The Short Life Read online

  V

  "There should be no deaths!"

  Phil turned that one over in his mind, cautiously. A good deal of hisattention was needed for the task of nursing his old car along the rutsof the dirt road, but the murmured exclamation impelled him to steal aglance at the boy sitting beside him. This was the spring of Timmy'stenth year--the sixth year of his friendship with "Uncle" Phil--andthose years had taught Phil more than he realized, if less than he hadhoped. He knew, for example, that the peculiar vacancy of Timmy'sexpression at the moment implied deep thought rather than the completeabsence of thought that it suggested. That was a curious characteristicthat always made the man a little uneasy. Timmy's face was sometimesradiantly, spontaneously expressive, the most sensitive of mirrors, andsometimes it was rather mechanically expressive, but it was onlyexpressive in a positive sense. In moments of abstraction or daydreamingthere was no faraway look, no frown of concentration. Only blankness.

  "The world would get a trifle crowded, you know."

  Timmy leaped the gap easily to connect the two remarks, as Phil hadthought he would. "Oh, I didn't mean there should be no _death_. I wasthinking of something else. That man they found dead in the bushyesterday."

  "A man with a heart condition should never go hunting alone."

  "Was it his heart, Uncle Phil?"

  "His heart and his head both, if you ask me. He had a bad heart, allright--I saw him have an attack once. You'd think a man like that wouldhave sense enough to avoid overexertion, but he lost his way and startedchurning through swamp and brush in a straight line instead of lookingfor the trail again. Must have acted like a moron, running until hedropped."

  "Would panic make a man do that?"

  "It will make a man do any crazy thing imaginable, if he lets it getthe upper hand. There's only a few square miles of marsh and brush here,with the town already crowding up against it. In a few years it will bedrained and the land used for industrial development and so on, then thefools will have to find some other way to kill themselves."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Oh, every so often we have to turn out search parties and have a grandshivaree looking for some idiot who usually turns up dead. Drownedhimself in two feet of water, or run himself ragged, or even put abullet through his head for no good reason. It's happened several timesin the past few years, so the place is getting a bad name it doesn'tdeserve. Even the search parties often get themselves balled up and millaround in circles, perfect examples of mass hysteria. Sometimes I getfed up with the human race."

  "I ... didn't know. I mean, about the ... deaths."

  Phil laughed outright at the tragic tone.

  "Oh, come now! Let's not be morbid about it! You wanted to drive outhere, remember."

  "I still do, Uncle Phil. You and Dad were talking about how you used tocome out here every spring when you were kids, to collect specimens, andit sounded like fun."

  "So it was ... in those days. This old dirt road leads well in towardthe center. I used to spend a whole day hiking along here with my dog,just rooting around and having a grand time. It's a pity we outgrowthe best things in life. Childhood scenes should be remembered, notrevisited. We can remember, but we can't recapture. A few years agoI wanted some nature photographs so of course I came out here, sureI'd get some beauties. I don't know. I started out in high spirits,recognizing every rotted old stump along the way, but somehow it allturned to ashes. I lost interest and turned back without taking a singleexposure--almost hating the place, in fact, as if it had let me down.Strange that a place I loved as a kid should seem so empty anduninviting now." He put on the brakes and looked around morosely.

  "Don't you want to go any farther, Uncle Phil?"

  "What for? You can see how overgrown the road is getting. I'll be luckyif I can find a clearing to turn around. There's nothing of interest upahead, Timmy. The road dies out and then there's a couple of miles or soof swamp and flies. It's getting dusk, too--"

  "I'd like to get out for a minute."

  "Oh. Well, O. K., but make it snappy."

  He settled back listlessly as the boy climbed out, holding the door forthe dog to follow.

  "Do you have to take that mutt ... never mind, go ahead."

  * * * * *

  The boy wandered off to the side of the road and Phil listened to therustle of bushes, wondering at his own irritation. He felt ill at ease,anxious to be away. He started as Timmy came up beside him on the leftof the car.

  "That was quick."

  "Yeah." The boy was holding a spray of flowering shrub and his handpassed casually over the flowers in a light caress. "Say, hasn't thisflower got a sweet smell, Uncle Phil? Here, smell it."

  "It's a pretty flower, Timmy, but that stuff has no perfume." Heaccepted the branch automatically, lifted it to his nostrils.

