“Sure,” said Stevenson. “That’s why he had it with him in the bank that day.”
“Maybe,” said Marshall. “I just don’t know. You know, I don’t really believe there is a machine.”
“Of course there is,” said Stevenson. “We’ve seen what it can do.”
“Oh, I’m not denying the boy caused those things. But I just have the completely insane conviction that there isn’t any machine.” Marshall shrugged. “Ah, well, never mind. Let’s go back and soothe the mother.”
They soothed her, which took some doing, not because she was at all worried, but because she was so curious she could hardly sit still. But Marshall, by looking very stern and official, and by speaking in round long-syllabled sentences, finally convinced her that the welfare of the nation was absolutely dependent upon her not mentioning anything at all about this visit to Eddie, under any circumstances.
“We’ll be back to talk to the boy in a day or two,” Marshall told her. “In the meantime, we’d prefer him not to be forewarned.”
“If you say so,” she said, frowning.
The school principal, a gray battleship named Miss Evita Dexter, was irate. The idea that pornographic materials were being sold in her schoolyard was absurd. It was ridiculous. It was unheard-of.
Stevenson assured her that, adjectives notwithstanding, it was happening. And they were going to have a shakedown of the student body whether Miss Dexter liked it or not. Detective-Sergeant Stevenson and his associates, Marshall and Lang, were going to go through the student body with a fine tooth comb.
Neither Marshall nor Lang had mentioned the fact that they were from the FBI.
The search began at nine forty-five in the morning, and ended at ten past twelve.
On the persons of three eighth-grade boys, they found pornographic photos.
On the person of Eddie Clayhorn, they found absolutely nothing…
Abner Streitman Long was a government expert. He was more or less a government expert in the ready reserve, since he had never once been called upon to use his expertise for the government.
Not until now.
Abner Streitman Long was Resident Professor of Psychology at Mandar University. He was also one of the world’s foremost and best-known experimenters in the area of parapsychology, also called Extra-Sensory Perception, also called psionics.
The government, as a matter of principle, didn’t believe in psionics. But the government, also as a matter of principle, kept a psionics expert handy, just in case.
The “just in case” had maybe happened.
Professor Long sat in Marshall’s office and listened stolidly to the problem. The expert was a tall, barrel-chested man with a fantastic shock of white hair exploding out in all directions from his head. His nose was bulbous, hits jaw out-thrust, his eyes deepset, his ears hairy, his hands huge and his feet huger. He looked like a dressed-up lumberjack, of the old school.
He listened, and they talked, and every once in a while he nodded. and said, “Huh.” His voice was, predictably, basso profundo.
Then they were finished, and Professor Long summed it all up. “He changes the temperature of objects. Yes?”
“Yes,” said Marshall.
“You looked for a machine. Yes?”
“Yes, and we didn’t find it.”
“And your thermodynamics people said no such machine could exist anyway, yes?”
“That’s right.”
“Then why did you look for it?”
“Because,” said Marshall desperately, “we’d seen it in action. That is, we’d seen the result of its use.”
“Yes,” said the professor. He sucked on his lower lip and abstractedly watched his thumbs twiddle. “Pyrotic,” he announced at last.
“I beg your pardon?” asked Marshall.
“Pyrotic,” repeated the professor. “Yes? Yes. Pyrotic. Do you know what that is?”
“No,” said Marshall.
“Good,” said the professor. “Neither do I. But I have a theory. There are more theories than there are phenomena. That always happens. But listen to this theory. The mind reaches into the object on the molecular level, and adjusts the molecules, so. The temperature changes. Do you see?”
“Not exactly,” said Marshall doubtfully.
“Neither do I. Never mind. I know lots of theories, none of them make any sense. But they all try to explain.”
“If you say so,” said Marshall.
“Yes. I say so. Now. As a psychologist, I will tell you something else. This boy has made this a secret, yes? The Scorpion, he calls himself, and, like his heroes of the comic books, he uses his power for good. Shazam, yes? Captain Marvel.”
“Yes,” said Stevenson, nodding emphatically.
“Now, what happens if you go to this boy and tell him, ‘We know you are the Scorpion? Your secret is out.’ What happens then?”
“I don’t know,” said Marshall.
“Think,” suggested Professor Long. “Batman, let us say, or Superman. Quite apart from fighting crime, what is the major task confronting these heroes? That of maintaining the secrecy of their identity, yes?”
The four men nodded.
“Now,” said Professor Long, “to the mind of a ten-year-old boy, what is the implication? The implication is this: If the secret of the identity is lost the power of the hero is also lost. This is the clear implication. Yes?”
“You mean this boy wouldn’t be able to do it any more if we went and talked to him?” asked Lang.
“I don’t say that,” cautioned the professor. “I do say this: He will believe that he has lost the power. And this belief may be sufficient to destroy the power. Yes?”
“In other words,” said Marshall, “you’re saying that we can’t ask this boy how he manages his stunt, because if we do then he probably won’t be able to manage it any more.”
“A distinct possibility,” said the professor. “But only a temporary possibility. The drama of the Scorpion will not, I imagine, survive puberty.”
“But will the ability survive puberty?”
“No one can know. No one can even guess.”
“Now, here’s the thing,” said Marshall. “Not downgrading your theories at all, Professor, they are nevertheless still only theories. Frankly, given my choice between an impossible machine and a boy with the power to think things hot and cold, I’ll give the impossible machine the edge. At this point, accepting the idea of the machine, our next move is simple. We go ask the boy to give it to us. From what you say, we can’t even do that.”
“My best advice,” said the professor, “would be to keep the boy under careful surveillance for the next three or four years. Gradually get to know him, carefully work out a long-range program involving his reading habits, the attitudes of his teachers and parents, the sort of external stimuli to which he is—”
“Fellas,” said Roberts suddenly. “Oh, fellas.”
They turned to look at him. He was in his favorite pose, shoes off, feet up on the windowsill. He was now pointing at the window. “Do you fellas see what I fella see?” he asked them.
They saw. The window was frosting. It was a rainy, humid mid-November day, and moisture was condensing on the window pane. It was condensing, and then it was freezing.
It didn’t take long. No more than a minute passed from the time Roberts noticed the thing beginning until the time it was complete. And then they watched various specific sections of the window defrost again.
It was a very strange looking window. It was covered with frost, but there were lines of bare window, as though the frost had been scraped away. The lines formed letters, and the letters formed words, and the words were: