CHILDREN OF THE THUNDER

by John Brunner

  Accordingly:

  “How long ago did the Crowders arrive?”

  “The year Garth started school. He’s thirteen now, so that must have been eight years ago. I didn’t know them then—didn’t meet them until Garth came to me at eleven.”

  “Even though Mrs. Crowder herself had been a teacher?”

  “People are very reclusive around here. They don’t like offcomers. Besides, Roy and Tilly were regarded as bossy, as wanting to make people give up their old ways. In fact, of course, their dream was to go back to them. To be self-sufficient and live off their own plot of land.”

  “But did they settle in? Was Garth accepted at school, for instance?”

  “It took a while, but according to what I’ve heard from his teachers at the primary he adjusted fairly well. It was obvious from the start he was very bright, and that always causes problems. But on the whole… And of course Roy did have a fair amount of money saved up, so he could pay on the nail for everything he wanted done.”

  “I understand he’d been an engineer?”

  “Electrical engineer. He had visions of applying what he knew to—well, for example, the waterwheel that he installed. Rewired the house so he could light it off a car-dynamo using headlight bulbs.”

  “Did it work out?”

  “For a while, yes. They even had a black-and-white TV. All they have now, though, is a battery radio.”

  “What went amiss?”

  “I don’t know. But something did.”

  “When?”

  “I suppose it must have been shortly after Garth moved to my school.”

  “Did he get on as well there as at the primary?”

  “For the first couple of terms, yes. But… Oh, I don’t know. Kids tend to grow quarrelsome at that age, don’t they? And secretive with it. Maybe it was due to the other kids realizing just how bright he is. Hardly one in fifty of them stands a chance of higher education, and here was Garth, university material if ever I saw such, bursting with questions at a time when most of the boys I’ve been trying to teach since I came here are deciding they already know enough to carry them through the rest of their lives. So they just stop listening. Of course, it’s the parents’ fault.”

  Miss Fisher gave a wise nod. She knew Mr. Youngman’s type. In his late thirties, he was resigned to never becoming a head teacher and on the verge of accepting he might not even make head of department.

  “Had something gone wrong at home? You said it was about then you first met the Crowders. And a crisis at home just as a child enters adolescence—”

  A vigorous headshake that made Mr. Youngman’s already untidy fair hair even more tousled.

  “No, they seem to be a devoted couple. Mark you, I’m not sure Tilly was ever as enthusiastic as Roy about going to live in the middle of nowhere, but right from our first meeting she’s always insisted that she went along with the idea for Garth’s sake, because back where they came from the kids she used to teach were so cut off from reality and she didn’t want him to turn out the same way.”

  “ ‘Where they came from’ being—?”

  “Spang in the middle of Birmingham. About as urban as you can get.”

  “By ‘reality’ she meant—?”

  “I suppose the way crops are grown, animals are bred and slaughtered… Not that that applies; they’re vegetarian.”

  “Did they try to—well—proselytize for their beliefs? I mean, most of the local farmers depend on sheep, don’t they? They wouldn’t like people who hoped to put them out of the meat business.”

  Another fierce headshake. “No, they always struck me as very tolerant.”

  “Nonetheless, I read about certain clashes…”

  “I know what you mean”—in a bitter tone. “And I’m just as worried about what’s been going on as anybody else. But I simply can’t believe Garth had a hand in it!”

  “There was a boundary dispute following which a sheepdog was poisoned, a potential champion that its owner hoped might get him into the national trials.”

  “And on television! That was Jack Atterthwaite’s Judy. He farms in the next valley.”

  “Wasn’t it his son who was found drowned? And wasn’t he one of your pupils, in the same form as Garth but older?”

