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The children had missed their toys, but not for long. Emma recovered first, though Scott still moped. He held unintelligible conversations with his sister, and studied meaningless scrawls she drew on paper he supplied. It was almost as though he was consulting her, anent difficult problems beyond his grasp.
If Emma understood more, Scott had more real intelligence, and manipulatory skill as well. He built a gadget with his Meccano set, but was dissatisfied. The apparent cause of his dissatisfaction was exactly why Paradine was relieved when he viewed the structure. It was the sort of thing a normal boy would make, vaguely reminiscent of a cubistic ship.
It was a bit too normal to please Scott. He asked Emma more questions, though in private. She thought for a time, and then made more scrawls with an awkwardly clutched pencil.
"Can you read that stuff?" Jane asked her son one morning.
"Not read it, exactly. I can tell what she means. Not all the time, but mostly."
"Is it writing?"
"N-no. It doesn't mean what it looks like."

 

Lewis Padgett

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Scott was questioning his sister. Sometimes he did it in English. More often he had resource to gibberish and sign language. Emma tried to reply, but the handicap was too great.
Finally Scott got pencil and paper. Emma liked that. Tongue in cheek, she laboriously wrote a message. Scott took the paper, examined it, and scowled.
"That isn't right, Emma," he said.
Emma nodded vigorously. She seized the pencil again and made more scrawls. Scott puzzled for a while, finally smiled rather hesitantly, and got up. He vanished into the hall. Emma returned to the abacus. Paradine rose and glanced down at the paper, with some mad thought that Emma might abruptly have mastered calligraphy. But she hadn't. The paper was covered with meaningless scrawls, of a type familiar to any parent. Paradine pursed his lips.
It might be a graph showing the mental variations of a manic-depressive cockroach, but probably wasn't. Still, it no doubt had meaning to Emma. Perhaps the scribble represented Mr. Bear.
Scott returned, looking pleased. He met Emma's gaze and nodded.

 

Lewis Padgett

 

Emma and Scott had free rein with the toys.
"What," Scott asked his father one evening, "is a wabe, dad?"
"Wave?"
He hesitated. "I … don't think so. Isn't wabe right?"
"Wab is Scot for web. That it?"
"I don't see how," Scott muttered, and wandered off, scowling, to amuse himself with the abacus. He was able to handle it quite deftly now. But, with the instinct of children for avoiding interruptions, he and Emma usually played with the toys in private. Not obviously, of course  but the more intricate experiments were never performed under the eye of an adult.

 

Lewis Padgett

 

His find he hid at the back of the closet in his own room upstairs. The crystal cube he slipped into his pocket, which already bulged with string, a coil of wire, two pennies, a wad of tinfoil, a grimy defenses stamp, and a chunk of feldspar. Emma, Scott's two-year-old sister, waddled unsteadily in from the hall and said hello.
"Hello, Slug," Scott nodded, from his altitude of seven years and some months. He patronized Emma shockingly, but she didn't know the difference. Small, plump, and wide-eyed, she flopped down on the carpet and stared dolefully at her shoes.
"Tie 'em, Scotty, please?"
"Sap," Scott told her kindly, but knotted the laces.

 

Lewis Padgett

 

Scott stirred in his sleep. Without awakening, he called what was obviously a question, though it did not seem to be in any particular language. Emma gave a little mewling cry that changed pitch sharply.
She had not awakened. The children lay without stirring.
But Paradine thought, with a sudden sickness in his middle, it was exactly as though Scott had asked Emma something, and she had replied.
Had their minds changed so that even — sleep — was different to them?

 

Lewis Padgett

 

Holloway picked up the crystal cube. "Did you question the children much?"
Paradine said, "Yeah. Scott said there were people in that cube when he first looked. I asked him what was in it now."
"What did he say?" The psychologist's eyes widened.
"He said they were building a place. His exact words. I asked him who — people? But he couldn't explain."

 

Lewis Padgett