They'd Rather Be Right

by Mark Clifton

  And the imaginings were worse than the visions. So clear, so intricately clear, they become memories. Memories as sharp and clear as any other reality. Eight-year-old Joey could not yet know the reasoned verbalization: an imaginary experience can have as profound an effect upon personality development as a real one. He knew only that it was so.

  But he must never tell about this beating, must never tell anyone. Others wouldn’t have any such memory and they would say he was crazy. He must store it away, with all the other things he had stored away. It was hard to keep remembering which were the ones others could remember, and which were his alone. Each was as real as the other, and that was the only distinction.

  Sometimes he forgot, and talked about the wrong things. Then they called him a little liar. To keep away from that he always had to go into their minds first, and that was sometimes a terrible and frightening thing; their memories were not the same as his, and often hard to recognize.

  Then it was morning. The whispers were all about him again. In half-awake reverie, he shuddered over the imagined beating he had received. He twisted and turned under the covers, trying to escape the also twisting threads of thought between his father and mother in the kitchen. The threads became ropes; gray-green and alive; affection turned resentment coiling and threatening; held back from striking only by hopelessness. He stared into the gray morning light seeping in around the shade at his window. He tried to trace the designs on the wallpaper, but they, too, became twisting worms of despair. And transferred again into the memory of the beating. Involuntarily, a sob escaped his throat, aloud.

  “Madge!” This was no whisper, but his father shouting at his mother. “That kid is in there sniveling again. I’ll give him something to bawl about.” The sudden terrible rage was a dead black smothering blanket.

  “Bob!” The sharp fear in his mother’s voice stopped the tread of feet across the kitchen floor, changing the rage back to hopelessness.

  He felt his father go away from his door, back to his place at the table. He felt the sudden surge of resolution in his father.

  “Madge. I’m going to talk to Dr. Ames this morning. He gets in early. He’s the head of the psychology department. I’m going to talk to him about Joey.”

  Joey could feel the shame of his father at such a revelation. The shame of saying, “Dr. Ames, do you think my son is crazy?”

  “What good will that do?” His mother’s voice was resentful, fearful; afraid of what the doctor might say.

  “I’ll tell him all about Joey. He gives loony tests, and I’m going to find out about—”

  “Bob! Saying such a thing about your own son. It’s—it’s sinful!” His mother’s voice was high, and her chair creaked as she started to move from her side of the table.

  “Take it easy, Madge,” his father warned her. ‘I’m not saying he’s crazy, mind you. I just want to get to the bottom of it. I want to know. I want a normal boy.” Then, desperately: “Madge, I just want a boy!” The frustration, the disappointment welled over Joey as if it were his own.

  “I’ll talk to the doctor,” his father was continuing, reasoning with her. “I’ll try to get him to see Joey. I’m janitor of his building, and he shouldn’t charge me anything. Maybe he’ll see you and Joey this afternoon. I’ll call you on the phone if he will. You be ready to take Joey up there if I should call.” The voice was stern, unbending.

  “Yes, Bob.” His mother recognized the inflexibility of the decision.

  “Where’s my lunch pail, then?” his father asked. “I’ll get to work early, so I can have a talk with Dr. Ames before class time.”

  “On the sink, Bob. Where it always is,” his mother answered patiently.

  The sudden rage again. Always is. Always is. That’s the trouble, Madge. Everything always is. Just like yesterday, and the day before. That’s why it’s all so hopeless. But the bitterness switched suddenly to pity.

  “Don’t worry so, Madge.” There was a tone of near affection in his father’s voice. Belated consideration. Joey felt his father move around the table, pat his mother awkwardly on the shoulder. But still the little yellow petals of affection were torn and consumed by the gray-green worms of resentment.

  “Bob—” His mother spoke to the closing door. The footsteps, heavy, went on down the back steps of their house, each a soundless impact upon Joey’s chest.

