by Jeff Sutton
The Boy Who Had The Power -- Jean and Jeff Sutton -- (1971) (Version 2002.09.29 -- Done) For Erin and Michael Patrick Mahanay
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SPRAWLED COMFORTABLY in the lush green panda grass, Jedro idly watched the big yellow sun Klore slide downward toward the rim of the Ullan Hills. Its warmth felt good. Far behind it, small and bright in the yellow-blue sky, raced the small orange sun Bergon. Once Klore fell below the horizon, Bergon would splash the darkening hills with its dusky orange light.
Jedro lazily reached out to scratch the ear of a browsing gran, his thoughts languid. He seldom wondered that most of his days and nights, for as long as he could remember, had been spent tending the sleek woolly animals that grazed the rolling hills. He could scarcely conceive that life, at least his own, could be much different.
Neither did he know that his memory cells were blocked.
Yet occasionally in the quiet of night, when Klore and Bergon were down and the sky was agleam with stars, strange things nibbled at his mind --
unidentifiable things which crouched just beyond the borders of his awareness so that he never quite managed to give them shape or substance. But he could remember his life quite clearly, all the way back to that morning, some four years earlier, when he had awakened in the attic room of Oscar Krant's ranch house. That far he could remember, but no further. Beyond that morning was a nothingness.
He had awakened, not knowing who or where he was -- a small boy staring blankly at a dirty ceiling, the scarred and grimy walls that hemmed him in, the tattered curtains that hung limply over the single narrow window. A stale, musky odor touched his nostrils. Lying there, he wondered without wondering, his mind grappling with an awesome vacuum. It was like gazing into a curious emptiness that extended back and back and back.
Who am I? The question came unbidden, bringing a moment of stark terror.
His body shook convulsively. He gazed for a long moment at the pale light filtering through the window before rising stealthily to pull aside the dingy curtain. Trees, bushes, low rolling hills limned against a strange yellow-orange horizon -- he knew what he was seeing, knew the names of most of the objects that met his eyes, but with no comprehension of the source of his knowledge. Neither could he remember ever having seen such a strange landscape. That bizarre yellow-orange light on the horizon...He trembled and moved his gaze.
His eyes settled on a dilapidated barn fronting a series of large fenced fields that had been designed to hold what? He didn't know, for the fields were empty. Trampled mud around a nearby water hole suggested that the fenced areas had held animals of some kind.
He let his gaze wander. A rutted dirt road winding off into the distance, an old wagon with a broken wheel, a small vegetable garden overgrown with weeds -- his recognition came totally without conscious memory. It was as if his strange surroundings had been conjured up in some nightmarish dream.
Who am I? The question came again, this time more forcefully. Swirling out from some hidden place in his mind, it brought with it an anxiety that caused him to tremble anew. Trying to remember was like looking into a black and bottomless well; the effort was almost a pain.
Closing his eyes, he fought to think.
J-E-D-R-O...Letter by letter the name formed in his mind. Flaring there in the darkness of his thoughts, it gave him an odd sense of identity. The name (for he instinctively knew that it was a name) had seeped out from that region of blankness from which he himself had seemed to Page 1
come. I am Jedro! He gripped the window ledge filled with the knowledge while the name surged through his consciousness like a pleasant stream. He was Jedro!
A door slammed somewhere below, followed by the loud clomp of boots coming closer.
Frightened, he sprang back into bed and watched the door. It opened and a heavy-set man with coarse, mean features stepped into the room.
His grimy trousers, faded shirt, and muddy boots were oddly at one with his dark, scowling face.
"Awake, eh?" he snarled. "It's about time." Staring down at the boy, he rubbed his nose on his sleeve.
Terrified, Jedro asked, "Where am I?"
"Where are you? Ha, you are dumb."
"Please," he whispered.
"My name is Mr. Krant, and you're here to work on my ranch."
"Please, Mr. Krant, how did I get here?"
