Barbara Smith led the two small boys, one by each hand, into an ugly, sparsely furnished room in the Thorling School basement. There was an old couch, a table littered with gaudy children's books and magazines, and a couple of scarred chairs. On the floor was a toy fire truck. On the window sills, so high as to be well out of arm's reach of the boys, sat what appeared to be an assortment of bottles and dimestore vases. Actually, these were made of lightweight, easily shattered plastic, not of glass.
"Here we are, children!" said Miss Smith. She released them and backed away, leaving the tykes to stare at one another with uneasy curiosity. Miss Smith added, "Stevie, this is David; David, this is Stevie. Now, you two play, and I'll come back in a little while."
She left the room.
Left to their own devices, Stevie and David prowled their separate, self-conscious courses about the room, each aiming indirectly at the fire truck—the only toy in sight.
"Are you goin' to go to school here?" David asked.
"I guess so," said Stevie. "Are you?"
"Yeah."
"I'm five."
"I'm almost."
They arrived at the fire truck at the same time. Stevie squatted beside it and pressed his right hand firmly on its red top. Without closing his fingers he pushed it back and forth, while David watched silently. Then Stevie shoved it across the floor to bang against a wall, and David walked after it. He kneeled beside the truck, tried the back-and-forth routine, then scooted it back in Stevie's direction. Stevie sprawled sideways to intercept it and both boys laughed.
Soon they were both sitting on the floor, some distance apart, happily rolling the truck from one to the other. The routine of a game had been established.
Watching from behind a one-way mirror, Headmaster Judson Royster grunted dubiously, "This doesn't look like a psychokinetic duel to me. They've gotten on good terms almost immediately. Is there any point in continuing?"
Miss Smith was frowning in disappointment. "Let's watch a little longer," she urged. "This was such a fine opportunity—two new children, boys the same age, strangers to each other, with home reputations for 'throwing things' and, of course, both with behavior problems. I still think those young fellows ought to be tangling for possession of that fire truck!"
"Just how did you expect this battle of the century to develop?" Royster asked dryly.
Miss Smith's eyes snapped at him, but her words were matter-of-fact: "The fight for possession would be physical, a tugging match probably. As soon as one boy got possession, the other would vent his frustration by pelting the victor with the vases and bottles. This would scare and anger the victor into retaliating in kind. If this phase could end with only one piece of ammunition left unbroken, and both boys struggling for psi control of that piece . . ."
" . . . Then both boys would wind up with well-developed mental muscles, after just one easy lesson," Royster finished. He looked through the mirror at the boys, who were still playing peaceably. "Perhaps it could work even yet," he added, "but I've explained my lack of faith in shortcuts of this sort. And anyway, the problem is not so much to strengthen ESP talents as to bring them under conscious control. That has always been the problem, and I know only one way to solve it. No matter how many breakaway bottles David and Stevie pelt each other with while in fits of rage, I wouldn't expect the exercise to prepare them, when they're making a calm, rational effort, to roll one peanut."
He concluded with a grin, "Are you sure we're not staging this experiment simply to satisfy your feminine urge to see two masterful males locked in combat?"
Miss Smith gave the remark the sniff of dismissal which, Royster agreed to himself, was all it deserved. Why did his attempts at jokes with her always come out with more cutting edge than humor? Maybe the reason was that he . . . No! He broke away from the forbidden train of thought, as he always did. After all, he was in a building full of telepathic children!
"I'll get another pretty girl's opinion," he said lightly, turning to the serious-faced, twelve-year-old blonde who was standing a little apart from them in the observation cubicle. "Jilly," he asked, "how do you size up our gladiators?"
"They won't fight," Jilly replied assuredly. "David started to get mad when Stevie first touched the truck, but he just stood there. They're pretty sure they're being watched."
"How's that? Telepathy?"
"Just a little bit," the girl answered. "Not that they can read us or anything, but they can sense us looking at them. So they won't fight while they feel like that."
"Damn!" groaned Miss Smith. "Forgive the language, Jilly, but I'd have thought it if I hadn't said it. The whole idea of this experiment hangs on those two kids being isolated. Certainly it won't work with them aware of adult presences."
"Maybe if you let a movie camera do the watching it would work," Jilly suggested.
"There isn't a camera in the building," said Royster. "And besides . . ."
* * *
A boy of nine pushed through the door of the observation booth with an excited expression on his face. "Hostiles in the first floor halls, Mr. Royster!" he puffed breathlessly. Turning to Jilly he added an angry reproach, "Jilly, why wasn't you listening?" . . .
"I was busy listening to them," she answered, pointing to the boys playing with the truck.
"What kind of hostiles, Arthur?" Royster asked.
"Inspectors from the state! School credit inspectors!"
"Accreditation inspectors from the State Department of Public Instruction?" Royster asked sharply.
"Yeah! That's them! And they have it in for the school!"
Royster nodded grimly. "I'd better get up there," he said swiftly. "Miss Smith, take David and Stevie up to Miss Wembley's class, then go on to the office. Jilly, Arthur, spread the word that outsiders are here and that everything must look normal in the classrooms. And get back to your own classes."
"The dormitories are fragrant," commented Arthur.
Royster stared down at him in puzzlement for a second, then said, "The word is 'flagrant', Arthur. You're right. Jilly, get three of the older boys and two girls plus yourself up to the dorms right away. Put everything used in ESP out of sight—the pendulums, pith balls, decks, everything! Hurry! I'll try to keep the inspectors away from the dorms long enough for you to get through."
