“I can walk now,” James said.
“To be sure. To be sure. And push him in. Kaff Kaff. And my apologies to the Mallards who may resent the trespass. May I say, my dear boy, I say, may I state on behalf of us all that we welcome you as a fully accepted member of our commune. It is a privilege to have a specimen of your species, Kaff Kaff, among us. I’m sure my valued friend, the Professor, will agree.”
“He’s my best pupil,” the White Rat admitted grudgingly, “but I’m going to have to work him over if he ever hopes to get into Rutgers.”
“Oh, Jamie! You fell into the pond again.”
“Da,” the hero said.
That night was another bad night for James. He was terribly upset over the murder of George. He was in a quandary about the Scoutmaster’s denunciation of dogs because he was as fond of dogs as he was of all creatures.
“There are good dogs and bad dogs,” he kept insisting to himself, “and we mustn’t judge the good by the bad. I think the Senior Rabbit was wrong, but how can a Scoutmaster be wrong?
“It’s a question of the Categorical Imperative. Good acts lead to good results. Bad acts lead to bad results. But can good lead to bad or bad to good? My father could answer that question but I’m damned if I’ll ask him in his language. He won’t speak ours.”
Here, the deep rumbling of the bats began to irritate him. Creature voices are pitched so much higher than human voices that what sounds like a bat squeak to the human ear sounds like a bass boom to the creature ear. This is another reason why most humans can’t speak creature. James went to the window.
“All right! All right!” he called. “Break it up and move it out.”
One of the bats fluttered to the window screen and hooked on. “What’s bugging you, old buddy-boy?” he rumbled.
“Keep it down to a roar, will you? You want to wake up the whole house?”
“They can’t hear us.”
“I can hear you.”
“How come? Not many human types can.”
“I don’t know, but I can, and you’re making so much noise I can’t sleep.”
“Sorry, old buddy, but we got to.”
“Why?”
“Well, in the first place we’re night people, you know?”
“Yes. And?”
“In the second place we don’t see so good.”
“Moe Mole doesn’t see either, but he doesn’t make a racket.”
“Yeah, but Moe is working underground, old buddy. He hasn’t got like trees and barns and buildings to worry about. You know? Now the last thing we want to do is crash into something. There’d be a C.A.B. investigation and somebody would lose his license for sure.”
“But what’s the noise got to do with it?”
“That’s our sonar.”
“What’s sonar?”
“Radar you know about?”
“Yes.”
“Sonar is radar by sound. You let out a yell and the echoes come back and you know where everything is.”
“Just from the echo?”
“Right on. You want to try it? Go ahead. Wait a minute; no cheating. Close your eyes. Now make with the sonar.”
“What should I yell?”
“Anything you feel like.”
“Weehawken!” James shouted. The bat winced. Three echoes returned; Weehawken, Whyhawken and Weehawkee.
“I heard three,” James said.
“What were they?”
“Weehawken.”
“That was the big barn.”
“Whyhawken.”
“The smoke house.”
“Weehawkee.”
“The oak tree. You’re getting the hang, old buddy. Now why don’t you practice a little? It won’t bother us. None of us use place-names except one cracker from the south who keeps hollering Carlsbad.”
And then James James fell in love. It was a mad, consuming passion for the least likely candidate. Obeying George Woodchuck’s dying admonition he went down to the triangle to request Paula, the pig, to respect the boundaries, and it was love at first sight. Paula was white with black patches or black with white patches (Poland China was her type) and she was grossly overweight. Nevertheless, James adored her. He brought her armfuls of apples from the orchard which she ate methodically and without thanks. Nevertheless, James loved her. He was the despair of the Big Red Schoolhouse.
“Puppy love,” the Professor snorted.
“He’s a set-up for a my-wife-is-so-fat-that joke,” one of the Endmen said.
“Marriage is out of the question,” the Senior Rabbit said.
“She’s twice his age.”
“And twice his weight.”
Caw! Caw! Caw!
“If he dares to bring that woman here,” the debutantes said, “we’ll never speak to him again.”
James dreamed into the barn. “Ready for the biology seminar,” he said.
“Mathematics today,” the Professor rapped.
“Yes, Paula.”
“I am the Professor.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“We will begin with a review of binary arithmetic. I trust you all remember that the decimal system uses the base of ten. We count from one to ten, ten to twenty, twenty to thirty, and so on. The binary system is based on zero and one. Zero is zero. One is one, but two is ten. Three is eleven. Four is one hundred. What is five, James?”
“One hundred and Paula.”
“Class dismissed.”
And then James began to skip classes.
“We were supposed to start a dig yesterday,” Moe Mole reported, “and he never showed up.”
“He cut my oratorio session,” Jack Johnson said.
“That boy is turning into a drop-out.”
“Have you noticed how he’s brushing his hair?” the debutantes inquired.
“Oh, come on!” His Eminence said. “If the kid’s got hot pants why can’t we—”
“The boy is morally straight,” the Scoutmaster interrupted sternly.
