Schizophrenic

Noel M. Loomis

Tommie Bassford was concerned over the steady frown on his father's forehead and a little bit hurt because his father hadn't noticed him for at least an hour. At the age of three, Tommie didn't understand a lot of things, although sometimes he felt them very keenly. Sometimes a person's unpleasant mood would be more painful to him than a spanking-well, that is to say, an ordinary spanking.

He had heard his father say only last night, "It's a chance to make a million-if I can trust him. And it won't take but a month," he had said wistfully. "We could move up to the mountains or down to the seashore. You wouldn't have to worry about Tommie getting picked on by the big boys next door, and you wouldn't have to quit playing bridge to come home when you lose your five dollars." His father had looked at mother fondly. Then he had sobered. "The only thing is-if Pickens isn't on the level, then we can lose what little business we have, just as fast."

Tommie thought maybe he could help his father. He gathered up his whole sun-energy set from the center of the big front window where he liked best to play. He pulled it across the floor in quantum jerks, moving backward in a sitting position, pushing himself by digging his heels into the floor and then straightening his legs. That way he could make it all in one trip, hugging the sun-energy set to his stomach until he jammed his back against his father's chair.

He was disappointed that his father did not look down at him and perhaps pat him on the head. It was most unusual. But Tommie set up his blocks and then pressed the button and watched the reactions start all over again. He watched carbon 12 go into nitrogen and then into oxygen and then into nitrogen 15. Up to that point it went very well, but when those four hydrogen nuclei, represented by four glowing green balls, were supposed to combine into one helium nucleus, something went wrong. They didn't combine right. They smacked into each other with a violent report and disappeared.

At this moment Tommie's father came to life with a startled jump. He said a word that Tommie, at his age, had never yet dared to say except to himself, because even though he was a prodigy, his mother didn't allow him to say da- he caught it just in time.

Tommie was glad, anyway, that his father had quit staring at the paper. Tommie stood up to receive the gentle pat on the head that he usually got from his father's big hand, but as he turned around, astonishingly enough, his father smacked him on the seat, and, through his red linen shorts, it stung.

"Will you please take those confounded atom blocks and your one-seventy I.Q. into the back yard or somewhere, so a man can have some peace?" His father tried to sound exasperated, but Tommie didn't think he really meant it.

But Tommie got on his knees and gathered the whole set to his stomach and hoped there wasn't any dirt on them to get on his white waist. Then he went out, very disappointed and even a little hurt-in fact, his eyes felt a little watery-because he thought if dad would tell him what was the trouble, he could help dad figure out something.

Mother was showing talky Mrs. Jones the new disintichute that disposed of everything that was waste-soiled clothes, dirty dishes, used silverware. Tommie wondered why they called it silver. Certainly there wasn't any silver in it, as everything was plastic now. Everything, that is, but very special things, like his red linen pants.

Mother smiled at him vaguely, and Mrs. Jones smiled too, but Mrs. Jones had a sharp, searching look in her eyes that made it seem as if she was trying to find something wrong so she could punish him. Tommie didn't care for her. She wouldn't have any right to send him into scrub his hands again.

"Come here, Tommie," she said in a high cooing voice, and made a move for him. But Tommie felt a strange, almost violent repugnance toward her. He backed away and went sideward toward the kitchen door. It opened, and he lifted his feet high to get over the sill and very nearly lost his balance doing so.

That annoyed him, too. Being a prodigy was all right if one had a body to go with it. When a boy had a ten-year-old mind it was irritating to have a three-year-old body as clumsy as the body of a baby.

He lost an orange-colored electron just outside of the door, but he let it lie there for a moment. Mrs. Jones was too close to the door. Maybe Mrs. Jones would go back into the front room where dad was worrying so much. Secretly Tommie chuckled. Dad didn't like Mrs. Jones any more than Tommie did. He'd send her home in a hurry.

Tommie set up his blocks and got some spare nuclei out of the box and started the reaction going again. It puzzled him a lot, why the hydrogen nuclei didn't combine properly. There must have been some unusual influence somewhere. In the two days he had had it, he hadn't been able to complete the carbon cycle once.