  “You have done your homework, haven’t you?”—with a sarcastic twist of his lip. “Yes and yes. And they tried to make out that the snare Bob tripped on, so he fell in the beck and knocked himself unconscious on a rock, was made from wire in the Crowders’ barn. But it’s a common type! Nothing was proved at the inquest! Listen, you can judge how much store to set by these charges when I tell you that the local people are accusing the Crowders of witchcraft!”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Your homework wasn’t quite that complete, was it? I’m talking literally!” Fire sparkled in Mr. Youngman’s eyes—and voice. “Stick around here a few days, and you’ll notice words being spoken that haven’t been uttered in half a century at least—‘darklady,’ ‘hornylord’!”

  Miss Fisher found herself at a loss for the first time in a long while. She said after a pause, “I’m sure that’s of interest to students of folklore, but—”

  With a sigh: “You’re only here to find out whether the boy is receiving a decent upbringing. Right?”

  “Of course.” And, recovering her normal tart manner: “You seem to be distinctly parti pris in this affair! If you feel you can still offer an unbiased opinion, tell me your view. Are or are not Garth’s parents providing him with a sound, well-rounded education?”

  “I wish I knew!” An amazing shrug hoisted the shoulders of his worn tweed jacket high as his ears. “I call on the Crowders once a month, because about every four weeks I start to worry.”

  “And—?”

  “And I stay worried until I’m indoors, and then I come away perfectly happy. I mean… But you’re supposed to see for yourself, aren’t you?”

  Yes, of course. It was entirely legal for parents to educate their children at home. It was their right. But they had to demonstrate that they were doing it as well as a school could. And in a broken-down farmhouse, without TV… Was there even a phone?

  “We’ll have to walk the last bit. A Mini doesn’t have enough ground-clearance.”

  Miss Fisher started, for not memory but reality had supplied Mr. Youngman’s latest comment. He had brought them to a halt about a hundred yards below the house, where the way turned from lane to track. Releasing her safety belt by reflex, she was about to ask how the Crowders managed for transportation when she caught sight of an elderly Citroën deux-chevaux shadowed inside the barn.

  Against the wall of which, a few logs. Also a stack of something like enormous dark-brown sandwiches.

  “Is that peat?”

  “Hmm? Oh, yes. They use a lot of it. For heating.”

  Does using peat for fuel rather than fertilizer square with the concept of relying on renewable resources?

  Already prepared to deliver a hostile verdict, Miss Fisher followed in Mr. Youngman’s wake, picking her awkward way between clods and puddles and wishing she had chosen a more sensible pair of shoes.

  “Hello, Mr. Youngman! And I suppose you must be Miss Fisher! I’m Garth, of course! How do you do?”

  It was a black-haired, brown-eyed boy—neatly enough attired in jersey, jeans and trainers—who had called from the front door of the house. Now he ran to meet the visitors at the front gate, that stood ajar on rusted hinges between tilted stone posts. Either side of his path were rows of wilting vegetables around which flies were buzzing, but the visitors’ attention was wholly focused on Garth, who not only shook their hands but clasped them between both of his, and as he turned to lead them into the house put an arm companionably around Miss Fisher’s waist… or nearly around, for she had put on a lot of weight. Such familiarity on first acquaintance was normally anathema to her, but this time she raised no objection, for the boy had such an appealing smile.

  “Mother’s in
the kitchen!” Garth declared cheerfully. “I told her you’d be here soon so she ought to put a kettle on—you’d like a cup of tea, I’m sure. Nettle tea, of course; we can’t afford the real stuff, but my parents say it’s healthier anyway. And Dad… Yes, there he comes!”

  They followed his pointing hand. Scruffy in corduroys and an ancient shirt without a collar, Roy Crowder was approaching with an armful of creosote-blackened wood.

  “He’s been breaking up the old chicken-run,” said Garth. “You know we’re vegetarian, yes? So we don’t have any need for it, but we’re always short of firewood… Come on in!”

