VI

Indian summer now lay softly upon the land.

On a wooded rise ten miles from the outskirts of the town, close by

a bluff overlooking the bushland, the tan walls of a small tent warmed

to the late afternoon sun. Here and there beyond the bushland the

supper-smoke of scattered farms stood columned and motionless. The only

sound on the still air was the harsh, labored breathing of the dying

Homer.

The dog lay in the open near the edge of the bluff, his eyes closed, his

companions seated nearby. Phil had brought Timmy on a week-end camping

trip that now appeared spoiled at the outset, for the short, steep climb

up the bluff had unexpectedly proven too much for old gray-muzzle. His

trembling legs had barely carried him to the top before he collapsed,

and now it was only a question of how long he must suffer before

release. Phil glanced toward a .22 rifle lying with their gear. It would

be more merciful.

"No, Uncle Phil. He'll live until sundown at least. Let him have that

much."

"I'm sorry this happened, Timmy, but now that it has I think we should

make it easier for him."

"You liked him, didn't you, Uncle Phil?"

"Yes, Tim ... I'm a bit surprised to find that I really did. I can't say

that I'm much of an animal-lover, but in his way Homer was the perfect

Old Faithful. No beauty and not very bright, you must admit, but he

never left your side. It won't seem the same."

"It won't _be_ the same, Uncle Phil." The boy raised his head to look

over the distant bushland. His face was composed.

"Timmy, I hesitate to say this, but--"

"I don't seem very upset about it?"

"Well, yes. Did you really care much for Homer? You never paid any

attention to him, never petted or played with him, just let him tag

along."

"I had no need to pet or play with him, and it was enough that he give

me all of his attention. I should have spared a thought for him, his

needs and limitations, but it's too late now." The answering voice was

subtly changed from that of a boy, and strangely gentle. "A dog's life

is so short, hardly more than today and tomorrow. A breath or two, and

it has begun and ended. When Homer dies he will be free, and I will no

longer exist."

A chill slid over the man.

What makes a voice? Air and musculature and tissue, but what more?

A brain, a mind--a life. An accumulative series of reactive patterns

called Life grows like a fragile crystal around a seeding impulse

that lacks a name acceptable to all, and the resulting structure is

called "personality" or "character" and it influences what it touches

in a manner peculiar to itself alone. Given the crude tools of a

sound-producing mechanism it will, if it chooses and has the skill,

disclose some trifle of its own true nature. Phil heard words that

should have sounded idiotic coming from a boy, but they carried complete

and instant conviction. Without elocutionary tricks, without fire and

oratory, the boy-voice had changed in timbre, acquired a quality that

could sway multitudes--the wild thought crossed Phil's mind that what

it had acquired was the quality of complete sanity.

A suspicion, planted deliberately and nurtured through the years,

matured on the triggered instant. Phil twisted around--alert, wary,

almost hostile, his eyes searching the somewhat bony young face. His

gaze was returned steadily, with assured composure.

* * * * *

"Who are you?" he demanded bluntly. "_What_ are you?"

Timmy laughed lightly, patently at ease.

"I am nothing, Phil. Nothing at all."

"Rot. You are flesh and blood, human, and were born to Helen and Jerry.

What else?"

"Is there more?"

"Stop playing!" Phil jumped up angrily, standing tall over the seated

figure. "I've watched you for years. You've given yourself away

repeatedly."

"Ah, that 'advanced scientific knowledge' worried you badly, didn't it?"

"I ... see. You revealed it deliberately. There are other things. Your

aversion to crowds--"

"Their thinking confused me. They were dangerous."

"Were?"

"After tonight, crowds will not matter."

"Because Homer will be dead?"

"Because Homer will be dead, poor beast. My conscience will be dead."

"What on earth does that mean? I find it impossible either to doubt you

or to think of you as a boy any longer."

"That is because your mind is filled with uncertainties, mine with

certainties. You have never before met anyone in whom certainty was a

clear truth unquestioned on any level of any remote corner of the mind.

I am such a one."

Phil sat down helplessly. There was no point in standing. Whatever Tim

was, he was not going to be dominated by tricks.

"_What are you?_"

"What can I say? I am a book that is being read, yet I am neither the

pages nor the printing on the pages, but only the meaning inherent in

the shapes and sequences of the letters that comprise the printing."

"Can't you give me a straight answer?"

"It is difficult. You must think about what I say."

"But the ideas recorded in a book are merely--thoughts. They have no

tangible existence."

"Nor have I."

"You're not a product of my imagination!"

"Hardly."

"Are you giving me that line about 'All is Illusion'?"

"No," the boy laughed spontaneously.

"Are you a mutant, a new evolutionary development?"

"No, nor am I a machine or a monster."

"At least you're alive!"

"That, I think, is a matter of definition."

"Then, for the third time, what are you! Stop baiting me!"

