It made a fuller picture of the past in his mind—enough for him to stop probing further. He had enough to think about. "And then came all the psychiatrists. I can remember some of them. Always probing and asking the same stupid questions. They wouldn't let me mix with the other boys at the school, you know. They were a little afraid of what they called my delicate balance, my potential instability. They thought they were hiding their ideas behind their big words. But I was a doctor's son! They'd have done better to let me alone. I told Uncle Charles so, but he never would listen."
"Sometimes he did," she said. "He listened to me at first. He wanted to adopt me legally, but I wanted to stay my father's daughter. And he never forced me to change that. He wanted to be good to us, Harry. He's a very honest person, really. But he had his problems, too. And then, when I turned fourteen—"
She got up and began scraping the dishes into the sink, getting ready to wash them in the old-fashioned way. "That's when I found I could sometimes read other people's thoughts," she said with her back to him. "That doesn't bother you now, does it?"
He made no answer. If she could read his mind, he didn't have to answer. And she turned her face toward him briefly to smile at that.
"It came on very slowly. At first, just a hint now and then. But I knew it could happen, from your parents and mine, so it wasn't any shock. Until I got all the nasty things. Men and women thinking—ugh! Oh, I knew about sex and such things; your mother had several long talks with me about that and sin, though my mother never mentioned the subject. But I asked Uncle Charley about something I didn't even know was bad, and that's when he found out. He—I guess he was scared for me. He really lectured me then, and he made me promise to give up telepathy. As if anyone could! But he wanted to be fooled, so he was."
She'd been rubbing the same plate for most of her speech. Now she rinsed, it and turned to another.
"I got all twisted around inside, knowing things I couldn't understand. But it wasn't too bad, once I learned to shut out some of the worst things. It was very nice in school when we had a test. I could always find someone who knew the answer."
"That's cheating," he protested. Then he winced as her smile indicated he was being very young.
"Of course, but it all seemed natural to me, and I did study my lessons. Besides, the things I learned that way stuck better than the others. I hid it from Uncle Charley, and it seemed so natural I mostly didn't think of it. I wasn't much good at predicting, but I learned to read almost any mind. I thought it was good—until a few months ago."
"What happened then?"
"I learned something horrible, Harry. Something too horrible to tell to a twelve-year-old!"
"I think I know something like that, too. And I'm going to have to go back all the way, I guess."
She nodded, and the dishes no longer gave her an excuse not to face him. "I know, darling. But not yet, please. Stay where you are for just a little longer. You need that—and so do I. Let me be—oh, an older sister for just a while longer, until I try what I have to do."
"You don't look happy about it."
"I'm not, Harry." But she smiled again and brushed the hair back from his forehead. "Yet I'd be much more unhappy if I let you grow up to what you have to face any other way. Really." Then she braced her shoulders and motioned him out of the chair. "Bedtime, Harry."
"But it's still light outside!"
"I know, but you've had a very hard day. And it will be easier if you lie down and relax. Please?"
He followed her, conscious that something was wrong. Then he had it as he watched her making up the bed. "I guess I'd better sleep on the couch," he decided. "You can take the bed."
There was something very tender in the smile she gave him. But she shook her head. She turned back the covers carefully and patted the right side. "You'll sleep here, Harry. And I'll sleep on the left. It has to be that way. Yes, I'm very sure."
This time she didn't turn her back as she dropped the pajamas to the floor. He hesitated, uncertain what to do. His eyes wanted to search out her body, but he was afraid to let her see him look. And his fingers reached for his own buttons, then fell away. But he caught her nod and reluctantly undressed, conscious that he was turning red all over. She waited until he was between the sheets before she closed the blinds tightly. He felt her slide in beside him. Her breath caught just slightly, and then she was pressed up against him.
"How old are you now, Harry?"
He was surprised at his own immediate answer. "Fourteen."
"Fourteen is a very good age," she assured him. "It's a very sweet age for a boy, I think. At least for some boys, from the thoughts I've read. And you're a very nice boy, Harry."
"You don't want to do this," he protested as he felt her trembling in the uncertain arm he put around her.
"No." Her voice was completely honest "Part of me is sick inside. And yet, I do—for a number of reasons."
She kissed him then, her lips tense as were his, and then softening as if guiding him. "So many other experiences," she said softly. "But it's different when it's myself. I know so much—and so little."
Her arms were soft around him, quiet and comforting. He lay there, desperately wanting to do many things, unable to make any advance. It was her hand that took his and guided it. He felt her tense, but there was no sound from her. And then she was relaxed again.
"You won't be alone, Harry. You won't be alone for a second while you grow back. You'll be part of me, and I'll be in your mind, even before you can be in mine again. Body and mind, Harry. Never alone in any way."
She drew him to her, guided him, until his own body took over and he could force his way with her. He heard her moan, this time in pain, but her arms forced him steadily down. And now her thoughts were trickling into his mind. They were wild thoughts, shifting from moment to moment, from sick disgust and loathing of self to a warmth that enfolded him as completely as her body was enfolding his.
