Changeling (Illustrated) Read Online Free Page B

that.”
    “That’s—interesting . . . ” he said. “I didn’t realize—and there’s still stuff left?”
    “That’s what my father said.”
    Abruptly, she looked him straight in the eye.
    “You know, maybe you’d better not show this to anybody else,” she said.
    “Why not?”
    “People might think you’ve been there and learned some of the forbidden things. They might get mad.”
    “That’s dumb,” he said, just as the horse fell onto its side. “That’s real dumb.”
    But as he righted it, he said, “Maybe I’ll wait till I have something better to show them. Something they’ll like . . . ” 
    The following spring, he demonstrated for a few friends and neighbors the flotation device he had made, geared to operate a floodgate in the irrigation system. They talked about it for two weeks, then decided against installing it themselves. When the spring runoff occurred—and later, when the rains came—there was some local flooding, not too serious. They only shrugged.
    “I’ll have to show them something even better,” he told Nora. “Something they’ll have to like.”
    “Why?” she asked.
    He looked at her, puzzled.
    “Because they have to understand,” he said.
    “What?”
    “That I’m right and they’re wrong, of course.”
    “People don’t usually go for that sort of thing,” she said.
    He smiled.
    “We’ll see.”
     
    When the boy was twelve years old, he took his guitar with him one day—as he had on many others—and visited a small park deep in the steel, glass, plastic and concrete-lined heart of the city where his family now resided.
    He patted a dusty synthetic tree and crossed the unliving turf past holograms of swaying flowers, to seat himself upon an orange plastic bench. Recordings of birdsongs sounded at random intervals through hidden speakers. Artificial butterflies darted along invisible beams. Concealed aerosols released the odors of flowers at regular intervals.
    He removed the instrument from its case and tuned it. He began to play.
    One of the fake butterflies passed too near, faltered and fell to the ground. He stopped playing and leaned forward to examine it. A woman passed and tossed a coin near his feet. He straightened and ran a hand through his hair, staring after her. The disarrayed silver-white streak that traced his black mop from forehead to nape fell into place again.
    He rested the guitar on his thigh, chorded and began an intricate right-hand style he had been practicing. A dark form—a real bird—suddenly descended, to hop about nearby. Dan almost stopped playing at the novel sight. Instead, he switched to a simpler style, to leave more attention for its movements.
    Sometimes at night he played his guitar on the roof of the building where birds nested, beneath stars twinkling faintly through the haze. He would hear them twittering and rustling about him. But he seldom saw any in the parks—perhaps it was something in the aerosols—and he watched this one with a small fascination as it approached the failed butterfly and seized it in its beak. A moment later, it dropped it, cocked its head, pecked at it, then hopped away. Shortly thereafter, the bird was airborne once again, then gone.
    Dan reverted to a more complex pattern, and after a time he began singing against the noises of the city. The sun passed redly overhead. A wino, sprawled beneath the level of the holograms, sobbed softly in his sleep. The park vibrated regularly with the passage of underground trains. After several lapses, Dan realized that his voice was changing.
     

 
     
IV .
     
    Mark Marakson—six feet in height and still growing, muscles as hard as any smith’s—wiped his hands on his apron, brushed his unruly thatch of red back from his forehead and mounted the device.
    He checked the firebox again, made a final adjustment on the boiler and seated himself before the steering mechanism. The vehicle whistled and banged as he released the clutch and drove it