by Mark Clifton
“You were correct on five of them, Joey,” Martin said, noncommittally.
“Is that pretty good?” Joey asked anxiously.
“Average,” Martin said, and threw him a quick look. Wasn’t that eagerness to please just a bit overdone? “Just average. Let’s try it again.”
This time Joey did not make the mistake of waiting until the end of the deck before he called correct cards. The doctor had said every fifth card should be called correctly. Joey did not understand statistical language. Dutifully, he called every fifth card correctly. Four wrong, one right. And again, the rising excitement near the twentieth card. Again, what are the laws of chance that the boy would call four wrong, one right, again and again, in perfect order?
Joey promptly called two of them right together. And felt Martin’s disappointment. The pattern had been broken again. And then a rise of excitement, carefully suppressed.
“Let’s run them again,” Martin said. And he whispered strongly to himself. “This time he must call every other one of them right, in order to pass as just an average boy.”
Joey was bewildered. There seemed to be a double thought in Martin’s mind, a tenseness he could not understand. He wavered, and then doubtfully, doubting he was doing the right thing, he began to call every other card correctly.
Halfway through the deck Martin laid the cards down. Joey caught the flash of undisguised elation in his mind, and sank back into his own chair in despair. He had done it wrong.
“O.K., Joey,” Martin said quietly. There was a smile of tender bitterness around his lips. “I don’t know what the idea is. You’ve got your reasons, and they must be pretty terrible ones. Do you think you could talk to me? Tell me about it?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Dr. Martin,” Joey lied. Perhaps if he didn’t admit anything—
“In trying to avoid a pattern, Joey, you made one. Just as soon as I realized you were setting up an unusual pattern, you immediately changed it. Every time. But that, too, is a pattern.” And then he asked, quite dryly, “Or am I talking over your head?”
“Yes, sir,” Joey said. “I guess you are.” But he had learned. The whole concept of patterned response as against random response leaped from Martin’s mind into his. “Maybe if I tried it again?” he asked hopefully. At all costs he must get the idea out of Martin’s mind that there was anything exceptional about him. This time, and forever afterwards, he knew he could avoid any kind of a pattern. Just one more chance.
“I don’t blame you, Joey,” Martin answered sadly. “If you’ve looked into my mind, well, I don’t blame you. Here we are. You’re a telepath and afraid to reveal it. I’m a psychologist, supposed to be, and I’m afraid to investigate it. A couple of fellows who caught the tiger by the tail, aren’t we, Joey? Looks as if we’d better kind of protect one another, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” Joey answered and tried to hold back the tears of relief. “You won’t even tell my mother? What about my father?” He already knew that Martin didn’t dare tell Ames.
“I won’t tell anybody, Joey,” Martin answered sadly. “I’ve got to hang onto my job. And in this wise and mighty institution we believe only in orthodox psychology. What you have, Joey, simply doesn’t exist. Dr. Ames says so, and Dr. Ames is always right. No, Joey,” he sighed, “I’m not likely to tell anybody.”
“Maybe he’ll trick me like you did,” Joey said doubtfully, but without resentment. “Maybe with that ink-blot thing, or that ‘yes’ and ‘no’ pile of little cards.”
Martin glanced at him quickly.
“You’re quite perfect at it, aren’t you?” He framed it a question and made it a statement. “You go beyond the words to the actual thought image itself. No, Joey, in that case I don’t think he will. I think you can keep ahead of him.”
“I don’t know,” Joey said doubtfully. “It’s all so new. So many new things to think about all at once.”
“I’ll try to be in the room with you and him,” Martin promised. “I’ll think of the normal answer each time. He won’t look very deep. He never does. He already knows all the answers.”
“Thank you, sir.” Joey said, and then, “I won’t tell on you, either.”