Bennie, next door, had a set, and when Bennie tried it, it always worked fine. Bennie never had lost a nucleus by explosion. Maybe there was something wrong with Tommie's set. He'd get Bennie to try it-and maybe Bennie would let Tommie try his set.

Tommie sat there in the white sand, watching the interlaced orange-glowing orbits of the electrons and the broad green paths of the hydrogen nuclei. The sun was warm on Tommie's back and the Baltimore orioles were singing in the elm tree almost over his head. Across the high electronic fence he could hear the bigger boys playing ball in Bennie's yard.

Suddenly the four hydrogen nuclei, flashing at half light-speed in their four orbits, went together and disappeared in the usual green flash and with the customary loud report. Tommie was thankful the explosion didn't sound as loud out in the yard as it had in the front room under dad's chair, although secretly Tommie liked it better in the house because of that very fact.

The only thing was that dad wasn't in a very good mood today.

Tommie watched the orioles sweeping around the tree-top, and the papa oriole's orange plumage, flashing in the sunlight, reminded him of the orbit of an electron. Then he remembered that he had dropped an electron just outside the kitchen door.

He got up laboriously-he was so solid his legs had a hard time holding him up, sometimes. He went to the door and leaned over to pick up the electron. He heard the swish of the door as it opened and then the high cooing of Mrs. Jones' voice as she bore down on him.

"Oh, that dear little boy, I simply must squeeze him."

Tommie stood up suddenly, so suddenly he lost his balance and sat down on the grass. Mrs. Jones reached for him, and that strange feeling of repugnance he had for her grew so powerful that it almost smothered him. He squirmed to get away from her, but he was trapped. She touched him, and his body quit squirming because mother wouldn't like it, but in his mind he writhed. It almost seemed that he could tear himself away from his body.

Then he did! Just how he didn't know, but suddenly he was standing a couple of feet to one side, watching Mrs. Jones holding the arms of his first body. He looked down at himself. Yes, he was in a body, too, and he was wearing red linen pants. This body didn't seem quite as solid as his first, but solid enough. He looked up at Mrs. Jones triumphantly.

He was surprised to see her drawing back with her mouth open like the hole in the disintichute. Her eyes were sticking out and her eyebrows were almost up to her hair.

"Oh! He-he split!" she shrieked. "He-he's got two bodies!"

Tommie was very amused at her antics. He looked over and smiled at his mother but she too was staring at him with something like horror.

Then Mrs. Jones did something Tommie couldn't understand. She went to his mother and put her arms around her and cried and said, "Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry for you. I didn't know you had this burden. All of us have our crosses to bear-the atomic age has left such dreadful marks on civilization-but, oh my dear!" She let out a hearty bawl, and Tommie quit being amused and began to be very disgusted. She looked at him from under one arm, half afraid, he thought, and then she turned back to Tommie's mother. "My dear! A schizo-schizo-"

"Schizophrenic," said Tommie Number One helpfully.

"Split personality," Mrs. Jones sputtered. "But physically! Oh, my da-"

Tommie's mother was disengaging herself. "Why don't you go home and make yourself a nice cup of hot tea, with maybe just a touch of-" She hesitated.

"Arsenic," Tommie thought promptly. He became one little boy again.

"Ar-" She caught herself and looked at Tommie, horrified. "Just a touch of brandy," she said.

Mrs. Jones looked bewildered. Oh, this was fun, thought Tommie. He'd known for some time that he could mentally suggest things for his parents to say, but he'd never tried it so openly before. He knew one thing, though. He'd better be plenty careful with this power, or he'd get walloped. In fact as he thought about it, he didn't feel too sure about the arsenic deal.

Mrs. Jones retired in confusion, and Tommie went back to the sun-energy set. But when his father and mother were both outside, and mother was saying as if she were shocked, "Yes, he definitely split in two. I saw him with my own eyes."

His father looked serious-then he chuckled. "No doubt you would have done the same thing, if you could have. But I wonder why." He took Tommie's arm, somewhat gingerly. "Hm." He took the other arm. "He doesn't do it when we touch him. It must be her repellent personality, or some phase of it. Insincerity, do you suppose?"

Tommie himself guessed that was it. Mrs....