"Bearings" (PG) and an apology for Lady Sarai
lady_sarai, I'm really sorry that this is late! I had to go out of town this weekend for an unexpected job interview.
Author: Ion Bond
Title: Bearings
Recipient: Lady Sarai
Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men
Rating: PG
Summary: The Xavier School has a long tradition of educational field trips.
Recipient's request: "Young!Scott in the early days at the mansion, books (bonus points for something involving blind!Scott and braille), and Erik."
“Love the Truth. Let others have their truth and truth will prevail.” - attributed last words of Jan Hus, 14th century Czech religious thinker, dissident, and martyr.
“Living is easy with eyes closed” - John Lennon, Strawberry Fields Forever.
Scott forced himself to stop running and groped his way to a wall. His breath was coming fast, but he felt less nauseous now. He leaned back, his shoulders and both palms pressed against the building front. He could smell garbage and exhaust, and the warm, damp smell of laundry steam being released from a sidewalk-level vent nearby. The rough cement pressed back at his hands through the artificial skin of the leather gloves, and people pushed past him, all going somewhere, knowing where they were going. Scott was lost. He hadn’t kept count of the streets he had darted blindly across. It didn’t matter anyway; he had started out south of the surety of the numbered order uptown. He had no idea where he was. He wondered if Mr. Lehnsherr had arranged for that on purpose all along, but the thought was paranoid, ridiculous.
The first rule, according to Mr. Lehnsherr, was to keep the cane moving at all times. Mr. Lehnsherr acted like he knew everything there was to know about it, but Scott didn’t understand why he would. Scott’s own personal first rule was to keep his ears open.
He listened for Chinese being spoken around him, and didn’t catch any. Great, he was definitely north of Chinatown. That was something. There was no reason for him to run and risk getting hit, making drivers slam on their brakes, endangering people’s safety. No one was after him. All he had to do was find a subway station. Mr. Lehnsherr wouldn’t look for him there. From the subway, Scott could make his way to Grand Central Station and take commuter rail back to Salem Center and tell Professor Xavier everything.
Erik hates trains, Jean said.
It was time to ask someone. He didn‘t want to, but there was no choice.
“Excuse me,” he said into the stream of passing pedestrians. “Excuse me. Hey!”
Someone put a hand on his shoulder. Scott fought his first urge to shake him off. “Can I help you, son?” the someone said. He didn’t sound old enough to be Scott’s father, but Scott was glad he had stopped.
“I’m trying to find a subway station. Can you point me in the right direction?”
“Sure. The closest one is Canal Street. That’s --”
Scott felt his stomach shrivel up into a tight ball. He didn’t want to go back the way he’d come. “Please, is there another one I could walk to?”
“Huh.” The man thought. “I guess Washington Square would be easy. Just keep going up 6th Avenue until you hit 4th Street.”
“So that would be north?” Scott asked.
“Yeah, north.”
“I can do that.”
***
They had set off early that afternoon on this private field trip into New York City, just Scott and Mr. Lehnsherr in Mr. Lehnsherr’s Mercedes. Six months before, Professor Xavier and Mr. Lehnsherr had found him and freed him from the orphanage near North Platte, Nebraska where the doctor had been planning to enucleate him. They brought him to the school in Westchester County and explained to him that the beams that came from his eyes were, in fact, the manifestation of a powerful genetic mutation. He was not the only one, but he was the only one they’d found who couldn’t control what he did. They hadn’t been able to teach him that. He wasn’t blind, but he wasn’t able to use his eyes.
“For the time being,” the Professor said, but Scott could hear how he was getting frustrated. He kept them closed, swaddled under cotton and medical tape for safety, and Professor Xavier was teaching him to read Braille. “It’s practical,” the Professor said, as if Scott was arguing. Scott wondered if Professor Xavier was listening to more of his mutinous thoughts than his code of ethics left the telepath willing to admit.
Scott felt safe in the mansion. “You can trust the walls,” the Professor said kindly, the first week he was there. “They’re always in the same places. We’ll work out the rest.” He was right about the first part, the walls, and Scott learned where they were. He studied the rooms and halls and grew tired of waiting. Other than his textbook, the only Braille book that Xavier had been able to track down for Scott to practice with was Ivanhoe. Feeling for the cells with his fingertips was a slow process, and desperate as he was for something to do, Scott had not even been able to get through the thicket of dots that was the preface.
It was tricky, Scott knew it was tricky. Xavier’s influence had kept him entered in the Nebraska Family Services records as a normal kid -- a runaway, not a mutant -- and that was a good thing. Scott wasn’t even sure who had legal custody of him. He couldn’t afford to rock the boat.
Then, Mr. Lehnsherr mentioned an old friend who was now working at the New York Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in Manhattan. Professor Xavier hadn’t known that this particular friend was at the library, why hadn’t Erik said something about it before? It hadn’t come up, that was why, and so here they were, going to the city on a Saturday on a mission to get Scott an account and a library card and something -- anything -- else to read.
They hardly talked on the hour-and-a-half-long drive downstate. Mr. Lehnsherr set the radio to a Top Ten-type station, and Scott spent the first part of the trip trying to keep himself from singing parts of “Time After Time” out loud with Cyndi Lauper and wondering how long it would take before Mr. Lehnsherr switched it off in disgust. They had nothing to say to each other. The Professor had elected not to come today, so there was no argument in the front seat, and Scott got to ride shotgun. Grim and serious, Mr. Lehnsherr sounded like he was by far the elder of the two teachers, and unlike the Professor, everything Scott said to Mr. Lehnsherr made him sound older, wearier, more bored by Scott’s company. Jean was close to Mr. Lehnsherr, but Scott was sure there was some explanation that he was missing, something that had happened before his arrival at the School or something that he couldn’t see.
Scott felt uncomfortable being in the car with him without either telepath present to act as a buffer zone, and he was willing to bet that Mr. Lehnsherr felt the same way.
After about twenty minutes on the road, he felt them pull off I-684. Scott didn’t know where they were. “What are we doing?” he asked, hating the nervous sound of his own voice. The worst thing about being blind, he thought, was having to depend on people you didn’t even necessarily like.
“Wait here for me,” Mr. Lehnsherr said, “I’ll be back soon,” and he was, bearing a soda for Scott in a waxy paper cup. It was regular Coca-Cola. Scott was beginning to be able to smell the difference between this and the diet stuff Jean always drank -- also sweet, but more chemical-y somehow, and sharp in his nose. Scott didn’t ask again about Mr. Lehnsherr’s business at the rest stop. Maybe he had just needed to pee. If it was anything more important than that, he wouldn’t tell Scott anyway. Mr. Lehnsherr turned the key in the ignition. The radio came back on in the middle of “Like a Virgin.” The car accelerated underneath them for the highway entry ramp. Scott sucked at the straw. The paper cup was cold from the ice cubes heaped inside. He put his free hand on the heating vent to warm it. “Does Professor Xavier know your friend?” he asked.
For a minute Mr. Lehnsherr didn’t answer. He fiddled with the radio tuning knob. Scott expected him to choose jazz or classical, but he stopped at an oldies station that was playing “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Scott’s mom had loved the Beatles. He could feel the dirty sound of the cello under the bright horns deep in his stomach and in the vibrations of the plastic top of his Coke.
“They have never met,” Mr. Lehnsherr said at last. “They know each other by reputation.”
That was the end of conversation. With nothing to look at but the inside of his eyelids, Scott lost track of time. After a while, they got off 684 and onto a different highway and crossed a bridge -- the George Washington Bridge, Mr. Lehnsherr said, when Scott asked. The traffic sounds grew louder, and the car stopped and started and swerved more often. Once, Scott heard Mr. Lehnsherr swear under his breath in a language that was not English, but for the most part, he seemed happy, whistling along with the radio when he knew the songs. Then, abruptly, as if in response to something happening outside the car, Mr. Lehnsherr flicked off the music. “I am going to give you a quick lesson in New York City geography,” he said.
