The Creatures of Man (16 page)

The state education officials made no fuss about the fact that the building was "substandard." So long as the big sign facing the highway made it plain that Thorling was a privately-operated institution, public officials seemed to feel that the shoddier it looked the better.

Thus Royster chattered extensively about the building's shortcomings, poor-mouthing and apologizing over them, as he led the inspectors about. He knew that the quality of housing was a definite factor in the accreditation process—but he knew as well that the members of this team definitely were not interested in finding fault with the building.

They were more inclined to gaze with studious frowns through the little glass-door panels of classrooms and poke their heads in storage closets, evidently in hope of discovering disorderly or illicit activity. They accepted Royster's explanation of the room in which Miss Smith's experiment with Stevie and David had been conducted—that it was a room in which visiting parents could chat with their children. The adjacent observation booth would have passed, with its lights on to blank out the scene through the one-way mirror, as unused storage space, but the inspectors did not notice it at all.

"I'm sure you've observed that we made some use of programmed instruction in our classes," Royster remarked, "but haven't gone to it fully by any means. About half of the classrooms are equipped with the program machines. We find them excellent, of course, for the teaching of all subjects once the basic learning skills are acquired."

"Then why not adopt them more fully?" asked Dr. Stilly.

"Mainly to keep the children functioning, as much as possible, as members of groups—that is, as cooperating participants in a class discussion, et cetera. When a child is using a PI machine, he is isolated, without social contact. For our purposes, which as you know are to help the children surmount behavioral difficulties as well as provide a rounded educational experience, too much time in isolation is undesirable."

How much easier it would be, thought Royster, who was getting tired of chattering at the increasingly grumpy visitors, to tell them the truth in a very few words—that PI is about the only way to be sure that a telepathic pupil is actually learning a subject instead of picking up answers, as needed, from the minds of teachers or other students, while the ordinary, old-fashioned classroom setup is ideal for the development of ESP skills.

The group returned to the first floor and the inspectors fanned out immediately to gaze into three classrooms. Arthur took the opportunity to hiss a message to the headmaster.

"Stilly's completely snowed, Mr. Royster, but Fat Stuff and the old biddy are still on the prowl. Don't worry, though. Just get 'em into Mrs. Morelli's room!"

Royster nodded, wondering giddily who was actually running this school.

"You are, sir," Arthur hissed promptly. "but in an emerging situation like this, it's fun for us to help out."

"Emergency situation," Royster corrected automatically, and a little too loudly.

"What's that you said?" McNear snapped sharply, rejoining him.

"Oh, Arthur was saying he has to go to the bathroom. He said it was an 'emerging situation' and I was correcting him."

McNear guffawed shrilly.

Royster frowned and said to Arthur, "Well, run along, but be back in three minutes. We'll be at Mrs. Morelli's room."

"Who's Mrs. Morelli?" asked Stilly as they walked down the hall.

"She's the music teacher. We emphasize vocal music here, because the children seem to come out of their shells so readily in the process of joint creativity of beautiful harmonies. We start part-singing at the kindergarten level. It's a wonderful social experience for the children—and an aesthetic experience as well, of course."

They reached Mrs. Morelli's room, and Royster opened the door, just as the children were finishing a marching song.

"Really, Royster," protested Dr. Ross, "we haven't the time to waste listening to . . .

Her voice trailed off as the children's voices rose again—very softly and sweetly this time:

"Soft as the voice of an angel,
Breathing a lesson unheard,
Hope with a gentle persuasion,
Whispers her comforting words.
Wait, till the darkness is over,
Wait, till the tempest is done,
Hope for the sunshine tomorrow,
After the shower is gone."

 

Dr. Ross had edged through the door to stand facing the singing children, who seemed to be unaware of her and the other inspectors who followed her quietly. Mrs. Morelli looked up curiously from the piano but didn't stop playing as the children sang the chorus:

"Whispering Hope, oh how welcome thy voice,
Making my heart in its sorrow rejoice."

 

"Oh my," Dr. Ross said numbly. "Oh my!"

