The Speculist

Chapter 23

Part III

Chapter Twenty-Three

 

Celia would have no vacation that summer. She normally took a week in July, right after the Fourth. She would rent a cabin in the mountains, and find herself bored usually no later than the third day. It had been a few years since she had made the flight back east to see her family. But they weren’t complaining, and Celia preferred to save her money. It had been longer still since she had taken a full ten days to California and back, a lazy road trip with a companion now long gone from her life.

Jeff was a fire marshal, ten years her senior. He came to the home one day for a routine inspection and ended up asking Celia, at the time 24 years old, to lunch. Things between them were white-hot at first — to the point that it almost cost Celia her job — but it didn’t last a year. Maybe it was Celia’s long work hours, or her lack of discernible days off. Or the curfews. In the end, her job was the cause of the breakup, but it never occurred to either of them that she should quit, or that there was any alternative.

So it ended.

Two years later, Jeff was married. Celia still saw him from time to time, when he made his scheduled visits to the home. She would always ask him about his wife and three kids, and would try not to think about the nights he had spent in the home, in violation of good sense and all of Myra’s rules. Or about that long, sun-drenched drive through the desert — his arm, tanned and muscled and perfect, draped casually over her shoulder as he steered the car. How they talked on that trip, conversations as pointless and meandering as the route to California that he had chosen.

Years passed; things changed. Celia had no lover now, hadn’t had one since her relationship with Jeff ended. These days she had no interests or plans outside the home. In fact, she no longer had any real desire to take a vacation. Scheduling it was a logistical morass, arranging for two reliable live-in helpers to be on hand to assist Caroline. For her part, Caroline never expressed any interest in taking vacation. She had rarely left the home since coming there to work eight years earlier, just after being abandoned by her husband of six months. She had wrapped the home around herself like a protective cocoon, and would apparently be content if she never had to leave.

But it was not any lack of interest, or a giving in to her own latent cocooning instinct, that would prevent Celia from taking a vacation this year. Not at all. There was simply too much going on at the home. What was happening could not be handled by Caroline alone, or with any number of helpers. And Celia would not miss one second of it. Not for a vacation. Not for the world.

The children were changing.

Celia sat in a sagging overstuffed red chair in a far corner of the common room and watched them at play. The scene was incredibly different from what it would have been four months earlier, before Corey arrived.

Robert and Andrew were kneeling on the floor in front of her with an enormous sheet of butcher paper spread out before them. They were painting a mural — one of two that the children were currently working on. Over a black background that they had put down the previous day, Andrew painted a meticulous moonscape. The craters, scattered rocks, and distant mountains were set out in varying shades of silver and gray. Their scale and perspective were a perfect match to the photograph that he glanced at from time to time, a page in an open encyclopedia volume sprawled on the floor next to him. Andrew had blown the picture up 15 times or so, and was now confidently adding details from his imagination where the frame of the mural extended beyond that of the photograph. Robert, meanwhile, had finished a mottled blue crescent earth in the upper right corner and was dabbing a few white stars here and there.

Todd walked over and watched their progress in silence for a moment.

“It’s good,” he said. “When the two of you have finished this one, I’ll help you hang it up to dry. Then you can start on the earth picture with the rocket.”

Robert looked up at him.

“I thought they were doing it?” he said, gesturing at Kathy and Judy, who sat on the floor across the room with a similarly sized sheet of paper spread out in front of them. Judy was sketching something on the paper in broad strokes using a piece of charcoal.

“No, they‘re working on the other one. The new one.”

“A new one?” Andrew asked disapprovingly. He set his brush down and turned to get a better look at what the girls were doing.

“It’s Grace’s idea,” said Todd. “It’s about the Mountain People.”

“Oh. Well…okay,” Andrew said with resignation, looking to his friend. Robert shrugged and went back to work. Whatever their reservations might be, Grace’s imprimatur apparently settled the matter. That much hadn’t changed, Celia noted. Nor had the earnest seriousness of these two boys at play. They approached mounting a major theatrical production with the same methodical soberness they had applied to trading baseball cards.

