;:i“pt.5. .07

then stood.

“Of course you can; I’ve seen

you. Why, you’re one of the best . rope-skippers I’ve ever —”

“No I can’t! ” She wailed, and turned to the wall. For a mo- ment she was silent, but then she spoke again.

“I can’t understand the words. I get all tangled up in them, then 1 get all tangled up in the rope. If only I could figure out' what they mean . . .”

“Wait a minute,” confused}

“What words? ”

“The rhymes. Like this:” and she had intoned softly, “Girl guide, girl guide, dressed in green . . .”

He knew enough not to laugh this time. Instead he took her onto,his lap, cornsilk hair tick- ling his chin, and explained to her that the words were nonsense rhymes, that they weren’t meant to have internal logic of their ownsHe explained cadence, and showed her how the rhymes helped establish and maintain rhythm. When he was finished she squirmed down and raced outside. He had watched from the window, grinning’with pride and relief, until he grew dizzy from following the arc of the yel- low vinyl rope.

Dizziness dogged him again

now; not the elated dizziness brought on by too much sunlight or too many joyful visions, but

the nauseous fog of too much _.

vigilance with no relief. Melnyk shook his head and dialed the number of Anna’s home without turning away from her bed. Martin slumped in his chair, his attention divided between the door and information from Annais file. The papers were sorted and placed in the file fold- er; the crystal paperweight which had held them down was in his fingers. He slowly turned it over and over, watching it catch and scatter the sunlight against

the walls and ceiling. Random facts drifted in his mind, first jumbling,‘ then fading under a cloud of sleeplessness.

Martin started at a noise. The paperweight clattered to, the floor as Melnyk’s face appeared around the edge of the door.

“Come in, Les. Have a seat.” '

Martin rose and bent to retreive the crystal, scrambling to recover the thoughts and half-thoughts that fled from his mind.

Melnyk perched himself in a chair and watched the older man "gingerly place the paperweight on top of the folder and settle into a seat. When the furrows on Martin’s brow had turned to CYCaSes, flattened, and creased . again, he broke the silence.

“Herparents said they would be here in an hour or so.” he said, but Martin took no notice. He ran both hands across his

forehead and down his temples. ,

The creases softened when he Spoke. “Les, I think I know what’s

causing those convulsions.” He

Waved Melnyk’s incredulous re- Ply aside. “Describe the latest at- tack.” _ .

“Between'attacks,4she’s uncon- SC}_9us: metabolism down, ‘no ‘. A r v; v» ‘ I. '

“(S’Mgs'xi- ' I’l’, .ah‘rnva pearl:

rapid eye rrlovement. During the convulsions everything goes way up, but there’s no connection be- tween her and us. She doesn’t respond to noises or lights. Most

of the time hereyes are closed, ’ but even when she opens them'

they don’t focus, not on us, any- way. Dilated, jumping all over the place, but no trace of con- scious recognition. It’s as if she was waking up somewhere else, somewhere in the middle of hell. She...doesn’t...I...we can’t . . .” Melnyk tried to pull his thoughts together, let the statement trail off. “I’m scared, doctor.” The words skittered away under the Weight of articu- lation. ‘ Martin spoke. “I’ve got noth- ing definite yet. Every tentative

uomaqa aui Jame» Iauou Kq

“A

answer contradicts every other, but I have a direction. The coun- selling sessions we’ve had lately have exposed the beginnings of a sexual identity conflict. She may possible be going through some sort of anxiety reaction to that.” Melnyk frowned. “For this long, with no recovery of con- sciousness? ” he asked.

.“There are still a lot of chinks in a theory like that; but remem- ber that Anna’s no ordinary child. She can abstract words and

verbal images the way you and I _ ’

approach crossword puzzles, only on a much higher, level. HOWever, no matter how much training we give her she’s still a child; still susceptible to the same emotional problems as any other five-year-old.”

“But she would react on a much higher level as well.” said

.Melnyk, thinking of the skip-

rope rhymes.

“Precisely. She’s capable of one hell of a fantasy. Les, have you ever considered the differ- ence between a brilliant intellec- tual and an artist? The best the intellectual can do is understand the emotions which produce a work of art. The artist, however,

must live with those emotions;

his actions are shaped and altered by feelings that he can’t describe or analyze or come to grips with, except through his art. The artist is the servant of his emotions,

which often makes him anti- I

social, or worse. We excuse his maladjustment as part of his ¢gift’.!’

“And instead of training a stable critic we’ve allowed Anna to become a neurotic child- prodigy artist,” Melnyk said.