Royster, who was himself seldom untouched by that old song's tender simplicity, said, "The children love that piece. It has a message for a troubled boy or girl."

"I could listen to it forever," breathed Dr. Ross. "I haven't heard it for years, but when I was a child . . . I've never heard it sung more beautifully!"

"Perhaps Mrs. Morelli has it on tape," said Royster. He introduced the inspectors to the teacher and asked her if she had taped "Whispering Hope."

"Why, yes," she said.

"Let's make a present of it to Dr. Ross," said Royster.

Mrs. Morelli got a small spool from her desk and handed it to the other woman. "Oh, I'll cherish this!" Dr. Ross crooned. "Thank you, Mrs. Morelli, and you, Mr. Royster. And thank
you
, children!"

McNear, who had been leaning his considerable weight against the doorframe, looking bored and annoyed, spoke up. "Who plays the fiddle?" he asked, nodding to a violin case in the corner of the room.

"I do!" piped up Sandylou, a chubby, confident seven-year-old. "Shall I play for you?" She headed for the violin case without waiting for an answer, but suddenly whirled to glare angrily at her classmates. "I
will
play, too!" she shouted at them.

Something was going wrong, Royster realized. The class didn't want Sandylou to play for some reason, but the girl was only slightly telepathic and could not understand the
Don't!
she was receiving from the others. Her ESP capabilities were strong in the kinetics realm, but . . .

Of course!
That was the trouble! She played the violin mostly with her fingers, but sometimes she used a mental touch to produce a harmonic, which did not require that the string be pressed against the fingerboard but merely touched at a vibrational node to damp the fundamental tone while allowing the whispery overtone to sound. Since the principal node is at one-half the string's length—high up on the fingerboard for a beginning violinist—Sandylou's mental touches made it possible for her to avoid long, quick reaches for harmonics, and thus enabled her to play selections that would otherwise be beyond her technique.

To the non-musician, with no exact knowledge of violin techniques, Sandylou's playing would appear extraordinary only in the sense that it was extremely advanced for a child her age. Royster himself had not known, until Mrs. Morelli told him, that the girl was ESPing her harmonics. But someone who
knew
the instrument . . . !

"Do any of you play the violin?" he asked the inspectors.

"Yeah, I used to play quite a bit," grunted McNear, "but I didn't intend to launch a student recital! We're not here to spend the morning listening to musical trivialities."

This brought a glare from his female colleague, who was still clutching her tape spool as if it were a precious jewel.

"Thank you for offering to play for us, Sandylou," said Royster, "but our guests are in a hurry today and—"

"I'll play something short, and fast," replied the girl, who already had the violin under her chin and was tightening the bow hairs. "And it won't be no triviality. It's a Wohlfahrt
study!"

She dug into a piece that consisted mostly of ascending arpeggios, almost every one of which had a harmonic at its summit. Royster, Mrs. Morelli, and the class watched in numb, helpless silence as one pure, unexplainable note after another flowed from the instrument. McNear, his head lowered slightly and his lips puckered critically, gazed at Sandylou through his eyebrows in deep concentration.

The music ended and McNear said, "Very good, little girl. Very good indeed! You'll be an accomplished musician one of these days if you practice hard. You have a . . . a sure touch."

"Shall we move on, folks?" Royster said hurriedly, sensing that the situation had been saved—but unable to guess how. He moved toward the door and saw Arthur waiting in the hall. The inspectors were busy taking their leave of Mrs. Morelli, so he stepped outside.

In a somewhat mystified tone, Arthur hissed to him, "Fat Stuff
saw
it, but he didn't
believe
it, so he didn't
see
it! Is he looney or something?"

After a moment, Royster nodded in understanding. McNear had responded to the inexplicable as people often do: he had ignored its existence. An excellent way to maintain sanity—provided the inexplicable does not become overpowering.

"Oh," said Arthur. "You've never thought much about that before. It'll help us stay a secret, won't it?"

"Don't depend on it," said Royster.

