Children of Tomorrow (17 page)

A faint Susan voice sounded from far away: ‘No, mother.’ ‘Then,’ asked Estelle, astonished, ‘why hasn’t someone called?’ ‘Oh, nobody would know right away, mother,’ the remote girlish voice replied.

When Len Jaeger opened his eyes on his second afternoon awakening, he saw that a fine-looking man was bending over him. The stranger’s face was stem,
and there was a suggestion of somewhat more personal power than Jaeger was accustomed to confronting. Nevertheless, the machinist had his own bravado, and he said, ‘Hi, doc. Which one are you?’

The obvious mistake in identity caused John Lane to hesitate for a moment. His eyes and face reflected an inner argument as to whether or not he should accept the deception. In the end - which was very quickly - he decided against it. ‘No, Mr Jaeger,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘I’m here on ano
th
er matter.’ He managed to smile through his sternness, as he finished, ‘Since you seem to be more alert. I’m assuming that you are being given excellent medical care.’

‘I’m still kind’ye dizzy,’ was the reply,
‘
but I sure feel a lot better than I did.’

‘Good.’ The commander spoke firmly. ‘And I want you to tell me the moment you start to feel bad. However, what I want to find out has to do with the fact that in all Spaceport only you and I have emitted an energy, which has been labeled K energy by Security - ’ Briefly, he described how the skin of a human being could apparently store the energy, and then radiate it in about twenty hours. “We’re trying to find out where you fit in,’ he concluded, frankly.

It took a while, then. The subject was apparently outside of the reality of the miserable creature on the bed. Accordingly, the situation was a threat to him. His cunning eyes narrowed into a greater cunningness, and would never quite meet Lane’s. He knew nothing. He had no idea. He was just a hard-working man trying to get along. He had come to Spaceport about a year before, attracted by the higher pay. Then, a few weeks ago, his runaway son had contacted him, and was now living at home. A little over a week ago, it seemed, the boy had joined an outfit. But Jaeger had only discovered this fact the previous night. ‘And I sure wasn’t going to have any of that,’ he said, sanctimoniously. “Where I come from, parents give their kids their moral training.’

It was the kind of moment that can never be understood by one of the persons who is party to it. In this i
n
stance, the man on the bed would be forever incapable of grasping that his statement, coming from such as he, was a farce. Who shall raise the children of the world? Until that moment, until that remark, the matter might have been at issue in the minds of some people. Suddenly, gazing down into that face - with its twisted mind exuding through every pore, and through the very shaping of the face muscles - even that most ardent supporter of parental control, John Lane, experienced a pause.

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
mini
ng
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 inter
r
ogating, 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 that 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?’