Scott knew the drill. This was supposed to be educational; Scott was supposed to learn to navigate with his cane in a city.“OK,” he said, adjusting the camouflaging wraparound sunglasses over the tape. He’d never seen New York.
Now he never would. He tried to tell himself things like this every day in order to make himself stronger, to make sure he would be prepared for the worst if it came, but he could never really make himself believe them, so he wasn’t sure if it counted.
“Avenues are long. They run north-south. Streets are short; they run east-west. Manhattan is a grid made up of parallel lines,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. Scott was confused already, but he didn’t protest. He tried to picture it. He felt the Mercedes pull forward, and then ease gently backward. “We are at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 28th Street,” Mr. Lehnsherr explained. “I am executing an incredible parallel park just now. It’s too bad that you can’t admire it.”
Scott couldn’t tell if this was a joke or not. “Thanks a lot,” he said.
“The library, our goal, is located at 166 Avenue of the Americas.” Mr. Lehnsherr sniffed, as if the name offended him. “That’s really Sixth Avenue. First Avenue is on the far east of the island of Manhattan, and Twelfth Avenue is in the west, right near the Hudson River. You read the map from right to left, so to speak.”
“Like Hebrew.”
“Yes, or Arabic. The avenues are more widely spaced than the streets, which run from First Street in Greenwich Village all the way into the two hundreds in Washington Heights. So, south to north. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, it’s very organized. There is no excuse for getting lost.”
Scott pictured the island, a long lozenge floating in the Hudson River. “What cross-street is the library near?” he asked.
“Well unfortunately, southern Manhattan is where the system breaks down a bit.” Scott felt the metal clasp of his seatbelt pop, and the heavy passenger-side door swung open on its own initiative. “There are more streets past 1st that aren’t numbered,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. “The library is at Canal Street, in Chinatown. But you are going to find your way to 1st Street on your own, at least.”
Scott stepped out of the car, staying close to its side for safely, shielded behind the open door. He could hear traffic passing on 28th Street. He unfolded his cane. “Can’t we take the subway?”
“No,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. Erik hates trains, Scott remembered Jean telling him, but he couldn’t remember why she knew that, or why it mattered. “If I had wanted to park closer, I would have,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. “We’re walking because you need practice.”
***
Scott felt his way down the damp cement steps into the station. The third person he’d asked had reassured him that this was indeed the West 4th Street-Washington Square subway. He stopped when the railing ended and listened. It was late afternoon, hours before rush hour. He didn’t hear trains or talking, or anything else helpful. Shit, he thought. Goddamn.
“What’s your imagination like?” Jean had asked him once, out of the blue. “What do you see?”
From her, it was a stupid question. “You already know,” Scott had said. He was never sure how much she picked up from him, so he assumed the worst, that she’d seen the picture he’d made of her in his mind, the picture that matched her voice. It was humiliating to think of her comparing.
“No, I don’t know,” Jean said, irritated. “It’s not like I’m just in there all the time, watching your mind work. I have better things to do.” She stopped. “Besides, it’s so confusing, when I try. Things grow and shrink in the dark. I have no sense of distance. It must be different from your end.”
Scott knew the sensation she was talking about. When he got tired, he lost track of dimensions, and he had to fight the feeling that nothing was real. “If it’s different,” he had said, “then I guess there’s no way for us to tell.” He didn’t want her to know how often he was scared.
Jean had punched him in the shoulder, hard, but she’d dropped it.
Now, he tried to imagine what the subway station must look like. There must be ticket booths. Where would they be? Not good enough, he thought. That was what his imagination was like, not good enough. Not any help.
“Uh, excuse me?” someone yelled. “Excuse me!” It was an older man with a voice that sounded perfectly New York to Scott, like a guy in a movie. He followed the sound. The tip of his cane hit something. “You want to buy a ride?” the man asked.
“Yeah,” Scott said, relieved. He felt up the tiled front of a booth before him, a ledge fitted with a metal dish, and above that, a glass partition. Embarrassed, he took his fingers away. “How much?”
“Ninety cents.”
Scott dug in his pocket and pulled out what he was pretty sure was a dollar bill and put it in the dish. The man slid something back across the counter. Scott recognized the feel of the dime. The other piece of metal was the subway token, then. “How do I get to Grand Central Station?” he asked.
“You take any of these downtown trains -- one stop, OK? -- to Broadway-Lafayette Street. Then you get off, change lines to a 4, 5, 6 train uptown. It’s seven stops to Grand Central.” The man sighed. “You ask somebody at Broadway-Lafayette, you hear me kid? They’ll show you how to change.”
“Thanks,” said Scott. “Which way is the downtown train?”
“Platform’s straight through the token machines.”
Scott turned 180 degrees and walked away from the booth. He had a picture now. He knew where the train would be in relation to the street exit. Two ways out. His stomach still felt a lot like a wadded up ball of tinfoil, but he was careful to keep his back straight. He could feel the man behind the glass, watching him.
***
“You don’t have to be so apologetic,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. “Really, it’s their job to get out your way. This is the courtesy a civilized society affords a man with a white cane. If you run into another person, it’s the fault of the person with whom you collided, because he or she can see you coming.” Mr. Lehnsherr coughed. “You deserve a place on the sidewalk. But your blindness is no excuse for you not to know what’s around you.”
Scott curled his left hand into a fist. Against his palm, his fingertips felt foreign, like cold marbles or frozen grapes. He stuffed the fist into his jacket pocket. His exposed cane-hand stung.
“You should probably keep both hands free,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. “So you can catch yourself if you fall. Here, stop.” He took hold of Scott’s elbow. Scott tried not to jump at the sudden touch. He didn’t like being manhandled, but that was just too bad for him now. People touched him all the time, people who were trying to help him. “Take these,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. He pushed a pair of gloves at Scott. They were smooth leather lined with cashmere, still warm from being worn.
“Thanks,” said Scott. He put them on. They were too big.
“You’re welcome,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. Scott wondered if he had put his own now-naked hands in his pockets.
They were on Sixth Avenue, the Avenue of the Americas, headed south toward the low teens. Scott swept the sidewalk for obstructions with every step he took, listening for traffic at the cross-streets and counting down in his head. He wondered how tall the buildings were. He could ask Mr. Lehnsherr, but engineer or not, it didn’t seem like something he’d want to answer. At first, Scott had tried to hug the walls, touching them with his cane every few steps to make sure that he was walking straight, but there were too many obstacles, stoops and standpipes that jutted out, signs in front of restaurants to advertised the specials. He didn’t like the thunder-rumble of his footsteps when he walked over the loud doors that covered up basement entrances set into the cement, or the subway grates he could sometimes feel through the soles of his sneakers. They felt uncertain, even though he knew that in his present company, the chances of the metal giving way under him were very slim.
They were past 1st Street now, and Scott was walking right in the middle where the sidewalk was firm and uninterrupted. He was getting into the rhythm now. He wondered if Mr. Lehnsherr was satisfied with his lesson. The traffic noises were continuous, but the smells - trash and oil and fruit -- varied. The air was cold on Scott’s ears and neck, and his shoulders hurt from holding them tense and still. People brushed against him more and more often as the pedestrian traffic grew heavier. He didn’t say he was sorry anymore.
“Here we are,” Mr. Lehnsherr said, behind him, and stopped walking. “There’s a plaque.” He guided Scott’s hand to a spot on the wall.
Scott couldn’t feel much of anything through the leather gloves. “OK. Do I have to --?” He was ready to expose his hands to the cold and puzzle out the raised letters, but he’d rather not, if he could get away with it.
“It says ‘New York Free Circulating Library for the Blind.’ There are two steps up. Take my arm,” Mr. Lehnsherr directed. “No, don’t fold up your cane.” He seemed to be in a hurry.
