The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

  "Poor kid," Jane said.

  Holloway shot her a quick glance. "The basis of Euclid. Alphabet blocks. Math, geometry, algebra—they come much later. We're familiar with that development. On the other hand, start the baby with the basic principles of our x logic."

  "Blocks? What kind?"

  Holloway looked at the abacus. "It wouldn't make much sense to us. But we've been conditioned to Euclid."

  Paradine poured himself a stiff shot of whisky. "That's pretty awful. You're not limiting to math."

  "Right! I'm not limiting it at all. How can I? I'm not conditioned to x logic."

  "There's the answer," Jane said, with a sigh of relief. "Who is? It'd take such a person to make the sort of toys you apparently think these are."

  Holloway nodded, his eyes, behind the thick lenses, blinking. "Such people may exist."

  "Where?"

  "They might prefer to keep hidden."

  "Supermen?"

  "I wish I knew. You see, Paradine, we've got yardstick trouble again. By our standards these people might seem super-dupers in certain respects. In others they might seem moronic. It's not a quantitative difference; it's qualitative. They think different. And I'm sure we can do things they can't."

  "Maybe they wouldn't want to," Jane said.

  Paradine tapped the fused gadgetry on the box. "What about this? It implies—"

  "A purpose, sure."

  "Transportation?"

  "One thinks of that first. If so, the box might have come from anywhere."

  "Where—things are—different?" Paradine asked slowly.

  "Exactly. In space, or even time. I don't know; I'm a psychologist. Unfortunately I'm conditioned to Euclid, too."

  "Funny place it must be," Jane said. "Denny, get rid of those toys."

  "I intend to."

  Holloway picked up the crystal cube. "Did you question the children much?"

  Paradine said, "Yeah. Scott said there were people in that cube when he first looked. I asked him what was in it now."

  "What did he say?" The psychologist's eyes widened.

  "He said they were building a place. His exact words. I asked him who—people? But he couldn't explain."

  "No, I suppose not," Holloway muttered. "It must be progressive. How long have the children had these toys?"

  "About three months, I guess."

  "Time enough. The perfect toy, you see, is both instructive and mechanical. It should do things, to interest a child, and it should teach, preferably unobtrusively. Simple problems at first. Later—"

  "X logic," Jane said, white-faced.

  Paradine cursed under his breath. "Emma and Scott are perfectly normal!"

  "Do you know how their minds work—now?"

  Holloway didn't pursue the thought. He fingered the doll. "It would be interesting to know the conditions of the place where these things came from. Induction doesn't help a great deal, though. Too many factors are missing. We can't visualize a world based on the x factor—environment adjusted to minds thinking in x patterns. This luminous network inside the doll. It could be anything. It could exist inside us, though we haven't discovered it yet. When we find the right stain—" He shrugged. "What do you make of this?"

  It was a crimson globe, two inches in diameter, with a protruding knob upon its surface.

  "What could anyone make of it?"

  "Scott? Emma?"

  "I hadn't even seen it till about three weeks ago. Then Emma started to play with it." Paradine nibbled his lip. "After that, Scott got interested."

  "Just what do they do?"

  "Hold it up in front of them and move it back and forth. No particular pattern of motion."

  "No Euclidean pattern," Holloway corrected. "At first they couldn't understand the toy's purpose. They had to be educated up to it."

  "That's horrible," Jane said.

  "Not to them. Emma is probably quicker at understanding x than is Scott, for her mind isn't yet conditioned to this environment."

  Paradine said, "But I can remember plenty of things I did as a child. Even as a baby."

  "Well?"

  "Was I—mad then?"

  "The things you don't remember are the criterion of your madness," Holloway retorted. "But I use the word 'madness' purely as a convenient symbol for the variation from the known human norm. The arbitrary standard of sanity."

  Jane put down her glass. "You've said that induction was difficult, Mr. Holloway. But it seems to me you're making a great deal of it from very little. After all, these toys—"

  "I am a psychologist, and I've specialized in children. I'm not a layman. These toys mean a great deal to me, chiefly because they mean so little."

  "You might be wrong."