Krant's eyes narrowed. "The fewer questions you ask, the better off you'll be," he warned.
"But..."
"Get up," he roared. "Get dressed and go downstairs. I can't have you loafing around all day."
"Yes, sir," Jedro answered hurriedly. Frightened and bewildered, he hastened to comply. Krant left the room, clomping back down the stairs.
That's the way it had been that morning, when first he had awakened in the attic room -- back at the edge of his memory, beyond which there was nothing. Dressing, he'd hurried downstairs.
Krant's wife, Lena, had served him a bowl of cold mush. Thin and sloppy, with stringy gray hair that she seemed to be continually brushing back from her narrow face, she didn't speak until he began to eat.
Then she said to her husband, "He looks puny."
"I'll build him up," growled the rancher.
"Hmmmph!" She eyed Jedro disparagingly. Shifting uncomfortably, he looked down into his bowl.
"Hurry up and slop it down," snarled Krant. "I can't wait all day."
Hastily gulping the mush, he trailed the rancher from the house. The big yellow sun, balanced on the morning horizon, held an alien look that startled him. Halting to gaze at it, he felt a slow hammering somewhere deep inside him
-- the hammering of a thought trying to break through into his consciousness.
That sun wasn't, wasn't.
"Hurry up," barked Krant. Jedro tore his eyes from the gleaming yellow ball and hurried after him.
The rancher outlined Jedro's duties while giving him a quick tour of the yard and barn. From early spring until late fall he would pasture Krant's flock of gran in the Ullan Hills, moving the animals along the rolling slopes to keep them from cropping the grass to the roots. Sleeping and eating in the open, he would return to the ranch house only occasionally to get food; the rest of the time he would be alone. He savored that.
Before the onset of winter the fattened gran would be herded into the fenced yards to await the chain of relkdrawn wagons that would take them to market in a distant town. Relks, Jedro learned, were large, flat-headed quadrupeds that served both for transportation and as beasts of burden. Krant owned two of the creatures, thin, nervous animals that were kept locked in small stalls in one corner of the gloomy barn. They reared, snorting with terror, whenever Krant entered. Their large, dark eyes rolling wildly, their brown and white bodies would tremble. Sight of them evoked a deep stirring in
some hidden part of Jedro's mind, although he was quite certain he had never seen such animals Page 2
before. He could sympathize with them and understand their fear.
"Not worth their feed," explained Krant. "Only use 'em a few times a year to go to town or ride out to pasture. The rest of the time they're dead weight."
"What are their names?"
"Names? They haven't any. They're just animals."
"They look hungry," he ventured timidly.
"No work, no food," snapped Krant. "That's the policy around here and don't ever forget it."
He gulped, feeling a surge of pity for the animals. He could see no reason why they couldn't be pastured in the nearby panda grass, especially when the relks were only ridden a few times a year.
He wanted to suggest it but didn't dare.
The rancher pointed out the various tools and pieces of equipment, explaining how each was to be used. "I'd better not
catch you breaking anything," he warned. It struck Jedro that almost everything he'd seen already was broken, but he didn't say so.
As he followed the rancher outside, he glanced at the sky, then jerked straighter. Two Suns! The big alien yellow sun and another -- a small orange sun just lifting above the horizon. Fright stabbed at his mind.
"What are you gawking at?" growled Krant.
"Two suns," he exclaimed.
"What did you expect?" asked the rancher sarcastically. Caught with a deep sweeping incredulity that told him that such a thing could not be, Jedro scarcely heard him.
"An orange sun," he whispered.
"You'd better give me your attention," grated Krant, "because I'm not going to tell you anything twice. You'd better remember that."
"Yes, sir." Jedro wrenched his gaze from the sky, his mind in tumult.
Again he had the impression of living a hideous nightmare. He could recognize things that he was certain he'd never seen before, even read the words on the supply containers he'd seen in the barn and know what they meant, although he couldn't remember ever having seen a written word before. Yet he knew his name, the individual letters that composed it. How was that? But a sky with two suns! Although he couldn't recall ever having seen another sky, he knew that two suns couldn't be; and yet they were.
