"No, Lucifer, I see so very little. But what little I do see makes me
feel like a blind person the rest of the time. Isn't it terrible to
look at shadows?"
"Really, Miss Poteil--"
"Hush!"
She put her finger to his lips.
He started.
"Wha--?"
"Please, Lucifer--Oh, be quiet--Please!"
Her breasts rose and fell sharply beneath the thin tunic. He saw the
tendons stand out in her throat. Finally she whispered: "I think
someone is coming to see us! Tonight. I'm not sure.... Oh, this damned
blindness!"
She beat her fists furiously on her knees.
Lucifer tried to speak casually: "If someone comes, we'll know about it
soon enough. Meanwhile, I suggest we try to get some sleep."
There was a strange weariness in her as she got up from the couch and
started toward the bedroom, which Lucifer had sternly assigned to
her after the first morning of awakening. But after a few steps, she
stopped and turned back to him.
"Lucifer, they say you are the father of my baby. If that is so, I am
grateful."
It was the first time they had mentioned the child. Lucifer felt
shocked, and very humble. This was another new feeling. He decided it
would be wisest not to speak.
"You are a man, Lucifer," she went on, in her husky voice. "I knew it
when you tried to take that test, knowing you would fail."
She brushed her lips across his forehead.
"Goodnight, Lucifer. I have known many males, but very few men. There
is a great difference...."
He lay awake on the couch for a long time, his body aching for sleep,
his mind spinning with strange thoughts, stranger concepts. He was
just beginning to slip into the twilight zone between wakefulness and
troubled sleep when a foreign sound in the room jarred him awake.
Forcing himself to lie completely still, to continue his even
breathing, he strained to catch a repetition of the sound; his eyes
turned toward the rear window. The latest rain squall had swept by,
and the window was now a luminous rectangle against a brilliant,
star-filled sky.
As his vision cleared and focused, he saw that the casement window was
partly open. A fresh breeze, warm and fragrant with the odors of the
rain forest, swept across the couch.
Lucifer heard a definite, sharp click from the visagraph. It was as
though a switch had been snapped. But there was no shadow of a physical
presence in the room.
The bedroom door opened suddenly. Nina stood there for an instant,
silhouetted in her short, white nightgown. Then she moved quickly
across the room, knelt beside his couch. Her lips, warm and dry,
pressed close to his ear; her long hair tumbled over his cheek and
throat. She whispered:
"Can I stay here a little while?"
He nodded, and felt her body crowd against him on the narrow couch.
They lay there together, breathing quietly, watching the open window.
And then there was a shadow there, a darker something against the
darkness. Nina's body stiffened. With an unconscious gesture older than
remembered time, Lucifer put his arm over her.
A voice spoke out quietly from the window.
"It's O.K. now, Dr. Brill."
* * * * *
A figure stepped through the window, stumbled over the hassock and sat
on the edge of it.
"You both there?" a man's voice asked, then, without waiting for an
answer, continued: "... Good!.... Fetzer's my name. Albert Fetzer.
Remember me, Dr. Brill?"
"I regret to say--"
"That's O.K. It was a long time ago--when I was GI-ing my way through
electrical engineering at Western. You gave me a lot of card tests. I
did pretty well, too--damm-it!"
"I'm sorry."
"None of us blames you anymore. We were kind of bitter at first--now
we're glad you're here."
"Glad?"
"Sure. We've got a lot of things figured out, but there's still a lot
more we don't get. You could be a big help to us."
"I sincerely hope so, but--"
"But, nothing, Doc. It looks like they're really giving you the
orientation business--like they need you and are going all the way this
time!"
Lucifer's tongue felt dry, and difficult to maneuver. He was grateful
that Fetzer didn't seem to expect an answer.
"They've been cozy with some of us before, but always cooled off. You
just play it smart, learn all you can! But be careful, or you'll end up
with the _Goolies_."
Fetzer listened intently, then chuckled.
"I guess they're still kind of fouled up! We had to warp the force
field behind your place--shorted their magnetic track, too! But
before they get here there's something else I've got to warn you
about--'specially you, Mrs. Brill."
He hesitated.
"What is it?" Nina prompted.
"Well, when you think you get a message from us don't bust out with it
like you did a while ago. They pick up everything you say on that damn
visagraph--I had to short the magnetic track in order to get at the
control wire to block it off--"
"Just a moment, Albert," Lucifer interrupted. "How did you know what
was said in this room?"
