by James Gunn
'What a thing to tell a child!' Matt thought.
"Purty soon I got to believing it, that Libby done the bad things that I got licked for, that Libby was part of me that I had to push deep down so she couldn't get out and get me in trouble. After I" -- she blushed -- "got older and funny things started happening, Libby come in real handy."
"Can you see her?" Matt ventured.
"Course not," Abbie said reproachfully. "She ain't real."
"Isn't real," Abbie said. "Things happen when I feel bad. I can't do anything about it. But you got to explain it somehow . . . I use Libby."
Matt sighed. Abbie wasn't so crazy -- or stupid either. "You can't control it -- ever?"
"Well, maybe a little. Like when I felt kind of mean about that liquor you gave Paw, and I thought how nice it would be if Paw had something wet on the outside for a change."
"How about a tire and a hub cap full of nuts?"
She laughed. Again that tinkling of little silver bells. "You did look funny."
Matt frowned. But slowly his expression cleared and he began to chuckle. "I guess I did."
He swung back to the typewriter before he realized that he was accepting the events of the last eighteen hours as physical facts and Abbie's explanation as theoretically possible. Did he actually believe that Abbie could -- how was he going to express it? -- move objects with some mysterious, intangible force? By wishing? Of course he didn't. He stared at the typewriter. Or did he?
He called up a picture of a pint bottle hanging unsupported in mid-air, emptying its contents over Jenkins' head. He remembered a dish that jumped from a shelf to shatter on the floor. He thought of a hub cap that dumped its contents into the dirt when his foot was two inches away. And he saw a tire straighten up and begin to roll down a level road.
'You can't just dismiss things,' he thought. 'In any comprehensive scheme of the universe, you must include all valid phenomena. If the accepted scheme of things cannot find a place for it, then the scheme must change.'
Matt shivered. It was a disturbing thought.
The primitive mind believed that inanimate objects had spirits that must be propitiated. With a little sophistication came mythology and its personification -- nymphs and sprites, Poseidon and Aeolus -- and folklore, with its kobolds and poltergeists.
Sir James Frazer said something about the relationship between science and magic. Man, he said, associates ideas by similarity and contiguity in space or time. If the association is legitimate, it is science; if illegitimate, it is magic, science's bastard sister.
But if the associations of magic are legitimate, then those of science must be illegitimate, and the two reverse their roles and the modern world is standing on its head.
Matt felt a little dizzy.
'Suppose the primitive mind is wiser than we are. Suppose you can insure good luck by the proper ritual or kill your enemy by sticking a pin in a wax doll. Suppose you can prove it.'
You had to have some kind of explanation of unnatural events, the square pegs that do not fit into any of science's round holes. Even Abbie recognized that.
Matt knew what the scientific explanation would be: illusion, delusion, hypnosis, anything which demanded the least possible rearrangement of accepted theory, anything which, in effect, denied the existence of the phenomenon.
But how could you really explain it? How could you explain Abbie? Did you believe in the spirits of inanimate objects, directed by Abbie when she was in the proper mood? Did you believe in poltergeists which Abbie ordered about? Did you believe in Libby, the intangible projectable, manipulative external soul?
You had to explain Abbie or your cosmology was worthless.
That man at Duke -- Rhine, the parapsychologist -- he had a word for it. Telekinesis. That was one attempt to incorporate psychic phenomena into the body of science, or, perhaps, to alter the theoretical universe in order to fit those phenomena into it.
But it didn't explain anything.
Then Matt thought of electricity. 'You don't have to explain something in order to use it. You don't have to understand it in order to control it. It helps, but it isn't essential. Understanding is a psychological necessity, not a physical one.'
Matt stared at the words he had written. The seventeenth century. Why was he wasting his time? Here was something immediate. He had stumbled on something that would set the whole world on its ear, or perhaps stand it on its feet again. It would not molder away, as the thesis would in a university library.
Matt turned around. Abbie was sitting at the tabIe, her mending finished, staring placidly out the open doorway. Matt stood up and walked toward her. She turned her head to look at him, smiling slowly. Matt turned his head, searching the room.
"Kin I get you something?" Abbie asked anxiously.
Matt looked down at her, "Here!" he said, He plucked the needle from the spool of darning thread, He forced it lightly into the rough top of the table so that the needle stood upright. "Now," he said defiantly, "make it move."
Abbie stared at him. "Why?"
"I want to see you do it," Matt said firmly. "Isn't that enough?"
"But I don't want to," Abbie objected. "I never wanted to do it. It just happened."
"Try!"
"No, Mr. Wright," Abbie said firmly. "It never brung me nothing but misery. It scared away all my fellers and all Paw's friends. Folks don't like people who can do things like that. I don't ever want it to happen again."
"If you want to stay here," Matt said flatly, "you'll do as I say."
"Please, Mr. Wright," she begged. "Don't make me do it. It'll spoil everything. It's bad enough when you can't help it, but it's worse when you do it a-purpose -- something terrible will come of it."
