The Boy With Penny Eyes by Al Sarrantonio Page A

smiled. "There, such a fright you gave me!"
    It heard another voice, and the mother turned her head away, talking to someone else: ". . . all right now, everything's all right," it heard the mother say to the new voice. Then there was a new face peering down at it, a face it hadn't seen before: old and small, like a chimpanzee's, wrinkles around the mouth and eyes, nose pitted with age, only the eyes bright. The old man smiled down at it, reached a bent finger in, and tickled it under the chin. "Is the baby good now?" the old man said in a high, silly voice. "Is the baby good?" The old face retreated, and once more it heard the two voices, the mother and the old man, conversing on the park bench.
    The cloud overhead was passing out of its line of vision. It thought about what had happened. It knew the power was in it to do the things it wanted, but it knew now that it would take time to be strong enough. Like all of the other, noxious things it must learn to do—crawl, walk, talk, eat with a spoon, and drink from a cup—this, too, must be learned slowly. But it would learn. It would learn to walk and then run, and then, slowly, it would learn to . . .
    The old face blocked out the cloud again and hung over it. "Good little baby?" the cracked lips asked. It saw where a spot of drool sat toad-like on one corner of the old man's mouth; the teeth were age-yellow and there was a breath of garlic and red wine and age. Seventy years of odors drifted from the old man's mouth—toothpaste, and apples, and garlic—seventy years of rotted food and decay.
    Without hesitation, it reached up a tiny hand and touched the old man's face. The old man drew back for a moment, the eyes widened in surprise, but then he let its hand rest on his face. Inside, it felt something happen. It felt a tiny window behind its eyes open, and as its hand lay on the old man's cheek, as it saw the old man's light, the light of life itself, it saw a tiny spot in his chest that was not as luminous as the rest. And then, as its tiny fingers stroked the old man's cheek, a gesture that made the old man laugh with misunderstood pleasure as it probed the old man's fractured light, it began to teach itself how to bend the light and make it do whatever it wanted. It could, it knew, make the old man see whatever it wanted him to, could make him see the things in his mind, his long-dead son, killed in the war, his daughter, who had run away, his wife, who, even now, lay childish and dying in the home across the park. Or it could shape the light, could go to that small weak luminescence in the chest and . . .
    It stared into the old man's eyes and knew there was something it could do now. Something safe, that no one would know about. Just as it had learned to crawl, it was learning this now. It let the rage fill it, let the hate run through its body as the old man cooed above him, and then it opened its eyes wide and twisted that little weak spot of light.
    The old man stopped cooing. Another spot of spittle, and then another, appeared on his lips. His cracked hand reached up toward his face, waving at something it couldn't quite see, and his eyes grew glazed. The old face moved up and away, and then the mother was shouting and the old man's face was completely gone and the mother was screaming for help. It heard a sound come from the old man, a dry crackle like a bunch of sticks being broken, and then nothing.
    There were more sounds of alarm around him, more people running toward them, but it just cooed and waved its hands in the air as no one bothered with it, reached up at the next fat white cloud rolling overhead . . .
    Hate.
    So it had learned hate, but at the same time it had learned patience. And it had grown. And the hate, the deep golden hate that was in it, grew and matured along with its body. A calm descended over its exterior, a beautiful mask that it formed and shaped year by year until it was all but invisible, though the storm raged on inside. It was a