  And, within two shakes of a lamb’s tail, there they were seated around a four-square farm-style kitchen table, sipping clear astringent tea, being plied with fresh-baked scones spread with home-churned butter and home-made jam sweetened with honey from the Crowders’ own hives…

  For a while Miss Fisher struggled to remember what she had been planning to ask about. She tore her gaze away from Garth with a near-physical effort. Then she caught sight of rows of books reposing on ill-planed but substantial shelves filling an alcove beside the fireplace. She recognized some of them—Mabey’s Food for Free, Seymour’s The Forgotten Arts—and noticed others she had never heard of: One Acre and Security by Bradford Angier, The Mother Earth Book of Home-Made Power…

  And, underneath, the current Encyclopedia Britannica.

  “I can well understand,” Garth said, squeaking his chair closer to Miss Fisher’s across the stone-flagged floor, “how concerned the authorities must be if people opt to educate their children at home. But, ma’am, you must surely have been told that Tilly—that’s my mother—is a qualified teacher. How many children benefit from a one-on-one situation all day long? I ought rather to say a two-on-one, for Dad imparts his knowledge to me just as ceaselessly. With all respect to Mr. Youngman, had I remained under his tutelage would I by now be perusing the general theory of relativity along with the elements of practical design involved in buildings and operating power stations designed to feed the National Grid?”

  With sudden stubbornness, Mr. Youngman said, “I see four half-burned candles over there! What about your water-powered dynamo? And the wind-powered one before it?”

  Miss Fisher jerked her head around. She’d missed that!

  “We’re working on a better design,” Roy Crowder cut in.

  “That’s right,” his wife confirmed. “Meanwhile, using candles allows me to instruct Garth in the fundamentals of combustion. Roy and I devote ourselves unreservedly to his welfare and enlightenment. More tea?”

  So completely were the visitors under Garth’s spell, they departed without noticing how haggard Roy and Tilly had grown since that terrible day when he had returned from school—or rather, from avoiding school—and said:

  “Roy! I don’t want to call you Dad any longer! You’re not really my father, are you?”

  “What in the world—?”

  “Shut up! And switch off that fucking radio!” It was reporting how yet another Jewish home in Tokyo had been burned down, but such matters were too far away for Garth to care about at the moment. He went on with undiminished intensity, “Tilly, I accept that you’re my mother. But you lied to me as well.”

  “What—?” and “How—?” simultaneously from Roy.

  “I was waiting for that ‘how?’” was Garth’s snap answer. “Until this moment I merely suspected. Now I’m sure. I’m not going back to school. I can’t put up any more with—”

  “We were going to tell you!” Tilly burst out. “At the proper time!”

  “Which never came, did it? You’ve stuck me out here in the wilds, surrounded by yobs I can’t stand, at the tender mercy of teachers who are a sight more ignorant than you—even than I am at my age!—and I’m going to get my own back! You’ve run my life for nearly twelve years under false pretenses, and it stops now! Make the necessary arrangements to teach me at home. Keep me fit and fed and tell me what I want to know—start by buying a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica, because there’s a cut-price offer from a book club this week and you can always dump the club afterward. Don’t make me sweat over your damned turnips any more, or clear the ashes from the hearth! I won’t do it! I’ve found out enough about the sort of life I should look forward to—buses and taxis and discos and concerts and computers and libraries and television and girls and all kinds of goodies! That you have robbed me of! That for the sake of a patch of barren ground you’re now too goddamned broke to provide for me!”

  His eyes were full of tears, but his voice remained level and controlled.

  “So you, Roy, can get on with your farming bit. I admit you have to do that by daylight. But if you let me go hungry I promise you’ll starve before I do! And whenever I want information you can supply, you drop your spade and come running, hear me? As for you, Mother, you can take care of your bocky household chores before I get up and after I go to bed, even if it means you never get more than five hours’ sleep for the rest of your life! When I leave here, which I estimate will be in roughly four years’ time, I intend to take with me all the vicarious information you can supply by teaching me non-stop all day, from cooking to quantum physics! When I finally dump you dishonest creeps I intend to be capable in the abstract sense at least of making out fine on my own… and after that I hope you have to squeal to pass for pork!”

  Not only tears now, but sweat as well, were pearling down his face.

  “Son—” ventured Roy.

