Sunburst

by Phyllis Gotlieb

“Keep going.”

  “So if there’s any everyday kind of psi it’s telepathy in babies and kids…maybe herd animals, too, and ants?”

  “I’ll buy it.” He folded his arms and watched her with the wary look he reserved for her. “And?”

  “When it finally came to people as a radiation mutation it hit juvenile delinquents.”

  He said in disgust, “Tell me something I don’t know!”

  “Jason…what have they got in common?”

  He stared at her for a moment. Then he said “Ow!” and clapped his hand over his mouth.

  “I didn’t mean—” she began.

  He said grimly, “Didn’t you! Helmi, Pres!”

  They appeared in their chairs at once, Helmi red-eyed but composed to the point of chill. Their double noise was excruciating. Shandy said in a small voice, “Please don’t do that, it scares me.” Peter shambled out of the bedroom, bewildered.

  Helmi said, “You’d better put that clearly.”

  At this point, she didn’t want to. But she took a deep breath, and said, “Psychopaths have brainwaves like children…a sentence in a book I read about juvenile delinquents stuck in my head: Their minds seem more primitively organized. That’s what they’ve got in common with all the other creatures in the world that have psi.” She looked at them, but their faces were expressionless. “I’ve been trying to say: psi might be nothing but an ability that belongs to animals…for civilized people, just interesting garbage. Maybe you were banking on being considered superior because you have psi, you’re not psychopathic, and you’re a lot brighter than most of the Dumplings?…this might hurt you a bit, but maybe you’d even be a little relieved? Not to be responsible for the fate of the world?” She turned pleadingly to Jason. “I don’t think you’d mind terribly, Jason? You’re an unpretentious person.”

  He stared at her, half-outraged for a moment, and burst out laughing till the chair rocked under him.

  Helmi’s face thawed a little. “You have a genius for the left-footed compliment.”

  Peter took her hand. “I will mind for you, if you like.”

  “It’s all right, Peter. I can manage. But I’d like to know why I’m sitting here letting a thirteen-year-old kid tell me all my talents and powers are trash.”

  “You didn’t care for them very much anyway. Helmi,” Shandy said.

  “Even if your wild logic holds together,” said Jason, “which I doubt, what you’re mainly doing is calling the Dumplings animals. It’s kind of a way-out assumption.”

  Shandy said impatiently, “I’m trying to say that the psychopath started out being one in his mother’s and father’s chromosomes. People see a healthy-looking kid with average intelligence and a healthy mind and nothing missing but a conscience, so they figure he was brought up wrong. But I don’t think he was. I think he had something wrong before he was born, like a mashed-up chromosome, or one too many, like the mongoloid…and maybe it made him slide a quarter-inch back down toward Neanderthal.”

  Sunburst: 11

  Prester Vernon yawned, “You shootin’ that off the top of your head?”

  “Well, I was kind of thinking on my feet,” she admitted, “but all the bits of the idea were hanging around waiting to be put together.”

  “They may never stick together,” said Jason. “That Neanderthal bit won’t be popular with the parents of these kids.”

  “Many of them are a lot like the kids—and the rest think they’ve done every wrong thing in the book bringing them up. Wouldn’t this be easier to take?”

  Helmi said thoughtfully, “Everyone says amoral people are animals.”

  “Yes, but they don’t mean it. Prothero said it to Colin: ‘You’re in a cage because you’re an animal.’ But he meant acting like an animal, not really one. Gee, I’m not trying to say they belong with the monkeys in the trees.”

  “Even if you could prove it for the Dumplings,” Jason said, “you’d have a heck of a time trying to sort them out of the ordinary lot. There’s so many borderline cases, how could you define the animal?”

  “The psi did it for the Dumplings, but it would be hard, picking them off all over the world. The Prognostic Index might help, but you can’t test very young kids.”

  “And they usually have the brainwaves of children, too.”

  “Yes, darn it, and you can’t pick them out at birth.”

  “No, you’d have to wait till they started busting a few windows,” said Jason.

  “If they’re mesomorphs—present company excepted,” she added hastily.

  “We’ll worry about that later,” said Jason. “Keep on defining.”

