Free A Cage of Butterflies by Brian Caswell

the half-sleep, relaxing the body, dozing, sometimes with the appearance of sleep. But always a part of the mind remained conscious, aware.
    Once, it had been a matter of survival. Now it was an unbreakable habit. Lying there in the dark, she thought of Larsen, and smiled.
    What he would give for proof of what he already suspected! It was ironic that his self-interest, his obsession, had brought them together here, breaking their isolation, handing them the power to resist him. The strength of numbers.
    Life had changed for Myriam the day the twins arrived. It was like a rebirth. An escape from the prison of self. The beginning of the Sharing.
    Behind the Shield, alone with her thoughts, she had grown beyond her years. In her isolation, thoughts had come, connections, understandings which she could never share.
    But the twins had never been alone. From the start they had shared the burden of maintaining the Shield. From the outset they had thought, pooled their understandings, interpreted their world together. Behind the mask they presented to the world they were one. In a way the rest of the world could never be one.
    And on that first day they had made her a part of that unity.
    Standing there, watching them arrive, she had felt the sudden thought grow in her mind behind the Shield, and Ian had caught her eye.
    hello the thought had said. No more.
    A single word which spelled the end of loneliness. More than enough reason to smile.

XIII
    GREG’S STORY
    You have to get away from the idea of words. Words are only the labels we put on thoughts to make them manageable for ourselves; to communicate them to other people. I guess that’s why the Babies had so much trouble teaching us the mind-speech. We had to overcome a lifetime of verbalising. I’m sure that most of the communication they used between themselves was on a plane beyond words.
    How do you describe a taste? Apart from very general descriptions like “sweet” or “sour”, we don’t have the words to describe, say, the flavour of an orange, or a packet of salt-and-vinegar chips or garlic. So we rely on comparisons: “It tastes like …”, “It’s similar to …” and a hundred other phrases which count on the other person having had experiences that match ours.
    Myriam and the others never had that problem. If one of the Babies wanted to describe a taste to the others, they simply shared the experience. Without reducing it to words. The hardest part for them was slowing down; breaking up a complex thought into individual words, so that we could comprehend it.
    I had to pity Larsen. Susan let us in on his attempts to measure just how bright the Babies were. You just couldn’t do it. No scale he could devise could come close. How do you measure a mind that looks and just knows? And anyway, there was no point in trying to gauge the power of any one of the Babies’ minds. Because in a real sense, they weren’t five separate minds at all, but one. Like a network. Five terminals feeding one memory. What one learned, they all knew.
    That’s not to say they weren’t individuals. They were. Eventually I was able to distinguish between their thought-tones and their personalities, but the power of their thoughts was overwhelming. If Larsen had ever developed any accurate conception of their capabilities, he would probably have packed away his research and taken up finger-painting. He only knew that they were extremely bright and that he thought he could use them.
    He never really believed they were autistic. Even though from the age of three none of them had made any attempt to communicate with the outside world. They simply didn’t fit the pattern of autism. There were no violent outbursts; the Babies were all placid kids, who never caused the slightest commotion. Most autistics absolutely need order, repetition; everything has to be in the right place, predictable, familiar. The Babies had never