From:
http://jabberwockland.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/mimsy-were-borogoves-by-lewis-padgett.html
MIMSY WERE THE BOROGOVES
Lewis Padgett (aka Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore), published
1943
There's no use trying to describe either Unthahorsten or
his surroundings, because, for one thing, a good many million years
had passed since 1942 Anno Domini and, for another, Unthahorsten
wasn't on Earth, technically speaking. He was doing the equivalent
of standing in the equivalent of a laboratory. He was preparing to
test his time machine.
Having turned on the power, Unthahorsten suddenly
realized that the Box was empty. Which wouldn't do at all. The
device needed a control, a three-dimensional solid which would
react to the conditions of another age. Otherwise Unthahorsten
couldn't tell, on the machine's return, where and when it had been.
Whereas a solid in the Box would automatically be subject to the
entropy and cosmic ray bombardment of the other era, and
Unthahorsten could measure the changes, both qualitative and
quantitative, when the machine returned. The Calculators could then
get to work and, presently, tell Unthahorsten that the Box had
briefly visited 1,000,000 A.D., 1,000 A.D., or 1 A.D., as the case
might be.
Not that it mattered, except to Unthahorsten. But he was
childish in many respects.
There was little time to waste. The Box was beginning to
glow and shiver. Unthahorsten stared around wildly, fled into the
next gossatch, and groped in a storage bin there. He came up with
an armful of peculiar-looking stuff. Uh-huh. Some of the discarded
toys of his son Snowen, which the boy had brought with him when he
had passed over from Earth, after mastering the necessary
technique. Well, Snowen needed this junk no longer. He was
conditioned, and put away childish things. Besides, though
Unthahorsten's wife kept the toys for sentimental reasons, the
experiment was more important.
Unthahorsten left the glossatch and dumped the assortment
into the Box, slamming the cover shut just before the warning
signal flashed. The Box went away. The manner of its departure hurt
Unthahorsten's eyes.
He waited.
And he waited.
Eventually he gave up and built another time machine,
with identical results. Snowen hadn't been annoyed by the loss of
his old toys, nor had Snowen's mother, so Unthahorsten cleaned out
the bin and dumped the remainder of his son's childhood relics in
the second time machine's Box.
According to his calculations, this one should have
appeared on Earth, in the latter part of the nineteenth century,
A.D. If that actually occurred, the device remained there.
Disgusted, Unthahorsten decided to make no more time
machines. But the mischief had been done. There two of them, and
the first-
Scott Paradine found it while he was playing hooky from
the Glendale Grammar School. There was a geography test that day,
and Scott saw no sense in memorizing place names - which in 1942
was a fairly sensible theory. Besides, it was the sort of warm
spring day, with a touch of coolness in the breeze, which invited a
boy to lie down in a field and stare at the occasional clouds till
he fell asleep. Nuts to geography! Scott dozed.
About noon he got hungry, so his stocky legs carried him
to a nearby store. There he invested his small hoard with penurious
care and a sublime disregard for his gastric juices. He went down
by the creek to feed.
Having finished his supply of cheese, chocolate, and
cookies, and having drained the soda-pop bottle to its dregs, Scott
caught tadpoles and studied them with a certain amount of
scientific curiosity. He did not persevere. Something tumbled down
the bank, and thudded into the muddy ground near the water, so
Scott, with a wary glance around, hurried to investigate.
It was a Box. It was, in fact, the Box. The gadgetry
hitched to it meant little to Scott, though he wondered why it was
so fused and burnt. He pondered. With his jackknife he pried and
probed, his tongue sticking out from a corner of his mouth -
Hm-m-m. Nobody was around. Where had the box come from? Somebody
must have left it here, and sliding soil had dislodged it from its
precarious perch.
"That's a helix," Scott decided, quite erroneously. It
was helical, but it wasn't a helix, because of the dimensional warp
involved. Had the thing been a model airplane, no matter how
complicated, it would have held few mysteries to Scott. As it was,
a problem was posed. Something told Scott that the device was a lot
more complicated than the spring motor he had deftly dismantled
last Friday.
But no boy has ever left a box unopened, unless forcibly
dragged away. Scott probed deeper. The angles on this thing were
funny. Short circuit, probably. That was why - uh! The knife
snapped. Scott sucked his thumb and gave vent to experienced
blasphemy.
Maybe it was a music box.
Scott shouldn't have felt depressed. The gadgetry would
have given Einstein a headache and driven Steinmetz raving mad. The
trouble was, of course, that the box had not yet completely entered
the space-time continuum where Scott exited and therefore it could
not be opened. At any rate, not till Scott used a convenient rock
to hammer the helical nonhelix into a more convenient position.
He hammered it, in fact, from its contact point with the
fourth dimension, releasing the space0time torsion it had been
maintaining. There was a brittle snap. the box jarred slightly, and
lay motionless, no longer only partially in existence. Scott opened
it easily now.
The soft, woven helmet was the first thing that caught
his eye, but he discarded that without much interest. It was just a
cap. Next he lifted a square, transparent crystal block, small
enough to cup in his palm - much too small to contain the maze of
apparatus within it. In a moment Scott had solved that problem. The
crystal was a sort of magnifying glass, vastly enlarging the things
inside the block. Strange things they were, too. Miniature people,
for example-
They moved. Like clockwork automatons, though much more
smoothly. It was rather like watching a play. Scott was interested
in their costumes, but fascinated by their actions. The tiny people
were deftly building a house. Scott wished it would catch fire, so
he could see the people put it out.
Flames licked up from the half-completed structure. The
automatons, with a great deal of odd apparatus, extinguished the
blaze.
It didn't take Scott long to catch on. But he was a
little worried. The manikins would obey his thoughts. By the time
he discovered that, he was frightened, and threw the cube from him.
Halfway up the bank, he reconsidered and returned. The
crystal block lay partly in the water, shining in the sun. It was a
toy; Scott sensed that, with the unerring instinct of a child. But
he didn't pick it up immediately. Instead, he returned to the box
and investigated its remaining contents.
He found some really remarkable gadgets. The afternoon
passed all too quickly, Scott finally put the toys back in the box
and lugged it home, grunting and puffing. He was quite red-faced by
the time he arrived at the kitchen door.
His find he hid at the back of the closet in his own room
upstairs. The crystal cube he slipped into his pocket, which
already bulged with string, a coil of wire, two pennies, a wad of
tinfoil, a grimy defenses stamp, and a chunk of feldspar. Emma,
Scott's two-year-old sister, waddled unsteadily in from the hall
and said hello.
"Hello, Slug," Scott nodded, from his altitude of seven
years and some months. He patronized Emma shockingly, but she
didn't know the difference. Small, plump, and wide-eyed, she
flopped down on the carpet and stared dolefully at her shoes.
"Tie 'em, Scotty, please?"
"Sap," Scott told her kindly, but knotted the laces.
"Dinner ready yet?"
Emma nodded.
"Let's see your hands." For a wonder, they were
reasonably clean, though probably not aseptic. Scott regarded his
own paws thoughtfully and, grimacing, went to the bathroom, where
he made a sketchy toilet. The tadpoles had left their traces.
Dennis Paradine and his wife Jane were having a cocktail
before dinner, downstairs in the living room. He was a youngish,
middle-aged man with gray-shot hair and a thinnish, prim-mouthed
face; he taught philosophy at the university. Jane was small, neat,
dark, and very pretty. She sipped her Martini and said
"New shoes. Like 'em?"