Fetzer sounded embarrassed:
"Well, it's a funny thing, Doc, but back on Earth we were all kind
of ashamed of this psi thing. We tried to keep it hid from other
people. Here, it's different. We're all the same way, more or less.
So we try to use psi instead of hide it. Doesn't work on Huth's gang,
though. They got minds like machines--It's like trying to psi into a
quarter-horse motor!"
There was a pounding of footsteps outside the front door.
"Gotta go!" said Fetzer.
He twisted lithely through the window, closed it behind him and
vanished into the sultry night.
Nina slipped from the couch and hurried into the bedroom.
The front door banged open. The room light flared on, blinding Lucifer.
Huth was there, with two of his men. The men ranged about the place
with giant strides, going through the living room, the bedroom and out
into the rear enclosure. One of the men worked on the visagraph, trying
to light it up. He had no success.
Huth stood over Lucifer's couch. "Has anyone been here?" he demanded
sternly.
"If there was, he was more quiet and courteous than you have been,"
snapped Lucifer. "Need I remind you that this has been a most
exhausting day, and that to be awakened in this manner--"
"Mrs. Brill received a message, and informed you of it."
"Miss Poteil talks a great deal of nonsense, which you must also have
overheard. However, I assure you, Sir, that I am not interested in her
hallucinations, and if you are, I suggest you discuss them with her in
the morning."
"What happened to the visagraph."
"If I knew, I wouldn't care. Your electronic gadgets impress me as
being rather juvenile."
Huth bowed.
"Perhaps because you do not understand them, Dr. Brill."
The warning in his voice was clear. He turned sharply on his heel,
motioned his men out of the room and left, shutting the door quietly.
* * * * *
With breakfast, the tubicular delivered a metal-backed manuscript that
bore the scholarly title: "Genetics and Psi, with an Evaluation of
Three Case Histories as Compiled from Earth Records."
Nina glanced at the title across the breakfast tray, then shifted her
chair beside Lucifer's.
"I'd better read that, too," she said. "Maybe it will tell us something
about our own genetics experiment."
Lucifer pursed his lips in disapproval at her frankness, but he held
the manuscript so that both could study it. The introduction began:
"After studying the incidence of psi on Earth, we felt that the
genetics approach should receive considerable concentration of effort.
Our chemists, biochemists and physicists are naturally continuing
their experimentation, but the geneticists seem to promise the maximum
results in the minimum amount of time. If psi can be explained,
understood and propagated through genetics, it can no longer be
mis-nomered 'extra-sensory'. It will become no more 'extra-sensory'
than sense of direction, sense of time and, in the case of musical
aptitude, such component primary senses as sense of absolute pitch,
sense of intensity, sense of harmony, sense of rhythm and sense of
tonal memory. Thousands of tests have indicated that these musical
senses may have an hereditary base."
"Physiologizers!" Lucifer exclaimed, contemptuously.
"Let's keep our windows clean," Nina murmured.
He stared at her in surprise.
"My father used to say that," she explained. "He told us to keep our
windows clean--so truth can look in and out."
Lucifer turned back the manuscript. He felt somehow chastened.
After several paragraphs of further discussion on the hereditary
aspects of the various senses, even including the inheritance through a
dominant gene of the ability to taste, the manuscript went into a long
analysis of the family trees of Arturo Toscanini, Kirsten Flagstad and
the 19th century mystic, Daniel Dunglas Home.
"Please note," the manuscript emphasized, "that in all three family
trees a favorable heredity and a favorable environment were perfectly
blended."
Nina gasped excitedly.
"Oh, Lucifer--if this project can bring the right parents together...."
"Human beings are not white mice!" Lucifer snapped!
"They are on Mendel's Planet!"
Nina seized his hand.
"Think, Lucifer! Our child may be able to see things we have never
dreamed of seeing! We will teach him to use his eyes from the very
moment of birth--even before!"
Deep anger and resentment stirred within Lucifer, but before he could
answer her, a click from the visagraph screen told them they were not
alone.
Huth's usually calm voice betrayed his excitement. His dark eyes glowed.
"Mrs. Brill--how would you propose to train a child so early?"
"By encouraging him to use his own true senses rather than his
superficial senses for his very first needs! My father raised all six
of us and he used to say I was a good baby, because I never cried to be
fed or changed. But maybe it was because he knew what I wanted and took
care of me before I cried!"
