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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30283 ***
+
+                         Transcriber's Note:
+
+  This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction June 1962.
+  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
+  on this publication was renewed.
+
+
+                              THE SOUND
+
+                              OF SILENCE
+
+
+                         BY BARBARA CONSTANT
+
+
+     Most people, when asked to define the ultimate in
+     loneliness, say it's being alone in a crowd. And it takes
+     only one slight difference to make one forever alone in the
+     crowd....
+
+
+                       ILLUSTRATED BY SCHELLING
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Nobody at Hoskins, Haskell & Chapman, Incorporated, knew jut why
+Lucilla Brown, G.G. Hoskins' secretary, came to work half an hour
+early every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Even G.G. himself, had he
+been asked, would have had trouble explaining how his occasional
+exasperated wish that just once somebody would reach the office ahead
+of him could have caused his attractive young secretary to start doing
+so three times a week ... or kept her at it all the months since that
+first gloomy March day. Nobody asked G.G. however--not even Paul
+Chapman, the very junior partner in the advertising firm, who had
+displayed more than a little interest in Lucilla all fall and winter,
+but very little interest in anything all spring and summer. Nobody
+asked Lucilla why she left early on the days she arrived early--after
+all, eight hours is long enough. And certainly nobody knew where
+Lucilla went at 4:30 on those three days--nor would anybody in the
+office have believed it, had he known.
+
+"Lucky Brown? seeing a psychiatrist?" The typist would have giggled,
+the office boy would have snorted, and every salesman on the force
+would have guffawed. Even Paul Chapman might have managed a wry smile.
+A real laugh had been beyond him for several months--ever since he
+asked Lucilla confidently, "Will you marry me?" and she answered, "I'm
+sorry, Paul--thanks, but no thanks."
+
+Not that seeing a psychiatrist was anything to laugh at, in itself. After
+all, the year was 1962, and there were almost as many serious articles
+about mental health as there were cartoons about psychoanalysts, even in
+the magazines that specialized in poking fun. In certain cities--including
+Los Angeles--and certain industries--especially advertising--"I have an
+appointment with my psychiatrist" was a perfectly acceptable excuse for
+leaving work early. The idea of a secretary employed by almost the largest
+advertising firm in one of the best-known suburbs in the sprawling City of
+the Angels doing so should not, therefore, have seemed particularly odd.
+Not would it have, if the person involved had been anyone at all except
+Lucilla Brown.
+
+The idea that she might need aid of any kind, particularly
+psychiatric, was ridiculous. She had been born twenty-two years
+earlier in undisputed possession of a sizable silver spoon--and she
+was, in addition, bright, beautiful, and charming, with 20/20 vision,
+perfect teeth, a father and mother who adored her, friends who did
+likewise ... and the kind of luck you'd have to see to believe. Other
+people entered contests--Lucilla won them. Other people drove five
+miles over the legal speed limit and got caught doing it--Lucilla
+out-distanced them, but fortuitously slowed down just before the
+highway patrol appeared from nowhere. Other people waited in the wrong
+line at the bank while the woman ahead of them learned how to roll
+pennies--Lucilla was always in the line that moved right up to the
+teller's window.
+
+"Lucky" was not, in other words, just a happenstance abbreviation of
+"Lucilla"--it was an exceedingly apt nickname. And Lucky Brown's
+co-workers would have been quite justified in laughing at the very
+idea of her being unhappy enough about anything to spend three
+precious hours a week stretched out on a brown leather couch staring
+miserably at a pale blue ceiling and fumbling for words that refused
+to come. There were a good many days when Lucilla felt like laughing
+at the idea herself. And there were other days when she didn't even
+feel like smiling.
+
+Wednesday, the 25th of July, was one of the days when she didn't feel
+like smiling. Or talking. Or moving. It had started out badly when she
+opened her eyes and found herself staring at a familiar blue ceiling.
+"I don't know," she said irritably. "I tell you, I simply don't know
+what happens. I'll start to answer someone and the words will be right
+on the tip of my tongue, ready to be spoken, then I'll say something
+altogether different. Or I'll start to cross the street and, for no
+reason at all, be unable to even step off the curb...."
+
+"For no reason at all?" Dr. Andrews asked. "Are you sure you aren't
+withholding something you ought to tell me?"