Matt glowered at her. Her pleading eyes dropped. She bit her lip. She stared at the needle. Her smooth, young forehead tightened.
Nothing happened. The needle remained upright.
Abbie took a deep breath. "I cain't, Mr. Wright," she wailed. "I just cain't do it."
"Why not?" Matt demanded fiercely. "Why can't you do it?"
"I don't know," Abbie said. Automatically her hands began to smooth the pants laid across her lap. She looked down and blushed. "I guess it's 'cause I'm happy."
After a morning of experimentation, Matt's only half-conscious need was still unsatisfied. He had offered Abbie an innumerable assortment of objects: a spool of thread, a fountain pen cap, a dime, a typewriter eraser, a three-by-five note card, a piece of folded paper, a bottle . . . The last Matt considered a stroke of genius. But tip it as he would, the bottle, like all the rest of the objects, remained stolidly unaffected.
He even got the spare tire out of the trunk and leaned it against the side of the car. Fifteen minutes later, it was still leaning there.
Finally, frowning darkly, Matt took a cup from the shelf and put it down on the table. "Here," he said. "You're so good at smashing dishes, smash this."
Abbie stared at the cup hopelessly. Her face seemed old and haggard. After a moment, her body seemed to collapse all at once. "I cain't," she moaned. "I cain't."
"Can't!" Matt shouted. "Can't! Are you so stupid you can't say that? Not 'cain't -- can't!"
Her large blue eyes lifted to Matt's in mute appeal. They began to fill with tears. "I can't," she said. A sob broke from her throat. She put her head down on her arms. Her thin shoulders began to quiver.
Moodily, Matt stared at her back. Was everything that he had seen merely an illusion? Or did this phenomenon only evidence itself under very rigid conditions? Did she have to to be unhappy?
It was not without a certain logic. Neurotic children had played a large part in the history of witchcraft. In one of the English trials, children had reportedly fallen into fits and vomited crooked pins. They could not pronounce such holy names as "Lord," "Jesus," or "Christ," but they could readily speak the names "Satan" or "Devil." Between the middle of the fifteenth century and the middle of the sixteenth, 100,000 persons had been put to death for witchc
raft. How many had come to the rack, the stake, or the drowning pool, through the accusations of children? A child saw a hag at her door. The next moment she saw a hare run by and the woman had disappeared. On no more convincing evidence than that, the woman was accused of turning herself into a hare by witchcraft.
Why had the children done it? Suggestibility? A desire for attention?
Whatever the reason, it was tainted with abnormality.
In the field of psychic phenomena as well, the investigations of the Society of Psychical Research were full of instances in which neurotic children or neurotic young women played a distinct if inexplicable role.
'Did Abbie have to be unhappy?' Matt's lips twisted. 'If it was true, it was hard on Abbie.'
"Get your things together," Matt said harshly. "You're going home to your father."
Abbie stiffened and looked up, her face tear-streaked but her eyes blazing. "I ain't."
"You are not," Matt corrected sharply.
"I are not," Abbie said fiercely. "I are not. I are not."
Suddenly the cup was sailing toward Matt's head. Instinctively, he put out his hand. The cup hit it and stuck. Matt looked at it dazedly and back at Abbie. Her hands were still in her lap.
"You did it!" Matt shouted. "It's true."
Abbie looked pleased. "Do I have to go back to Paw?"
Matt thought a moment. "No," he said. "Not if you'll help me."
Abbie's lips tightened. "Ain't -- isn't once enough, Mr. Wright? You know I can do it. Won't you leave it alone now? It's unlucky. Something awful will happen. I got a feeling." She looked up at his implacable face. "But I'll do it, if you want."
"It's important," Matt said gently. "Now. What did you feel just before the cup moved toward me?"
"Mad."
"No, no. I mean what did you feel physically or mentally, not emotionally."
Abbie's eyebrows were thick. When she knit them, they made a straight line across the top of her nose. "Gosh, Mr. Wright, I cain't -- " She looked at him quickly. "I can't find the words to tell about it. It's like I wanted to pick up the nearest thing and throw it at you, and then it was like I had thrown it. Kind of a push from all of me, instead of just my hand."
Matt frowned while he put the cup back on the table. "Try to feel exactly like that again."
Obediently, Abbie concentrated. Her face worked. Finally she sagged back in her chair. "I cai- -- I can't. I just don't feel like it."
"You're going back to your father!" Matt snapped.
The cup rocked."
"There!" Matt said quickly. "Try it again before you forget!"
The cup spun around.
"Again!"
The cup rose an inch from the table and settled down.
Abbie sighed. "It was just a trick, wasn't it, Mr. Wright? You aren't really going to send me back?"
"No, but maybe you'll wish I had before we're through. You'll have to work and practice until you have full conscious control of whatever it is."