"O.K.," said the girl, dashing off. Miss Smith had already gone to retrieve her young duelers and take them to the kindergarten class. Royster left the observation booth and headed for the stairs with Arthur at his heels.
"Are you sure you won't need me or somebody with you, Mr. Royster?" the boy asked.
"Hm-m-m. Maybe so, Arthur. Stay with me, but get rid of that excited expression. Look sullen! Remember that you're a badly-behaved problem child who can't adjust to adults or to your peers."
"O.K.," the boy said. Royster glanced back at him. The boy looked satisfactorily rebellious and woebegone. Royster hoped he could play his own role as convincingly.
On two scores Royster had a head start. First, his appearance was prototypical of the dedicated, harassed, rather ineffectual schoolman. He was of medium height, a little underweight, bespectacled, and despite his thirty-five years a bit too youthful-looking to seem a capable adult.
Second, at this moment he felt as nervous and unsettled as anyone would expect the headmaster of a school full of young misfits and antisocials to be. This surprise visit by the state accreditation team could darken the school's future, and he knew it. If he could stay on the defensive with the inspectors, not get angry and tell them to go to hell, perhaps things would go off all right.
* * *
There was plenty to get angry about, though. The fact that this was a surprise inspection, for instance. Schools in the public system were never subjected to such upsetting visits. And even the private schools, traditionally viewed with suspicious dislike by state education officials, were hit by surprise inspections so seldom that the very act of an accreditation team, showing up unannounced at one of them, was tantamount to an accusation of educational hanky-panky.
All Royster could hope for would be grudging agreement that Thorling School's students would, in the event of their transferal to another school, continue to be accepted as bona fide graduates of the last grade they had completed at Thorling. Or, when Thorling reached the stage, in another five years, of graduating high-school students, these would be accepted by standard colleges and universities, subject only to the usual entrance examinations and placement tests.
There would be no pats on Royster's head from any state school officials, no praise for Thorling for a difficult job well done—for a very good reason: Thorling was succeeding in educating children with whom the public schools had failed. Such a success was hardly the sort to please the leaders of the state's educational and political power structures, even though it should have been plain to everyone that Thorling was specialized for a task that public schools, by their very nature, could not be expected to handle.
So the public school psychologists and counselors grudgingly referred to Thorling the children they could not get through to, particularly the kindergarteners they did not even wish to try to get through to. Thorling accepted some of these and sent the others back. When asked to explain the school's criteria for accepting or rejecting a referred child, Royster spouted a dizzying line of educational doubletalk that, if stripped of its camouflaging verbiage, would have amounted to nothing more than: "We take the children we can help."
The carefully concealed truth was, of course, that Thorling took those children who had extrasensory abilities, whose behavior problems in fact usually stemmed from the difference these abilities created between them and other children. Brought together with others of their own sort, these children were no longer misfits. They became attainable—to each other, to their teachers, to the normal processes of schooling, and to the development and joyful use of their special gifts.
If Thorling School's real nature was suspected, its loss of accreditation would be the least of its worries. Public school officials would scream with gleeful alarm until they stirred up a full-scale witch-hunt. And the public itself, long plagued to the point of surliness by educational quackery and soaring school costs, would probably be quick in making Thorling School a sacrificial goat.
In brief, Thorling School existed on a razor's edge, and the accreditation inspectors would be in a position to topple it if they could find a minimal amount of solid leverage . . . anything to justify their vague suspicions. But, if Royster could say the right things, and the children played their roles . . .
* * *
"Don't worry about that, Mr. Royster," said Arthur. "Us kids're with you all the way—except maybe a couple of new soreheads and the old perfectioners—perfectionists. An' they won't get out of line, either."
"Thanks, Arthur," Royster responded.
They came out of the stairwell into the first floor hall. Arthur murmured, "Everybody's got the word."
Two of the team members, a man about Royster's age and an angular woman in her fifties, were in the main hall, each peering through the glass panel of a classroom door. Royster recognized neither of them as he approached. Roddy Linker, the student hall monitor, was at his desk unconcernedly reading his biology textbook. He glanced up and gave the headmaster a conspiratorial wink, then returned to his book.
Royster reached the woman first and said rather loudly, "Good morning, madam. Can I help you?"
Both she and the man, who was at the next door down the hall, jumped and spun around. She recovered her composure quickly and drew her head up and back, as if confronted by a distasteful odor.
"Are you Judson Royster?" she barked.
"Yes, I'm Mr. Royster, madam."
"Why weren't you in your office, Royster?" she demanded.
"Duties elsewhere in the building. Sorry to have kept you waiting, madam. The hall monitor should have let me know through the intercom that I had visitors." He gave young Roddy a reproving glance. "What can I do for you?"
She fumbled in her garishly beaded handbag and drew out an official card. "I am Dr. Phyllis Ross, of the Inspections Division of the State Department of Public Instruction." She held the card out so he could read it with a little peering but could not touch it. "My colleague here is Dr. J. Mercer Stilly, who has our documents." The man walked up, gravely shook hands with Royster, and gave him a stiff, folded paper.
"And this is the third member of our team, Mr. Donnelly McNear," Dr. Ross continued, pointing to a rotund, baby-faced young man who was emerging from the school office.
Looking very much at a loss, Royster said, "I'm very happy to meet all of you, Dr. Ross, Dr. Stilly, Mr. McNear. I suppose this is a building-safety inspection, isn't it? You'll find everything in good order, and I'll welcome your professional advice on a few proposed alterations—"
"We're not safety inspectors!" broke in McNear in an insulted tone. "That paper tells who we are!"
