CHILDREN OF THE THUNDER Page 19

  Unfortunately, of course, that meant his search for his biological father was going to be even longer and harder than he had originally imagined. Still, he was getting far better at unearthing data intended to be private; he had, for instance, no business accessing Harry’s medical records yet that had gone off smoothly enough.

  And the second discovery he made was of almost equal importance. The faculty he thought of as his “charm” did almost beyond a doubt have a hereditary component. Perhaps it was even a mutation. There was scarcely anything in the formal literature concerning cases like his, but extensive—and expensive—searching turned up occasional news-items that sounded tantalizingly similar to his own case: reports of young people, all around the same age, who had the knack of getting their own way…

  At first the prospect of meeting others like himself struck him as immensely exciting. On reflection, however, he decided it might be risky, too. He had no idea whether their “charm effect” might not be stronger than his. He was becoming well adjusted to the idea of controlling people; the risk of being controlled in his turn did not appeal. Nonetheless, if he did have siblings…

  In the upshot he decided to go ahead, albeit with great circumspection, and in particular to follow up the idea of advertising that had come to him in a flash of inspiration.

  This was how he made his third discovery, and his first breakthrough.

  He had located an agency that offered maximal exposure for minimal outlay—not of course that cost was any object, and he paid at once, in full—by syndicating its insertions in English-language journals from Ireland to Greece. And, to his surprise, it was from Ireland that he received the first response to his cautiously worded inquiry.

  Widowed, deprived of her only child, who had been perverted into the paths of evil thanks to the refusal of the teaching nuns at her convent school to root out the true source of the wickedness festering among their pupils, to expel instead of her daughter that younger girl who must plainly be a monster despite her charm, Caitlin’s mother was constantly on the lookout for anyone who would believe her story and sympathize—maybe take action. Of some kind…

  For the latest of a dozen times she began to set forth the details.

  In green ink on pink and scented paper, with no signature.

  Why David took the letter seriously, he could not quite figure out. In the end he decided that he must believe in instinct, which he had previously and sometimes publicly despised. At all events…

  “We’re going to Ireland tomorrow,” he informed his parents at lunch, the day he received the letter.

  “What?”—from Harry and Alice in astonished unison.

  “You heard me!” As he grew more confident of the power that he thought of as his “charm,” David was also becoming curter in his manner. “There’s someone there I want to meet. A girl.”

  They relaxed and exchanged smiles—predictably. He had worked out that it was always better to provide a reason that could be rationalized. In another day or two, they’d have convinced themselves that it was their idea all along.

  Everything went as smoothly as he could reasonably hope. Having met Dymphna, learned that she was an orphan, that she had not been the daughter of her mother’s husband—she admitted as much within minutes, though unfortunately she had no idea who her true father might have been and there was no one left whom they could ask—she agreed instantly to his suggestion that she come and live with him.

  But traces of residual resistance endured.

  Harry and Alice raised no overt objection to the removal of Dymphna Clancy from her school, any more than did the nuns—though some of her fellow pupils broke down in tears and insisted that she keep in touch by letter. His charm wasn’t quite up to coping with so many nubile girls at one time, and for a brief moment he wished he could have brought them all to England with him. That would have been so much better than hiring servants…!

  He was sure, however, that he had been right in his decision to come here. Simply by looking at her he could tell that he and Dymphna had more in common than their mere appearance: the same dark hair, the same dark eyes, the same slightly tawny, slightly sallow skin… He was on the right track at last!

  And his charm went on working, at least so far as Harry and Alice were concerned. Indeed, though they were visibly puzzled about the fact that their son (“their!”) had insisted on traveling to Ireland, and now and then remembered that during the trip they had been—well—charmed into signing papers whose content they could no longer clearly recall, but which satisfied both the Mother Superior of the convent and the lawyer whom she brought in to advise her (what had his name been?)—in spite of that, they made no bones about Dymphna sharing David’s room. The rest of the house was huge and echoing, unfurnished save for odds and ends; she could have had her choice of half a dozen.

  But despite the shift in moral attitudes that had followed AIDS, they somehow felt it unobjectionable that she and he should sleep together…

  That first night, Dymphna wept herself to sleep on David’s shoulder, not out of misery, but from pleasure mingled with relief. David himself, less inclined to tears, kept shuddering with joy till nearly dawn.

  There was a scent on her skin that he had dreamed of without knowing, that he had never known existed in reality, but held out a terrifying promise…

  A trace or two of resistance:

  “Dammit, boy!” Harry boomed when he was told there were to be other recruits to the “family.” “You’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you? Dymphna’s lovely! Wish I’d had a girl like her when I was your age!”

  Beyond the windows she was dancing for pure joy, though it was raining—dancing on the lawn in shift and panties, feet bare, legs bare, delighting in the world.

  “A part,” David sighed, leaning back from the breakfast table. “By no means all. And there are so many empty rooms in this great house…”

  “You want to cram them with orphans?” Alice cried.