"All right," Abbie said submissively. "But it's terrible tiring work when you don't feel like it."
"Terribly," Matt corrected.
"Terribly," Abbie repeated.
"Now," Matt said. "Try it again."
Abbie practiced until noon. Her maximum effort was to raise the cup a foot from the table, but that she could do very well.
"Where does the energy come from?" Matt asked.
"I don't know," Abbie sighed, "but I'm powerful hungry."
"Very," Matt said.
"Very hungry," Abbie repeated. She got up and walked to the cupboard. "How many ham sandwiches do you want -- two?"
Matt nodded absently. When the sandwiches came, he ate in thoughtful silence.
It was true, then. Abbie could do it, but she had to be unhappy to have full power and control.
"Try it on the mustard," he said.
"I'm so full," Abbie explained contentedly. She had eaten three sandwiches.
Matt stared at the yellow jar, unseeing. It was quite a problem. There was no sure way of determining just what Abbie's powers were, without getting some equipment. He had to find out just what it was she did, and what effect it had on her, before he could expect to fully evaluate any data.
But that wasn't the hardest part of it. He should be able to pick up the things he needed in Springfield. It was what he was going to have to do to Abbie that troubled him.
All he had been able to find out about Abbie's phenomena was that they seemed to occur with the greatest frequency and strength when the girl was unhappy.
Matt stared out through the cabin window.
Gradually, he was forming a plan to make Abbie unhappier than she had ever been.
All afternoon Matt was very kind to Abbie. He helped her dry the dishes, although she protested vigorously. He talked to her about his life and about his studies at the University of Kansas. He told her about the thesis and how he had to write it to get his master's degree in psychology and what he wanted to do when he was graduated.
"Psychology," he said, "is only an infant science. It isn't really a science at all but a metaphysics. It's a lot of theorizing from insufficient data. The only way you can get data is by experimentation, and you can't experiment because psychology is people, living people. Science is a ruthless business of observation and setting up theories and then knocking them down in laboratories. Physicists can destroy everything from atoms to whole islands; biologists can destroy animals; anatomists can dissect cadavers. But psychologists have no true laboratories; they can't be ruthless because public opinion won't stand for it, and cadavers aren't much good. Psychology will never be a true science until it has its laboratories where it can be just as ruthless as the physical sciences. It has to come."
Matt stopped. Abbie was a good listener; he had forgotten he was talking to a hill girl.
"Tell me more about K.U.," she sighed.
He tried to answer her questions about what the coeds wore when they went to classes and when they had dates and when they went to dances. Her eyes grew large and round.
"Guess it would be romantic," Abbie sighed. "How far do they let a fellow go if they ain't -- aren't serious?"
Matt thought Abbie's attempt to improve her English was touching -- almost pathetic. He puzzled about her question for a moment. "I guess it depends on the girl."
Abbie nodded understandingly. "Why do they go to college?"
"To get married," Matt said. "Most of them."
Abbie shook her head. "All those pretty clothes. All those men. They must be awful -- very slow not to get married quick. Can't they get married at home without waiting so long?"
Matt frowned perplexedly! Abbie had a talent for asking questions which reached down to basic social relationships. "The men they meet at college will make more money for them."
"Oh," Abbie said. She shrugged, "That's all right, I guess, if that's what you want."
So it went. Matt paid Abbie little compliments on her appearance, and she blushed and looked pleased. He told her he couldn't understand why she wasn't besieged by suitors and why she hadn't been married long ago. She blushed deeper. He dwelt expansively on the supper she cooked and swore that he had never tasted better.
Abbie couldn't have been happier. She hummed through her tasks. Everything worked well for her. The dishes were done almost as soon as they were started.
Matt walked out on the porch. He sat down on the edge. Abbie settled herself beside him, quietly, not touching him, her hands in her lap.
The cabin was built on the top of a ridge. It was night, but the moon had come up big and yellow, and they could look far out over the valley. Silvery, in a dark green setting of trees, the lake glimmered far below.
"Ain't -- isn't it purty?" Abbie sighed, folding her hands.
"Pretty," Matt said absently.
"Pretty," Abbie sighed.
They sat in silence. Matt sensed her nearness in a way that was almost physical. It stirred him. There was something intensely feminine
about Abbie that was very appealing at times, in spite of her plain face and shapeless clothes and bare feet and lack of education. Even her single-minded ambition was a striving to fulfill her true, her basic function. In a way it was more vital and understandable than all the confused sublimations of the girls he had known.
Abbie, at least. knew what she wanted and what she would pay to get it. She would make someone a good wife. Her one goal would be to make her husband happy. She would cook and clean for him and bear his strong, healthy children with a great and thrilling joy. She would be silent when he was silent, unobtrusive when he was working, merry when he was gay, infinitely responsive when he was passionate. And the transcendent wonder of it was that she would be fulfilling her finest function in doing it; she would be serenely happy, blissfully content.
