“Tim, you’re beyond me! But I still don’t get the joke.”
“The joke is that I did it by mathematics. I calculated what ought to sound like joy, grief, hope, triumph, and all the rest, and—it was just after I had studied harmony; you know how mathematical that is.”
Speechless, Welles nodded.
“I worked out the rhythms from different metabolisms—the way you function when under the influences of these emotions; the way your metabolic rate varies, your heartbeats and respiration and things. I sent it to the director of that orchestra, and he didn’t get the idea that it was a joke—of course I didn’t explain—he produced the music. I get nice royalties from it, too.”
“You’ll be the death of me yet,” said Welles in deep sincerity. “Don’t tell me anything more today; I couldn’t take it. I’m going home. Maybe by tomorrow I’ll see the joke and come back to laugh. Tim, did you ever fail at anything?”
“There are two cabinets full of articles and stories that didn’t sell. Some of them I feel bad about. There was the chess story. You know, in ‘Through the Looking Glass,’ it wasn’t a very good game, and you couldn’t see the relation of the moves to the story very well.”
“I never could see it at all.”
“I thought it would be fun to take a championship game and write a fantasy about it, as if it were a war between two little old countries, with knights and foot-soldiers, and fortified walls in charge of captains, and the bishops couldn’t fight like warriors, and, of course, the queens were women—people don’t kill them, not in hand- to-hand fighting and… well, you see? I wanted to make up the attacks and captures, and keep the people alive, a fairytale war you see, and make the strategy of the game and the strategy of the war coincide, and have everything fit. It took me ever so long to work it out and write it. To understand the game as a chess game and then to translate it into human actions and motives, and put speeches to it to fit different kinds of people. I’ll show it to you. I loved it. But nobody would print it. Chess players don’t like fantasy, and nobody else likes chess. You have to have a very special kind of mind to like both. But it was a disappointment. I hoped it would be published, because the few people who like that sort of thing would like it
“I’m sure I’ll like it.”
“Well, if you do like that sort of thing, it’s what you’ve been waiting all your life in vain for. Nobody else has done it.” Tim stopped, and blushed as red as a beet. “I see what grandmother means. Once you get started bragging, there’s no end to it. I’m sorry, Peter.”
“Give me the story. I don’t mind, Tim—brag all you like to me; I understand. You might blow up if you never expressed any of your legitimate pride and pleasure in such achievements. What I don’t understand is how you have kept it all under for so long.”
“I had to,” said Tim.
The story was all its young author had claimed. Welles chuckled as he read it, that evening. He read it again, and checked all the moves and the strategy of them. It was really a fine piece of work. Then he thought of the symphony, and this time he was able to laugh. He sat up until after midnight, thinking about the boy. Then he took a sleeping pill and went to bed.
The next day he went to see Tim’s grandmother. Mrs. Davis received him graciously.
“Your grandson is a very interesting boy,” said Peter Welles carefully. “I’m asking a favor of you. I am making a study of various boys and girls in this district, their abilities and backgrounds and environment and character traits and things like that. No names will ever be mentioned, of course, but a statistical report will be kept, for ten years or longer, and some case histories might later be published. Could Timothy be included?”
“Timothy is such a good, normal little boy, I fail to see what would be the purpose of including him in such a survey.”
“That is just the point. We are not interested in maladjusted persons in this study. We eliminate all psychotic boys and girls. We are interested in boys and girls who succeed in facing their youthful problems and making satisfactory adjustments to life. If we could study a selected group of such children, and follow their progress for the next ten years at least—and then publish a summary of the findings, with no names used—”
“In that case, I see no objection,” said Mrs. Davis.
“If you’d tell me, then, something about Timothy’s parents—their history?”
Mrs. Davis settled herself for a good long talk.
“Timothy’s mother, my only daughter, Emily,” she began, “was a lovely girl. So talented. She played the violin charmingly. Timothy is like her, in the face, but has his father’s dark hair and eyes. Edwin had very fine eyes.”
“Edwin was Timothy’s father?”
“Yes. The young people met while Emily was at college in the East. Edwin was studying atomics there.”
“Your daughter was studying music?”
“No; Emily was taking the regular liberal arts course. I can tell you little about Edwin’s work, but after their marriage he returned to it and… you understand, it is painful for me to recall this, but their deaths were such a blow to me. They were so young.”
Welles held his pencil ready to write.
“Timothy has never been told. After all, he must grow up in this world, and how dreadfully the world has changed in the past thirty years, Dr. Welles! But you would not remember the day before 1945. You have heard, no doubt of the terrible explosion in the atomic plant, when they were trying to make a new type of bomb? At the time, none of the workers seemed to be injured. They believed the protection was adequate. But two years later they were all dead or dying.”
Mrs. Davis shook her head, sadly. Welles held his breath, bent his head, scribbled.
“Tim was born just fourteen months after the explosion, fourteen months to the day. Everyone still thought that no harm had been done. But the radiation had some effect which was very slow—I do not understand such things—Edwin died, and then Emily came home to us with the boy. In a few months she, too, was gone.
“Oh, but we do not sorrow as those who have no hope. It is hard to have lost her, Dr. Welles, but Mr. Davis and I have reached the time of life when we can look forward to seeing her again. Our hope is to live until Timothy is old enough to fend for himself. We were so anxious about him; but you see he is perfectly normal in every way.”
“Yes.”
“The specialists made all sorts of tests. But nothing is wrong with Timothy.”
The psychiatrist stayed a little longer, took a few more notes, and made his escape as soon as he could. Going straight to the school, he had a few words with Miss Page and then took Tim to his office, where he told him what he had learned.
“You mean—I’m a mutation?”
“A mutant. Yes, very likely you are. I don’t know. But I had to tell you at once.”
“Must be a dominant, too,” said Tim, “coming out this way in the first generation. You mean—there may be more? I’m not the only one?” he added in great excitement. “Oh, Peter, even if I grow up past you I won’t have to be lonely?”
There. He had said it.
“It could be, Tim. There’s nothing else in your family that could account for you.”
“But I have never found anyone at all like me. I would have known. Another boy or girl my age—like me—I would have known.”
“You came West with your mother. Where did the others go, if they existed? The parents must have scattered everywhere, back to their homes all over the country, all over the world. We can trace them, though. And, Tim, haven’t you thought it’s just a little bit strange that with all your pen names and various contacts, people don’t insist more on meeting you? Everything gets done by mail. It’s almost as if the editors are used to people who hide. It’s almost as if people are used to architects and astronomers and composers whom nobody ever sees, who are only names in care of other names at post office boxes. There’s a chance—just a chance, mind you—that there are others. If there are, we’ll find them.”
“I’ll work out a code they will understand,” said Tim, his face screwed up in concentration. “In articles—I’ll do it—several magazines and in letters I can inclose copies—some of my pen friends may be the ones—”
“I’ll hunt up the records—they must be on file somewhere—psychologists and psychiatrists know all kinds of tricks—we can make some excuse to trace them all—the birth records—”
Both of them were talking at once, but all the while Peter Welles was thinking sadly, perhaps he had lost Tim
