Dreaming Jewels by Theodore Sturgeon Read Free Book Online Page B

contortionist, who can make a shoulder muscle, or a thigh or part of an arm, jump and twitch individually. He did a thing like tuning an electronic instrument, with his brain. He channeled his mental energy into the specific “wave-length” which hurt the jewel, and suddenly, shockingly, spewed it out.
    Again and again he struck out at the jewel. Then he let it rest while he tried to bring into the cruel psychic blows some directive command. He visualized the drooping basil shrub, picturing it in the second can.
Grow one.
    Copy that.
    Make another.
    Grow one.
    Repeatedly he slashed and slugged the jewel with the order. He could all but hear it whimper. Once he detected, deep in his mind, a kaleidoscopic flicker of impressions—the oak tree, the fire, a black, star-studded emptiness, a triangle cut into bark. It was brief, and nothing like it was repeated for a long time, but Monetre was sure that the impressions had come from the jewel; that it was protesting something.
    It gave in; he could feel it surrender. He bludgeoned it twice more for good measure, and went to bed.
    In the morning he had two basil plants. But one was a freak.

6
    C ARNIVAL LIFE PLODDED STEADILY along, season holding the tail of the season before. The years held three things for Horty. They were—belonging; Zena; and a light with a shadow.
    After the Maneater fixed up his—“her”—hand, and the pink scar-tissue came in, the new midget was accepted. Perhaps it was the radiation of willingness, the delighted, earnest desire to fit in and to be of real value that did it, and perhaps it was a quirk or a carelessness on the Maneater’s part, but Horty stayed.
    In the carnival the pinheads and the roustabouts, the barkers and their shills, the dancers and fireaters and snake-men and ride mechanics, the layout and advance men, had something in common which transcended color and sex and racial and age differences. They were carny, all of them, interested in gathering their tips and turning them—which is carnivalese for collecting a crowd and persuading it to file past the ticket-taker—for this, and for this alone, they worked. And Horty was a part of it.
    Horty’s voice was a part of Zena’s in their act, which followed Bets and Bertha, another sister team with a total poundage in the seven hundreds. Billed as The Little Sisters, Zena and Kiddo came on with a hilarious burlesque of the preceding act, and then faded to one of their own, a clever song-and-dance routine which ended in a bewildering vocal—a harmonizing yodel. Kiddo’s voice was clear and true, and blended like keys on an organ with Zena’s full contralto. They also worked in the Kiddie’s Village, a miniature town with its own fire station, city hall, and restaurants, all child-size; adults not admitted. Kiddo served weak tea and cookies to the round-eyed, freckle-faced moppets at the country fairs, and felt part of their wonder and part of their belief in this magic town. Part of… part of… it was a deep-down, thrilling theme to everything that Kiddo did; Kiddo was part of Horty, and Horty was part of the world, for the first time in his life.
    Their forty trucks wound among the Rockies and filed out along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, snorted into the Ottawa Fairgrounds and blended themselves into the Fort Worth Exposition. Once, when he was ten, Horty helped the giant Bets bring her child into the world, and thought nothing of it, since it was so much a part of the expected-unexpected of being a carny. Once a pinhead, a happy, brainless dwarf who sat gurgling and chuckling with joy in a corner of the freak show, died in Horty’s arms after drinking lye, and the scar in Horty’s memory of that frightening scarlet mouth and the pained and puzzled eyes—that scar was a part of Kiddo, who was Horty, who was part of the world.
    And the second thing was Zena, who was hands for him, eyes for him, a brain for him until he got into the swing of things, until he learned to be, with