"Here's to crime," Paradine muttered absently. "Huh?
Shoes? Not now. Wait till I've finished this. I had a bad day."
"Exams?"
"Yeah. Flaming youths aspiring toward manhood. I hope
they die. In considerable agony. Insh'Allah!"
"I want the olive," Jane requested.
"I know," Paradine said despondently. "It's been years
since I've tasted one myself. In a Martini, I mean. Even if I put
six of 'em in your glass, you're still not satisfied."
"I want yours. Blood brotherhood. Symbolism. That's why."
"Paradine regarded his wife balefully and crossed his
long legs. "You sound like one of my students."
"Like that hussy Betty Dawson, perhaps?" Jane unsheathed
her nails. "Does she still leer at you in that offensive way?"
"She does. The child is a neat psychological problem.
Luckily she isn't mine. If she were-" Paradine nodded
significantly. "Sex consciousness and too many movies. I suppose
she still thinks she can get a passing grade by showing me her
knees. Which are, by the way, rather bony."
Jane adjusted her skirt with an air of complacent pride.
Paradine uncoiled himself and poured fresh Martinis. "Candidly, I
don't see the point of teaching those apes philosophy. They're all
at the wrong age. Their habit-patterns, their methods of thinking,
are already laid down. They're horribly conservative, not that
they'd admit it. The only people who can understand philosophy are
mature adults or kids like Emma and Scotty."
"Well, don't enroll Scotty in your course," Jane
requested. "He isn't ready for Philosophiae Doctor. I hold no brief
for child geniuses, especially when it's my child"
"Scotty would probably be better at it than Betty
Dawson," Paradine grunted.
"'He died an enfeebled dotard at five,'" Jane quoted
dreamily. "I want your olive."
"Here. By the way, I like the shoes."
"Thank you. Here's Rosalie. Dinner?"
"It's all ready, Miz Pa'dine," said Rosalie, hovering.
"I'll call Miss Emma 'n' Mista' Scotty."
"I'll get 'em."Paradine put his head into the next room
and roared, "Kids! Come and get it!"
Small feet scuttered down the stairs. Scott dashed into
the view, scrubbed and shining, a rebellious cowlick aimed at the
zenith. Emma pursued, levering herself carefully down the steps.
Halfway she gave up the attempt to descend upright and reversed,
finishing the task monkey-fashion, her small behind giving an
impression of marvelous diligence upon the work in hand. Paradine
watched, fascinated by the spectacle, till he was hurled back by
the impact of his son's body.
"Hi, dad!" Scott shrieked.
Paradine recovered himself and regarded Scott with
dignity. "Hi, yourself. Help me in to dinner. You've dislocated at
least one of my hip joints."
But Scott was already tearing into the next room, where
he stepped on Jane's new shoes in an ecstasy of affection, burbled
an apology, and rushed off to find his place at the dinner table.
Paradine cocked up an eyebrow as he followed, Emma's pudgy hand
desperately gripping his forefinger.
"Wonder what the young devil's been up to?"
"No good, probably," Jane sighed. "Hello, darling. Let's
see your ears."
"They're clean. Mickey licked 'em."
"Well, that Airedale's tongue is far cleaner than your
ears," Jane pondered, making a brief examination. "Still, as long
as you can hear, the dirt's only superficial."
"Fisshul?"
"Just a little, that means," Jane dragged her daughter to
the table and inserted her legs into a high chair. Only had Emma
graduated to the dignity of dining with the rest of the family, and
she was, as Paradine remarked, all eat up with pride by the
prospect. Only babies spilled food, Emma had been told. As a
result, she took such painstaking care in conveying her spoon to
her mouth that Paradine got the jitters whenever he watched.
"A conveyer belt would be the thing for Emma," he
suggested, pulling out a chair for Jane. "Small buckets of spinach
arriving at her face at stated intervals."
Dinner proceeded uneventfully until Paradine happened to
glance at Scott's plate. "Hello, there. Sick? Been stuffing
yourself at lunch?"
Scott thoughtfully examined the food still left before
him. "I've had all I need, dad," he explained.
"You usually eat all you can hold, and a great deal
more," Paradine said. "I know growing boys need several tons of
foodstuffs a day, but you're below par tonight. Feel OK?"
"Uh-huh. Honest, I've had all I need."
"All you want?"
"Sure. I eat different."
"Something they taught you at school?" Jane inquired.
Scott shook his head solemnly.
"Nobody taught me. I found it out myself. I used spit."
"Try again," Paradine suggested. "It's the wrong word."
"Uh s-saliva. Hm-m-m?"
"Uh-huh. More pepsin? Is there pepsin in the salivary
juices, Jane? I forget."
"There's poison in mine," Jane remarked. "Rosalie's left
lumps in the mashed potatoes again."
But Paradine was interested. "You mean you're getting
everything possible out of you food - no wastage - and eating
less?"
Scott thought that over. "I guess so. It's not just the
sp saliva. I sort of measure how much to put in my mouth
at once, and what stuff to mix up. I dunno. I just do it."
"Hm-m-m," said Paradine, making a note to check up later.
"Rather a revolutionary idea." Kids often get screwy notions, but
this one might not be so far off the beam. He pursed his lips.
"Eventually I suppose people will eat quit differently - I mean the
way they eat, as well as what. What they eat, I mean. Jane, our son
shows signs of becoming a genius."
"Oh?"
"It's a rather good point in dietetics he just made. Did
you figure it out for yourself, Scott?"
"Sure," the boy said, and really believed it.
"Where'd you get the idea?"
"Oh, I-" Scott wriggled. "I dunno. It doesn't mean much,
I guess."
Paradine was unreasonable disappointed. "But surely-"
"S-s-s-spit!" Emma shrieked, overcome by a sudden fit of
badness. "Spit!" she attempted to demonstrate, but succeeded only
in dribbling into her bib.
With a resigned air Jane rescued and reproved her
daughter, while Paradine eyed SCott with rather puzzled interest.
But it was not till after dinner, in the living room, that anything
further happened.
"any homework?"
"N-no," Scott said, flushing guiltily. To cover his
embarrassment he took from his pocket a gadget he had found in the
box, and began to unfold it. The result resembled a tesseract,
strung with beads. Paradine didn't see it at first, but Emma did.
She wanted to play with it.
"No. Lay off, Slug," Scott ordered. "You can watch me."
He fumbled with the beads, making soft, interesting noises. Emma
extended a fat forefinger and yelped.
"Scotty," Paradine said warningly.
"I didn't hurt her."
"Bit me. It did," Emma mourned.
"Paradine looked up. He frowned, staring. What in-
"Is that an abacus?" he asked. "Let's see it, please."
Somewhat unwillingly Scott brought the gadget across to
his father's chair. Paradine blinked. The "abacus," unfolded, was
more than a foot square, composed of thing, rigid wires that
interlocked here and there. On the wires colored beads were strung.
They could be slid back and forth, and from one support to another,
even at the points of juncture. But - a pierced bead couldn't cross
interlocking wires .
So, apparently, they weren't pierced. Paradine looked
closer. Each small bead had a deep groove running around it, so
that it could be revolved and slid along the wire at the same time.
Paradine tried to pull one free. It clung as though magnetically.
Iron? It looked more like plastic.
The framework itself - Paradine wasn't a mathematician.
But the angles formed by the wires were vaguely shocking, in their
ridiculous lack of Euclidean logic. They were a maze. Perhaps
that's what the gadget was - a puzzle.
