Caviar by Theodore Sturgeon

Author:Theodore Sturgeon [Sturgeon, Theodore]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

It was almost exactly the same time the next morning when Mayb was summoned from the Assembly Room where she was teaching her children to sing

“There was a young fellow called Smitti

Who lived in an abnormal city.

His children were bugs

And two-headed slugs,

Oh, dear! What a terrible pity!”

and in the midst of the children’s shrill merriment at Smitti’s comic predicament, she got the Examiner’s call.

The thin veil of laughter fell from her face and she rose. “Free time!” she called. The children took the signal as a permission to play; the hidden watchers behind one-way glass in Observation 1 and 2 bent toward their panes, Normalcy Reaction charts at their elbows.

Mayb hurried to the Examiner’s office. She found him alone rubbing his hands. “Well, Mayb! I knew it would be all right.”

“It’s about Andi? You’ve found him? Did you get the police?”

“She got them.” He laughed. “She got them, herself. She just couldn’t take it—his own mother.”

“Where is he?”

“She’s bringing him … and I’ll bet that’s her, right now.”

The door swung open. An Under-Guardian said, “Library-Beth, Examiner.”

Pushing past the underling, Library-Beth entered. Her flaming hair was unkempt; her face was white and her eyes wild. In her arms she carried the limp form of Andi.

“Here he is … here! Take him; I can’t stand it! I thought I could, but I can’t. I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m a good citizen; I want to do my duty; I care about the law, and the Norm, and the race. I was crazy, I guess. I had a thing all made up to tell you, about Andi, about him surviving, that was it—he can survive better than anyone else on earth, he can; he can get anything he wants just by wanting it, and no one can say no to him, not so it makes any difference to him.” It poured from her in a torrent. She put the limp form down on the settee. “But I didn’t know it was like this. And he badgered me all night and I couldn’t sleep, and he ran away in the morning and I couldn’t find him, and he hated me and when I saw him and ran to him he hated me with his mind, more and more and more the nearer I got, so that I couldn’t touch him, and people gathered round and looked at him as if he was a monster, and he is, and he hated them all, every one of them. And somebody got a policeman and he threw sleep-dust, and Andi made a hate then that made everyone cry out and run away, and he hated everyone until he fell asleep. Now take him. Where is that paper? Where is it?”

“Beth, Beth, don’t. Please don’t. You’ll flurry everyone in the place, and all the children.”

“Where’s the paper?” she screamed, joltingly. It made Mayb’s ears ring.

The Examiner went for the form, handed two copies and a stylus to Beth. She signed them, and then collapsed weeping into a chair.

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