  Joey felt his mother start toward his room. Hastily he took the pillow from over his head, pulled the blanket up under his chin, dropped his chin and jaw, let his mouth open in the relaxation of deep sleep, and breathed slowly. He hoped he could will away the welts of the belt blows before she would see them. With all his might he willed the welts away, and the angry blue bruises of his imagination. All the signs of the terrible consequences of what might have been.

  He felt her warm tenderness as she opened his door. Now the lights were warm and shining, clear and beautiful, unmuddied by any resentments. He felt the tenderness flow outward from her, and wrapped it around him to clear away the bruises. He willed back the tears of relief, and lay in apparent deep sleep. He felt her kneel down by his bed, and heard the whispers in her mind.

  “My poor little different boy. You’re all I’ve got. I don’t care what they say, Joey. I don’t care what they say.” Joey felt the throb of grief arise in her throat, choked back, the tremendous effort to smile at him, to make her voice light and carefree.

  “Wake up, Joey,” she called, and shook his shoulder lightly. “It’s morning, darling.” There was bright play in her voice, the gladness of morning itself. “Time all little fellows were up and doing.”

  He opened his eyes, and her face was sweet and tender. No one but a Joey could have read the apprehension and dread which lay behind it.

  “I sure slept sound,” he said boisterously. “I didn’t even dream.”

  “Then you weren’t crying a while ago?” she asked in hesitant puzzlement.

  “Me, Mom? Me?” he shouted indignantly. “What could there be to cry about?”

  The campus of Steiffel University was familiar to Joey from the outside. He knew the winding paths, the stretches of lawn, the green trees, the white benches nestled in shaded nooks. The other kids loved to hide in the bushes at night and listen to the young men and women talking. They snickered about it on the school playground all the time. Joey had tried it once, but had refused to go back again. These were thoughts he did not want to see—tender, urgent thoughts so precious that they belonged to no one else except the people feeling them.

  But now walking up the path, leading to the psychology building with his mother, he could feel only her stream of thought.

  “Oh I pray, dear God, I pray that the doctor won’t find anything wrong with Joey. Dear God…dear God…don’t let them find anything wrong with Joey. They might want to take him away, shut him up somewhere. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t live. Dear God…oh dear God—”

  Joey’s thought darted down another bypath of what might be, opened by his mother’s prayer. He willed away the constriction in his throat.

  “This is interesting, Mom,” he exclaimed happily. “Pop is always talking about it. But I’ve never been inside the building of a college before. Have you?”

  “No, son,” she said absently. Thank heaven he doesn’t know. “Joey—” she said suddenly, and faltered.

  He could read the thought in her mind. Don’t let them find anything wrong with you. Try not to talk about whispers, or imagination, or—

  “What, Mom?” It was urgent to get her away from her fear again.

  “Joey…er…are you afraid?”

  “No, Mom,” he answered scornfully. “Course not. It’s just another school, that’s all. A school for big kids.”

  He could feel his father watching them through a basement window, waiting for them to start up the steps of the building. Waiting to meet them in the front hall, to take them up to Dr. Ames’s study. He could feel the efforts his father was making to be casual and normal about it a
ll; Bob Carter, perhaps only a janitor, but a solid citizen, independently proud. Didn’t everyone call him “Mr. Carter?” Recognize his dignity?

  Joey’s father, with his dignity upon him, met them at the doorway of the building; looked furtively and quickly at the rusty black clothing of his wife, inadvertently comparing the textiles of her old suit to the rich materials the coeds wore with such careless style.

  “You look right nice, Madge,” he said heavily, to reassure her, and took her arm gallantly. When they had reached the second floor, up the broad stairs, he turned to Joey.

  “I’ve been telling the professors how bright you are, Joey. They want to talk to you.” He chuckled agreeably.

  Pop, don’t laugh like that. I know you’re ashamed. But don’t lie to me. Pop, I know.

  “Just answer all their questions, Joey,” his father was saying. “Be truthful.” He emphasized the word again, “Truthful, I said.”

