Children of Tomorrow Page 15

  There must have been an odd expression on his face; for Jaeger looked up at him, and said hastily, ‘Don’t get me wrong, mister. For some kids, maybe, the outfits arc good. But my boy is going to be raised right.’

  Once more, it was sensationally the wrong thing for such as he to say. He looked as if he didn’t know one moral from another. He clearly had degraded opinions on many matters, always on the basis of some despicable impulse. Confronted by the madnesses of the Len Jaegers of the world, systematic thought based on principle took on a more shadowy meaning. Reality trembled

  and it was shaken now in Commander John Lane.

  But nonetheless the officer managed to contain himself and to say quietly, ‘What happened? It says here somewhere that you were beaten up.’

  The rough-faced man was suddenly back to a narrow-eyed cunning and eye to eye avoidance. He obviously considered himself in danger of some kind. Perhaps, he had had an inkling of the fate of an adult who tried to attack a teenage boy. The big lie poured from his mouth. He described how he had been sitting in the bar, when he was unexpectedly set upon by two outfit boys.

  ‘The way I figure it,’ Jaeger said, as if he were in fact reasoning out the motives, ‘they expected me to defend myself by chasing those two come-ons. And like a stupe I fell for it. Naturally, when I made my break through the door onto the street, there was the whole outfit. Well - they beat the tar out of me, gave me concussion, and here I am.’ His expression hardened. 'Boy, you can bet I know what I’m gonna do when I get out of this bed.’ Several seconds elapsed in the space-time universe of John Lane. Every word of the other man’s account fitted an inner need of his own in connection with the outfits. But every articulated syllable uttered in that crude voice, and with that peculiar unpleasant evasiveness, offended his integrity and good sense.

  His hesitation ended. He said softly, ‘What will you do?1 ‘I’m takin’ my kid,’ said Len Jaeger, ‘and gettin’ out of this crazy town. Those outfits are more than I bargained for. It’s like’ - he paused melodramatically, as if seeking a suitably irrational comparison - ‘like living in enemy country: Boy, you’d better mind your p’s and q’s. Not for me, thank you. I’m gom’ back to my own kind of country, to civilisation, where a peaceful type like me can live his life like he wants to.’

  If Lane had not prepared his questions in advance, the other’s positivities might automatically have detoured him away from certain lines of inquiry. But now, because he was baffled, he glanced at his little notebook, and was reminded. 'What’s this about your son having run away?’ he asked. ‘Outside? Before you came here?’

  It was Jaeger’s turn to pause, and for an unplanned reason.

  He was momentarily confused. The question penetrated deep into a more basic lie - the implanted hypnotism, which had been used on both his wife and himself, and which had provided him with a substitute son. Unfortunately for truth, his uncertainty merely caused him to become shifty-eyed and evasive again.

  It had all been the fault of the boy’s mother. Bud had been alienated from good sense by her over-protectiveness. Each time there was even a hint of discipline, the kid got to feeling abused. “Like any spoiled child,’ said Len Jaeger. ‘So one day I decided I’d had enough of his mom mining him. I put on just a little pressure. He took off, and went to live with - ’

  The man in the bed stopped. He made a gesture with one hand that was intended to dismiss such details. But he was also astounded to realise that he didn’t know where Bud had been. The realisation widened his eyes, and briefly absorbed him. ‘Hey!8 he said, ‘I’ve forgotten where that kid ran off to. And that’s odd, ’cause I don’t generally forget things.’

  The signal was clear and loud for ears that were attuned to it. But it was too late. The final fiction had struck home. It had taken Lane a long time to accept that this uncouth individual and he were brothers under the skin: two men confronting similar home situations. But the story of a mother’s over-protective’ ness achieved that result. That was real. In Mrs Jaeger, he visualised an Estelle without Estelle’s physical attractiveness. But a mother type, nonetheless.

  The negative decision reaffirmed, the officer stood up. Nonetheless, he was unhappy with the outcome of the inquiry. And so he said tentatively, ‘Where could he have been?’

