Collected Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by J F Bone

  “I wish I could do this easily,” Jones said, “but I can’t. Somehow I have to make you understand that my daughter can kill you, and that she’ll probably do just that if you stay around. She has powers most people don’t possess.”

  “You’re telling me? She’s a witch.” Lenny nodded. “I’ve known that for weeks, but nobody believes me when I tell them. She hexed Mr. Ellingsen. She whammied the baseball team, she—”

  “She’s not a witch. She’s perfectly normal.”

  “Ha!” Lenny eyed Jones speculatively and wondered if he’d gone too far. Fathers weren’t noted for tolerating kids who bad-mouthed their daughters. But oddly enough Mr. Jones wasn’t affected. He might love Mary Ellen, although Lenny couldn’t see why, but the love didn’t affect his temper. “Look, sir,” Lenny said “I took Mary Ellen out last summer, I kissed her a few times, but we didn’t do anything else, no matter what she says.”

  “She hasn’t said anything except that she hates you. Why did you stop dating?”

  “She got too possessive. Acted like she owned me. I didn’t like it very much, so I dropped her. A week or so later she chewed me out and told me she hated me.”

  “When was that?”

  “Last September.” Lenny shrugged. “She kept telling me all fall and winter term. Kept saying, “Just you wait Lenny Stone. I’ll fix you!”

  Jones shivered. “Get out of town Lenny. I know what I’m talking about. You haven’t got a chance.”

  “But she can’t really hurt me. She’s tried.”

  “She hasn’t got her full powers yet,” Jones said. “The best thing you can do is get away while you still can. Get lost. Vanish. Visit relatives. Don’t come back until we re gone. I’m leaving in June—by the tenth I’ll be far from here and so will Mary Ellen. You’d be safe then.”

  “Hey—you’re really worried.”

  “You damn well know I am.” Jones stared at Lenny as though he could force his fears and concern into the young man’s mind. The light from the window fell on Lenny’s face. It had a stark quality not normally found in an adolescent.

  Lenny shook his head. “It’s my graduation as much as hers,” He said, “I belong there as much as she does. I’m staying.”

  Jones sighed. “All right Lenny, let’s do it the hard way.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “This.” Jones said. His face hardened and Lenny watched him with mild uneasiness. He was going to get mad after all.

  “Are you mad at me for calling Mary Ellen a witch? Are you—hey—leggo—you can’t—” Lenny’s voice ran down and stopped as he sat with glassy eyes clamped in a fixed stare on Jones’ tense face.

  This has to be fast, Jones thought. He had perhaps a minute before one of Pop McGonigle’s teen age customers was going to notice that Lenny was somewhere on cloud nine. He marshaled what he thought were the most important things for Lenny’s safety, gave the necessary instructions, planted the posthypnotic suggestions and awakened Lenny.

  “Goodbye Lenny, and good luck,” he said.

  “Sorry, sir, but I couldn’t leave anyway. My parents would object, and I don’t have any relatives.”

  Jones smiled. “Well—you’ve been warned. I guess that’s all I can do . . .” He walked out of the store feeling reasonably happy. By tomorrow, Lenny should be a hundred miles or more from here . . .

  Mary Ellen faced her father across the dinner table. “What were you talking about with Lenny Stone down at McGonigle’s?” She asked. “And don’t say you weren’t because I saw you. I want to know.”

  “Now Mary—” Emily protested.

  “I want to know!”

  “That’s no way to talk to your lather.”

  “I don’t care—you can’t touch me. I’ve got something that makes me bigger than either of you. I’ve found out all about it.”

  “Is the high school still standing?” Jones asked. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He was conscious of a horrid compulsion to tell everything. He clenched his teeth. Mary had at last arrived at control of her powers. She was strong—as strong as Emily had been. He was right when he told Lenny that he couldn’t control her—but he hadn’t dreamed how right he was. He’d thought he could deny her. That was his worst mistake.

  Suddenly he was suspended in midair looking down at the tight angry face of his daughter. The thought that she had learned a lot in a very short time dominated his brain. He bad a reasonable certainty that he wasn’t going to be hurt physically, even though his position was ridiculous. Adults simply didn’t levitate. That was kid stuff.

  “Mary! Put your father down this minute!” Emily ordered. She couldn’t resist the wry thought that she would love to be in her daughter’s place right now. But of course she wasn’t, and after all, she couldn’t have done a thing like this to John. Still, he was a stubborn, opinionated and unreasonable man at times and a good shaking would be him a world of good.

  “I want to know what he was talking to Lenny about,” Mary Ellen said, “and I’m not going to let him down till I do.” She smiled a tight, hard, smug little smile. “I’ve found out what I can do—and how to do it,” she said. “I’m maybe the most powerful person in the world. And you’re going to tell me what I want to know and do what I want you to do—or—I’ll—”

  “YOU’LL WHAT?” Lenny asked. He stood in the kitchen door, looking at the suddenly frozen tableau. There was a solid thump as Jones’ buttocks made contact with the floor, followed by three lesser thumps as heels and head followed the example of his behind. He scrambled to his feet, his face a study in anger and embarrassment.

  “You!” Mary Ellen screeched at Lenny. “Go away! Get out of here!”

  “Why?”

  “Thanks,” Jones said, “I’m glad you showed up, but you should be running for your life.”

  “Mom said you did a pretty good job for a quickie,” Lenny said. “You left only a couple of loose ends. But those were enough. You gave me no motivation that would stand probing. I don’t know that I told you but I can’t hide anything from Mom. Anyway, it looks as though I came just in time.”

  “You did. I’m too old to appreciate being the centrum of a psi effect.”

