One and Wonder (43 page)

There were limits to Abbie's ability. The number of dissimilar objects
she could manipulate seemed to be three, regardless of size; she could handle five similar objects with ease, and she had made six slices of bread do an intricate dance in the air. It was possible, of course, that she might improve with practice.

“My God!” Matt exclaimed. “You could make a fortune as a magician.”

“Could I?” Abbie said without interest. She pleaded a headache and went to bed. Matt said nothing. They had worked for an hour and a half.

Matt lit a cigarette. The latent telekinetic power could explain a lot of things, poltergeist phenomena, for instance, and in a more conscious form, levitation and the Indian rope trick and the whole gamut of oriental mysticism.

He spent the rest of the day making careful notes of everything Abbie did, the date and time, the object and its approximate weight and its movements. When he finished, he would have a complete case history. Complete except for the vital parts which he did not dare put down on paper.

Several times he turned to stare at Abbie’s still, small form. He was only beginning to realize the tremendous potentialities locked up within her. His awareness had an edge of fear. What role was it he'd chosen for himself. He had been fairy godmother, but that no longer. Pygmalion? He felt a little like Pandora must have felt before she opened the box. Or, perhaps, he thought ruefully, he was more like Doctor Frankenstein.

Abbie did not get up at all that day, and she refused to eat anything Matt fixed. Next morning, when she climbed slowly from her bunk, his apprehension sharpened.

She was gaunt, and her face had a middle-aged, haggard look. Her blonde hair was dull and lifeless. Matt had already cooked breakfast, but she only went through the motions of eating. He urged her, but she put her fork down tiredly.

“It don't matter,” she said.

“Maybe you're sick,” Matt fretted. “We'll take you to a doctor.”

Abbie looked at Matt levelly and shook her head. “What's wrong with me, a doctor won't fix.”

That was the morning Matt saw a can of baking powder pass through his chest. Abbie had been tossing it to Matt at various speeds, gauging the strength of the push necessary. Matt would either catch it or Abbie would stop it short and bring it back to her. But this time it came too fast, bullet-like. Involuntarily, Matt looked down, tensing his body for the impact.

He saw the can go in . . .

Abbie’s eyes were wide and frightened. Matt turned around dazedly, prodding his chest with trembling fingers. The can had shattered against the cabin wall behind him. It lay on the floor, battered, in a drift of powder.

“It went in,” Matt said. “I saw it, but I didn't feel a thing. It passed right
through me. What happened, Abbie?”

“I couldn't stop it,” she whispered, “so I just sort of wished it wasn't there. For just a moment. And it wasn't.”

That was how they found out that Abbie could teleport. It was as simple as telekinesis. She could project or pull objects through walls without hurting either one. Little things, big things. It made no difference. Distance made no difference either, apparently.

“What about living things?” Matt asked. Abbie concentrated. Suddenly there was a mouse on the table, a brown field mouse with twitching whiskers and large, startled black eyes. For a moment it crouched there, frozen, and then it scampered for the edge of the table, straight toward Abbie.

Abbie screamed and reacted. Twisting in the air, the mouse vanished. Matt looked up, his mouth hanging open. Abbie was three feet in the air, hovering like a hummingbird. Slowly she sank down to her chair.

“It works on people, too,” Matt whispered. “Try it again. Try it on me.”

Matt felt nauseated, as if he had suddenly stepped off the Earth. The room shifted around him. He looked down. He was floating in the air about two feet above the chair he had been sitting on. He was turning slowly, so that the room seemed to revolve around him.

He looked for Abbie, but she was behind him now. Slowly she drifted into view. “That's fine,” he said. Abbie looked happier than she had looked for days. She almost smiled.

Matt began to turn more rapidly. In a moment he was spinning like a top; the room flashed into a kaleidoscope. He swallowed hard. “All right,” he shouted, “that's enough.”

Abruptly he stopped spinning and dropped. His stomach soared up into his throat. He thumped solidly into the chair and immediately hopped up with a howl of anguish. He rubbed himself with both hands.

“Ouch!” he shouted. And then accusingly, “You did that on purpose.”

Abbie looked innocent. “I done what you said.”

