Chapter V

“There should be no deaths!”

Phil turned that one over in his mind, cautiously. A good deal of his attention was needed for the task of nursing his old car along the ruts of the dirt road, but the murmured exclamation impelled him to steal a glance at the boy sitting beside him. This was the spring of Timmy’s tenth year--the sixth year of his friendship with “Uncle” Phil--and those years had taught Phil more than he realized, if less than he had hoped. He knew, for example, that the peculiar vacancy of Timmy’s expression at the moment implied deep thought rather than the complete absence of thought that it suggested. That was a curious characteristic that always made the man a little uneasy. Timmy’s face was sometimes radiantly, spontaneously expressive, the most sensitive of mirrors, and sometimes it was rather mechanically expressive, but it was only expressive in a positive sense. In moments of abstraction or daydreaming there was no faraway look, no frown of concentration. Only blankness.

“The world would get a trifle crowded, you know.”

Timmy leaped the gap easily to connect the two remarks, as Phil had thought he would. “Oh, I didn’t mean there should be no death. I was thinking of something else. That man they found dead in the bush yesterday.”

“A man with a heart condition should never go hunting alone.”

“Was it his heart, Uncle Phil?”

“His heart and his head both, if you ask me. He had a bad heart, all right--I saw him have an attack once. You’d think a man like that would have sense enough to avoid overexertion, but he lost his way and started churning through swamp and brush in a straight line instead of looking for the trail again. Must have acted like a moron, running until he dropped.”

“Would panic make a man do that?”

“It will make a man do any crazy thing imaginable, if he lets it get the upper hand. There’s only a few square miles of marsh and brush here, with the town already crowding up against it. In a few years it will be drained and the land used for industrial development and so on, then the fools will have to find some other way to kill themselves.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, every so often we have to turn out search parties and have a grand shivaree looking for some idiot who usually turns up dead. Drowned himself in two feet of water, or run himself ragged, or even put a bullet through his head for no good reason. It’s happened several times in the past few years, so the place is getting a bad name it doesn’t deserve. Even the search parties often get themselves balled up and mill around in circles, perfect examples of mass hysteria. Sometimes I get fed up with the human race.”

“I ... didn’t know. I mean, about the ... deaths.”

Phil laughed outright at the tragic tone.

“Oh, come now! Let’s not be morbid about it! You wanted to drive out here, remember.”

“I still do, Uncle Phil. You and Dad were talking about how you used to come out here every spring when you were kids, to collect specimens, and it sounded like fun.”

“So it was ... in those days. This old dirt road leads well in toward the center. I used to spend a whole day hiking along here with my dog, just rooting around and having a grand time. It’s a pity we outgrow the best things in life. Childhood scenes should be remembered, not revisited. We can remember, but we can’t recapture. A few years ago I wanted some nature photographs so of course I came out here, sure I’d get some beauties. I don’t know. I started out in high spirits, recognizing every rotted old stump along the way, but somehow it all turned to ashes. I lost interest and turned back without taking a single exposure--almost hating the place, in fact, as if it had let me down. Strange that a place I loved as a kid should seem so empty and uninviting now.” He put on the brakes and looked around morosely.

“Don’t you want to go any farther, Uncle Phil?”

“What for? You can see how overgrown the road is getting. I’ll be lucky if I can find a clearing to turn around. There’s nothing of interest up ahead, Timmy. The road dies out and then there’s a couple of miles or so of swamp and flies. It’s getting dusk, too--”

“I’d like to get out for a minute.”

“Oh. Well, O. K., but make it snappy.”

He settled back listlessly as the boy climbed out, holding the door for the dog to follow.

“Do you have to take that mutt ... never mind, go ahead.”

The boy wandered off to the side of the road and Phil listened to the rustle of bushes, wondering at his own irritation. He felt ill at ease, anxious to be away. He started as Timmy came up beside him on the left of the car.

“That was quick.”

“Yeah.” The boy was holding a spray of flowering shrub and his hand passed casually over the flowers in a light caress. “Say, hasn’t this flower got a sweet smell, Uncle Phil? Here, smell it.”

“It’s a pretty flower, Timmy, but that stuff has no perfume.” He accepted the branch automatically, lifted it to his nostrils.

Time stopped.

He thought he felt a thump against the side of the car, but the impression faded before it was fully born. In a remote corner of his mind the ticking of his watch sounded as a cold, measured rhythm, a metronome with delusions of syncopation. He sat motionless, his forearm resting on the steering wheel, the spray of blossoms caressing his cheek, his mind stunned by the anaesthetic he drew in with each breath. He was as one lost in thought, his eyes open but unseeing, observing but not interpreting.

There was no sense of duration, of the passage of seconds or minutes. There was only a dream in which, suddenly, a gentle mind made its presence known. Concepts tapped lightly at his own mind and an automatic process of interpretation winnowed and equated until a gentle voice seemed to speak. The words were few, merely computed associations keyed to understanding, and with them were perfectly and intimately synchronized fragments of emotion and vision, softly washing over the surface of his mind.

(Urgency) Attend--attend! Challonari! Attend!

An impression of convolutions drifted through his mind--a shape, perhaps, and a color. He felt no curiosity, and let the impression drift. As a sunbather drowsing on a crowded beach, hearing the background hum of the crowd and now and then a more clearly spoken phrase, so he caught the edge of this communication. It was not for him. A second mind entered... was it a mind? Yes, and yet very different. It was strong, but limited--perhaps childlike, in some ways. Alive after a fashion, it was receptive of emotion up to a point and even capable of emotion--up to a point. It seemed an embryo mind, in some ways well developed and in others with no potential whatever.

