Slan

Chapter Four

For Jommy Cross there were long spells of darkness and mental blankness that merged finally into a steely gray light through which vague thoughts at last wove a web of reality. He opened his eyes, conscious of great weakness.

He was lying in a little room, staring up at a smeared, dirty ceiling, from which some of the plaster had fallen. The walls were an uneven gray, splotched with age. The pane of the single window was cracked and discolored; the light that forced its way through fell across the end of the kon bedstead in a little pool and lay there as if exhausted from the effort.

Its wan brightness revealed bedclothes that were remnants of what had once been gray blankets. At one edge, straw stuck out from the old mattress, and the whole thing stank with a stale, unaired odor. Sick though he still was, Jommy flung the foul coverings from him and started to slip out of bed. A chain rattled menacingly, and there was sudden pain in his right ankle. He lay back, panting from the exertion, and stunned. He was chained to this loathsome bed!

Heavy footsteps aroused him from the stupor into which he had fallen. He opened his eyes to see a tall, gaunt woman in a formless gray dress standing at the door, her black eyes gleaming down at him like bright beads.

"Ah," she said. "Granny's new boarder has come out of his fever, and now we can get acquainted. That's good! That's good!"

She rubbed her dry hands together raspingly. "We're going to get along beautifully, aren't we? But you've got to earn your keep. No slackers can leech off Granny. No, sir. We'll have to have a heart-to-heart talk about that Yes, yes," she leered at him over clasped hands, "a heart-to-heart talk." Jommy stared up at the old woman in repelled fascination. As the thin, slightly stooped creature sank with a grunt, onto the foot of the bed, he drew his legs up against his body, withdrawing as far from her as the chain would allow. It struck him that he had never seen a face that more nearly expressed the malignant character that lay behind the mask of old flesh. With rising disgust, he compared her thin, lined, egg-shaped head with the mind inside; and it was all there. Every twisted line in that wrecked face had its counterpart in the twisted brain. A whole world of lechery dwelt within the confines of that shrewd mind.

His thought must have shown in his face, for she said with sudden savagery, "Yes, yes, to look at Granny you'd never think she was once a famous beauty. You'd never suspect that men once worshiped the white loveliness of her. But don't forget that this old hag saved your life. Never forget that, or Granny may turn your ungrateful hide over to the police. And how they'd love to have you. How they would love it! But Granny's kind to them that's kind to her and does as she wants."

Granny! Was there ever a term of affection more prostituted than by this old woman calling herself Granny!

He searched her mind, trying to find in its depths her real name. But there was only a blur of pictures of a silly, stage-struck girl, profligate of her charms, ruined, degraded to the level of the street, hardened and destroyed by adversity. Her identity was buried in a cesspool of the evil she had done and thought. There was an endless story of thieving. There was the dark kaleidoscope of more loathsome crimes. There was murder committed – Shuddering, immeasurably weary now that the first stimulus of her presence was fading, Jommy withdrew from the abomination that was Granny's mind. The old wretch leaned toward him, her eyes like gimlets drilling into his.

"It's true," she asked, "that slans can read minds?"

"Yes," Jommy admitted, "and I can see what you're thinking, but it's no use."

She chuckled grimly. "Then you don't read all that's in Granny's mind. Granny's no fool. Granny's smart; and she knows better than to think she can force a slan to stay and work for her. He has to be free for what she wants him to do. He's got to see that, being a slan, this will be the safest place for him until he grows up. Now, isn't Granny clever?"

Jommy sighed sleepily. "I can see what's in your mind, but I can't talk to you now. When we slans are sick – and that's not often – we just sleep and sleep. My waking up the way I did means that my subconscious was worried and forced me awake because it thought I was in danger. We slans have a lot of protections like that. But now I've got to go back to sleep and get well."

The coal– black eyes grew wide. The lustful mind recoiled, briefly accepting defeat in its main purpose of making immediate wealth from its prey. Greed yielded momentarily to violent curiosity, but there was no intention of letting him sleep.

"Is it true that slans make monsters out of human beings?"

Fury burned through Jommy's brain. Weariness fell away from him. He sat up, in rage.