  "Well, I rather hope I am. I'd like to examine the children."

  Jane rose in arms. "How?"

  After Holloway had explained, she nodded, though still a bit hesitantly. "Well, that's all right. But they're not guinea pigs."

  The psychologist patted the air with a plump hand. "My dear girl! I'm not a Frankenstein. To me the individual is the prime factor—naturally, since I work with minds. If there's anything wrong with the youngsters, I want to cure them."

  Paradine put down his cigarette and slowly watched blue smoke spiral up, wavering in an unfelt draught. "Can you give a prognosis?"

  "I'll try. That's all I can say. If the undeveloped minds have been turned into the x channel, it's necessary to divert them back. I'm not saying that's the wisest thing to do, but it probably is from our standards. After all, Emma and Scott will have to live in this world."

  "Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe there's much wrong. They seem about average, thoroughly normal."

  "Superficially they may seem so. They've no reason for acting abnormally, have they? And how can you tell if they—think differently?"

  "I'll call 'em," Paradine said.

  "Make it informal, then. I don't want them to be on guard."

  Jane nodded towards the toys. Holloway said, "Leave the stuff there, eh?"

  -

  But the psychologist, after Emma and Scott were summoned, made no immediate move towards direct questioning. He managed to draw Scott unobtrusively into the conversation, dropping key words now and then. Nothing so obvious as a word-association test; cooperation is necessary for that.

  The most interesting development occurred when Holloway took up the abacus. "Mind showing me how this works?"

  Scott hesitated. "Yes, sir. Like this." He slid a bead deftly through the maze, in a tangled course, so swiftly that no one was quite sure whether or not it ultimately vanished. It might have been merely legerdemain. Then, again—

  Holloway tried. Scott watched, wrinkling his nose.

  "That's right?"

  "Uh-huh. It's gotta go there."

  "Here? Why?"

  "Well, that's the only way to make it work."

  But Holloway was conditioned to Euclid. There was no apparent reason why the bead should slide from this particular wire to the other. It looked like a random factor. Also, Holloway suddenly noticed, this wasn't the path the bead had taken previously, when Scott had worked the puzzle. At least, as well as he could tell.

  "Will you show me again?"

  Scott did, and twice more, on request. Holloway blinked through his glasses. Random, yes. And a variable. Scott moved the bead along a different course each time.

  Somehow, none of the adults could tell whether or not the bead vanished. If they had expected to see it disappear, their reactions might have been different.

  In the end nothing was solved. Holloway, as he said good night, seemed ill at ease.

  "May I come again?"

  "I wish you would," Jane told him. "Any time. You still think—"

  He nodded. "The children's minds are not reacting normally. They're not dull at all, but I've the most extraordinary impression that they arrive at conclusions in a way we don't understand. As though they used algebra while we used geometry. The same conclusion, but a differ
ent method of reaching it."

  "What about the toys?" Paradine asked suddenly.

  "Keep them out of the way. I'd like to borrow them, if I may."

  -

  That night Paradine slept badly. Holloway's parallel had been ill chosen. It led to disturbing theories. The x factor ... The children were using the equivalent of algebraic reasoning, while adults used geometry.

  Fair enough. Only—

  Algebra can give you answers that geometry cannot, since there are certain terms and symbols which cannot be expressed geometrically. Suppose x logic showed conclusions inconceivable to an adult mind.

  "Damn!" Paradine whispered. Jane stirred beside him.

  "Dear? Can't you sleep either?"

  "No." He got up and went into the next room. Emma slept peacefully as a cherub, her fat arm curled around Mr. Bear. Through the open doorway Paradine could see Scott's dark head motionless on the pillow.

  Jane was beside him. He slipped his arm around her.

  "Poor little people," she murmured. "And Holloway called them mad. I think we're the ones who are crazy, Dennis."

  "Uh-huh. We've got jitters."

  Scott stirred in his sleep. Without awakening, he called what was obviously a question, though it did not seem to be in any particular language. Emma gave a little mewling cry that changed pitch sharply.

  She had not wakened. The children lay without stirring.