Royster unfolded the paper, stared at it, and looked up with a dazed expression. "Accreditation? There must have been a mix-up somewhere, I'm afraid. We've not received notice that you were coming, and don't have any of the special reports prepared. Could it be that . . ." He peered at the paper again and went on weakly, "No, it says Thorling School, all right, and the date's correct. But those special reports I should have ready . . ."
"Never mind the reports, Royster," Dr. Ross said brusquely. "Send the paperwork in later. We're here to see what's going on for ourselves, not to read what you say is going on. And I still want a satisfactory explanation as to why your office was left unattended."
"Yes, madam. Our funds are insufficient to pay a receptionist without reducing our teaching staff. There is only Miss Smith, who is my assistant and who also handles much of the secretarial work, in addition to myself. Sometimes we both have to be out of the office at the same time, particularly when new pupils are being enrolled as two were this morning.
"However, we always make sure a monitor of demonstrated dependability is on duty in the front hall when both of us must be out." He looked at Roddy Linker again and said to the inspectors, "If you will pardon me a moment, I should have a word with that young man."
He walked over to the monitor's desk and the team followed closely behind him. "Roddy," he said sternly, "you know very well that you are supposed to inform Miss Smith or myself when we have visitors!"
Roddy's lips puckered angrily and his eyes swept the four adults with a glower. "They said not to," he grunted churlishly.
"Who said not to?" Royster demanded.
"Them," Roddy replied, pointing to Dr. Ross and McNear. "That woman and that guy."
"That lady and that gentleman," Royster corrected him.
Roddy shrugged and said indifferently, "You're the boss."
Royster thought in dismay: What's Roddy trying to do to us? "The young scoundrel is lying!" snapped Dr. Ross.
"In his teeth!" supplemented McNear. "We said no such thing! Really, Royster, if your establishment is producing such dishonest ruffians as this . . ."
Helplessly Royster looked at Dr. Stilly, who was listening with an unhappy frown but who showed no inclination to speak. It was a hopeless situation—the word of one boy, and a problem boy at that, against two or maybe three responsible adults. "Roddy," he began.
"Gosh, Mr. Royster," said Roddy, in a changed tone and plainly in retreat, "I didn't mean to lie! That's what I thought they told me."
"Nonsense!" yapped Dr. Ross. "We said nothing that the dimmest child in the state could misinterpret in that manner!"
Roddy was fumbling for something under his desk. "If you say so, ma'm," he said apologetically, "I guess you're right. What was really said," he finished, lifting a tape recorder onto the desk and rapidly flicking its buttons, "was this!"
The recorder come on loud and clear with Roddy's voice:
" 'Good morning. Who did you wish to see?'
"McNear's unmistakable, high-pitched voice: 'Nobody in particular.'
"Roddy: 'Just a moment, please, and I'll call Mr. Royster.'
"Dr. Ross: 'That won't be necessary, young man. Return to your seat.'
"Roddy: 'But Mr. Royster said I'm supposed—'
"McNear: 'And the lady said that won't be necessary!'
"Roddy: 'But when visitors come, he wants to—'
"Dr. Ross: 'We're not mere visitors, boy. We're here on business. Now get on with your book!'
"Roddy: 'Yes, ma'm.' "
He switched off the recorder and looked up innocently. To Royster he said, "I guess they didn't say not to call you, after all, sir. At least not in those exact words."
Royster was fighting to stifle a guffaw of sheer relief—and no little admiration. He was glad the inspectors were staring at Roddy, as if the boy were a rattlesnake who had just depleted his venom supply into their veins, and weren't noticing him.
As soon as he had himself under control, Royster said brightly, "Roddy is quite an enthusiast of speech identification patterns—you know, those photographs of vocal vibrations that are used somewhat like fingerprints. He makes himself a minor nuisance with that recorder of his, gathering samples of visitors' voices to study. How many adults do you have so far, Roddy?"
"Twenty-seven, counting these three. But none of these said 'Good morning,' and those are the words I'm using in my comparative study."
"I'm sure they'll be happy to oblige, won't you, folks?" Royster said, turning to the inspectors. "Will each of you say 'Good morning' for Roddy's recording?"
Dr. Stilly said with a wry smile, "That's a very educational project you're undertaking, young man. I'll be glad to contribute. Good morning." He looked expectantly at McNear.
"Good morning," McNear sang tonelessly.
"Good morning!" Dr. Ross snapped impatiently. "Now let's quit wasting time and get on with the inspection."
"Very well," Royster said, talking fast and glibly. "I suggest we start with the dormitories, on the upper floors, and work our way systematically to the basement." He moved away slightly, as if to lead the way to the stairwell, but none of the others showed any intention of following him, so he edged back, still talking. "As I'm sure you know, most of our youngsters are boarding students from all sections of the state. The top floor has been converted into living quarters for the boys, the second floor for the girls, and the first floor and basement rooms for classes. Fortunately, this is a big if rather old building, and—"
"We'll start with the classrooms, if you please," Dr. Ross ruled coldly.
"Those in the basement," added McNear.
Royster looked blankly at them a moment, then said, "Very well," with a nervous chuckle. "I can appreciate the fact that, for an accreditation inspection, the actual classroom work is your foremost consideration."
"Precisely," said Dr. Ross. "So let's not just stand here all day!"