  ‘Better ask my wife,’ was the reply. ‘It’s gone clean out of my head.’

  And still Lane stood there, dissatisfied. He said finally, ‘You say he came home about three weeks ago?’

  ‘Well, we went and got him, of course.’'

  That, also, seemed obvious and unimportant. In the face of Jaeger taking it for granted that the boy, Bud, was his son, it was virtually impossible for the breakthrough thought to occur: that the real son, having escaped from this madman, had not returned, and probably never would. And that the entire memory of such a return was a hypnotically planted lie, whereby a child of an alien race had been able to penetrate the defenses of Spaceport.

  It was the barrier feeling that Lane experienced. A distinct awareness that he was confronted by a human being who was somehow not able to be of help in this situation. He stood for a long moment staring down at the veined, unhealthy face of the machinist. Then his gaze came up and flicked over the other beds in the room. The other three patients were shining, healthy looking specimens compared to the pallid Len Jaeger.

  Without a word, Lane walked over to the man in the furthest away bed, stood above him, and spoke in a low voice, pitched so that it would be impossible for the meaning of the words to reach Jaeger. What he said was, ‘You are a security officer?’

  The man nodded, and said, ‘Yes.’-

  Lane continued in the same undertone, ‘Has he said anything that in your opinion is worth reporting?’

  The security man shook his head, and said, ‘No!’

  'Thank you!’ His voice went up. ‘And get well soon, every’ body.’

  The commander returned to the creature he had been interrogating, and made one last effort. ‘Mr Jaeger,’ he said formally, ‘you definitely do not know how your skin came to be saturated with K energy?’

  ‘I sure don’t, boss,’ was the truthful reply.

  Lane said in the same formal manner, ‘Thank you!’ Then he bowed slightly and, turning, walked out of the room without a backward glance. Out in the hall, he walked over to the little group of hospital personnel who had accompanied him this far but had not entered the room with him. He drew aside the head doctor on duty, and said in a low voice, ‘I’m assuming you know the men in the other beds are all security officers?’'

  ‘That is correct,’ was the reply.

  ‘If any of them reports anything significant,’ said the commander, ‘contact me at once.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Commander,’ the plumpish medical man said firmly, ‘May I ask what, in your opinion, would be a significant remark?’

  It was touche and it brought a faint, grim smile to Lane’s face. He shook his head, baffled, and said simply, ‘Do your best, doctor. I have no specific suggestions to offer.’

  He returned to his office, about the time that school was over for the day - and as Dolores Munroe sought out Mike Sutter.

  As it turned out, there was a race between Dolores and Marianne as to who would head Mike off first. Marianne won by seconds. And it was she who saw Dolores, as it was also Marianne that Dolores saw first, and Mike next. The sultry, dark-haired girl, so pretty in the face, so twisted in her emotions, came to a breathless halt in front of the boy.

  The emotion on Dolores’s face, as she teetered there breathless, was not decipherable to Mike.

  The girl was suddenly remembering her promise of the previous night. Incredibly, as the hours went by, she had forgotten.

  But now, she thought of Captain Sennes - and it stopped her.

  Yet hers was only a momentary hesitation. She was, among other things, genuinely curious. But, above and beyond that, was her hatred of Susan. Before that rush of feeling, the restriction of silence th
at Sennes had imposed on her, went down. Yet some of the caution remained. Enough to make her first reference oblique. She said airily, “Has that goody little jabber, Susan, confessed yet?’

  Mike continued to stare at her. But he was a game player, and he was not about to give away any information. He said finally in a brittle voice, ‘Suppose you confess for her.’

  ‘Wel-l-ll,’ said Dolores with a contemptuous half-tum of the upper part of her body, ‘So she didn’t tell you! So she didn’t think I’d dare push out anything. So she thought if I pushed it, it would sound like a lie. All right, I’ll confess for her. I went past her house last night, just as that sailor was lip-kissing her — again. So, now, what axe you going to do, Mr Conscience-of-the-outfit Mike Sutter?’