It’s still the same truck, she thought. Even if it has wheels.

Celia got up and strolled across the room to get a better look at the mural Judy and Kathy were working on. It was a close-up of Mount Evans, the most prominent peak in view from the home’s back yard. Judy had outlined the contours of the peak perfectly: its flat southern face dropping off sharply to a bowl-like rescission that was the front of the peak, the north side gradually sloping off to meet a lower, broader peak. It was a perfect likeness of the real mountain except for one added detail. In the middle of the bowl, there was now a small city. A wall surrounded two or three dozen buildings — some were low and flat with odd, bulbous domes; others were long and elegant towers whose height rivaled that of the mountain itself.

It didn’t look like anything that was really on the mountain, or any real city that Celia had ever seen. It was pure fantasy. Or rather, it was the stuff of dreams ™ which should have been fantasy, but for some reason wasn’t.

“What do you think, Miss Crawford?” Judy asked, looking up from her work.

“It’s wonderful.”

She looked at the sketch a while longer while Judy continued drawing.

“So I understand that we’re going to be doing two plays?”

“Yes,” said Kathy, excitedly. Her speech was as flawless as her hearing. “And you know what? Judy’s writing this one.”

“Is that so?” asked Celia.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Judy. “It’s about the Mountain People. Do you know about them?”

Celia nodded.

“Only a little,” she said.

The obsession with writing, staging, and acting out plays was a few weeks old. It started when Lucinda and Estelle read Cheaper by the Dozen one afternoon and observed that there were enough children in the home to play all the parts. At dinner, they announced that they had written a play based on the book and would begin production on it the next day.

Raymond protested that it was a girl’s book. If they were going to do a play, it should be something the boys liked, too.

“It is not a girl’s book,” said Kathy. “I just read it. It was written by a man and a woman. And half the characters are boys.”

“Well, I read it, too,” said Raymond, “And it most definitely is a girl’s book. They always put boys in girl’s books. That’s how they get you.”

Joey nodded in agreement.

Celia looked around the table, wondering how many of the rest of them had also finished reading a book of several hundred pages that afternoon. It wasn’t long ago that she or Caroline would read to them every day, usually not more than a chapter a time. Their attention spans wouldn’t allow for much more than that, and progress was slow with having to stop and offer frequent explanations as to what was happening. Now the period between lunch and dinner was apparently ample time for all them to read a book, and for two of them to write a play based on it.

“I can prove it,” Raymond continued. “Little Women has boys in it, doesn’t it? I guess it’s not a girl’s book, either.”

“You obviously can’t read,” Alice said, looking at him contemptuously. “Illiteracy is a shame, but it’s understandable…considering your upbringing. But you have no one to blame but yourself for being a male chauvinist pig.”

“Alice,” Caroline interrupted, not daring to meet Celia’s eyes lest they both burst out laughing. “How are we supposed to treat each other?”

Alice looked down at her plate for a moment. Then she turned to face Caroline.

“We’re supposed to be —” she stopped short of the formulaic answer, one of the simple rules which, through the years, most of the children in the home had been able to remember and recite: be nice.

“We’re supposed to treat each other with respect and consideration,” she continued. She turned to Raymond. “I suppose I failed in that regard, so I apologize. Your statements were sexist and offensive, but there was no reason for me to resort to name-calling.”

“It’s one thing to call Ray names,” said Joey. “I doubt you hurt his feelings with your passé claptrap. But how dare you make a disparaging reference to his ‘upbringing?’ As if yours was any different. You’ve insulted both Miss Crawford and Miss Gray. You should apologize to them.”

Alice’s eyes flashed with anger.

“Feminism is hardly passé,” she said. “An amendment to the Constitution which guarantees equal rights to women has already been ratified in 35 of the required 38 states.”

“Oh really?” said Joey. “And how many states in the deep south have ratified it?”

“Texas,” she answered defiantly.

Joey laughed.