At the top of the stairs, Mr. Lehnsherr made an exaggerated movement backwards to let Scott know that he had pulled open a door. There was a rush of warm air from inside. They stepped into the building together, Scott trying not to trip over Mr. Lehnsherr’s feet. The room they entered had a smooth linoleum floor. Scott heard the slight echo of Mr. Lehnsherr’s deliberate steps and the squeak of his own sneakers. Mr. Lehnsherr led him left, and his cane immediately knocked into a barrier at floor level, a desk or a counter. Scott had a definite impression of open space behind him; it must be a big room.
“How may I help you?” a young woman asked. She sounded like she was black, but Scott didn’t know for sure. She smelled like baby powder and chemically singed hair.
“I’m here to see Mr. Hejdánek,” Mr. Lehnsherr told her.
Scott tried to map the direction from which they’d entered in his mind, letting it glow like a point on an Atari screen, where he’d be able to find it again. He didn’t want to move any further into this room. There were probably lots of shelves to run into. He wondered how you found books in a library for the blind. Did you feel your way around yourself, or wait for a librarian to bring you what you needed?
“Is he expecting you?” the woman asked.
“I called this morning,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. From the rest stop on the highway, Scott thought. Why not from the school?
“He’s in his office,” she said. “Down the hall, second room on the right.” She must be used to giving directions to people who couldn’t see.
The hallway was twenty steps past the desk. Without speaking, Mr. Lehnsherr waited for Scott to find the right-hand wall himself and start down the hall, following a few paces behind, his shoes creaking quietly, as Scott ran his cane along the baseboard to the second door. Scott paused. Mr. Lehnsherr rested a hand on his shoulder. “It’s already half-open,” he directed. “Push.”
“Erik Lehnsherr! Hello!” someone greeted them. Scott heard the sound of a chair scraping the floor somewhere in the back of the office. The man who had spoken might have been about Professor Xavier’s age or a little younger, and he was foreign. “Please, come in! And who is this you have with you?” He sounded a little bit surprised. His voice was closer to them now.
“Scott, I’d like you to meet Josef Hejdánek,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. “This is Scott Summers.”
Russian was Scott’s best guess at the accent, although the name really didn’t sound Russian. “Hi,” he said. Awkwardly, he shifted his cane from his right hand to his left, and extended it for the other man to shake.
Mr. Hejdánek’s fingers felt twisted and gnarled, older than his voice. His handshake was warm. “How are you doing, young man?” he said. Scott was pretty sure he didn’t really want an answer.
“Scott would like to sign up for your book delivery service,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. “He has an eye condition that makes it very difficult for him to read printed text.” Mr. Lehnsherr’s voice was as rich and playful as if he were saying Check, but his hand, hovering near the bare skin of Scott’s neck, was cold from outdoors. “He is a student of Charles Xavier.”
Mr. Hejdánek cleared his throat. “A temporary condition?”
“Oh, I think you understand what kind of thing I mean, Josef. It’s permanent.” The words were a cordial accusation. “Xavier and I are working on a more effective way of . . . managing it, but I’ve never been one for false optimism.” Scott’s stomach clenched. They never talked like this in front of him. He felt Mr. Lehnsherr’s grip tighten on his shoulder.
“You know he’s not eligible for our services.”
“Clearly, he is in need of them,” said Mr. Lehnsherr.
“I’m sorry, but --”
“Josef, come.”
“I’m sorry, Lehnsherr. Really, I can’t,” Mr. Hejdánek said. “First, there’s the residency requirement. Patrons of this library need a mailing address in one of the five boroughs or in Suffolk or Nassau Counties. If he is living in Westchester with you, there is a Braille library in Albany from which he might be able to borrow books. But of course, there would have to be medical documentation of some kind . . .” His voice trailed off, and the room was quiet. Scott was aware of an unsteady clanking in the background, like an old steam radiator with poor condensation drainage.
Mr. Lehnsherr squeezed his shoulder more firmly. “So you will follow the rules of your bureaucracy and leave this boy to sit in the dark?” Scott didn’t know why he was so insistent. Listening to this made him feel ashamed.
“That’s not what I --”
“You have your own office, Josef,” Lehnsherr interrupted. His tone was deceptively friendly. Scott found it disconcerting to hear Mr. Lehnsherr, who called Scott “Mr. Summers” in the classroom, who always scrupulously said “Miss” or “Sir” to store clerks and neighbors, refer to this man over and over by his first name. “Do you think your supervisor notices to whom you send your books?” he asked. “This isn’t Socialism, you know. No one is watching you.” He rapped on the tabletop. “No one is listening in.”
“I can’t,” Mr. Hejdánek said again.
Mr. Lehnsherr sighed. “You see, this is the kind of attitude we keep encountering. Even those who should be our allies turn away. We need to work together.” Scott recognized the texture of his voice. It was how he always sounded when he was explaining something he thought should be perfectly obvious. “Without your help, the only alternative,” Mr. Lehnsherr continued, “is to do what my colleague suggests and bring the boy to a hospital, to allow them to test him, measure him, make a record of him.”
Scott remembered the arguments he’d overheard in Salem Center. There had been one last week. “They have more sophisticated diagnostic equipment, Erik,” the Professor had explained patiently. “It’s simple common sense. Our facility isn’t prepared for this, and we can’t rely on a five years out-of-date cranial CT. He needs new tests. If we want a better idea if he’ll ever be able to control the force-beams organically -- if we want to know what the damaged part of his brain even looks like -- we’ll have to take him to a hospital.”
“I think the crystal insorber material is promising,” Mr. Lehnsherr had said. His voice echoed across the entryway and up the stairs.
“So does Hank. So do I. But we want to know what’s causing this, we need a scan. We can get him in to see a specialist -- one of Hank’s friends from Johns Hopkins, even.”
“Fine. A hospital. And you can get him out again without any records. No trace that he was there, Charles. No memories of him. Do you understand?”
“No,” said Professor Xavier. “I won’t engage in that level of tampering. It won’t be necessary.”
“They both care a lot about you, you know,” Jean said. She sat down next to Scott. The stair creaked underneath them. “Erik’s worried. He thinks they’ll stick you with needles.”
“That’s not even what they’re talking about,” Scott said. He hated when she did this, when she acted like she was ten years older than him. “I’ve been listening for half an hour. They’re talking about brain scans and tests.”
“Erik thinks they’ll give you tests, and shots, too.”
“So?” Scott said. “I’m not afraid of shots.” Not if they would help him control the damage his eyes made, he’d thought.
“You should be,” Jean had said. “They give you a shot and wait to see how long you die.”
In the study, they could hear the Professor saying “No one is making lists, Erik.” Then a door slammed below, and Jean had stood up and gone to the kitchen. From his place halfway up the stairs, Scott had heard the sucking sound of the refrigerator door giving up its seal, but nothing more from the Professor’s office.
Now, inside the library, Mr. Lehnsherr was still arguing. “Xavier believes that scientists and doctors are capable of acting without hubris,” he said. “He trusts his government to behave honorably. That isn’t a choice -- you and I know that. You were a Party member in the very early years, weren’t you? But you learned your lesson.” His voice was clipped now, all signs of amusement gone. “Xavier hasn’t the benefit of our first-hand experience, and for a mind-reader, he is frightfully ignorant of human nature. He doesn’t understand that once we put ourselves at their mercy, there is no going back.”
Scott shifted uncomfortably. He wasn’t sure what was going on any more. Who was this man who didn’t know Xavier but who was allowed to know about his power and what they really did at the school? He waited, listening for any clues of movement from the stranger, not sure what to do.
“I believe in keeping my head down, as you do.” Hejdánek said. His voice, almost as quiet as Mr. Lehnsherr’s, was angry-sounding.
“That’s not what I believe,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. “You didn’t used to believe it either, Josef. I read the leaflets you passed around against Antonín Novotny and the Komunistická strana Ceskoslovenska.” His voice dropped an octave. “I know what they did to you for it.”
Mr. Hejdánek said something short and choked-sounding that Scott didn’t understand.
“Yes, perhaps someday.” Mr. Lehnsherr answered in English. He stepped forward. “You Czechs,” he said. The familiar gentle mockery was back now. “We can’t all be martyrs. We won’t get caught -- not with the forces we can marshal to our side. We have to work together."