“It can’t be solved on simplistic terms,” the Professor said. “Emotions are involved, and the cerebrum is never on speaking terms with the cerebellum.”
Alas, the situation resolved itself on an afternoon when James, carefully combed and brushed, brought another armful of apples to his love. Paula devoured them as stolidly as ever while James sat and watched devotedly. Apparently Paula was extra-hungry this afternoon because when James started to embrace her she started to eat him. James pulled his arm out of her mouth and recoiled in horror and disillusionment.
“Paula!” he exclaimed. “You only love me for myself.”
“Khonyetchna,” Paula grunted in Cyrillic.
James returned to the Big Red Schoolhouse in a gloomy mood. Of course everybody had seen the sad incident and all of them did their best to be tactful.
“Physiology tomorrow,” the Professor said. “We will discuss the hydrogen-ion balance in the blood.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We got to get on to the modern composers, kid.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know, shale is an oil-bearing rock,” Moses Mole said.
“But why isn’t there any oil in red shale? There must be a mathematical reason.”
“We’ll try to find it, sir.”
“Stick out your chest and be a man,” the Scoutmaster said.
“I’m trying, sir.”
“It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” the Chairman said.
Then a fawn nestled alongside James and whispered, “It’s all right. We’re sorry you picked the wrong girl, but it has to happen to every man at least once. That’s how you find the right girl.”
James burst into tears and cried and cried for his lost love while the fawn petted him, but in the end he felt curiously relieved.
“James,” the Professor said, “we must have a serious talk.”
“Yes, sir. Here?”
“No. Come to the willow grove.” They went to the willow g
rove. “Now we are alone,” the Professor said. “James, you must start speaking to your mother and father. I know you can. Why don’t you?”
“I’m damned if I will, sir. They won’t speak Us. Why should I speak Them?”
“James, they don’t know how to speak Us. Aren’t you being unfair?”
“They could try.”
“And I’m sure they would if they had a clue, but they haven’t. Now listen to me. You’re our only link between Us and Them. We need you, James, as a diplomatist. Your mother and father are very nice people; no hunting or killing on Red Hill and they’re planting many things. We all live together very pleasantly. I admit your mother loses her temper with the Scoutmaster and his troop because they won’t get out of her way when she comes out to hang the laundry on the line, but that’s because she has a Bohemian disposition. We know what artists are like, unpredictable.”
“I won’t talk to her,” James said.
“Your father is an intellectual of top caliber, and he went to Rutgers. You’ve brought many of his ideas and speculations to the Schoolhouse, which are stimulating and appreciated. In all fairness you should let him know how grateful we are to him.”
“He wouldn’t believe me.”
“But at least you could speak to him.”
“I won’t speak to him. He’s old, old, old and hidebound. He’s a cube. He’s trapped in a structured society.”
“Where did you get that?”
“From my father.”
“Well, then. You see?”
“No, I don’t,” James said stubbornly. “I won’t talk their language to them. They have to try Us first.”
“In other words, you have opted for Us?”
“Yes, sir.”
“To the exclusion of Them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then there’s nothing more to say.”
“Connie,” Constance said to Constantine, “we must have a serious talk.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“What about?”
“Jamie.”
“What about Jamie?”
“He’s a problem child.”
“What’s his problem?”
“He’s arrested.”
“Are you starting that again? Now come on, Connie. He’s learned to walk. What more do you want?”
“But he hasn’t learned to talk.”
“Talk! Talk! Talk!” Constantine sounded as though he was cursing. “Words! Words! Words! I’ve lived my whole life with them and I hate them. Do you know what most words are? They’re bullets people use to shoot each other down with. Words are weapons for killers. Language should be the beautiful poetry of communication but we’ve debased it, poisoned it, corrupted it into hostility, into competition, into a contest between winners and losers. And the winner is never the man with something to say; the winner is always the fastest gun in the west. These are the few simple words I have to say about words.”
“Yes, dear,” Constance said, “but our son should be shooting words by now, and he isn’t.”
“I hope he never does.”
“He must, and we’ll have to take him to a clinic. He’s autistic.”
“Autism,” the Professor said, “is an abnormal absorption in fantasy to the exclusion of external reality. I have known many laboratory victims who have been driven to this deplorable state by fiendish experiments.”
“Could you put that in mathematical terms?” Moe asked. “I can’t follow your words.”
“Ah, yes. Kaff Kaff. I’m having some slight difficulty myself. I’m sure our valued friend will be good enough to simplify.”
“All right,” the White Rat said. “He won’t talk.”
“Won’t talk? Good heavens! We can’t shut him up. Only yesterday he engaged me in a two hour dispute over Robert’s Rules of Order, and—”
“He won’t talk human.”
“Oh. Ah.”
“The questo is can he?” the Chaldean Chicken said. “Many who are born under the Sign of Torso find it difficulto to—”
“Taurus! Taurus! And will you be quiet. He can talk; he just won’t.”
“What’s a fantasy?” Moe asked.
“A hallucination.”
“What’s that?”
“Something unreal.”
