CHILDREN OF THE THUNDER

by John Brunner

  It was his parents’ Rover. And next to it was a Rolls Royce that he didn’t recognize and was certain he had never seen around the place before.

  Abruptly worried, he honed his power to a sharp edge and entered warily into Mr. Brock’s sanctum.

  His parents were indeed present, and he greeted them with convincing enthusiasm, going so far as to kiss his mother’s cheek—which she usually liked, though he hated, because her face was always crusted with makeup.

  This time, however, she flinched away. And he had never seen his father’s face so stern…

  Moreover they weren’t the only ones in here with Mr. Brock (no sign of Mrs., as though he suspected his wife of being a weak point in his defenses).

  No, there were two other adults present, both of whom showed traces of what must have been a deep tan, fading now, plus a girl and a boy of roughly his own age, alike enough to himself to be—well, not his siblings, but at least his cousins.

  And his attention focused instantly on them. He knew in less than a heartbeat that they were the ones that mattered. He could sense it from their relaxed, assured attitudes, the gazes that they bent on him, the very air…!

  It had been a long while since he found himself at a total loss. Now he blindly fumbled his way to a chair at Mr. Brock’s bidding as though he were ten years old again, transported back to helpless and dependent childhood before the onset of adolescence gave him his new sense of confident control.

  He strove to master his reactions, and failed. He felt a sense of dreadful weakness, and prepared himself in dismay for the worst news he had ever heard.

  Luckily, it wasn’t all that bad…

  “Well, Cray Wilson!” Mr. Brock snapped, seeming to have been lent far more than his usual degree of confidence—no doubt by the two young strangers. “I suppose you know why I’ve called you here!”

  “No, sir.” The words emerged in a mumble. “My people didn’t even tell me they were coming—”

  The housemaster disregarded him. “Some alarming reports of your activities during the holidays have come to my notice! I’m prepared to accept they may stem from your—ah—unfortunate association with a woman of loose character, and a daughter whom she appears to be bringing up in the same tradition, but I would have thought better of any boy in my care than that he fall victim to such allurement!”

  His parents looked downcast; his father shifted his feet noisily under his hard and upright chair.

  “I was surprised,” Mr. Brock went on, staring at them under his untidy eyebrows, “that you permitted your son to pass the holidays here, given that the morals of people in the—ah—entertainment industry are always questionable. As a consequence of what has transpired, as a consequence of events that have created a considerable scandal, that have indeed come close to drawing the attention of the police, I am gravely disturbed, as are your parents!”

  What does he mean, “come close”? I could name four bent coppers…!

  But there was no time to complete the thought.

  “Fortunately,” Mr. Brock rumbled on, “it looks as though a way out has been found, that will save both your family and this school from involvement in a public uproar. Mr. and Mrs. Shay, it seems, are in process of founding a sort of refuge for children like yourself, those who have been regrettably corrupted by exposure to the sleazier side of adult life. Mr. Shay?”

  But it was the boy who leaned forward and spoke in a clear firm voice that struck Roger as astonishingly like his own.

  “I think I might get through to Roger more easily than my father would—sir.” The last word sounded like an afterthought. “May I—?”

  “Go ahead.” Mr. Brock sat back and mopped his forehead with a none-too-clean handkerchief. “God knows, all I want is to see this dreadful affair resolved! I can’t believe half of what I’ve heard, and yet I must!”

  No wonder you didn’t want your wife in here! Roger said cynically to himself. But at least what lay in store for him didn’t sound as bad as he had briefly feared. He said in a cautious tone, “May I hear more?”

  Afterward he could never accurately recall what had been said. He only retained the impression that for the first time he had been in the presence of someone with the same talent as himself, but infinitely more developed. He remembered being ashamed at the brilliance with which the other boy—whose name, he learned, was David—deployed not merely his naked power but also reasoned lines of argument, expressed in a voice whose very tone and pitch compelled agreement. After a while he felt he was living a dream, and could only comply passively with what he was told he ought to say and do.