+
+She shifted a little, suddenly uncomfortable ... and then she was
+fully awake and the ceiling was ivory, not blue. She stared at it for
+a long moment, completely disoriented, before she realized that she
+was in her own bed, not on Dr. Andrews' brown leather couch, and that
+the conversation had been another of the interminable imaginary
+dialogues she found herself carrying on with the psychiatrist, day and
+night, awake and asleep.
+
+"Get out of my dreams," she ordered crossly, summoning up a quick
+mental picture of Dr. Andrews' expressive face, level gray eyes, and
+silvering temples, the better to banish him from her thoughts. She was
+immediately sorry she had done so, for the image remained fixed in her
+mind; she could almost feel his eyes as she heard his voice ask again,
+"For no reason at all, Lucilla?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The weatherman had promised a scorcher, and the heat that already lay
+like a blanket over the room made it seem probable the promise would
+be fulfilled. She moved listlessly, showering patting herself dry,
+lingering over the choice of a dress until her mother called urgently
+from the kitchen.
+
+She was long minutes behind schedule when she left the house. Usually
+she rather enjoyed easing her small car into the stream of automobiles
+pouring down Sepulveda toward the San Diego Freeway, jockeying for
+position, shifting expertly from one lane to another to take advantage
+of every break in the traffic. This morning she felt only angry
+impatience; she choked back on the irritated impulse to drive directly
+into the side of a car that cut across in front of her, held her horn
+button down furiously when a slow-starting truck hesitated
+fractionally after the light turned green.
+
+When she finally edged her Renault up on the "on" ramp and the freeway
+stretched straight and unobstructed ahead, she stepped down on the
+accelerator and watched the needle climb up and past the legal 65-mile
+limit. The sound of her tires on the smooth concrete was soothing and
+the rush of wind outside gave the morning an illusion of coolness. She
+edged away from the tangle of cars that had pulled onto the freeway
+with her and momentarily was alone on the road, with her rear-view
+mirror blank, the oncoming lanes bare, and a small rise shutting off
+the world ahead.
+
+That was when it happened. "Get out of the way!" a voice shrieked
+"out of the way, out of the way, OUT OF THE WAY!" Her heart lurched,
+her stomach twisted convulsively, and there was a brassy taste in her
+mouth. Instinctively, she stamped down on the brake pedal, swerved
+sharply into the outer lane. By the time she had topped the rise, she
+was going a cautious 50 miles an hour and hugging the far edge of the
+freeway. Then, and only then, she heard the squeal of agonized tires
+and saw the cumbersome semitrailer coming from the opposite direction
+rock dangerously, jackknife into the dividing posts that separated
+north and south-bound traffic, crunch ponderously through them, and
+crash to a stop, several hundred feet ahead of her and squarely
+athwart the lane down which she had been speeding only seconds
+earlier.
+
+The highway patrol materialized within minutes. Even so, it was after
+eight by the time Lucilla gave them her statement, agreed for the
+umpteenth time with the shaken but uninjured truck driver that it was
+indeed fortunate she hadn't been in the center lane, and drove slowly
+the remaining miles to the office. The gray mood of early morning had
+changed to black. Now there were two voices in her mind, competing for
+attention. "I knew it was going to happen," the truck driver said, "I
+couldn't see over the top of that hill. All I could do was fight the
+wheel and pray that if anybody was coming, he'd get out of the way."
+She could almost hear him repeating the words, "Get out of the way,
+out of the way...." And right on the heel of his cry came Dr.
+Andrews' soft query, "For no reason at all, Lucilla?"
+
+She pulled into the company parking lot, jerked the wheel savagely to
+the left, jammed on the brakes. "Shut up!" she said. "Shut up, both of
+you!" She started into the building, then hesitated. She was already
+late, but there was something.... (Get out of the way, the way.... For
+no reason at all, at all....) She yielded to impulse and walked
+hurriedly downstairs to the basement library.
+
+"That stuff I asked you to get together for me by tomorrow, Ruthie,"
+she said to the gray-haired librarian. "You wouldn't by any chance
+have already done it, would you?"
+
+"Funny you should ask." The elderly woman bobbed down behind the
+counter and popped back up with an armload of magazines and
+newspapers. "Just happened to have some free time last thing
+yesterday. It's already charged out to you, so you just go right ahead
+and take it, dearie."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was 8:30 when Lucilla reached the office.
+
+"When I need you, where are you?" G.G. asked sourly. "Learned last
+night that the top dog at Karry Karton Korporation is in town today,
+so they've pushed that conference up from Friday to ten this morning.