  “Whose?” came the cutting answer. And that was the last objection.

  Of course, when Garth wasn’t turning his full force on them—as for instance now, when much of it had been expended on sending the visitors away happy—Roy and Tilly did succeed in uttering an occasional brief question.

  “Garth, what if that inspector—?”

  “What what?” with unspeakable contempt. “Haven’t I taken as much care of you as you of me? Didn’t I get even with Jack Atterthwaite when he trained that bitch of his to drive his sheep into your cabbages? Even though I hate bocky cabbage! Didn’t he shy off when his canky son wound up in the beck? And didn’t I warn you not to bring in water till it ran clear again, meaning after they took away Bob’s body?”

  Roy’s face was perfectly white; Tilly’s was gray.

  “So it was you who—!”

  “Why should you care? They haven’t bothered us since, have they?”

  “But the police—” Tilly whimpered.

  “Did they even call us as witnesses at the inquest?”

  “No, but—”

  “And doesn’t everybody think we’re untouchable now? Don’t they call you ‘darklady’ and ‘hornylord’? Don’t you find offerings at the farm gate that no one asks you to pay for? If you deny it—!”

  Roy’s pallor yielded to a blush. He started to speak, but Garth erupted to his feet.

  “I’m sick of your ‘yes buts’! Tilly, get back to your stove! I want my dinner on time! And I want meat with it—hear me? You may want to waste away on greens and roots, but I need bocky protein!”

  For once his mother managed to withstand the force of his anger. Instead of obeying immediately, she whispered, “If that’s what they’re calling us, what can they be calling you?”

  The boy had no answer. He felt unsure of himself for the first time since the moment he thought of as his coming-of-age, that morning when he woke to find a wet patch in his bed. Roy and Tilly—he must grant them that much—had soothed his panic with frank and reassuring explanations about the onset of puberty. Even so…

  Faint doubts began to stir about the justice of the course he had embarked on, as deep in his subconscious as whatever made his penis stiffen in the night and spill his seed. He knew in theory what ought to harden it in waking life, but when his mother was a drawn-faced drudge…

  And anyway he’d been accustomed to watching his parents dress and undress since he could remember.

  He was tired from having to make the proper impression
on Miss Fisher and Mr. Youngman. Snappishly he repeated his former command, and was obeyed. As usual.

  That night, however, lying in bed, he tried to recall in detail how and why he had concluded that Roy was not his father.

  He could not.

  He could not.

  He could not…

  You’re watching TV Plus. Here is Newsframe.

  For the third successive day students have rioted in Tokyo and other large Japanese cities, protesting against their parents’ willingness to mortgage their children’s future earnings as security for flats and houses. The average price of a three-room flat in central Tokyo is now one million pounds. More in a moment.

  Followers of General Thrower cheered him this afternoon when he declared that the “steely spirit of Britain” must be re-tempered in the fire, even if that fire should prove to be nuclear. Opposition MPs…

  Peter was out of touch. Since their last contact, Jim Spurman had been appointed a full professor. Now he was “out of the office”—“addressing a conference”—“supervising a course”… Peter cursed the string of excuses that he found every time he checked for a response to the message he’d left to crop up twice a day on the guy’s phone. In the end, because worrying about what Claudia might have meant was distracting him from paid work, he risked posting a general request for information on an American board he knew Claudia didn’t log on to but several of her colleagues did—colleagues who tended to pooh-pooh her ideas.

  Given the time of year, he wasn’t expecting either a quick or a substantial response, but that same evening—as it happened, the day when, under the influence of Islamic expansionism, Malaysia occupied Singapore, an event that boded ill for Britain’s precarious economy inasmuch as it meant the breaking of yet another Commonwealth link—returning late from the book-launch party which had evolved into dinner with a bunch of former colleagues, he found among his email a one-word message, presumably a password, addressed to a code he could have sworn he had only disclosed to a handful of particular friends. It was a warm night. Opening windows, brewing coffee that he needed to clear his head, he wondered aloud who on Earth—?