'Seen it when?'
'Yesterday morning, before we went into town. On the TV in the living
room.
Toby was watching it ... sort of enraptured like this. Strange.'
She shuddered and reached for the master switch.
'Shut it off.'
'No,' Jack said, reaching in front of Toby to stay her hand. 'Wait.
Let's see.'
'Honey,' she said to Toby, 'what's going on here, what kind of game is
this?'
'No game. I dreamed it, and in the dream I came in then I woke up and
I was here, so we started talking-'
'Does this make any sense to
you?'
she asked Jack.
'Yes. Some.'
'What's going on, Jack?'
'Later.'
'Am I out of the loop on something? What is this all about?' When he
didn't respond, she said, 'I don't like this.'
'Neither do I,' Jack said. 'But let's see where it ads, whether we can
figure this out.'
'Figure what out?' The boy's fingers pecked busily at the keys.
Although no words appeared on the screen, it seemed as if new colors
and fresh patterns appeared and progressed in a rhythm that matched his
typing.
'Yesterday, on the TV . . . I asked Toby what it was,' Heather said.
'He didn't know. But he said . . . he liked it.' Toby stopped
typing. The colors faded, then suddenly intensified and flowed in
wholly new patterns and shades.
'No,' the boy said. 'No what?' Jack asked. 'Not talking to you.
Talking to ...
it.' And to the - screen, he said, 'No. Go away.' Waves of sour
green. Blossoms of blood red appeared at random points across the
screen, turned black, flowered into red again, then wilted, streamed, a
viscous pus yellow. The endlessly mutagenic display dazed Jack when he
watched it too long, and he could understand how it could completely
capture the immature mind of an eight-year-old boy, hypnotize him.
As Toby began to hammer the keyboard once more, the colors on the
screen faded--then abruptly brightened again, although in new shades
and in yet more varied and fluid forms.
'It's a language,' Heather exclaimed softly. For a moment Jack stared
at her, uncomprehending. She said, 'The colors, the patterns. A
language.' He checked the monitor. 'How can it be a language?'
'It is,' she insisted. 'There aren't any repetitive shapes, nothing
that could be letters, words.'
'Talking,' Toby confirmed. He pounded the keyboard. As before, the
patterns and colors acquired a rhythm consistent with the pace at which
he input his side of the conversation. 'A tremendously complicated and
