Ahead of Time Read online

  When he got thirsty, he made it rain a little over his haid and opened his mouth. It was shameful.

  Nobody paid no attention to Lemuel, though. Maw got busy. Paw, natcherally, snuck off with a jug of corn, and I had to do all the work. 'Twarn't much. Main trouble was we needed some sort of power. Keeping the baby alive in his tank uses up a lot of current, and Grandpaw drinks electricity like a hawg sucks up swill. Ef'n Lemuel had kept the water running in the stream, we'd of had no trouble, but that was Lemuel! He just let it dry up. There was a trickle, no more.

  Maw helped me build a gadget in the henhouse, and after that we got all the power we needed.

  The trouble all started when a skinny little runt come up the trail one day and seemed surprised to see maw take the washing out in the yard. I trailed along, interested like.

  "Right nice day," Maw said. "Want a drink, stranger?"

  He said he didn't mind if'n he did, so I got him a dipperful, and after he had drunk the corn he took a few gasping breaths and said, thanks, no, he didn't want any more just then or ever. He said he could cut his throat cheaper, and get the same effect.

  "Just moved in here?" he asked.

  Maw said yes, we had, and Lemuel was a relative. The feller looked at Lemuel, sitting on the porch with his eyes shut, and said, "You mean he's alive?"

  "Shore is," Maw said. "Alive and kicking, so to speak."

  "We thought he'd been dead for years," the man said. "That's why we never bothered about collecting the poll tax for him. I guess you'd better pay yours, too, now that you've moved in. How many of you are there?"

  " 'Bout six," Maw said.

  "All of age?"

  "There's Paw and Saunk and the baby——"

  "How old?"

  "The baby's about four hundred now, ain't he, Maw?" I asked, but she clouted me 'longside the haid and said I should shet up. The man pointed at me and said he'd meant how old was I. Heck, I couldn't tell him. I lost track round about Cromwell's time. Finally he said we'd all have to pay a poll tax except the baby.

  "Not that it matters," he said, writing in a little book. "You have to vote the right way in this town. The Machine's in to stay. There's only one boss in Piperville, and his name's Eli Gandy. Twenty dollars that'll be."

  Maw told me to git some money, so I went searchin'. Grandpaw didn't have anything except something he said was a denarius, and that was his lucky piece anyhow; he said he'd swiped it from a feller named Julius up in Gaul. Paw was daid drunk. The baby had three dollars. I went and looked through Lemuel's pockets but didn't find nothing but an old oriole's nest with two eggs in it.

  When I told Maw, she scratched her haid, so I said, "We can make some by tomorrow, Maw. You'll take gold, won't you, Mister?"

  Maw clouted me. The man looked kind of funny and said sure, he'd take gold. Then he went away through the woods passing a coon that was carrying a bundle of twigs fer firewood, and I figgered Lemuel was getting hungry. The man started to walk faster.

  I started looking fer some old iron I could change into gold.

  The next day we got carted off to jail.

  We knew about it in advance, of course, but there wasn't much we could do. It's allus been our idea to keep our haids down and not attract no special attention. That's what Grandpaw told us to do now. We all went up to the attic—all but the baby and Lemuel, who never stirred—and I kept looking at a spiderweb up in one corner, so I wouldn't have to look at Grandpaw. He hurts my eyes.

  "Out upon them for stinkard knaves," Grandpaw said. " 'Tis best that we go to their gaol; the days of the Inquisition are over. 'Twill be safe enough."

  "Cain't we hide that thar gadget we made?" I asked him.

  Maw clouted me fer speaking before my elders. "That won't do no good," she said. "Them spies from Piperville was up here this morning and seen it."

  Grandpaw said, "Have you hollowed a cavern under this house? Good. Hide me and the baby there. The rest of you——" He relapsed into old-fashioned language. " 'Tis pity if we were to live thus long and be found out by these black-avised dullards. 'Twere better their weasands were slit. Nay, Saunk—I spoke in jest. We would not call attention to ourselves. We will find a way."

  That was the way it was. We all got toted off, all but Grandpaw and the baby, who were down in the cave by that time. We got carried off to Piperville and put in the hoosegow. Lemuel never woke up. They drug him off by the heels.