"That's a lie! It's one of those horrible lies that human beings tell about us to make us seem inhuman, to make everybody hate us, kill us. It – "

He sank back, exhausted, rage evaporating. "My mother and father were the finest people alive," he said softly, "and they were terribly unhappy. They met on the street one day, and saw in each other's minds that they were slans. Until then they'd lived the loneliest of lives, they'd never harmed anyone. It's the human beings who are the criminals. Dad didn't fight as hard as he could have when they cornered him and shot him in the back. He could have fought. He should have! Because he had the most terrible weapon the world has ever seen – so terrible he wouldn't even carry it with him for fear he might use it. When I'm fifteen I'm supposed to – "

He stopped, appalled at his indiscretion. For an instant he felt so sick, so weary, that his mind refused to hold the burden of his thought. He knew only that he had given away the greatest secret in slan history, and if this grasping old wretch turned him over to the police in his present weakened condition, all was lost. Slowly, he breathed easier. He saw that her mind hadn't really caught the enormous implication in his revelation. She hadn't really heard him at the moment when he mentioned the weapon – for that rapacious brain had already been too long away from its main purpose. And now, like a vulture, it swooped down on prey it knew to be exhausted.

"Granny's glad to know that Jommy's such a nice boy. Poor, starving old Granny needs a young slan to make money for her and him. You won't mind working for tired old Granny, will you?" Her voice hardened. "Beggars can't be choosers, you know."

The knowledge that his secret was safe acted like a drug. His eyelids drooped. He said, "Really, I can't talk to you now; I've got to sleep."

He saw that she wasn't going to let him go. Her mind had already realized what could agitate him. She spoke sharply, not because she was interested, but to keep him awake.

"What is a slan? What makes you different? Where did slans come from in the first place? They were made, weren't they – like machines?"

Funny how that could bring a surge of responsive anger when his mind saw that that was her purpose. Dimly he realized that bodily weakness had taken normal restraints from his mind. He said in a dull rage, "That's another one of the lies. I was born just like anyone else. So were my parents. Beyond that, I don't know."

"Your parents must have known!" the old woman prodded him.

Jommy shook his head. His eyes closed. "No, Mother said Dad was always too busy to investigate the mystery of the slans. But now, leave me alone. I know what you're trying to do and I know what you want, but it's dishonest and I won't do it."

"That's stupid," the old woman snapped angrily, on her subject at last. "Is it dishonest to rob people who live by robbery and cheating? Shall you and Granny eat crusts of bread when the world is so rich that every treasury bulges with gold, every granary bulges with wheat, and honey flows in the streets? Bah for your honesty! That's what Granny says. How can a slan, hunted like a rat, talk of being honest?"

Jommy was silent and not only because of his need for sleep. He had had thoughts like that himself. The old woman pounded on:

"Where will you go? What will you do? Will you live in the streets? What about winter? Where in all this world can a little slan boy go?"

Her voice sank, in an attempt at sympathy. "Your poor, dear mother would have wanted you to do what I'm asking, She had no love for human beings. I've saved the paper to show you how they shot her down like a dog when she tried to escape. Would you like to see it?"

"No!" said Jommy, but his mind whirled.

The harsh voice pressed on. "Don't you want to do everything you can against a world that's so cruel? Make them pay? Make them regret what they've done? You're not afraid?"

He was silent. The old woman's voice took on a whine. "Life's too hard for old Granny – too hard. If you won't help Granny, she'll have to go on doing other things. You saw in her mind about them. But she promises not to do that any more if you'll help her. Think of that. She'll stop all the wicked things she's had to do for a living in this cold, cruel world."

Jommy felt beaten. He said slowly, "You're a rotten, miserable old scoundrel, and someday I'll kill you!"

"Then you'll stay until that 'someday,' " Granny said triumphantly. Her wrinkled fingers rubbed together like dry scaled snakes crawling over each other. "And you'll do as Granny says, too, or she'll turn you over to the police so fast – Welcome to our little home, Jommy. Welcome. You'll be better the next time you waken, Granny hopes."

