Hot Sleep- The Worthing Chronicle - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,1
a deep, hard, long look into their minds.
The Swipe? Swipes were monsters, Swipes were planet - wreckers, Swipes weren't kids in" schoolrooms taking calculus tests.
He stared at the picture of his father on the ceiling. The tiling had been there since their last authorized remodeling, when Jas was seven, and he had instantly seen the picture. That squiggle was the nose; the dark space his eye; the lips the gentle curves just below. It was a benign face, kind if monstrous, trustworthy if incredible. How had he decided that it was his father? Jas knew. After all, he had seen no other picture.
He wanted the face to smile, but it always just smirked, as if just about to laugh, or as if it had just tired of laughter. Or as if it knew that a meal was coming. Jas shuddered.
And as he did his mind gave his body a reason for the fear. How was I to know, he asked himself. How was I to know that the last three questions were cross - programmed from another classroom, a classified, advanced, damn - it - but - it - all - made - so - much - sense classroom, and Jason rolled over and dug his hand into his mattress, partly because it felt good, and partly because his mother had told him, "When you muck up the mattress it has to be replaced early, and if it has to be replaced early, the government gets angry."
Advanced astrodynamics. Well, it just felt like more math, how was I to know I was playing little games with stars and planets? And I understood it, once I got the answer. Jas rumpled the bed again. Once he got the answer: that was the problem. He couldn't show them any figuring. He couldn't show them how he arrived at the correct answer. "I figure in my head," he said, and they showed him the paper where he had done some other figuring, and Jas had smiled and said, "Sometimes, anyway."
If only Tork had been a moron and had remembered astrodynamics wrong.
If only God were still alive and not just a face on the ceiling.
"I'm a Swipe," Jas said under his breath, trying out the words.
Suddenly a hand was fiercely clamped over his mouth. Startled, he opened his eyes to see his mother glaring down at him.
"Fool!" his mother hissed. "An intelligence that can't be measured and you talk as if the walls weren't listening!"
"I was joking," Jas stammered, "I didn't think - "
"In this world, boy, don't ever not think. Why do you suppose your father died?" She wheeled and left the room.
Jas looked after her. "Father didn't have a chance!" he shouted.
"Shut up and eat your dinner," his mother snapped, surly again. Again? Still.
The answers had just been sitting there, like a disc ready to be played, a book ready to be read, waiting for him behind Tork's eyes. Jas looked up and saw his mother watching him. He looked at her tightly - set lips, glanced at her wrinkled forehead, and saw (just behind the eyes) that she would suffer any torture if it would bring Homer Worthing back to her for one bright day, for one penetrating touch, for one last kind, delicate, ravishing night.
"I wish I looked more like him, mother," Jas said, wanting the wrinkles on the forehead to go away.
She just narrowed her eyes at him. "Don't," she whispered, and then pushed a plate of the stiff gel that was called soup in the catalog across the table toward him. Jas sat for a moment, then leaned across the table, took his mother by the shoulders, and pulled her close. His mouth by her ear, he spoke so softly that he could barely hear his own voice, and said, "It's true."
She tried to pull away, shaking her head.
"Mother," Jas insisted, pulling her closer still, "I'm a Swipe. I got the answers from the teacher's mind."
She shuddered. "Impossible," she said softly.
"I know."
She got up from the table and took him by the hand. Together they left the flat and walked down corridors and ramps to the tube. At that hour it wasn't crowded. She dragged him along until they got to a women's lavatory. She started to pull him in.
"I can't go in there," Jas whispered.
"You're sure as hell going to," she hissed back, her face ugly with fear.
He went in. It was empty. His mother leaned against the door, facing him.