Maybe he could take the entire problem to some of his father's friends. He shook his head over this thought. From all that had gone on it was too likely that the minute one of them discovered something that would be of help he would disappear before he could tell it!
That raised another point. Why didn't he himself vanish? What was there different about him?
A lot. His father had instilled in him a lot of the things he himself could only aspire to. Unbelief was the major thing. Or perhaps it was the other major thing, remembrance.
His father's voice came into consciousness, saying something he had said so many times it was grooved deeply in memory, even to the inflections of voice. "All psychoses and mental troubles are caused by walled-off unpleasant memories. The child who trains himself to recall all unpleasant things and deliberately associate them with the feeling that they are valuable lessons, but harmless, will grow up in perfect balance."
He smiled. He could let flow through consciousness, dozens of incidents he had taken up with his father.
He was definitely different than others around him. So different he had systematically disguised it by a front of accepted behavior—systematically and consciously, under his father's guidance.
There was a chance those differences made him safe. There was a chance those differences would make it possible for him to find out what caused the others to vanish, without he himself vanishing.
The other train of thought inserted itself into consciousness again. Was belief the key to the disappearances?
Mark Smythe hadn't paid attention when the theory was being explained. The others had undoubtedly lapped it up. The peculiar thing about the theory was that it was so logical and so inevitable that the mind tended to accept it, believe it to be true in spite of the evidence of the senses.