+If you'd been here early--or even on time--we might at least have
+gotten some of the information together."
+
+Lucilla laid the stack of material on his desk. "I haven't had time to
+flag the pages yet," she said, "but they're listed on the library
+request on top. We did nineteen ads for KK last year and three of
+premium offers. I stopped by Sales on my way in--Susie's digging out
+figures for you now."
+
+"Hm-m-m," said G.G. "Well. So that's where you've been. You could at
+least have let me know." There was grudging approval beneath his
+gruffness. "Say, how'd you know I needed this today, anyhow?"
+
+"Didn't," said Lucilla, putting her purse away and whisking the cover off
+her typewriter. "Happenstance, that's all." (Just happened to go down to
+the library ... for no reason at all ... withholding something ... get out
+of the way....) The telephone's demand for attention overrode her
+thoughts. She reached for it almost gratefully. "Mr. Hoskins' office," she
+said. "Yes. Yes, he knows about the ten o'clock meeting this morning.
+Thanks for calling, anyway." She hung up and glanced at G.G., but he was
+so immersed in one of the magazines that the ringing telephone hadn't even
+disturbed him. Ringing? The last thing she did before she left the office
+each night was set the lever in the instrument's base to "off," so that
+the bell would not disturb G.G. if he worked late. So far today, nobody
+had set it back to "on."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It's getting worse," she said miserably to the pale blue ceiling.
+"The phone didn't ring this morning--it couldn't have--but I answered
+it." Dr. Andrews said nothing at all. She let her eyes flicker
+sidewise, but he was outside her range of vision. "I don't LIKE
+having you sit where I can't see you," she said crossly. "Freud may
+have thought it was a good idea, but I think it's a lousy one." She
+clenched her hands and stared at nothing. The silence stretched
+thinner and thinner, like a balloon blown big, until the temptation to
+rupture it was too great to resist. "I didn't see the truck this
+morning. Nor hear it. There was no reason at all for me to slow down
+and pull over."
+
+"You might be dead if you hadn't. Would you like that better?"
+
+The matter-of-fact question was like a hand laid across Lucilla's
+mouth. "I don't want to be dead," she admitted finally. "Neither do I
+want to go on like this, hearing words that aren't spoken and bells
+that don't ring. When it gets to the point that I pick up a phone just
+because somebody's thinking...." She stopped abruptly.
+
+"I didn't quite catch the end of that sentence," Dr. Andrews said.
+
+"I didn't quite finish it. I can't."
+
+"Can't? Or won't? Don't hold anything back, Lucilla. You were saying
+that you picked up the phone just because somebody was thinking...."
+He paused expectantly. Lucilla reread the ornate letters on the framed
+diploma on the wall, looked critically at the picture of Mrs.
+Andrews--whom she'd met--and her impish daughter--whom she
+hadn't--counted the number of pleats in the billowing drapes, ran a
+tentative finger over the face of her wristwatch, straightened a fold
+of her skirt ... and could stand the silence no longer.
+
+"All right," she said wearily. "The girl at Karry Karton thought about
+talking to me, and I heard my phone ring, even though the bell was
+disconnected. G.G. thought about needing backup material for the
+conference and I went to the library. The truck driver thought about
+warning people and I got out of his way. So I can read people's
+minds--some people's minds, some of the time, anyway ... only there's
+no such thing as telepathy. And if I'm not telepathic, then...." She
+caught herself in the brink of time and bit back the final word,
+fighting for self-control.
+
+"Then what?" The peremptory question toppled Lucilla's defenses.
+
+"I'm crazy," she said. Speaking the word released all the others
+dammed up behind it. "Ever since I can remember, things like this have
+happened--all at once, in the middle of doing something or saying
+something, I'd find myself thinking about what somebody else was doing
+or saying. Not thinking--knowing. I'd be playing hide-and-seek, and I
+could see the places where the other kids were hiding just as plainly
+as I could see my own surroundings. Or I'd be worrying over the
+answers to an exam question, and I'd know what somebody in the back of
+the room had decided to write down, or what the teacher was expecting
+us to write. Not always--but it happened often enough so that it
+bothered me, just the way it does now when I answer a question before
+it's been asked, or know what the driver ahead of me is going to do a
+split second before he does it, or win a bridge game because I can see
+everybody else's hand through his own eyes, almost."