  “I told you to get out of here,” Mary Ellen said, glaring at Lenny.

  “Get lost.” Lenny said.

  Jones shuddered. In about ten seconds there would be bloodshed.

  “I am going to wring you out and hang you up to dry.” Mary Ellen said. “I am going to smash you and shred the pieces. I am going to break you into little bits. I know what I can do!”

  “Big talk,” Lenny said. He stood in front of her, his face twisted into a mocking grin. “There’s a lot of hot air in you that ought to be let out,” he said. “You’re all puffed up . . . Your hubris is showing. You need deflating.”

  Mary Ellen ground her teeth and her face turned livid with anger.

  “Run!” Emily gasped. “You’ve gone too far! She’ll kill you!”

  The air in the room thickened and writhed and became a gelid something that wasn’t air. Forces gathered, poised, pulsed, and as Mary Ellen paused to focus the effect Lenny reached out and touched her. Something snatched Mary Ellen, spun her through the air and bounced her off the floor! The room shook, the walls creaked, plaster fell, and a dead calm descended upon the Jones kitchen.

  Emily’s eyes opened with a mixture of amazement and realization. Jones grinned, and Mary Ellen looked at Lenny with hate-filled eyes. “You did it again!” she said, “Damn you!”

  “It’s a good thing you have a well-padded behind,” Lenny said. “That was quite a wallop.”

  “It hurts,” Mary Ellen said.

  “Maybe it’ll teach you not to act stupid,” Lenny said. “I told your dad that you couldn’t hurt me. You can’t. You and I—we re complements. We cancel out. You’re a psi positive, I’m negative. It’s a defense mechanism our race has had from the beginning. We’d never have survived if a bunch of nutty tweens could damage each other and ever
yone else because they had no self control. Of course psi effects were useful to discourage predators and other big terrifying things, but except for telepathy they’re no good to help the race become civilized. When you can’t lie you’ve gotta be honest. But psychokinetics such as you have are no good for anything nowadays.”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t worry, you will as soon as your mom gets through talking to you. My Mom told me about it before she sent me over here. And I guess it’s a good thing she did. You were making an idiot out of yourself and you might have done something real bad. You can’t help being a tween any more than I can—it’s part of growing up. But you can help being stupid.”

  Mary Ellen got slowly to her feet. It dawned on her that she was abysmally ignorant, and from the expressions on her parent’s faces she realized that she was the only one who was. Her parents knew exactly what Lenny was saying. It wasn’t fair, she thought. And from the relaxed smile on her father’s face she was certain that whatever had happened, it was something that took a monkey off his back. The thought was ambivalent.

  “Just keep a hand on her, Lenny,” Jones said. “Emily’s bound to have her bracelets around somewhere. She never throws anything away.” Jones sighed with relief. “I suppose I should have guessed. You practically told me down at McGonigle’s, but I wasn’t thinking very well. I had a mental picture of you on a marble slab.”

  “Don’t worry about the bracelets,” Lenny said. “Mom gave me hers. She figured you might need them.” He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a plain gold bracelet. There wasn’t anything unusual about it except that it locked with a finalsounding click when he closed it around Mary Ellen’s wrist. “I’m wearing the mate to it,” Lenny said, pushing back the left sleeve of his jacket to show an identical bracelet around his lean wrist. “She can’t do anything now. As long as I’m around, she’s neutralized.”

  “It’s a miracle!” Emily said. “To think that there was a complementary—why the odds against it are in the millions!”

  “Not quite,” Lenny said. “You see, Mrs. Jones, my folks were transferred from Chicago because my psych profile and Mary Ellen’s were almost identical. The—the Council?”—he paused and Jones nodded. “The Council,” Lenny continued, “thought Mary Ellen would go tween earlier on this world than on Lyrane—something to do with the kind of sunlight and the shortness of the years. Since my pattern fitted hers to four decimal points, they figured I was almost certainly complementary; so they sent my parents here. I guess you have a higher research priority than Dad. Anyway, I don’t know much about these things.”

  “I expect we should have told Mary Ellen,” Emily said.

  “You should have,” Lenny said. “Tweens aren’t really stupid or uncooperative, we’re merely young.”

  “Have you learned the standing rules?” Jones asked.

  “No, but Mom said that was why we never got in touch. We were ready if needed, but we weren’t supposed to contact you. That was why she broke me off with Mary Ellen last summer. I kinda liked her, but Mom brainwashed it out of me. It might have been better if she hadn’t. Besides, she thinks you’re crazy to bring a girl here.”

  “Mary Ellen was born here,” Emily said.

  “You’re going to stay with us, of course.” Jones said.

  “Naturally. Your assignment’s about over and Mom wants me to go home for advanced training. I think I’d like to be a psychologician and you can’t get that sort of education on this world. My folks say its all right if I go with you to Arizona. They’ll both be interested in financial operations this summer. And when you’re done I can go home with you.”

  “Good!” Emily said.

  Mary Ellen shook her head. “I won’t stand for this,” she said. “If Lenny comes into this house, I’m leaving!”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Lenny said, “or do anything except graduate from dear old John Tyler High. After that, you and I and your parents are going to take a long trip to a place called Lyrane. And when the people there get through with us, we’ll be adults. And maybe then I won’t look so much like a louse to you, and you won’t look so much like a witch to me.”

  “Mom!—do something!”

  Emily shrugged. Her pleasant face wore a tight Giaconda smile, half loving, half cruel. Looking at her, Jones wondered if the Mona Lisa had been a Lyranian. It was hardly possible, but there was more than a passing resemblance. “Dear,” Emily said, “I can’t do a thing about it. You’ll simply have to grow up and become decently inhuman.”