The Science Fiction anthology. Andre Norton
that he would learn it faster if she avoided the word.
The winter passed, and the next summer, and two more summers.
Earl was ready for college. They had successfully kept their secret. They had been vigilant in every detail. Earl referred to the “damn Agents” now with a curl of his lip. They had been successful in contacting other Konvs, and sometimes visited them at a remote rendezvous.
“When you have finished college,” Mrs. Jamieson told her son, “we will go to Centaurus.”
“Why not now?”
“Because when you get there they will need men who can contribute to the development of the planet. Stinson is a physicist, Benjamin a metallurgist, Straus a doctor. But Straus is an old man by this time. A young doctor will be needed. Study hard, Earl. Learn all you can. Even the great ones get sick.”
She did not mention her secret hope, that before they left Earth he would have fully avenged his father’s death. He was clever and intelligent.
He could kill many Agents.
So she exhumed the money she had hidden more than ten years before. The house beside the Little Wolf river was sold. They found a modest bungalow within walking distance of the University’s medical school. Mrs. Jamieson furnished it carefully but, oddly, rather lavishly.
This was her husband’s money she was spending now. It needed to last only a few years. Then they would leave Earth forever.
A room was built on the east side of the bungalow, with its own private entrance. This was Earl’s room. Ostensibly the private entrance was for convenience due to the irregular hours of college students.
It was also convenient for coming home late at night after Agent hunting.
Mrs. Jamieson was becoming obvious.
Excitement brought color to her cheeks when she thought of Earl facing one of them—a lean, cunning jaguar facing a fat, lazy bear. It was her notion that federal Agents were evil creatures, tools of a decadent, bloodthirsty society, living off the fat of the land.
She painted the room herself, in soft, pastel colors. When it was finished she showed Earl regally into the room, making a big joke of it.
“Here you can study and relax, and have those bull sessions students are always having,” she said.
“There will be no friends,” he answered, “not here. No Konvs will be at the university.”
“Why not? Stinson selected only educated, intelligent people. When one dies the cylinder is taken and adjusted to a new thought pattern—usually a person from the same family. I would say it is very likely that Konvs will be found here.”
He shook his head. “No. They knew we were coming, and no one said a word about others being here. I’m afraid we are alone.”
“Well, I think not,” she said firmly. “Anyway, the room will be comfortable.”
He shook his head again. “Why can’t I be in the house with you? There are two bedrooms.”
She said quickly, “You can if you wish. I just thought you’d like being alone, at your age. Most boys do.”
“I’m not like most boys, mother. The Konvs saw to that. Sometimes I’m sorry. Back in high school I used to wish I was like the others. Do you remember Lorane Peters?” His mother nodded. “Well, when we were seniors last year she liked me quite a lot. She didn’t say so, but I knew it. She would sit across the aisle from me, and sometimes when I saw how her hair fell over her face when she read, I wanted to lean over and whisper to her, ‘Hey, Lorrie—’ just as if I was human—’can I take you to the basketball game?’“
Mrs. Jamieson turned to leave the room, but he stopped her. “You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t!” she said sharply. “You’re old enough to face realities. You are a Konv. You always will be a Konv. Have you forgotten your own father?”
She turned her back and slammed the door. Earl stood very still for a long time in the room that was to have been happy for him. She was crying just beyond the wall.
Earl did not use the room that first year. He slept in the second bedroom. He did not mention his frustrated desires to be normal, not after the first attempt, but he persisted in his efforts to be so. Use of the cylinder was out of the question for them now, anyway.
In the spring Mrs. Jamieson caught a virus cold which resulted in a long convalescence. Earl moved into the new bedroom. At first she thought he moved in an effort to please her because of the illness, but she soon grew aware of her mistake.
One day he disappeared.
Mrs. Jamieson was alarmed. Had the Agents found him? She watched the papers daily for some word of Konvs being killed.
The second day after his disappearance she found a small item. A Konv had raided the Agent’s office in Stockholm, killing three, and getting killed himself. Mrs. Jamieson dropped the paper immediately and went to Stockholm. She did not consider the risk. In Stockholm she found clothes and made discreet inquiries. The slain man had been a Finnish Konv, one of those left behind by Stinson as an undesirable. His wife had been killed by the Agents the week before. He had gone completely insane and made the raid singlehanded. Mrs. Jamieson read the account of crimes committed by the man and his wife, and determined to prevent Earl from making the mistake of taking on more than he could handle.
When she arrived at her own home, Earl was in his room.
“Where have you been?” she asked petulantly.
“Oh, here and there.”
“I thought you were involved in that fight in Stockholm.”
He shook his head.
She stood in the doorway and watched him leaning over his desk, attempting to write something on a sheet of paper. She was proud of his profile, tow-headed as a boy, handsome in a masculine way. He cracked his knuckles nervously.
“What did you do?” she asked.
Suddenly he flung the pencil down, jumped from his chair and paced the floor. “I talked to an Agent last night,” he said.
“Where?”
“Bangkok.”
Mrs. Jamieson had to sit down. Finally she was able to ask, “How did it happen?”
“I broke into the office there to get at the records. He caught me.”
“What were you looking for?”
“I wanted to learn the names of the men who killed Father.” He said the word strangely. He was unaccustomed to it.
“Did you find them?”
He pointed to the paper on his desk. Mrs. Jamieson, trembling, picked it up and read the names. Seeing them there, written like any other names would be written, made her furious. How could they? How could the names of murderers look like ordinary names? When she thought them in her mind, they even sounded like ordinary names—and they shouldn’t! She had always thought that those names, if she ever saw them, would be filthy, unholy scratches on paper, evil sounds, like the rustle of bedclothes to a jealous lover listening at a keyhole. “Tom Palieu” didn’t sound evil; neither did “Al Jonson.” She was shaken by this more than she would permit Earl to see.
“Why did you want the names?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Curiosity, maybe, or a subconscious desire for revenge. I just wanted to see them.”
“Tell me what happened! If an Agent saw you ... well, either he killed you or you killed him. But you’re here alive.”
“I didn’t kill him. That’s what seems so strange. And he didn’t try to kill me. We didn’t even fight. He didn’t ask why I broke in