+
+"Has it always ... bothered you, Lucilla?"
+
+"No-o-o-o." She drew the word out, considering, trying to think when
+it was that she hadn't felt uneasy about the unexpected moments of
+perceptiveness. When she was very little, perhaps. She thought of the
+tiny, laughing girl in the faded snaps of the old album--and suddenly,
+inexplicably, she was that self, moving through remembered rooms,
+pausing to collect a word from a boyish father, a thought from a
+pretty young mother. Reluctantly, she closed her eyes against that
+distant time. "Way back," she said, "when I didn't know any better, I
+just took it for granted that sometimes people talked to each other
+and that sometimes they passed thoughts along without putting them
+into words. I was about six, I guess, when I found out it wasn't so."
+She slipped into her six-year-old self as easily as she had donned the
+younger Lucilla. This time she wasn't in a house, but high on a
+hillside, walking on springy pine needles instead of prosaic carpet.
+
+"Talk," Dr. Andrews reminded her, his voice so soft that it could
+almost have come from inside her own mind.
+
+"We were picnicking," she said. "A whole lot of us. Somehow, I
+wandered away from the others...." One minute the hill was bright
+with sun, and the next it was deep in shadows and the wind that had
+been merely cool was downright cold. She shivered and glanced around
+expecting her mother to be somewhere near, holding out a sweater or
+jacket. There was no one at all in sight. Even then, she never thought
+of being frightened. She turned to retrace her steps. There was a big
+tree that looked familiar, and a funny rock behind it, half buried in
+the hillside. She was trudging toward it, humming under her breath,
+when the worry thoughts began to reach her. (... only a little creek
+so I don't think she could have fallen in ... not really any bears
+around here ... but she never gets hurt ... creek ... bear ... twisted
+ankle ... dark ... cold....) She had veered from her course and
+started in the direction of the first thought, but now they were
+coming from all sides and she had no idea at all which way to go. She
+ran wildly then, first one way, then the other, sobbing and calling.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"Lucilla!" The voice sliced into the night, and the dark mountainside
+and the frightened child were gone. She shuddered a little,
+reminiscently, and put her hand over her eyes.
+
+"Somebody found me, of course. And then Mother was holding me and
+crying and I was crying, too, and telling her how all the different
+thought at once frightened me and mixed me up. She ... she scolded me
+for ... for telling fibs ... and said that nobody except crazy people
+thought they could read each other's minds."
+
+"I see," said Dr. Andrews, "So you tried not to, of course. And
+anytime you did it again, or thought you did, you blamed it on
+coincidence. Or luck."
+
+"And had that nightmare again."
+
+"Yes, that, too. Tell me about it."
+
+"I already have. Over and over."
+
+"Tell me again, then."
+
+"I feel like a fool, repeating myself," she complained. Dr. Andrew's
+made no comment. "Oh, all right. It always starts with me walking down
+a crowded street, surrounded by honking cars and yelling newsboys and
+talking people. The noise bothers me and I'm tempted to cover my ears
+to shut it out, but I try to ignore it, instead, and walk faster and
+faster. Bit by bit, the buildings I pass are smaller, the people
+fewer, the noise less. All at once, I discover there's nothing around
+at all but a spreading carpet of gray-green moss, years deep, and a
+silence that feels as old as time itself. There's nothing to frighten
+me, but I am frightened ... and lonesome, not so much for people, but
+for a sound ... any sound. I turn to run back toward town, but there's
+nothing behind me now but the same gray moss and gray sky and dead
+silence."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+By the time she reached the last word, her throat had tightened until
+speaking was difficult. She reached out blindly for something to cling
+to. Her groping hand met Dr. Andrews' and his warm fingers closed
+reassuringly around hers. Gradually the panic drained away, but she
+could think of nothing to say at all, although she longed to have the
+silence broken. As if he sensed her longing, Dr. Andrews said, "You
+started having the dream more often just after you told Paul you
+wouldn't marry him, is that right?"
+
+"No. It was the other way around. I hadn't had it for months, not
+since I fell in love with him, then he got assigned to that "Which
+Tomorrow?" show and he started calling me "Lucky," the way everybody
+does, and the dream came back...." She stopped short, and turned on
+the couch to stare at the psychiatrist with startled eyes. "But that
+can't be how it was," she said. "The lonesomeness must have started
+after I decided not to marry him, not before."
+
+"I wonder why the dream stopped when you fell in love with him."