  “Sure, Pop,” Joey answered dutifully; knowing his father hoped he wouldn’t be truthful—and that his mother might die if he were. He wondered if he might hear the whisperings from the professors’ minds. What if he couldn’t hear! How would he know how to answer them, if he couldn’t hear the whispers! Maybe he couldn’t hear, wouldn’t know how to answer, and then his mother would die!

  His face turned pale, and he felt as if he were numb; in a dull dead trance as they walked down the hall and into a study off one of the big classrooms.

  “This here is my wife and my son, Dr. Martin,” his father was saying. Then to Joey’s mother: “Dr. Martin is Dr. Ames’s assistant.”

  The boy is very frightened. The thought came clearly and distinctly to Joey from the doctor’s mind.

  “Not any more,” Joey said, and didn’t realize until it was done that he had exclaimed it aloud in his relief. He could hear!

  “I beg your pardon, Joey?” Dr. Martin turned from greeting his mother and looked with quick penetration into Joey’s eyes. His own sharp blue eyes had exclamation points in them, accented by his raised blond brows in a round face.

  “But of course he is Dr. Ames’s assistant,” his father corrected him heartily, with an edge behind the words. You little fool, you’re starting in to demonstrate already.

  That isn’t what the boy meant. Dr. Martin was racing the thought through his mind. I had the thought that the boy was frightened, and he immediately said he wasn’t. All the pathological symptoms of fright disappeared instantly, too. Yes. Put into the matrix of the telepath, all the things Carter told us this morning about him would fit. I hadn’t considered that. And I know that old fool Ames would never consider it.

  If there ever was a closed mind against ESP, he’s got it. Orthodox psychology?

  “We will teach nothing here but orthodox psychology, Dr. Martin,” Ames had said. “It is the duty of some of us to insist a theory be proved through time and tradition. We will not rush down every side path, accepting theories as unsubstantial as the tobacco smoke which subsidizes them.”

  So much for ESP. Well, even Rhine says that the vast body of psychology, in spite of all the evidence, still will not accept the fact of ESP.

  But if this kid were a telepath—a true telepath. If by any chance he were… If his remark and the disappearance of the fear symptoms were not just coincidence!

  But another Ames’s admonition dampened his elation. “Our founder, Jacob Steiffel, was a wise man. He believed in progress, Martin, as do I. But progress through conservative proof. Let others play the fool, our job is to preserve the bastions of scientific solidity!”

  “Dr. Ames has not arrived yet,” he said suddenly to Joey’s parents…“He’s been called to the office of the university president. But, in the meantime, leave the boy with me. There’s preliminary work to do, and I’m competent to do that.” He realized the implications of bitterness in his remark, and reassured himself that these people were not so subtle as to catch it.

  “I got work to do anyhow,” Joey’s father said. His relief was apparent, that he would not be required to stand by, and he was using it to play the part of the ever faithful servant.

  “Here’s a room where you may wait, Mrs. Carter,” Dr. Martin said to Joey’s mother. He opened a door and showed her in to a small waiting room. “There are magazines. Make yourself quite comfortable. This may take an hour or so,”

  “Thank you, Doctor.” It was the first time she had spoken, and her voice contained the awe and respect she felt. A thread of resentment, too. It wasn’t fair; some had so many advantages to get educated. Others—But the resentment was drowned out in the awe and respect. These were not just ordinary doctors. They taught doctors!

  She sat tentatively on the edge of a wooden chair; the hardest one in the room. The worn red feather in her hat drooped, but her back remained straight.

  Joey felt the doctor thinking, “Relax, woman! We’re not going to skin him alive!” But he merely closed the door. Joey could still see her sitting there, through the closed door; not relaxing, not reaching for a magazine. Her lips were pulled tight against her teeth to keep her prayer from showing. “Dear God, oh, dear God—”

  Dr. Martin came back over from closing the door, and led Joey to a chair near the bookcase.