  In the upshot, he was in the Rolls along with the Shay family, and the girl who—he had vaguely gathered—was like him an adoptee, and all his belongings in the big old trunk his parents had given him to take to school, and they were gone. Vanished. Their car was hurtling down the road… and they hadn’t even said good-bye!

  The only person who did before he left was Mrs. Brock, who appeared with tears streaming down her cheeks and gave him a wordless hug before turning back and slamming the door, an act that said as clear as speech, “I’ll miss you! But because of what you’ve done—!”

  In the wide soft back seat of the purring car, Roger, too, broke down and wept. David and the girl put their arms around him until he got over it; then they did other things that made him feel better yet.

  Up front, Harry and Alice pretended not to notice what was going on.

  That made him feel the best of all.

  You’re watching TV Plus. Time for Newsframe.

  It’s not only in Europe that deforestation is approaching the disaster level, according to a United Nations report published today. In countries south of the Sahara, patches of desert are breaking out, in the words of the report’s compilers, like an epidemic. More in a moment.

  On his way home from Japan, General Thrower has praised the Pamyat movement in the Soviet Union, as a model of patriotic enthusiasm which, quote, “Britain would do well to imitate…”

  Days passed without news from Bernie. Now and then Peter rang Claudia, or she him, and they exchanged sour words of frustration, but it was worse for her. He did at least have plenty to keep him occupied. The pigs-with-AIDS story duly broke, provoking the usual outcry from religious extremists about the Judgment of God, plus a practically universal boycott of pork and bacon. Given that the reason for the current shortage of potato crisps and frozen chips was traceable to that imported virus which despite originating in the Mediterranean had found the British climate vastly to its liking, Peter couldn’t help wondering sourly as he contemplated his exiguous fee for securing the coup:

  Is God’s judgment being visited on spuds as well?

  Eventually the signal came for him to rendezvous with Claudia at the Comet office—Jake had insisted that no details of the story ever be discussed by phone. Arriving late after being delayed by a pro-versus anti-dog riot—rabies had indeed been confirmed in Kent and a muzzling order had been issued—he found the famous Dr. Morris waiting in the foyer for a lift, her expression downcast.

  Foolishly he tried to cheer her up with bantering chit-chat. She cut him short with a glare.

  “That’s the last thing I need!” she snapped.

  “I’m sorry,” he said with the best approximation of contriteness he could achieve. “But I expected you to be glad that Bernie has finally—”

  She wasn’t listening. She was saying, “Remember the policeman who fixed for me to access PNC?”

  “Of course!”

  “He’s dead.”

  “What?” Peter took half a step toward her.

  A grim nod. “He died yesterday. He’d been in the hospital since those riots up north. What’s the city called?”

  “You mean where they tried to drag that drug-pusher out of the police station?”

  “Mm-hm.” She passed a weary hand through her hair. “As I heard the story, half his skin was melted off with a gas bomb, and he inhaled the flames… Well,
I guess we’d better head upstairs and hear what Bernie has found out.”

  The lift arrived. She entered. Following, Peter folded his hands into fists and muttered curses that though inaudible were vehement.

  Behind the now-familiar sonic barrier Bernie was already in conversation—or argument—with Jake. As Peter and Claudia approached, the editor swung around in his chair and snapped, “I don’t know why I bothered to call you here! This bastard’s let us down!”

  Flushing, Bernie banged the corner of Jake’s desk. “Now you shut up, hear me? I’ve told you already—I’ve done my utmost, but someone’s caught on to the loopholes me and my mates left in that sort of filter, and…” He paused, drew a deep breath, and continued to Claudia instead.

  “Look, maybe I can get you to listen! Jake won’t! On the basis of what you gave me, I started interrogating PNC and got considerably further than you had. I—”

  “How much further?” Claudia stabbed.

  “For starters I established that all the kids in your list were indeed born to clients of the same clinic.”