Huth insisted on sending for them immediately. There was a
three-day-old Earth child at Center. Huth had the baby's records before
him when they arrived. Nina, flushed with eagerness, asked:
"How is the baby fed?"
Huth consulted a chart.
"Both formula and breast. But it doesn't appear that the mother will be
able to nurse much longer."
"When is the next feeding time?"
"In approximately one hour."
Huth took them to the nursery. Through the window, they could see that
the baby was still asleep.
The young mother was sitting up in her room. A tiny, thin-faced woman,
she looked at them with alarm.
"Is something wrong with my baby?"
Nina knelt beside her chair.
"Don't you know your baby is all right?" she asked gently.
"I--I thought so. But when you all walked in like this, I wasn't sure."
Lucifer didn't recognize this young woman; nor did she appear to
recognize him. Her eyes, still dilated, roved apprehensively from face
to face.
"You're not going to do something to my baby?"
Lucifer felt a great pity for this young woman, snatched away from
Earth to bear a child with an unknown mate on this strange planet.
"I wouldn't harm your child," Nina told her. "I'm from San Diego--how
about you?"
"Masselon, Ohio."
"Now tell me," Nina asked, "is your baby awake yet?"
The dilated eyes stared at Nina.
"I'm ... I'm not sure, but I don't think so."
"That's fine. Now, please don't be scared. I want to help you and your
baby. Do you trust me?"
The young mother studied Nina unblinkingly. After an instant of
hesitation, she nodded.
"Thank you. Now, are you going to feed your baby yourself this next
time?"
"I'll try again; but I haven't been doing so well."
"Can you tell when your baby is starting to wake up?"
"I thought I could the first day or so. But then I didn't try--I guess
I got used to having my baby brought to me every four hours."
"Is the baby usually crying when it is brought into the room?"
The young mother smiled.
"Oh, yes! She's got a strong, healthy cry!"
"Will you try to feed her this time before she cries, when she first
tells you that she is hungry?"
"What--what do you mean?"
Nina took the young mother's thin hand between her strong, brown
fingers. "You know what I mean! Don't be afraid to use what God has
given you! Let's stop talking now so you can keep your thoughts with
your child!"
Under the dominance of Nina's personality, the woman settled back in
her chair.
Outside, the first rain of the morning swept over the forest and
steamed up the windows. Huth stood statuesquely by the door, arms
folded. The tall nurse remained watchfully beside him.
Lucifer struggled with an unaccustomed inner turmoil. Dissecting the
tangle of his emotions, he was astonished to realize that his pulse was
thumping with excitement.
Abruptly, the young mother spoke up. "My baby is hungry. She wants to
be fed."
"Go feed her then!" commanded Nina.
She helped the young woman from the chair. Together they led the way
down the corridor. As they neared the nursery, Lucifer edged closer to
them. He saw that the child was still asleep. The mother saw it, too.
"But she's still asleep!" she said, bewildered. "I thought--"
"Does a child have to be awake to tell of its hunger?" Nina asked
gently.
The young mother went ahead of them into the nursery. She took the
child from the crib and cradled it in her arms.
The baby stirred, grimaced. Its lips groped in small, sucking motions.
The young mother hesitated, then opened her robe and brought the baby's
lips to her breast. The child began to feed contentedly.
At a gesture from Nina, the others left the mother and child alone in
the nursery.
When they were well down the corridor, Nina burst out triumphantly,
"The first contact! Child has communicated to mother. Message received
and answered. Child has used primary sense of communication, rather
than learning to rely on secondary!" Nina squared her shoulders
proudly. "My baby won't have to cry to tell me that it's hungry or cold
or wet and miserable!"
Lucifer's New England conscience prodded him. If indeed there was
anything to this psi heredity business, then he had again hurt someone
else, unknowingly, but deeply. What would Nina say and feel when she
learned that he had no psi talent to pass on to their child?
But this uneasy remorse conflicted with another emotion in Lucifer: The
sense of excitement that he suddenly realized had been lost somewhere
back in the early years of his psi testing. Somewhere, sometime along
the way the sense of wonder had gone out of his work and his life. The
constant repetition of the same basic testing technique had made a
familiar backyard out of--what had Huth called it?--the very frontier
of science.
