Title: Now We Are Three
Author: Hensley, Joe L., 1926-2007
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Now We Are Three" ***


    _Where are we going? What will the world be like in the
    days--perhaps not too distant--when we have tested and tested the
    bombs to the finite degree? Joe L. Hensley, attorney in Madison,
    Indiana, and increasingly well known in SF, returns with this
    challenging story of that Tomorrow._


   now
    we
   are
 three

 _by Joe L. Hensley_


 It didn't matter that he had quit. He was still one of the
 guilty. He had seen it in her eyes and in the eyes of others.


John Rush smoothed the covers over his wife, tucking them in where her
restless moving had pulled them away from the mattress. The twins moved
beside him, their smooth hands following his in the task, their blind
eyes intent on nothingness.

"Thank you," he said softly to them, knowing they could not hear him.
But it made him feel better to talk.

His wife, Mary, was quiet. Her breathing was smooth, easy--almost as if
she were sleeping.

_The long sleep._

He touched her forehead, but it was cool. The doctor had said it was a
miracle she had lived this long. He stood away from the bed for a moment
watching before he went on out to the porch. The twins moved back into
what had become a normal position for them in the past months: One on
each side of the bed, their thin hands holding Mary's tightly, the milky
blind eyes surveying something that could not be seen by his eyes.
Sometimes they would stand like this for hours.

Outside the evening was cool, the light not quite gone. He sat in the
rocking chair and waited for the doctor who had promised to come--and
yet might not come. The bitterness came back, the self-hate. He
remembered a young man and promises made, but not kept; a girl who had
believed and never lost faith even when he had retreated back to the
land away from everything. Long sullen silences, self-pity, brooding
over the news stories that got worse and worse. And the children--one
born dead--two born deaf and dumb and blind.

_Worse than dead._

You helped, he accused himself. You worked for those who set off the
bombs and tested and tested while the cycle went up and up beyond human
tolerance--not the death level, but the level where nothing was sure
again, the level that made cancer a thing of epidemic proportions,
replacing statistically all of the insane multitude of things that man
could do to kill himself. Even the good things that the atom had brought
were destroyed in the panic that ensued. No matter that you quit. You
are still one of the guilty. You have seen it hidden in her eyes and you
have seen it in the milky eyes of the twins.

_Worse than dead._

Dusk became night and finally the doctor came. It had begun to lightning
and a few large drops of rain stroked Rush's cheek. Not a good year for
the farming he had retreated to. Not a good year for anything. He stood
to greet the doctor and the other man with him.

"Good evening, doctor," he said.

"Mr. Rush--" the doctor shook hands gingerly, "I hope you don't mind me
bringing someone along--this is Mr. North. He is with the County
Juvenile Office." The young doctor smiled. "How is the patient this
evening?"

"She is the same," John Rush said to the doctor. He turned to the other
man, keeping his face emotionless, hands at his side. He had expected
this for some time. "I think you will be wanting to look at the twins.
They are by her bed." He opened the door and motioned them in and then
followed.

He heard the Juvenile man catch his breath a little. The twins were
playing again. They had left their vigil at the bedside and they were
moving swiftly around the small living room, their hands and arms and
legs moving in some synchronized game that had no meaning--their
movements quick and sure--their faces showing some intensity, some
purpose. They moved with grace, avoiding obstructions.

"I thought these children were blind," Mr. North said.

John smiled a little. "It is unnerving. I have seen them play like this
before--though they have not done so for a long time--since my wife has
been ill." He lowered his head. "They are blind, deaf, and dumb."

"How old are they?"

"Twelve."

"They do not seem to be more than eight--nine at the most."

"They have been well fed," John said softly.

"How about schooling, Mr. Rush? The teaching of handicapped children is
not something that can be done by a person untrained in the field."

"I have three degrees, Mr. North. When my wife became ill and I began to
care for them I taught them to read braille. They picked it up very
quickly, though they showed little continued interest in it. I read a
number of books in the field of teaching handicapped children ..." He
let it trail off.

"Your degrees were in physics, were they not, Mr. Rush?" Now the touch
of malice came.

"That is correct." He sat down in one of the wooden chairs. "I quit
working long before the witch hunts came. I was never indicted."

"Nevertheless your degrees are no longer bona fide. All such degrees
have been stricken from the records." He looked down and John saw that
his eyes no longer hid the hate. "If your wife dies I doubt that any
court would allow you to keep custody of these children."

