Infinity One by Robert Hoskins (Ed.) Page B

remembered how wonderful it tasted, she said. But not with her lips.
    The truth dawned on Pete: this child was a telepath. Impossible?—he hadn’t actually believed any of that crap. But there was no other explanation.
    “You aren’t talking,” he said. “You don’t make a sound.”
    I am too talking, answered the child soundlessly. And you're answering.
    Pete gulped, hastily trying to mend matters. “You just don’t speak the usual way.”
    I do everything kind of different. At least my Pa’s always complaining I do. Her head turned slowly towards him. You don’t suppose something’s happened to Pa, do you? I can’t hear very far away when I’m hungry.
    Pete fed her another bite guiltily. “When did you eat last?”
    Pa was home this morning. But all we had was bread.
    Pete vowed to himself passionately that he was going to see Welfare immediately.
    Oh, you mustn't! pleaded the soundless voice. Wizard, ears flattened, growling menacingly at Pete. She was clearly frightened of Welfare. They’d take me away, like they took my sister, and put me in a barred place and I'd neve hear any birds or see Pa. They might cut me up 'cause my body doesn’t work right. She still spoke without sound.
    “Aw, honey...”
    My name’s Maria, not honey.
    “Maria, you’ve got it all wrong. Wizard, you tell her. Welfare helps people. You’d have a clean bed and birds right outside the window.”
    It’d be a hospital. My Ma died m a hospital because no one cared. Pa said so. They just let her die.
    Wizard whimpered. Pete was frightened himself. He soothed Maria as best he could with promises of no hospitals, no cutting, plenty of birds. What she didn’t finish of the sandwich, he wrapped it up and put beside her. He started to peel the banana for her but she refused it.
    It’s a treat for Wiz for bringing you here. She laughed. He listens to people.
    Pete grinned.
    “How on earth did you know that fool dog loves bananas?”
    Nothing could have been funnier to Maria and her laughter was so contagious Pete grinned foolishly. Even Wizard laughed in his canine way, his tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth. Suddenly the atmosphere changed.
    I hear Pa coming. You’d better leave. He wouldn’t like having the fuzz in here.
    “Then why did you let me in?”
    Wizard. Dogs always know. I talk to dogs all the time. But I’ve never talked to one as smart as Wizard before. You get out now. Quick.
    Pete felt a violent compulsion to take to his heels. Once they were around the corner the impulse vanished, so he waited a few moments and then peered around the building. He saw a shambling figure go into the house where they had found Maria.
    Pete was shaken by his encounter with the girl: shaken, confused and frightened. She had taken him over, used him to suit her needs and then cut him off in fear when all he wanted to do was help her. He worried about her all the way round to the hospital: her pitiful life in those awful surroundings . . . and that Strange talent.
    He had a friend, a drinking buddy, who was interning at Delaware Hospital. Pete came in that night and found
    Joe Lavelle on duty in the emergency ward, so he told Joe a little about the girl. “And what’s going to become of her, living like that?”
    “I’d say she was dead already and didn’t know it,” Joe snorted.
    The thought of Maria dead choked Pete up. Her fragile laugh, her curious calm beauty gone? No!
    “Hey, Pete!” The interne watched the cop’s gut reaction with amazement. “I was only kidding. Why, I couldn’t even guess what was wrong with her without an examination. She could have had polio, meningitis, m. s., any variety of paralysis. But I’d say she needed treatment, fast. And I’d certainly like to see this kid who can make any stalwart defender of this one-horse town quake in his boots like that.”
    Pete growled and Wizard seconded it.
    Joe warded off an imaginary attack with his arm, laughing, just as the phone rang for him.