"Where'd you get this?"
"Uncle Harry gave it to me, "Scott said on the spur of
the moment. "Last Sunday, when he came over." Uncle Harry was out
of town, a circumstance Scott well knew. At the age of seven, a boy
soon learns that the vagaries of adults follow a certain definite
pattern, and that they are fussy about the donors of gifts.
Moreover, Uncle Harry would not return for several weeks; the
expiration of that period was unimaginable to Scott, or, at least,
the fact that his lie would ultimately be discovered meant less to
him than the advantages of being allowed to keep the toy.
Paradine found himself growing slightly confused as he
attempted to manipulate the beads. The angles were vaguely
illogical. It was like a puzzle. This red bead, if slid along this
wire to that junction, should reach there but it didn't. A maze,
odd, but no doubt instructive. Paradine had a well-founded feeling
that he'd have no patience with the thing himself.
Scott did, however, retiring to a corner and sliding
beads around with much fumbling and grunting. The beads did sting,
when Scott chose the wrong ones or tried to slide them in the wrong
direction. At last he crowed exultantly.
"I did it, dad!"
""Eh? What? Let's see." The device looked exactly the
same to Paradine, but Scott pointed and beamed.
"I made it disappear."
"It's still there."
"That blue bead. It's gone now."
Paradine didn't believe that, so he merely snorted. Scott
puzzled over the framework again. He experimented. This time there
were no shocks, even slight. The abacus had showed him the correct
method. Now it was up to him to do it on his own. The bizarre
angles of the wires seemed a little less confusing now, somehow.
It was a most instructive toy-
It worked, Scott thought, rather like the crystal cube.
Reminded of the gadget, he took it from his pocket and relinquished
the abacus to Emma, who was struck dumb with joy. she fell to work
sliding the beads, this time without protesting against the shocks
which, indeed, were very minor and, being imitative, she managed
to make a bead disappear almost as quickly as had Scott. The blue
bead reappeared but Scott didn't notice. He had forethoughtfully
retired into an angle of the chesterfield with an overstuffed chair
and amused himself with the cube.
There were little people inside the thing, tiny manikins
which enlarged by the magnifying properties of the crystal, and
they moved, all right. They built a house. It caught fire, with
realistic-seeming flames, and stood by waiting. Scott puffed
urgently. "Put it out!"
But nothing happened. Where was that queer fire engine,
with revolving arms, that had appeared before? Here it was. It came
sailing into the picture and stopped. Scott urged it on.
This was fun. Like putting on a play, only more real. The
little people did what Scott told them, inside of his head. If he
made a mistake, they waited till he'd found the right way. They
even posed new problems for him-
The cube, too, was a most instructive toy. It was
teaching Scott, with alarming rapidity and teaching him very
entertainingly. But it gave him no really knowledge as yet. He
wasn't ready. Later later
Emma grew tired of the abacus and went in search of
Scott. She couldn't find him, even in his room, but once there the
contents of the closet intrigued her. She discovered the box. It
contained a treasure-trove a doll, which Scott had already noticed
but discarded with a sneer. Squealing, Emma brought the doll
downstairs, squatted in the middle of the floor, and began to take
it apart.
"Darling! What's that?"
"Mr. Bear!"
Obviously it wasn't Mr. Bear, who was blind, earless, but
comforting in his own soft fatness. But all dolls were named Mr.
Bear to Emma.
Jane Paradine hesitated. "Did you take that from some
other little girl?"
"I didn't. She's mine."
Scott came out from his hiding place, thrusting the cube
into his pocket. "Uh that's from Uncle Harry."
"Did Uncle Harry give that to you, Emma?"
"He gave it to me for Emma," Scott put in hastily, adding
another stone to his foundation of deceit. "Last Sunday."
"You'll break it, dear."
"Emma brought the doll to her mother. "She comes apart.
See?"
"Oh? It ugh!" Jane sucked in her breath.
Paradine looked up quickly.
"What's up?"
She brought the doll over to him, hesitated, and then
went into the dining room, giving Paradine a significant glance. He
followed, closing the door. Jane had already placed the doll on the
cleared table.
"This isn't very nice, is it Denny?"
"Hm-m-m." It was rather unpleasant, at first glance. One
might have expected an anatomical dummy in a medical school, but a
child's doll-
The thing came apart in sections, skin, muscles, organs,
miniature but quite perfect, as far as Paradine could see. He was
interested. "Dunno. Such things haven't the same connotations to a
kid-"
"Look at that liver. Is it a liver?"
"Sure. Say I this is funny."
"What?"
"It isn't anatomically perfect, after all." Paradine
pulled up a chair. "The digestive tract's too short. No large
intestine. No appendix, either."
"Should Emma have a thing like this?"
"I wouldn't mind having it myself," Paradine said. "Where
on earth did Harry pick it up? No, I don't see any harm in it.
Adults are conditioned to react unpleasantly to innards. Kids
don't. They figure they're solid inside, like a potato. Emma can
get a sound working knowledge of physiology from this doll."
"But what are those? Nerves?"
"No, these are the nerves. Arteries here; veins here.
Funny sort of aorta-" Paradine looked baffled. "That
what's Latin for network? Anyway huh? Rita? Rata?"
"Rales," Jane suggested at random.
"That's a sort of breathing," Paradine said crushingly.
"I can't figure out what this luminous network of stuff is. It goes
all through the body, like nerves."
"Blood."
"Nope. Not circulatory, not neural funny! It seems to be
hooked up with the lungs."
They became engrossed, puzzling over the strange doll. It
was made with remarkable perfection of detail, and that in itself
was strange, in view of the physiological variation from the norm.
"Wait'll I get that Gould," Paradine said, and presently was
comparing the doll with anatomical charts. He learned little,
except to increase his bafflement.
But it was more fun than a jigsaw puzzle.
Meanwhile, in the adjoining room, Emma was sliding the
beads to and fro in the abacus. The motions didn't seem so strange
now. Even when the beads vanished. She could almost follow that new
direction almost-
Scott panted, staring into the crystal cube and mentally
directing, with many false starts, the building of a structure
somewhat more complicated than the one which had been destroyed by
fire. He, too, was learning being conditioned-
Paradine's mistake, from a completely anthropomorphic
standpoint, was that he didn't get rid of the toys instantly. He
did not realize their significance, and, but the time he did, the
progression of circumstances had got well under way. Uncle Harry
remained out of town, so Paradine couldn't check with him. Too, the
midterm exams were on, which meant arduous mental effort and
complete exhaustion at night; and Jane was slightly ill for a week
or so. Emma and Scott had free rein with the toys.
"What," Scott asked his father one evening, "is a wabe,
dad?"
"Wave?"
He hesitated. "I don't think so. Isn't wabe
right?"
"Wab is Scot for web. That it?"
"I don't see how," Scott muttered, and wandered off,
scowling, to amuse himself with the abacus. He was able to handle
it quite deftly now. But, with the instinct of children for
avoiding interruptions, he and Emma usually played with the toys in
private. Not obviously, of course but the more intricate
experiments were never performed under the eye of an adult.
Scott was learning fast. What he now saw in the crystal
cube had little relationship to the original simple problems. But
they were fascinatingly technical. Had Scott realized that his
education was being guided and supervised though merely
mechanically he would probably have lost interest. As it was, his
initiative was never quashed.
Abacus, cube, doll and other toys the children found in
the box-
Neither Paradine nor Jane guessed how much of an effect
the contents of the time machine were having on the kids. How could
they? Youngsters are instinctive dramatists, for purposes of
self-protection. They have not yet fitted themselves to the
exigencies to them partially inexplicable of a mature world.
