The Young Unicorns Read online

  “Even the Micro-Ray can’t replace an optic nerve.”

  “Don’t you see, then, Daddy?” Suzy’s voice strengthened, though her hoarseness was hindering her. “Don’t you remember the way I kept asking why it had to happen to Emily? And if God is good, how can he let things like that happen? And you said Emily wasn’t asking that question, and if I kept on asking it, even if not out loud, I’d be making things harder for her when she’s doing so well … . So when she asked the genie yesterday I just sort of burst.”

  “You were right,” Mr. Theo murmured.

  “But why didn’t you tell us last night, Suzy?” her mother asked.

  “You and Daddy had company for dinner and Emily made me promise not to, and I wanted to think about it some more before we said anything anyhow.”

  Mr. Theo growled, “And have you?”

  “I’ve done nothing else all day, except blow my nose.”

  “And?”

  “Mr. Theo, I don’t know! Maybe one reason I got so mad at Emily was I was so scared, and if you get mad enough at something it helps you not to be so scared.” She sighed, heavily.

  Emily came back to the table. Her face showed traces of tears, but she was quite composed.

  “Let’s have dessert now,” Rob suggested.

  His father nodded. “Start clearing the table. Okay, kids. It’s quite a tale. But I don’t think you three are the kind to go in for mass hallucinations. Or to make up tall stories for our dinner-table amusement. I agree with your mother in wishing you’d mentioned it to us last night, though I really don’t see what we could have done.”

  Mrs. Austin, holding the salad bowl, paused in the doorway to the kitchen and looked across the table to her husband. “Is there something we can do, Wallace?”

  “I’ll make it my business to pass Phooka’s Antiques some time tomorrow,” he said, “though I don’t really expect to find anything. When we told you New York was a colorful city, kids, I don’t think we expected it to be quite this colorful. Genies, forsooth. Dave, if you wouldn’t mind walking everybody home from school tomorrow, I’d appreciate it.”

  “I can walk everybody home tomorrow,” Vicky said.

  “You and Dave. I don’t think there’s really anything to worry about. It’s probably, as your mother suggested, some kind of post-Halloween prank, maybe somebody from Columbia with a peculiar sense of humor.”

  A note of hope came into Emily’s voice. “I wouldn’t put it past some of Papa’s students.”

  Mr. Theo did not look convinced. He mumbled to himself something that sounded like, “Not if Tallis is here,” then looked anxiously at Emily. “In these parlous times it is as well to take precautions.”

  Vicky looked at the old man affectionately. “But isn’t it fun to live in parlous times? I wish I’d been there yesterday.”

  “I wish you had, too,” Emily said.

  Three

  After dinner, when Mr. Theotocopoulos had gone home, Vicky took his place in the creaky rocking chair in her father’s study. “Daddy.”

  She rocked for a moment, looking at him. He seemed to her older, his hair greyer, thinner, than when they had come to New York. The laugh creases in his face were still there, but they had been joined by deeper lines of worry: about what? She spoke tentatively.

  He looked up from a page of formulas he was rechecking. “What’s up, Vicky? Where’s Mother?”

  “Putting Rob to bed. And steaming Suzy and rubbing her chest.”

  “Emily?”

  “Dave’s still reading her schoolwork to her. She thought she’d lost her Braille stylus and they had a fight because Dave wouldn’t find it for her.”

  “Where was it?”

  “On the floor, under the dining-room table.”

  “What happened?”

  “She found it. But she was furious because he made her get down on her hands and knees and feel all over the floor for it when she knew perfectly well he could see it and just pick it up for her and save all that time and trouble. But he was right, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes, and Emily knows it. That’s one reason she’s so fond of him.”

  “Usually she won’t let anybody find anything for her or help her. It’s only after her piano lessons with Mr. Theo, when she’s tired, that she asks any of us for anything.”

