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Burkhalter's home. He sent his thought ahead, and it touched Ethel's and
paused very briefly to reassure her.
Then it thrust on, and went into the sleeping mind of a little boy who,
confused and miserable, had finally cried himself to sleep. There were only
dreams in that mind now, a little discolored, a little stained, but they could
be cleansed. And would be.
ABSALOM
At dusk Joel Locke came home from the university where he held the chair of
psychonamics. He came quietly into the house, by a side door, and stood
listening, a tall, tight-lipped man of forty with a faintly sardonic mouth and
cool gray eyes. He could hear the precipitron humming. That meant that Abigail
Schuler, the housekeeper, was busy with her duties. Locke smiled slightly and
turned toward a panel in the wall that opened at his approach.
The small elevator took him noiselessly upstairs.
There, he moved with curious stealth. He went directly to a door at the end of
the hall and paused before it, his head bent, his eyes unfocused. He heard
nothing. Presently he opened the door and stepped into the room.
Instantly the feeling of unsureness jolted back, freezing him where he stood.
He made no sign, though his mouth tightened. He forced himself to remain quiet
as he glanced around.
It could have been the room of a normal twenty-year-old, not a boy of eight.
Tennis racquets were heaped in a disorderly fashion against a pile of book
records. The thiaminizer was turned on, and
Locke automatically clicked the switch over. Abruptly he turned. The televisor
screen was blank, yet he could have sworn that eyes had been watching him from
it.
This wasn't the first time it had happened.
After a while Locke turned again and squatted to examine the book reels. He
picked out one labeled
BRIAFF ON ENTROPIC LOGIC and turned the cylinder over in his hands, scowling.
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Then he replaced it and went out of the room, with a last, considering look at
the televisor.
Downstairs Abigail Schuler was fingering the Mastermaid switchboard. Her prim
mouth was as tight as the severe bun of gray-shot hair at the back of her
neck.
"Good evening," Locke said. "Where's Absalom?"
"Out playing, Brother Locke," the housekeeper said formally. "You're home
early. I haven't finished the living room yet."
'Well, turn on the ions and let 'em play," Locke said. "It won't take long.
I've got some papers to correct, anyway."
He started out, but Abigail coughed significantly.
"Well?"
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"He's looking peaked."
"Then outdoor exercise is what he needs," Locke said shortly. "I'm going to
send him to a summer camp."
"Brother Locke," Abigail said, "I don't see why you don't let him go to Baja
California. He's set his heart on it. You let him study all the hard subjects
he wanted before. Now you put your foot down. It's none of my affair, but I
can tell he's pining."
"He'd pine worse if I said yes. I've my reasons for not wanting him to study
entropic logic. Do you know what it involves?"
"I don't-you know I don't. I'm not an educated woman Brother Locke. But
Absalom is bright as a button."
Locke made an impatient gesture.
"You have a genius for understatement," he said. "Bright as a button!" Then he
shrugged and moved to the window, looking down at the play court below where
his eight-year-old son played handball.
Absalom did not look up. He seemed engrossed in his game. But Locke, watching.
felt a cool, stealthy terror steal through his mind, and behind his back his
hands clenched together.
A boy who looked ten, whose maturity level was twenty, and yet who was still a
child of eight. Not easy to handle. There were many parents just now with the
same problem-something was happening to the graph curve that charts the
percentage of child geniuses born in recent times. Something had begun to stir
lazily far back in the brains of the coming generations and a new species, of
a sort, was coming slowly into being. Locke knew that well. In his own time
he, too, had been a child genius.
Other parents might meet the problem in other ways, he thought stubbornly. Not
himself. He knew what was best for Absalom. Other parents might send their
genius children to one of the crèches where they could develop among their own
kind. Not Locke.
"Absalom's place is here," he said aloud. 'With me, where I can-" He caught
the housekeeper's eye and shrugged again, irritably, going back to the
conversation that had broken off. "Of course he's bright. But not bright
enough yet to go to Baja California and study entropic logic. Entropic logic!
It's too advanced for the boy. Even you ought to realize that. It isn't like a
lollypop you can hand the kid-first making sure there's castor oil in the
bathroom closet. Absalom's immature.
It would actually be dangerous to send him to the Baja California University
now to study with men three times his age. It would involve mental strain he
isn't fit for yet. I don't want him turned into a psychopath." Abigail's prim
mouth pursed up sourly.
"You let him take calculus."
"Oh, leave me alone." Locke glanced down again at the small boy on the play
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court. "I think," he said slowly, "that it's time for another rapport with
Absalom."
The housekeeper looked at him sharply, opened her thin lips to speak, and then
closed them with an almost audible snap of disapproval. She didn't understand
entirely, of course, how a rapport worked or what it accomplished. She only
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