  Bernie sat back with a triumphant grin. The response he had hoped for, though, was not forthcoming. Eventually Peter said, “After this long, all you’ve found out is ‘for starters’?”

  And Claudia chimed in: “So what’s its name?”

  The grin became a scowl. “I told you—I’m working under a handicap! Someone caught on about the loopholes in the filter! Not surprising, I suppose; after all, the design is five or six years old. But what’s done can be undone. All I need is a little more time—”

  “And no doubt a lot more money!” Jake rasped. “What about the names you were going to trace, through correlating Claudia’s data with news-reports?”

  “Christ, I can’t do that in just a few days! I admit this rig of yours is the most advanced I’ve ever worked with, but sifting through literally thousands of—”

  “You’re stalling!” Jake broke in. “I’ve used our setup since it was commissioned. I know how fast it can trace a cross-reference! Maybe I should have assigned one of my own people instead of swallowing your load of bock!”

  Peter winced. That image of ingesting someone else’s vomit had always revolted him, no matter how often he heard it casually used.

  “I want the truth!” Jake roared on. “You’ve run into a problem you can’t solve—isn’t that the way it is?”

  For a moment Bernie seemed inclined to shout back. Then the bluster leaked out of him and he slumped back in his chair.

  “I haven’t solved it yet,” he said with a final trace of defiance, and then, with reluctant candor: “But you’re right. I am bogged down.”

  “Why?”—from Claudia.

  A helpless shrug. “It’s as though someone else is in there ahead of me, guessing what approaches I might try and blocking them off. Like I said, it’s not altogether surprising. Once they found out the weaknesses in the filter, the rest would have followed logically. I’ll keep on trying, of course, but…” He spread his hands.

  “Sounds to me,” Jake said cynically, “as though once again we have to forget about the marvels of modern technology, and revert to tried and trusted methods.”

  “Such as?” Bernie flared.

  Jake curled his lip. “Bribery and blackmail, if all else fails! Never forget you’re talking to a veteran of the Wapping Wars! Back then I sold my honor and my self-respect for the sake of a fat salary, and my sense of morality took a beating that it’s never recovered from. I quote a growser who hates me very much… Ah, what the hell? The important point is this.”

  He folded his fingers on his left hand around his right fist, staring down as though into a crystal ball.

  “All these kids—with the couple of exceptions you’ve told me about—have turned out to be from the same clinic. That much I grant you’ve accomplished. The fact that you haven’t yet managed to correlate any news-reports with the details Claudia supplied may be due to the whole lot being juveniles, so one wouldn’t be allowed to print their names. It follows—”

  “Think I’m an idiot?” Bernie interrupted. “I’ve been running my search-pattern on a basis of related events and backgrounds. I don’t have any names I could search for, do I?”

  “You said you expected to find at least a few—” Peter began.

  “And I’ve explained why I can’t!” Bernie barked.

  As though the sonic barrier were letting out at least his peak loudness, some of the subs at work in the vast open-plan office glanced uneasily in their direction before continuing with their assignments. Jake forced himself to calm down.

  “I was saying,” he gritted, “it could take a very long time to complete a search-pattern on that basis, so it makes sense to supplement what you’re doing.”

  “How?”—from Claudia.

  “In the good old-fashioned way.” Jake leaned back and reached for a tissue to wipe his forehead; it was pearled with sweat. “I suppose I should have recommended this at the start, run the two in parallel… Peter, are you busy at the moment? I mean, with other stories?”

  “Yes. There are three or four leads I should be chasing up this minute.”

  “Does that mean you’ve lost interest?” Claudia demanded, rounding on him.

  “Stop that before it starts!” Jake ordered. “I’ve worked with Peter often enough to know he doesn’t drop a promising story until it’s last hope. No doubt he’ll spare what time he can… Meanwhile, though, this is your baby, Claudia!”

  For an instant it seemed she was about to erupt at his use of what she might have held to be a sexist metaphor. With vast effort she overcame the impulse.