  As fer Paw, he stayed drunk. He's got a trick he knows. He can drink corn, and then, as I understand it, the alcohol goes in his blood and gets changed into sugar or something. Magic, I guess. He tried to explain it to me, but it made oncommon bad sense. Likker goes into your stummick; how kin it go up inside your skull and turn into sugar? Plumb silly. Or conjure, anyhow. But what I was going to say, Paw says he's trained some friends of his named Enzymes—furriners, by the name—so they change the sugar right back to alcohol, and he kin stay drunk as long as he wants. Still, he likes fresh corn if he can get it. Me, I don't like them conjure tricks; they make me skittery.

  I was took into a room with people in it and told to sit down in a chair. They asked me questions. I played dumb. I said I didn't know nothing.

  "It's impossible!" somebody said. "They couldn't have built it themselves—illiterate hillbillies! But, unmistakably, there's a uranium pile in their henhouse!"

  Shucks.

  I kept on playing dumb. After a while they took me back to my cell. There was bedbugs. I made a sort of ray come out of my eyes and killed 'em off, much to the surprise of a seedy little feller with pink whiskers who was asleep in the upper bunk, and who I didn't notice was awake till it was too late.

  "I have been in some strange prisons in my time," said the seedy little feller, blinking rapid, "and I have had some unusual cellmates, but never yet have I encountered one whom I suspected to be the devil. My name is Armbruster, Stinky Armbruster, and I'm up for vagrancy. What's the charge against you, my friend? Buying souls over the ceiling price?"

  I said I was pleased to meet him. I had to admire his language. He had eddication something fearful.

  "Mr. Armbruster," I said, "I got no idea why I'm here. They just carted me off—Paw and Maw and Lemuel. Lemuel's asleep, though, and Paw's drunk."

  "I would like to be drunk." Mr. Armbruster told me. "Then I wouldn't be so surprised to see you floating two feet off the floor."

  That kind of embarrassed me. Nobody likes to be caught doing things like that. It was just that I was absent-minded, but I felt foolish. I said I was sorry.

  "It doesn't matter," Mr. Armbruster said, rolling over and scratching his whiskers. "I've been expecting this for years. I've had a pleasant life, all in all. And this is a delightful way to go crazy. Why did you say they arrested you?"

  "They said we had a uranium pile," I told him. "I bet we ain't. We got a woodpile, I know, 'cause I chopped the wood. But I know I never chopped no uranium."

  "You'd remember it if you had," he said. "It's probably some political gambit. Election's a week off. There's a reform party starting, and old Gandy's smashing it before it can start."

  "Well, we ought to be getting home," I said.

  "Where do you live?"

  I told him, and he thought that over. "I wonder. You're on the river, aren't you—the creek, I mean? Big Bear?"

  "It ain't even a creek," I said.

  Mr. Armbruster laughed. "Gandy called it the Big Bear River. That was before he got the Gandy Dam built, down below your place. There hasn't been any water in that creek for fifty years, but old Gandy put through an appropriation for I don't know how much money, about ten years ago. He got the dam built by calling the creek a river."

  "What did he want to do that for?" I asked.

  "Do you know how much crooked money you can make out of building a dam?" Mr. Armbruster asked me. "But Gandy's in to stay, I guess. When a man owns the newspapers, he can write his own ticket. Oh-oh. Here comes somebody."

  A man come with keys and took Mr. Armbruster away.
After quite awhile somebody else come and let me out. I was took into another room full of lights. Mr. Armbruster was there, and Maw and Paw and Lemuel, and some big fellers with guns. There was a little skinny wizened man with a bald head and snaky eyes, and everybody done what he told 'em. They called him Mr. Gandy.

  "This boy's an ordinary hillbilly," Mr. Armbruster said, when I come in. "If he's got into trouble, it must be by accident."

  They told him to keep quiet and banged him one. So he kept quiet. That Mr. Gandy sat off in a corner and sort of nodded, looking mean. He had a bad eye. "Listen, boy," he said to me. "Who are you shielding? Who built that uranium pile in your woodshed? You'd better tell me the truth or you'll get hurt."

  I just looked at him, so somebody hit me on top of the haid. Shucks. You can't hurt a Hogben by hitting him on the haid. I recollect the time the feuding Adamses cotched me and banged me on the haid till they was plumb wore out and couldn't even squeal when I dumped 'em down a cistern.