  David’s charm was not at its maximum. Concentrating, he raised it to a peak. (What was it? How did it work? That was the next question that he needed to investigate…)

  In his severest tone: “Is it not right and moral for those who are well off to help others that are not, by no fault of their own?”

  To that, Harry and Alice found no answer. At least, none before he clinched the argument, leaning forward with his elbows on the table and switching his blazing glare from one to the other.

  “You know I’ve kept search programs running on my computers since we got here?”

  “Well”—disconcertedly—“of course. You said so.”

  “Among the things I’ve found out is that you are worth eighty-seven million dollars. At current rates of interest the income from that would be enough to support a dozen kids, at least, along with you two and myself, at a very high standard of living.”

  “David!” Alice began, but he cut her short.

  “How do you feel about children who are starving in a world of plenty?”

  “Well—uh…”

  “Uncomfortable?”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose so.” She snatched at her coffee cup and took a gulp.

  “You, Harry?”

  It was the first time he had addressed his putative father so directly; until now he had maintained the polite fiction of calling him “dad.”

  “The same, I suppose”—in an uncertain tone. “But do you honestly mean you want us to fill the house with—?”

  “Riff-raff? Rubbish? Guttersnipes? Heavens, no!” David tipped back his head and let go a healthy laugh. “I want to share my home with brilliant kids, underprivileged but capable of learning—fast! Tell me straight: what better use do you have in mind for your fortune?”

  Abruptly he was earnest, gazing into Harry’s eyes and reaching out to grasp his hand.

  “Well—ah…”

  “Nothing better?” David challenged.

  “In the moral sense, the absolute sense… I suppose not.”
<
br />   “There you are!” David crowed. “So the matter’s settled. Excuse me. I think it’s about time for my program to throw up more news.”

  Later, Alice said to Harry, “Are you sure—?”

  And he retorted, “No! But I can’t find any reason to object? Can you?”

  After a pause: “Well… no!”

  All, then, was as it should be. David, who was listening because he had bugged as many of the rooms as were in current use, allowed himself a chuckle and went back to investigating the data his computer search program had turned up. There was, according to the machine, a very interesting means to access PNC, thanks to a policeman who had done something highly unofficial for an American sociologist. There was a filter in the way, but British filters were as nothing to the ones he had tackled in the States when confirming that the FBI’s agents had given up on the idea of prosecuting him for drug-designing.

  Soaking wet, Dymphna came running into his—no, now it was their—room just as he was reviewing the fresh data that his program had unearthed.

  “Let’s make love again!” she whispered in his ear with all the enthusiasm of a girl who had often dreamed of bedding boys and been denied the chance for much too long.

  “In a moment,” David sighed, punching commands into his board. “I’ve finally got the breakthrough that I wanted into PNC… Yes! Look!”

  The screen display, though, meant nothing to Dymphna, so he gave up and yielded to her importunities. As he stripped her and rolled her into bed, David wondered how long he could stand the company of his peers.

  She was one. There was no doubt about it. Though she used a different term, he had seen her charm at work on Harry, and Alice, and the nuns. Possibly he had just experienced a trace of it himself… Without it, any or all of them might have balked at her being brought here from Ireland. For the first time, David felt genuinely afraid of the phenomenon that he was letting loose, as though he had unbarred a tiger from its cage.

  But it was already too late to worry about that.

  You’re watching TV Plus. Newsframe follows.

  The Japanese government has blamed the recent mass outbreaks of arson in Tokyo and other large cities on the disaffected Korean minority, despite claims by left-wing MPs that this is an attempt to find scapegoats. The true reason, they argue, is the high cost of housing, which has already led to rioting among students who object to their future earning capacity being mortgaged by parents and even grandparents in order to purchase over-priced apartments.

  However, General Sir Hampton Thrower, currently in Japan on a “goodwill mission to another island nation,” has come out strongly in support of the government line. Quote: “Any discontented alien group…”

  At Claudia’s insistence a copy of the contract Jake Lafarge proposed had been faxed to New York for vetting by her friend the lawyer, the one Peter had met by chance. His name, it turned out, was Walter Stine.

  He proposed relatively few changes, and the Comet’s lawyer accepted them after only token objections. Well pleased with the success of their negotiations, Jake left his deputy in charge and took them to a hurried lunch. All three were eager to rush back to the office, but for different reasons: Jake because a major story was breaking—Peter was dismayed to learn that once again the arrest of a black drug-pusher threatened to entail rioting—and the other two because they were anxious to meet the hacker.

  On their return he was waiting for them: a blond, untidy man in anorak, jeans and boots, overdue for both a shave and a haircut, wearing heavy horn-rim glasses—almost a caricature of the popular concept of his kind, too interested in computers to worry about his appearance. Jake had time only to introduce him as Bernie before being called away to make a decision about which of two stories should be followed up first.

  Bernie had been assigned an alcove in one corner of the office, equipped with a computer terminal. Temporary screens had been placed around it, and as soon as he sat down he turned on another sonic barrier. Inside the protected area there was barely room for three chairs.

  “Right!” he said. “What exactly is it that you want from me?”