  “So what exactly do you suggest?” she sighed.

  “A bit of legwork. Good traditional legwork. Start by calling on this friend of yours is the police, this chief superintendent—”

  “Scratch that!” She repeated what she had told Peter in the foyer. In conclusion: “What other bright ideas do you have?”

  Momentarily disconcerted, Jake said, “Ah…” And found the thread again.

  “Well, too bad. So move on to the next possibility. On a purely statistical basis, the largest and best-known of the old AID clinics would be the likeliest. Make a list of those that are still operating, call on them, see whom you can chat up, find out whether any former staff are still around who are down on their luck and might take cash in hand for information. Like I said, good old-fashioned stuff. You might begin with the clinic Peter went to.”

  For an instant Peter tensed. He had never mentioned his experience as a semen-donor to Jake, so how—?

  Then he remembered: following their initial heart-to-heart Claudia had updated the information on her master disk with reference to “an acquaintance in London” who at some unspecified past time had—and so forth. It couldn’t have been too hard for Jake to figure out who the acquaintance must be.

  Swallowing his annoyance, he muttered, “It’s gone.”

  “What?”

  “I looked it up in the phone book.” With a glance at Claudia: “You didn’t think I’d just been sitting on my backside, did you? It isn’t where it used to be—it isn’t anywhere. Dr. Chinn is dead. His partner, Dr. Wilson… Sorry, not Wilson; her name was Wilkinson. Anyhow, she’s retired. I tried asking the BMA whether anybody bought the operation, because it must have accumulated a load of goodwill by the time it folded, but they refused to answer on grounds of confidentiality.”

  “That sounds like something I could dig into,” Bernie ventured. He had been sitting in discomfited silence, but had not lost track of what was being said.

  “Go ahead, why not? We need all the help we can get. But…” He broke off.

  “But what?” Jake urged.

  Peter shook his head as though he had briefly fallen asleep. “Nothing. Just a sense of—of connection: the clinic, the doctors who ran it, the donors, the mention of computerizing their records…”

  They waited expectantly, but he disappointed them.

  “
Sorry, I can’t pin it down. I’ll think about it again, though. Jake, I think you were going to say something else, weren’t you?”

  Calmer now, Jake shrugged. “I think I’ve spelt out my messages. What about it, Claudia? This is strictly your pigeon, you know.”

  She hesitated. He went on, “I can read your mind! You think you might be a trifle—shall we say notorious?”

  Relieved, she gave a nod.

  “But your face hasn’t exactly been plastered all over the telly. I can furnish you with fake ID, in either the name of the Comet or that of the agency that syndicates our stuff in the States, to account for your accent. Well?”

  After a pause: “I don’t see any alternative. Okay. I don’t imagine I’ll be much good at the game, but—yes, it is my pigeon. Funniest kind of research I ever undertook!”

  “Funniest kind of subject,” Peter said, and he wasn’t joking, “that I ever found a scientist researching.”

  “That’s settled, then,” Jake said, and rose. The others did the same. “Bernie, I’m sorry I bit your head off—”

  “Forget it. Just believe me when I say the data I imagined I could find for Claudia have turned out to be shellbacked to the nth degree. Talk about turtle inside tortoise inside terrapin… Still, I’ll keep on hacking.”

  “You do that,” said Jake. “You, too, do that.”

  Waiting for the lift—Bernie had remained behind—Claudia said anxiously to Peter, “You seemed to be having some kind of insight, even inspiration. Have you figured out what it was?”

  He shook his head. “No, damn it. It was on the tip of my tongue and wouldn’t come out. Still won’t. Like trying to recapture a dream, know what I mean? But at least I do recall what brought it on: Dr. Wilkinson, the people who were donors at the clinic, the connection with computers, the row that led to her and Dr. Chinn dissolving their partnership… I’ll work it out sooner or later. Put the computer on the job, maybe. Or get Ellen to.”