Scott didn’t think anyone was still talking about the reading program. He heard the radiator clank and groan again, more urgently this time, as if someone were hurting it.
“It is strength that will prevail in the end, not only the Truth of which you speak,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. Metal shrieked before him, a scale above his low voice. “We have the strength, even the weakest among us.”
“Stop that!” Hejdánek yelled. There was another clang, and then across the room, something heavy dropped to the ground with a bigger clang -- the radiator itself? A file cabinet? The floor shook under Scott’s feet. He stepped backwards. “Lehnsherr, stop!” The atmosphere in the room had changed somehow. Scott’s skin prickled.
“As you like,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. “Would a demonstration of the boy’s power perhaps be more encouraging? Scott, take off your glasses, please.”
The short hairs on Scott’s forearms stood on end beneath his sweater and jacket. He had never felt anything quite like this before. He wondered if he was losing his mind. The air felt charged, wrong. He squeezed his eyelids together underneath the tape.
“Scott,” Mr. Lehnsherr said softly. “Do as I say.” Scott took another step back, and fumbled for the open door. He felt nausea, and the pressure of invisible fingers groping all over his skin. He thought he might throw up.
The metal door handle turned under his hand. The door was trying to close itself the rest of the way, trying to trap him inside. Scott planted his foot at its base and pushed back. The hinges complained loudly. He heard a moan from the radiator, and an answering moan from Mr. Hejdánek.
“He can’t hurt you,” said Mr. Lehnsherr, but Mr. Lehnsherr was wrong. Scott knew that he could hurt him. He could blast through a wall. He shoved the door as hard as he could and ran, pounding back down the hall from the direction they’d come. The door to the office slammed closed behind him loudly, as if in relief. He didn’t hear it open again; he was too desperate to get away to pay attention. His sneakers slapped the linoleum. Balance was something he forgot to be concerned about when he was going fast, and he didn’t fall.
Scott felt the hallway open up around him. He must be through the doorway and in the main library room. He realized that his cane was dragging behind him, still attached by the loop around his wrist. He brought it around in front without pausing, and felt his way to the information desk he remembered, twenty paces away and now on his right. At the corner, he turned 90 degrees. He should be standing in front of the doors now. He didn’t think he heard Mr. Lehnsherr coming behind him.
“Hey!” the woman from the desk called. “Are you -- “
Scott pushed his way through the door. It was not as heavy as he expected, and he staggered a little before finding his equilibrium. Two steps -- he discovered them again with the tip of his cane -- and he was on the sidewalk. And then he was running again.
***
The safest thing to do on the subway, Scott had decided, was to pretend to be asleep. With his eyes already taped shut behind his wraparound sunglasses, all he did was fold up his cane and stuff it behind him, and lean his head to one side in a way that was sure to give him a sore neck. A sleeping kid was less of an easy victim than a blind kid.
The mechanical rush and clack of the train was comforting. Scott loved machines, even ones that didn’t run smoothly. The car smelled like newspaper ink and the skin under a band-aid. It was empty of conversation. The wall and window was behind him, the vertical metal pole in front of him, then a facing bench and another wall-window. Scott dug his butt deeper into the plastic seat and slumped low. There was nothing to worry about anyway, he told himself. If anyone tried to mess with him, he had the best defense in the world, right behind his eyelids. He forced himself to breathe calmly. He was Scott Summers. His stare was deadly.
He thought about how it felt to use his eyes, remembered his head throbbing, like it would turn itself inside out, the world crystal-clear and bright but softening and breaking and crumbling in the face of the push pumping out of him. The force, whatever it was, didn’t come from him -- Scott knew that his body wasn’t big enough to store so much power -- but it came through him. Only he had the right to decide when.
When Scott woke up, there were people moving around him and the voice over the muffled intercom was saying “Avenue U.” That didn’t make sense. Mr. Lehnsherr said the avenues were all numbered. He knew he’d gone too far -- he was supposed to change after one stop -- but he figured maybe the name of the next stop would help him orient himself. He waited, fingers on the plastic upholstery. “Avenue X,” said the conductor. They must be in another borough, Scott realized. He tried to remember what was south of New York.
He rode the train three more stops, until the end of the line. “Stillwell Avenue, Coney Island,” the intercom announced. Scott stood up and felt for the door where he remembered it. He took a big step onto the platform so that he wouldn’t trip. He was moving automatically, like an airplane on autopilot -- or a plane with a pilot more competent than he behind the cockpit. The tracks must be aboveground here; Scott could feel people around him, moving toward the stairway down into the world. He was already through the turnstile when he realized that he didn’t have his cane.
Coney Island, Scott knew, was an amusement park, but it was still winter outside. The air was just as cold by the shore, and wetter. He followed that cold wetness across the pavement, the source of the stronger, salty wind, the sound of waves hitting, walking confidently in case someone was watching until there was sand in between his sneakers and the cement of the street. There were no walls to trail a hand along, but after thirty yards, there was a chain suspended at shin-height that tripped him, tipping him into the sand on the other side. He got back up and moved more slowly then, one hand across his chest, the other reaching out into the emptiness. He shuffled his feet. The beach felt totally open. There was nothing else in his way. The ocean sounds grew louder. Magically, the back of a bench materialized right in his outstretched hand.
Scott sat down. He pretended to watch the water through his sunglasses. He wondered how dark it was getting.
It grew colder. He didn’t think about anything. Sometimes, there were voices on the distant street behind him. Gulls talked to each other overhead. After what felt like hours, he heard someone approach. Scott hooked his fingers underneath the right lens of his glasses, feeling for the edge of the tape. No one would take him by surprise.
“Scott.” It was Mr. Lehnsherr.
“How did you find me?”
“How do you think?” he asked. “I called Charles. He used Cerebro.” Scott wondered how much Mr. Lehnsherr had explained to Xavier during that call, and what Xavier had asked of him. Mr. Lehnsherr didn’t sound particularly angry, but then, he never did, not even when Scott knew that he was.
“I don’t trust you,” Scott said.
“Hejdánek is a mutant, one of the first I ever encountered. He makes protective force fields more reliably than Jean can. It’s his sole power, and he’s had some practice using it -- under a different name, of course. Thirty years ago in Czechoslovakia, the government used to call him the Bulletproof Man.” Mr. Lehnsherr paused. “But only in their private memos. And now he’s here. You can imagine how useful a power like that could be.” Scott felt him sit down on the bench nest to him. “You couldn’t have hurt Hejdánek with your beams.”
“Good.”
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. “I should have made things clear to you before we went in.”
“You just wanted to use me to prove a point.” Scott took off the gloves and lay them between them on the cold planks.
“Yes.”
Scott traced a circle around the pad of his thumb with the tip of his pointer finger. His hands were already getting cold again. “Did you tell the Professor that?”
“Charles always knows everything he wishes to.”
Scott thought of Jean. “Did you tell him, though?”
Mr. Lehnsherr seemed to understand the distinction. “Yes. I told him.”
“What did he say?”
Mr. Lehnsherr didn’t answer.
The damp wind was freezing. Scott drew his knees into his chest and fingered the sixteen sets of eyelets on his Converse All Stars. The metal was cold, too. He wondered if he’d be willing to get in a car with Mr. Lehnsherr again. “If you told me what you wanted beforehand, I still wouldn’t have done it,” he said. He wondered if that was really true. He couldn’t help feeling a little sorry that had been a disappointment.
Mr. Lehnsherr shifted his weight on the bench. Neither of them spoke. The worst thing about being blind, Scott thought, was having to rely on someone who doesn’t like you.
“I got you this.” Something sharp poked into Scott’s stomach through his jacket. It was the corner of a book.
Scott took it in his hands. “Did you --”
“Mr. Hejdánek gave it to me,” Mr. Lehnsherr said shortly.
Scott opened it and ran his hand across a page. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t read Braille.”