“All right, you did,” Matt said bitterly. “From now on, I resign as a guinea pig.”

Abbie folded her hands in her lap. “What shall I do?”

“Practice on yourself,” Matt said.

“Yes, Mr. Wright.” She rose steadily in the air. “This is wonderful.” She stretched out as if she were lying in bed. She floated around the room. Matt was reminded of shows in which he had seen magicians producing the same illusion, passing hoops cleverly around their assistant's body to show that there were no wires. Only this wasn't magic; this wasn't illusion; this was real.

Abbie settled back into the chair. Her face was glowing. “I feel like I
could do anything,” she said. “Now what shall I try?”

Matt thought for a moment. “Can you project yourself?”

“Where to?”

“Oh, anywhere,” Matt said impatiently. “It doesn't matter.”

“Anywhere?” she repeated. There was a distant and unreadable expression in her eyes.

And then she vanished.

Matt stared at the chair she had been in. She was gone, indisputably gone. He searched the room, a simple process. There was no sign of her. He went outside. The afternoon sun beat down, exposing everything in a harsh light.

“Abbie!” Matt shouted. “Abbie!” He waited. He heard only the echo drifting back from the hills across the lake. For five minutes he roamed about the cabin, shouting and calling, before he gave up.

He went back into the cabin. He sat down and stared moodily at the bunk where Abbie had slept. Where was she now? Was she trapped in some extra dimension, weird and inexplicable to the senses, within which her power could not work.

There had to be some such explanation for teleportation—a fourth-dimensional shortcut across our three. Why not—if she could nullify mass, she could adjust atoms so that they entered one of the other dimensions.

As he brooded, remorse came to him slowly, creeping in so stealthily that awareness of it was like a blow. The whole scheme had been madness. He could not understand now the insane ambition that had led to this tinkering with human lives and the structure of the Universe. He had justified it to himself with the name of science. But the word had no mystic power of absolution.

His motive had been something entirely different. It was only a sublimated lust for power, and thinly disguised at that. The power of knowledge. And for that lust, which she could never understand, an innocent, unsophisticated girl had suffered.

Was Abbie dead? Perhaps that was the most merciful thing.

Ends can never justify means, Matt realized now. They are too inextricably intertwined ever to be separated. The means inevitably shape the ends. In the long view, there are neither means nor ends, for the means are only an infinite series of ends, and the ends are an infinite series of means . . .

And Abbie appeared. Like an Arabian genie, with gifts upon a tray, streaming a mouth-watering incense through the air. Full-formed, she sprang into being, her cheeks glowing, her eyes shining.

“Abbie!” Matt shouted joyfully. His heart gave a sharp bound, as if it had suddenly been released from an unbearable weight. “Where have you been?”

“Springfield.”

“Springfield!” Matt gasped. “But that's over fifty miles.”

Abbie lowered the tray to the table. She snapped her fingers. “Like that, I was there.”

Matt's eyes fell to the tray. It was loaded with cooked food: shrimp cocktail, broiled lobster tails, french fried . . .

Abbie smiled. “I got hungry.”

“But where—?” Matt began. “You went back to the restaurant,” he said accusingly, “you took the food from there.”

Abbie nodded happily. “I was hungry.”

“But that's stealing,” Matt moaned. And he realized for the first time the enormity of the thing he had done, what he had let loose upon the world. Nothing was safe. Neither money nor jewels nor deadly secrets. Nothing at all.

“They won't ever miss it,” Abbie said, “and nobody saw me.” She said it simply, as the ultimate justification.

Matt was swept by the staggering realization that where her basic drives were concerned Abbie was completely unmoral. There was only one small hope. If he could keep her from realizing her civilization-shattering potentialities! They might never occur to her.

“Sure,” Matt said. “Sure.”

Abbie ate heartily, but Matt had no appetite. He sat thoughtfully, watching her eat, and he experienced a brief thankfulness that at least she wasn't going to starve to death.

“Didn't you have any trouble?” he asked. “Getting the food without anyone seeing you?”

Abbie nodded. “I couldn't decide how to get into the kitchen. I could see that the cook was all alone . . .”

“You could see?”