  Time stopped.

  He thought he felt a thump against the side of the car, but theimpression faded before it was fully born. In a remote corner of hismind the ticking of his watch sounded as a cold, measured rhythm, ametronome with delusions of syncopation. He sat motionless, his forearmresting on the steering wheel, the spray of blossoms caressing hischeek, his mind stunned by the anaesthetic he drew in with each breath.He was as one lost in thought, his eyes open but unseeing, observing butnot interpreting.

  There was no sense of duration, of the passage of seconds or minutes.There was only a dream in which, suddenly, a gentle mind made itspresence known. Concepts tapped lightly at his own mind and an automaticprocess of interpretation winnowed and equated until a gentle voiceseemed to speak. The words were few, merely computed associationskeyed to understanding, and with them were perfectly and intimatelysynchronized fragments of emotion and vision, softly washing over thesurface of his mind.

  * * * * *

  _(Urgency) Attend--attend! Challonari! Attend!_

  * * * * *

  An impression of convolutions drifted through his mind--a shape,perhaps, and a color. He felt no curiosity, and let the impressiondrift. As a sunbather drowsing on a crowded beach, hearing thebackground hum of the crowd and now and then a more clearly spokenphrase, so he caught the edge of this communication. It was not forhim. A second mind entered ... _was_ it a mind? Yes, and yet verydifferent. It was strong, but limited--perhaps childlike, in some ways.Alive after a fashion, it was receptive of emotion up to a point andeven capable of emotion--up to a point. It seemed an embryo mind, insome ways well developed and in others with no potential whatever.

  * * * * *

  (RELIEF) IDENTITY BLURRED ... KNOW/NOT KNOW. (PERPLEXITY) NO PRECEDENT ... REQUIRE INSTRUCTIONS. (CONFIDENCE/TRUST) INSTRUCT PLEASE.

  _Instructions (Decisive) Sleep ... sleep ... sleep._

  (AGITATION) IDENTITY NOT MENTOR ... INSTRUCTIONS INVOLVE BASIC DISOBEDIENCE (CONFUSION/DISTRESS) CANNOT OBEY/DISOBEY ... DILEMMA INSOLUBLE TO CHALLONARI (PLEADING) REVISE INSTRUCTIONS PLEASE.

  _(Sorrow) Cannot revise. Identity mentor/not mentor. Challonari must obey identity._

  (GREAT AGITATION) ACCEPT IDENTITY MENTOR/NOT MENTOR ... CANNOT RECONCILE BASIC CONFLICTS ... CANNOT OBEY/DISOBEY (SUDDEN HOPE) LOGICAL DIVERGENCE PERMISSIBLE ... SIMPLIFY EXPLANATION PLEASE.

  _(Reluctance/hesitation) Intelligent identities here ... unable communicate ... Challonari. Result ... so. (Pain) Communication ... so. (Wave pattern)._

  (UNHESITATING) ILLOGICAL/REJECT ... COMMUNICATION DESCRIBED IMPOSSIBLY LIMITED ... INCONSISTENT/HIGH-LEVEL INTELLIGENCE.

  _Challonari limited ... must accept. (Command) Challonari sleep ... sleep ... sleep._

  (EXTREME AGITATION) CANNOT/MUST OBEY.

  _(Command/pity) Challonari has destroyed intelligence! Must sleep ... sleep ... sleep!_

  (AGONY ... HORROR/CONFLICT ... INSANITY).

  _Challonari! (No response. Grief) Ultimate withdrawal ... Challo
nari! Challonari!_

  * * * * *

  Phil frowned, looking at his empty hand. It seemed to him that the sprayof flowers had inexplicably vanished. There was an elusive sense ofdisorientation, a feeling of something overlooked. There was the tag-endof a remembered grief. There was--

  "You were right, Uncle Phil. They have no scent."

  "What?" He looked around blankly, saw Timmy tossing the spray aside."Oh ... there it is. I thought I ... uh ... forget what I was going tosay." Two voices that were not voices--a dream, a despairing cry. Anelusive memory faded, faded. "There's mud on your cheek, Timmy. Did youfall?"

  "No ... that is, yes." Timmy scrubbed his cheek industriously.

  "Make up your mind. Hurt yourself?"