  “Well…you sift out mesomorphs who’ve gotten in trouble with the police a lot as young kids, and have low indexes. Most of them come from families without very strong morals—often immigrants who have trouble coping with a new country. Maybe some of them have moved because they can’t get along very well in their own countries. I’ve heard poverty is a cause of delinquency, but I think these kinds of shiftless, helpless people could be a cause of poverty too…”

  “Most of the psis are boys,” Helmi said, “and most delinquents…”

  “Girls don’t throw themselves around so much. They don’t rebel by stealing cars—but they can find plenty of other ways to mess up their lives…and remember how scared you were when you discovered you had psi, Helmi? Maybe there’s a few girls yet in Sorrel Park who have psi and never got frightened or angry enough to open it up inside them.”

  “That gang business is an animal thing, I think,” said Jason.

  “Oh, yes… I once read a zoologist’s description of a couple of bunches of apes—what he called primate hordes—threatening each other on the borders of their territories, and it sounded very familiar. The parents’re always saying, ‘My Joey was such a good boy till he started running around with that gang.’ They never figure that’s what their Joey was waiting for all his life—some of his own to run with, and a herd leader instead of an old drunk of a father. And something to bust. They can’t get along with ordinary people. The world’s a zoo to them, and they have to throw themselves at the bars.”

  “Yeah…I guess there’s no place in the world for them to be free. But how do you tie all this in with the psi?”

  “I can’t completely. But most of the Dumplings were born to people like the Slippecs, the kind who often have delinquent kids. And at least one of the two parents had had a lot of radiation and didn’t have the Dumplings till he was over forty. The mongoloids and the kids like LaVonne and Doydoy usually get born to that group, because they’re just getting too old to have healthy babies—and the radiation was one more strike against them. So they ended up with psi.”

  “Then you say that since psi is an animal function, this exaggerated psi the Dumplings have is a logical result of radiation-induced mutation—in what you call a human animal.”

  “Gee thanks, Helmi. That’s just what I have been trying to say.”

  “You don’t think much of psi,” Jason said.

  “Well—it’s a mutation, and from what I’ve read, most mutations are harmful; a mutation’s a good thing only if you can’t get along without it in your environment—or at least it shouldn’t do any harm. I think it’s done a lot of harm, and I think the world can get on fine without it. You don’t have to walk through walls too often in the ordinary run of life, and if you need to haul a ton of lead you can use a freight car. I guess scientists and surgeons could use the pk—but they haven’t got it. Dumplings have it. Besides all that, it takes a lot of energy. Doydoy’s stunt yesterday seems to have taken a lot out of him.”

  The others stirred in their chairs, uncomfortably. So there were still things she didn’t know, and she was going to have to wait for them to volunteer the answers.

  “Now,” said Jason, “I think I’d like to know where we come in with all this.
In your theory.”

  She wriggled a little under their scrutiny. In spite of their good intentions, they were a powerful group of people—with ordinary emotions, not those of supermen, and she was extremely vulnerable. She said carefully, “You can find plenty of use for psi. If you could use it to examine the Dumplings as they ought to be examined you might be able to prove—”

  He jeered, “Come on, you know that’s not what we’re talking about. We want to know where we fit in with your dinky animal theory. Better start thinkin’ on your feet again!”

  She snapped, “You said a while ago you’d want to know what was an animal! Didn’t you? I’ve been trying to define it. But I don’t know how to account for you and I couldn’t do it grouping you with the Dumplings.”

  “Not safely.”

  “But if you can work up a theory that takes care of forty-five psis out of fifty it shouldn’t be thrown in the garbage. I can’t call it a theory, it’s only an idea—a way to look at things from a different direction. I don’t know why Prester and Helmi are psis. Doydoy and LaVonne aren’t animal types, but I guess Urquhart would call LaVonne a psychopath. And you’re a mesomorph way past the Dumpling type, Jason. Maybe you’re something special.”

  Jason looked up and asked the ceiling, “Hey Fitso, who’s the monk on the lamppost?”

  She said in a fury, “Maybe I remember something too! Something you said yesterday that—that—” She trailed off. Maybe it was time to begin learning not to shoot her mouth off. “Oh, forget it.”