  Dr. Austin pushed his papers aside and leaned back in his desk chair. He had been forcing himself to ask questions, to assume an interest that a few months earlier would have been spontaneous. His fingers were cramped from writing and he flexed them, much as Emily did over the piano. Both his desk and his chair were discards from Dr. Gregory’s office at Columbia and were functional, ancient, and comfortable. The rest of the furnishings had been left by Dr. Shasti and Dr. Shen-shu. Rob’s favorite object in the study was a small Hsi-Fo, a white laughing “Buddha” that reposed on the desk, benevolent, forbearing. Dr. Austin let his eyes rest on the wise and amused ivory face and relaxed, letting accumulated tensions and unanswered questions lie less heavily on his shoulders.

  The rocker across from him in which Vicky sat was an ancient one of wicker which Dr. Shen-shu had painted saffron yellow. Mrs. Austin had added cushions, and it was extremely comfortable if rather creaky. Dr. Austin’s red leather chair answered in a lower voice, and father and daughter rocked thoughtfully together in counterpoint.

  “Daddy …” Vicky asked tentatively, “is it all right if I ask you about something?”

  “Of course, Vicky. What?” He put the pencil he had been twirling down on the desk.

  —It isn’t “of course,” Vicky thought, looking across the desk at him. Their father was in the house far more than when he had been a busy country doctor, but the children saw less of him. He shut himself up in the study and made it clear that he didn’t want to be disturbed. “It’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you for a long time,” she said finally.

  “Okay. Fire ahead.”

  “Why did Dr. Shasti and Dr. Shen-shu go to Liverpool right after their papers were stolen and Emily was blinded?”

  Her father picked up the Buddha and frowned at it. The Buddha smiled back. “It didn’t have anything to do with it, Vicky. They were here on a foundation grant, their time was up, and they’d already accepted the position in the lab in Liverpool.”

  Vicky considered this. “Then maybe whoever was after the papers wanted to get them before Dr. Shasti and Dr. Shen-shu left?”

  “Very likely.”

  “You liked them, didn’t you?”

  “Very much. I wouldn’t have taken their place in Hyde’s lab if I hadn’t.”

  “You’re really doing the work of both of them, then, aren’t you?”

  “Not really. As we’ve come to know more about the laser and to control its power, the formulae have become simpler. As a matter of fact, Dr. Hyde tried to manage alone for almost two years, but the work got too heavy for him, so he offered me the job.”

  Vicky looked carefully at her father. “I don’t think Mr. Theo liked Dr. Shasti and Dr. Shen-shu, and that sort of makes me wonder.”

  Dr. Austin put the Buddha down and picked up in its stead a small, ugly clay paperweight and turned it over in his hands. It was infinitely precious to him, having been made by Rob from clay dug out of the fresh-water pond near their house in the country. “It isn’t that Mr. Theo didn’t like them, Vicky, but he isn’t very objective where Emily is concerned, and he holds them responsible for her accident.”

  “Were they?” Vicky demanded.

  “Only in the sense that we’re all responsible for one another, I think. I imagine you’ll find that Mr. Theo’s equally prickly about Dr. Hyde in spite of all he’s done for Emily.”

  “Why did he? Dr. Hyde, I mean.”

  “Because whoever attacked Emily was trying to steal papers that belonged to his laboratory, and he felt a sense of personal responsibility. Emily’s father isn’t very practical once he leaves Attic Greece, you know, so it’s a good thing somebody took care of Emily’s train
ing, or she’d be a much sadder child than she is today.”

  “But, Daddy, why were the papers here instead of at the lab?”

  Dr. Austin’s usually friendly, open face closed. He put the paperweight down on the desk with a bang. “I imagine Dr. Shasti and Dr. Shen-shu had their reasons.”

  Vicky looked at him in shock. He never spoke curtly to his children without cause. But she had started this and she was determined to finish. “Please, Daddy, one more thing: whoever hit Emily wasn’t just an ordinary thief, was he, looking for money for dope or something?”

  “Why do you ask that?” His voice was sharp.

  “Suzy says it must have been someone who knew a lot about physics, and about microwaves and coherent radiation. Is she right?”

  “Suzy thinks she knows far too much.” But he made no denial.

  “But what about Emily?” Vicky pursued. “Why would he have wanted to hurt Emily?”