“Oh,” Scott said. “OK.” He hoped he liked it.
end.
Author: Ion Bond
Title: Bearings
Recipient: Lady Sarai
Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men
Rating: PG
Summary: The Xavier School has a long tradition of educational field trips.
Recipient's request: "Young!Scott in the early days at the mansion, books (bonus points for something involving blind!Scott and braille), and Erik."
“Love the Truth. Let others have their truth and truth will prevail.” - attributed last words of Jan Hus, 14th century Czech religious thinker, dissident, and martyr.
“Living is easy with eyes closed” - John Lennon, Strawberry Fields Forever.
Scott forced himself to stop running and groped his way to a wall. His breath was coming fast, but he felt less nauseous now. He leaned back, his shoulders and both palms pressed against the building front. He could smell garbage and exhaust, and the warm, damp smell of laundry steam being released from a sidewalk-level vent nearby. The rough cement pressed back at his hands through the artificial skin of the leather gloves, and people pushed past him, all going somewhere, knowing where they were going. Scott was lost. He hadn’t kept count of the streets he had darted blindly across. It didn’t matter anyway; he had started out south of the surety of the numbered order uptown. He had no idea where he was. He wondered if Mr. Lehnsherr had arranged for that on purpose all along, but the thought was paranoid, ridiculous.
The first rule, according to Mr. Lehnsherr, was to keep the cane moving at all times. Mr. Lehnsherr acted like he knew everything there was to know about it, but Scott didn’t understand why he would. Scott’s own personal first rule was to keep his ears open.
He listened for Chinese being spoken around him, and didn’t catch any. Great, he was definitely north of Chinatown. That was something. There was no reason for him to run and risk getting hit, making drivers slam on their brakes, endangering people’s safety. No one was after him. All he had to do was find a subway station. Mr. Lehnsherr wouldn’t look for him there. From the subway, Scott could make his way to Grand Central Station and take commuter rail back to Salem Center and tell Professor Xavier everything.
Erik hates trains, Jean said.
It was time to ask someone. He didn‘t want to, but there was no choice.
“Excuse me,” he said into the stream of passing pedestrians. “Excuse me. Hey!”
Someone put a hand on his shoulder. Scott fought his first urge to shake him off. “Can I help you, son?” the someone said. He didn’t sound old enough to be Scott’s father, but Scott was glad he had stopped.
“I’m trying to find a subway station. Can you point me in the right direction?”
“Sure. The closest one is Canal Street. That’s --”
Scott felt his stomach shrivel up into a tight ball. He didn’t want to go back the way he’d come. “Please, is there another one I could walk to?”
“Huh.” The man thought. “I guess Washington Square would be easy. Just keep going up 6th Avenue until you hit 4th Street.”
“So that would be north?” Scott asked.
“Yeah, north.”
“I can do that.”
***
They had set off early that afternoon on this private field trip into New York City, just Scott and Mr. Lehnsherr in Mr. Lehnsherr’s Mercedes. Six months before, Professor Xavier and Mr. Lehnsherr had found him and freed him from the orphanage near North Platte, Nebraska where the doctor had been planning to enucleate him. They brought him to the school in Westchester County and explained to him that the beams that came from his eyes were, in fact, the manifestation of a powerful genetic mutation. He was not the only one, but he was the only one they’d found who couldn’t control what he did. They hadn’t been able to teach him that. He wasn’t blind, but he wasn’t able to use his eyes.
“For the time being,” the Professor said, but Scott could hear how he was getting frustrated. He kept them closed, swaddled under cotton and medical tape for safety, and Professor Xavier was teaching him to read Braille. “It’s practical,” the Professor said, as if Scott was arguing. Scott wondered if Professor Xavier was listening to more of his mutinous thoughts than his code of ethics left the telepath willing to admit.
Scott felt safe in the mansion. “You can trust the walls,” the Professor said kindly, the first week he was there. “They’re always in the same places. We’ll work out the rest.” He was right about the first part, the walls, and Scott learned where they were. He studied the rooms and halls and grew tired of waiting. Other than his textbook, the only Braille book that Xavier had been able to track down for Scott to practice with was Ivanhoe. Feeling for the cells with his fingertips was a slow process, and desperate as he was for something to do, Scott had not even been able to get through the thicket of dots that was the preface.
It was tricky, Scott knew it was tricky. Xavier’s influence had kept him entered in the Nebraska Family Services records as a normal kid -- a runaway, not a mutant -- and that was a good thing. Scott wasn’t even sure who had legal custody of him. He couldn’t afford to rock the boat.
Then, Mr. Lehnsherr mentioned an old friend who was now working at the New York Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in Manhattan. Professor Xavier hadn’t known that this particular friend was at the library, why hadn’t Erik said something about it before? It hadn’t come up, that was why, and so here they were, going to the city on a Saturday on a mission to get Scott an account and a library card and something -- anything -- else to read.
They hardly talked on the hour-and-a-half-long drive downstate. Mr. Lehnsherr set the radio to a Top Ten-type station, and Scott spent the first part of the trip trying to keep himself from singing parts of “Time After Time” out loud with Cyndi Lauper and wondering how long it would take before Mr. Lehnsherr switched it off in disgust. They had nothing to say to each other. The Professor had elected not to come today, so there was no argument in the front seat, and Scott got to ride shotgun. Grim and serious, Mr. Lehnsherr sounded like he was by far the elder of the two teachers, and unlike the Professor, everything Scott said to Mr. Lehnsherr made him sound older, wearier, more bored by Scott’s company. Jean was close to Mr. Lehnsherr, but Scott was sure there was some explanation that he was missing, something that had happened before his arrival at the School or something that he couldn’t see.
Scott felt uncomfortable being in the car with him without either telepath present to act as a buffer zone, and he was willing to bet that Mr. Lehnsherr felt the same way.
After about twenty minutes on the road, he felt them pull off I-684. Scott didn’t know where they were. “What are we doing?” he asked, hating the nervous sound of his own voice. The worst thing about being blind, he thought, was having to depend on people you didn’t even necessarily like.
“Wait here for me,” Mr. Lehnsherr said, “I’ll be back soon,” and he was, bearing a soda for Scott in a waxy paper cup. It was regular Coca-Cola. Scott was beginning to be able to smell the difference between this and the diet stuff Jean always drank -- also sweet, but more chemical-y somehow, and sharp in his nose. Scott didn’t ask again about Mr. Lehnsherr’s business at the rest stop. Maybe he had just needed to pee. If it was anything more important than that, he wouldn’t tell Scott anyway. Mr. Lehnsherr turned the key in the ignition. The radio came back on in the middle of “Like a Virgin.” The car accelerated underneath them for the highway entry ramp. Scott sucked at the straw. The paper cup was cold from the ice cubes heaped inside. He put his free hand on the heating vent to warm it. “Does Professor Xavier know your friend?” he asked.
For a minute Mr. Lehnsherr didn’t answer. He fiddled with the radio tuning knob. Scott expected him to choose jazz or classical, but he stopped at an oldies station that was playing “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Scott’s mom had loved the Beatles. He could feel the dirty sound of the cello under the bright horns deep in his stomach and in the vibrations of the plastic top of his Coke.
“They have never met,” Mr. Lehnsherr said at last. “They know each other by reputation.”
That was the end of conversation. With nothing to look at but the inside of his eyelids, Scott lost track of time. After a while, they got off 684 and onto a different highway and crossed a bridge -- the George Washington Bridge, Mr. Lehnsherr said, when Scott asked. The traffic sounds grew louder, and the car stopped and started and swerved more often. Once, Scott heard Mr. Lehnsherr swear under his breath in a language that was not English, but for the most part, he seemed happy, whistling along with the radio when he knew the songs. Then, abruptly, as if in response to something happening outside the car, Mr. Lehnsherr flicked off the music. “I am going to give you a quick lesson in New York City geography,” he said.
Scott knew the drill. This was supposed to be educational; Scott was supposed to learn to navigate with his cane in a city.“OK,” he said, adjusting the camouflaging wraparound sunglasses over the tape. He’d never seen New York.