Moreover, their lives are complicated by human variables. They are
told by one person that playing in the mud is permissible, but
that, in their excavations, they must not uproot flowers or small
trees. Another adult vetoes mud per se. The Ten Commandments are
not carved on stone; they vary, and children are helplessly
dependent on the caprice of those who give them birth and feed and
clothe them. And tyrannize. The wound animal does not resent that
benevolent tyranny, for it is an essential part of nature. He is,
however, an individualist, and maintains his integrity by a subtle,
passive fight.
Under the eyes of an adult he changes. Like an actor
on-stage, when he remembers, he strives to please, and also to
attract attention to himself. Such attempts are not unknown to
maturity. But adults are less obvious to other adults.
It is difficult to admit that children lack subtlety.
Children are different from the mature animal because they think in
another way. We can more or less easily pierce the pretenses they
set up but they can do the same to us. Ruthlessly a child can
destroy the pretenses of an adult. Iconoclasm is their prerogative.
Foppishness, for example. The amenities of social
intercourse, exaggerated not quite to absurdity. The gigolo-
"Such savoir faire! Such punctilious courtesy!" The
dowager and the blond young thing are often impressed. Men have
less pleasant comments to make. But the child goes to the root of
the matter.
"You're silly!"
How can an immature human understand the complicated
system of social relationships? He can't. To him, an exaggeration
of natural courtesy is silly. In his functional structure of
life-patterns, it is rococo. He is an egotistic little animal, who
cannot visualize himself in the position of another certainly not
an adult. A self-contained, almost perfect natural unit, his wants
supplied by others, the child is much like a unicellular creature
floating in the blood stream, nutriment carried to him, waste
products carried away-
From the standpoint of logic, a child is rather horribly
perfect. A baby may be even more perfect, but so alien to an adult
that only superficial standards of comparison apply. The thought
processes of an infant are completely unimaginable. But babies
think, even before birth. In the womb they move and sleep, not
entirely through instinct. We are conditioned to react rather
peculiarly to the idea that a nearly-viable embryo may think. We
are surprised, shocked into laughter, and repelled. Nothing human
is alien.
But a baby is not human. An embryo is far less human.
That, perhaps, was why Emma learned more from the toys
than did Scott. He could communicate his thoughts, of course; Emma
could not, except in cryptic fragments. The matter of the scrawls,
for example-
Give a young child pencil and paper, and he will draw
something which looks different to him than to an adult. The absurd
scribbles have little resemblance to a fire engine, to a baby.
Perhaps it is even three-dimensional. Babies think differently and
see differently.
Paradine brooded over that, reading his paper one evening
and watching Emma and Scott communicate. Scott was questioning his
sister. Sometimes he did it in English. More often he had resource
to gibberish and sign language. Emma tried to reply, but the
handicap was too great.
Finally Scott got pencil and paper. Emma liked that.
Tongue in cheek, she laboriously wrote a message. Scott took the
paper, examined it, and scowled.
"That isn't right, Emma," he said.
Emma nodded vigorously. She seized the pencil again and
made more scrawls. Scott puzzled for a while, finally smiled rather
hesitantly, and got up. He vanished into the hall. Emma returned to
the abacus. Paradine rose and glanced down at the paper, with some
mad thought that Emma might abruptly have mastered calligraphy. But
she hadn't. The paper was covered with meaningless scrawls, of a
type familiar to any parent. Paradine pursed his lips.
It might be a graph showing the mental variations of a
manic-depressive cockroach, but probably wasn't. Still, it no doubt
had meaning to Emma. Perhaps the scribble represented Mr. Bear.
Scott returned, looking pleased. He met Emma's gaze and
nodded. Paradine felt a twinge of curiosity.
"Secrets?"
"Nope. Emma uh asked me to do
something for her."
"Oh." Paradine, recalling instance of babies who had
babbled in unknown tongues and baffled linguists, made a note to
pocket the paper when the kids had finished with it. The next day
he showed the scrawl to Elkins at the university. Elkins had a
sound working knowledge of many unlikely languages, but he chuckled
over Emma's venture into literature.
"Here's a free translation, Dennis. Quote. I don't know
what this means, but I kid the hell out of my father with it.
Unquote."
The two men laughed and went off to their classes. But
later Paradine was to remember the incident. Especially after he
met Holloway. Before that, however, months were to pass, and the
situation to develop even further toward its climax.
Aneirin
09-08-2004, 0620 AM
Part 2, because of post length restrictions
Perhaps Paradine and Jane had evinced too much interest
in toys. Emma and Scott took to keeping them hidden, playing with
them only in private. They never did it overtly, but with a certain
unobtrusive caution. Nevertheless, Jane especially was somewhat
troubled.
She spoke to Paradine about it one evening. "That doll
Harry gave Emma."
"Yeah?"
"I was downtown today and tried to find out where it came
from. No soap."
"Maybe Harry bought it in New York."
Jane was unconvinced. "I asked them about the other
things, too. They showed me their stock Johnson's a big store, you
know. But there's nothing like Emma's abacus."
"Hm-m-m." Paradine wasn't much interested. They had
tickets for a show that night, and it was getting late. So the
subject was dropped for the nonce.
Later it cropped up again, when a neighbor telephoned
Jane.
"Scotty's never been like that, Denny. Mrs. Burns said he
frightened the devil out of her Francis."
"Francis? A little fat bully of a punk, isn't he? Like
his father. I broke Burns' nose for him once, when we were
sophomores."
"Stop boasting and listen," Jane said, mixing highball.
"Scott showed Francis something that scared him. Hadn't you
better-"
"I suppose so." Paradine listened. Noises in the next
room told him the whereabouts of his son. "Scotty!"
"Bang," Scotty said, and appeared smiling. "I killed 'em
all. Space pirates. You want me, dad?"
"Yes. If you don't mind leaving the space pirates
unburied for a few minutes. What did you do to Francis Burns?"
Scott's blue eyes reflected incredible candor. "Huh?"
"Try hard. You can remember, I'm sure."
"Uh. Oh, that. I didn't do nothing."
"Anything," Jane corrected absently.
"Anything. Honest, I just let him look into my television
set, and it it scared him."
"Television set?"
Scott produced the crystal cube. "It isn't really that.
See?"
Paradine examined the gadget, startled by the
magnification. All he could see, though, was a maze of meaningless
colored designs.
"Uncle Harry-"
Paradine reached for the telephone. Scott gulped. "Is
is Uncle Harry back in town?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I gotta take a bath." Scott headed for the door.
Paradine met Jane's gaze and nodded significantly.
Harry was home, but disclaimed all knowledge of the
peculiar toys. Rather glumly, Paradine requested Scott to bring
down from his room all of the playthings. Finally they lay in a row
on the table, cube, abacus, doll, helmet-like cap, several other
mysterious contraptions. Scott was cross-examined. He lied
valiantly for a time, but broke down at last and bawled, hiccupping
his confession.
"Get the box these things came in," Paradine ordered.
"The head for bed."
"Are you hup! gonna punish me daddy?"
"For playing hooky and lying, yes. You know the rules. No
more shows for two weeks. No sodas for the same period."
Scott gulped. "You gonna keep my things?"
"I don't know yet."
"Well g'night, daddy. G'night, mom."