+
+"That's easy," Lucilla said promptly, grasping at the chance to evade
+her own more disturbing question. "I felt close to him, whether he was
+with me or not, the way I used to feel close to people back when I was
+a little girl, before ... well, before that day in the mountains ...
+when Mother said...."
+
+"That was when you started having the dream, wasn't it?"
+
+"How'd you know? I didn't--not until just now. But, yes, that's when
+it started. I'd never minded the dark or being alone, but I was
+frightened when Mother shut the door that night, because the walls
+seemed so ... so solid, now that I knew all the thoughts I used to
+think were with me there were just pretend. When I finally went to
+sleep, I dreamed, and I went on having the same dream, night after
+night after night, until finally they called a doctor and he gave me
+something to make me sleep."
+
+"I wish they'd called me," Dr. Andrews said.
+
+"What could you have done? The sleeping pills worked, anyway, and
+after a while I didn't need them any more, because I'd heard other
+kids talking about having hunches and lucky streaks and I stopped
+feeling different from the rest of them, except once in a while, when
+I was so lucky it ... bothered me."
+
+"And after you met Paul, you stopped being ... too lucky ... and the
+dream stopped?"
+
+"No!" Lucilla was startled at her own vehemence. "No, it wasn't like
+that at all, and you'd know it, if you'd been listening. With Paul, I
+felt close to him all the time, no matter how many miles or walls or
+anything else there were between us. We hardly had to talk at all,
+because we seemed to know just what the other one was thinking all the
+time, listening to music, or watching the waves pound in or just
+working together at the office. Instead of feeling ... odd ... when I
+knew what he was thinking or what he was going to say, I felt good
+about it, because I was so sure it was the same way with him and what
+I was thinking. We didn't talk about it. There just wasn't any need
+to." She lapsed into silence again. Dr. Andrews straightened her
+clenched hand out and stroked the fingers gently. After a moment, she
+went on.
+
+"He hadn't asked me to marry him, but I knew he would, and there wasn't
+any hurry, because everything was so perfect, anyway. Then one of the
+company's clients decided to sponsor a series of fantasy shows on TV and
+wanted us to tie in the ads for next year with the fantasy theme. Paul was
+assigned to the account, and G.G. let him borrow me to work on it, because
+it was such a rush project. I'd always liked fairy stories when I was
+little and when I discovered there were grown-up ones, too, like those in
+_Unknown Worlds_ and the old _Weird Tales_, I read them, too.
+But I hadn't any idea how much there was, until we started buying copies
+of everything there was on the news-stands, and then ransacking musty
+little stores for back issues and ones that had gone out of publication,
+until Paul's office was just full of teetery piles of gaudy magazines and
+everywhere you looked there were pictures of strange stars and
+eight-legged monsters and men in space suits."
+
+"So what do the magazines have to do with you and Paul?"
+
+"The way he felt about them changed everything. He just laughed at the
+ones about space ships and other planets and robots and things, but he
+didn't laugh when came across stories about ... well, mutants, and
+people with talents...."
+
+"Talents? Like reading minds, you mean?"
+
+She nodded, not looking at him. "He didn't laugh at those. He acted as
+if they were ... well, indecent. The sort of thing you wouldn't be
+caught dead reading in public. And he thought that way, too,
+especially about the stories that even mentioned telepathy. At first,
+when he brought them to my attention in that disapproving way, I
+thought he was just pretending to sneer, to tease me, because
+he--we--knew they could be true. Only his thoughts matched his
+remarks. He hated the stories, Dr. Andrews, and was just determined to
+have me hate them, too. All at once I began to feel as if I didn't
+know him at all and I began to wonder if I'd just imagined everything
+all those months I felt so close to him. And then I began to dream
+again, and to think about that lonesome silent world even when I was
+wide awake."
+
+"Go on, Lucilla," Dr. Andrews said, as she hesitated.
+
+"That's all, just about. We finished the job and got rid of the
+magazines and for a little while it was almost as if those two weeks
+had never been, except I couldn't forget that he didn't know what I
+was thinking at all, even when everything he did, almost, made it seem
+as if he did. It began to seem wrong for me to know what he was
+thinking. Crazy, like Mother had said, and worse, somehow. Not well,
+not even nice, if you know what I mean."
+
+"Then he asked you to marry him."