Now he never would. He tried to tell himself things like this every day in order to make himself stronger, to make sure he would be prepared for the worst if it came, but he could never really make himself believe them, so he wasn’t sure if it counted.
“Avenues are long. They run north-south. Streets are short; they run east-west. Manhattan is a grid made up of parallel lines,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. Scott was confused already, but he didn’t protest. He tried to picture it. He felt the Mercedes pull forward, and then ease gently backward. “We are at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 28th Street,” Mr. Lehnsherr explained. “I am executing an incredible parallel park just now. It’s too bad that you can’t admire it.”
Scott couldn’t tell if this was a joke or not. “Thanks a lot,” he said.
“The library, our goal, is located at 166 Avenue of the Americas.” Mr. Lehnsherr sniffed, as if the name offended him. “That’s really Sixth Avenue. First Avenue is on the far east of the island of Manhattan, and Twelfth Avenue is in the west, right near the Hudson River. You read the map from right to left, so to speak.”
“Like Hebrew.”
“Yes, or Arabic. The avenues are more widely spaced than the streets, which run from First Street in Greenwich Village all the way into the two hundreds in Washington Heights. So, south to north. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, it’s very organized. There is no excuse for getting lost.”
Scott pictured the island, a long lozenge floating in the Hudson River. “What cross-street is the library near?” he asked.
“Well unfortunately, southern Manhattan is where the system breaks down a bit.” Scott felt the metal clasp of his seatbelt pop, and the heavy passenger-side door swung open on its own initiative. “There are more streets past 1st that aren’t numbered,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. “The library is at Canal Street, in Chinatown. But you are going to find your way to 1st Street on your own, at least.”
Scott stepped out of the car, staying close to its side for safely, shielded behind the open door. He could hear traffic passing on 28th Street. He unfolded his cane. “Can’t we take the subway?”
“No,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. Erik hates trains, Scott remembered Jean telling him, but he couldn’t remember why she knew that, or why it mattered. “If I had wanted to park closer, I would have,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. “We’re walking because you need practice.”
***
Scott felt his way down the damp cement steps into the station. The third person he’d asked had reassured him that this was indeed the West 4th Street-Washington Square subway. He stopped when the railing ended and listened. It was late afternoon, hours before rush hour. He didn’t hear trains or talking, or anything else helpful. Shit, he thought. Goddamn.
“What’s your imagination like?” Jean had asked him once, out of the blue. “What do you see?”
From her, it was a stupid question. “You already know,” Scott had said. He was never sure how much she picked up from him, so he assumed the worst, that she’d seen the picture he’d made of her in his mind, the picture that matched her voice. It was humiliating to think of her comparing.
“No, I don’t know,” Jean said, irritated. “It’s not like I’m just in there all the time, watching your mind work. I have better things to do.” She stopped. “Besides, it’s so confusing, when I try. Things grow and shrink in the dark. I have no sense of distance. It must be different from your end.”
Scott knew the sensation she was talking about. When he got tired, he lost track of dimensions, and he had to fight the feeling that nothing was real. “If it’s different,” he had said, “then I guess there’s no way for us to tell.” He didn’t want her to know how often he was scared.
Jean had punched him in the shoulder, hard, but she’d dropped it.
Now, he tried to imagine what the subway station must look like. There must be ticket booths. Where would they be? Not good enough, he thought. That was what his imagination was like, not good enough. Not any help.
“Uh, excuse me?” someone yelled. “Excuse me!” It was an older man with a voice that sounded perfectly New York to Scott, like a guy in a movie. He followed the sound. The tip of his cane hit something. “You want to buy a ride?” the man asked.
“Yeah,” Scott said, relieved. He felt up the tiled front of a booth before him, a ledge fitted with a metal dish, and above that, a glass partition. Embarrassed, he took his fingers away. “How much?”
“Ninety cents.”
Scott dug in his pocket and pulled out what he was pretty sure was a dollar bill and put it in the dish. The man slid something back across the counter. Scott recognized the feel of the dime. The other piece of metal was the subway token, then. “How do I get to Grand Central Station?” he asked.
“You take any of these downtown trains -- one stop, OK? -- to Broadway-Lafayette Street. Then you get off, change lines to a 4, 5, 6 train uptown. It’s seven stops to Grand Central.” The man sighed. “You ask somebody at Broadway-Lafayette, you hear me kid? They’ll show you how to change.”
“Thanks,” said Scott. “Which way is the downtown train?”
“Platform’s straight through the token machines.”
Scott turned 180 degrees and walked away from the booth. He had a picture now. He knew where the train would be in relation to the street exit. Two ways out. His stomach still felt a lot like a wadded up ball of tinfoil, but he was careful to keep his back straight. He could feel the man behind the glass, watching him.
***
“You don’t have to be so apologetic,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. “Really, it’s their job to get out your way. This is the courtesy a civilized society affords a man with a white cane. If you run into another person, it’s the fault of the person with whom you collided, because he or she can see you coming.” Mr. Lehnsherr coughed. “You deserve a place on the sidewalk. But your blindness is no excuse for you not to know what’s around you.”
Scott curled his left hand into a fist. Against his palm, his fingertips felt foreign, like cold marbles or frozen grapes. He stuffed the fist into his jacket pocket. His exposed cane-hand stung.
“You should probably keep both hands free,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. “So you can catch yourself if you fall. Here, stop.” He took hold of Scott’s elbow. Scott tried not to jump at the sudden touch. He didn’t like being manhandled, but that was just too bad for him now. People touched him all the time, people who were trying to help him. “Take these,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. He pushed a pair of gloves at Scott. They were smooth leather lined with cashmere, still warm from being worn.
“Thanks,” said Scott. He put them on. They were too big.
“You’re welcome,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. Scott wondered if he had put his own now-naked hands in his pockets.
They were on Sixth Avenue, the Avenue of the Americas, headed south toward the low teens. Scott swept the sidewalk for obstructions with every step he took, listening for traffic at the cross-streets and counting down in his head. He wondered how tall the buildings were. He could ask Mr. Lehnsherr, but engineer or not, it didn’t seem like something he’d want to answer. At first, Scott had tried to hug the walls, touching them with his cane every few steps to make sure that he was walking straight, but there were too many obstacles, stoops and standpipes that jutted out, signs in front of restaurants to advertised the specials. He didn’t like the thunder-rumble of his footsteps when he walked over the loud doors that covered up basement entrances set into the cement, or the subway grates he could sometimes feel through the soles of his sneakers. They felt uncertain, even though he knew that in his present company, the chances of the metal giving way under him were very slim.
They were past 1st Street now, and Scott was walking right in the middle where the sidewalk was firm and uninterrupted. He was getting into the rhythm now. He wondered if Mr. Lehnsherr was satisfied with his lesson. The traffic noises were continuous, but the smells - trash and oil and fruit -- varied. The air was cold on Scott’s ears and neck, and his shoulders hurt from holding them tense and still. People brushed against him more and more often as the pedestrian traffic grew heavier. He didn’t say he was sorry anymore.
“Here we are,” Mr. Lehnsherr said, behind him, and stopped walking. “There’s a plaque.” He guided Scott’s hand to a spot on the wall.
Scott couldn’t feel much of anything through the leather gloves. “OK. Do I have to --?” He was ready to expose his hands to the cold and puzzle out the raised letters, but he’d rather not, if he could get away with it.
“It says ‘New York Free Circulating Library for the Blind.’ There are two steps up. Take my arm,” Mr. Lehnsherr directed. “No, don’t fold up your cane.” He seemed to be in a hurry.
At the top of the stairs, Mr. Lehnsherr made an exaggerated movement backwards to let Scott know that he had pulled open a door. There was a rush of warm air from inside. They stepped into the building together, Scott trying not to trip over Mr. Lehnsherr’s feet. The room they entered had a smooth linoleum floor. Scott heard the slight echo of Mr. Lehnsherr’s deliberate steps and the squeak of his own sneakers. Mr. Lehnsherr led him left, and his cane immediately knocked into a barrier at floor level, a desk or a counter. Scott had a definite impression of open space behind him; it must be a big room.