  Mr. Armbruster made noises.

  "Listen, Mr. Gandy," he said. "I know it'll make a big story if you find out who built that uranium pile, but you'll get re-elected without it. Maybe it isn't a uranium pile anyway."

  "I know who built it," Mr. Gandy said. "Renegade scientists. Or escaped Nazi war criminals. And I intend to find them!"

  "Oh-oh," said Mr. Armbruster. "Now I get the idea. A story like that would be nationwide, wouldn't it? You could run for Governor or the Senate or—or write your own ticket."

  "What did that boy tell you?" Mr. Gandy asked. But Mr. Armbruster said I hadn't told him nothing.

  Then they started to whup Lemuel.

  It was tiresome. Nobody can't wake up Lemuel when he's sot on a nap, and I never seen nobody so sot just then. They give him up fer daid after a time. He might as well of been. Lemuel is so bone lazy that when he's sleeping hard he don't even trouble to breathe.

  Paw was working magic with them Enzyme friends of his'n, and he was remarkable drunk. It sort of tickled him to get whupped. Every time they whammed him with a length of hose he giggled kind of foolish. I was ashamed.

  Nobody tried to whup Maw. When anybody got close enough to hit her, he'd go all over white as a goose wing and start busting out with sweat and shaking. Once we knowed a perfesser feller who said Maw could emit a tight-beam subsonic. He was a liar. She just made a noise nobody could hear and aimed it wherever she wanted. All them high-falutin words! Simple as firing a squirrel rifle. I can do it myself.

  Mr. Gandy said to take us back to where we was, and he'd see us later. So they drug out Lemuel, and we all went back to our cells. Mr. Armbruster had a lump on his haid the size of a duck egg. He lay down on his bunk moaning, and I sot in a corner looking at his haid, and sort of shooting a light out of my eyes, only nobody couldn't see the light. What it did was—shucks, I ain't eddicated. It worked like a poultice, anyhow. After a while the bump on Mr. Armbruster's haid went away, and he stopped groaning.

  "You're in trouble, Saunk," he said—I had told him my name by then. "Gandy's got big ideas now. And he's got the people of Piperville hypnotized. What he wants is to hypnotize the state, or even the nation. He wants to be a national figure. The right sort of news story could do that for him. Besides, it would ensure his re-election next week—not that he needs insurance. He's got the city in his pocket. Was that a uranium pile?"

  I just looked at him.

  "Gandy seems certain," he went on. "He sent up some physicists, and they said it was apparently Two-thirty-five with the graphite dampers. Saunk, I heard them talking. For your own good, you'd better not shield anyone. They're going to use a truth drug on you—sodium pentathol or scopolamine."

  "You better go to sleep," I said, because I heard Grandpaw calling me, inside my haid. I shet my eyes and listened. 'Twarn't simple, because Paw kept tuning in. Oh, my, he was drunk!

  "Have a drink," Paw said, cheerful, only without talking, if you understand.

  "Beshrew thee for a warrantable louse," Grandpaw said, much less cheerful. "Get thy dullard mind away from here. Saunk!"

  "Yes, Grandpaw," I said, silent-like.

  "We must make a plan——"

  Paw said, "Have a drink, Saunk."

  "Now, Paw, do shet up," I told him. "Have some respect fer your elders. I mean Grandpaw. Besides, how can I have a drink? You're 'way off in some other cell."

  "I got me a pipeline," Paw said. "I can give you a what-you-call-it, a transfusion. Teleportation, that's what it is. I just short-circuit space between your blood stream and mine and I can pump alcohol from my veins into your'n. Look, this is how I do it." He showed me how, in a sort of picture inside my haid. It looked easy enough. For a Hogben, I mean.

  I got mad. "Paw," I said, "don't make your loving son disrespect you more than natcheral, you runty old wood-shoat, you. I know you ain't got no book-larnin'. You're just picking them four-bit words out of somebody's skull."

  "Have a drink," Paw said, and then yelled. I heard Grandpaw chuckle.

  "Stealing the wisdom from men's minds, eh?" he said. "I, too, can do that. I have just rapidly cultured a migraine virus in my blood stream and teleported it to your brain—you gorbellied knave! A plague upon the varlet! Hearken to me, Saunk. Thy rascally sire will not trouble us bewhiles."

