For Love of Mother-Not - Alan Dean Foster [71]
“An ignorant Commonwealth society did not feel as we did about the importance of our activities. As a result, we have undergone many years of persecution. Yet we have persisted. As you can see, all of us who are original members of the Society are nearly as advanced in years as yourself.
“The government has been relentless in its efforts to wipe us out. Over the years, it has whittled away at our number until we have been reduced to a dedicated few. Yet we need but a single success, one incontrovertible proof of the worthiness of our work, to free ourselves from the lies and innuendo with which we have been saddled.
“It was a cruel and uncaring government which caused the dispersal of the children many years ago and which brought us to our current state of scientific exile. Slowly, patiently, we have worked to try and relocate those children, in particular any whose profiles showed real promise. Your Flinx is one of those singled out by statistics as a potential Talent.”
“But there’s nothing abnormal about him,” Mother Mastiff protested. “He’s a perfectly average, healthy young man. Quieter than most, perhaps, but that’s all. Is that worth all this trouble? Oh, I’ll admit he can do some parlor tricks from time to time. But I know a hundred street magicians who can do the same. Why don’t you go pick on them?”
Nyassa-lee smiled that humorless, cold smile. “You’re lying to us, old woman. We know that he is capable of more than mere tricks and that something far more important than sleight of hand is involved.”
“Well, then,” she continued, trying a different tack, “why kidnap me? Why pull me away from my home like this? I’m an old woman, just as ye say. I can’t stand in your way or do ye any harm. If ’tis Flinx you’re so concerned with, why did ye not abduct him? I surely could not have prevented ye from doing so.”
“Because he may be dangerous.”
Yes, they are quite mad, this lot, Mother Mastiff mused. Her boy, Flinx, dangerous? Nonsense! He was a sensitive boy, true; he could sometimes know what others were feeling, but only rarely, and hardly at all when he most wished to do so. And maybe he could push the emotions of others a tiny bit. But dangerous? The danger was to him, from these offworld fools and madmen.
“Also,” the little Oriental continued, “we have to proceed very carefully because we cannot risk further harm to the Society. Our numbers have already been drastically reduced, partly by our too-hasty attempt to regain control of one subject child a number of years ago. We cannot risk making the same mistake with this Number Twelve. Most of our colleagues have been killed, imprisoned, or selectively mindwiped.”
Mother Mastiff’s sense of concern doubled at that almost indifferent admission. She didn’t understand all the woman’s chatter about genetic alterations and improving mankind, but she understood mindwiping, all right. A criminal had to be found guilty of some especially heinous crime to be condemned to that treatment, which took away forever a section of his memories, of his life, of his very self, and left him to wander for the rest of his days tormented by a dark, empty gap in his mind.
“You leave him alone!” she shouted, surprised at the violence of her reaction. Had she become so attached to the boy? Most of the time she regarded him as a nuisance inflicted on her by an unkind fate—didn’t she?
“Don’t you hurt him!” She was on her feet and pounding with both fists on the shoulders of the woman called Nyassa-lee.
Though white-haired and no youngster, Nyassa-lee was a good deal younger and stronger than Mother Mastiff. She took the older woman’s wrists and gently pushed her back down into the chair.
“Now, we’re not going to hurt