“How may I help you?” a young woman asked. She sounded like she was black, but Scott didn’t know for sure. She smelled like baby powder and chemically singed hair.
“I’m here to see Mr. Hejdánek,” Mr. Lehnsherr told her.
Scott tried to map the direction from which they’d entered in his mind, letting it glow like a point on an Atari screen, where he’d be able to find it again. He didn’t want to move any further into this room. There were probably lots of shelves to run into. He wondered how you found books in a library for the blind. Did you feel your way around yourself, or wait for a librarian to bring you what you needed?
“Is he expecting you?” the woman asked.
“I called this morning,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. From the rest stop on the highway, Scott thought. Why not from the school?
“He’s in his office,” she said. “Down the hall, second room on the right.” She must be used to giving directions to people who couldn’t see.
The hallway was twenty steps past the desk. Without speaking, Mr. Lehnsherr waited for Scott to find the right-hand wall himself and start down the hall, following a few paces behind, his shoes creaking quietly, as Scott ran his cane along the baseboard to the second door. Scott paused. Mr. Lehnsherr rested a hand on his shoulder. “It’s already half-open,” he directed. “Push.”
“Erik Lehnsherr! Hello!” someone greeted them. Scott heard the sound of a chair scraping the floor somewhere in the back of the office. The man who had spoken might have been about Professor Xavier’s age or a little younger, and he was foreign. “Please, come in! And who is this you have with you?” He sounded a little bit surprised. His voice was closer to them now.
“Scott, I’d like you to meet Josef Hejdánek,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. “This is Scott Summers.”
Russian was Scott’s best guess at the accent, although the name really didn’t sound Russian. “Hi,” he said. Awkwardly, he shifted his cane from his right hand to his left, and extended it for the other man to shake.
Mr. Hejdánek’s fingers felt twisted and gnarled, older than his voice. His handshake was warm. “How are you doing, young man?” he said. Scott was pretty sure he didn’t really want an answer.
“Scott would like to sign up for your book delivery service,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. “He has an eye condition that makes it very difficult for him to read printed text.” Mr. Lehnsherr’s voice was as rich and playful as if he were saying Check, but his hand, hovering near the bare skin of Scott’s neck, was cold from outdoors. “He is a student of Charles Xavier.”
Mr. Hejdánek cleared his throat. “A temporary condition?”
“Oh, I think you understand what kind of thing I mean, Josef. It’s permanent.” The words were a cordial accusation. “Xavier and I are working on a more effective way of . . . managing it, but I’ve never been one for false optimism.” Scott’s stomach clenched. They never talked like this in front of him. He felt Mr. Lehnsherr’s grip tighten on his shoulder.
“You know he’s not eligible for our services.”
“Clearly, he is in need of them,” said Mr. Lehnsherr.
“I’m sorry, but --”
“Josef, come.”
“I’m sorry, Lehnsherr. Really, I can’t,” Mr. Hejdánek said. “First, there’s the residency requirement. Patrons of this library need a mailing address in one of the five boroughs or in Suffolk or Nassau Counties. If he is living in Westchester with you, there is a Braille library in Albany from which he might be able to borrow books. But of course, there would have to be medical documentation of some kind . . .” His voice trailed off, and the room was quiet. Scott was aware of an unsteady clanking in the background, like an old steam radiator with poor condensation drainage.
Mr. Lehnsherr squeezed his shoulder more firmly. “So you will follow the rules of your bureaucracy and leave this boy to sit in the dark?” Scott didn’t know why he was so insistent. Listening to this made him feel ashamed.
“That’s not what I --”
“You have your own office, Josef,” Lehnsherr interrupted. His tone was deceptively friendly. Scott found it disconcerting to hear Mr. Lehnsherr, who called Scott “Mr. Summers” in the classroom, who always scrupulously said “Miss” or “Sir” to store clerks and neighbors, refer to this man over and over by his first name. “Do you think your supervisor notices to whom you send your books?” he asked. “This isn’t Socialism, you know. No one is watching you.” He rapped on the tabletop. “No one is listening in.”
“I can’t,” Mr. Hejdánek said again.
Mr. Lehnsherr sighed. “You see, this is the kind of attitude we keep encountering. Even those who should be our allies turn away. We need to work together.” Scott recognized the texture of his voice. It was how he always sounded when he was explaining something he thought should be perfectly obvious. “Without your help, the only alternative,” Mr. Lehnsherr continued, “is to do what my colleague suggests and bring the boy to a hospital, to allow them to test him, measure him, make a record of him.”
Scott remembered the arguments he’d overheard in Salem Center. There had been one last week. “They have more sophisticated diagnostic equipment, Erik,” the Professor had explained patiently. “It’s simple common sense. Our facility isn’t prepared for this, and we can’t rely on a five years out-of-date cranial CT. He needs new tests. If we want a better idea if he’ll ever be able to control the force-beams organically -- if we want to know what the damaged part of his brain even looks like -- we’ll have to take him to a hospital.”
“I think the crystal insorber material is promising,” Mr. Lehnsherr had said. His voice echoed across the entryway and up the stairs.
“So does Hank. So do I. But we want to know what’s causing this, we need a scan. We can get him in to see a specialist -- one of Hank’s friends from Johns Hopkins, even.”
“Fine. A hospital. And you can get him out again without any records. No trace that he was there, Charles. No memories of him. Do you understand?”
“No,” said Professor Xavier. “I won’t engage in that level of tampering. It won’t be necessary.”
“They both care a lot about you, you know,” Jean said. She sat down next to Scott. The stair creaked underneath them. “Erik’s worried. He thinks they’ll stick you with needles.”
“That’s not even what they’re talking about,” Scott said. He hated when she did this, when she acted like she was ten years older than him. “I’ve been listening for half an hour. They’re talking about brain scans and tests.”
“Erik thinks they’ll give you tests, and shots, too.”
“So?” Scott said. “I’m not afraid of shots.” Not if they would help him control the damage his eyes made, he’d thought.
“You should be,” Jean had said. “They give you a shot and wait to see how long you die.”
In the study, they could hear the Professor saying “No one is making lists, Erik.” Then a door slammed below, and Jean had stood up and gone to the kitchen. From his place halfway up the stairs, Scott had heard the sucking sound of the refrigerator door giving up its seal, but nothing more from the Professor’s office.
Now, inside the library, Mr. Lehnsherr was still arguing. “Xavier believes that scientists and doctors are capable of acting without hubris,” he said. “He trusts his government to behave honorably. That isn’t a choice -- you and I know that. You were a Party member in the very early years, weren’t you? But you learned your lesson.” His voice was clipped now, all signs of amusement gone. “Xavier hasn’t the benefit of our first-hand experience, and for a mind-reader, he is frightfully ignorant of human nature. He doesn’t understand that once we put ourselves at their mercy, there is no going back.”
Scott shifted uncomfortably. He wasn’t sure what was going on any more. Who was this man who didn’t know Xavier but who was allowed to know about his power and what they really did at the school? He waited, listening for any clues of movement from the stranger, not sure what to do.
“I believe in keeping my head down, as you do.” Hejdánek said. His voice, almost as quiet as Mr. Lehnsherr’s, was angry-sounding.
“That’s not what I believe,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. “You didn’t used to believe it either, Josef. I read the leaflets you passed around against Antonín Novotny and the Komunistická strana Ceskoslovenska.” His voice dropped an octave. “I know what they did to you for it.”
Mr. Hejdánek said something short and choked-sounding that Scott didn’t understand.
“Yes, perhaps someday.” Mr. Lehnsherr answered in English. He stepped forward. “You Czechs,” he said. The familiar gentle mockery was back now. “We can’t all be martyrs. We won’t get caught -- not with the forces we can marshal to our side. We have to work together."