Abruptly, his memory was fully back, with its sick waves of horror and fear for what must surely come. But this time it seemed less strong, and there was another mind with his, a voice in his thoughts telling him it wasn't real, it couldn't be real, that the only reality was here and now.
He had frozen into immobility, but now he felt her move beneath him, forcing a physical response from him at some effort he could only appreciate vaguely. And then there was a sudden surge of triumph in her thoughts, and no effort as she held and responded to him.
The horror of the future was washed thin by the physical reaction as he finally pulled himself away, drained of energy to think. The states of childhood that he had sought to protect himself were also gone, though the memory of their events remained.
Her thoughts reached him again—guarded and channeled, but with the love too real to leave room for doubt. "Sleep, darling. Don't think anymore, my love."
His mind was already falling through the lethargy toward sleep, and her thoughts crooned a soft lullaby to him. He tried to kiss her, felt her move to take his lips, and then relaxed into complete dreamlessness where there were no visions.
It was still and dark when he awoke. His mind groped for the events that had piled together and then came into focus. The vision of doom was there but still held off. And he could feel Ellen's hips where his arm lay across her.
He groped for her thoughts, but found nothing—only a complete blank. Yet something had awakened him. He tried to remember if he'd sensed any sleeping mind. It didn't matter. It couldn't be that absolute a negation.
With a muttered grunt, he turned over and began quieting his mind, hiding and holding back the word shapes that tried to slide across it, letting only a vague picture of a boy and a girl beside a creek cross his consciousness. Beside him, her body stirred slightly, as if she'd turned her head. But he kept the expressed thought back in the dark cell at the rear of his self and tried to breathe like a sleeping man.
The bed trembled faintly, and there was the softest sound of a sniff.
"Open your mind," he ordered.
She shook her head quickly, trying to hide her face again.
"Open it, or I'll come in and force it open," he threatened. He had no idea of whether that could be done, and the concept was against every ethic within him; but he tried not to let her sense that "Open it and you can keep a guard on your thoughts. But if I force my way in, you'll have to let me take what I want."
"You could do it," she decided. "Yes, I think you're strong enough. All right, Harry."
Much of her consciousness was still guarded, but he saw what he wanted to know.
"Was I really that horrible to you?" he asked in shock.
She cried out in protest. "Not you. Never you, Harry! Me! I responded to you—fully, totally. And—but that's what is horrible. I'm as filthy now as all those others. I'm no different. I'm an animal!"
"It's better than being a vegetable," he pointed out. "I suppose that if you'd hated every moment, but done it all as pure duty to me, it would have been sinless and beautiful?"
She nodded, her thoughts trying to meet his and make her meaning plain to him. But there was no common meeting ground. Damn it, at the end she had wanted him and had met his passion fully with her own. That, when shared in love, was what he'd been conditioned to think was the highest ideal of mature relationship. There was no lack of love, either.
"We're going to have a helluva marriage while it lasts," he decided wryly.
That brought her upright, so surprised that she didn't even notice his eyes resting on her body in frank enjoyment. "You can't marry me—not ever, Harry!" she protested.
"Normally, I couldn't ask it now. But I've had a fair sample of the kind of courage you have, Ellen. I think it's more than enough to risk what is going to happen to me. And for three months—well, I can let you alone. I'm not wholly a ravening beast."
"Not that. None of that," she said. Then she sighed. "My guard is all down, Harry."
He went into her mind gently this time, until he hit the knot of horror and fear she had held back from him. Then he broke contact, holding his head in his hands.
The shape of her madness and the time of its arrival were almost the same as it would be for him. Three months—and then certain and terrible insanity. But beyond that, her mind grew dark and unreadable; there was a faint sense of some terrible danger, but it was not defined into full alien possession. There was only something—waiting...
Maybe, as she had said, her precognition was weak, unable to pierce beyond the shock of her madness. Or maybe, as she had assumed when she caught the shadow of his horror earlier, his Alien Entity was only a further paranoiac delusion from his own mind. But he could not accept the idea. That alien presence could be no projection of his own imagination. It was sane—horribly, grotesquely, sane in a way no normal human mind could match.
He tried to conceal the direction of his thoughts from her now and to pretend acceptance of her explanation, however. "How long have you known, Ellen?"
"Fully? Several months. That's why I couldn't pretend any longer to Uncle Charley. But the knowledge has been growing in me for three or four years. It didn't come all at once, like yours. I had time to get used to it."
"Does everyone with extrasensory powers have to go mad?"
"Uncle Charley couldn't find anyone who escaped it in the original group. All went mad, Harry."
He pulled her to him, and there was no shrinking this time as she sought his comfort and strove to give him hers. "Then we'll go mad together," he decided. "The time is the same for both of us, so far as I can tell, and even the delusions of our two dooms match, mostly. Could such similarity come about unless we share our lives from now on?"
She considered it, then shook her head against his bare breast. "But there isn't time for me to change, to learn. I couldn't promise to be a real wife to you. And we—we could never dare to have children."