* * *
As Royster led the way with apparent reluctance, the visitors became increasingly aware of the glum-looking urchin who was dogging the headmaster's footsteps. After a whispered conference with Dr. Ross, McNear asked, "Why is this young man following you, Royster?"
The headmaster started to answer, then paused, not at all satisfied with the explanation he meant to offer for Arthur's presence. The boy cleared his throat and Royster peered down at him.
"Suppose you answer our visitor's question, Arthur," he said. After all, the boy had access to several dozen imaginative young brains.
"It's 'cause I misbehaved," said Arthur.
"This is your punishment?" asked McNear.
"No, sir. This is so Mr. Royster can watch me while he decides what to do to me."
"This strikes me as a most unusual procedure," Dr. Ross commented disapprovingly.
"Oh, no, ma'm," said Arthur. "Mr. Royster does this all the time. It ain't unusual."
"It 'isn't' unusual, Arthur," Royster corrected mildly, wondering what this was leading to.
"Really, Royster," the woman said, "such a display of hesitancy concerning a simple disciplinary matter shows a lack of decisiveness scarcely fitting for a headmaster."
"Am I indecisive, Arthur?" asked Royster.
"No, sir, it ain't . . ."
"Isn't!"
" . . . It isn't that." The boy looked up at Dr. Ross. "The reason he waits for an hour or two is so I'll know he's thinkin' over what I did, because he thinks I'm important enough to think about."
Royster got the drift and put in a pious aside to the inspectors, "So many of our children's problems were intensified by angry and impatient parents . . ." He shook his head sadly.
"But couldn't the boy do his waiting in his classroom?" asked Dr. Stilly. "This procedure interrupts his work schedule for hours."
"That's correct, Dr. Stilly," said Royster, "and in the regular school situation this practice would be unjustifiable. But here at Thorling, as you know, behavioral problems have to be given a high priority. If Arthur were in his class, waiting with mounting dread to hear my decision, imagining me increasingly as a vengeful ogre, and perhaps misbehaving again out of boyish bravado, the effect on him would be far from salutary. But if he's actually with me, he's constantly aware of me as I really am, and of my desire to help, rather than injure, him. You'd be surprised at the gracefulness with which the children accept a penalty when they know I have given it hours of thought."
"Arthur," Dr. Ross said sweetly, "do you even go to the bathroom with your headmaster?"
"Yes'm."
"And are girl students punished in this manner, too?"
"Yes'm. Miss Smith had Hazel Petrov with her most all yesterday afternoon, ma'm."
Dr. Ross grunted in disappointment.
Royster led the way along the basement hall. Thorling School had originally been built, back in the late 1920s, as a public school to consolidate some two dozen of the old rural one-roomers in that area of the county. When enrollment began to mount after World War II, the penny-pinching county fathers decreed that the overflow of students be handled not by the construction of expensive new wings, nor of entire new schools, but by digging out new rooms under the old buildings. The resulting classrooms might have looked dismally shoddy, with their tangle of pipes a foot below the ceiling and their haphazardly located support beams and posts, but they served their purpose for a while.
But finally enrollment pressure reached the point where an all-out program of new-school construction was unavoidable—and the new schools made the old "substandard" by comparison. Naturally, every tax-paying citizen was soon demanding that his Johnny have as pleasant a school to attend as the next kid, and it became expedient to build still more new schools and to abandon the old.
The J. V. Thorling Foundation had purchased this building for not many more dollars than it had cost originally. The boxy, red-brick structure was old, and not considered handsome, but it was sturdy. And after a thorough repair and renovation of the interior, it proved quite satisfactory to its new users.
The state education officials made no fuss about the fact that the building was "substandard." So long as the big sign facing the highway made it plain that Thorling was a privately-operated institution, public officials seemed to feel that the shoddier it looked the better.
Thus Royster chattered extensively about the building's shortcomings, poor-mouthing and apologizing over them, as he led the inspectors about. He knew that the quality of housing was a definite factor in the accreditation process—but he knew as well that the members of this team definitely were not interested in finding fault with the building.
They were more inclined to gaze with studious frowns through the little glass-door panels of classrooms and poke their heads in storage closets, evidently in hope of discovering disorderly or illicit activity. They accepted Royster's explanation of the room in which Miss Smith's experiment with Stevie and David had been conducted—that it was a room in which visiting parents could chat with their children. The adjacent observation booth would have passed, with its lights on to blank out the scene through the one-way mirror, as unused storage space, but the inspectors did not notice it at all.
"I'm sure you've observed that we made some use of programmed instruction in our classes," Royster remarked, "but haven't gone to it fully by any means. About half of the classrooms are equipped with the program machines. We find them excellent, of course, for the teaching of all subjects once the basic learning skills are acquired."
"Then why not adopt them more fully?" asked Dr. Stilly.
"Mainly to keep the children functioning, as much as possible, as members of groups—that is, as cooperating participants in a class discussion, et cetera. When a child is using a PI machine, he is isolated, without social contact. For our purposes, which as you know are to help the children surmount behavioral difficulties as well as provide a rounded educational experience, too much time in isolation is undesirable."
How much easier it would be, thought Royster, who was getting tired of chattering at the increasingly grumpy visitors, to tell them the truth in a very few words—that PI is about the only way to be sure that a telepathic pupil is actually learning a subject instead of picking up answers, as needed, from the minds of teachers or other students, while the ordinary, old-fashioned classroom setup is ideal for the development of ESP skills.
