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The Sandman was gone.
Way off in the hot distance of the garden a bonging noise sounde
d. A cylinder was rushing up the tube to the wall’s circular door. The door peeled open with a faint hiss. Footsteps rustled measuredly along the path. Mr Grill stepped through a a lush frame of tiger-lilies.
‘Morning, Roby. Oh!’ Mr Grill stopped, his chubby pink face looked as if it had been kicked. ‘What have you there, boy?’ he cried.
Roby bounced the object against the wall.
‘This? A rubber ball.’
‘Eh?’ Grill’s small blue eyes blinked, narrowing. Then he relaxed. ‘Why, of course. For a moment I thought I saw – uh – er –’
Roby bounced the ball some more.
Grill cleared his throat. ‘Lunch time. Meditation Hour is over. And I’m not certain that Minister Locke would enjoy your playing unorthodox games.’
Roby swore under his breath.
‘Oh, well, then, go on. Play. I won’t tattle.’ Mr Grill was in a generous mood.
‘Don’t feel like playing.’ Roby sulked, shoving his sandal-tip into the dirt. Teachers spoiled everything. You couldn’t vomit without permission.
Grill tried to interest the boy. ‘If you come to lunch now, I’ll let you televise your mother in Chicago afterwards.’
‘Time limit, two minutes, ten seconds, no more, no less,’ was Roby’s acid reply.
‘I gather you don’t approve of things, boy.’
‘I’ll run away some day, wait and see!’
‘Tut, lad. We’ll always bring you back, you know.’
‘I didn’t ask to be brought here in the first place.’ Roby bit his lip, staring at his new red rubber ball. He thought he had seen it kind of, sort of, well – move. Funny. He held the ball in his hand. The ball shivered.
Grill patted his shoulder. ‘Your mother is neurotic. Bad environment. You’re better off here on the island. You have a high I.Q. and it is an honour for you to be here with the other little boy geniuses. You’re unstable and unhappy and we’re trying to change that. Eventually you’ll be the exact antithesis of your mother.’
‘I love Mother!’
‘You like her,’ corrected Grill, quietly.
‘I like Mother,’ replied Roby, disquieted. The red ball twitched in his hands, without his touching it. He looked at it with wonder.
‘You’ll only make it harder for yourself if you love her,’ said Grill.
‘You’re a goddam silly,’ said Roby.
Grill stiffened. ‘Don’t swear. Besides, you don’t really mean god and you don’t mean damn. There’s very little of either in the world. Semantics Book Seven, page 418. Labels and Referents.’
‘Now I remember!’ shouted Roby, looking around. ‘There was a Sandman here just now and he said –’
‘Come along,’ said Mr Grill. ‘Lunch time.’
Commissary food emerged from robot-servers on extension springs. Roby accepted the ovoid plate and milk-globe silently. Where he had hidden it, the red rubber ball pulsed and beat like a heart under his belt. A gong rang. He gulped food swiftly. The tumble for the tube began. They were blown like feathers across the island to Sociology and then, later, in the afternoon, back again for games. Hours passed.
Roby slipped away to the garden to be alone. Hatred for this insane, never-stopping routine, for his teachers and his fellow-students flashed through him in a scouring torrent. He sat alone and thought of his mother, a great distance away. In great detail he recalled how she looked and what she smelled like and how her voice was and how she touched and held and kissed him. He put his head down into his hands and began to fill the palms of his hands with small tears.
He dropped the red rubber ball.