“Texas,” he repeated. “Well, that’s one, I guess. You need to face facts, Allie. The ERA is dead in the water. Now how about that apology?”

Her initial wave of temper subsiding, Alice’s manner turned cold.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Maybe you should apologize for calling equal rights for women ‘claptrap.’ I thought you called yourself a humanist. Some humanist.”

“You know I have nothing against the idea of equal rights for women. Not in principle, anyway. What I objected to was your rhetoric. It was jingoistic. And divisive.”

Celia thought back to a fierce argument these two had had a year or so before about who would get to sit at the head of the table. In the heat of the moment, Alice called Joey a “stupid ugly stink.” Joey, who was often unable to come up with words under pressure, replied that she was a “stupid stinky-stink.” Needless to say, neither of them got to sit at the head of the table. But at the time, it was one the wittiest exchanges that had ever occurred between two residents of the home.

“Well I think that —”

“Hold it.” Todd interrupted Alice in mid-rejoinder. “Alice, you didn’t really mean to disparage Miss Crawford and Miss Gray’s management of this institution, did you?”

Alice shook her head.

“Of course not.”

Todd turned to Raymond.

“Ray, I’m sure you’ll agree that — whether you enjoy reading them or not — books that girls like are as legitimate as books that boys like.”

Raymond shrugged.

“I guess.”

“Well, then, in keeping with what Alice just said about respect and consideration — excellent points, by the way — I think the respectful and considerate thing to do would be to let Kathy and Estelle tell us about their play and for all of us to agree to act it out.”

Raymond snorted at the suggestion.

“Come on, Ray,” said Judy. “We can do a boy’s play next time.”

Celia observed that, these days, Todd and Judy often acted as peacemakers. The changes that had come over the children had diminished some of the old rivalries within the group (Alice against Judy, Joey against Raymond) and had exacerbated others (boys against girls). While Todd, Alice, and Judy had become de facto leaders of the group — along with Grace, of course — Alice remained a little too hotheaded to provide constructive leadership, and it often fell on the other two to iron things out. The older boys, Joey and Raymond, weren’t much interested in taking charge of the group. They generally went along with whatever the group decided, but objected when, as in this instance, they thought the girls were getting the upper hand.

“Please, Ray?” Grace implored. “Will you do the play with us?”

Grace’s pleading had an immediate softening effect.

“I never said I wouldn’t. But it still won’t work. There are only 13 of us. We need another boy to play the Dad.”

Estelle shook her head.

“Joey will be the Dad. Alice will be the Mom. Everything works out right if one girl plays a boy. I don’t mind; I’ll be a boy.”

“But then there’s only 11 kids,” said Joey.

“That’s right,” Kathy answered. “It’s historically accurate. One of the Gilbreth girls died in childhood. The play takes place after that.”

Raymond nodded, satisfied.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

The first rehearsal took place after dinner that night. The performance was the following day, after lunch. The play was a single act — just a series of scenes, really — and it ran about 45 minutes. Each actor knew his or her part flawlessly. The play had no costumes or sets; the common room served as a stand-in for the Gilbreth household and for the world at large.

Celia and Caroline applauded wildly at its conclusion.

A few days later, the children staged a much more elaborate production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Then came The Merchant of Venice. Next they did A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Raymond and Joey grew tired of all these “girl’s plays,” and said they didn’t want to do any more dramatic productions. Alice was able to entice them back by offering them the roles of Aldrin and Armstrong in her original play about the first mission to the moon.

Celia was looking forward to seeing that one, but — now that she had heard about it — she was much more intrigued by Judy‘s play. (She didn’t bother to wonder how a group of children could write, produce, and act out two theatrical productions at the same time. That sort of question no longer troubled her.)

She didn’t know much about the “Mountain People.” She had dreamed about them two or three times, but the dreams were muddled and difficult to remember. She knew only that they were strange-looking folk — like elongated marble sculptures of the human form come to life — and that they lived in a non-existent city on top of a mountain that she could see from her bedroom window.