  "No, I'm all right."

  "Well, whip around to the other side and hop in." Phil watched him inthe rear-view mirror and noted the hasty dab at moist eyes. It seemedlike a significant giveaway, but he couldn't imagine why. "Get your muttin and let's go."

  "Come on, Homer." The boy settled himself with his dog between his feet,and Phil laughed, his good spirits returned. He turned the car withoutmuch trouble and they bumped back over the wagon ruts.

  "Why do you call him Homer, Timmy?"

  "Well, on account of the Odyssey, you know."

  "I see. Some day when I have a clear mind and a couple of hours tospare, you can explain the connection between Homer's Odyssey and aflea-bitten semi-airdale."

  They rode in silence for a while, until the dirt road changed topavement. Phil let his thoughts wander idly, thinking of nothing inparticular. Scraps of this and that seemed to float to the surface anddrift out of reach before he could capture them, had he been interestedin trying. One fragment somehow caught in an eddy and remained in sightlong enough to draw his attention.

  "Challonari," he said, wonderingly, and almost ditched them as stabbingpain shot through his temples. He held the wheel with one hand, theother clapped for a moment to his brow. "Don't do that!" he snappedangrily.

  "W-what, Uncle Phil?"

  "Sorry, Timmy, I didn't mean you. I don't know who I meant ... or,rather, _what_ I meant, of course. I seem to be pretty confused tonight.I even startled poor old Homer with that swerve. Get his muddy feet offthe cushions, Timmy." Homer sank back obediently to his usual placebetween Timmy's feet, but his muzzle rested on the boy's muddied kneesand his brown eyes regarded both of them at the same time. Apparently hewas not convinced that the upheavals were over.

  "What does 'challonari' mean, Uncle Phil?"

  "Oh ... that. Just something that came to mind."

  "But what does it mean?"

  "I don't really know, Timmy ... something about convolutions or aconvoluted shape, I think, but that's only part of it. There areconnotations of ... of intelligence? No ... ridiculous. How can you havea convoluted intelligence? But a brain is convoluted and to a greater orlesser degree intelligent. The ... um ... the question of degree comesinto it, I think. A brain of limited intelligence, then, though damnedif I know why I think of it as limited. Challonari ... challonari. It'snot English and it doesn't sound like a technical word, but I must haveheard it in connection with something ... quite recently, too."

  "Sort of rhymes with 'shivaree.'"

  "Only sort-of, Timmy. You wouldn't make a good poet.Shivaree--challonari. I mentioned shivaree when we were talking aboutpeople getting lost in the bush, didn't I? Did it have some connectionwith that? But how?"

  "Maybe a sort of--mental trick?"

  "Mental association rings a bell. Mental ... no, it's gone ... wait.Teacher, trainer, instructor--a brain of limited intelligence would needa teacher. Gentle teacher. Why gentle, for Pete's sake? But teacher andpupil, that seems almost right. How much can one word mean? What am Itrying to recall, anyway? The meaning of a word? The _associations_connected with a word? The association of ideas? Blast it, this is morethan tantalizing."

  "Like when you wake up knowing you've had a dream, but you can'tremember any of it?"

  "Uh ... yes, like a dream. A dream of--" The blood drained from hisface, leaving him gray and ashen. Timmy put out a hand in alarm, tosteady the wheel.

  "Uncle Phil!"

  "It's all right, Tim. It ... it's all right. I had a thought there thatkind of shook me." He relaxed with a shaky laugh, relief flooding hisface once more with color. "What a crazy thought! I could have sworn ...well, never mind. But it shakes a man to learn what tricks his own mindcan play on him, all in an instant."

  "What kind of tricks, Uncle Phil?"

  "Oh, no you don't. If you hadn't egged me on with so many questions,I'd have been spared a pretty nasty moment, you know that? Now let meconcentrate on driving for a change so I can get you home in time forsupper. O. K.?"

  "But ... oh, O.K."

  "Don't sound so disappointed, chum. It's been a pleasant drive, even ifnothing much happened."

  "Yes, Uncle Phil. Even if ... nothing much happened."

  * * * * *

  Spring changed to summer, and summer rolled into its final days. Philwas in a gloomy frame of mind when Timmy's eleventh birthday camearound.