After the small figure had gone upstairs, Paradine
dragger a chair to the table and carefully scrutinized the box. He
poked thoughtfully at the fused gadgetry. Jane watched.
"What is it, Denny?"
"Dunno. Who'd leave a box of toys down by the creek?"
"It might have fallen out of a car."
"Not at that point. The road doesn't hit the creek north
of the railroad trestle. Empty lots nothing else." Paradine lit a
cigarette. "Drink, honey?"
"I'll fix it." Jane went to work, her eyes troubled. She
brought Paradine a glass and stood behind him, furling his hair
with her fingers. "Is anything wrong?"
"Of course not. Only where did these toys come from?"
"Johnsons's didn't know, and they get their stock from
New York."
"I've been checking up, too," Paradine admitted. "That
doll" he poked it "rather worried me. Custom jobs, maybe, but I
wish I knew who'd made 'em."
"A psychologist? The abacus don't they give people tests
with such things?"
Paradine snapped his fingers. "Right! And say! There's a
guy going to speak at the university next week, fellow named
Holloway, who's a child psychologist. He's a big shot, with quite a
reputation. He might know something about it."
"Holloway? I don't-"
"Rex Holloway. He's hm-m-m! He doesn't live far
from here. Do you suppose he might have had these things made
himself?"
Jane was examining the abacus. She grimaced and drew
back. "If he did, I don't like him. But see if you can find out,
Denny."
Paradine nodded. "I shall."
He drank his highball, frowning. He was vaguely worried.
But he wasn't scared yet.
Rex Holloway was a fat, shiny man, with a bald head and
thick spectacles above which his thick, black brows lay like bushy
caterpillars. Paradine brought him home to dinner one night a week
later. Holloway did not appear to watch the children, but nothing
they did or said was lost on him. His gray eyes, shred and bright,
missed little.
The toys fascinated him. In the living room the three
adults gathered around the table, where the plaything had been
placed. Holloway studied them carefully as he listened to what Jane
and Paradine had to say. At last he broke his silence.
"I'm glad I came here tonight. But not completely. This
is very disturbing, you know."
"Eh?" Paradine stared, and Jane's face showed her
consternation. Holloway's next words did not calm them.
"We are dealing with madness."
He smiled at the shocked looks they gave him. "All
children are mad, from an adult viewpoint. Ever read Hughes' 'High
Wind in Jamaica'?"
"I've got it." Paradine secured the little book from its
shelf. Holloway extended a hand, took it, and flipped the pages
till he had found the place he wanted. He read aloud
"'Babies of course are not human - they are animals, and
have a very a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and
fishes, and even snakes; the same in kind as these, but much more
complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most
developed species of the lower vertebrates. In short, babies have
minds which work in terms and categories of their own which cannot
be translated into the terms and categories of the human mind.'"
Jane tried to take that calmly, but couldn't. "You don't
mean that Emma-"
"Could you think like your daughter?" Holloway asked.
"Listen 'One can no more think like a baby than one can think like
a bee.'"
Paradine mixed drinks. Over his shoulder he said, "You're
theorizing quite a bit, aren't you? As I get it, you're implying
that babies have a culture of their own, even a high standard of
intelligence."
"Not necessarily. There's no yardstick, you see. All I
say is that babies think in other ways than we do. Not necessarily
better that's a question of relative values. But with a different
manner of extension-" He sought for the words, grimacing.
"Fantasy," Paradine said, rather rudely, but annoyed
because of Emma. "Babies don't have different senses from ours."
"Who said they did?" Holloway demanded. "They use their
minds in a different way, that's all. But it's quite enough!"
"I'm trying to understand," Jane said slowly. "All I can
think of is my Mixmaster. It can whip up batter and potatoes, but I
can squeeze oranges, too."
"Something like that. The brain's a colloid, a very
complicated machine. We don't know much about its potentialities.
We don't even know how much it can grasp. But it is known that the
mind becomes conditioned as the human animal matures. It follows
certain familiar theorems, and all thought thereafter is pretty
well based on patterns taken for granted. Look at this." Holloway
touched the abacus. "Have you experimented with it?"
"A little," Paradine said.
"But not much. Eh?"
"Well-"
"Why not?"
"It's pointless," Paradine complained. "Even a puzzle has
to have some logic. But those crazy angles-"
"Your mind has been conditioned to Euclid," Holloway
said. "So this thing bores us, and seems pointless. But a child
knows nothing of Euclid. A different sort of geometry from ours
wouldn't impress him as being illogical. He believe what he sees."
Are you trying to tell me that this gadget's got a fourth
dimensional extension?" Paradine demanded.
"Not visually, anyway," Holloway denied. "All I say is
that our minds, conditioned to Euclid, can see nothing in this but
an illogical tangle of wires. But a child especially a baby might
see more. Not at first. It'd be a puzzle, of course. Only a child
wouldn't be handicapped by too many preconceived ideas."
"Hardening of the thought-arteries," Jane interjected.
Paradine was not convinced. "Then a baby could calculus
better than Einstein? No, I don't mean that. I can see your point,
more or less clearly. Only-"
"Well, look. Let's suppose there are two kinds of
geometry we'll limit it, for the sake of the example. Our kind,
Euclidean, and another, which we'll call x. ]X hasn't much
relationship to Euclid. It's based on different theorems. Two and
two needn't equal four in it; they could equal y, or they might not
even equal. A baby's mind is not yet conditioned, except by certain
questionable factors of heredity and environment. Start the infant
on Euclid-"
"Poor kid," Jane said.
Holloway shot her a quick glance. "The basis of Euclid.
Alphabet blocks. Math, geometry, algebra they come much later.
We're familiar with that development. On the other hand, start the
baby with the basic principles of our x logic."
"Blocks? What kind?"
Holloway looked at the abacus. "It wouldn't make much
sense to us. But we've been conditioned to Euclid."
Paradine poured himself a stiff shot of whiskey. "That's
pretty awful. You're not limiting to math."
"Right! I'm not limiting it at all. How can I? I'm not
conditioned to x logic."
"There's the answer," Jane said, with a sigh of relief.
"Who is? It'd take such a person to make the sort of toys you
apparently think these are."
Holloway nodded, his eyes, behind the thick lenses,
blinking. "Such people may exist."
"Where?"
"They might prefer to keep hidden."
"Supermen?"
"I wish I knew. You see, Paradine, we've got yardstick
trouble again. By our standards these people might seem
super-doopers in certain respects. In others they might seem
moronic. It's not a quantitative difference; it's qualitative. They
think different. And I'm sure we can do things they can't."
"Maybe they wouldn't want to," Jane said.
Paradine tapped the fused gadgetry on the box. "What
about this? It implies-"
"A purpose, sure."
"Transportation?"
"One thinks of that first, If so, the box might have come
from anywhere."
"Where things are = different?" Paradine asked slowly.
"Exactly. In space, or even time. I don't know; I'm a
psychologist. Unfortunately I'm conditioned to Euclid, too."
"Funny place it must be," Jane said. "Denny, get rid of
those toys."
"I intend to."
Holloway picked up the crystal cube. "Did you question
the children much?"
Paradine said, "Yeah. Scott said there were people in
that cube when he first looked. I asked him what was in it now."
"What did he say?" The psychologist's eyes widened.
"He said they were building a place. His exact words. I
asked him who people? But he couldn't explain."
"No, I suppose not," Holloway muttered. "It must be
progressive. How long have the children had these toys?"
"About three months, I guess."