The group returned to the first floor and the inspectors fanned out immediately to gaze into three classrooms. Arthur took the opportunity to hiss a message to the headmaster.
"Stilly's completely snowed, Mr. Royster, but Fat Stuff and the old biddy are still on the prowl. Don't worry, though. Just get 'em into Mrs. Morelli's room!"
Royster nodded, wondering giddily who was actually running this school.
"You are, sir," Arthur hissed promptly. "but in an emerging situation like this, it's fun for us to help out."
"Emergency situation," Royster corrected automatically, and a little too loudly.
"What's that you said?" McNear snapped sharply, rejoining him.
"Oh, Arthur was saying he has to go to the bathroom. He said it was an 'emerging situation' and I was correcting him."
McNear guffawed shrilly.
Royster frowned and said to Arthur, "Well, run along, but be back in three minutes. We'll be at Mrs. Morelli's room."
"Who's Mrs. Morelli?" asked Stilly as they walked down the hall.
"She's the music teacher. We emphasize vocal music here, because the children seem to come out of their shells so readily in the process of joint creativity of beautiful harmonies. We start part-singing at the kindergarten level. It's a wonderful social experience for the children—and an aesthetic experience as well, of course."
* * *
They reached Mrs. Morelli's room, and Royster opened the door, just as the children were finishing a marching song.
"Really, Royster," protested Dr. Ross, "we haven't the time to waste listening to . . .
Her voice trailed off as the children's voices rose again—very softly and sweetly this time:
"Soft as the voice of an angel,
Breathing a lesson unheard,
Hope with a gentle persuasion,
Whispers her comforting words.
Wait, till the darkness is over,
Wait, till the tempest is done,
Hope for the sunshine tomorrow,
After the shower is gone."
Dr. Ross had edged through the door to stand facing the singing children, who seemed to be unaware of her and the other inspectors who followed her quietly. Mrs. Morelli looked up curiously from the piano but didn't stop playing as the children sang the chorus:
"Whispering Hope, oh how welcome thy voice,
Making my heart in its sorrow rejoice."
"Oh my," Dr. Ross said numbly. "Oh my!"
Royster, who was himself seldom untouched by that old song's tender simplicity, said, "The children love that piece. It has a message for a troubled boy or girl."
"I could listen to it forever," breathed Dr. Ross. "I haven't heard it for years, but when I was a child . . . I've never heard it sung more beautifully!"
"Perhaps Mrs. Morelli has it on tape," said Royster. He introduced the inspectors to the teacher and asked her if she had taped "Whispering Hope."
"Why, yes," she said.
"Let's make a present of it to Dr. Ross," said Royster.
Mrs. Morelli got a small spool from her desk and handed it to the other woman. "Oh, I'll cherish this!" Dr. Ross crooned. "Thank you, Mrs. Morelli, and you, Mr. Royster. And thank you, children!"
McNear, who had been leaning his considerable weight against the doorframe, looking bored and annoyed, spoke up. "Who plays the fiddle?" he asked, nodding to a violin case in the corner of the room.
"I do!" piped up Sandylou, a chubby, confident seven-year-old. "Shall I play for you?" She headed for the violin case without waiting for an answer, but suddenly whirled to glare angrily at her classmates. "I will play, too!" she shouted at them.
Something was going wrong, Royster realized. The class didn't want Sandylou to play for some reason, but the girl was only slightly telepathic and could not understand the Don't! she was receiving from the others. Her ESP capabilities were strong in the kinetics realm, but . . .
Of course! That was the trouble! She played the violin mostly with her fingers, but sometimes she used a mental touch to produce a harmonic, which did not require that the string be pressed against the fingerboard but merely touched at a vibrational node to damp the fundamental tone while allowing the whispery overtone to sound. Since the principal node is at one-half the string's length—high up on the fingerboard for a beginning violinist—Sandylou's mental touches made it possible for her to avoid long, quick reaches for harmonics, and thus enabled her to play selections that would otherwise be beyond her technique.
To the non-musician, with no exact knowledge of violin techniques, Sandylou's playing would appear extraordinary only in the sense that it was extremely advanced for a child her age. Royster himself had not known, until Mrs. Morelli told him, that the girl was ESPing her harmonics. But someone who knew the instrument . . . !
"Do any of you play the violin?" he asked the inspectors.
"Yeah, I used to play quite a bit," grunted McNear, "but I didn't intend to launch a student recital! We're not here to spend the morning listening to musical trivialities."
This brought a glare from his female colleague, who was still clutching her tape spool as if it were a precious jewel.
"Thank you for offering to play for us, Sandylou," said Royster, "but our guests are in a hurry today and—"
"I'll play something short, and fast," replied the girl, who already had the violin under her chin and was tightening the bow hairs. "And it won't be no triviality. It's a Wohlfahrt study!"
She dug into a piece that consisted mostly of ascending arpeggios, almost every one of which had a harmonic at its summit. Royster, Mrs. Morelli, and the class watched in numb, helpless silence as one pure, unexplainable note after another flowed from the instrument. McNear, his head lowered slightly and his lips puckered critically, gazed at Sandylou through his eyebrows in deep concentration.
The music ended and McNear said, "Very good, little girl. Very good indeed! You'll be an accomplished musician one of these days if you practice hard. You have a . . . a sure touch."
"Shall we move on, folks?" Royster said hurriedly, sensing that the situation had been saved—but unable to guess how. He moved toward the door and saw Arthur waiting in the hall. The inspectors were busy taking their leave of Mrs. Morelli, so he stepped outside.