“O.K., Joey. We’d better be finishing the IQ test when he comes in. He’s about due now. I suppose you’d better grade around a hundred. And you’d better miss random questions, so as not to show any definite pattern, for him to grab onto. All right, here goes. Tell me what is wrong with this statement—”
The tests were over. Joey sat quietly in his chair watching Dr. Martin grade papers at his desk, watching him trying not to think about Joey. He watched his mother in the waiting room, still sitting on the edge of her chair, where she had been for the last two hours, without moving, her eyes closed, her lips still drawn tight. He watched Dr. Ames, sitting in his own office, absently shuffling papers around, comparing the values of the notes he had taken on Joey’s reaction.
But the nearer turmoil in Dr. Martin’s mind all but drowned out the fear of his mother, the growing disgust of Dr. Ames.
“It’s a choice between Joey and holding my job. No matter how secretly I worked, Ames would find out. Once you’re fired from a school, it’s almost impossible to get a comparable job. All this subversive business, this fear of investigating anything outside the physical sciences that isn’t strictly orthodox. No matter what explanation was given out, they’d suspect me of subversion. Oh Marion, Marion! Why can’t I count on you to stand beside me? Or am I just using you as an excuse? Would I have the courage even if there were no Marion?”
He rubbed his hand across his eyes, as if to shut out the vision of a world where there was no Marion. He replaced it with a world where constant fear of becoming grist for some politician’s publicity ground all research to a halt. He had quite forgotten that Joey was sitting across the room, and could follow at least the somatics of his thought.
Consciously he shoved the problem into the background, and made himself concentrate on the words of the student’s paper before him. The words leaped into startling clarity, for they were a reflection of his own train of thought.
“…it becomes apparent then that just as physical science varies its techniques from one material to the next to gain maximum result, psychology must obtain an equal willingness to become flexible. I suggest that objective physical science methodology will never permit us to know a man; that such methodology limits us merely to knowing about a man. I suggest that an entirely new science, perhaps through somatics and methodology derived therefrom, must be our approach.”
Dr. Martin shoved the paper away from him. Must warn that student. His entire train of thought was a violation of orthodox psychology. Ames would crucify the boy if he ever saw this paper. Did he dare warn the boy? Students show so little caution or ethics. He could hear him now down at the milkshake hangout.
“Martin told me to soft-pedal my thinking if I wanted to get a grade.”
And the answering chorus from all around the room, the Tannenbaum chant:
“Oh, Steiffel U will stifle you,
We all must think as granddads do!”
Best just to give the student a failing grade on the paper, and let him draw his own conclusion. Got to be orthodox.
With his thumb and fingers he pulled the flesh of his forehead into a heavy crease, grinding it between his fingers, taking pleasure that the pain of the flesh lessened the pain of his spirit. If only the kid had never shown up here!
His thought stream was interrupted in Joey’s mind by the scene now taking place in the waiting room. Dr. Ames had taken a chair beside Joey’s mother.
“Oh no, no, no, no, Mrs. Carter,” he was saying consolingly. “Don’t be so frightened. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your boy. Nothing at all—yet. I’ve never tested a more average boy.”
Characteristically, he had overlooked the most vital point, a point also forgotten by Martin when he was thinking of the proper answers for Joey to give—that no boy can possibly be as av
erage as Joey had graded. It never occurred to him that mean average is a statistical concept in psychology, never to be found in one individual.
“Notice I said ‘yet,’ Mrs. Carter,” Ames said heavily. “He’s an only child, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Joey’s mother barely breathed the word. Her fear had not abated. She knew that doctors sometimes did not tell all the truth. In the soap operas they always started out comfortingly, and only gradually let you know the terrible truth.
“I thought so,” Ames said with finality. “And as with many one-child families, you’ve spoiled him. Spoiled him so dreadfully that now you must take stern measures.”
“He’s all I’ve got, Doctor,” she said hesitantly.
“All the more reason why you want him to grow up into a strong, solid man. A man such as your husband, for example. A child is a peculiar little entity, Mrs. Carter. The more attention you give him, the more he wants.”