  Mike sent Marianne a quick look. The girl avoided his gaze, and simply peered down at the sidewalk slantingly off to one side.

  Mike had his cool back in a moment. And he was at his slick best as he said smoothly, ‘What else can you confess for Susan, Dolores?’

  The sullen girl was outraged. “What more do you need?’ she flared. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘When was this?’ was Mike’s diplomatic counterquestion.

  ‘About ten o’clock,’ the girl answered truthfully.

  The boy nodded. ‘Sack, Dolores,’ he said. ‘I’ll push it to the outfit.’ He started to turn away, and then his face - his lean, intent face - showed that he had had another thought. He spun on his heel, and caught Dolores’s arm in his purposefulness. He stared straight into her yellow-brown eyes, where also the girl’s emotional disturbance showed in a mixture of grief and anger. He said, ‘Does Susan know that you saw her?’

  The sound of Dolores’s gleeful laughter was a brittle, staccato vibration on the still, warm air. As soon as the girl could control herself she said with a savage pleasure, ‘You should have seen the way she jumped when I yelled at her from the gate. If ever anybody was guilty - ’ Her voice had gone away up as she finished her words. They were almost scream level.

  Mike shushed her down with a gesture, and then said almost in an undertone, ‘This sailor was embracing her, lip-kissing her, at the moment you yelled?’

  ‘They were really hitting each other,’ said the girl with another

  twist of her body, one that actually had a retrospective jealousy in it. But that was too complex a feeling for Mike to analyse.

  The boy nodded thoughtfully as Dolores finished. He said, ‘Sack, I’ll push,’ This time when he turned away, he did not glance back. What he did do was catch hold of Marianne’s arm. He walked her rapidly toward the shopping area a block away. Mike was tense, Marianne subdued. But nonetheless she presently asked breathlessly, 'What are you going to do?’

  ‘Call Susan,’ he said grimly. ‘Do what I should have done this morning.’

  The girl had been almost running to keep up with him. Her heels clacked on the sidewalk, plainly audible above the voices and feet of other students who were all around them. But after his reply, she shook his hand off her arm and slowed. Several moments went by, so obsessed was Mike, before he was able to be aware she had fallen yards behind him. He stopped short, then went back. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Her arm, when he took it again, resisted him. Her face, when he put his own close to it, was unhappy. Her eyes filled with tears, as he gazed into them; and her voice was griefy but yet determined as she said, ‘I refuse to help you damage Susan quicker, by running.’

  The boy was not about to accept reproof. ‘Listen,’ he said from between clenched teeth, ‘Susan confessed because Dolores saw her. So this whole thing with the sailor is more serious than we realised - ’ He broke off, shook his head wonderingly but with impatience. ‘Imagine her calling me up last night to confess, hoping - I’ll bet - to get her own story in before Dolores told what she had seen. So don’t give me any of this friendship for Susan business. The best friendship we can give her is to get her to scrap this sailor.’

  ‘Why don’t you talk to Lee first?’ urged the girl. Her intense brown eyes pleaded up at him, and she caught his arm. Tlease, Mike.’

  Standing there under a cloudless late afternoon sky, the handsome boy with the dark, flashing eyes, and the dedicated look in them, shook his head. Deliberately, then, he turned and walked away from her. The girl watched kind of limply as he walked all the way to one of the open-air phone booths nearly half a block distance. She didn’t move as he stepped close. When he started to do what looked like the button-pressing of a number, she shook her head a little as if she couldn’t quite believe that he really was making the call.

  Estelle answered the phone in the den. ‘Oh - oh, yes, Mike/ she said. ‘No, Susan is in bed. She says she’ll see you all tomorrow.

  I don’t understand. Isn’t that probation over in a couple of days? Oh, something new - yesterday?’

  The woman was standing with her back to the hall door, and so she did not see Susan’s shadow and then Susan come cautiously into view. The girl stopped, and stood with her back pressed against the corridor wall beside the door.