"Yes," Jommy said weakly. "I'll be better."

He slept.

Three days later, Jommy followed the old woman through the kitchen toward the back door. The kitchen was a bare little room, and Jommy closed his mind against the dirt and untidiness. He thought: The old woman was right. Horrible as the life promised to be, this shack, sunk here in the oblivion of poverty, would make an ideal retreat for a slan boy who had to wait at least six years before he could visit the hiding place of his father's secrets; who had to grow up before he could hope to carry out the great things that had to be done.

The thought flew as the door opened and he saw what lay beyond. He stopped short, stunned by the vista that opened up before him. Never in all the world had he expected to see anything like this.

First was the yard, piled with old metal and junk of every description. A yard barren of grass or trees, without beauty; a discordant, jangling stretch of sterility enclosed by a rusting, twisted fence of rotten wood and wire. A small, ramshackle barn tottered precariously at the farthest end of the yard. The blurred mind pictures of a horse came from inside. The horse itself was vaguely visible through the open door.

But Jommy's eyes flashed past the yard. His passing glance picked up the unpleasant details; that was all. His mind, his vision, reached beyond the fence, beyond that rickety barn. Beyond, there were trees, little groups of them; and grass – a green, pleasant meadow that sloped toward a broad river, gleaming dully now that the rays of the sun no longer touched it with their shining fire.

But even the meadow (part of a golf course, he noted absently) held his gaze for an instant only. A land of dream began on the opposite shore of the river, a veritable fairyland of growth, a gardener's paradise. Because of some trees that blocked his vision, he could see only a narrow stretch of that Eden, with its sparkling fountains and its square mile on square mile of flowers and terraces and beauty. But that narrow, visible area contained a white pathway.

A pathway! Jommy's mind soared. Unutterable emotion choked his throat. The path was visible, running in a geometrically straight line away from his gaze. It ran into the dim distance, a gleaming ribbon that faded into the mist of miles. And it was there, at the ultimate limit of his vision, far beyond the normal horizon, that he saw the palace.

Only part of the base of that tremendous, that incredible structure reached up from the other side o! the skyline. A thousand feet it reared and then it merged into a tower that floored another five hundred feet into the heavens. Stupendous tower! Half a thousand feet of jewellike lacework that seemed almost fragile, sparkling there with all the colors of the rainbow, a translucent, shining, fantastic thing, built in the noble style of the old days; not merely ornamental – in its very design, its fine-wrought magnificence, it was ornament in itself.

Here in this glory of architectural triumph the slans had created their masterpiece, only to have it fall to the victors after the war of disaster.

It was too beautiful. It hurt his eyes, hurt his mind with the thoughts that it brought. To think that he had lived so close to this city for nine years and had never before seen this glorious achievement of his race! His mother's reason for not showing it to him seemed mistaken, now that he had the reality before him. "It'll make you bitter, Jommy, to realize that the palace of the slans now belongs to Kier Gray and his ghoulish crew. Besides, there are special precautions against us at that end of the city. You'll see it soon enough."

But it wasn't soon enough. The sense of something missed burned bright and painful. It would have given him courage in his blacker moments to know of this noble monument to his people.

His mother had said, "Human beings will never know all the secrets of that building. There are mysteries there, forgotten rooms and passages, hidden wonders that even the slans no longer know about, except in a vague way. Kier Gray doesn't realize it, but all the weapons and machines the human beings have searched for so desperately are buried right in that building."

A harsh voice jarred his ears. Jommy tore his gaze reluctantly from the grandeur across the river and became aware of Granny. He saw she had hitched the old horse to her junk wagon.

"Quit your daydreaming," she commanded. "And don't get any funny ideas into your head. The palace and palace grounds are not for slans. And now, get in under these blankets, and keep your mind still. There's a busybody policeman up the street who'd better not find out about you yet. We've got to hurry."

Jommy's eyes turned to the palace for one last lingering look. So that palace wasn't for slans! He felt a queer thrill. Someday he'd go over there to look for Kier Gray. And when that day came – The thought stopped; he was trembling with rage and hatred against the men who had murdered his father and his mother.