CHILDREN OF THE THUNDER Page 14

  “The impression I gained from your book,” Peter said slowly, “was that you regarded your insight not just as generally applicable, but universally. If you don’t mind my saying so, I felt that was its weakest point.”

  She gave a harsh laugh. “If only you knew how right you are!” she muttered. “Still, you will, in just a few minutes… As a matter of fact, the first item that rocked me back on my heels didn’t come from PNC at all. And I have a couple more that didn’t, either, that I’ll get around to in due time. Here’s the first one—Can you see okay?”

  Peter had been standing behind her. Now he drew up a chair and sat down for a better-angled view.

  “I got this from my friend in the criminology department, who had it from a colleague at Stanford. There’s an epidemic of designer drugs in California. You heard the funders launched a soft drink spiked with one of them?”

  “CrusAde,” Peter said with a nod. “Didn’t they try to claim it was legal?”

  “Right. Because it wasn’t synthesized but secreted by a tailored yeast. That didn’t cut any ice with the FDA. And some believers are claiming that yeasts imply brewing, i.e. ‘strong liquor,’ and so— Never mind! They’re still trying to clarify the law on that point. But here’s what got me interested.” She gestured at the screen.

  “The FBI are certain that the drug-designer is a kid. They caught one of his dealers, who confessed where he’d got the modified yeast, so they sent an agent after him. And he came back swearing the kid was the nicest guy he’d ever met, couldn’t possibly have done what he’s accused of, and a few days later quit the bureau. The same happened the second time, and the third, at which point the local director decided he must be barking up the wrong tree. But new drugs are still emerging. Someone’s responsible, and more dealers have been caught and more of them have claimed to know the designer is only a kid.”

  Peter’s heart was hammering. From a mouth abruptly dry he said, “Perhaps I should have asked what criteria you chose for inclusion, rather than exclusion.”

  Claudia marked each with an extended finger. “A major crime—committed by a child—who subsequently got away with it. That’s the important bit: getting away with it.”

  “ ‘Child’ meaning…?”

  “As it turns out: above twelve or thirteen.”

  Peter whistled. “And you really mean major crimes?”

  She twisted around to glare at him. “Do you have any idea how many patients in American mental hospitals had to be locked away because of designer drugs?”

  “I’m not disputing that definition. It’s a major crime by anybody’s standards. But… Have you found a lot of similar cases?”

  “No, not a lot. Less than a dozen. Enough, though, to cast doubt on my beloved theory! Let me show you the others. First the ones I got off PNC, the British ones.”

  Another command, and the display changed. She gave, as before, a commentary.

  “Now this one is again a boy—there’s a fairly even spread between the sexes, incidentally. At age thirteen he was attending an expensive private boarding school. He turned out to be running a sex-for-sale operation among the pupils, with the assistance of the headmaster’s daughter. She serviced the men whose tastes didn’t include boys.”

  “Nothing was done about this?”

  “The culprit was transferred one term ahead of schedule to another school. I wouldn’t bet on that reforming him!”

  “But didn’t the teachers—?”

  “Several of the teachers were among his customers.”

  Peter pondered that for a while. At length he said, “Go on.”

  “The next one I came up with was a girl. She ran away from an aunt and uncle who’d taken her over after her parents died. Not accident, disease. I can’t be sure what kind—I told you there’s a filter on my gateway to PNC, which deletes anything that might give a clue to identity. But I found an approximate date, and it coincides with that epidemic of meningitis you had here a few years ago. I think you covered it for Continuum, didn’t you?”

  “I did indeed. Though if you’re hoping to trace her parents through me, it won’t work. We respected the anonymity of the victims.”

  “I assure you I wasn’t thinking along those lines.”

  “Good. Carry on about the girl who ran away.”

  “She headed for a big city, likely London, but again, of course, I can’t be certain. Before her twelfth birthday she was on the streets—how else could a kid that age earn a living? One of her customers turned nasty and pulled a knife on her. He wound up cut to ribbons.”

  “And they didn’t do anything about that, either?”

  “I know what you’re going to say! She ought to have been put into a foster home, at least, if not sent to reform school, right? Instead this girl was acquitted. Even the prosecution admitted there were none of her fingerprints on the handle of the knife. She wanted the court to believe the man had killed himself… and they did.”

  Peter was staring at her in unveiled dismay. “They believed that he’d cut himself to ribbons, as you put it?”

  A firm nod, a grim tensing of her wide lips.

  “She was discharged from custody at once and apparently was back at her usual post the same afternoon.”

  “They let a twelve-year-old go back to prostitution after what had happened? How the hell did I not get to hear about this?”

  Claudia shrugged. “Well, the trial took place in whatever your counterpart is of Juvenile Hall, so I guess the media weren’t allowed to publish the details. They sure as hell got stored on PNC, though. I warned you my findings don’t make for sound sleep… Can you think of an explanation for what I just told you—? No, hold on. Let me show you the rest before you make up your mind.