"Time enough. The perfect toy, you see, is both
instructive and mechanical. It should do things, to interest a
child, and it should teach, preferably unobtrusively. Simple
problems at first. Later-"
"X logic," Jane said, white faced.
Paradine cursed under his breath. "Emma and Scott are
perfectly normal!"
"Do you know how their minds work now?"
Holloway didn't pursue the thought. He fingered the doll.
"It would be interesting to know the conditions of the place where
these things came from. Induction doesn't help a great deal,
though. Too many factors are missing. We can't visualize a world
based on the x factor environment adjusted to minds thinking in x
patterns. This luminous network inside the doll. It could be
anything. It could exist inside us, though we haven't discovered it
yet. When we find the right stain-" He shrugged. "What do you make
of this?"
It was a crimson globe, two inches in diameter, with a
protruding knob upon its surface.
"What could anyone make of it?"
"Scott? Emma?"
"I hadn't even seen it till about three weeks ago. Then
Emma started to play with it." Paradine nibbled his lip. "After
that, Scott got interested."
"Just what do they do?"
"Hold it up in front of them and move it back and forth.
No particular pattern of motion."
"No Euclidean pattern," Holloway corrected. "At first
they couldn't understand the toy's purpose. They had to be educated
up to it."
"That's horrible," Jane said.
"Not to them. Emma is probably quicker at understanding x
than Scott, for her mind isn't yet conditioned to this
environment."
.Paradine said, "But I can remember plenty of things I
did as a child. Even as a baby."
"Well?"
"Was I mad then?"
"The things you don't remember are the criterion of your
madness," Holloway retorted. "But I use the word 'madness' purely
as a convenient symbol for the variation from the known human norm.
The arbitrary standard of sanity."
Jane put down her glass. "You've said that induction was
difficult, Mr. Holloway. But it seems to me you're making a great
deal of it from very little. After all, these toys-"
"I am a psychologist, and I've specialized in children.
I'm not a layman. These toys mean a great deal to me, chiefly
because they mean so little."
"You might be wrong."
"Well, I rather hope I am. I'd like to examine the
children."
Jane rose in alarm. "How?"
After Holloway had explained, she nodded, though still a
bit hesitantly. "Well, that's all right. But they're not guinea
pigs."
The psychologist patted the air with a plump hand. "My
dear girl! I'm not a Frankenstein. To me the individual is the
prime factor naturally, since I work with minds. If there's
anything wrong with the youngsters, I want to cure them."
Paradine put down his cigarette and slowly watched blue
smoke spiral up, wavering in an unfelt draft. "Can you give a
prognosis.?"
"I'll try. That's all I can say. If the undeveloped minds
have been turned into the x channel, it's necessary to divert them
back. I'm not saying that's the wisest thing to do, but it probably
is from our standards. After all, Emma and Scott will have to live
in this world."
"Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe there's much wrong. they
seem about average, thoroughly normal."
"Superficially they may seem so. They've no reason for
acting abnormally, have they? And how can you tell if they think
differently?"
"I'll call 'em," Paradine said.
"Make it informal, then. I don't want them to be on guard."
Jane nodded toward the toys. Holloway said, "Leave the
stuff there, eh?"
But the psychologist, after Emma and Scott were summoned,
made no immediate move at direct questioning. He managed to draw
Scott unobtrusively into the conversation, dropping key words now
and then. nothing so obvious as a word-association test
co-operation is necessary for that.
The most interesting development occurred when Holloway
took up the abacus. "Mind showing me how this works?"
Scott hesitated. "Yes, sir. Like this-" He slid a bead
deftly through the maze, in a tangled course, so swiftly that no
one was quite sure whether or not it ultimately vanished. It might
have been merely legerdemain. Then, again-
Holloway tried. Scott watched, wrinkling his nose.
"That right?'
"Uh-huh. It's gotta go there-"
"Here? Why?"
"Well, that's the only way to make it work."
But Holloway was conditioned to Euclid. There was no
apparent reason why the bead should slide from this particular wire
to the other. It looked like a random factor. Also, Holloway
suddenly noticed, this wasn't the path the bead had taken
previously, when Scott had worked the puzzle. At least, as well as
he could tell.
"Will you show me again?"
Scott did, and twice more, on request. Holloway blinked
through his glasses. Random, yes. And variable. Scott moved the
bead along a different course each time.
Somehow, none of the adults could tell whether or not the
bead vanished. If they had expected to see it disappear, their
reactions might have been different.
In the end, nothing was solved. Holloway, as he said good
night, seemed ill at ease.
"May I come again?"
"I wish you would," Jane told him. "Any time. You still
think-"
He nodded. "The children's minds are not reacting
normally. They're not dull at all, but I've the most extraordinary
impression that they arrive at conclusions in a way we don't
understand. AS though they used algebra while we used geometry. The
same conclusions, but a different method of reaching it."
"What about the toys?" Paradine asked suddenly.
"Keep them out of the way. I'd like to borrow them, if I
may-"
That night Paradine slept badly. Holloway's parallel had
been ill-chosen. It led to disturbing theories. The x factor The
children were using the equivalent of algebraic reasoning, while
adults used geometry.
Fair enough. Only-
Algebra can give you answers that geometry cannot, since
there are certain terms and symbols which cannot be expressed
geometrically. Suppose x logic showed conclusions inconceivable to
an adult mind?
"Damn!" Paradine whispered. Jane stirred beside him.
"Dear? Can't you sleep either?"
"No." He got up and went into the next room. Emma slept
peacefully as a cherub, her fat arm curled around Mr. Bear. Through
the open doorway Paradine could see Scott's dark head motionless on
the pillow.
Jane was beside him. He slipped his arm around her.
"Poor little people," she murmured. "And Holloway called
them mad. I think we're the ones who are crazy, Dennis."
"Uh-huh. We've got the jitters."
Scott stirred in his sleep. Without awakening, he called
what was obviously a question, though it did not seem to be in any
particular language. Emma gave a little mewling cry that changed
pitch sharply.
She had not awakened. The children lay without stirring.
But Paradine though, with a sudden sickness in his
middle, it was exactly as though Scott had asked Emma something,
and she had replied.
Had their minds changed so that even sleep was
different to them?
He thrust the thought away. "You'll catch cold. Let's get
back to bed. Want a drink?"
"I think I do," Jane said, watching Emma. Her hand
reached out blindly toward the child; she drew it back. "Come on.
We'll wake the kids."
They drank a little brandy together, but said nothing.
Jane cried in her sleep, later.
Scott was not awake, but his mind worked in slow, careful
building. Thus-
"They'll take the toys away. The fat man
listava dangerous maybe. But the Ghoric direction won't show
evankrus dun-hasn't-them. Intrasdection bright and shiny.
Emma. She's more khopranik-high now than I still don't
see how to thavarar lizery dist-"
A little of Scott's thoughts could still be understood.
But Emma had become conditioned to x much faster.
She was thinking, too.
Not like an adult or a child. Not even like a human.
Except, perhaps, a human of a type shockingly unfamiliar to genus
homo.
Sometimes Scott himself had difficulty in following her
thoughts.
If it had not been for Holloway, life might have settled
back into an almost normal routine. The toys were no longer active
reminders. Emma still enjoyed her dolls and sand pile, with a
thoroughly explicable delight. Scott was satisfied with baseball
and his chemical set. They did everything other children did, and
evinced few, if any, flashes of abnormality. But Holloway seemed to
be an alarmist.