Huth was speaking to him.
"What do you think now, Dr. Brill? Could it be possible after all that
the unorthodoxy of Earth's parapsychology might have to be shaken from
its own orthodoxy?"
Lucifer frowned. "I do not want to split definitions with you. But it
should be obvious to any scientific mind that Miss Poteil's experiment,
although interesting, was painfully inadequate in methodology. In the
first place, can we determine whether the child was communicating a
need, or whether a psi-positive mother had some precognition of her
child's need? In the second place, would a large number of children
born of psi-positive parents react with significant difference from a
similar number of children born of psi negatives?"
"A flash of lightning can be duplicated in the laboratory," said Huth,
"but it is still a flash of lightning. We recognize lightning, we admit
its existence, but we do not wish to go on proving forever in the
laboratory that lightning is in fact lightning. If some of your earlier
scientists had been content to do that, your cities would still be
illuminated by oil lamps."
"A fallacious comparison!"
"Not entirely so! I merely wished to make a point. It is all a matter
of objective. You have seen how older children are developing their
psi talents in our classes. Your wife may have shown us how to begin
training at a much earlier age, when training is most important."
"Still, I should think you would require more substantiation, some
further testing, to support Miss Poteil's little experiment."
"Of course. Do you have any suggestions, Dr. Brill?"
Once more Lucifer found himself backed toward a corner. Only this time
he did not try to escape. The challenge intrigued him, in spite of his
determination not to become involved with this nonsense. A controlled
experiment was quite a different thing....
"I might have," he replied, with an effort to be casual. He plucked
at his mustache. "But you must grant that a valid basis for
experimentation cannot be improvised on the spur of the moment."
"Improvise at your leisure, Dr. Brill."
Nina was sent off to continue orientation work with Dr. Thame. Lucifer
was given a small cubicle near Huth's office. It consisted of little
more than a desk, a stool, three bare walls and a floor to ceiling
window through which an orange rim of the planet's great sun was now
shining mistily.
Lucifer scribbled notes, drew crude diagrams, tore them up and started
all over again. Spots of color flushed his cheeks. Though he would not
have made the admission, he hadn't enjoyed himself so much in fifteen
years. He didn't even notice when a new squall rustled across the wet
jungle, blotting out the sun and drumming against the window.
Huth came in with the attendant who brought lunch.
"How many children are there here now?" Lucifer asked crisply.
"I believe we have about thirty under the age of nine months."
"Do you have another nursery room, like the one we visited this
morning?"
"We have three more in the Maternity Division."
Lucifer explained his immediate needs. Huth issued orders that three
more babies be brought to the Maternity Division. Each was installed
alone in a nursery. Two were placed in cribs, and soon fell asleep. The
third, a boy of about eight months, refused to nap. He wasn't happy
until allowed to crawl around the floor, exploring the strange wonders
of the nursery. Lucifer made a quick procedural adjustment, and hoped
the youngster would stay awake until feeding time.
He tried to tell himself, whenever he thought about it, that he was
doing all this only to point up the absurdity of Huth's theories.
As feeding time neared, three bottles of heated formula were brought
in warmers and placed at Lucifer's direction in rooms immediately
adjacent to each of the nurseries. Two of the children were still
asleep; the third had discovered a pack of disposable diapers and was
systematically tearing it apart. Dr. Thame joined them to watch the
experiment, and he brought Nina along. Her eyes sparkled with interest
and understanding as she watched Lucifer's preparations. After one
quick nod, he did not look her way again, and he stifled the thought
that Nina would be watching the experiment with their own child in mind.
One of the babies stirred in its sleep, and whimpered a little.
"Normally," explained Dr. Thame, "a child of this age would awaken
shortly and begin to cry."
The baby squirmed again, then turned toward the room in which one of
the bottles had been placed. Its tiny lips worked in a sucking motion.
"How wonderful!" whispered Nina.
Lucifer picked up the bottle, moved slowly into the corridor.
The child appeared confused. Its eyes screwed up tightly, and its face
reddened. Then it jerked its head toward the new position of the bottle
and repeated the sucking motion.
Nina, who had followed Lucifer, squeezed his arm in excitement. He gave
her the bottle, and she hurried into the nursery to reward the child.
Its lips groped eagerly for the nipple.
By this time, the second child was stirring. Its reactions were much
slower, and more uncertain, than those of the first baby, but they
followed the same pattern.