“I was outside, but I could see into the kitchen, somehow. So finally, I called ‘Albert!’ And the cook went out and I went in and took the food that was sitting on the tray and came back here. It was really simple, because the cook was expecting someone to call him.”

“How did you know that?”

“I thought it,” Abbie said, frowning. “Like this.” She concentrated for a moment. He watched her, puzzled, and then knew what she meant. Panic caught him by the throat. There were things she shouldn't know. Because he was trying so hard to bury them deep, they scuttled across his consciousness. Telepathy!

And as he watched her face, he knew that he was right. Her eyes grew wide and incredulous. Slowly, something hard and cruelly cold slipped over her face like a mask.
Oh, Abbie! My sweet, gentle Abbie!

“You—” she gasped. “You devil! There ain't nothin’ too bad for anyone who'd do that!”
I'm a dead man,
Matt thought.

“You with your kindness and your handsome face and your city manners,” Abbie said pitifully. “How could you do it? You made me fall in love with you. It wasn't hard, was it? All you had to do was hold a little hill girl's hand in the moonlight an’ kiss her once, an’ she was ready to jump into bed with you. But you didn't want anything as natural as that. All the time you was laughing and scheming. Poor little hill girl!

“You make me think you like me so well you want me to look real purty in new clothes and new hair and a new face. But it's just a trick. All the time it's a trick. When I'm feeling happiest and most grateful, you take it all away. I'd sooner you hit me across the face. Poor little hill girl! Thinking you wanted her. Thinking maybe you were aiming to marry her. I wanted to die. Even Paw was never that mean. He never done anything a-purpose, like you.”

White-faced, Matt watched her, his mind racing.

“You're thinking you can get around me somehow,” Abbie said, “and I'll forget. You can make me think it was all a mistake. ‘Tain't no use. You can't, not ever, because I know what you're thinking.”

What
had
he been thinking? Had he actually thought of marrying her? Just for a second? He shuddered. It would be hell. Imagine, if you can, a wife who is all-knowing, all-powerful, who can never be evaded, avoided, sighed to, lied to, shut out, shut up. Imagine a wife who can make a room a shambles in a second, who can throw dishes and chairs and tables with equal facility and deadly accuracy. Imagine a wife who can be any place, any time, in the flicker of a suspicion. Imagine a wife who can see through walls and read minds and maybe wish you a raging headache or a broken leg or aching joints.

It would be worse than hell. The torments of the damned would be pleasant compared to that.

Abbie's chin came up. “You don't need to worry. I'd as soon marry up with a rattlesnake. At least he gives you warning before he strikes.”

“Kill me!” Matt said desperately. “Go ahead and kill me!”

Abbie smiled sweetly. “Killing's too good for you. I don't know anything that ain't too good for you. But don't worry, I'll think of something. Now, go away and leave me alone.”

Thankfully, Matt started to turn. Before he could complete it, he found himself outside the cabin. He blinked in the light of the sinking sun. He began to shiver. After a little he sat down on the porch and lit a cigarette. There had to be some way out of this. There was always a way.

From inside the cabin came the sound of running water.
Running water!
Matt resisted an impulse to get up and investigate the mystery. “Leave
me alone,” Abbie had said, in a tone that Matt didn't care to challenge.

A few minutes later he heard the sound of splashing and Abbie's voice lifted in a sweet soprano. Although he couldn't understand the words, the tune sent chills down his back. And then a phrase came clear:

Root-a-toot-toot

Three times she did shoot

Right through that hardwood door.

He was her man,

But he done her wrong. . . .

Matt began to shake. He passed a trembling hand across his sweaty forehead and wondered if he had a fever. He tried to pull himself together, for he had to think clearly. The situation was obvious. He had done a fiendishly cruel thing—no matter what the excuse—and he had been caught and the power of revenge was in the hands of the one he had wronged, never more completely.

The only question was: What form would the revenge take? When he knew that, he might be able to figure out a way to evade it. There was no question in his mind about waiting meekly for justice to strike.

The insurmountable difficulty was that the moment he thought of a plan, it would be unworkable because Abbie would be forewarned. And she was already armed. He had to stop thinking.