A year before--even six months and John would not have protested. Now he
had to make the effort. "They are my children--such as they are--and I
will fight any attempt to take them from me."

The Juvenile Man smiled without humor. "My wife and I had a child last
year, Mr. Rush. Or perhaps I should say that a child was born to us. I
am glad that child was born dead--I think my wife is even glad. Perhaps
we should try again--I understand that you and your kind have left us an
even chance on a normal birth." He paused for a moment. "I shall file a
petition with the circuit court asking that the Juvenile Office be
appointed guardians of your children, Mr. Rush. I hope you do not choose
to resist that petition--feeling would run pretty high against an
ex-physicist who tried to prove he _deserved_ children." He turned away
stiffly and went out the front door. In a little while Rush heard the
car door slam decisively.

The doctor was replacing things in the black bag. "I'm sorry, John. He
said he was going to come out here anyway so I invited him to come with
me."

John nodded. "My wife?"

"There is no change."

"And no chance."

"There never has been one. The brain tumor is too large and too
inaccessible for treatment or surgery. It will be soon now. I am
surprised that she has lasted this long. I am prolonging a sure
process." He turned away. "That's all I can do."

"Thank you for coming, doctor--I appreciate that." Rush smiled bitterly,
unable to stop himself. "But aren't you afraid that your other patients
will find out?"

The doctor stopped, his face paling slightly. "I took an oath when I
graduated from medical school. Sometimes I want to break that oath, but
I have not so far." He paused. "Try as I may I cannot blame them for
hating you. You know why."

Rush wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. "Don't you realize that
the government that punished the men I worked with for their 'criminal
negligence' is the same government that commissioned them to do that
work--that officials were warned and rewarned of the things that small
increases in radiation might do and that such things might not show up
immediately--and yet they ordered us ahead?" He stopped for a moment and
put his head down, touching his work-roughened hands to his eyes. "They
put us in prison for refusing to do a job or investigated us until no
one could or would trust us in civilian jobs--then when it was done they
put us in prison or worse because the very things we warned them of came
true."

"Perhaps that is true," the doctor said stiffly, "but the choice of
refusing was still possible."

"Some of us did refuse to work," Rush said softly. "I did, for one.
Perhaps you think that we alone will bear the blame. You are wrong.
Sooner or later the stigma will spread to all of the sciences--and to
you, doctor. Too many now that you can't save; in a little while the
hate will surround you also. When we are gone and they must find
something new to hate they will blame you for every malformed baby and
every death. You think that one of you will find a cure for this thing.
Perhaps you would if you had a hundred years or a thousand years, but
you haven't. They killed a man on the street in New York the other day
because he was wearing a white laboratory smock. What do you wear in
your office, doctor? Hate-blind eyes can't tell the difference:
Physicist, chemist, doctor.... We all look the same to a fool. Even if
there were a cancer cure that is only a part of the problem. There are
the babies. Your science cannot cope with the cause--only mine can do
that."

The doctor lowered his head and turned away toward the door.

There was another thing left to say: "If the plumbing went bad in your
home, doctor, you would call a plumber, for he would be the one
competent to fix it." Rush shook his head slowly. "But what happens when
there are no plumbers left?"

       *       *       *       *       *

The children were by the bed, their hands holding those of the mother.
Gently John Rush tugged those hands away and led them toward their own
bed. The small hands were cold in his own and he felt a tiny feeling of
revulsion as they tightened. Then the feeling slipped away and was
replaced--as if a current had crossed from their hands to his. It was a
warm feeling--one that he had known before when they touched him, but
for which he had never been able to find mental words to express the
sensation.

Slowly he helped them undress. When they were in the single bed he
covered them with the top sheet. Their milky eyes surveyed him,
unseeing, somehow withdrawn.

"I have not known you well," he said. "I left that to her. I have sat
and brooded and buried myself in the earth until it is too late for much
else." He touched the small heads. "I wish you could hear me. I wish ..."

Outside on the road a truck roared past. Instinctively he set to hear
it. The faces below him did not change.

He turned away quickly then and went back out on the porch. He filled
his pipe and sat down in the old, creaky rocker. A tiny rain had begun
to fall hesitantly--as if afraid of striking the sun-hardened ground.

