The Distant Home (8 page)

Locked in her private room, Sally was exploring the uses to which she could put Dr Allport’s pen. She had already checked the barred window, but the pen was no use in trying to unscrew the fastenings on the bars. Besides, even if she removed the bars, the room was on the third level, and no one short of a mountain climber could have reached the ground safely.

No, she thought, it had to be the door. Or had it? Again, she found herself looking at the air-conditioning ducting, big square pipes that took filtered air around the hospital. She stood on her bed and examined the grille through which conditioned air came into her room. The grille was made to be removed. Maybe, she thought, if she used the pen as a lever. Very carefully, she pushed the end of the pen under the grille and began to work it backwards and forwards.

If Sally had known what was going on in the X-ray department, she might have worked much faster. Because, as she worked, a conference was being held that would decide her entire future.

Dr Chambers had the X-rays of all the Harrison family up on the viewing screens. There on one side were the X-rays of Bobby, Maria and Jim, and on the other, Sally’s showing her two hearts, four lungs, four kidneys and so on. On the bench below the viewing screens stood a rack of sealed test tubes, three with normal coloured blood, one with blue-green.

Chambers turned to Dr Rosen, Dr Allport, the pathologist, and the senior nursing sister. ‘I’m swearing you all to secrecy. Understand?’

They nodded. They were all a little nervous. For one thing, they had all lived their entire lives seeking rational explanations for things, and here they were facing evidence which defied rational explanation. And for another thing, they knew if they fouled up on this one, Chambers would have their scalps.

Chambers looked at Dr Allport, the psychologist. ‘Doctor?’ he said. ‘Your report please.’

Allport hugged her clipboard. If she had seen anyone else doing it, she would have said that their clipboard represented a security blanket. Naturally things like that did not apply to her, but she hugged it tight, and looked at it, even though she knew what she was going to see.

‘Patient Sally Harrison,’ she began, ‘personality is almost suspiciously stable.’

‘How do you mean?’ Chambers interrupted.

‘Twelve years old, has an accident, is brought into hospital, there should be signs of normal disorientation. The subject was unnaturally self-controlled. It was almost as if she were in charge of the interview.’

‘You let her take
control
?’ yelped Chambers.

‘Certainly not! But she wasn’t as vulnerable as I would have liked.’ Allport paused. ‘It was like dealing with a very old, very wise adult. I had a professor like that at university—Professor O’Connor. It was as if she was … humouring me.’

‘Did she explain things to you?’ Chambers was still feeling bitter about Sally telling him about astigmatism and twins.

‘When we got down to personality tests, she wanted to know if we’d be doing Rorshach inkblots or thematic apperception tests. I can tell you it wasn’t like dealing with a twelve year old at all.’ Allport paused. ‘It was spooky.’ A sudden thought hit her. ‘She’s not an adult is she? A physically very immature adult?’

‘As far as we know she’s twelve years old,’ said Chambers. ‘What’s the intelligence read-out?’

Allport shrugged. ‘Hard to say.’ She saw Chambers face go red and forestalled his angry outburst, ‘Dr Chambers, she’s off the chart. The intelligence is scarcely measurable.’

‘Very bright,’ he said. ‘Her parents say she tops her class at school.’

‘That’s not what I’m talking about,’ Allport said carefully. ‘Very bright is not the term. With further testing I could talk figures like an IQ in the mid two hundreds, but it could be higher than that.’

‘We can’t measure that high!’ Chambers was outraged.

‘Exactly what I’m saying,’ said Allport.

‘But you’re saying she’s more intelligent than I am!’ shouted Chambers. He felt sick with anger. How could a little kid be more intelligent than he was? It was against the laws of nature!

‘She’s probably more intelligent than both of us put together,’ Allport said.

Chambers eyes went to the X-ray, and then to the blue-green fluid he had seen extracted from Sally’s vein. ‘We’ve delayed long enough,’ he said. ‘We have to tell the authorities.’ He turned and looked at the others. They were staring at him. The idiots, he thought, had not worked it out yet. ‘Well she doesn’t come from this planet, does she?’ he said. There. It was out in the open. He had thought the unthinkable, said the unsayable. ‘She comes from … somewhere else.’

Allport turned from Chambers and looked at the blue-green blood. ‘You means she’s … it, daughter of them?’

‘I can’t see any other explanation,’ said Chambers. ‘The internal organs, the blood, the impossibly quick healing, the intelligence level higher than that of even the most brilliant human such as myself, it can add up to only one thing. She’s from somewhere else.’

‘But the parents and the brother—’ the nursing sister began.