* * * * *

Timmy's hand closed on Phil's--a firm, warm, dirty and somewhat

calloused boy's hand that was unquestionably flesh, blood and bone.

"Take it easy, Uncle Phil." Perhaps he had pushed too hard. The dancing

eyes veiled themselves a little and the intangible, indescribable

magnetism somehow faded. Phil, looking at him, was suddenly able to

see him and to think of him once more as Timmy, a boy with unusual

qualities, but the same boy he had watched for years. He shook his head

and felt somewhat bemused, as he had done once before.

"Look, let's get a fresh start, Tim, and stop going in circles."

"O. K., Uncle Phil." He was an eleven-year-old again, responding

obediently.

"I've suspected for years that we didn't know the truth about you--that

you were something special, something new."

"Well--" Tim appeared to consider it gravely. "Yeah, I guess that's fair

enough. I'm something new, all right."

"For years, then, you've been concealing something--something that

showed through whenever you made a slip."

"Wanna bet on how many of those slips were deliberate?" Tim challenged,

then joined Phil's rueful laugh. "Not all of them were, I got to admit,

but most of them."

"But today--apparently because Homer is dying--you've abandoned

pretense, come out in the open."

"Not all the way out, not yet. You've still got some shocks coming,

Uncle Phil."

"I don't doubt it, you young hoodlum. You were pretty overwhelming there

for a few minutes. But why all the mystery? Why not just tell me?"

"You explained why."

"Overwhelming? Are you that terrific?"

"I'm a humdinger, Bub. Think you can stand it now?"

"I think the full blast would be better than any more of your 'gentle'

hints."

"That's what you think." Come now, the first shock had been fairly

neatly delivered and fielded after all, the concept of difference

proposed, established and accepted. "Well, here goes. You remember

that spray of flowers I handed you in the car that night?"

"I've had my suspicions about them ever since."

"O. K.--now smell this pine cone."

Phil looked at it with distrust.

"The thing that beats me is how I can be morally certain that pine cone

is loaded, cocked, and ready to fire, and yet I take it," he let Tim put

it in his hand, "and smell it." He raised it to his nostrils, held his

breath for a moment, then gingerly sniffed.

* * * * *

Time stopped.

All sense of duration was gone. Awareness drifted in formless

inattention until a focal point, a mere nucleus of intellect, captured

and held it. The nucleus strengthened, became an impression of

identity--not his own identity, nor any that he knew, but that of

some Other. From this other presence came insistently the warmth and

gentleness of good will, an unreserved outpouring that sought to evoke

an unreserved response.

Isolation, the sanctum of the mind, took the assault, melting like an

ice-castle in the sun--but before the tempting surrender could become

irrevocable alarms rang through his being and his mind gathered in on

itself in confusion, holding its isolation intact and inviolate. Through

the opposing desires to yield and to withhold, to break barriers down

and to raise them up, he detected from the Other a reaction both of pity

and of revulsion. The pressure decreased. He knew then that what he

yielded willingly would be accepted as sufficient, and no more be asked

of him than he was capable of giving. Somehow, it was not a victory, but

a defeat.

He became aware that the private domain he had claimed for his own was

truly his own, a corridored, compartmented, dungeoned storehouse of

filed fancies and forgotten files. A tunneled, revetted, embrasured and

battlemented citadel filled with rusty armor and broken lances. A hock

shop, a junkyard, a hall of distorting mirrors. A cemetery by the sea,

a peak of glory, a slough of despond. A radiant light, an encroaching

dark, the sweetest of melody, the sourest of discord. A library of

trivia, museum of curiosa, sideshow of freaks, and shrine of greatness.

It was the lowering pendulum, the waiting pit, the closing walls. It was

the vaulting spirit, the gallant heart, the just and the kind and the

merciful. Withal, it was a haunted castle, perpetually besieged, the

towers soaring but the structure toppling. It was himself. His memories,

his experiences, his actions and reactions, his life. And it was

appalling.

A gentle prompting from the Other roused him from his self-immersion

and for a moment he was all panic lest his secret had been observed.

Mechanisms he had not known he possessed slammed doors and banged

shutters over windows in a fine frenzy, so that the Other winced and

fell back, pleadingly, then softly and insistently drew near once more.

He realized that there was a purpose that must be served. Something was

desired from him. A voice. He tried, and the croak of a clogged throat

would have held as much meaning as the disharmonious thrust of thought

that began in chaos and ended in futility. Abashed, he would not try

again. Silence crept around him, the silence of isolation.

The most disarmingly hesitant, the most reassuringly inoffensive of

thoughts touched as lightly as a breath and was accepted as his own.

He saw no cause to take alarm. Such an insignificant invasion was of no

more moment than the blowing of a grain of dust beneath a locked door.

The thought lay among his own, and moved like a thread through his own,

and the elements that it drew together became the acceptance of an idea.

Secure in his ill-kept citadel, he permitted a rapport so tenuous he

could break it at will, yet so strong that--