Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (51 page)

"It could get inside a nut and make him assassinate the president and get
caught at it. It could make a Russian shoot his Number 1. It could make a
Spaniard shoot the Prime Minister of England. It could start a bloody riot
in the UN, and make an army man, there to guard it, explode an A-bomb
dump. It could—hell, Beautiful, it could push this world into a
final war within a week. It practically
has
done it."

He walked over to the window and stroked the cat's sleek fur while he
frowned down at the gun emplacements going up under the bright
floodlights.

"And he's done it, and even if my guess is right I couldn't stop him
because I couldn't find him. And nobody would believe me now. He'll make
the world safe for Martians. When the war is over, a lot of little ships
like that—or big ones—can land here and take over what's left
ten times as easy as they could now."

He lighted a cigarette with hands that shook a little. He said, "The more
I think of it, the more—"

He sat down in the chair again. He said, "Beautiful, I've got to
try.
Screwy as that idea is, I've got to give it to the authorities, whether
they believe it or not. That Major I met was an intelligent guy. So is
General Keely. I—"

He started to walk to the phone and then sat down again. "I'll call both
of them, but let's work it out just a little finer first. See if I can
make any intelligent suggestions how they could go about finding the—the
being
—"

He groaned. "Beautiful, it's impossible. It wouldn't even have to be a
human being. It could be an animal, anything. It could be you. He'd
probably take over whatever nearby type of mind was nearest his own. If he
was remotely feline, you'd have been the nearest cat."

He sat up and stared at her. He said, "I'm going crazy, Beautiful. I'm
remembering how you jumped and twisted just after that spaceship blew up
its mechanism and went inert. And, listen, Beautiful, you've been sleeping
twice as much as usual lately. Has your mind been out—

"Say,
that
would be why I couldn't wake you up yesterday to feed
you. Beautiful, cats always wake up easily.
Cats
do."

Looking dazed, Bill Wheeler got up out of the chair. He said, "Cat,
am
I crazy, or—"

The Siamese cat looked at him languidly through sleepy eyes. Distinctly it
said, "
Forget it.
"

And halfway between sitting and rising, Bill Wheeler looked even more
dazed for a second. He shook his head as though to clear it.

He said, "What was I talking about, Beautiful? I'm getting punchy from not
enough sleep."

He walked over to the window and stared out, gloomily, rubbing the cat's
fur until it purred.

He said, "Hungry, Beautiful? Want some liver?"

The cat jumped down from the windowsill and rubbed itself against his leg
affectionately.

It said, "Miaouw."

The End

© 1949, by Standard Magazines, Inc. Originally published in
Thrilling
Wonder Stories
. Copyright 1977 by the Estate. Used by permission.

Zenna Henderson

I don't like kids—never have. They're too uncanny. For one thing,
there's no bottom to their eyes. They haven't learned to pull down their
mental curtains the way adults have. For another thing, there's so much
they don't know. And not knowing things makes them know lots of other
things grown-ups can't know. That sounds confusing, and it is. But look at
it this way. Every time you teach a kid something, you teach him a hundred
things that are impossible because that one thing is so. By the time we
grow up, our world is so hedged around by impossibilities that it's a
wonder we ever try anything new.

Anyway, I don't like kids, so I guess it's just as well that I've stayed a
bachelor.

Now, take Thaddeus. I don't like Thaddeus. Oh, he's a fine kid, smarter
than most—he's my nephew—but he's too young. I'll start liking
him one of these days when he's ten or eleven. No, that's still too young.
I guess when his voice starts cracking and he begins to slick his hair
down, I'll get to liking him fine. Adolescence ends lots more than it
begins.

The first time I ever really got acquainted with Thaddeus was the
Christmas he was three. He was a solemn little fellow, hardly a smile out
of him all day, even with the avalanche of everything to thrill a kid.
Starting first thing Christmas Day, he made me feel uneasy. He stood still
in the middle of the excited squealing bunch of kids that crowded around
the Christmas tree in the front room at the folks' place. He was holding a
big rubber ball with both hands and looking at the tree with his eyes wide
with wonder. I was sitting right by him in the big chair, and I said, "How
do you like it, Thaddeus?"