  “The next I came across was a boy again, somewhere in the north of England, far as I can make out. Sheep-farming country, at any rate, where they say beck instead of brook or creek. There was a quarrel between his family and some neighbors. A prize dog was killed. Then the rival family’s son was found drowned, his foot caught in a wire noose so that he pitched headlong into a stream, hit his head, and drowned. It didn’t look like an accident, more a deliberate trap.

  “But the inquest found for accident, and—this’ll amuse you!—now the local police speak about the family as though they’re witches.”

  “In this day and age?”

  “Yes indeed. I had to go to my theology department—where I am not exactly a regular visitor… Was, I guess I have to say now. Had to go there for explanations of some of the words I found in the report, like ‘darklady’ and ‘hornylord.’ Apparently they can be traced back to the religion of pre-Christian Britain.”

  “Mm-hm.” Peter nodded vigorously. “Hornylord would be Cernunnos, the Wild Man of the Mountains, who had a stag’s head or a pair of antlers on a human head. They still worship him at Carnac in Brittany, in the guise of a Christian saint called Cornély.”

  “You did a Continuum program about that too, did you?”

  “Why else do you think I know so many peculiar facts? But you know a lot that I don’t, even so… Go on.”

  “Ahh… yes. Next one’s a girl again. Another killer. Drowned a man in plain sight of his friends. She was just a kid and he was a trained Commando, like a Marine Ranger.”

  Peter jolted upright on his chair. “That doesn’t make sense!”

  “Damned little about this makes sense,” Claudia retorted caustically. “Read it for yourself.”

  He hunched closer to the screen. Some day soon he was going to need glasses…

  He said eventually, “But if he was intending to rape her—”

  “She personally didn’t claim that. Of course no one heard what they said to one another, not at that distance. He just apparently put his head under the water and didn’t come up. I wish I could get at more detail, but that puky filter has been programed to err on the side of caution, and all I know is that he drowned in a river and his body was found bobbing against some kind of ba
rrier—presumably marking out an area as safe for swimming. But there must be hundreds such in Britain.”

  “Do you get the dates of these events?” Peter demanded. Claudia shook her head, her hair swooping up and down like an oscilloscope trace.

  “An indication of the season is as much as the filter will let pass. This one happened in summer, obviously. But they’re all comparatively recent. Indirect evidence suggests they’re all within the past couple of years.”

  “I ought to be taking notes!” Peter realized belatedly.

  “You can copy the disk if you like. I didn’t realize until this evening just how badly I need a second opinion. Shall we go on?”

  “Yes!”

  “Okay, here’s another boy, obviously living in a rundown city, again probably in the north of England. According to a report on PNC, one of the rumors they encourage their local intelligence officers to file—”

  “No need to tell me about those!” Peter interrupted in a bitter tone.

  “Run foul of them yourself, haven’t you?” She scowled at his sidelong. “Yes, I remember your mentioning it. Your government seems to encourage paranoia in its citizens… Anyway, the report indicates, as you see, that he’s the leader of a gang of older kids who operate a protection racket, blackmailing local shopkeepers into paying them ridiculous sums for doing practically nothing. Like they get ten or fifteen pounds for throwing away unsold newspapers, or carrying garbage cans from the back of a shop to the front.”

  “But the shopkeepers—”

  “They won’t testify. Won’t give evidence.”

  “It doesn’t make sense!”

  “You said that before. I still agree.”

  “But how could they be so terrified of a few kids?”

  “That’s the strangest part of all. They aren’t terrified.”

  “What?”

  “They aren’t terrified,” Claudia repeated patiently. “They claim to like the kids, to be paying them willingly! By the way, this is the case my friend the chief superintendent had run across and was so annoyed about. That’s why I can be so positive about it. But he didn’t steer me to it. I write to him occasionally to tell him how the research is progressing, and when I came up with this one he admitted it was the example he’d had in mind.”

  “I need another drink,” Peter said, rising. “You?”

  “I’d rather have coffee.”

  “Can do. If you don’t mind instant, that is. It’s been some time since I could afford the real stuff.”

  When he set the steaming mug beside her, she resumed.

  “Now we’re getting into a borderline area. Here are a couple of cases which may not be related, but they do have certain similarities.

  “The first one concerns a trial in juvenile court where some schoolgirls were charged with assaulting one of their classmates—the youngest in the class, if that has any bearing on the matter. According to what they said at the time of the offense, she had turned up wearing jewelry that had formerly belonged to them, but which she had somehow conned them out of, and then tried to do the same to a girl who had left and come back to show her friends an engagement ring she had just been given. She was quite badly hurt and had to be taken to the hospital. But when the trial came on, meek as lambs they all confirmed what the injured girl said: they had given her their belongings willingly—and some, by the way, were very expensive, so expensive that the former owners had lied to their parents about having ‘lost’ them and been severely scolded.”

  “But even if the girls themselves retracted, what about their parents, who presumably paid for the things that she had taken?”

  “If they were in court, they were won over. If they called on her at home, they were won over. Now do you see what—what obsesses me about all this?”

  “I do indeed,” Peter muttered, and sipped his fresh drink. “You said there were more cases to come.”

  “Yes indeed. All, as I said, on the borderline, linked only by a very curious coincidence that— No, I’m running ahead of myself. I want you to see the rest of my evidence first.” Fingers leapt briskly to the keyboard.