_Somewhere out there, somewhere hunted, but not found, the plumbers
gathered. There had been a man--what was his name? Masser--that was it.
He had been working on a way to inhibit radioactivity--speed up the
half-life until they had taken the grant away. If a man can do whatever
he thinks of--can he undo that which he has done?_

_Masser was the theoreticist--I was the applier, the one who translated
equations into cold blueprints. And I was good until they ..._

They had hounded him back to the land when he quit. Others had not been
so lucky. When a whole people panic then an object for their hate must
be found. A naming. An immediate object. He remembered the newspaper
story that began: "They lynched twelve men, twelve ex-men, in New Mexico
last night ..."

_Have I been wrong? Have I done the right thing?_ He remembered the tiny
hands in his own, the blind eyes.

_Those hands. Why do they make me feel like ..._

He let his head slide back against the padded top of the rocking chair
and fell into a light, uneasy sleep.

The dreams came as they had before. Tiny, inhumanly capable hands
clutched at him and the sun was hot above. There was a background sound
of hydrogen bombs, heard mutely. He looked down at the hands that
touched and asked something of his own. The eyes were not milky now.
They stared up at him, alert and questioning. _What is it you want?_

The wind tore holes in tiny voices and there was the sound of laughter
and his wife's eyes were looking into his own, sorry only for him, at
peace with the rest. And they formed a ring around him, those three,
hands caught together, enclosing him. _What is it you are saying?_

It seemed to him that the words would come clear, but the rain came
then, great torrents of it, washing all away, all sight and sound....

       *       *       *       *       *

He awoke and only the rain was true. The tiny rain had increased to a
wind-driven downpour and he was soaked where it had blown under the
eaves onto the porch.

From inside the house he heard a cry.

She was sitting upright in bed. Her eyes were open and full of pain. He
went quickly to her and touched her pulse. It was faint and reedy.

"I hurt," she whispered.

Quickly, as the doctor had taught him, he made up a shot of morphine, a
full quarter grain, and gave it to her. Her eyes glazed down, but did
not close.

"John," she said softly, "the children ... they ... talk to ..." She
twisted on the bed and he held her with strong arms until the eyes
closed again and her breathing became easy. He pushed the ruffled hair
back from her eyes and straightened the awry sheets.

The vibration of his walking might have wakened the twins. He tiptoed to
_their_ bed--for they refused to be parted even in sleep.

For a second he thought that the small night-light had tricked him by
shadows on shadows. He reached down to touch ...

They were gone.

He fought down sudden panic. Where can two children, deaf and dumb and
blind go in the middle of the night?

Not far.

He opened the door to the kitchen, hand-hunted for the hanging light.
They were not there--nor were they on the small back porch. The panic
passed critical mass, exploded out of control. He lurched back into the
combination living room, bed room. He looked under all of the beds and
into the small closet--everywhere that two children might conceal
themselves.

Outside the rain had increased. He peered out into the lightning night.
A truck horn blew ominously far down the road.

The road?

He slogged through the mud, instantly soaking as soon as he was out of
shelter, not knowing or caring. Through the front yard, out to the road.
He could see the lights of the truck coming from far away, two tiny
points in the darkness. But no twins.

He waited helplessly while the truck rushed past, its headlights cutting
holes in the darkness--fearing those lights would outline something that
he had not seen. But there was nothing.

For another eternity he hunted the muddy fields, the small barn and
outbuildings. The clutch of fear made him shout their names, though he
knew they could not hear.

And then, suddenly, all fear was gone--like a summer squall near the
sea, with the sun close behind. It was as if their hands had reached out
and touched him and brought the strange feeling again.

"They are in the house," he said aloud and knew he was right.

He took time to discard muddy shoes on the porch before he opened the
door. And they were there--by the mother's bed, hands clasped over hers.

He felt a tiny chill. Their eyes were watching the door as he opened it,
their faces set to receive some stimuli--already set--as if they had
known he was coming.

Mary was breathing softly. On her face all trace of pain had disappeared
and now there was the tiny smile that had been hers long ago. Her
breathing was even, but light as forgotten conversation.

Gently he tried to pry their resisting hands away from hers. The hands
fought back with a terrible strength beyond normality. By sheer greater
force he tore one of the twins away.