He turned his big, solemn eyes to me, and for a long time, all I could see
was the deep, deep reflections in his eyes of the glitter and glory of the
tree and a special shiningness that originated far back in his own eyes.
Then he blinked slowly and said solemnly, "Fine."

Then the mob of kids swept him away as they all charged forward to claim
their Grampa-gift from under the tree. When the crowd finally dissolved
and scattered all over the place with their play-toys, there was Thaddeus
squatting solemnly by the little red wagon that had fallen to him. He was
examining it intently, inch by inch, but only with his eyes. His hands
were pressed between his knees and his chest as he squatted.

"Well, Thaddeus." His mother's voice was a little provoked. "Go play with
your wagon. Don't you like it?"

Thaddeus turned his face up to her in that blind, unseeing way little
children have.

"Sure," he said, and standing up, tried to take the wagon in his arms.

"Oh for pity sakes," his mother laughed. "You don't carry a wagon,
Thaddeus." And aside to us, "Sometimes I wonder. Do you suppose he's got
all his buttons?"

"Now, Jean." Our brother Clyde leaned back in his chair. "Don't heckle the
kid. Go on, Thaddeus. Take the wagon outside."

So what does Thaddeus do but start for the door, saying over his shoulder,
"Come on, Wagon."

Clyde laughed. "It's not that easy, Punkin-Yaller, you've gotta have pull
to get along in this world."

So Jean showed Thaddeus how, and he pulled the wagon outdoors, looking
down at the handle in a puzzled way, absorbing this latest rule for acting
like a big boy.

Jean was embarrassed the way parents are when their kids act normal around
other people.

"Honest. You'd think he never saw a wagon before."

"He never did," I said idly. "Not his own, anyway." And had the feeling
that I had said something profound, but wasn't quite sure what.

The whole deal would have gone completely out of my mind it if hadn't been
for one more little incident. I was out by the barn waiting for Dad. Mom
was making him change his pants before he demonstrated his new tractor for
me. I saw Thaddeus loading rocks into his little red wagon. Beyond the
rock pile, I could see that he had started a playhouse or ranch of some
kind, laying the rocks out to make rooms or corrals or whatever. He
finished loading the wagon and picked up another rock that took both arms
to carry, then he looked down at the wagon.

"Come on, Wagon." And he walked over to his play place.

And the wagon went with him,
trundling along over the uneven
ground, following at his heels like a puppy.

I blinked and inventoried rapidly the Christmas cheer I had imbibed. It
wasn't enough for an explanation. I felt a kind of cold grue creep over
me.

Then Thaddeus emptied the wagon and the two of them went back for more
rocks. He was just going to pull the same thing again when a big
boy-cousin came by and laughed at him.

"Hey, Thaddeus, how you going to pull your wagon with both hands full? It
won't go unless you pull it."

"Oh," said Thaddeus and looked off after the cousin who was headed for the
back porch and some pie.

So Thaddeus dropped the big rock he had in his arms and looked at the
wagon. After struggling with some profound thinking, he picked the rock up
again and hooked a little finger over the handle of the wagon.

"Come on, Wagon," he said, and they trundled off together, the handle of
the wagon still slanting back over the load while Thaddeus grunted along
by it with his heavy armload.

I was glad Dad came just then, hooking the last strap of his striped
overalls. We started into the barn together. I looked back at Thaddeus. He
apparently figured he'd need his little finger on the next load, so he was
squatting by the wagon, absorbed with a piece of flimsy red Christmas
string. He had twisted one end around his wrist and was intent on tying
the other to the handle of the little red wagon.

It wasn't so much that I avoided Thaddeus after that. It isn't hard for
grown-ups to keep from mingling with kids. After all, they do live in two
different worlds. Anyway, I didn't have much to do with Thaddeus for
several years after that Christmas. There was the matter of a side trip to
the South Pacific where even I learned that there are some grown-up
impossibilities that are not always absolute. Then there was a hitch in
the hospital where I waited for my legs to put themselves together again.
I was luckier than most of the guys. The folks wrote often and regularly
and kept me posted on all the home talk. Nothing spectacular, nothing
special, just the old familiar stuff that makes home, home and folks,
folks.