+
+"And I said no, even when I wanted, oh, so terribly, to say yes and
+yes and yes." She squeezed her eyes tight shut to hold back a rush of
+tears.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Time folded back on itself. Once again, the hands of her wristwatch
+pointed to 4:30 and the white-clad receptionist said briskly, "Doctor
+will see you now." Once again, from some remote vantage point, Lucilla
+watched herself brush past Dr. Andrews and cross to the familiar
+couch, heard herself say, "It's getting worse," watched herself move
+through a flickering montage of scenes from childhood to womanhood,
+from past to present.
+
+She opened he eyes to meet those of the man who sat patiently beside
+her. "You see," he said, "telling me wasn't so difficult, after all."
+And then, before she had decided on a response, "What do you know
+about Darwin's theory of evolution, Lucilla?"
+
+His habit of ending a tense moment by making an irrelevant query no
+longer even startled her. Obediently, she fumbled for an answer. "Not
+much. Just that he thought all the different kinds of life on earth
+today evolved from a few blobs of protoplasm that sprouted wings or
+grew fur or developed teeth, depending on when they lived, and where."
+She paused hopefully, but met with only silence. "Sometimes what
+seemed like a step forward wasn't," she said, ransacking her brain for
+scattered bits of information. "Then the species died out, like the
+saber-tooth tiger, with those tusks that kept right on growing until
+they locked his jaws shut, so he starved to death." As she spoke, she
+remembered the huge beast as he had been pictured in one of her
+college textbooks. The recollection grew more and more vivid, until
+she could see both the picture and the facing page of text. There was
+an irregularly shaped inkblot in the upper corner and several heavily
+underlined sentences that stood out so distinctly she could actually
+read the words. "According to Darwin, variations in general are not
+infinitesimal, but in the nature of specific mutations. Thousands of
+these occur, but only the fittest survive the climate, the times,
+natural enemies, and their own kind, who strive to perpetuate
+themselves unchanged." Taken one by one, the words were all
+familiar--taken as a whole, they made no sense at all. She let the
+book slip unheeded from her mind and stared at Dr. Andrews in
+bewilderment.
+
+"Try saying it in a different way."
+
+"You sound like a school teacher humoring a stupid child." And then,
+because of the habit of obedience was strong, "I guess he meant that
+tails didn't grow an inch at a time, the way the dog's got cut off,
+but all at once ... like a fish being born with legs as well as fins,
+or a baby saber-tooth showing up among tigers with regular teeth, or
+one ape in a tribe discovering he could swing down out of the treetops
+and stand erect and walk alone."
+
+He echoed her last words. "And walk alone...." A premonitory chill
+traced its icy way down Lucilla's backbone. For a second she stood on
+gray moss, under a gray sky, in the midst of a gray silence. "He not
+only could walk alone, he had to. Do you remember what your book
+said?"
+
+"Only the fittest survive," Lucilla said numbly. "Because they have to
+fight the climate ... and their natural enemies ... and their own
+kind." She swung her feet to the floor and pushed herself into a
+sitting position. "I'm not a ... a mutation. I'm not, I'm not, I'm
+NOT, and you can't say I am, because I won't listen!"
+
+"I didn't say you were." There was the barest hint of emphasis on the
+first word. Lucilla was almost certain she heard a whisper of
+laughter, but he met her gaze blandly, his expression completely
+serious.
+
+"Don't you dare laugh!" she said, nonetheless. "There's nothing funny
+about ... about...."
+
+"About being able to read people's minds," Dr Andrews said helpfully.
+"You'd much rather have me offer some other explanation for the
+occurrences that bother you so--is that it?"
+
+"I guess so. Yes, it is. A brain tumor. Or schizophrenia. Or anything
+at all that could maybe be cured, so I could marry Paul and have
+children and be like everybody else. Like you." She looked past him to
+the picture on his desk. "It's easy for you to talk."
+
+He ignored the last statement. "Why can't you get married, anyway?"
+
+"You've already said why. Because Paul would hate me--everybody would
+hate me--if they knew I was different."
+
+"How would they know? It doesn't show. Now if you had three legs, or a
+long bushy tail, or outsized teeth...."
+
+Lucilla smiled involuntarily, and then was furious at herself for
+doing so and at Dr Andrews for provoking her into it. "This whole
+thing is utterly asinine, anyhow. Here we are, talking as if I might
+really be a mutant, and you know perfectly well that I'm not."