  Peter left the explanations to Claudia. She had brought a copy of the disk she had shown him before. Loading it, she ran through almost exactly the same exposition. Bernie listened attentively, asking a question now and then. When she had finished, he pondered in silence for a while, and finally gave a brisk nod.

  “Should be possible,” he said. “The first thing you need, I take it, is the name of the clinic that these women went to—assuming they all went to the same one. Matter of fact, though, I’m a bit surprised you haven’t got at that already.”

  “I told you,” Claudia began. “There’s a filter—”

  A dismissive wave; his fingernails were edged with black.

  “No problem. It just so happens I know what sort of filter you’re talking about. I was one of the team that designed it. My mates and I left a couple of loopholes, thinking they’d come in handy some day. Looks like the day has arrived… I can probably also get you some personal names, maybe not the lot but a good few, if they can be cross-referred to news-reports. And the next thing will be the identity of the donor. I can’t promise that, though.”

  “Obviously not,” Peter said. “Not if they still keep their records manually.”

  “Precisely. I’ll do my best, though. I should find the name of the clinic fairly quickly—or clinics. Beyond that point, like I say, no promises. Can I hang on to this disk?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Well, that’s as far as we can go for the moment.” He slapped the top of the terminal and rose, switching off the sonic barrier. “I’ll be in touch in a few days.”

  Leaving the office, Claudia said anxiously, “What do you think?”

  Peter shrugged. “Too soon to be sure. But at least he grasped what you told him right away.”

  “Mm-hm… How are you going to kill the time until he comes up with something useful?”

  “Me? I have a weird story to follow up—the weirdest. Did you hear that AIDS has been found in pigs?”

  “I thought that was just a silly rumor!”

  “I’m afraid not. They think they’ve traced the source: a mentally subnormal farmhand in Essex… You?”

  “I’m going to take a weekend off. I feel haunted by this damned idea. I need to think about something else for a while. A trip to Paris strikes me as a good idea.”

  “Enjoy yourself.”

  “I’ll try. Give my regards to Ellen. Remember what I said about the good effect she’s having on you. Treat her well.”

  “I will.”

  Roger Cray Wilson had had the most marvelous summer holidays imaginable. During the previous term he had learned that for the whole of August and the first half of September the school’s Victorian-Gothic buildings were to be rented to a film company. An idea had sprung to his mind at once… and, crazy though it was, he’d brought it off. He had scarcely had to see his bocky parents—

  Well, just for the first few days after summer term ended, long enough to convince them that he ought to return to Hopstanton. He couldn’t employ his powers of persuasion over a telephone; he had to be physically present. One of these days he intended to try and find out how his trick worked, but being lazy and self-indulgent he had never put the plan into effect.

  Why should he bother, when he could twist anyone—boy or girl or adult—round his proverbial little finger? (Or as he often thought and sometimes said, another organ?)

  He had proved the fact in spectacular style.

  In a terraced row of cottages adjacent to his school boardinghouse he had met Mildred, a pretty young widow whose husband had been killed in an accident at the factory where he worked, leaving her with a daughter of sixteen even prettier than herself, called June. His sympathy with their plight had led to a close—well, maybe not friendship, because Mildred was, to be candid, a bit of a dimwit, and June wasn’t much brighter. Say a functional and profitable re
lationship.

  It had been no trouble at all to suggest that the three of them provide an attractive service for the people working on the film. They had, admittedly, been doubtful at the start, but once they realized how much they could make, even after deduction of Roger’s commission…

  Of course, he had been meticulous about ensuring that every client had an AIDS certificate.

  And as a result he had met people who were internationally famous: a major director, his producer, four of his stars and countless players in the minor roles. Roger himself had been in several crowd scenes as an extra, and had even been offered a speaking part when the Equity member who should have played it turned up with laryngitis. But he had had the sense to decline. He was aware of the need to keep a low profile.

  Already, on his first day of the new term, gossip was spreading about his coup. It wasn’t to his housemaster’s taste, but that was a minor problem; he simply needed to cajole Mrs. Brock for a few minutes and she was, as usual, firmly on his side. If only he didn’t have to stay on at this horrible place…!

  It was too soon, though, to break loose and follow up the valuable contacts he had made in the film world. It wasn’t that he preferred to remain here and endure the boredom of the daily classes, the obligatory chapel services, the petty authority of the prefects; rather, it was that he felt unready to strike out completely on his own. Using his power of persuasion was, after all, quite hard work in certain cases—Mrs. Brock, for instance, and above all the Headmaster, who had taken a certain interest in him but was rarely available to be exposed to the “effect.”

  The chaplain, fortunately, had proved instantly pliable, and had already supported Roger more than once. He did have doubts about the pleasure he obtained from their intimacy, but so far he’d managed to keep his sense of sin under control. Oh, yes! Things were going fine!

  It was no special surprise when, on the first evening of the winter term, he was summoned to the housemaster. He was in fact whistling as he approached the latter’s office—until, through an open window, he spotted a parked car.