Scott didn’t think anyone was still talking about the reading program. He heard the radiator clank and groan again, more urgently this time, as if someone were hurting it.
“It is strength that will prevail in the end, not only the Truth of which you speak,” said Mr. Lehnsherr. Metal shrieked before him, a scale above his low voice. “We have the strength, even the weakest among us.”
“Stop that!” Hejdánek yelled. There was another clang, and then across the room, something heavy dropped to the ground with a bigger clang -- the radiator itself? A file cabinet? The floor shook under Scott’s feet. He stepped backwards. “Lehnsherr, stop!” The atmosphere in the room had changed somehow. Scott’s skin prickled.
“As you like,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. “Would a demonstration of the boy’s power perhaps be more encouraging? Scott, take off your glasses, please.”
The short hairs on Scott’s forearms stood on end beneath his sweater and jacket. He had never felt anything quite like this before. He wondered if he was losing his mind. The air felt charged, wrong. He squeezed his eyelids together underneath the tape.
“Scott,” Mr. Lehnsherr said softly. “Do as I say.” Scott took another step back, and fumbled for the open door. He felt nausea, and the pressure of invisible fingers groping all over his skin. He thought he might throw up.
The metal door handle turned under his hand. The door was trying to close itself the rest of the way, trying to trap him inside. Scott planted his foot at its base and pushed back. The hinges complained loudly. He heard a moan from the radiator, and an answering moan from Mr. Hejdánek.
“He can’t hurt you,” said Mr. Lehnsherr, but Mr. Lehnsherr was wrong. Scott knew that he could hurt him. He could blast through a wall. He shoved the door as hard as he could and ran, pounding back down the hall from the direction they’d come. The door to the office slammed closed behind him loudly, as if in relief. He didn’t hear it open again; he was too desperate to get away to pay attention. His sneakers slapped the linoleum. Balance was something he forgot to be concerned about when he was going fast, and he didn’t fall.
Scott felt the hallway open up around him. He must be through the doorway and in the main library room. He realized that his cane was dragging behind him, still attached by the loop around his wrist. He brought it around in front without pausing, and felt his way to the information desk he remembered, twenty paces away and now on his right. At the corner, he turned 90 degrees. He should be standing in front of the doors now. He didn’t think he heard Mr. Lehnsherr coming behind him.
“Hey!” the woman from the desk called. “Are you -- “
Scott pushed his way through the door. It was not as heavy as he expected, and he staggered a little before finding his equilibrium. Two steps -- he discovered them again with the tip of his cane -- and he was on the sidewalk. And then he was running again.
***
The safest thing to do on the subway, Scott had decided, was to pretend to be asleep. With his eyes already taped shut behind his wraparound sunglasses, all he did was fold up his cane and stuff it behind him, and lean his head to one side in a way that was sure to give him a sore neck. A sleeping kid was less of an easy victim than a blind kid.
The mechanical rush and clack of the train was comforting. Scott loved machines, even ones that didn’t run smoothly. The car smelled like newspaper ink and the skin under a band-aid. It was empty of conversation. The wall and window was behind him, the vertical metal pole in front of him, then a facing bench and another wall-window. Scott dug his butt deeper into the plastic seat and slumped low. There was nothing to worry about anyway, he told himself. If anyone tried to mess with him, he had the best defense in the world, right behind his eyelids. He forced himself to breathe calmly. He was Scott Summers. His stare was deadly.
He thought about how it felt to use his eyes, remembered his head throbbing, like it would turn itself inside out, the world crystal-clear and bright but softening and breaking and crumbling in the face of the push pumping out of him. The force, whatever it was, didn’t come from him -- Scott knew that his body wasn’t big enough to store so much power -- but it came through him. Only he had the right to decide when.
When Scott woke up, there were people moving around him and the voice over the muffled intercom was saying “Avenue U.” That didn’t make sense. Mr. Lehnsherr said the avenues were all numbered. He knew he’d gone too far -- he was supposed to change after one stop -- but he figured maybe the name of the next stop would help him orient himself. He waited, fingers on the plastic upholstery. “Avenue X,” said the conductor. They must be in another borough, Scott realized. He tried to remember what was south of New York.
He rode the train three more stops, until the end of the line. “Stillwell Avenue, Coney Island,” the intercom announced. Scott stood up and felt for the door where he remembered it. He took a big step onto the platform so that he wouldn’t trip. He was moving automatically, like an airplane on autopilot -- or a plane with a pilot more competent than he behind the cockpit. The tracks must be aboveground here; Scott could feel people around him, moving toward the stairway down into the world. He was already through the turnstile when he realized that he didn’t have his cane.
Coney Island, Scott knew, was an amusement park, but it was still winter outside. The air was just as cold by the shore, and wetter. He followed that cold wetness across the pavement, the source of the stronger, salty wind, the sound of waves hitting, walking confidently in case someone was watching until there was sand in between his sneakers and the cement of the street. There were no walls to trail a hand along, but after thirty yards, there was a chain suspended at shin-height that tripped him, tipping him into the sand on the other side. He got back up and moved more slowly then, one hand across his chest, the other reaching out into the emptiness. He shuffled his feet. The beach felt totally open. There was nothing else in his way. The ocean sounds grew louder. Magically, the back of a bench materialized right in his outstretched hand.
Scott sat down. He pretended to watch the water through his sunglasses. He wondered how dark it was getting.
It grew colder. He didn’t think about anything. Sometimes, there were voices on the distant street behind him. Gulls talked to each other overhead. After what felt like hours, he heard someone approach. Scott hooked his fingers underneath the right lens of his glasses, feeling for the edge of the tape. No one would take him by surprise.
“Scott.” It was Mr. Lehnsherr.
“How did you find me?”
“How do you think?” he asked. “I called Charles. He used Cerebro.” Scott wondered how much Mr. Lehnsherr had explained to Xavier during that call, and what Xavier had asked of him. Mr. Lehnsherr didn’t sound particularly angry, but then, he never did, not even when Scott knew that he was.
“I don’t trust you,” Scott said.
“Hejdánek is a mutant, one of the first I ever encountered. He makes protective force fields more reliably than Jean can. It’s his sole power, and he’s had some practice using it -- under a different name, of course. Thirty years ago in Czechoslovakia, the government used to call him the Bulletproof Man.” Mr. Lehnsherr paused. “But only in their private memos. And now he’s here. You can imagine how useful a power like that could be.” Scott felt him sit down on the bench nest to him. “You couldn’t have hurt Hejdánek with your beams.”
“Good.”
“I’m sorry,” Mr. Lehnsherr said. “I should have made things clear to you before we went in.”
“You just wanted to use me to prove a point.” Scott took off the gloves and lay them between them on the cold planks.
“Yes.”
Scott traced a circle around the pad of his thumb with the tip of his pointer finger. His hands were already getting cold again. “Did you tell the Professor that?”
“Charles always knows everything he wishes to.”
Scott thought of Jean. “Did you tell him, though?”
Mr. Lehnsherr seemed to understand the distinction. “Yes. I told him.”
“What did he say?”
Mr. Lehnsherr didn’t answer.
The damp wind was freezing. Scott drew his knees into his chest and fingered the sixteen sets of eyelets on his Converse All Stars. The metal was cold, too. He wondered if he’d be willing to get in a car with Mr. Lehnsherr again. “If you told me what you wanted beforehand, I still wouldn’t have done it,” he said. He wondered if that was really true. He couldn’t help feeling a little sorry that had been a disappointment.
Mr. Lehnsherr shifted his weight on the bench. Neither of them spoke. The worst thing about being blind, Scott thought, was having to rely on someone who doesn’t like you.
“I got you this.” Something sharp poked into Scott’s stomach through his jacket. It was the corner of a book.
Scott took it in his hands. “Did you --”
“Mr. Hejdánek gave it to me,” Mr. Lehnsherr said shortly.
Scott opened it and ran his hand across a page. “What is it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t read Braille.”
“Oh,” Scott said. “OK.” He hoped he liked it.
end.