Nina went on to the third child, which had been left playing on the
floor of the nursery.
"Lucifer! Come quickly!" she called.
The child had crept over to the wall nearest the room in which its
bottle had been placed. It was pawing, bewildered, at the rough surface.
Ducking below the window edge, Lucifer picked up the bottle and moved
it to the other side of the room.
For a moment the child looked like it was about to cry. But it hitched
around on its knees, sprawled flat, raised up again and crawled across
the floor. When it was midway to the other side of the nursery, Lucifer
switched the bottle back to its original position.
The child continued its forward progress for a few feet, faltered and
stopped. Its red button of a nose wrinkled, and two big tears squeezed
down its round cheeks.
Nina rushed into the nursery, picked up the youngster, cooed over it
and thrust the nipple of the bottle between its anxious lips.
"My compliments, Dr. Brill," said Huth. "Does this begin to satisfy
your laws of probability?"
Lucifer was determined not to show his excitement. He shrugged. "Five
thousand more tests might prove something--providing you counterposed
5,000 tests on children whose ancestry was psi negative."
"We're not interested in psi negative children, Dr. Brill."
Lucifer faced him squarely.
"Just what are you interested in? I think we are entitled to an
explanation."
Huth hesitated, then nodded.
"Perhaps you are."
* * * * *
When they were settled in Huth's office, he stood by the window and
folded his huge, bronzed arms.
"My home planet," he began, "is also in the system of Capella. We
are an old race, but neither decadent nor degenerative. Our physical
sciences--as you can judge from your presence here--are at least 500
orbits beyond the outermost probings of science on Earth."
He paced across to the door, and back to the window again.
"But in our obsession and fascination with the ever new horizons
of physical science, we neglected that which was potentially of
far greater significance. We ignored the possibilities of psionic
evolution--we ignored them until it was almost too late!"
"Too late," breathed Nina. "Is that why your mind feels like a machine?"
Huth inclined his massive head in her direction.
"That could be why, Mrs. Brill. What society--or our bodies--neglect
will eventually die. It is true even of psi, Dr. Brill."
"Can you be specific?" Lucifer challenged.
"I can. If you had taken your eyes out of the laboratory long enough
to look at your world as it is and has been, you would have learned
that psi manifestations were quite customary on Earth during the 13th
and 14th centuries. But your industrial age did not have much room for
psionics. With Daniel Dunglas Home went the last of your great psi
talents!"
"Our card tests have discovered many psi positives," Lucifer
interjected heatedly. "You ought to know--you have many of them here
now!"
"Psi positives with thwarted, arrested or frustrated talents," replied
Huth. "Psi positives who wanted to be 'normal', because that is what
society demanded.... Psi positives who were ashamed of their talent and
quite willing to have it overlooked! Yes, we have them here ... and,
what is more important, we have their less inhibited children!"
"Your logic escapes me."
"It wouldn't if you had emerged from your cubicle and looked around you
among the physical sciences. Some of your more venturesome geneticists
believe that man will soon be the master of his heredity and that the
next five million years of evolution on Earth will be the controlled
evolution of the human mind. That could mean controlled evolution
toward psi, Dr. Brill--if Earth science can ever escape the terrible
drag of orthodoxy and if the unorthodox can ever learn to avoid the
trap of its own dogma."
Nina had been watching Huth with the unblinking intensity that was so
characteristic of her in moments of total concentration.
"So we are your nursery!" she exclaimed. "We produce the plants that
will bring life back to your own soil!"
Huth came close to one of his rare smiles. "You have admirably reduced
the milleniums and mathematics of evolution to a single sentence!" He
turned to Lucifer. "Is this a laboratory big enough to challenge you?"
Lucifer took refuge in a question of his own. "What about your
_Goolies_?"
From the shadow on Huth's face, and the faint gasp from Nina's parted
lips, Lucifer knew he had made a mistake.
"Where did you learn that name?" Huth asked him coldly.
Lucifer was not a good liar, but he tried. "I--I don't really know.
Perhaps--from one of your nurses or drivers...."
"We will accept that explanation, for the moment. Later, I trust you
will volunteer another."
Huth's emphasis on "volunteer" was almost imperceptible, yet it had the
effect of two pieces of steel striking together.
"You have already met one of these--_Goolies_. Let us go and meet some
more."