  But, Paradine thought, with a sudden sickness in his middle, it was exactly as though Scott had asked Emma something, and she had replied.

  Had their minds changed so that even—sleep was different to them?

  He thrust the thought away. "You'll catch cold. Let's get back to bed. Want a drink?"

  "I think I do," Jane said, watching Emma. Her hand reached out blindly towards the child; she drew it back. "Come on. We'll wake the kids."

  They drank a little brandy together, but said nothing. Jane cried in her sleep, later.

  -

  Scott was not awake, but his mind worked in slow, careful building. Thus—

  "They'll take the toys away. The fat man—listava dangerous, maybe. But the Ghoric direction won't show ... evankrus dun hasn't them. Intransdection ... bright and shiny. Emma. She's more khopranik-high now than ... I still don't see how to ... thavarar lixery dist—"

  A little of Scott's thoughts could still be understood. But Emma had become conditioned to x much faster.

  She was thinking, too.

  Not like an adult or a child. Not even like a human being. Except, perhaps, a human being of a type shockingly unfamiliar to genus Homo.

  Sometimes, Scott himself had difficulty in following her thoughts. If it had not been for Holloway, life might have settled back into an almost normal routine. The toys were no longer active reminders. Emma still enjoyed her dolls and sandpile, with a thoroughly explicable delight. Scott was satisfied with baseball and his chemical set. They did everything other children did, and evinced few, if any, flashes of abnormality. But Holloway seemed to be an alarmist.

  He was having the toys tested, with rather idiotic results. He drew endless charts and diagrams, corresponded with mathematicians, engineers and other psychologists, and went quietly crazy trying to find rhyme or reason in the construction of the gadgets. The box itself, with its cryptic machinery, told nothing. Fusing had melted too much of the stuff into slag. But the toys ...

  It was the random element that baffled investigation. Even that was a matter of semantics. For Holloway was convinced that it wasn't really random. There just weren't enough known factors. No adult could work the abacus, for example. And Holloway thoughtfully refrained from letting a child play with the thing.

  The crystal cube was similarly cryptic. It showed a mad pattern of colors, which sometimes moved. In this it resembled a kaleidoscope. But the shifting of balance and gravity didn't affect it. Again the random factor.

  Or, rather, the unknown. The x pattern. Eventually, Paradine and Jane slipped back into something like complacence, with a feeling that the children had been cured of their mental quirk, now that the contributing cause had been removed. Certain of the actions of Emma and Scott gave them every reason to quit worrying.

  For the kids enjoyed swimming, hiking, movies, games, the normal functional toys of this particular time-sector. It was true that they failed to master certain rather puzzling mechanical devices which involved some calculation. A three-dimensional jigsaw globe Paradine had picked up, for example. But he found that difficult himself.

  Once in a while there were lapses. Scott was hiking with his father one Saturday afternoon, and the two had paused at the summit of a hill. Beneath them a rather lovely valley was spread.

  "Pretty, isn't it?" Paradine remarked.

  Scott examined the scene gravely. "It's all wrong," he said.

  "Eh?"

  "I dunno."

  "What's wrong about it?"

  "Gee." Scott lapsed into puzzled silence. "I dunno."

  -

  The children had missed their toys, but not for long. Emma recovered first, though Scott still moped. He held unintelligible conversations with his sister, and studied meaningless scrawls she drew on paper he supplied. It was almost as though he was consulting her, anent difficult problems beyond his grasp.

  If Emma understood more, Scott had more real intelligence, and manipulatory skill as well. He built a gadget with his Meccano set, but was dissatisfied. The apparent cause of his dissatisfaction was exactly why Paradine was relieved when he viewed the structure. It was the sort of thing a normal boy would make, vaguely reminiscent of a cubistic ship.

  It was a bit too normal to please Scott. He asked Emma more questions, though in private. She thought for a time, and then made more scrawls, with an awkwardly clutched pencil.

  "Can you read that stuff?" Jane asked her son one morning.

  "Not read it, exactly. I can tell what she means. Not all the time, but mostly."

  "Is it writing?"

  "N-no. It doesn't mean what it looks like."