Obviously Corey was responsible for bringing these mysterious dream-people into their lives. But no one seemed to know why.

The explosion of interest in drama followed on the heels of a science craze that Celia had been forced to nip in the bud when she caught Raymond and Joey digging through a neighbor’s trash looking for electrical parts. Earlier, Caroline had caught Bettina rummaging under the sink looking for borax. She wouldn’t say why. Celia felt she had to lay down the law. She gathered all the children together in the common room and set out the ground rules for scientific research in the home. No electrical gadgets, she told them, to the great dismay of the boys. And no chemistry experiments.

Whatever it was that Raymond and Joey (along with Todd) were working on was moved to the tool shed and kept under lock and key. All that remained of that project was an immense equation that Todd had scrawled on the blackboard in the common room, and that he or one of the children would occasionally stop and look at — sometimes making the odd correction.

Before science had come art, with the children fascinated with drawing and painting. The common room and their dormitory rooms were now elaborately decorated with their handiwork. Watercolor still-life — interiors of the home, landscapes, and seascapes — lined the stairway. Multiple sketches of each child (some self-portraits, some done by one of the other artists) hung over each bed. Additional portraiture was hung in the common room, scattered pictures of Celia and Caroline, of Sheila and Myra and Jimmy the Lawn Man and the Mission Lady from the Presbyterian church. At Grace’s request, using an old Polaroid image that Caroline peeled from one of the home’s raggedy photo albums, Alice painted a large portrait of Jolene, which was now hung over the fireplace. Of all the artwork the children had produced, this was Celia’s favorite.

The story of the children’s rapid progress could be read in the artwork. Todd was the first of them to begin drawing, a few days after he gained his hearing. His earliest sketches were of the fireplace and the jungle gym. As others began to change — Alice, Raymond, and Judy were next — they also began to draw. Then more children were changed, and the output of the early few became more complex and challenging. The art craze had culminated in the portrait of Jolene and an intricate mobile, now hung over the dining room table, with dozens of small birds made of soap, toothpicks, fishing line, and some feathers stolen from an old pillow. The birds were brown and red and blue. They were lifelike but for their too-small size, and posed in the many variations of flight.

Creating the mobile had somehow ushered in an interest in science. Naturalistic drawings of insects and birds observed in the back yard joined the portraits on the walls of the common room. A detailed map of the solar system was hung over the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. Sketches of airplanes and spacecraft began to appear, followed by detailed technical drawings that Celia couldn’t understand.

Now the drama craze seemed to have brought them full circle, with the children once again consumed with the production of elaborate artwork.

But with Judy, Alice, and Todd, all of these changes — the sudden leap in intelligence and motivation, the acquisition and rapid mastery of new abilities — were compounded by an alteration of appearance. The physical symptoms of Down Syndrome had disappeared along with the behavioral ones. As she watched Judy standing there looking at her work in progress, her brow furrowed, Celia felt a wave of joy wash over her.

Look at her. My Judy.

“They live in this city,” said Judy, waving her charcoal-dusted hand around that portion of her picture.

“They’re not like human beings,” said Kathy. “Do you know what they’re made of?”

“I don’t,” said Celia. “Do you?”

Both girls shrugged.

“They look like statues,” said Kathy. “But they move.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Judy. “We know what they look like. And we know enough to tell the story.”

“Was it your idea to write the play?” asked Celia.

The girl nodded.

“Yes, ma’am. I asked if I could write this one, since Alice got to write the one about the astronauts. Grace said okay.”

“I’m glad,” said Celia. “I’m really looking forward to seeing both of them.”

“Miss Crawford,” said Kathy. “This time are we going to let outside people come and see our plays?”

Celia shook her head.

“I’m sorry, girls. That isn’t going to be possible. Not for now.”