  He watched Timmy draw a deep breath and--without puffing out his cheeksas a child would do--neatly blow out the eleven candles on his cake.It was an efficient, sprayless, perfectly-controlled operation, anoperation carried out happily and in high spirits, and it depressedPhil. The "party" itself depressed him--a child's birthday party withno children present, unless you counted Timmy! Phil and Doc, Helen andJerry, and Homer, the latter gray muzzled and stiff in the joints. Thatwas the roster of the guests and it could almost be called the rosterof Timmy's total acquaintances. His parents, his two friends, and a dogthat at its best had never seemed bright and now was obviously half-deadwith age. The boy was not normal, had no normal life, and gave noindication of ever being likely to take a normal role in life. He wasa "disordered personality" if one could take comfort in a tag, but thetrue nature, cause and cure of his divergence from "normal" would remainunknown so long as his parents were afraid of tampering--

  "Did you make a wish, Timmy?"

  "Sure, Mom."

  "Helen, honey--Tim knows that wishing when you blow out the candles iskid stuff."

  "And what is he but an eleven-year-old kid?"

  "He's too smart to believe in wishing, honey. Smarter than his old man,eh, Tim?"

  "I'll _never_ be as smart as you, Dad."

  "That's my boy! But you don't kid me." Jerry turned to Phil and Clancey,feigning indignation. "You know what happened the other day? I broughthome an old design that I dug out of the files and wanted to lookover--a helical gravity conveyer--and when Tim saw it spread out on thetable he said, 'That's the curve I was just reading about.' Now how didthat little so-and-so know enough to call it a curve? I figured he wasbluffing and got him to show me where he read about it, and the bratshowed me all right--in one of my old college textbooks! Of course Ionly had to ask a few questions to find out that the college texts arefar beyond him, but imagine him dipping into them on his own and gettinganything out of them at all! How about that, young man? Explainyourself."

  Timmy hesitated, his eyes dark with uncertainty.

  "You said I could," he blurted defensively. "Remember? Remember I askedyou one day and you said--"

  "Your father isn't angry, Timmy," Helen laughed, hugging him. "Honest,you get worried about the darnedest things! He's _proud_ of you! Don'tyou know paternal boasting when you hear it?"

  "Oh!" The shadow lifted and he laughed sheepishly. "I get it. It wasnuance of idiom that threw me. Calling me a brat and a so-and-so wasaffectionate misdirection to conceal--" he broke off at theirexpressions. Helen darted a quick look around and came to his rescueagain.

  "Timmy-chile, where you git these heah high-falutin' _ex_-pressionsI'll never know. Hit shore ain't from you' low-talkin' pappy."

  "Or from yo' low-comedian mammy. It's all right, son--you just sounda bit bookish sometimes, that's all. W
ant some help with the dishes,Helen?"

  "You know darn well you'd divorce me if I said yes. You and Clancey takeTimmy in the front room and let him teach you something. Phil's justcrazy to help with the dishes. Aren't you, Phil?"

  "The obvious answer is yes. O. K., let's go."

  * * * * *

  They piled the dishes, joking and chattering until the sound of laughterfrom the front of the house told them that the others were occupied,then Helen put down the dish she was washing.

  "Well, Phil?"

  "Am I supposed to know what that means?"

  "Phil, in plain language, is Timmy a ... a genius?"

  "No, I don't think so. He's unaccountably bright in many ways and justas unaccountably slow in others. I don't think genius comes into it atall."

  "That's what I think, too. Timmy's no genius ... yet he does things thatonly a genius-type could do."

  "Don't exaggerate, Helen. A sharp youngster living a secluded life andstudying more than he plays may be years ahead of other kids who go topublic schools."

  "He's farther ahead than you think, Phil. I have Timmy in the house withme all day, so maybe I know him better than Jerry does. He fooled Jerrywith that business of the college textbooks, but not me. I think thatfor some reason Timmy doesn't want us to know how advanced he really is.I think he slipped up when he commented on that helical what's-it, thencovered his slip by pretending he'd only leafed through the texts andpicked up a bit here and there. I know when that boy's fooling, and Iknow he deliberately fluffed the questions Jerry put to him. Timmy'sjust plain lousy when it comes to dissembling, you know, as if it wascompletely foreign to him to lie. All right, all right, I know whatyou're going to say--fond mama building mother's-intuition fantasyaround only child.

