James Gunn - Wherever you may be

Abbie took a deep breath. "I cain’t, Mr. Wright," she wailed. "I just cain’t do it."

"Why not?" Matt demanded fiercely. "Why can’t you do it?"

"I don’t know," Abbie said. Automatically her hands began to smooth the pants laid across her lap. She looked down and blushed. "I guess it’s 'cause I’m happy."

After a morning of experimentation, Matt’s only half-conscious need was still unsatisfied. He had offered Abbie an innumerable assortment of objects: a spool of thread, a fountain pen cap, a dime, a typewriter eraser, a three-by-five note card, a piece of folded paper, a bottle… The last Matt considered a stroke of genius. But tip it as he would, the bottle, like all the rest of the objects, remained stolidly unaffected.

He even got the spare tire out of the trunk and leaned it against the side of the car. Fifteen minutes later, it was still leaning there.

Finally, frowning darkly, Matt took a cup from the shelf and put it down on the table. "Here," he said. "You’re so good at smashing dishes, smash this."

Abbie stared at the cup hopelessly. Her face seemed old and haggard. After a moment, her body seemed to collapse all at once. "I cain’t," she moaned. "I cain’t."

"Can’t!" Matt shouted. "Can’t! Are you so stupid you can’t say that? Not 'cain’t — can’t!"

Her large blue eyes lifted to Matt’s in mute appeal. They began to fill with tears. "I can’t," she said. A sob broke from her throat. She put her head down on her arms. Her thin shoulders began to quiver.

Moodily, Matt stared at her back. Was everything that he had seen merely an illusion? Or did this phenomenon only evidence itself under very rigid conditions? Did she have to to be unhappy?

It was not without a certain logic. Neurotic children had played a large part in the history of witchcraft. In one of the English trials, children had reportedly fallen into fits and vomited crooked pins. They could not pronounce such holy names as "Lord," "Jesus," or "Christ," but they could readily speak the names "Satan" or "Devil." Between the middle of the fifteenth century and the middle of the sixteenth, 100,000 persons had been put to death for witchcraft. How many had come to the rack, the stake, or the drowning pool, through the accusations of children? A child saw a hag at her door. The next moment she saw a hare run by and the woman had disappeared. On no more convincing evidence than that, the woman was accused of turning herself into a hare by witchcraft.

Why had the children done it? Suggestibility? A desire for attention?

Whatever the reason, it was tainted with abnormality.

In the field of psychic phenomena as well, the investigations of the Society of Psychical Research were full of instances in which neurotic children or neurotic young women played a distinct if inexplicable role.

Did Abbie have to be unhappy? Matt’s lips twisted. If it was true, it was hard on Abbie.

"Get your things together," Matt said harshly. "You’re going home to your father."

Abbie stiffened and looked up, her face tear-streaked but her eyes blazing. "I ain’t."

"You are not," Matt corrected sharply.

"I are not," Abbie said fiercely. "I are not. I are not."

Suddenly the cup was sailing toward Matt’s head. Instinctively, he put out his hand. The cup hit it and stuck. Matt looked at it dazedly and back at Abbie. Her hands were still in her lap.

"You did it!" Matt shouted. "It’s true."

Abbie looked pleased. "Do I have to go back to Paw?"

Matt thought a moment. "No," he said. "Not if you’ll help me."

Abbie’s lips tightened. "Ain’t — isn’t once enough, Mr. Wright? You know I can do it. Won’t you leave it alone now? It’s unlucky. Something awful will happen. I got a feeling." She looked up at his implacable face. "But I’ll do it, if you want."

"It’s important," Matt said gently. "Now. What did you feel just before the cup moved toward me?"

"Mad."

"No, no. I mean what did you feel physically or mentally, not emotionally."

Abbie’s eyebrows were thick. When she knit them, they made a straight line across the top of her nose. "Gosh, Mr. Wright, I cain’t — " She looked at him quickly. "I can’t find the words to tell about it. It’s like I wanted to pick up the nearest thing and throw it at you, and then it was like I had thrown it. Kind of a push from all of me, instead of just my hand."

Matt frowned while he put the cup back on the table. "Try to feel exactly like that again."

Obediently, Abbie concentrated. Her face worked. Finally she sagged back in her chair. "I cai- — I can’t. I just don’t feel like it."

"You’re going back to your father!" Matt snapped.

The cup rocked."

"There!" Matt said quickly. "Try it again before you forget!"

The cup spun around.

"Again!"

The cup rose an inch from the table and settled down.

Abbie sighed. "It was just a trick, wasn’t it, Mr. Wright? You aren’t really going to send me back?"

"No, but maybe you’ll wish I had before we’re through. You’ll have to work and practice until you have full conscious control of whatever it is."

"All right," Abbie said submissively. "But it’s terrible tiring work when you don’t feel like it."

"Terribly," Matt corrected.

"Terribly," Abbie repeated.

"Now," Matt said. "Try it again."

Abbie practiced until noon. Her maximum effort was to raise the cup a foot from the table, but that she could do very well.

"Where does the energy come from?" Matt asked.

"I don’t know," Abbie sighed, "but I’m powerful hungry."

"Very," Matt said.

"Very hungry," Abbie repeated. She got up and walked to the cupboard. "How many ham sandwiches do you want — two?"

Matt nodded absently. When the sandwiches came, he ate in thoughtful silence.

It was true, then. Abbie could do it, but she had to be unhappy to have full power and control.

"Try it on the mustard," he said.

"I’m so full," Abbie explained contentedly. She had eaten three sandwiches.

Matt stared at the yellow jar, unseeing. It was quite a problem. There was no sure way of determining just what Abbie’s powers were, without getting some equipment. He had to find out just what it was she did, and what effect it had on her, before he could expect to fully evaluate any data.

But that wasn’t the hardest part of it. He should be able to pick up the things he needed in Springfield. It was what he was going to have to do to Abbie that troubled him.

All he had been able to find out about Abbie’s phenomena was that they seemed to occur with the greatest frequency and strength when the girl was unhappy.

Matt stared out through the cabin window.

Gradually, he was forming a plan to make Abbie unhappier than she had ever been.

All afternoon Matt was very kind to Abbie. He helped her dry the dishes, although she protested vigorously. He talked to her about his life and about his studies at the University of Kansas. He told her about the thesis and how he had to write it to get his master’s degree in psychology and what he wanted to do when he was graduated.

"Psychology," he said, "is only an infant science. It isn’t really a science at all but a metaphysics. It’s a lot of theorizing from insufficient data. The only way you can get data is by experimentation, and you can’t experiment because psychology is people, living people. Science is a ruthless business of observation and setting up theories and then knocking them down in laboratories. Physicists can destroy everything from atoms to whole islands; biologists can destroy animals; anatomists can dissect cadavers. But psychologists have no true laboratories; they can’t be ruthless because public opinion won’t stand for it, and cadavers aren’t much good. Psychology will never be a true science until it has its laboratories where it can be just as ruthless as the physical sciences. It has to come."