Neither girl argued. They both knew what the answer would be before the question was asked. The idea of opening their productions to the public was Grace’s idea, and she was not easily dissuaded. But of course it was impossible. Celia had already been forced to let Sheila go, and had notified all of the home’s day volunteers — some of whom had been coming for years — that their help would no longer be needed. She couldn’t have people coming in and seeing what was taking place. Not yet, anyway. In any case, their help no longer was needed. The children required much less supervision now, and the older ones were perfectly capable of providing most of what was needed. Raymond and Kathy had even begun to cook.

Celia looked around the room. Alice and Joey were applying papier-mâché to a spacesuit frame made of chicken wire. They were working on the torso. The suit’s pants were already finished, as were the sleeves, which would be attached after the torso dried. Some ingenious work on the part of Todd had enabled Alice and Joey to give the suit arms and legs that could bend naturally. The perfectly round helmet was already finished and painted a gleaming white. Meanwhile Raymond, Estelle, and Lucinda were hard at work on an incredibly realistic, ¼ scale model of the Apollo 11 Lunar Excursion Module. It was made of construction paper, twisted coat hangers, aluminum beverage cans — which Raymond could only have acquired by leaving the yard and spending more time in the neighbors’ trash, in spite of Celia’s warnings — and huge sheets of aluminum foil from a roll stolen from the kitchen. This latter crime had been committed in full view of Caroline, and in spite of her vociferous objections.

Celia and Caroline didn’t talk to each other about the changes that were taking place in the home. Why that was, Celia wasn’t sure. Somehow it didn’t seem safe to talk about these events. Not with another adult. There was some risk that the spell would be broken, that it would all disappear — like waking from a happy dream. Celia couldn’t bring herself to initiate a conversation on the subject. Caroline made a few passing remarks, but that was as far as it went.

“While he’s dreaming,” she had said a few days earlier, “I wish he’d get an image of me about 70 pounds lighter.”

“That’s risky,” Celia had responded. “You know how dreams are. What if he saw you seven feet taller instead?”

That was the closest they had come to acknowledging what was going on.

She wondered what would happen to them if word somehow got out. What would happen to Corey. In all of this, the silent boy had very noticeably not changed. He sat now at one of the tables in the common room, staring approximately in the direction of Alice and Joey. Grace was beside him, coloring. She hadn’t changed either, but then she was already exceptionally bright. Perhaps Corey had sensed there was nothing there to “fix.”

The doorbell interrupted Celia’s train of thought. She wasn’t expecting anyone. She made her way to the door and opened it just enough to see who was there. The man was a stranger; he looked to about 35. He had on a gray suit, slightly disheveled, and carried an overstuffed briefcase. He could stand a shave, Celia thought, and a comb through his hair. But he looked harmless; probably an insurance salesman or something.

She opened the door a bit wider, mindful of blocking the man’s view into the home.

“Yes?” she said. “Can I help you?”

“Yes, hello,” the man said, distractedly. “I’m looking for Dr. Celia Crawford.”

Celia didn’t know how to respond.

“I’m not…I’m Celia Crawford. Who are you?”

“Ah, Dr. Crawford,” the man extended his hand. Celia declined to take it. “I’m pleased to meet you. My name is Darryl MacHale. I’m an associate professor of computer science with the University of Colorado.”

Celia blinked.

“You know…in Boulder?” he prompted.

“Yes, of course,” said Celia, shaking her head to try to make sense of this encounter. “And what can I do for you, Mr. MacHale?”

“Well, I received a letter from one your students outlining a very interesting research project, and —”

“Wait,” Celia interrupted. “One of my students wrote to you? Which one?”

“Westram. Todd Westram.”

Celia stared at the man for a long moment.

“You do have a student here by that name?” he asked.

Celia nodded. Yes, she thought, I do. Although he’s never exactly been a student of mine. He only just learned how to talk a few weeks ago. Somewhere, deep inside, there was an urge to laugh hysterically. Celia suppressed that urge.

“Look, I’m thinking I must have caught you at a bad time. I apologize for coming over unannounced, but the letter didn’t give a phone number, and there’s no listing for the Crawford Institute in the Greenwood directory.”