In a somewhat mystified tone, Arthur hissed to him, "Fat Stuff saw it, but he didn't believe it, so he didn't see it! Is he looney or something?"
After a moment, Royster nodded in understanding. McNear had responded to the inexplicable as people often do: he had ignored its existence. An excellent way to maintain sanity—provided the inexplicable does not become overpowering.
"Oh," said Arthur. "You've never thought much about that before. It'll help us stay a secret, won't it?"
"Don't depend on it," said Royster.
"You've got the old biddy and Fat Stuff now," Arthur reported, "but you've lost Stilly, and he's the top man. He feels like they're being had, because they ain't found nothing wrong anywhere. We're too perfect! He'll like Miss Smith, though."
Miss Smith? Royster thought as the inspectors came into the hall and Arthur fell silent. What has liking Miss Smith got to do with it?
He glanced at his watch and said, "Classes will change in a couple of minutes, and the first lunch period will start. What's your desire, folks? We can stay here and let you observe the movement of the students through the hall, or we can get on with a tour of the dormitories, or we can go to the cafeteria for lunch, now or later."
"Whichever you think preferable, Mr. Royster," Dr. Ross said pleasantly.
"Lunch sounds fine to me," smiled McNear.
Dr. Stilly said, "We may look into the dormitories later, Mr. Royster, but that would serve no essential purpose of this inspection. As for lunch, I wonder if we could have that somewhere other than in the cafeteria? Do you have a conference room where we could confer with you while we eat, without being interrupted by children or other distractions?"
"Why, yes. There's a conference table in my office. Arthur, run down to the cafeteria and tell Mrs. Sams to send four regular trays, plus coffee, to my office . . . Make that five trays, Arthur. If we eat there, Miss Smith can join us."
Arthur counted noses and asked, "What about me, sir? Where do I eat?"
"Oh, I was forgetting you. Make that six trays."
Dr. Stilly frowned. "Don't you think, Royster, that we can dispense with this young man's company now? Surely, you've considered his case sufficiently . . ."
Royster blinked, then nodded. "Quite right, Dr. Stilly. Have your lunch in the cafeteria, Arthur, and return to your regular schedule. And report to the night room each evening this week for one hour of vocabulary PI."
"Yes, sir."
* * *
In the office Royster introduced the inspectors to Miss Smith. As Arthur had predicted, Dr. Stilly was visibly impressed by her, and Royster felt a pang of bitter annoyance at the friendly warmth with which Miss Smith responded. His assistant had never favored him with such a charming smile!
But if the kids had expected Stilly to develop an immediate, disarming crush on Barbara Smith, they were wrong. As soon as the trays were brought in and the group settled around the table, the inspector said:
"In going over your background, Mr. Royster, I noticed that you spent two years, after finishing college, with a parapsychology group. That struck me as very strange preparation for a headmaster."
There was no point in denying the record, which Stilly had apparently gone to some trouble to look into. "Yes, I became quite interested in parapsychology during college. I viewed it as one of our scientific frontiers." Royster chuckled wryly at the idea and continued, "I soon realized the parapsychology people were getting nowhere with their researches, of course."
"But you stayed two years," Stilly persisted.
"Yes. I became interested, while I was there, in the general problems of disturbed children. You may not know that such children are brought to the group quite frequently. Perhaps it is a complex some parents have—to see abnormal behavior in their children as an indication of abnormal, or paranormal, abilities. At any rate, I saw enough such children there to gain an appreciation of their problems, and left the group to do graduate work in special education. So, in a sense, you could say that those two years were responsible for me being in my present position."
All of which was the truth—the carefully edited truth.
Stilly ate for a moment in frowning silence, then remarked, "I understand those two years might have been responsible in more ways than one. Wasn't it while you were with the parapsychology people that you first met J.V. Thorling?"
"Yes, indeed," Royster said brightly. "Our late benefactor was quite a psi buff, as is fairly well known."
"He attributed his financial success to a freakish mental ability to foresee the future, didn't he?"
Royster laughed. "So the magazine articles about him said. From my own conversations with him, I got the impression he wasn't really sure of the source of his success. But he wondered about it, and therefore took some interest in parapsychology. We have to remember, though, that he had a fine head for finance, and I'm sure a more acceptable explanation of his accomplishments would be that he often could see the financial possibilities of a situation, through subconscious but quite normal mental processes, that were invisible to less capable minds."
"That doesn't explain why he chose to endow this school rather generously," Stilly frowned.
"That's no mystery," Royster shrugged. "When Mr. Thorling visited the parapsychology people he wasn't much impressed, and since I was something of a rebel there he talked with me quite a bit—to the annoyance of the group's brass, I might add. I told him about my plans, such as they were at the time, to work with children of above-average potential but suffering from severe behavioral defects. In the rarefied air of that group my ideas must have had a down-to-earth, constructive ring to Mr. Thorling. He became interested, and said if he could ever be of assistance to let him know. So, here we have Thorling School."
"From all this, then," said Stilly, "I take it that you no longer believe in parapsychology. Is that correct?"