He continued the development of his theme inexorably.
“Their bodies can be little, but their egos can be enormous. They learn little tricks for getting attention. And then they add to these with others. They’re insatiable little monsters. They never get enough. Once they get you under their thumb, they’ll ride you to death. They’ll try anything, anything at all to get special attention, constant attention. That’s what has happened to your Joey.”
“I’m not sure I understand, Doctor.”
“Well, Mrs. Carter, to put it bluntly, Joey has been pretending, telling lies, deliberately keeping you worried and fearful so that you will give him more attention. He hasn’t been able to fool his father so well, so in line with Oedipus complex, he set about to win you away from his father, to come between you. Your husband is a fine man, a good worker; but your son wants to make you turn against your husband so he will get all of your attention.”
He was enjoying the development of his logic, sparing no impact upon her.
“And it could be bad for the boy. Too much attention is like too much candy. It makes them sick.” He pulled an ancient trick upon her, deliberately confusing her to impress her with the gravity, and his knowledge. “If this continues, the boy could easily become a catatonic schizophrenic!”
Joey’s mother shrank back, her eyes opening wide. The horror of the unknown was worse than the reality might be.
“What is that, Doctor?”
The doctor, gratified by her reaction, pulled another ancient one.
“Well…er…without the proper background…er…well, in layman’s language, Mrs. Carter, we might roughly define it as an incurable form of insanity.”
“Oh, no, no! Not my Joey!”
The doctor leaned back in his chair. In this changing world of thought anarchy, it was good to see there were some who still retained the proper respect, placed the proper value upon the words of a man of science. These flip kids he got in his classes these days; this younger generation! Without respect, that flip kid he’d had to get expelled.
“Just give us the facts, Doctor, and let us draw our own conclusions. Yours haven’t worked so well.”
Yes, it was gratifying to see there were still some who recognized a man of position.
“But you can prevent it, Mrs. Carter.” He leaned forward again. “Joey is eight, now. No longer a baby. It is time he began to be a little man. He plays hooky from school, says the teachers don’t like him. Why, Mrs. Carter, when I was eight, I got up before daylight, did my farm chores without complaint, and walked two miles through the snow for the wonderful privilege of going to school!
“Now here is what you must do. You must regard this just as you would a medical prescription; with full knowledge of the penalty if you do not use the prescription: You must stop mothering him. Stop catering to him. Pay no attention to his tricks. Let his father take over, Mrs. Carter. The boy needs a strong man’s hand.
“He must be forced to play with the other boys. A black eye never hurt a boy, now and then, a real boy. Your boy must get in there and scrap it out with the rest of them, gain his place among them, just as he will have to scrap later to gain his place in society.”
A sigh, almost a sob, escaped her. A doctor knows. And this doctor teaches doctors. Relief from tension, fear of the terrible words the doctor had said; and then a growing anger, anger at herself, anger at Joey. He had tricked her. Her son had lied to her, betrayed her love, pretended all sorts of terrible things just to worry her. She stood up suddenly, her face white with grief-rage.
“Thank you, Doctor. Thank you so much. I’m sorry we took up your time.” Her humiliation was complete.
“No thanks needed, Mrs. Carter. Glad to help. We’ve caught it in time. If it had been allowed to go on a little longer—”
He left the phrase hanging in the air, ominously. He patted her arm in a fatherly fashion, and turned absently away, dismissing her.
Joey saw her open the door into the room where he was sitting.
“Come, Joey,” she said firmly.
Dr. Martin did not look up from the papers he was now grading with furious speed, furious intensity, slashing angrily with his blue pencil at any thought variant from the orthodox. But even while he checked, circled, questioned, the thought crept into his mind.
“I could write an anonymous letter to Dr. Billings of—yes, that’s the thing to do. It’s out of my hands then. If Billings chooses to ignore the follow-up, that’s his business.”