“The…uh…Crawford Institute,” Celia repeated. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t find a listing for that.”

MacHale glanced at the plaque next to the front door. It read: The John Mackey Home for Special Children.

“I see you share this building. Or is your institute located elsewhere?” He looked dubiously around the front porch and yard. The place was obviously not what he had been led to expect.

Celia cleared her throat.

“No, it’s…here. That is, everything we do is here.”

“Your students live on site?”

She nodded. There was a long moment in which neither of them said anything. Celia looked deep into the stranger’s eyes, unsure what it was she was looking for. She stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind her.

“Let me be frank with you, Mr. MacHale. Other than sending a single student to one of the local schools, our…institute has never interacted with any other organization. Large or small.”

MacHale looked puzzled.

“But why?”

“I can’t explain that to you right now. All I can tell you is that the…” she groped for the right words “…unique educational programs that we’re engaged in are not a matter of public knowledge. I must ask you to keep everything you’ve learned about us in the strictest confidence.”

He nodded.

“Of course,” he said. “I should have mentioned it. Mr. Westram said as much in his letter.”

Celia smiled, in spite of herself.

“He asked you not to tell anyone about his project until you had spoken to us first?

“That’s right,” said MacHale, fumbling to unlatch his briefcase. He opened it and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Here’s the letter.”

Celia took it from him. The letter was neatly typed on heavy linen paper which bore the embossed letterhead of The Crawford Institute. She shook her head. Where that had come from, she would worry about later. There would be plenty of time for that. And for strangling Todd.

She glanced through the contents of the letter. Dear Dr. MacHale, it began, my colleagues and I are on the brink of a major breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence.

She looked up at MacHale. She wanted to ask him what that meant, but realized that it was not appropriate for the head of the ‘Crawford Institute’ to ask such a question. She continued reading.

We have developed a set of algorithms that we believe can revolutionize speech recognition, the processing of visual information, and a number of related applications. These claims may sound extraordinary, but I hope that you will indulge me a few minutes of your valuable time while I outline our premise. Let’s begin with the recursive sequence deriving from the relation a(n) = a(n(n - 1)) + a(n - a(n - 1)), assuming that (a = 1) and…

Unable to make sense of what followed, Celia skipped a few paragraphs.

I’m sure you will agree, the final paragraph began, that if a small set of simple mathematical relationships lies at the core of the human ability to process such information, there is no reason to believe that it would be otherwise for machines. We are prepared to proceed as outlined above as soon as we have access to the requisite computing equipment. I would very much appreciate the opportunity to meet with you in person and discuss these ideas further. Until such time as that’s possible, I would ask that you keep our communication in the strictest of confidence.

Looking greatly forward to your response I am

Sincerely Yours,

Todd Westram

Celia couldn’t help but notice with pride what a beautiful signature Todd had. She wondered when exactly it was that he had learned handwriting.

Not to mention all this computer mumbo-jumbo.

She folded the letter and put it in the pocket of the apron she suddenly realized she was wearing. ‘Dr.’ Crawford indeed. Maybe the kids could pull something like this off, but she didn’t see how she would ever be able to. Still, what choice had they left her?

MacHale's dismay at her not returning the letter was obvious.

“Dr. MacHale,” she said, taking her cue from the letter as to how to address him, “I have a question for you. Does anyone know that you’re here today?’

He shook his head.

“No ma’am,” he said.

Celia nodded. She reached into her pocket and pulled the letter out. She looked at it for a moment.

“And you haven’t said a word about this to anyone?”

MacHale looked slightly annoyed at the line of questioning.

“The request for confidentiality was quite straightforward, Dr. Crawford.”

She nodded again.

“Yes. It was. And I can count on your continued discretion?”

“Absolutely,” he said.

Celia made her decision. She handed the letter back to him.

“All right then, Dr. MacHale.”

She turned and opened the door.

“Perhaps you’d like to come inside?”

Posted by Phil at March 1, 2004 12:00 AM | TrackBack