“I need some help,” he said, and they nodded soberly, as if they had guessed he needed help.
“I want to build a house,” he explained. “A big house. Much larger than the usual house.”
Riggs said, “We’ll draw the plans for you. Do anything else that you—”
“A house,” Young went on, “about four or five times as big as the ordinary house. Four or five times normal scale, I mean. Doors twenty-five to thirty feet high and everything else in proportion.”
“Neighbors or privacy?” asked Stanford.
“Privacy,” said Young.
“We’ll take care of it,” promised Riggs. “Leave the matter of the house to us.”
Young stood for a long moment, looking at the two of them. Then he said, “I thank you, gentlemen. I thank you for your helpfulness and your understanding. But most of all I thank you for not asking any questions.”
He turned slowly and walked out of the room and they sat in silence for minutes after he was gone.
Finally, Stanford offered a deduction: “It will have to be a place that a boy would like. Woods to run in and a little stream to fish in and a field where he can fly his kites. What else could it be?”
“He’s been out ordering children’s furniture and toys,” Riggs agreed. “Stuff from five thousand years ago. The kind of things he used when he was a child. But scaled to adult size.”
“Now,” said Stanford, “he wants a house built to the same proportions. A house that will make him think or help him believe that he is a child. But will it work, Riggs? His body will not change. He cannot make it change. It will only be in his mind.”
“Illusion,” declared Riggs. “The illusion of bigness in relation to himself. To a child, creeping on the floor, a door is twenty-five to thirty feet high, relatively. Of course the child doesn’t know that. But Andrew Young does. I don’t see how he’ll overcome that.”
“At first,” suggested Stanford, “he will know that it’s illusion, but after a time, isn’t there a possibility that it will become reality so far as he’s concerned? That’s why he needs our help. So that the house will not be firmly planted in his memory as a thing that’s merely out of proportion … so that it will slide from illusion into reality without too great a strain.”
“We must keep our mouths shut.” Riggs nodded soberly. “There must be no interference. It’s a thing he must do himself … entirely by himself. Our help with the house must be the help of an unseen, silent agency. Like brownies, I think the term was that he used, we must help and be never seen. Intrusion by anyone would introduce a jarring note and would destroy illusion and that is all he has to work on. Illusion pure and simple.”
“Others have tried,” objected Stanford, pessimistic again. “Many others. With gadgets and machines. …”
“None has tried it,” said Riggs, “with the power of mind alone. With the sheer determination to wipe out five thousand years of memory.”
“That will be his stumbling block,” said Stanford. “The old, dead memories are the things he has to beat. He has to get rid of them … not just bury them, but get rid of them for good and all, forever.”
“He must do more than that,” said Riggs. “He must replace his memories with the outlook he had when he was a child. His mind must be washed out, refreshed, wiped clean and shining and made new again … ready to live another five thousand years.”
The two men sat and looked at one another and in each other’s eyes they saw a single thought—the day would come when they, too, each of them alone, would face the problem Andrew Young faced.
“We must help,” said Riggs, “in every way we can and we must keep watch and we must be ready … but Andrew Young cannot know that we are helping or that we are watching him. We must anticipate the materials and tools and the aids that he may need.”
Stanford started to speak, then hesitated, as if seeking in his mind for the proper words.
“Yes,” said Riggs. “What is it?”
“Later on,” Stanford managed to say, “much later on, toward the very end, there is a certain factor that we must supply. The one thing that he will need the most and the one thing that he cannot think about, even in advance. All the rest can be stage setting and he can still go on toward the time when it becomes reality. All the rest may be make-believe, but one thing must come as genuine or the entire effort will collapse in failure.”
Riggs nodded. “Of course. That’s something we’ll have to work out carefully.”
“If we can,” Stanford said.
The yellow button over here and the red one over there and the green one doesn’t fit, so I’ll throw it on the floor and just for the fun of it, I’ll put the pink one in my mouth and someone will find me with it and they’ll raise a ruckus because they will be afraid that I will swallow it.
And there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that I love better than a full-blown ruckus. Especially if it is over me.
“Ug,” said Andrew Young, and he swallowed the button.
He sat stiff and straight in the towering high chair and then, in a fury, swept the oversized muffin tin and its freight of buttons crashing to the floor.
For a second he felt like weeping in utter frustration and then a sense of shame crept in on him.
Big baby, he said to himself.
Crazy to be sitting in an overgrown high chair, playing with buttons and mouthing baby talk and trying to force a mind