He was having the toys tested, with rather idiotic
results. He drew endless charts and diagrams, corresponded with
mathematicians, engineers, and other psychologists, and went
quietly crazy trying to find rhyme or reason in the construction of
the gadgets. The box itself, with its cryptic machinery, told
nothing. Fusing had melted too much of the stuff into slag. But the
toys-
It was the random element that baffled investigation.
Even that was a matter of semantics. For Holloway was convince that
it wasn't really random. There just weren't enough known factors.
No adult could work the abacus, for example. And Holloway
thoughtfully refrained from letting a child play with the thing.
The crystal cube was similarly cryptic. It showed a mad
pattern of colors, which sometimes moved. In this it resembled a
kaleidoscope. But the shifting of balance and gravity didn't affect
it. Again the random factor.
Or, rather, the unknown. The x pattern. Eventually
Paradine and Jane slipped back into something like complacence,
with a feeling that the children had been cured of their mental
quick, now that the contributing cause had been removed. Certain of
the actions of Emma and Scott gave them every reason to quit
worrying.
For the kids enjoyed swimming, hiking, movies, games, the
normal functional toys of this particular time-sector. It was true
that they failed to master certain rather puzzling mechanical
devices which involved some calculation. A three-dimensional jigsaw
globe Paradine had picked up, for example. But he found that
difficult himself.
Once in a while there were lapses. Scott was hiking with
his father one Saturday afternoon, and the two had paused at the
summit of a hill. Beneath them a rather lovely valley was spread.
"Pretty, isn't it?" Paradine remarked.
Scott examined the scene gravely. "It's all wrong," he
said.
"Eh?"
"I dunno."
"What's wrong about it?
"Gee-" Scott lapsed into puzzled silence. "I dunno."
The children had missed their toys, but not for long.
Emma recovered first, though Scott still moped. He held
unintelligible conversations with his sister, and studied
meaningless scrawls she drew on paper he supplied. It was almost as
though he was consulting her, anent difficult problems beyond his
grasp.
If Emma understood more, Scott had more real
intelligence, and manipulatory skill as well. He built a gadget
with his Meccano set, but was dissatisfied. the apparent cause of
his dissatisfaction was exactly why Paradine was relieved when he
viewed the structure. It was the sort of thing a normal boy would
make, vaguely reminiscent of a cubistic ship.
It was a bit too normal to please Scott. He asked Emma
more questions, though in private. She thought for a time, and then
made more scrawls with an awkwardly clutched pencil.
"Can you read that stuff?" Jane asked her son one
morning.
"Not read it, exactly. I can tell what she means. Not all
the time, but mostly."
"Is it writing?"
"N-no. It doesn't mean what it looks like."
"Symbolism," Paradine suggested over his coffee.
Jane looked at him, her eyes widening. "Denny-"
He winked and shook his head. Later, when they were
alone, he said, "Don't let Holloway upset you. I'm not implying the
kids are corresponding in an unknown tongue. If Emma draws a
squiggle and says it's a flower, that's an arbitrary rule Scott
remembers that. Next time she draws the same sort of squiggle, or
tries to well!"
"Sure," Jane said doubtfully. "Have you noticed Scott's
been doing a lot of reading lately?"
"I noticed. Nothing unusual, though. No Kant or Spinoza."
"He browses, that's all."
"Well, so did I, at his age," Paradine said, and went off
to his morning classes. He lunched with Holloway, which was
becoming a daily habit, and spoke of Emma's literary endeavors.
"Was I right about symbolism, Rex?"
The psychologist nodded. "Quite right. Our own language
is nothing but arbitrary symbolism now. At least in its
application. Look here." On his napkin he drew a very narrow
ellipse. "What's that?"
"You mean what does it represent?"
"Yes. What does it suggest to you? It could be a crude
representation of -what?"
"Plenty of things," Paradine said. "Rim of a glass. A
fried egg. A loaf of French bread. A cigar."
Holloway added a little triangle to his drawing, apex
joined to one end of the ellipse. He looked up at Paradine.
"A fish," the latter said instantly.
"Our familiar symbol for a fish. Even without fins, eyes
or mouth, it's recognizable, because we've been conditioned to
identify this particular shape with our mental picture of a fish.
The basis of a rebus. A symbol, to us, means a lot more than what
we actually see on paper. What's in your mind when you look at this
sketch?"
"Why a fish."
"Keep going. What do you visualize everything!"
"Scales," Paradine said slowly, looking into space.
"Water. Foam. A fish's eye. The fins. The colors."
"So the symbol represents a lot more than just the
abstract idea fish. Note the connotation's that of a noun, not a
verb. It's harder to express actions by symbolism, you know. Anyway
reverse the process. Suppose you want to make a symbol for some
concrete noun, say bird. Draw it."
Paradine drew two connected arcs, concavities down.
"The lowest common denominator," Holloway nodded. "The
natural tendency is to simplify. Especially when a child is seeing
something for the first time and has few standards of comparison.
He tries to identify the new thing with what's already familiar to
him. Ever notice how a child draws the ocean?" He didn't wait for
an answer; he went on.
"A series of jagged points. Like the oscillating line on
a seismograph. When I first saw the Pacific, I was about three. I
remember it pretty clearly. It looked tilted. A flat plain,
slanted at an angle. The waves were regular triangles, apex upward.
Now I don't see them stylized that way, but later, remembering, I
had to find some familiar standard of comparison. Which is the only
way of getting any conception of an entirely new thing. The average
child tries to draw these regular triangles, but his coordination's
poor. He gets a seismograph pattern."
"All of which means what?"
"A child sees the ocean. He stylizes it. He draws a
certain definite pattern, symbolic, to him, of the sea. Emma's
scrawls may be symbols, too. I don't mean that the world looks
different to her brighter, perhaps, and sharper, more vivid with a
slackening of perception above her eye level. What I do mean is
that her though-processes are different, that she translates what
she sees into abnormal symbols."
"You still believe-"
"Yes, I do. Her mind has been conditioned unusually. It
may be that she breaks down what she sees into simple, obvious
patterns and realizes a significance to those patterns that we
can't understand. Like the abacus. She saw a pattern in that,
though to us it was completely random."
Paradine abruptly decided to taper off these luncheon
engagements with Holloway. The man was an alarmist. His theories
were growing more fantastic than ever, and he dragged in anything,
applicable or not, that would support them.
Rather sardonically he said, "Do you mean Emma's
communicating with Scott in an unknown language?"
"In symbols for which she hasn't any words. I'm sure
Scott understands a great deal of those scrawls. To him, an
isosceles triangle may represent any factor, though probably a
concrete noun. Would a man who nothing of algebra understand what
H²O meant? Would he realize that the symbol could evoke a picture
of the ocean?"
Paradine didn't answer. Instead, he mentioned to Holloway
Scott's curious remark that the landscape, from the hill, had
looked all wrong. A moment later, he was inclined to regret his
impulse, for the psychologist was off again.
"Scott's thought-patterns are building up to a sum that
doesn't equal this world. Perhaps he's subconsciously expecting to
see the world where those toys came from."
Paradine stopped listening. Enough was enough. The kids
were getting along all right, and the only remaining disturbing
factor was Holloway himself. That night, however, Scott evinced an
interest, later significant, in eels.
There was nothing apparently harmful in natural history.
Paradine explained about eels.
"But where do they lay their eggs? Pr do they?"
"That's still a mystery. Their spawning grounds are
unknown. Maybe the Sargasso Sea, or the deeps, where the pressure
can help them force the young out of their bodies."