  "Yes, Grandpaw," I said. "Are you fit?"

  "Aye."

  "And the baby?"

  "Aye. But you must act. 'Tis your task, Saunk. The trouble lies in that—what is the word? That uranium pile."

  "So that's what it is," I said.

  "Who would have thought anyone in the world could recognize it? My own grandsire told me how to make it; they existed in his time. Indeed, 'twas through such things that we Hogbens became mutants. Faith, I must pick a brain myself to make this clear. There are men in the town where you are, Saunk, who know the words I need—let me see."

  He sort of shuffled through a few brains. Then he went on.

  "When my grandsire lived, men had begun to split the atom. There were—um—secondary radiations. They affected the genes and chromosomes of some men and women—a dominant mutation, with us Hogbens. So we are mutants."

  "That's what Roger Bacon said, wasn't it?" I asked.

  "Aye. But he was friendly and kept silence. Had men known our powers in those days, we'd have been burned. Even today, it would not be safe for us to reveal ourselves. Eventually—you know what we plan eventually, Saunk.''

  "Yes, Grandpaw," I said, for I did know.

  "Well, here's the rub. It seems that men have split the atom again. Thus they were able to recognize this uranium pile. We must destroy it; we do not want men's eyes upon us. Yet we need power. Not much, but some. The uranium pile was the easiest way to get it, but we cannot use it now. Saunk, here is what you must do—so that enough energy will be supplied for the baby and for me."

  He told me what to do.

  Then I went and done it.

  When I sort of shift my eyes, I can see real purty things. Like them bars on the window, I mean. They get busted up into teeny-weeny little bits, all rushing around like they was crazy. I hear tell them is atoms. My, they look cheerful—all bustling like they was hurrying to git to meeting on a Sunday. 'Course it's easy to juggle 'em like blocks. You look real hard and make something come out of your eyes, and more teeny little fellers come busting out of your eyes and they all get together and it's mighty amusing. I made a mistake the first time and changed them iron bars into gold. Missed an atom, I expect. But after that I got it right and turned the bars into nothing much. I clomb out and turned 'em back into iron. First I'd made sure Mr. Armbruster was asleep. That was easy.

  We was seven stories up above the street, in a big building that was part the city hall and part jail. It was nighttime, so nobody noticed me. I flew away. Once an owl came past, figgering I couldn't see in the dark, and I spit on him. Hit him, too.

  I fixed that there uranium pile. There was guards around it with lights, but I hung up in the sky where they couldn't see me a
nd got busy. First I hotted the thing up so the stuff Mr. Armbruster had called graphite turned into nothing and blew away. Then it was safe to handle the rest of the junk—Two-thirty-five, is it?—so I did, and I turned that into lead. The real crumbly kind. I made it so fearful crumbly it started to blow away. Soon there wasn't nothing left.

  Then I flew away up the crick. There was only a dollop of water in it, and Grandpaw said he needed more than that. I got way up in the mountains, but didn't have no luck. Grandpaw started to talk to me. He said the baby was crying. I guess I shouldn't have tore up the uranium pile till I'd made plumb certain of getting more power.

  Only thing to do was to make it rain.

  There are several ways to do that, but I friz a cloud, sort of. Had to land and build a gadget fast and then fly way up where there was clouds; it took time, but pretty soon there was a thunderstorm coming up, and then it rained. But the water didn't go down the crick. I searched for a while, till I found a place where the whole crick bottom had fell out. Seems like there was caves underneath. I did some rapid plugging. No wonder there hadn't been no water to speak of in the crick for so long. I fixed that.

  Grandpaw wanted a steady supply, though, and I smelled around till I located some big springs. I opened them up. By that time it was raining oncommon rapid. I went back to see Grandpaw.

  Them men who was on guard had gone home, I guess. Grandpaw said the baby had plumb upset them when he started crying. They all stuck their fingers in their ears and screamed and run off. I looked over the water wheel, like Grandpaw told me, and done a few repairs. There warn't much needed. They built purty good a hundred years ago—and the wood had got seasoned, too. I admired that wheel, turning and turning as the water piled up in the crick—crick, nothing! It was a river now.