"You've got the old biddy and Fat Stuff now," Arthur reported, "but you've lost Stilly, and he's the top man. He feels like they're being had, because they ain't found nothing wrong anywhere. We're too perfect! He'll like Miss Smith, though."

Miss Smith? Royster thought as the inspectors came into the hall and Arthur fell silent. What has liking Miss Smith got to do with it?

He glanced at his watch and said, "Classes will change in a couple of minutes, and the first lunch period will start. What's your desire, folks? We can stay here and let you observe the movement of the students through the hall, or we can get on with a tour of the dormitories, or we can go to the cafeteria for lunch, now or later."

"Whichever you think preferable, Mr. Royster," Dr. Ross said pleasantly.

"Lunch sounds fine to me," smiled McNear.

Dr. Stilly said, "We may look into the dormitories later, Mr. Royster, but that would serve no essential purpose of this inspection. As for lunch, I wonder if we could have that somewhere other than in the cafeteria? Do you have a conference room where we could confer with you while we eat, without being interrupted by children or other distractions?"

"Why, yes. There's a conference table in my office. Arthur, run down to the cafeteria and tell Mrs. Sams to send four regular trays, plus coffee, to my office . . . Make that five trays, Arthur. If we eat there, Miss Smith can join us."

Arthur counted noses and asked, "What about me, sir? Where do I eat?"

"Oh, I was forgetting you. Make that six trays."

Dr. Stilly frowned. "Don't you think, Royster, that we can dispense with this young man's company now? Surely, you've considered his case sufficiently . . ."

Royster blinked, then nodded. "Quite right, Dr. Stilly. Have your lunch in the cafeteria, Arthur, and return to your regular schedule. And report to the night room each evening this week for one hour of vocabulary PI."

"Yes, sir."

In the office Royster introduced the inspectors to Miss Smith. As Arthur had predicted, Dr. Stilly was visibly impressed by her, and Royster felt a pang of bitter annoyance at the friendly warmth with which Miss Smith responded. His assistant had never favored
him
with such a charming smile!

But if the kids had expected Stilly to develop an immediate, disarming crush on Barbara Smith, they were wrong. As soon as the trays were brought in and the group settled around the table, the inspector said:

"In going over your background, Mr. Royster, I noticed that you spent two years, after finishing college, with a parapsychology group. That struck me as very strange preparation for a headmaster."

There was no point in denying the record, which Stilly had apparently gone to some trouble to look into. "Yes, I became quite interested in parapsychology during college. I viewed it as one of our scientific
frontiers."
Royster chuckled wryly at the idea and continued, "I soon realized the parapsychology people were getting nowhere with their researches, of course."

"But you stayed two years," Stilly persisted.

"Yes. I became interested, while I was there, in the general problems of disturbed children. You may not know that such children are brought to the group quite frequently. Perhaps it is a complex some parents have—to see abnormal behavior in their children as an indication of abnormal, or paranormal, abilities. At any rate, I saw enough such children there to gain an appreciation of their problems, and left the group to do graduate work in special education. So, in a sense, you could say that those two years were responsible for me being in my present position."

All of which was the truth—the carefully edited truth.

Stilly ate for a moment in frowning silence, then remarked, "I understand those two years might have been responsible in more ways than one. Wasn't it while you were with the parapsychology people that you first met J.V. Thorling?"

"Yes, indeed," Royster said brightly. "Our late benefactor was quite a psi buff, as is fairly well known."

"He attributed his financial success to a freakish mental ability to foresee the future, didn't he?"

Royster laughed. "So the magazine articles about him said. From my own conversations with him, I got the impression he wasn't really sure of the source of his success. But he wondered about it, and therefore took some interest in parapsychology. We have to remember, though, that he had a fine head for finance, and I'm sure a more acceptable explanation of his accomplishments would be that he often could see the financial possibilities of a situation, through subconscious but quite normal mental processes, that were invisible to less capable minds."

"That doesn't explain why he chose to endow this school rather generously," Stilly frowned.