“What can we do about it? ”

“As soon as she regains con— sciousness we can start some routine therapy. Before we can really do anything we have to pin down the source of the fantasies, and I’m pretty well stumped right now. As soon as I saw the trauma developing I went over

everything she’s been exposed to, and I ironed out every wrinkle I could find.”

~“But with her talent for .ab- straction, couldn’t she make some connection that you or I would consider unimportant? ”

“That’s a possibility, but I’m more inclined to think that she’s drawing on something that she

assimilated before she came,

here.”

“That sort of thing would show up in the therapy sessions, wouldn’t it? ”

“Only if she was consciously

aware of it at the time. In the first three years of her life she accumulated enough information to completely determine her in- tellectual capacity. Most of it lies, below even the subconscious level, so dormant that she isn’t affected by it in the least. One day a certain sequence of events opens the mnemonic lock, the right memories slip into the con- scious in the right order, and . . .” ’ “And we have to sit and wait until she’s able to tell us what memories are bringing all this on!”

“We can’t possibly guess at her experiences before her enroll- ment, can we? It’s the same old problem: too many random un- knowns for us to keep track of. We’ve got to get them in here earlier.”

“You’re asking people to aban- don a. Child-rearing tradition that’s as old as the family.” said Melnyk.

“I know it, I’m going to do it too. We’ve got no choice. There’s no way we can achieve the de- gree of precision I have in mind if we have to get around all that random learning first. What we have to make people believe is that there’s no way we can fail if that block is removed.”

“So what are you going to say to Anna’s parents;\ that they should . have enrolled her sooner? ”

“ForIihe time being I’m going to tell them that we haven’t a clue what’s causing these attacks. If we tell them what we suspect they’d more than likely go into some wild panic and put us in the middle of a scandal; you know, turn us into child-destroy- ing villians with no conscience.” Martin straightened in his chair, looked squarely at Melnyk. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Les. Officially you’re in the dark about all this, but I want you to keep track of any- thing she might do or say to give us an idea where it’s coming from.” '

“What if she'doesn’t give an sign? ” -

“Then we have to wait until she comes round,” Martin said with a tremor in his voice, “. . . if we can.” '

After Melnyk had left Martin swiveled again to,the window. The sun had risen until it struck his window squarely. Squinting, he contemplated the paradox he was caught in. As long as his pupils brought unaccountable

knowledge with them to the In- stitute he could never hone their minds as keenly as he wished to; yet he had to sharpen them enough to convince people that his methods were working. If his pupils became too astute they of- ten collided with the past, with unpredictable results. How many Anna Carters would he create be- fore he arrived at the point of balance? How long after that be- fore he could enroll students who were young enough to be truly impressionable? He reached for the paperweight, held it in the light and slowly rotated it, watching its inner sur- faces trade colors until the phone rang again.

. . . She opened her mouth to scream and choked on a mouth- ful of slime. Gasping, she sensed that she was covered with it. She tried to vomit, doubled up with cramps, her empty stomach heav-

ing against itself. She flailed blindly at the green body which bent over her in the clearing, pawing, probing, smearing what was left of her with the same caustic ooze that clotted her throat, cauterized her lungs. He waited until her diaphragm stopped heaving and her blistered tongue stopped trying to coax sounds from the ruined larynx. Then he realeased her arms and lifted her to his shoulder. Cooing and belching softly, he carried , her into the heart of the bog.

' Anna’s mother wandered into her daughter’s bedroom, some-

,thing she had done many times

in the previous two days, under the influence of countless contra- dictory emotions. Rage, bitter- ness, shock, had all propelled her to this room; this time she was moved by a curious sense of loss. Anna had been removed once from the warmth and security of her body, once again from the close circle.t_hat was family. Now she was far beyond the perimeter of any circle that could be cast. When she tried to conjure up a memory of her daughter she found a series of vague, dis- jointed fragments, none of which would fill the hollow emptiness in her chest. She was driven by the need to find a touchstbne, something which would forge the fragments into a textured whole, a satisfying memory of all Anna had been.

She sat on the bed, idly strok- ing the coverlet. Her eyes fell on the bedside book stand. Perhaps one of her favorite stories would bridge the gap between remnant and reality. She settled on a worn, illustrated volume and let it fall open in her lap. She forgot the words, as fast as she read them, until they blurred beyond recognition. She rocked numbly, eyes unfocused, her fingers trac- ing the embossed illustration, the picture of the princess kissing the enchanted frog in the middle of the magic forest.