The Crystal Child by Theodore Roszak Read Free Book Online

flesh from dead matter.  Secretly she clung to a principle that had no scientific status.  If there were laws for the conservation of matter and energy, then there had to be a law for the conservation of human consciousness.  A law that gave life a special momentum in the face of all that thermodynamics taught about inert nature.
    Please don’t bother, my dear .  “Why not, Beth?”  In her thoughts she had asked the question countless times.  “Why are you giving up the fight?”  She knew what Beth might have answered.  “Because there’s too little to gain for all the work.  Save your efforts for those who have more time.”   More time.  Beth was over ninety; how much longer could she last?  At twenty we can assume we have another twenty years ahead of us.  At thirty, another thirty years.  But at fifty and sixty, we cannot assume we have double the number of years yet to go.  And at ninety …  After a certain point, expectation fades; the horizon of hope shortens with each passing day.  Fatalism sets in, soon to become the balm of surrender.  In their final years people stop wanting more time because they have had their share.  Staying alive becomes hard work, the strain becomes too great.  It is almost as if nature has built submission into the deep psyche, the last consolation of the doomed.  Once it is triggered, the struggle is over. And when it became clear that her patients were ready to submit, Julia, though reluctantly, acquiesced, letting them find peace in their final days.
    But now a remarkable possibility had entered her life.  A senile child .  The boy who had now become her youngest patient knew he had a right to another fifty or sixty years of healthy life.  With her help, he might be willing to fight for those years.  If anybody had ever been old before his time, Aaron Lacey was that person.  Surely that certainty would give him the will to fight.  That was what made him important.  Though cursed with age, he might not be burdened with resignation.
     
    ***
     
    Julia made a point of visiting Aaron every night, the last patient on her rounds before she left for home.  She used the occasion to make a few notes on his condition, but this was mainly a chance to mother the lonely boy a bit.  She sat at his bedside and talked about anything that interested him.  Sometimes they talked about the games, reviewing the strategies he had chosen.  Invariably he asked how she thought he was progressing.  “Am I getting better?” he would ask.  And she would be as reassuring as she could be without actually lying.  Sometimes she would read to him from a favorite book, a chapter from The Lord of the Rings perhaps, a book he was struggling through with his dimmed eyesight.  Above all she tried to find excuses to touch him, to hold his hand, feel his brow, stroke his cheek.  She was a great believer in the therapeutic laying on of hands.  And finally she would tuck him in and brush a kiss to his forehead, sometimes waiting, with his hand in hers, until he dozed off.
    These became precious moments for Aaron.  Each time Julia settled down beside him he studied her face, finding it more and more beautiful, even when she came to him with her hair mussed and wearing no makeup.  He grew used to her odor, a mixture of medicinal aromas mixed with the heat of her body.  Touching became especially important to him.  Where her fingers brushed against him, he felt a pleasure that was more like a forbidden thrill than friendly warmth.  And when she bent over him to adjust his covers and kiss him good-night, he flushed with joy to know her breasts were there, just a few inches from him.  He wanted to reach up and take hold of her, to press her against him, but he knew that would be wrong.  This was not the feeling he had for his mother, but something more intense and troubling.  It came over him whenever Julia was with him during the day, a pang of longing.  Stay , he wanted to