Krant continued outlining his duties. During winter he would repair the barn, fences, water troughs, and perform innumerable other tasks. There was the garden to be tended, fruits and nuts to be picked, wood to be chopped.
After dark he would help Mrs. Krant in the house. Jedro couldn't imagine there were enough hours in a day.
When his first day's chores were finished, long after the big yellow sun and its smaller orange companion had set. Mrs. Krant provided him with a bowl of watery soup, some greens from the garden, and a chunk of stale bread. He gulped the food greedily, then asked for more.
"More?" she demanded. She towered over him, hands on her bony hips, her narrow face wrathful. "You'll get exactly what I give you and no more," she snapped.
"Yes, ma'am," he answered meekly.
Still feeling the pangs of hunger, he went outside. It felt good to escape, even if for but a few moments. The sky was alive with stars and a cool breeze touched his face. The cry of a nightbird came faintly from a distance.
Again he had the sense of the unfamiliar familiar. Whispers from a deep corner of his mind told him that the strangeness around him was not strange at all, but was merely things he had known in different shape, color, and context. But
two suns! He shuddered with the sense of something terribly wrong.
The consciousness of his hunger made him think of the relks. Glancing cautiously at the house, Page 3
he sneaked toward the barn. Reaching the door, he hesitated, remembering how the animals had reared and snorted at Mr. Krant's approach. If they kicked up a fuss with him, Mr. Krant would hear for sure.
Yet they had to be fed. The knowledge fortified his courage.
Boldly opening the door, he crept inside and paused in the darkness. To his relief, he heard only a low whinny, followed by a stark silence. He had the strange feeling that the animals had been waiting for him. Procuring an armload of fodder from a bin he'd noticed earlier, he dropped half in each stall.
The relks' eyes, aglow in the blackness, fastened on him. The animal nearest him moved forward to brush its moist nose across his cheek. Gazing at the creatures, he felt an odd sense of companionship with them.
"Eat, boy," he whispered. He patted the animal, appalled at its thinness. It seemed scarcely more than skin and bones. As the relk dropped its head and began munching, Jedro patted the animal in the adjacent stall and went outside.
The next night he fed them again, and on the following night. On the fourth or fifth night, as he stole toward the barn, he heard a loud snorting in the stalls. Hoofs thudded against the wooden walls. Frightened, he halted.
Abruptly the barn door burst open and Krant rushed out.
"Caught you," he shouted angrily. He struck Jedro alongside the jaw, sending him sprawling.
"I didn't do anything," Jedro shrieked, scrambling to his feet.
"Don't lie to me," roared Krant. "You've been feeding those worthless relks." He lashed out again, a smashing blow to the ribs that sent Jedro reeling back into the dirt. This time he was smart enough not to get up.
Krant sprang forward, glaring down at him. "That's just a small sample of what you'll get if I catch you at it again," he shouted. His face contorted with anger, he kicked Jedro savagely and strode back into the house.
Jedro pulled himself to his knees, staring at the rancher's retreating figure. "I hate you," he said through gritted teeth. Holding his side, he pushed himself painfully to his feet and gazed toward the barn. The relks had tried to warn him! He felt grateful for that.
Each night thereafter he was more careful. Long after the Krants were asleep, he would tiptoe from the silent house to feed the animals. Certain that Krant was checking the fodder in the bin, he brought them fresh panda grass from the nearby field. His reward each night was the nuzzling the animals gave him.
It was the only love he had known that whole first winter.
But all that was long ago. Since then he'd learned many things. Here and there, beyond the Ullan Hills, were villages and towns. Ramsig, a neighboring gran herder, had told him of them. "Big towns," explained Ramsig. "Some have four or five thousand people."
"That many?" Jedro was amazed.