  “It’s too late for that now,” said Jason. “Go on, tell me the horrible thing I said.”

  She swallowed. “You said, ‘I’m half a Dumpling myself.’”

  He grunted, and Prester Vernon snickered.

  She added gently, “You also said, quote, ‘It’s a living problem, not just a lot of gobbledygook you can rub off a blackboard, and it’s got to be lived out to the end.’ I don’t care if you throw the idea out the window, but you do have to consider it as a possibility in the problem of psi—and it’s part of living it out to the end.”

  “So okay, we’ll leave it at that. But now we’ve talked about us maybe you’ve got an idea where you come in?”

  “I think that’s Urquhart’s department, Jason…maybe yours too. You hinted about something a while back. But I won’t ask now…” She was suddenly leery of that problem.

  “Not ask! Maybe you’re not too keen on finding out!”

  “Oh, I know how you feel. I have to find out, sooner or later. I might not like it when I do. If you know something that’ll hurt me—maybe you feel like hurting me right now. I know I’m clumsy and irritating sometimes, but—but I love all of you and I haven’t meant to hurt you.”

  They looked at each other and sighed. Prester Vernon snickered again. “Shandy, you are sure lucky nobody ever thought to clunk you on the head and split your skull for being so smart.”

  “Maybe I can learn a little tact now I’ve got to this age,” Shandy said, laughing. She touched the top of her head. “I am lucky no-one tried it because my fontanel didn’t close till I was seven and I bet the bone’s still kind of feeble up there.”

  They stared at her. Jason said, “Why didn’t you mention that to Grace or Urquhart?”

  “I—I thought it was just a kind of freak thing that happened to grow that way. Does it mean anything?”

  Jason rubbed his head. “I wonder…there was a term—”

  “Extended foetalization,” Helmi said.

  “Oh. Does that mean it’s going to take me another thirteen years to grow up and then I’ll be six-foot-seven?”

  “Nope,” said Jason. “By your own statement you had most of your growth up to twelve and then started slowing down, so the prolonged infantile part—if that’s what it is—is probably over. Physically.” He smothered a surge of laughter and added gravely, “Anyway, Grace thinks you should start becoming interested in boys any day now.”

  Shandy sniffed. “Did she say when she thought I was going to become interesting?”

  “If we ever get out of this mess,” Helmi said smiling, “I’ll treat you to a lipstick and fix up your hair for you.”

  “Oh, no! Don’t do that!” Jason cried. “She might turn out beautiful, and then she’d be really unbearable! Ouch, help! Hey, get her offa me!”

  “Jason! Shandy! Stop it!” Helmi jumped up and pulled at Shandy, who was attacking Jason with a dishtowel. “Stop it! Something’s wrong!”

  Shandy stepped back. “What—”

  Silence, except that the clock ticked with flat measured strokes.

  In the street a child was bawling: “But I dowanna stay inside!”

  “My God!” Jason pulled himself up slowly. “I’m a dope. Horsing around and…”

  Shandy and Peter gaped at him. “What is it?”

  “The Dumplings. No buzz…they were camped in the woodlot, shielding. Now they’re not. There’s no scramble, nothing coming from them at all. They’re gone!”

  “Out of Sorrel Park?”

  Jason muttered, “Gotta get back to Prothero—oh boy, is he gonna boil me in oil. No use, Helmi, you can’t come.”

  “No, she cannot,” said Peter.

  “I—I—” Helmi twisted her hands, glancing at the boy. “Jason, he’s so young.” Prester made a face at her.

  “Maybe we won’t need him,” Jason said. “I’ll go first, anyway. Mind you keep out of it, now!” He gave Shandy a sharp fierce look as if to pin her to the spot. She blinked, and he was gone by the time her eyes opened.

  Helmi sank down at the table. Prester was staring out of the window. “Doydoy—” Shandy began.

  Helmi said, “There’s no use keeping that a secret any more… Doydoy’s gone too, for all practical purposes.”

  Shandy whispered, “Not dead?”

  “No, not dead. But he might as well be. He’s not sending and he’s not receiving, and he won’t move or speak. He’s as impenetrable as—as you are.”