‘Are human. Just.’ Chambers’s mouth twisted into an imitation of a smile. ‘They claim never to have noticed anything odd about the creature called “Sally”. Now if that’s true, their combined intelligence must equal that of an indoor plant. A rather dumb indoor plant. On the other hand,’ and here he paused, ‘they may be in on it.’

‘In on what?’ said the radiologist.

‘In on the plot, you imbecile!’ Chambers grated. ‘Think about it. The Harrison family either know what it is that they’ve been bringing up, or she was planted on them at some time in the past.’

‘Like a cuckoo’s egg,’ Allport said. ‘Cuckoos lay their eggs in other birds’ nests and let those birds bring them up.’

‘I know what cuckoos do!’ Chambers yelled. It was bad enough having the girl creature explain things to him without Dr Allport starting. Then he realized the implications of what she had said. Lots of cuckoos did it. Maybe lots of aliens did it. ‘Ask yourself,’ he moaned. ‘How many more of them are there out there?’

The others stared at him, not wanting to believe him. But there were the X-rays. There was the blood sample.

Chambers got himself under control. This might be a crisis in human history, a threat to the survival of the entire human race but, looking on the bright side, what a career opportunity it represented! He went on more calmly. ‘The more we know about them the better. The so-called parents aren’t going to give permission to dissect, but I think once the authorities know, we’ll get the old green light on that little matter!’

At that moment there was a knock on the door and the giant orderly entered, looking scared. ‘I’m sorry, Dr Chambers, sir,’ he said, ‘but I’ve lost the boy.’

Chambers’s pink face went an ashen colour. He knew that if that irritating boy was loose, then there was bound to be trouble. He headed for the door and the others followed.

Bobby climbed out of his laundry trolley outside the door with the number 312 above it. This was it, the room Sally had told him she was locked in. He tried the door handle, found the door was locked, took a deep breath and then knocked. ‘Sally?’ he whispered. ‘It’s me. Bobby.’

‘What kept you?’ Her voice was muffled by the door but it was Sally all right.

‘Had to do tests and things. Then they had a guy the size of a gorilla guarding me. Now, how do I get in?’

‘You can’t get through the door,’ Sally’s muffled voice said. ‘And you should get out of the corridor in case they’re looking for you. So phone me.’

‘What?’ Bobby shook his head. Sally sometimes came up with the weirdest ideas.

When Sally answered, her voice had a very patient tone that he recognized. ‘Find a phone, dial three one two.’

Bobby looked both ways, then moved along to the next door, pushing the laundry trolley in front of him. He tried the door, it opened, and he slipped inside.

He found he was in a room with a single hospital bed in it. The bed was made up but the room was clearly unoccupied. Swiftly he locked the door behind him and moved to the phone on the bedside table.

‘Three one two,’ he murmured to himself as he pressed the buttons.

There was a brief ringing sound from the room next door, and then Sally’s voice. ‘Hi. That you?’

‘Yes,’ said Bobby, ‘I’m in the room next door.’

‘Ace!’ said Sally. ‘In your room is there an air-conditioning duct with an access cover on it?’

Bobby looked around. He could see a big pipe with a wire grille on it. ‘Yeah. Big pipe thing. There’s a hole in it covered with wire mesh.’

‘That’s it,’ Sally’s voice said. ‘Do you have your Swiss Army knife?’

‘I always have my Swiss Army knife,’ said Bobby, shocked at the idea that he would ever leave home without it.

‘Try and lever the wire mesh off. I think it’s my only way of getting out of this room,’ said Sally. Then, hearing the rattle of a key in the lock, she said, ‘Got to hang up, someone’s coming!’

She put down the receiver and turned toward the door as it opened. Dr Chambers and the nursing sister entered. ‘Can I help you?’ Sally said, but they ignored her, and began to search the room, looking under the bed and in the wardrobe.

Satisfied that Bobby was not in the room, Chambers looked at Sally, keeping his distance from her as if she was dangerous. ‘Have you seen Bobby Harrison?’ he said.

‘My twin brother?’ Sally asked, surprised at the way Chambers had put the question.

‘Bobby Harrison,’ Chambers repeated.

‘Logically, since I’m locked in here, no, I haven’t seen him,’ Sally replied.

In the next room, Bobby was using his Swiss Army knife to lever the cover off the air-conditioning duct.

‘He’s running around causing trouble,’ Chambers said, ‘disrupting hospital routine. If he turns up, tell him to report to the front desk.’

Bobby was disappearing into the air-conditioning duct. He knew it was very dangerous and in normal circumstances even he would not have dreamed of doing it, but this was an emergency. He had to get Sally out of there.