+
+"Do I? You made the diagnosis, Lucilla, and you've given me some
+mighty potent reasons for believing it ... can you give me equally
+good reasons for doubting that you're a telepath?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The peremptory demand left Lucilla speechless for a moment. She groped
+blindly for an answer, then almost laughed aloud as she found it.
+
+"But of course. I almost missed it, even after you practically drew me
+a diagram. If I could read minds, just as soon as anybody found it
+out, he'd be afraid of me, or hate me, like the book said, and you
+said, too. If you believed it, you'd do something like having me
+locked up in a hospital, maybe, instead of...."
+
+"Instead of what, Lucilla?"
+
+"Instead of being patient, and nice, and helping me see how silly I've
+been." She reached out impulsively to touch his hand, then withdrew
+her own, feeling somewhat foolish when he made no move to respond.
+Her relief was too great, however, to be contained in silence. "Way
+back the first time I came in, almost, you said that before we
+finished therapy, you'd know me better than I knew myself. I didn't
+believe you--maybe I didn't want to--but I begin to think you were
+right. Lot of times, lately, you've answered a question before I even
+asked it. Sometimes you haven't even bothered to answer--you've just
+sat there in your big brown chair and I've lain here on the couch, and
+we've gone through something together without using words at all...."
+She had started out almost gaily, the words spilling over each other
+in their rush to be said, but bit by bit she slowed down, then
+faltered to a stop. After she had stopped talking altogether, she
+could still hear her last few phrases, repeated over and over, like an
+echo that refused to die. (Answered ... before I even asked ...
+without using words at all ... without using words....)
+
+She could almost taste the terror that clogged her throat and dried her
+lips. "You do believe it. And you could have me locked up. Only ...
+only...." Fragments of thought, splinters of words, and droplets of
+silence spun into a kaleidoscopic jumble, shifted infinitesimally, and
+fell into an incredible new pattern. Understanding displaced terror and
+was, in turn, displaced by indignation. She stared accusingly at her
+interrogator. "But you look just like ... just like anybody."
+
+"You expected perhaps three legs or a long bushy tail or teeth like
+that textbook tiger?"
+
+"And you're a psychiatrist!"
+
+"What else? Would you have talked to me like this across a grocery
+counter, Lucilla? Or listened to me, if I'd been driving a bus or
+filling a prescription? Would I have found the others in a bowling
+alley or a business office?"
+
+"Then there are ... others?" She let out her breath on a long sigh
+involuntarily glancing again at the framed picture. "Only I love Paul,
+and he isn't ... he can't...."
+
+"Nor can Carol." His eyes were steady on hers, yet she felt as if he
+were looking through and beyond her. For no reason at all, she
+strained her ears for the sound of footsteps or the summons of a
+voice. "Where do you suppose the second little blob of protoplasm with
+legs came from?" Dr. Andrews asked. "And the third? If that ape who
+found he could stand erect had walked lonesomely off into the sunset
+like a second-rate actor on a late, late show, where do you suppose
+you'd be today?"
+
+He broke off abruptly and watched with Lucilla as the office door
+edged open. The small girl who inched her way around it wore blue
+jeans and a pony tail rather than an organdy frock and curls, but her
+pixie smile matched that of the girl in the photograph Lucilla had
+glanced at again and again.
+
+"You wanted me, Daddy?" she asked, but she looked toward Lucilla.
+
+"I thought you'd like to meet someone with the same nickname as
+yours," Dr. Andrews said, rising to greet her. "Lucky, meet Lucky."
+
+"Hello," the child said, then her smile widened. "Hello!" (But I don't
+have to say it, do I? I can talk to you just the way I talk to Daddy
+and Uncle Whitney and Big Bill).
+
+"Hello yourself," said Lucilla. This time when the corners of her
+mouth began to tick upward, she made no attempt to stop them. (Of
+course you can, darling. And I can answer you the same way, and you'll
+hear me.)
+
+Dr. Andrews reached for the open pack of cigarettes on his deck. (Is
+this strictly a private conversation, girls, or can I get in on it,
+too?)
+
+(It's unpolite to interrupt, Daddy.)
+
+(He's not exactly interrupting--it was his conversation to begin
+with!)
+
+Dr. Andrews' receptionist paused briefly beside the still-open office
+door. None of them heard either her gentle rap or the soft click of
+the latch slipping into place when she pushed the door shut.
+
+Nor did she hear them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Sound of Silence, by Barbara Constant
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30283 ***