"Funny," Scott said, thinking deeply.
"Salmon do the same thing, more or less. They go up
rivers to spawn." Paradine went into detail. Scott was fascinated.
"But that's right, dad. They're born in the river, and
then they learn how to swim, they go down to the sea. And they come
back to lay their eggs, huh?"
"Right."
"Only, they wouldn't come back," Scott pondered. "They'd
just send their eggs-"
"It'd take a very long ovipositor," Paradine said, and
vouchsafed some well-chosen remarks upon oviparity.
His son wasn't entirely satisfied. Flowers, he contended,
sent their seeds long distances.
"They don't guide them. Not many find fertile soil."
"Flowers haven't got brains, though. Dad, why do people
live here?"
"Glendale?"
"No here. This whole place. It isn't all there is, I
bet."
"Do you mean the other planets?"
Scott was hesitant. "This is only part of the big place.
It's like the river where the salmon go. Why don't people go on
down to the ocean when they grow up?"
Paradine realized that Scott was speaking figuratively.
He felt a brief chill. The ocean?
The young of the species are not conditions to live in
the completer world of their parents. Having developed
sufficiently, they enter that world. Later they breed. The
fertilized eggs are buried in the sand, far up the river, where
later they hatch.
And they learn. Instinct alone is fatally slow.
Especially in the case of a specialized genus, unable to cope even
with this world, unable to feed or drink or survive, unless someone
has foresightedly provided for those needs.
The young, fed and tended, would survive. There would be
incubators and robots. They would survive, but they would not know
how to swim downstream, to the vaster world of the ocean.
So they must be taught. They must be trained and
conditioned in many ways.
Painlessly, subtly, unobtrusively. Children love toys
that do things and if those toys teach at the same time-
In the latter half of the nineteenth century and
Englishman sat on a grassy bank near a stream. A very small girl
lay near him, staring up at the sky. She had discarded a curious
toy with which she had been playing, and now was murmuring a
wordless little song, to which the man listened to with half an
ear.
"What was that, my dear?" he asked at last.
"Just something I made up, Uncle Charles."
"Sing it again." He pulled out a notebook.
The girl obeyed.
"Does it mean anything?"
She nodded. "Oh, yes. Like the stories I tell you, you
know."
"They're wonderful stories, dear."
"And you'll put them in a book some day?"
"Yes, but I must change them quite a lot, or no one would
understand. But I don't think I'll change your little song."
"You mustn't. If you did, it wouldn't mean anything."
"I won't change that stanza, anyway," he promised. "Just
what does it mean?"
"It's the way out, I think," the girl said doubtfully.
"I'm not sure yet. My magic toys told me."
"I wish I knew what London shop sold those marvelous
toys!"
"Mamma bought them for me. She's dead. Papa doesn't
care."
She lied. She had found the toys in a box one day, as she
played by the Thames. And they were indeed wonderful.
Her little song Uncle Charles thought it didn't mean
anything. (He wasn't her real uncle, she parenthesized. But he was
nice.) The song meant a great deal. It was the way. Presently she
would do what it said, and then-
But she was already too old. She never found the way.
Paradine had dropped Holloway. Jane had taken a dislike
to him, naturally enough, since what she wanted most of all was to
have her fears calmed. Since Scott and Emma acted normally now,
Jane felt satisfied. It was partly wishful-thinking, to which
Paradine could not entirely subscribe.
Scott kept brining gadgets to Emma for her approval.
Usually she'd shake her head. Sometimes she would signify
agreement. Then there would be an hour of laborious, crazy
scribbling on scraps of note paper, and Scott, after studying the
notations, would arrange and rearrange his rocks, bits of
machinery, candle ends, and assorted junk. Each day the maid
cleaned them away, and each day Scott began again.
He condescended to explain a little to his puzzled
father, who could see no rhyme or reason in the game.
"But why this pebble right here?"
"It's hard and round, dad. It belongs there."
"So is this one hard and round."
"Well, that's got Vaseline on it. When you get that far,
you can't see just a hard round thing."
"What comes next? This candle?"
Scott looked disgusted. "That's toward the end. The iron
ring's next."
It was, Paradine thought, like a Scout trail through the
woods, markers in a labyrinth. But here again was the random
factor. Logic halted familiar logic as Scott's motives in
arranging the junk as he did.
Paradine went out. Over his shoulder he saw Scott pull a
crumpled piece of paper and a pencil from his pocket, and head for
Emma, who was squatted in a corner thinking things over.
Well-
Jane was lunching with Uncle Harry, and, on this hot
Sunday afternoon there was little to do but read the papers.
Paradine settled himself in the coolest place he could find, with a
Collins, and lost himself in the comic strips.
An hour later a clatter of feet upstairs roused him from
his doze. Scott's voice was crying exultantly, "This is it, Slug!
Come on-"
Paradine stood up quickly, frowning. As he went into the
hall the telephone began to ring. Jane had promised to call-
His hand was on the receiver when Emma's faint voice
squealed in excitement. Paradine grimaced. What the devil was going
on upstairs?
Scott shrieked, "Look out! This way!"
Paradine, his mouth working, his nerves ridiculously
tense, forgot the phone and raced up the stairs. The door of
Scott's room was open.
The children were vanishing.
They went in fragments, like thick smoke in a wind, or
like movement in a distorting mirror. Hand in hand they went, in a
direction Paradine could not understand, and as he blinked there on
the threshold, they were gone.
"Emma!" he said, dry-throated. "Scotty!"
On carpet lay a pattern of markers, pebbles, an iron ring
junk. A random pattern. A crumpled sheet of paper blew towards
Paradine.
He picked it up automatically.
"Kids. Where are you? Don't hide-"
"Emma! SCOTTY!"
Downstairs the telephone stopped its shrill, monotonous
ringing. Paradine looked at the paper he held.
It was a leaf torn from a book. there were interlineations and
marginal notes, in Emma's meaningless scrawl. A stanza of verse had
been so underlined and scribbled over that it was almost illegible,
but Paradine was thoroughly familiar with "Through the Looking
Glass." His memory gave him the words-
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimbel in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Idiotically he thought Humpty Dumpty explained it. A wabe
is the plot of grass around a sundial. A sundial. Time it has
something to do with time. A long time ago Scotty asked me what a
wabe was. Symbolism.
'Twas brillig-
A perfect mathematical formula, giving all the
conditions, in symbolism the children had finally understood. The
junk on the floor. The toves had to be made slithy Vaseline? and
they had to be placed in a certain relationship, so that they'd
gyre and gimbel.
Lunacy!
But it had not been lunacy to Emma and Scott. They
thought differently. They used x logic. Those notes Emma had made
on the page she'd translated Carroll's words into symbols both she
and Scott could understand.
The random factor had made sense to the children. They
had fulfilled the conditions of the time-space equation. And the
mome raths outgrabe-
Paradine made a rather ghastly little sound, deep in his
throat. He looked at the crazy pattern on the carpet. If he could
follow it, as the kids had done but he couldn't. The pattern was
senseless. The random factor defeated him. He was conditioned to
Euclid.
Even if he went insane, he still couldn't do it. It would
be the wrong kind of lunacy.
His mind had stopped working now. But in a moment the
stasis of incredulous horror would pass Paradine crumpled the page
in his fingers. "Emma, Scotty," he called in a dead voice, as
though he could expect no response.
Sunlight slanted through the open windows, brightening
the golden pelt of Mr. Bear. Downstairs the ringing of the
telephone began again.