  "Well, I kept an eye on him after that and about a week later Jerrybrought home some calculus dealing with a new design he's developing. Heran into trouble with it and sweated and swore for an hour, while Timmysat and read and I kept peeking in the hall mirror that lets you seeinto the front room from the kitchen. After a while Jerry left the roomto look for some tables he wanted and Timmy slipped over and looked athis work, made a single notation, then dived back to his book as Jerryreturned. Jerry started to sweat over the thing again, then suddenly dida double-take. He made some erasures and in five minutes had the wholething worked out, cursing himself for misreading a figure or something.

  "Now don't tell me it was just a coincidence. Timmy hadn't seen thatproblem before and it should have been miles over his head anyway, yethe gave it a quick glance, spotted the error, changed the limits of anintegration and put Jerry on the right track. Just like that."

  * * * * *

  Phil carefully massaged a dry plate even drier.

  "So I stagger back and gasp, 'I can't believe it!' or something insanebut appropriate. The disturbing thing to me is that I not only _can_believe it, I do believe it. Completely. I may as well tell you nowwhat I haven't yet told anyone else, that I've been methodicallytricking Timmy for some months past--in fact, ever since I began tosuspect that his knowledge of the sciences was, to say the least,unusual for a boy his age. I probably led him into making that slip withJerry, identifying the curve. By giving him the impression that any boyhis age would know far more chemistry, math and physics than is actuallythe case, I tripped him into revealing that he himself knows a verygreat deal about them. Perhaps more than I do.

  "I begin to suspect now that I didn't set my sights nearly high enoughin leading him on, but God alone knows where he could have learned. Onanything that could be related to the humanities he's very slow, but inthe physical sciences he's out of this world. His secluded life--unableto mix with other kids, go to shows, games, or do anything that getshim into crowds--gives him a very limited background for understandinghis environment, leaves him unboyish. He doesn't understand people. Iconstantly have the impression that he is anxious to do the right thing,but is simply baffled by problems in human relations."

  "I know. He looks at me sometimes as though he's just desperate to reachme somehow--a lonely, unhappy little soul. He gets plenty of affectionfrom both of us, but it isn't the answer--it just isn't the answer."

  "Tell me, Helen, do you love your son?"

  "Do I--! Well, now, really Phil--what kind of a question is that?"

  "A simple one. Do you love Timmy?"

  "Of course I do. He's very dear to me."

  "_Do you love your son?_"

  "Now look here--! I told you.... Phil, what are you getting at?"

  "I'm wondering why you have no doubt that you love Timmy, but thequestion of whether you love your son confuses you and throws you onthe defensive. You react strongly, evade answering, take refuge inexclamations and unfinished sentences. A species of stuttering. Can itbe that you find it difficult to think of Timmy as your son? _Do youdoubt that he is your son?_ Here, sit down! I didn't think it would hityou so hard."

  "Phil, the only other moment like this in my life was when I firstadmitted to myself years ago that Timmy was ... what he used to be.An imbecile. Phil, it _can't_ be true! He _is_ my son! There's beenno substitution, no--"

  "Easy, Helen, easy. I agree with you. I've checked back as fully as Ican, and I'm sure there's been no trickery of any sort. Timmy was bornto you eleven years ago, beyond a shadow of a doubt."

  "But you've felt it too, haven't you? He's sweet and lovable in hisfunny, confused way, talking like a comic-strip kid one minute and anencyclopedia the next--so empty and faraway sometimes, then loving andaffectionate, as though to make up to us for being ... away. I'm sure heloves us, Jerry and I, as much as we love him, but I feel that we'vefailed him, that he wants love but it can't reach him. I'll say it,Phil. I feel that he's not mine, that he's apart from us. Ridiculous,isn't it? I can't feel true kinship for my own child, much as he meansto me. I feel better now that I've said it."

  "I wish I could say the same, but I don't know that I feel any betterfor adding one more question mark to a long, long line of them. Likeyou, I sense a loneliness, a reaching out from Timmy for something Ican't give him no matter what I do, no matter how I try to understand.I watch him, and I think of that line '... a stranger and afraid ...'What is there that frightens him? Can it ... possibly ... be us?"