Royster peered curiously at the inspector for a moment before replying, "I'm a rather conservative man, Dr. Stilly. I don't believe in getting something for nothing, and that's what parapsychology tries to do when you boil it down to the essentials. Man has to work for what he gets—for his food, for his knowledge, or to develop his skills. Now I try not to be prejudiced against parapsychologists, but I've seen enough of them to know that they are mostly of the visionary type, dreamers of dreams, not doers of jobs. They seem to expect to find some magic word that will bridge any gap in time and space, through telepathy, or teleportation, or some such, so they can manipulate the real world without exerting real energy. I certainly don't believe in magic, Dr. Stilly."
"I don't see what all this has to do with an accreditation inspection," yapped McNear rather crossly.
"Evidently it has nothing to do with it," said Stilly. "However, Mr. Royster had some crackpottist connections in the past, and if he still took such things seriously that would certainly reflect on his ability to direct the educational life of hundreds of children. But I find his explanations and his present, more adult, view of parapsychology quite satisfactory. Miss Smith, have you been with Thorling School any length of time?"
"Only four months, Dr. Stilly," she said, and the conversation drifted into less perilous waters.
* * *
After lunch the inspectors made a perfunctory tour through the dormitory floors, the cafeteria, and the gymnasium. Afterwards Royster walked out to their auto with them.
"An excellent job you're doing here, Mr. Royster," said Dr. Ross. "I was particularly impressed with the orderliness of activities in the classrooms. I really don't know quite how you do it, considering the backgrounds of your children."
"There are several factors involved," he responded. "A child coming here finds himself in a new environment, where he can make a fresh start. And as my written reports for earlier inspections have explained, and I'm sure you've read them, we try to let the child know where he stands with us, to make the rules perfectly clear to him—and above all to let him know we're on his side, that he can feel secure and loved. And understood. Fortunately, we have been able to bring together a faculty of sufficient size and ability to do the job. As in any school, success depends on the individual teacher."
"You'll see to it that that little violinist gets good training, Royster?" demanded McNear.
"Well, this is no conservatory, you realize," he replied, "and I must reemphasize the stress we place on proper personality and behavioral development. But you can rest assured, Mr. McNear, that Sandylou will be given ample opportunity to develop her special talents."
McNear nodded. "O.K. Just so you realize that she has something special." He climbed in the car with the others.
Royster smiled. "To us at Thorling, Mr. McNear," he said, "all of our children have something special."
"How true!" cooed Dr. Ross. "Good day, Mr. Royster, and thank you for an inspiring morning!"
Royster walked back in the building and, even though he could hear what sounded like a minor riot down the hall, he went into the office and sat down.
Miss Smith nodded toward the noise and said, "I don't have to ask if our visitors are gone."
"Yeah, back to normal," he said with a relieved sigh. "It's funny that I let things like that scare me, but I suppose I keep thinking of our kids as—just kids. I never realize what a help they can be in a pinch."
"I hear Sandylou almost gave the whole show away."
Royster nodded and lit a cigarette. "She had the kids upset for a moment there. Some of them looked as pale as I felt."
"Can't something be done about that child?"
"The kids'll be working on her, never fear," Royster shrugged. "They can do more with her kind of problem than we can."
"It frightens me to think," Miss Smith shuddered, "what would have happened if that McNear slob hadn't been so stupid."
Royster nodded without replying. Miss Smith had been with the school less than half a year and—well, there were some things she just wasn't ready to know yet. For example, that the kids could have handled the McNear problem, if absolutely necessary, with selective mental erasure. It was a repulsive idea, to him as it was to the kids, and it would be too disgusting for Miss Smith to accept until the Thorling children became her children more fully.
"Well, I'd like to get back to my young gladiators as you call them," she said.
Royster looked up curiously.
"To Stevie and David," she explained. "That test might still work even though—"
"Miss Smith," Royster said, grinding out his cigarette, "I've gone along with you on your experiments so far, partly to let you learn for yourself that this age-old search for a mental Midas touch is a waste of time, because there are no shortcuts, and partly not to discourage creative thinking from you, and partly I guess just to keep you happy.
"But you've been here four months now, and you're still busily barking up the same old empty tree. How much longer is it going to take you to get this nonsense out of your system and turn your energies to our real problems?"
She stared at him in hurt astonishment. He would have felt ashamed of his outburst, except for the tensions of the inspection and the way she had flirted with Dr. Stilly. His anger continued to boil.
"Well really, Mr. Royster," she snapped, her face turning red, "I see no need to shout! And I haven't been aware of neglecting my duties because of my interest in various experiments that, you must surely comprehend, can be conducted here more ideally than anywhere else in the world! If you're too stodgy to realize—"
"Stodgy?" barked Royster. "Is that what you think? Maybe you'd be happier doing something else—somewhere else! With livelier company! Maybe inspecting schools with your pal Stilly!"
"If you can't even have an argument like this without being ridiculous, maybe I should move along!" she flared. "Stilly indeed!"
"I saw you turn on the old charm for him!" replied Royster.
"Sure I did! The kids told me it would help!"
"Oh." He ought to have guessed that, he realized. His anger was suddenly gone. He said, "I'm sorry for jumping on you that way, Miss Smith. It was uncalled-for. Nerves, I guess . . . I have no objection, really, to you continuing that test with Stevie and David. So if you want to get on with it . . ."
She blinked a couple of times and turned toward her cubbyhole office. "No. I don't know. Maybe tomorrow . . ." She turned to face him again. "You really think it's a waste of time, don't you?"
He nodded glumly. "Yes, I do. But I don't know everything, after all, and had no business sounding off as if I did. I know that my own ideas work—today the kids proved just how well they've worked. But that doesn't make all other ideas worthless. So, if there's anything you want to try . . ."
