"Yes. When you're twelve years old you can go on a Happy Tour. Won't that be fun?"
Steven said, "If I could go alone."
The doctor looked at him sharply. "But you can't. Try to understand, Stevie, you can't. Now tell me—why don't you like to be with other people?"
Steven said, "All the time—not all the time."
The doctor repeated patiently, "Why?"
Steven looked at the doctor and said a very strange thing. "They touch me." He seemed to shrink into himself. "Not just with their hands."
The doctor shook his head sadly. "Of course they do, that's just—well, maybe you're too young to understand."
The interview went on for quite a while, and at the end of it Steven was given a series of tests which took a week. The psychiatrist had not told the truth; what the boy said, during the first interview and all the tests, was fully recorded on concealed machines. The complete transcript made a fat dossier in the office of the Clinic Director.
At the end of the tests the Director said seriously to Steven's parents, "I'll be frank with you. You have a brilliant kiddie here—right now he has the intelligence of a twelve-year-old—but brilliance has to be channeled in the right direction. Just now—well, frankly, it's channeled in the wrong direction. We'll give it a year or so, and then if things don't clear up I'm afraid we'll have to correct him."
Richard said through dry lips, "You mean a Steyner?"