  “But why?”

  “He says he killed the Kingfish and he’s going to fry in hell for it.”

  “But he didn’t mean to—”

  “Of course not. I knew that when it happened. But that’s the way his mind works, and we can’t budge him.”

  Helmi had said: we can’t go on like this. Now she knew why, and what all the cryptic looks and silences had meant. “That’s why the Dumplings didn’t attack you here. Doydoy wasn’t worth anything to them.”

  “Yes.” Her lips twisted. “We owe our lives to that.”

  * * * *

  “Can you tell what’s happening? Is Jason—”

  “Prester, keep still, for God’s sake. Yes, he’s all right, but I don’t envy him. Prothero’s so—”

  * * * *

  “—damn mad at that peeper I haven’t got words for it. Running off when—Waxman, get hold of Casker. I want to talk to that Fitch character.” Prothero strode back and forth, cigar in cheekpouch and snarling with the other half of his mouth. The room was blue with smoke, a fair expression of his fuming mood. Urquhart appeared in the doorway with a file folder.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  Urquhart regarded Prothero with a cold eye. “A civil tongue from you.”

  Prothero’s jaw dropped. He pulled it up again and mumbled, “Sorry, Chris—I can’t help—Judas Priest! If I ever live long enough to get my hands on Jason Hemmer—”

  There was a noise in the hall, and a second later Jason stepped in. His clothes were rumpled, but his salute was crisp. “Sir?”

  Waxman dropped the telephone, but Prothero had been through the whole eight years and was ready for anything. “Damn you, where’ve you been? Never mind, I’ll deal with you later. Get into uniform and start acting like an army man instead of a bloody fool!”

  Jason shook his head and said urgently, “
Sir, the Dumplings are gone! Right out of range! They were shielding in the woodlot by Craig’s Gardens till ten minutes ago, and we—I lost the scramble.”

  “What! Out of Sorrel Park?”

  “Yes. I…” He trailed off and stared into space, while Prothero gaped, face purpling, about to explode. “Something’s wrong…something…I…”

  “What is it, you idiot?”

  Jason blinked once and raised his hand to wipe a forehead beaded with sweat “Pres,” he whispered. “Come here.”

  Prester Vernon shot out of the floor like a genie and Waxman’s glasses fell off his nose. Jason regarded the apparition with disgust. “Not that way, you ignoramus!” Prester scuffed his feet.

  Prothero snarled, “One more trick like that—my God! Casker said there was a new—”

  “Yeah. He was telling you the truth. Pres, what’s wrong here?”

  “That man, Mar—Mar—”

  “Marczinek’s gone!”

  “You’re off your head! He was in this room fifteen minutes ago!” Prothero grabbed a phone and rammed a button with his thumb. “Marsh!” he bellowed. “Marsh! Waxman, put a detail on this.”

  “You won’t get an answer,” said Jason, “and you won’t find him around here. They’ve got him along.”

  “They could be a thousand miles away by now! Why did they pick on him for a hostage?”

  “Not a hostage. They need an information bank to take the place of Doydoy.”

  “Damnation, I don’t know where to…”

  Prester closed his eyes and murmured, “They been here, I can feel ’em. But I don’t know their thought pattern well enough to follow…if Doydoy…”

  Prothero howled, “You better follow! You damn well better! If you peepers haven’t got anything for me in five minutes I’m alerting every popgun within five hundred miles of here!”

  * * * *

  “If Doydoy…” Helmi whispered. Almost blindly she made her way to Doydoy’s room. Shandy followed and watched as she leaned over the bed and shook the still figure. Doydoy twitched under her hand and hunched deeper under the covers.

  Helmi shrugged and went to draw the heavy dark curtains and raise the blinds. A dull cold light was filtering past a thin cloud layer. At the touch of the light on his sensitive skin Doydoy reached out a hand and pulled the covers over his head. Shandy knelt beside the bed and gently turned the covers down. His eyes opened a crack, widened an eighth of an inch at the sight of her, and closed once more. His hand rose to cover his face. Slowly and carefully, Shandy pulled it away, and ran her fingers over the callused palm. “Why doesn’t he fly instead of crawling on his hands?”