"I . . . I don't think so." She sat down and propped her chin in her hand. "You're probably right, and it's high time I realized that. Maybe you had to yell at me to get through. ESP ability isn't a . . . a gift . . ."
"In a way it is," Royster said. "It's a gift in the sense that Sandylou's musicianship is a gift. But a gift is merely a capacity. Sandylou's doesn't automatically make her a great violinist, it just provides her with the capacity to become one—after several more years of hard work and practice. What would have happened to her gift if our society had no use for music, if the whole concept of music didn't exist? Not much of anything would have happened to it. Unless maybe it got her thrown in the loony-bin for making strange noises.
"That's what happens to ESP capacity, most of the time. A few people, like Old Man Thorling, manage to develop some primitive skill with it. But mostly, it just pops up, unexplainably and usually frighteningly, in moments of great emotional stress, and then it's gone again. It's an unrealized capacity because it isn't trained.
"That's what I decided while with the parapsychology group, working with the children brought there. Thorling agreed when I explained it to him. Take a child with ESP capacity, still young enough to have a pliable mind, let him know that ESP development is desirable, and figure out ways to train him to use his capacity. Encourage him to practice, practice, practice! Bring many such children together, so they can learn things from each other that we don't know to teach them. Children are eager to please, and to learn—and they'll work hard to do both.
"Now, as for shortcuts, some may exist. But I believe if they do they won't be discovered by you or me. The kids will find them. They have the knowledge and the skills that we'll never attain for ourselves. If Sandylou learns an improved violin technique, it will be from another fiddle player, not from a non-musician. That's why I feel our job is to help the children develop themselves, in the only way we know how, and leave it to them to devise ways to build on their basic skills."
"One thing bothers me about this," said Miss Smith. "You keep referring to consciously-controlled ESP as a skill, and equating its development to other skills such as learning to play a violin. Yet, you say the learning has to start at a very tender age—in the kindergarten years if not sooner. But this isn't true of other skills. I know it helps for a child to start his musical training early, but many adults, starting with no musical training at all, learn to become adequate performers on some instrument. Now if ESP were really a skill, why couldn't you, or I, or some of the teachers develop some degree of it? All of us have tried, without the slightest result."
Royster shook his head. "You're wrong, I think, when you speak of an adult learning to play an instrument with no early musical training at all. I don't think there is any such adult, for the simple reason that every person in our culture has some early musical training. From babyhood on we hear music, sung by our mothers, played on radios, and so on. And babies begin attempting to gurgle songs about the same time they are learning to talk. They experience music from the beginning. It's part of their lives. So no adult starts cold to learn an instrument. And there are similar parallels for any other skill you can name—except controlled ESP. Only in this school of ours does a child have a chance to grow up with ESP as an integral part of his daily experience. In fact, I think it's remarkable that they can start from scratch at the relatively advanced age of four or five, and still—"
* * *
Arthur appeared in the doorway. Royster broke off his conversation with Miss Smith and said, "Hi, Arthur. Thanks for the help this morning—thanks to all of you." The boy grinned his pleasure and looked down at his shoes as the headmaster continued, "What can I do for you?"
"About you tellin' me to do an hour of vocabulary PI every night, Mr. Royster—" Arthur began.
"That was just part of our act for the inspectors, Arthur," Royster smiled. "You can forget it."
"Oh, I know that, sir. What I wanted to tell you was that I guess I need that PI, so I'm goin' to do like you said, even if you didn't mean it."
Royster nodded approvingly. The boy turned to leave and Royster recalled something he had meant to ask the boy about at the first opportunity. "Just a moment, Arthur. This morning you told me all the children were with me, except a couple of new 'soreheads' and some old 'perfectionists'. The new 'soreheads' I understand, of course. But what was that business about 'perfectionists'?"
Arthur looked uncomfortable, and glanced uncertainly from one of the adults to the other. "Well, it ain't . . . isn't much of anything, just some silly stuff the big girls like Jilly and them think about sometimes."
"Is it too silly to tell us about, Arthur?" Miss Smith smiled.
"Naw, it's just that . . . well, they don't like the way Mr. Royster keeps himself half mad at you all the time, Miss Smith, because be likes you a lot and thinks he shouldn't, or that he shouldn't even think about liking you with all of us kid telepaths around."
Royster stiffened with astonishment and was aware that his face was flaming red. It did not help his feelings to observe that Miss Smith appeared perfectly calm.
"Wh-what business of theirs is it if—" he sputtered.
"That's what I think," nodded Arthur, emphatically. "But you know how girls can act sometimes. And they think it's mean of you not to be nice to Miss Smith, because she likes you, too, and it makes her sad because she thinks you don't."
"I . . . see," said Royster.
"But this is a good place to be," Arthur went on hurriedly, "and they like you just the same. They just don't like the . . . the way you do with Miss Smith. That's why the rest of us call them perfectionists."
Royster nodded. "Thank you, Arthur," he said, and the boy beat a hasty retreat.
After a pause Barbara Smith said, "Really, Judson, there's no reason to behave like a priest around here if you don't think like one! To telepathic children, that's simply a form of hypocrisy."
"But I felt that in my position . . ." he mumbled.
"Nonsense! The children have teachers who are married. They are aware of such relationships." She peered at his face. "How did you develop such a straitlaced attitude toward love? Do you come from a puritanical family?"
"Certainly not! My parents were merely—conservative."
She giggled and kept looking at him. Finally he smiled back.