Joey followed his mother out of the room and down the hall. She walked ahead of him, rapidly, her eyes blazing with anger and humiliation, not caring whether he followed her or not.
In one corner of the schoolyard, the boys were playing ball. Joey knew they saw him coming down the sidewalk, alone, but they pointedly paid no attention to him.
He did not try to join them. Even though they were not looking at him, he could hear the hated refrain singing through their minds.
Crazy Joe
Such a schmo!
Hope he falls
And breaks his toe!
It was simply their resentment because he was different. Their unconscious wish that he stumble and fall now and then, as they did. He realized that he must learn to do this. Then he shrugged. No, if he carried out his plan, it wouldn’t matter.
He walked on down past the fence of the play yard. The boys were concentrating on their ball game.
Without a warning a warmth suffused him, singing sympathy, hope, joy. He stopped, looked about him, and saw no one. Yet the somatic feeling had been near—so very near.
Then he saw it. A dirty, lop-eared dog looking at him quizzically from under a shrub near the playground gate. He thought at the dog, and saw its head come up. They stood and looked at one another, each letting the warmth, the tenderness, affection wash over them. So lonely. Each of them had been so lonely.
Joey knelt down and began to whisper.
“My mother is mad at me right now. So I can’t take you home.”
The dog cocked his head to one side and looked at him.
“But I’ll get food for you,” Joey promised. “You can sleep under our back steps and nobody will know if you just keep out of sight.”
The dog licked a pink tongue at his face. Joey nuzzled his face in the dirty hair of the dog’s neck.
“I was going to die,” he whispered. “I was going to die just as soon as my mother got over being mad at me. I was going to wait until then, because I didn’t want her to blame herself later. I can do it, you know. I can stop my blood from moving, or my heart from beating; there’s a hundred ways. But maybe I won’t need to do it now. I won’t need to die until you do. And that will be a long time; a long, long time. You see, if I can stop your heart from beating, I can keep it beating, too.”
The dog wagged his stumpy tail; and then stiffened in Joey’s arms.
“Yes,” Joey thought quickly at the dog. “Yes, I know the kids are watching us now. Pretend like—” the thought hurt him, but he said it anyway. “Pretend you don’t like me, that you
hate me.”
Slowly the dog backed away from Joey.
“Here, doggy, doggy!” Joey called.
The dog gave a wavering wag of his stump tail.
“No, no!” Joey thought desperately. “No, don’t let them know. They’ll want to hurt you if they find out. They’re—People are like that.”
The dog backed away another step and lifted his lip in a snarl.
“Yah! Yah! Yah!” the kids called out. “Joey can’t even make friends with a dog!”
They were standing in a semicircle about him now. Joey stood up and faced them then for a moment. There was no anger or resentment in his face. There never would be now. One just shouldn’t get angry at blind and helpless things.
Without a word he started walking down the street, away from them. The dog crouched far back in the corner under the shrub.
“Yah! Yah! Crazy Joey!” the kids called out again.
Joey did not look back. They couldn’t see. They couldn’t hear. They couldn’t know. He felt a rush of pity.
The kids went back to their play, arguing loudly about who was at bat.
The dog waited until their attention was fully on the game again. Then he crept out from under the bush, and started ambling aimlessly down the street in the direction Joey had gone, trotting awkwardly on the bias as some dogs do.
He did not need to sniff for tracks. He knew.
HIDE! HIDE! WITCH!
Mark Clifton
with Alex Apostolides
From Astounding Science Fiction
Hide! Hide! Witch!
The good folk come to burn thee!
Their keen enjoyment hid beneath
The gothic mask of duty.
Jonathan Billings, Dean of Psychosomatic Research at Hoxworth University, heard the knock on his study door, and looked up from his work at his desk. But before he could call out an invitation to enter, the door opened.
That would be Mr. Rogan, Resident Investigator. Anyone else would have waited.
