Astounding Science Fiction, October 1950 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

12 . ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION Attic Greek.” There were more, but Peter felt unable to face them. He opened the second package. “E. Naville’s “The Ancient Eyptian Faith,’ he read, “Breasted’s ‘His- tory of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the Persian Conquest.’ There were notes about India, Tibet, Babylon, Persia. Peter looked no more. With a slight shudder, he returned all the notes to the brief case and closed it firmly. Stella should carry it all the way across the continent with her own hands. Ali those pages of notes in a careful, minute handwriting must have cost long hours of hard labor in secret. These were the odd books she “just wanted to glance over” in which “no child could possibly be interested.” These were the source materials for her books. Peter attended the rest of the conferences he had come to attend. He telephoned Stella daily, but did not see her again. A telegram to Miss Page telling her to expect the child was followed by a letter giving the story. Peter met Jay almost daily, and talked to him about all they were doing and planning to do, but he did not tell the two children anything about each other. Jay, throbbing with eagerness to hear all that Dr. Welles would tell him about Tim and Elsie and the school, exacted a promise that Peter and the others would write often to him, but steadfastly refused to think about attending the school. It was, he said, impossible, and there was no use in thinking about it. In the taxi to the plane, Stella asked a question. “The other children—are they anything like me?” “Not very much,” replied Peter. “I hope you will like them and get along with them as well as you can. But I don’t think they will share your special interests to any great extent.” Stella, who had been looking puzzled, looked even more so. “What do we have in common?” she asked. Peter signed her to silence, but at the ‘airport he walked with her to a place where they could not be overheard and began the explanation and the warning he realized she must be given. “We are trying to gather you all together because most of you have had difficulty in adjusting to the world of normal children. Naturally the tastes and interests of each child are personal and different from those of the others. Tim and Elsie and you are as unlike as children can be, except that you all have exceptionally high intelligence. You should be able to adjust to one another if you make the effort, and you can learn from one another and teach one another. It is probable that you all have a wide range of interests, although your special interests are different there must be many things you can share.” Stella looked bewildered, then extremely thoughtful, and then she nodded. What was going on in her mind was more than Peter could guess. “Til leave it to you to tell them as much or as little about yourself as you choose,” he said. “There is, I know, much that you have not told me.” Thus warned, Stella said little about herself to Elsie or to Tim at first, and even less to Miss Page and to Dr. Foxwell. The children read her published works with some mystification, and she read theirs. “Tim certainly can do almost everything,” she confided to Dr. Welles. “He knows something about almost everything, too.” “But you know more about the Orient and about Africa,” he replied. “It’s right what you told me about their having different interests from mine.’ “Your interests will widen, no doubt,” said Dr. Welles, “and so will theirs. It is good that you have different specialized branches of knowledge to share with one another.” Dr: Foxwell, after this first meeting with Stella, and recalling Peter’s letter concern- ing her, had made a dire prediction that when Stella and Elsie were brought together, the ringing clash between the two personali- ties would probably resound for several miles. But Elsie was making tremendous efforts to overcome her faults, particularly her tendency to outspoken criticism of everything which differed in the least from her own notions, and she was determined to get along with the other Wonder Children or die in the effort. Stella’s habits were rather toward withdrawal than toward vio- lence when she was not “understood,” and as for Tim, nothing human was alien to that ardent would-be psychiatrist. To all three children, what really counted was that they had found others of their own age who were of the same mental level, and they were eager to share their interests and to help one another. Their clashes were indeed frequent, and misunderstandings rife, but the bond which bound them together was stronger than their differences. Dr. Welles was conscious that Stella had something on her mind and that she was Conmmicloooks. conn