Ramsig nodded. "One town around the curve of the planet -- they call it New Portland -- has close to ten thousand people. It's the biggest town on Doorn." His dark eyes gazed thoughtfully across the rolling hills of panda grass. "That's hard to imagine."
"Ten thousand people," exclaimed Jedro. His eyes grew wide with wonder.
"Have you ever seen a town?"
"Little Paris," answered Ramsig. "That was close to six years ago. I got to stay there for five whole days."
"What was it like?" he asked eagerly.
"Little Paris?" Ramsig rubbed his jaw reflectively. "What I remember most were the trucks."
"Trucks?" The word held a familiar ring.
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"They're like the flatbed wagons that haul the gran to market, only they're drawn by what they call engines instead of relks," he explained. "They go chu-chu-chu-chu, a real odd sound. They can go faster than a man can run.
Even faster than a relk," he added.
"I remember." Jedro searched his mind. "I heard Mr. Krant say that people back on the home planet had millions of them."
"Earth? I've heard that. They say that place is just one big city."
Ramsig frowned. "Imagine a planet being all city? But it's true. I saw pictures of it in a library."
"What's that?"
"A building in Little Paris where they keep books and tapes that talk.
They've even got a machine that makes pictures move, just like in real life.
Some of the pictures showed people flitting around in the sky in what they call aircars."
"Aircars." Something pinged in Jedro's memory, then faded before he could grasp it.
"You should see the buildings," said Ramsig. He gestured toward a distant hill that humped against the sky. "Some were even higher than that."
"In Little Paris?" Jedro was awed.
"On Earth," corrected Ramsig.
"That must be a long way off," he suggested tentatively.
Ramsig smiled wisely. "Thousands and thousands of miles," he said. "It goes around another sun."
"Another sun!" The words burned in Jedro's mind.
As Ramsig turned to leave, Jedro called after him, "Better find a good shelter tonight. It's going to rain."
"Rain?" Ramsig glanced at the cloudless sky. "Not a chance."
"It's going to rain real hard," insisted Jedro. The gran herder, striding down the slope, gave no sign he heard him.
That night, wrapped in his blanket under the shelter of a
n otog tree while the rain slanted down, Jedro pondered all the wonderful things Ramsig had told him. Most wonderful of all was the planet Earth that was all city.
People flitting like birds in aircars and buildings that touched the sky!
While contemplating the story with awe, he was aware that the scene the gran herder had painted had roused small echoes in his mind. What was it that lay hidden there? He struggled to bring it to the fore, and failed, yet retained the awe.
Surely the universe was a strange place.
The following week, when their flocks came close together again, Ramsig waved him over.
"How did you know it was going to rain?" he called, as Jedro drew near.
"I just knew."
"But how?" demanded Ramsig. "The sky was clear."
"I just felt it." Jedro didn't believe it strange; he always knew when it was going to rain. It wasn't a feeling exactly, and yet it was. Because the knowledge came so naturally, he had never questioned it.
"That's quite a trick," admitted Ramsig. It was his turn to be puzzled.
That summer Jedro kept his flock as close to Ramsig as possible, talking with him at every opportunity. The tall, silent, taciturn youth, who liked to stand facing into the yellow-blue sky, told him many marvelous things.
Ramsig said that the large yellow sun Klore and the small orange sun Bergon went around each other, just as Doorn -- the planet on which they lived
-- circled Klore. Fascinated, Jedro drew their paths in the dust, trying to imagine how it must be.
More magical yet was a third sun named Glost, which appeared as little more than a red spot in the sky. One night, after both Klore and Bergon had
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set and the stars gleamed magically in the blue-black firmament, Ramsig pointed it out to him.
"It goes around the other two suns, but it's so far away that you can hardly see it," he explained.
"How far?" Jedro stared at the reddish spark in the darkness.
"At least a million miles."
"A million miles," he echoed wonderingly. Although he had no idea of the distance, he sensed it must be very far indeed. Little Paris, the nearest town, lay sixty miles away and took two days to reach by relk. But a million miles!