“You mean he’s not real? But I only saw him yesterday and he—”
“I have no intention of discussing the metaphysics of reality. Those of you who are interested may take my course in Thesis, Synthesis and Antithesis. The situation with James is simple. He talks to us in our language; he refuses to talk to his parents in their language; they are alarmed. The Princess told me.”
“Why are they alarmed?”
“They think he’s autistic.”
“They think he’s unreal?”
“No, Moe,” the Professor said patiently. “They know he’s real. They think he has a psychological hang-up which prevents him from talking human.”
“Do they know he talks Us?”
“No.”
“Then why don’t we tell them? Then everything will be all right.”
“Why don’t you tell them?”
“I don’t know how to talk Them.”
“Does anybody here know how? Anybody?”
No answer.
“So much for that brilliant suggestion,” the Professor said.
“Now we come to the crux of the situation. They’re going to send him to a remedial school.”
“What’s the matter with our school?”
“They don’t know about our school, you imbecile! They want him to go to a school where he can learn to speak English.”
“What’s that?”
“Them talk.”
“Oh.”
“Well, Kaff Kaff, as our most esteemed and valued scholar, surely you can have no objections to that program, my dear Professor.”
“There’s a dilemma,” the White Rat said sourly.
“Name it, sir. I say, describe it and we shall, Kaff Kaff, we shall cope.”
“He’s so used to speaking Us that I’m afraid he won’t learn to speak Them.”
“But why should he want to, my learned friend?”
“Because he’s got Rutgers before him.”
“Ah, yes. To be sure. Your beloved Alma Mater. But I still can’t quite fathom, I say, perceive the basic difficulty.”
“We’ve got to turn him off.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“We’ve got to stop speaking to him. We’ve got to break his Us habit so he can learn Them. Nobody can speak both.”
“You can’t mean Coventry, Professor?”
“I do. Don’t you understand? No matter where he goes there will be others of us around. We must break the habit. Now. For his sake.” The Professor began to pace angrily. “He will forget how to speak Us. We’ll lose him. That’s the price. My best pupil. My favorite. Now he may never make Phi Beta Kappa.”
The debutantes looked despairing. “We love that boy,” they said. “He’s a real swinger.”
“He is not,” the Senior Rabbit stated, “He is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.”
“He told me all about E equals M C two,” Moe said. “It gave me an insight. It will change the world.”
“Aquarium,” Miss Leghorn said profoundly.
“He is a pest, a bore, a nuisance, a—a human,” the Professor shouted. “He doesn’t belong in our Schoolhouse. We want nothing to do with him; he’ll sell us out sooner or later. Coventry! Coventry!” Then he broke down completely. “I love him, too, but we must be brave. We’re going to lose him but we must be brave for his sake. And somebody better warn the Princess.”
James James Morrison Morrison shoved the barn door a little wider and swaggered into the Schoolhouse. There was no mistaking his pride in his walk. In an odd way it was a reflection of the Chairman’s strut.
“Ladies and gentlemen, goo
d evening,” he said, as courteous as ever.
The debutantes sniffled and departed.
“What’s the matter with them?” James asked curiously. He turned to the mole. “Uncle Moe, I just heard something up at the house that’ll interest you. It seems that the universe may break down. Time is not reversible from the mathematical standpoint, and—”
Here Moe broke down and went underground.
“What’s the matter with him?” James asked.
There was no answer. Everybody else had disappeared, too.
The long sad silence had begun.
The pheasant strutted, accompanied by his harem, and he ignored James. Martha W. Woodchuck, who had taken on George’s surveying duties (she was his daughter-in-law) ignored James.
Neither the Professor nor the Scoutmaster were to be seen. The does and the fawns hid in the woods. Moe Mole decided on an early hibernation. Jack Johnson went south for the winter and His Eminence suddenly moved his residence to Paula’s territory. The crows could not resist the challenge of an art noveau scarecrow on a farm a mile off and left. James James was abandoned.
“Would you like to read my palm?” he asked Miss Leghorn.
“Cluck,” she replied.
“Princess,” he said, “why doesn’t anybody want to talk to me?”
“Aeiou,” she replied.
James was abandoned.
“Well, at least he’s learned how to walk,” Dr. Rapp said, “and that’s a favorable prognosis. What beats me is how he can be autistic in such an articulate home. One would think that— Stop. An idea. Is it possible that the home is too articulate; that his autism is a refusal to compete with his betters?”
“But there’s no competition in our home,” one of the two Connies said.
“You don’t grasp the potential of the idea. In our society, if you don’t win you have failed. This is our contemporary delusion. James may well be afraid of failure.”
“But he’s only three years old.”
“My dear Mrs. Dupree, competition begins in the womb.”
“Not in mine,” Connie said indignantly. “I’ve got the fastest womb in the west.”
“Yes. And now if you will excuse me, the first lesson will begin. That door out. Thank you.” Dr. Rapp buzzed the intercom.
“Sherbet,” he said. A chalice of orange sherbet was brought to him.
Selected Stories of Alfred Bester Page 41