‘I’m not likely to see him,’ Sally was saying, ‘unless you leave the door unlocked.’

‘You can’t fool me that way,’ Chambers said, and to Sally’s ears, this grown-up doctor was sounding more and more like one of the younger kids at school. ‘If he talks to you through the door, tell him to report downstairs at the main desk.’

‘I don’t see why I should,’ said Sally. ‘I really don’t. He’s a free agent.’

‘We can’t have a society in which people just run around being free agents, Sally,’ Chambers snarled.

‘Why not?’

‘Because that’s not the way the world operates. We need to know where everyone is at all times. Of course, maybe you and your breed don’t like that,’ he added. ‘Maybe you think a society where people ran around being free agents would be all the more easy to take over!’

‘Me and my
breed
?’ Sally said.

Bobby, in the air-conditioning duct, looking into Sally’s room from behind the wire mesh of the grille, could see the anger in her. Her face had gone pale, and she was clenching her fists. Bobby thought that Chambers had better watch out: it didn’t do to get Sally angry.

‘We’ll talk about that later,’ said Chambers. ‘Now there are going to be some people coming to speak with you. And I’d like you to cooperate with them.’

‘What people?’ Sally said.

‘Important people,’ said Chambers. ‘From the government.’

‘Federal or State government?’ asked Sally, but Dr Chambers and the nursing sister were already out in the corridor and locking the door behind them.

As soon as the lock on Sally’s door clicked shut, Sally jumped up onto her bed and caught the wire grille of the air-conditioning duct as Bobby pushed it out from the inside. Now Bobby crawled out of the duct itself.

‘How’d you know I was there?’ he whispered.

‘I heard you breathing,’ said Sally. ‘I don’t know why they didn’t.’

‘Because they don’t have super powers like you,’ Bobby said with a grin.

‘Cut that stuff out, will you?’ said Sally.

‘Come on,’ Bobby said, and gestured at the open duct. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

But Sally shook her head. ‘Not so fast. This time we have to be sure of getting away. If they catch us one more time, they’ll have guards right here in the room with me. They’ll have me handcuffed to the bed or something.’

Bobby smiled. ‘Oh come on!’

‘I’m serious, Bobby. That Dr Chambers thinks he’s onto something important. Locking me up like this, he’s practically breaking the law!’

‘So we call the police.’

‘He’d just talk them around. Who are the police going to believe? Us or an important doctor?’

‘Okay,’ said Bobby, and paused. Then he snapped his fingers. ‘We’re forgetting what Mrs Webster said. It’s a Castle of Zahan situation!’

‘Right,’ Sally said, recalling the details of the computer game in her mind. It was a fairly standard role-playing sword and sorcery adventure game, which involved entering a castle controlled by a sorcerer, getting hold of his treasure, and then getting out again before getting killed by various goblins, orcs, werewolves, ghost warriors and assassins who were servants of the sorcerer. ‘There’s only one way to win that game,’ Sally said. ‘You have to keep the sorcerer so tied up that he’s too busy to control his forces. Meanwhile you make your escape with the treasure.’

‘And this Dr Chambers is the sorcerer and you’re the treasure we’ve got to get out of here?’

Sally smiled. ‘I’ve always thought I was a treasure, Bobby. Didn’t you?’

‘Oh sure!’ He was grinning, but serious underneath. ‘So we distract them. Maybe if I light a fire?’

‘Burning down hospitals is a very big no-no, Bobby,’ said Sally, and Mrs Webster, listening to it all in her kitchen, breathed a sigh of relief. Bobby was a high-spirited boy but sometimes he just went too far.

‘Okay,’ said Bobby. ‘Being smart’s your best thing, so do it. What’s your suggestion?’

‘Auntie Kate.’

Sitting at her kitchen bench, Mrs Webster smiled and linked her forefinger and thumb in a sign of approval. ‘Good!’ she muttered.

Bobby frowned the way he did when things had moved too fast for him. ‘What’s Auntie Kate got to do with it?’ he asked.

‘I told you. They’re holding me prisoner, that’s got to be against the law. Auntie Kate’s a lawyer,’ Sally said as she moved for the phone. ‘I’ll cooperate with Dr Chambers, make him think I’ve given in. Then we unleash Auntie Kate. She ties the system in knots, and we’re home free.’ She was punching numbers into the phone. It had always amazed Bobby how Sally never had to look up a phone number. It was as if she had them all stored in her head, like a computer. ‘Brown, Watson, Giovanelli? I’d like to speak to Kate Giovanelli please,’ Sally was saying into the phone. ‘This is her niece, Sally Harrison speaking. Tell her it’s a matter of life and death.’