  "Symbolism," Paradine suggested over his coffee.

  Jane looked at him, her eyes widening. "Denny—"

  He winked and shook his head. Later, when they were alone, he said, "Don't let Holloway upset you. I'm not implying that the kids are corresponding in an unknown tongue. If Emma draws a squiggle and says it's a flower, that's an arbitrary rule—Scott remembers that. Next time she draws the same sort of squiggle, or tries to—well!"

  "Sure," Jane said doubtfully. "Have you noticed Scott's been doing a lot of reading lately?"

  "I noticed. Nothing unusual, though. No Kant or Spinoza."

  "He browses, that's all."

  "Well, so did I, at his age," Paradine said, and went off to his morning classes. He lunched with Holloway, which was becoming a daily habit, and spoke of Emma's literary endeavors.

  "Was I right about symbolism, Rex?"

  The psychologist nodded. "Quite right. Our own language is nothing but arbitrary symbolism now. At least in its application. Look here." On his napkin he drew a very narrow ellipse. "What's that?"

  "You mean what does it represent?"

  "Yes. What does it suggest to you? It could be a crude representation of—what?"

  "Plenty of things," Paradine said. "Rim of a glass. A fried egg. A loaf of French bread. A cigar."

  Holloway added a little triangle to his drawing, apex joined to one end of the ellipse. He looked up at Paradine.

  "A fish," the latter said instantly.

  "Our familiar symbol for a fish. Even without fins, eyes or mouth, it's recognizable, because we've been conditioned to identify this particular shape with our mental picture of a fish. The basis of a rebus. A symbol, to us, means a lot more than what we actually see on paper. What's in your mind when you look at this sketch?"

  "Why—a fish."

  "Keep going. What do you visualize? Everything!"

  "Scales," Paradine said slowly, looking into space. "Water. Foam. A fish's eye. The
fins. The colors."

  "So the symbol represents a lot more than just the abstract idea fish. Note the connotation's that of a noun, not a verb. It's harder to express actions by symbolism, you know. Anyway—reverse the process. Suppose you want to make a symbol for some concrete noun, say bird. Draw it." Paradine drew two connected arcs, concavities down.

  "The lowest common denominator," Holloway nodded. "The natural tendency is to simplify. Especially when a child is seeing something for the first time and has few standards of comparison. He tries to identify the new thing with what's already familiar to him. Ever notice how a child draws the ocean?" He didn't wait for an answer; he went on.

  "A series of jagged points. Like the oscillating line on a seismograph. When I first saw the Pacific, I was about three. I remember it pretty clearly. It looked—tilted. A flat plain, slanted at an angle. The waves were regular triangles, apex upward. Now, I didn't see them stylized that way, but later, remembering, I had to find some familiar standard of comparison. Which is the only way of getting any conception of an entirely new thing. The average child tries to draw these regular triangles, but his coordination's poor. He gets a seismograph pattern."

  "All of which means what?"

  "A child sees the ocean. He stylizes it. He draws a certain definite pattern, symbolic, to him, of the sea. Emma's scrawls may be symbols, too. I don't mean that the world looks different to her—brighter, perhaps, and sharper, more vivid and with a slackening of perception above her eye level. What I do mean is that her thought processes are different, that she translates what she sees into abnormal symbols."

  "You still believe—"

  "Yes, I do. Her mind has been conditioned unusually. It may be that she breaks down what she sees into simple, obvious patterns—and realizes a significance to those patterns that we can't understand. Like the abacus. She saw a pattern in that, though to us it was completely random."

  Paradine abruptly decided to taper off these luncheon engagements with Holloway. The man was an alarmist. His theories were growing more fantastic than ever, and he dragged in anything, applicable or not, that would support them.

  Rather sardonically he said, "Do you mean Emma's communicating with Scott in an unknown language?"

  "In symbols for which she hasn't any words. I'm sure Scott understands a great deal of those—scrawls. To him, an isosceles triangle may represent any factor, though probably a concrete noun. Would a man who knew nothing of chemistry understand what H2O meant? Would he realize that the symbol could evoke a picture of the ocean?"