  Estelle was saying, ‘I think you’re making a mistake. Can I talk to Lee . . . Oh!’ Pause. The woman swallowed hard. Her face was working. She was striving to control a strong impulse to be emotional. ‘Let me understand you,’ she continued. ‘Susan must not go near any outfit member for one week? That’s the total second penalty? All right, I’ll tell her. But I really feel you have misjudged this whole thing ... As I see it, Mike, it’s just as important not to jump to conclusions as it is to - All right, all right, I’ll say no more.’

  She hung up, and then stood there. And then she turned. Her eyes were closed, so she didn’t see that Susan had come all the way into the doorway until she opened them again. Mother and daughter stared at each other. And then - Tears. Simultaneously. In both pairs of eyes.

  Bud Jaeger came out of school promptly at three. He was a boy in a hurry, but his first task was to take his books home. Which he did, shuffling as fast as he could. The thin little woman who was his ‘mother’ watched him shuffle into the house, drop his books off in his room - and then she was waiting for him at the front door.

  ‘What’re you going to do when your dad comes home?’ she asked.

  Bud said, ‘I got outfit duties, mom. Can’t talk right now. Sack?’

  She let him by, stood in the doorway, watching him make his awkward way along the street. She waited until he was out of sight, and then with a sigh, and a shake of her head, went back into the house. The door closed.

  Bud Jaeger got off the Subsurface at the fourth stop beyond the river. At this hour, he was the only one in the elevator. And so when he emerged he found himself under a protective concrete shelter structure - alone. The outskirts of Spaceport were not visible, because Exit Number Four was exactly ten miles from the last exit inside the big city.

  Around him was, well, not exactly open countryside. He could see two small communities: one in the near distance north, and the other approximately equal distance south. La between, however, was a green field: undoubtedly some kind of a crop. Bud shuffled to the nearest edge of the shelter, and then moved a few feet out onto the grass. There he stood under the alien sky of earth, and he looked up, expectantly. To the left. To the right’ No signal came. No thought. No sign of his father.

  His attention had already been attracted to a small retaining wall about a hundred yards from the Subsurface. Now, he shuffled across a portion of the crop field itself over to it, and he peered past the wall down into a swamp-like depression. The purpose of the wall was not clear, but perhaps it prevented soil from drifting into the swamp. Bud was not concerned with causes. Hastily, he looked around him; made sure there was no one near, and no one coming. Then, galvanised, he hurried around one end of the wall, and into the depression immediately behind it.

  He made a sound, then. It was not a human sound. But it had a quality of joy in it. There was eagerness and excitement in it. He began to strip. He took off all his human clothes. T
hen he reached to some point between his legs — and a fantastic thing happened. His skin began to glitter. It separated — and came off. It fell to the ground like a long piece of pure silk.

  There stood revealed an elongated, very pink hard shell of a very beautiful body with tentacles - it seemed - instead of legs and arms. A second pair of the arm tentacles were strapped to the side of the body; and it was these that he now impatiently unstrapped, and with a peculiar humming sound of joy waved around as if their long inactivity had just about driven him crazy.

  As soon as they could function, he used them to strap down the arm tentacles that until now he had used to manipulate his human arm shapes. The job done, he began hastily the delicate job of putting on the intricate material that somehow made a human shape. First, when it was completely on him, it glittered unhumanly, and not until he did something in the area under his body, between the legs, did it suddenly flicker - and, just like that, there was the human boy who looked like the familiar Bud Jaeger.

  This boy somewhat awkwardly put his clothes back on. Came out from behind the retaining wall. And was about halfway to the concrete shelter that housed the Subsurface when , . . his father's thought hit him:

  My son, what have you been doing?

  Bud told him. The father was startled.

  That was a very dangerous thing to do at this stage . . . But it’s done. Now, pay careful attention. I can’t stay long. The human beings have patrol ships as far out as Neptune's orbit, and we put this communication beam down six hours ago in an area of space that they were not covering at that time. They may be there at any moment. Such matters are difficult to predict.

  Bud interjected: How do I escape? That's what I really want to know.