“It is not magic,” the Sitter replied. “It is the way we live, the only way we can live. You will agree that even Sitters must somehow stay alive.”
“Yes, I agree,” said Dean.
He lifted the battered hat from off his knee and rose slowly to his feet.
The laughter seemed to be fainter now and the patter not so loud. But the sense of youth – of youngness, of vitality and of happiness – still lay within the room. It lent a sheen to the ancient shabbiness and it made his heart begin to ache with a sudden gladness.
The Sitter still sat upon the floor. “There was something you wanted, Mr. Dean?”
Dean fumbled with his hat. “Not any more. I think I’ve found my answer.”
And even as he said it, he knew it was unbelievable, that once be stood outside the door, he’d know with certainty there could be no truth in what he’d found.
The Sitter rose. “You will come again? We would love to have you.”
“Perhaps,” said Dean, and turned toward the door.
Suddenly there was a top spinning on the floor, a golden top with flashing jewels set in it that caught the light and scattered it in a million flashing colors, and as it spun, it played a whistling tune – the kind of music that got inside and melted down one’s soul.
Dean felt himself let go – as, sitting in the chair, he had thought it was impossible for him to do. And the laughter came again and the world outside withdrew and the room suddenly was filled with the marvelous light of Christmas.
He took a quick step forward and he dropped his hat. He didn’t know his name, nor where he was, nor how he might have come there, and he didn’t care. He felt a gurgling happiness welling up in him and he stooped to reach out for the top.
He missed it by an inch or two and he shuffled forward, stooping, reaching, and his toe caught in a hole in the ancient carpeting and he crashed down on his knees.
The top was gone and the Christmas light snapped out and the world rushed in upon him. The gurgling happiness had gone and he was an old man in a beauty-haunted house, struggling from his knees to face an alien creature.
“I am sorry,” said the Sitter. “You almost had it. Perhaps some other time.”
He shook his head. “No! Not another time!”
The Sitter answered kindly, “It’s the best we have to offer.’
Dean fumbled his hat back on his head and turned shakily to the door. The Sitter opened it and he staggered out.
“Come again,” the Sitter said, most sweetly. “Any time you wish.”
On the street outside, Dean stopped and leaned against a tree. He took off his hat and mopped his brow.
Now, where he had felt only shock before, the horror began creeping in – the horror of a kind of life that did not eat as human beings ate, but in another way, who sucked their nourishment from beauty and from youth, who drained a bouquet dry and who nibbled from the happy hours of laughing child, and even munched the laughter.
It was no wonder that the children of this village matured beyond their years. For they had their childishness stripped from them by a hungry form of life that looked on them as fodder. There might be, he thought, only so much of happy running and of childish laughter dealt out to an human. And while some might not use their quota, there still might be a limit on it, and once one had used it all, then it was gone and a person became an adult without too much of wonder or of laughter left within him.
The Sitters took no money. There was no reason that they should, for they had no need of it. Their house was filled with all the provender they had stowed away for years.
And in all those years, he was the first to know, the first to sense the nature of those aliens brought home by Lamont Stiles. It was a sobering thought – that he should be the first to find it out. He had said that he was old and that might be the reason. But that had been no more than words rising to his lips almost automatically as a part of his professional self-pity. Yet there might be something in it even so.
Could it be possible that, for the old, there might be certain compensations for the loss of other faculties? As the body slowed and the mind began to dim, might some magical ability, a sort of psychic bloodhound sense, rise out of the embers of a life that was nearly spent?
He was always pothering around about how old he was, he told himself, as if the mere fact of getting old might be a virtue. He was forgetful of the present and his preoccupation with the past was growing to the danger point. He was close to second childhood and he was the one who knew it – and might that be the answer? Might that be why he’d seen the top and known the Christmas lights?
He wondered what might have happened if he could have grabbed the top.
He put his hat back on and stepped out from the tree and went slowly up the walk, heading back for home.
What could he do about it, he wondered, now that he’d unearthed the Sitters’ secret? He could run and tattle, surely, but there’d be no one to believe him. They would listen to him and they would be polite so as not to hurt his feelings, yet there was no one in the village but would take it for an old man’s imaginings, and there’d be nothing that he could do about it. For beyond his own sure knowledge, he had not a shred of proof.
He might call attention to the maturity of the young people, as Stuffy had called his attention to it this very afternoon. But even there he would find no proof, for in the final reckoning, all the villagers would retreat to rationalization. Parental pride, if nothing else, might require they should. Not a single one of them would find much cause for wonder in the fact that a boy or girl of theirs was singularly well-mannered and above the average in intelligence.
One might say that the parents should have noticed, that they should have known that an entire village full of children could not possibly be so well-behaved or so levelheaded or so anything else as were these Millville children. And yet they had not noticed. It had crept along so slowly, had insinuated itself so smoothly, that the change was not apparent.
For that matter, he himself had not noticed it, he who most of his life had been intimately associated with these very children in which he found so much wonder now. And if he had not noticed, then why expect that someone else should? It had remained for a gossipy old busybody like the janitor to put a finger on it.
His throat was dry and his belly weak and sick and what he needed most of all, Dean told himself, was a cup of coffee.
He turned off on a street that would take him to the downtown section and he plodded along with his head bent against the dark.
What would be the end of it, he asked himself. What would be the gain for this lost childhood? For this pilfering of children? What the value that growing boys and girls should cease to play a little sooner, that they take up the attitude of adults before the chosen time?
There was some gain already seen. The children of Millville were obedient and polite; they were constructive in their play; they’d ceased to be little savages or snobs.
The trouble was, now that one thought of it, they’d almost ceased being children, too.
And in the days to come? Would Millville supply Earth with great statesmen, with canny diplomats, with topnotch educators and able scientists? Perhaps, but that was not the point at all. The question of robbing childhood of its heritage to achieve these qualities was the basic question.
Dean came into the business district, not quite three blocks long and walked slowly down the street, heading for the only drugstore in the town.
There were only a few people in the store and he walked over to the lunch counter and sat down. He perched on the stool forlornly, with the battered hat pulled down above his eyes, and he gripped the counter’s edge to keep his hands from shaking.
“Coffee,” he said to the girl who came to take his order, and she brought it to him.
He sipped at it, for it was too hot to drink. He was sorry he had come.