  “This one concerns the manager of—do you say building society?”

  “Yes.”

  “I had to get someone to explain that to me. They don’t exist in the States. Far as I can gather, they perform the same kind of function as savings-and-loan operations, is that right?”

  “I imagine it’s pretty close. What happened to the guy?”

  “He helped himself from the till to buy a new car, a new house, lots of goodies. As you might expect, he got caught and wound up in jail. He has a daughter. His only defense consisted in claiming, over and over, that she had put him up to it.”

  “I take it the court didn’t believe him,” Peter offered dryly.

  “Of course not. But you know something? I think I do.”

  After digesting that, Peter said, “What else do you have for me?”

  “The two items I didn’t get off the British PNC. But there’s still the same connection as between the others.”

  Assuming he had already guessed what the connection was, Peter nodded an invitation to go ahead. Claudia tapped keys again.

  “Here’s a girl in a convent school in Ireland. I heard about her from someone over there who knows about my work and wrote me—anonymously, so I can’t tell how much credence to give the story. By the way, she was determined to prove my theory wrong.”

  Peter broke in. “You said anonymously. She?”

  “Green ink on scented pink notepaper,” Claudia sighed. “I believe the phrase you use in England is ‘a dead giveaway.’”

  “Granted. Sorry.”

  “She seemed to have an idée fixe about religious education, blaming it, rather than the nuclear family, for juvenile crime. Here’s the case she reported: the daughter of a man who committed suicide and a woman who lost her mind as a result of the shock, alleged to be operating a porno racket from her school, the material being supplied by a delivery boy and his older brother, whom she allows to kiss and fondle her—a big deal in Ireland, apparently! My correspondent’s daughter got blamed for what the other girl was doing, and was expelled.”

  “I thought,” Peter said slowly, “you were concentrating on major crimes.”

  “And this hardly counts as one? Agreed. On the other hand… No, you’ll have to wait until the last case. This crime is major. I got it from an Italian farmer who read the translation of my book—not popular in his country, so he made a point of laying hands on it when he saw a review. Once again, however, it’s anonymous. I know where the letter was posted, though, and I’m fairly sure I could trace the actual case. In fact that’s one of the first tasks I want to tackle now I’m in Europe. There can’t be too many places in Italy where the night watchman at a farm co-operative’s oil-store was shot dead last fall.”

  “Especially by a kid of twelve!”

  “In this case it wasn’t the kid but his putative father who got away with it.”

  Momentarily distracted as he reached for his glass, Peter missed the implications of a crucial word in the last sentence. He said, “I didn’t quite follow…?”

  In her turn misunderstanding, Claudia said, “He talked the police out of a prosecution. Someone else got blamed, just as in the Irish case: one of the father’s tenants, who disappeared the same night. But why am I reading aloud to you? Look at the screen! It’s all there.”

  And sipped her coffee, cool enough to drink by now.

  At length Peter said slowly, “You think this is reliable—or simply hearsay? It sounds to me as though someone is venting a grudge against the local landowner. Why aren’t there any names in this one, incidentally? You’d think that someone with a grudge would want to be as specific as possible.”

  Claudia gave a harsh chuckle. “You ought to ask my husband about that!”

  Peter blinked several times. “Excuse me,” he said at last. “It’s my turn to say I had no idea you were married.”


  “I’m not. Not any more. It didn’t work out. Mainly because he expected me to turn into a machine for making babies… But he was tremendously handsome and dramatic, and I was terribly proud of him while we were engaged. It was only afterward that I found out the drawbacks of having been raised in the culture of the Italian Deep South. Oh, shit! It’s over and done with, and I hope I never meet the puky cank again! The point is”—and she leaned earnestly toward him, as though her earlier drinks were finally taking effect—“the poor guy may have been afraid that if he named names in his letter he would find the same thing happening to him. I can assure you he had grounds.”

  “I’m getting a bit confused,” Peter admitted after a pause for reflection. “All right, I grant that the growser from Italy may have been scared to—ah—name names. But what makes you connect this case with the others?”

  “Because it was the boy who talked the police out of prosecuting his father, when they had the deathbed word of the victim to convict him on. This carries a lot of weight in Catholic countries.”

  “It still isn’t clear,” Peter insisted. “So maybe the boy is exceptionally charming! Or maybe his father wasn’t anywhere near the place at the time. That’s what they both said, isn’t it?”—with a tap on the screen to indicate the relevant passage. “What on earth makes you connect this with all the others?”

  Claudia blanked the screen before answering, then rose and returned to her former place on the couch without removing her disk. Peter swivelled his chair around to face her.

  She said at length, having emptied her coffee mug, “They all have one thing in common. In the PNC cases, I don’t know why the filter let it pass, because in theory at least it could be a clue to identity. In the case from Ireland and the one from Italy, I have only rumor to rely on, yet it seems improbable that it should crop up time after time in such a similar context…

  “Not one of them is the natural child of his or her ostensible father. They were all conceived by artinsem. Or, as you may have known it before its initials clashed with a well-known disease, AID.”