I hadn't thought of Thaddeus in a long time. I hadn't been around kids
much, and unless you deal with them, you soon forget them. But I
remembered him plenty when I got the letter from Dad about Jean's new
baby. The kid was a couple of weeks overdue and when it did come—a
girl—Jean's husband, Bert, was out at the farm checking with Dad on
a land deal he had cooking. The baby came so quickly that Jean couldn't
even make it to the hospital, and when Mom called Bert, he and Dad headed
for town together, but fast.

"Derned if I didn't have to hold my hair on," wrote Dad. "I don't think we
hit the ground but twice all the way to town. Dern near overshot the gate
when we finally tore up the hill to their house. Thaddeus was playing out
front, and we dang near ran him down. Smashed his trike to flinders. I saw
the handle bars sticking out from under the front wheel when I followed
Bert in. Then I got to thinking that he'd get a flat parking on all that
metal, so I went out to move the car. Lucky I did. Bert musta forgot to
set the brakes. Derned if that car wasn't headed straight for Thaddeus. He
was walking right in front of it. Even had his hand on the bumper, and the
dern thing rolling right after him. I yelled and hit out for the car. But
by the time I got there, it had stopped, and Thaddeus was squatting by his
wrecked trike. What do you suppose the little cuss said? 'Old car broke my
trike. I made him get off.'

"Can you beat it? Kids get the dernedest ideas. Lucky it wasn't much
downhill, though. He'd have been hurt sure."

I lay with the letter on my chest and felt cold. Dad had forgotten that
they "tore up the hill" and that the car must have rolled up the slope to
get off Thaddeus' trike.

That night I woke up the ward yelling, "Come on, Wagon!"

It was some months later when I saw Thaddeus again. He and half a dozen
other nephews—and the one persistent niece—were in a tearing
hurry to be somewhere else and nearly mobbed Dad and me on the front porch
as they boiled out of the house with mouths and hands full of cookies.
They all stopped long enough to give me the once-over and fire a
machine-gun volley with my crutches, then they disappeared down the land
on their bikes, heads low, rear ends high, and every one of them being
bombers at the tops of their voices.

I only had time enough to notice that Thaddeus had lanked out and was just
one of the kids as he grinned engagingly at me with the two-tooth gap in
his front teeth.

"Did you ever notice anything odd about Thaddeus?" I pulled out the
makin's.

"Thaddeus?" Dad glanced up at me from firing up his battered old corncob
pipe. "Not particularly. Why?"

"Oh, nothing." I ran my tongue along the paper and rolled the cigarette
shut. "He just always seemed kinda different."

"Well, he's always been kinda slow about some things. Not that he's dumb.
Once he catches on, he's as smart as anyone, but he's sure pulled some
funny ones."

"Give me a fer-instance," I said, wondering if he'd remember the trike
deal.

"Well, coupla years ago at a wienie roast he was toting something around
wrapped in a paper napkin. Jean saw him put it in his pocket and she
thought it was probably a dead frog or a beetle or something like that, so
she made him fork it over. She unfolded the napkin and derned if there
wasn't a big live coal in it. Dern thing flamed right up in her hand.
Thaddeus bellered like a bull calf. Said he wanted to take it home cause
it was pretty. How he ever carried it around that long without setting
himself afire is what got me."

"That's Thaddeus," I said. "Odd."

"Yeah." Dad was firing his pipe again, flicking the burned match down to
join the dozen or so others by the porch railing. "I guess you might call
him odd. But he'll outgrow it. He hasn't pulled anything like that in a
long time."

"They do outgrow it," I said. "Thank God." And I think it was a real
prayer. I
don't
like kids. "By the way, where's Clyde?"

"Down in the East Pasture, plowing. Say, that tractor I got that last
Christmas you were here is a bear cat. It's lasted me all this time and
I've never had to do a lick of work on it. Clyde's using it today."

"When you get a good tractor you got a good one," I said. "Guess I'll go
down and see the old son of a gun—Clyde, I mean. Haven't seen him in
a coon's age." I gathered up my crutches.