  “Nobody knows, Vicky.” Dr. Austin spoke in his normal, quiet way when answering his children’s questions. Usually he encouraged them to ask, to stretch their minds. “Presumably because she walked in on him stealing the papers.”

  “So he hit her on the head and pushed her downstairs.”

  “That’s what it seems like. All Emily remembers is coming up to the study as usual—”

  “Right here,” Vicky said, “this very room,” and gave a deep shudder.

  “Yes. Somebody came at her so quickly that all she got was an impression of someone masked and huge rushing at her, and then there was a blinding light and darkness and that’s all she remembers.”

  “Why would a fractured skull have hurt her eyes?”

  “This is really the problem, Vicky. Nobody knows. It may possibly have been the angle at which she was hit, the placement of the blow. But what it really seems like, medically speaking, is an optic nerve damaged by powerful radiation, such as might come from an uncontrolled laser beam or Micro-Ray.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You know how, whenever there’s an eclipse of the sun, I warn you never to look at the eclipse directly, or even through dark glasses, because of the intensity of the radiation. Or do you remember those kids I told you about who were brought into the hospital after they’d been looking at the noonday sun under the influence of LSD? One said he was having a religious conversation with the sun. He was totally blinded; he’d burned out his optic nerve. Two had their reading vision destroyed by their psychedelic fantasies because they’d burned the macula, which is a small part of the cornea. The others got off without serious trouble; they were just lucky idiots. Anyhow, the damage to Emily’s optic nerve was very much as though it had been burned by overexposure to radiation.” He broke off as there was a rap on the door.

  Emily stuck her head in, scowling with her listening look. “Are you in the middle of something?”

  “We’d finished,” Vicky said. At last her father had talked to her in the old way, as though she were a reasonable human being capable of learning something. She sighed, deeply, relieved.

  Dr. Austin went to Emily and took her hands. “Homework done?”

  “Not really. I couldn’t concentrate tonight. Dave said I’ve done enough to get by. But he was cross at me for not being able to—what did he call it?—retain properly. I don’t know what’s the matter. I’m tired or something. Have you done your homework, Vic? Could we go to bed, please?”

  Vicky had not finished her homework, but after a look first at Emily, then at her father, she said, “Okay, as long as you don’t mind if I set the alarm and finish up before breakfast.”

  Postponing work was something she hated to do. Just as she had always found it impossible to go to bed angry (unlike Suzy, who could go to sleep happily nursing a grudge), so she hated to go to bed with studying still to be done. Her time for daydreaming was the few minutes before she went to sleep, and unfinished algebra equations or untranslated Latin phrases were apt to poke at her mind and interrupt her reveries.

  Suzy, smelling strongly of Vicks, had come to stand in the doorway. She demanded, cross and hoarse and stuffy-nosed, “What about reading tonight? We’re right in the middle of the biography of Mendel and it’s my turn. We never skip when it’s anybody else’s turn.”

  “We do, too,” Vicky said. “We missed my turn three times in a row. Anyhow, Rob’s gone to bed.”

  “Rob wouldn’t mind. He doesn’t care about genes and chromosomes and how we inherit things.” As Emily opened her mouth to speak, Suzy cut her off. “Don’t say ‘neither do we.’ I listen to the things you choose.”

  Vicky looked from Emily to Suzy, caught Suzy’s eye and nodded in Emily’s direction. “We’re all tired tonight, Suze. Let’s skip reading. Daddy, will you and Mother come downstairs and say good night to Emily and me?”

  “You think you’re so big,” Suzy muttered.

  Emily spoke through Suzy’s words. “Yes, please, Dr. Austin. And thanks, Suze.”

  “For what?” Suzy asked ungraciously, and blew her nose.

  Dr. Austin regarded her sternly. “Put your cold to bed, Suzy. You two girls go downstairs. Mother or I will check on you later.”

  As they descended the marble stairs Emily said, “I know you don’t like leaving homework, Vic, and I’m sorry about Suzy, I know she’s mad at us, but I thought maybe we could talk …”

  Vicky nodded, forgetting Emily couldn’t see, then said, “Yes. Okay. You’re still upset about what happened yesterday, aren’t you?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “Probably. Mother and Daddy say I let myself get upset about things. Suzy’s not. Very upset, I mean. It’s not bothering her any way nearly as much as it’s bothering you.”

