Sturgeon, Theodore - SS - The Synthetic Man.pdf

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The Synthetic Man
Cover
The Dreaming Jewels (v2.0)
Theodore Sturgeon, 1950
A jewel-eyed jack-in-the-box holds a mysterious key to the future of a young boy who
runs away from home and hides away in a traveling freak show.
1
They caught the kid doing something disgusting out under the bleachers at the high-school
stadium, and he was sent home from the grammar school across the street. He was
eight years old then. He’d been doing it for years.
In a way it was a pity. He was a nice kid, a nice-looking kid too, though not particu-
larly outstanding. There were other kids, and teachers, who liked him a little bit, and
some who disliked him a little bit; but everyone jumped on him when it got around.
His name was Horty
— Horton, that is — Bluett. Naturally he caught blazes when he got home.
He opened the door as quietly as he could, but they heard him, and hauled him front
and center into the living room where he stood flushing, with his head down, one sock
around his ankle, and his arms full of books and a catcher’s mitt. He was a good
catcher, for an eight-year-old. He said, “I was — ”
“We know,” said Armand Bluett. Armand was a bony individual with a small mustache
and cold wet eyes. He clapped his hands to his forehead and then threw up his
arms. “My God, boy, what in Heaven’s name made you do a filthy thing like that?”
Armand Bluett was not a religious man, but he always talked like that when he clapped his
hands to his head, which he did quite often.
Horty did not answer. Mrs. Bluett, whose name was Tonta, sighed and asked for a high-
ball.
She did not smoke, and needed a substitute for the smoker’s thoughtful match-lit pause
when she was at a loss for words. She was so seldom at a loss for words that a fifth
of rye lasted her six weeks. She and Armand were not Horton’s parents. Horton’s parents
were upstairs, but the Bluetts did not know it. Horton was allowed to call Armand and Tonta
by their first names.
“Might I ask,” said Armand icily, “how long you have had this nauseating habit? Or was it an
experiment?”
Horty knew they weren’t going to make it easy on him. There was the same
puckered expression on Armand’s face as when he tasted wine and found it unexpectedly
good.
“I don’t do it much,” Horty said, and waited.
“May the Lord have mercy on us for our generosity in taking in this little swine,” said
Armand, clapping his hands to his head again. Horty let his breath out. Now that
was over with. Armand said it every time he was angry. He marched out to mix Tonta a high-
ball.
“Why did you do it, Horty?” Tonta’s voice was more gentle only because her vocal
cords were more gently shaped than her husband’s. Her face showed the same implacable
cold.
“Well, I — just felt like it, I guess.” Horty put his books and catcher’s mitt down on
the footstool.
Tonta turned her face away from him and made an unspellable, retching syllable. Ar-
mand strode back in, bearing a tinkling glass.
“Never heard anything like it in my life,” he said scornfully. “I suppose it’s all over
the school?”
“I guess so.”
“The children? The teachers too, no doubt. But of course. Anyone say anything to you?”
“Just Dr. Pell.” He was the principal. “He said — said they could … ”
“Speak up!”
Horty had been through it once. Why, why go through it all again? “He said the
school could get along without f-filthy savages.”
“I can understand how he felt,” Tonta put in, smugly.
“And what about the other kids? They say anything?”
“Hecky brought me some worms. And Jimmy called me Sticky-tongue.” And Kay Hal-
lowell had laughed, but he didn’t mention that.
“Sticky-tongue. Not bad, that, for a kid. Ant-eater.” Again the hand clapped against
the brow. “My God, what am I going to do if Mr. Anderson greets me with ‘Hi Sticky-
tongue!’
Monday morning? This will be all over town, sure as God made little apples.” He
fixed Horty with the sharp wet points of his gaze. “And do you plan to take up bug-
eating as a profession?”
“They weren’t bugs,” Horty said diffidently and with accuracy. “They were ants. The
little brown kind.”
Tonta choked on her highball. “Spare us the details.”
“My God,” Armand said again, “what’ll he grow up as?” He mentioned two possibilities.
Horty understood one of them. The other made even the knowledgeable Tonta jump.
“Get out of here.”
Horty went to the stairs while Armand thumped down exasperatedly beside Tonta. “I’ve had
mine,” he said. “I’m full up to here. That brat’s been the symbol of failure to me ever
since I laid eyes on his dirty face. This place isn’t big enough — Horton! ”
“Huh.”
“Come back here and take your garbage with you. I don’t want to be reminded that
you’re in the house.”
Horty came back slowly, staying out of Armand Bluett’s reach, picked up his books and
the catcher’s mitt, dropped a pencil-box — at which Armand my-Godded again —

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