(RELIEF) IDENTITY BLURRED ... KNOW/NOT KNOW. (PERPLEXITY) NO PRECEDENT ... REQUIRE INSTRUCTIONS. (CONFIDENCE/TRUST) INSTRUCT PLEASE.

Instructions (Decisive) Sleep ... sleep ... sleep.

(AGITATION) IDENTITY NOT MENTOR ... INSTRUCTIONS INVOLVE BASIC DISOBEDIENCE (CONFUSION/DISTRESS) CANNOT OBEY/DISOBEY ... DILEMMA INSOLUBLE TO CHALLONARI (PLEADING) REVISE INSTRUCTIONS PLEASE.

(Sorrow) Cannot revise. Identity mentor/not mentor. Challonari must obey identity.

(GREAT AGITATION) ACCEPT IDENTITY MENTOR/NOT MENTOR ... CANNOT RECONCILE BASIC CONFLICTS ... CANNOT OBEY/DISOBEY (SUDDEN HOPE) LOGICAL DIVERGENCE PERMISSIBLE ... SIMPLIFY EXPLANATION PLEASE.

(Reluctance/hesitation) Intelligent identities here ... unable communicate ... Challonari. Result ... so. (Pain) Communication ... so. (Wave pattern).

(UNHESITATING) ILLOGICAL/REJECT ... COMMUNICATION DESCRIBED IMPOSSIBLY LIMITED ... INCONSISTENT/HIGH-LEVEL INTELLIGENCE.

Challonari limited ... must accept. (Command) Challonari sleep ... sleep ... sleep.

(EXTREME AGITATION) CANNOT/MUST OBEY.

(Command/pity) Challonari has destroyed intelligence! Must sleep ... sleep ... sleep!

(AGONY ... HORROR/CONFLICT ... INSANITY).

Challonari! (No response. Grief) Ultimate withdrawal ... Challonari! Challonari!

Phil frowned, looking at his empty hand. It seemed to him that the spray of flowers had inexplicably vanished. There was an elusive sense of disorientation, a feeling of something overlooked. There was the tag-end of a remembered grief. There was--

“You were right, Uncle Phil. They have no scent.”

“What?” He looked around blankly, saw Timmy tossing the spray aside. “Oh ... there it is. I thought I ... uh ... forget what I was going to say.” Two voices that were not voices--a dream, a despairing cry. An elusive memory faded, faded. “There’s mud on your cheek, Timmy. Did you fall?”

“No ... that is, yes.” Timmy scrubbed his cheek industriously.

“Make up your mind. Hurt yourself?”

“No, I’m all right.”

“Well, whip around to the other side and hop in.” Phil watched him in the rear-view mirror and noted the hasty dab at moist eyes. It seemed like a significant giveaway, but he couldn’t imagine why. “Get your mutt in and let’s go.”

“Come on, Homer.” The boy settled himself with his dog between his feet, and Phil laughed, his good spirits returned. He turned the car without much trouble and they bumped back over the wagon ruts.

“Why do you call him Homer, Timmy?”

“Well, on account of the Odyssey, you know.”

“I see. Some day when I have a clear mind and a couple of hours to spare, you can explain the connection between Homer’s Odyssey and a flea-bitten semi-airdale.”

They rode in silence for a while, until the dirt road changed to pavement. Phil let his thoughts wander idly, thinking of nothing in particular. Scraps of this and that seemed to float to the surface and drift out of reach before he could capture them, had he been interested in trying. One fragment somehow caught in an eddy and remained in sight long enough to draw his attention.

“Challonari,” he said, wonderingly, and almost ditched them as stabbing pain shot through his temples. He held the wheel with one hand, the other clapped for a moment to his brow. “Don’t do that!” he snapped angrily.

“W-what, Uncle Phil?”

“Sorry, Timmy, I didn’t mean you. I don’t know who I meant ... or, rather, what I meant, of course. I seem to be pretty confused tonight. I even startled poor old Homer with that swerve. Get his muddy feet off the cushions, Timmy.” Homer sank back obediently to his usual place between Timmy’s feet, but his muzzle rested on the boy’s muddied knees and his brown eyes regarded both of them at the same time. Apparently he was not convinced that the upheavals were over.

“What does ‘challonari’ mean, Uncle Phil?”

“Oh ... that. Just something that came to mind.”

“But what does it mean?”

“I don’t really know, Timmy ... something about convolutions or a convoluted shape, I think, but that’s only part of it. There are connotations of ... of intelligence? No ... ridiculous. How can you have a convoluted intelligence? But a brain is convoluted and to a greater or lesser degree intelligent. The ... um ... the question of degree comes into it, I think. A brain of limited intelligence, then, though damned if I know why I think of it as limited. Challonari ... challonari. It’s not English and it doesn’t sound like a technical word, but I must have heard it in connection with something ... quite recently, too.”

“Sort of rhymes with ‘shivaree.’”

“Only sort-of, Timmy. You wouldn’t make a good poet. Shivaree--challonari. I mentioned shivaree when we were talking about people getting lost in the bush, didn’t I? Did it have some connection with that? But how?”