John Brunner - The Whole Man

The memory of near-disaster, still only a few hours old, was far too fresh for Howson to have conceived any new ambitions. He had no notion of what he wanted to do with his developing talent; using it was giving him a sense of giddy, fearful excitement, like steering a fast car for the first time, and that was all he could think about as yet. His instinct still warned him that he should seek obscurity for fear of consequences.

Yet — here was the chance he craved to be important to somebody. Not much of a somebody, true: just a deprived, unhappy, physically handicapped girl in a plight resembling his own.

It was too early to decide which of these opposing tugs would eventually win out, but for the moment at any rate he had no alternative plan to granting the girl’s desire: be with me!

She chuckled, a thick inhuman sound, and gave a wide grin, and caught up the forgotten bag of food to force it into his hand and make him eat.

Uncounted, time slipped by. It seemed to carry him forward by simple inertia. Things were done, as he grew accustomed to a fugitive existence; by night there were furtive expeditions in search of food, when his telepathic gift gave warning of anyone approaching and there was time to dodge out of sight, and by day there were tasks in plenty which he could not have attempted by himself.

Hidden behind a low wall of the old warehouse, a sort of crude lean-to took shape. As unquestioning as a dog, the girl brought old planks and rusty nails and found rocks to use as hammers. She was stronger than Howson, of course. Almost anyone was stronger than he was.

She never left him after their original encounter. Her father was a shred of mist compared to the presence of Howson who could actually communicate with her; the mere idea of separation from him for longer than a few minutes terrified her, implying a permanent return to her old loneliness. At first he was worried that someone would come looking for her. Then he decided the risk was negligible, and turned his attention to his own problems.

He spent long hours in silent contemplation, his mind clouded with misery, thinking of all the money he had briefly had, now hidden in his old room and impossible to recover—of his new jacket and shoes, which he dared not go to fetch. How long it would be before he could venture back on the streets, he couldn’t tell. Once or twice he picked up the stray thoughts of a patrolling policeman, and knew there was still a description of him being circulated.

This squalid, vegetable existence which was all he felt safe in allowing himself began to prey on him after a few days. Since he could not escape from it physically, he evaded it mentally, day-dreaming after the old fashion but trying to fit his new gifts into the scheme.

The movies about telepathists which he had seen provided a ready-made frame to work with. Curious, he inquired of the girl as to her enjoyment of movies and TV, and found what he expected — that the stories mattered little to her, since she could hardly follow them without the dialogue, but that the color and glamour obsessed her.

Tentatively, borrowing from her own long-time fantasy about the rich father and adoring mother who would come to claim their long-lost child and bring the gift of speech, he tried to make it clear what she had been missing by not hearing anything. As they huddled together for warmth in their draughty shed of a home, he elaborated huge mental dramas, where he was tall, straight-backed, handsome, and where she was fine-featured, shapely, glamorously dressed.

The real, cruel world began to seem less and less important; the little he saw of it was drabber than ever. He came closely to feel that if it never again had any truck with him, he would be happy. Occasionally he recalled that telepathists were well treated by that world, praised and highly valued. But he couldn’t be sure that there were no other consequences of presenting himself for the attention of authority. He considered going to officials and saying, “I’m a telepathist!” He reconsidered it, and postponed the day. Meanwhile, there was a world of dreams to engage his interest, and daily the dreams grew brighter and more elaborate.

Yet, all the time he was hiding from the world, he was telling the world about himself.

The communications man fastened the helmet to the ring around his neck, closing himself off from the universe by all normal sensory channels. Blind, deaf, weightlessly suspended, he let himself be sealed into the insulated compartment of the swinging satellite as it came around the shoulder of Earth and into line-of-sight with the bubble of awareness now drifting, unpowered, towards the red glow of Mars. He used yoga techniques to relax, clearing his mind for the impact of the messages across ten million miles.

? (A silent question, signifying readiness to receive.)

! (A sense of excitement that didn’t dim from day to day, implying that the ship was functioning perfectly, that hopes for the success of the mission were still high.)

And then:

— the evil men cringed before the all-seeing wall-piercing telepathist as he stripped away the deceitful layers of hypnotic conditioning from the mind of—

WHO’S THAT? Earth side, are you picking up a TV spectacular, for pity’s sake?

—the poor imprisoned girl in the ugly fortress where all her life had gone to waste, never speaking to anyone—

Tower, my God, like being hit with an iron bar! WHO ARE YOU?

—Weeping now with sheer relief because her wicked father was only an adopted parent and her rescuer—

MARS SHIP CANCEL CANCEL CANCEL — speak later — that’s an escapist fantasy and the way it’s trending it’ll be a catapathic grouping before we know where we are and—

—taking her from the prison into a bright world of sunshine without misery—

—and we can’t afford to lose a mind like that! Heaven’s name, can’t you feel the power he has? It’s unbelievable!

From the Mars ship, colored with agreement: Where is he? Aground? Where (city) where (street)?

Anywhere over the visible hemisphere. I guess! We’ve got to find him before—

And, aloud, as the communications man hammered on the wall of the insulated chamber: ” Let me out of here! Fast!”

Something was happening out in the real world; earlier, the city had been criss-crossed by the roar of aircraft, making a continuous din as they turned and swung back on parallel courses without ever going out of earshot, and now helicopters were droning just beyond the low grey cover of cloud. The clouds were shedding a chilly rain on the rubble-strewn site of the ruined warehouse, creating miniature lakes and rivers tinted red with brick-dust. Howson wasn’t interested in the outside world anyway, he told himself. Besides, it was a miserable day. Better to huddle under cover and let his imagination roam.

Curiously, though, it was becoming more difficult rather than easier to lose himself in his fantasies. Nagging ideas crawled up unbidden, to distract him. Annoyed, he considered obvious explanations: hunger, cold, irrelevant images from the girl’s mind clashing with his.

But they had eaten well during the night, and the little fire over which they had made a mulligan stew still glowed and made their crude shed cozy. And there was no question of the girl’s mind wandering from its link with his — she was an unbelievably passive audience, content to obliterate everything from her awareness but the tempting visions Howson could create.

Nonetheless the distractions continued, at the very edge of consciousness, and were so labile that the act of turning his attention to them altered them. It might seem for a few seconds that he was thinking: this is childish — why don’t I go and learn to use my talents properly? Then, when he tried to blot out that, he was thinking: that way lays danger — I might forget my body and starve while I’m day-dreaming. And the angry counter to that — should I care? — was itself countered: die, without knowing the intimacy of telepathic friendship?