"No," he agreed firmly. "But stay with me. There's room here for whatever arrangement you want. Or I can get a sofa-bed for the living room. Don't leave me, Ellen."
She nestled closer to him. "I already promised that, darling, or don't you remember? I promised it to you when you were only a little boy lying on a very dirty floor."
"A pretty horrible little boy, as I remember."
"Yes," she admitted. "And I was once a nasty little girl, wasn't I? I really led you astray then. What happened to me?"
"We were brought up by what passes for adults in this world!"
They were silent then, while he rocked her gently back and forth, feeling the softness of her skin slide against his.
"Grimes will have to know. He won't like it, but he's entitled to know we're together. And that means you'll have to make it legal, Ellen—whatever you do in your heart. So tomorrow we apply for blood tests and then get a license. And after that, I've got to start finding some way to get us out of this. After all, we don't know what happens beyond that moment—or eon, whatever it is—of madness. Even my hints don't prove any outcome. I've got to try to learn. We've got three months. Sometimes a lot can be done in that time when it has to be."
He sensed a casual consent in her mind, but no hope. And he knew that he was really only whistling against the wind. But he couldn't sit back supinely and let things just happen. A man had to fight for his fate, even when there was no seeming chance to win.
"Only three months," she muttered.
She bent her head back and pulled him down suddenly, her lips seeking his. There was still a sickness coiled inside her, but she met it and drove it back with no flinching from his awareness. There was love in her mind and growing passion in her body.
His own fusion in mind and body met her divided response, accepted it for what it was, and poured out to envelop her as her body received him.
IX. HOME
Dr. Byron Coleman, FRS etc., glanced one more time around the room that had been his home so long. He checked the drawers in the rickety little dresser, looked in the closet, and opened the medicine cabinet above the rust-stained sink. There was only the old-fashioned straight razor, and he tossed it into the wastebasket; almost certainly, they wouldn't let him keep that where he was going.
"That's it, Pete. I'll take the other bag." He picked it up and took the notebook from the scarred table, to follow the old desk clerk down the frayed carpet of the hall and the stairs. Outside, the limousine was drawn up to the curb with the liveried chauffeur beside it.
Pete lifted the bags into the trunk, but waved aside the bill he was offered. "I hate to see you leave, Bud," he said. "After fourteen years, we're going to miss you around here."
"Fourteen years," Bud agreed. "As they say, how time flies. Well, dear chap, take care of yourself."
He shook the gnarled hand gravely, took one more look at the ancient hotel, and climbed into the limousine. "You have the address, James?"
"Yes, Dr. Coleman. My instructions were quite complete."
"Excellent. And by the way, what is your name?"
The chauffeur permitted himself a slight smile as he looked back. "It really is James, sir."
The car got into motion with a velvet smoothness, even on the rough streets of the decaying neighborhood. Bud sank back into the luxury of the seat. It was finished, or almost so. By now his books would be delivered to the library of the Primates, his personal things to the friends who could appreciate them. There was a case of good whiskey being sent to Pete, and only the notebook with its charts and graphs, its facts and questions, remained. Then a leisurely drive southward and an excellent dinner at the Canvasback Inn in Delaware. After that, a ride over mostly rural roads, to arrive in time for a final chat with the director, before he sought his very private quarters and the door closed finally
on him. He would even sleep soundly this last night, he knew. Ave atque vale!
Like all things worth doing well, it had been expensive to arrange. But now, watching the quiet efficiency of the chauffeur, he was satisfied that there would be no fault, ever, with the service for which he had contracted.
The limousine drew up before the West End apartment and double parked with the assurance only such a car could command. Bud waited for the door to be opened and stepped out, the notebook under his arm.
"I may be awhile in here, James."
"Yes, Dr. Coleman. You'll find me waiting here when you come out."
He could have delivered the notebook before, once he was sure the boy had rediscovered his abilities, but now he was glad for the delay. He was curious about the new bride Bronson had taken, and Tina Hillery was never a good person to trust for important details. He knew less of Ellen than of most of the mutants he had discovered. Now, as she held the apartment door open and he introduced himself, he was satisfied. Harry had chosen well.
She had changed a great deal in growing up from a saucy little girl in frizzy curls, but he thought he might still have recognized her. For the moment, however, the recognition wasn't mutual, though she did seem a bit puzzled.
She was inviting him in, explaining that Harry should be back soon. "Can I give you some lunch, Dr. Coleman?"
"Please, my dear—just Bud," he corrected her. He laughed quietly. "Ah, yes, I see that Harry has told you of my appetite. But no, dear girl, no lunch this time. Not even a bottle of beer. I shan't stay long. Just dropped by to leave Harry my notes about something we're both interested in. I'm leaving town, you see, and I'm afraid I won't be back. Devil of a nuisance, wrapping things for mailing, so I thought I'd bring the book here."
"Thank you. It looks like an awful lot of work," she said uncertainly, but her frown was not directed at the notebook lying on the coffee table between them. "You can't have done all that since talking to Harry."
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