She rolled her eyes upward and muttered, “Dowsing for brains,” but she also moved her hands away so he could feel the child’s head. Slowly now, and carefully, trying to understand the map of the boy’s skull, to read the ridges and bumps, the troughs and depressions. He had no need to consult a book. The books were nonsense, anyway. He had found that out quite quickly—they all spouted idiotic generalities, such as, “The Red will always have a bump just over the ear, indicating savagery and cannibalism,” when of course Reds had just as much variety in their heads as Whites. No, Thrower had no faith in those books—but he had learned a few things about people with particular skills, and head bumps they had in common. He had developed a knack of understanding, a map of the shapes of the human skull; he knew as his hands passed over Al’s head what it was he found there.

Nothing remarkable, that’s what he found. No one trait that stood out above all others. Average. As average as can be. So utterly average that it could be a virtual textbook example of normality, if only there were any textbook worth reading.

He lifted his fingers away, and the boy—who had stopped crying under his hands—twisted on his mother’s lap to look at him. “Reverend Thrower,” he said, “your hands are so cold I like to froze.” Then he squirmed off his mother’s lap and ran off, shouting for one of the German boys, the one he had been wrestling so savagely before.

Faith laughed ruefully. “You see how quickly they forget?”

“And you, too,” he said.

She shook her head. “Not me,” she said. “I don’t forget a thing.”

“You’re already smiling.”

“I go on, Reverend Thrower. I just go on. That’s not the same as forgetting.”

He nodded.

“So—tell me what you found,” she said.

“Found?”

“Feeling his bumps. Brain-dowsing. Does he got any?”

“Normal. Absolutely normal. Not a single thing unusual about his head.”

She grunted. “Nothing unusual?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, if you ask me, that’s pretty unusual right there, if a body was smart enough to notice it.” She picked up the stool and carried it off, calling to Al and Cally as she went.

After a moment, Reverend Thrower realized she was right. Nobody was so perfectly average. Everybody had some trait that was stronger than the others. It wasn’t normal for Al to be so well balanced. To have every possible skill that could be marked by the skull, and to have it in exactly even proportions. Far from being average, the child was extraordinary, though Thrower had no notion what it would mean in the child’s life. Jack of all trades and master of none? Or master of all?