  “Suzy always thinks everything can be explained.”

  “Don’t you?”

  Dr. Gregory had read Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Aeschylus aloud to his small daughter, who now quoted. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy—or Suzy’s science. Anyhow, Vic, I can’t talk with the others around. It sounds so nutty.”

  But they undressed and got ready for bed in silence.

  When Dr. Gregory had left for Athens, Mrs. Austin planned to have Emily come upstairs to sleep, but Emily had begged to have Vicky come down and sleep with her; she wasn’t as familiar with Suzy’s and Vicky’s room and bath, she would bump into things, and she and Vicky never, never had a chance to talk, and please, please, couldn’t they, after all Vicky was fifteen …

  “Just,” Mrs. Austin had said.

  “Yes, but she’s very responsible, you know she is, and we’ll be all right, and do anything you say and we promise not to talk all night—”

  “You’ll hurt Suzy’s feelings,” Mrs. Austin had said. “After all, the two of you are the same age.”

  “I know, and I love Suzy, but we’re always together at school, and anyhow I’m ever so much older than she is, centuries older, you know I am, Mrs. Austin, and it’s Vicky who’s really my friend, oh please!”

  “All right,” Mrs. Austin had agreed. “I know you’re more mature than Suzy is, Emily, but Suzy doesn’t. In any case, you and Vicky are to include her as much as possible and not go off to your room and make her feel left out.”—And, Mrs. Austin thought to herself,—our apartment cannot be just our apartment to Emily. It is also Dr. Shasti’s and Dr. Shen-shu’s; it is their rooms she must still see.

  Emily’s bedroom was on the Drive and faced the river. Under her windows was a long seat covered with a deep blue cushion. There Vicky established herself to wait while Emily finished in the tub. Despite a storm window, there was always a leak of cold air in the winter when the wind blew from the river; Vicky pulled her bathrobe close around her. It was a new one; she had grown two full inches during the summer, so Suzy had inherited her old one, and Mrs. Austin had put most of Vicky’s other clothes away for a year to see if Suzy was ever going to grow into them. In a tall family, Suzy was going to be much the smallest and, w
ith her golden curls and gentian-blue eyes, by far the most conventionally beautiful; her looks were what made many people underestimate her acute scientific intelligence.

  In the bath Emily was singing. Vicky had learned that Emily did two kinds of singing: when she was happy she invented her own melodies; when she was angry or upset she picked more formal themes from the composers she was studying. Bach always indicated deep and serious thinking, coming to terms with some kind of problem. Chopin or Schumann were indications of self-pity, but were seldom heard. A purely intellectual problem, like trouble with her studies at school or memorizing from the unwieldy Braille manuscripts, was apt to be approached with Beethoven or, by contrast, Scarlatti.

  Tonight the music that came from the tub was Bach, not a theme from one of the fugues, but one of the more introspective chorale preludes.

  —What would I be singing, Vicky wondered,—if I sang out my moods?

  If Emily had been one of her friends in the country, Vicky would have blurted out, ‘I’m scared. Something’s wrong with my father. Always, always he’s wanted to work in a big hospital where he could concentrate on his research, and now that he’s got exactly what he’s always wanted something’s wrong. It isn’t just tonight, but the way he snaps at Mother for no reason. And I went into his study once and he was just sitting there with his head in his hands.’

  But she couldn’t wail in front of Emily. If she thought for even a moment about all the problems Emily had to face, then a complaint even about something as fundamental as a change in her father, who had always seemed perfect, wasn’t possible.

  Emily came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a large, white towel, her long fine hair dark against it. “Vicky—”

  “Yes. I’m here.”

  Emily moved towards the voice and sat by the older girl on the window seat. Vicky turned from the river, from watching the lights across in New Jersey, a barge crawling up the river, cars streaming north and south on the West Side Highway, the lights of the park baring the dark branches of the trees, and looked at Emily.—I wonder, she thought,—if Emily used to sit here this way, looking out and dreaming …