  “Now, you just sit down there and relax, Joey. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re just going to visit a little, and ask you some questions.” But his mind was darting in and out around his desires. I’d better start in on routine IQ tests, leave the Rorschach for Ames. Now that it’s standard, he’ll use it. Leave word association for him, too. That’s his speed. Maybe I should give the multiphasic; no, better leave that for Ames. He’ll discredit it, but it’ll make him feel very modem and up-to-date to use it. I mustn’t forget I’m just the errand boy around here. I wish / could run the Rhine ESP deck on the boy, but if Ames came in and caught me at it—”

  The office phone rang, and Martin picked it up hurriedly. It was the president’s office calling.

  “Dr. Ames asked me to tell you he will be tied up for almost an hour,” the operator said disinterestedly. “The patient will just have to wait.”

  “Thank you,” Martin said slowly. Joey felt his lift of spirit. I can run a few samples of the Rhine cards. I just have to know. I wish I could get away from this place, into a school where there’s some latitude for research. I wish Marion weren’t so tied down here with her family and that little social group she lords it over. “My husband is assistant to the dean of psychology!” That’s much more important to her than any feeling I’ve got of frustration. If I quit here, and got into a place where I could work, really work, it would mean leaving this town. Marion wouldn’t go. She’s a big frog in a little puddle here. And still tied to her parents—and I’m tied to Marion. If anybody needs psych help, I do. I wish I had the courage—”

  Joey, as frequently with adults, could not comprehend all the words and sentences, but the somatic indecision and despair washed over him, making him gasp for breath.

  Martin went over to a desk, with sudden resolution, and from far back in a drawer he pulled out a thin deck of cards.

  “We’re going to play a little game first, Joey,” he said heartily, as he sat down at his desk and pulled a sheet of paper toward him. “There are twenty-five cards here. Five of them have a circle, five a star, a wavy line, a cross, a rectangle. Do you know what a rectangle is, Joey?”

  Joey didn’t, but the vision of a square leaped into his mind.

  “Yes, sir,” Joey said. “It’s a sort of square.”

  “That’s right,” Martin said approvingly, making a mental note that the boy shouldn’t have known the word, and did. “Now I’m going to look at a card, one at a time, and then you guess what kind of an image there is on it. I’ll write down what the card really shows, and what you say it is, and then we’ll see how many you get right.”

  Too short a time! Too short a time! But maybe long enough to be significant. If I should just get a trace. All right, suppose you do? The question was iron
ic in his mind. He picked up the first card and looked at it, holding it carefully so that Joey would have no chance to see the face of it.

  A circle leaped with startling clarity into Joey’s mind. And the circle contained the image of Joey’s mother, sitting on the edge of her chair in the other room, praying over and over, “Don’t let them find anything wrong with him. Don’t let them find—”

  “Square,” Joey said promptly. He felt the tinge of disappointment in Martin’s mind as he recorded the true and the false. Not a perfect telepath, anyway.

  “All right, Joey,” Martin responded verbally. “Next card.”

  “Did I get that one right?” Joey asked brightly.

  “I’m not supposed to tell you,” Martin answered. “Not until the end of the game.” Well, the boy showed normal curiosity. Didn’t seem to show too much anxiety, which sometimes damped down the ESP factor. He picked up the next card. Joey saw it contained a cross.

  “Star,” he said positively.

  “Next card,” Martin said.

  It was in the nineteenth card that Joey sensed a new thought in Martin’s mind. There was a rising excitement. Not one of them had been correct. Rhine says a negative result can be as revealing as a positive one. He should get every fifth card correctly. Five out of the twenty-five to hit the law of averages. Martin picked up the twentieth card and looked at it. It was a wavy line.

  “Wavy line,” Joey answered. He felt the disappointment again in Martin’s mind, this time because he had broken the long run of incorrectness.

  The twenty-first card was a star.

  “Star,” Joey said.

  And the next three were equally correct. Joey had called five out of the twenty-five correctly, as the law of averages required. The pattern was a bit strange. What would the laws of chance say to a pattern such as this? Try it again.

  “Let’s try it again,” he suggested.

  “You were supposed to tell me how I did at the end of the game,” Joey prompted.