It was like releasing a bomb. Sudden pain stabbed through his body. The
twin struggled in his arms, the small hands reaching blindly out for the
thing they had lost. And Mary's eyes opened and all of the uncontrolled
pain came, back into those eyes. Her body writhed on the bed, tearing
the coverings away. The twin squirmed away from his slackening hold and
once again caught at the hands of the mother.

All struggle ceased. Mary's eyes shut again, the pain lines smoothed
themselves, the tiny smile flowered.

He reached out and touched the small hands on each side of the mother
and the feeling for which there were no words came through more
strongly than ever before. Tiny voices tried to whisper within the
corners of his mind, partially blotted, sometimes heard. The _real_
things, the things of hate and fear and despair retreated beyond the
bugle call that sounded somewhere.

"She will die," the voice said; one voice for two. "This part of her
will die."

And then _her_ voice came--as it had been once before when all of the
world was young. "You must not be afraid, John. I have known for a long
time--for they were a part of me. And you could not know for your mind
was hiding and alone. I have seen ..."

He cried out and pulled his hands away. Sound died, the room was normal
again. The milky, white eyes surveyed him, the hands remained locked
securely over those of the mother. The thin carven features of the
children were emotionless, waiting.

He strove for rational meaning within his brain. _These are my
sons--they can not see or hear or speak. They are identical twins--born
with those defects._

Take two children, blind them, make them deaf to all sound, cut away
their voices. They are identical twins, facing the same environment,
sharing the same heredity of blasted chromosomes. They will have
intelligence and curiosity that increases as they mature. They will not
be blinded by the senses--the easy way. The first thing they will
discover is each other.

What else might they then discover?

It has been said that when sight is lost the sense of touch and hearing
increase to almost unbelievable acuteness--Rush knew that. The blind
often also develop a sense almost like radar which allows them to
perceive an object ahead of them and gives them the ability to follow
twisting paths.

Take one child and put him under the disability that the twins were born
with. As intelligence grows so does single bewilderment. The world is a
puzzling and bewildering place. Braille is a great discovery--a way to
communicate with the unknown that lies beyond.

But the twins had shown almost no interest in Braille.

He reached back down for the tiny hands.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Yes, we can communicate," the single voice that spoke for two said. "We
have tried with you before, but we could not break through. Your mind
speaks in a language we do not understand, in figures and equations that
are not real to us. Those things lie all through your mind--on the
surface we have sensed only your pity for us and your hate for the
shadowy ones around you, the ones we do not know. It was a wall we could
not climb. She is different.

"A part of her will go with us," the voice said. "There is another place
that touches this one which we perceive and know more fully than this
one."

The voice died away and brief pictures of a land of other dimensions
beyond sight flashed in his brain. He had seen them before imperfectly
in the disquieting dreams. "She must go with us for she can no longer
exist here," the voice said softly. "Perhaps there are others like us to
come--we do not yet know what we are or whether there will be others
like us. But we must go now, before we were ready, because of her."

The mother's voice came. "You must go too. There is nothing here for you
but sorrow. They will take you, John." A softness touched at him.
"Please, John."

The longing was a thing of fire. To cast off the world that had already
given him all of the hate and fear that he could stand, that had made
him worse than a coward. To go with her.

But she no longer needed him. She was complete--as they were, only
necessary to themselves.

He could not go.

During the long night he kept the vigil by the bedside; long after any
need to keep it.

The twins were gone and she with them.

He could not cry for all tears seemed useless. He said a small prayer,
something he had not done in years, over the cold thing left behind.

The rain had ceased outside. Somewhere out there in his world there were
men trying to undo the harm that had been done, harm that he had helped
to do, then retreated from. He had no right to retreat further.

Something spoke a requiem sentence in his consciousness, light as late
sunset, only vaguely there. "_We are_ here--we will wait for you ...
come to us ... come ..."

He wrote a short note for the doctor and the others who would come and
hunt and go through the motions that men must live by. Perhaps the
doctor might even understand.

"I have gone plumbing," the note said.



Transcriber's Note:

    This etext was produced from _Fantastic Universe_ August 1957.
    Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
    copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
    typographical errors have been corrected without note.

    A section of text was missing from the original printing. To
    restore narrative flow, the following italicised text has been
    added as a suggested amendment: "It had begun to lightning and
    a few large drops of rain stroked _Rush's cheek. Not a_ good
    year for the farming he had retreated to. Not a good year for
    anything."





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