Segway

By Bernie Hanvey

A baby is born as his mother dies; his survival is a miracle. Sam Tyler is the baby – and he is a genius. Sam is awarded a fast-track scholarship to attend the University of Aberystwyth in Wales. Three years later, he has a PhD in Mathematics and Science, and a Masters in Art. With Sam’s genius come other extraordinary abilities: telekinesis and levitation are just two of them. At fifteen, the travel bug bites. More adventures begin on the other side of the world. Sam meets a dog at the sacred Maori cemetery of Mount Taupiri in the Waikato region of North Island. The dog has been waiting by the grave of his owner for two weeks when Sam arrives. This dog is very special, his name is Hugo. The wild South Island of New Zealand is where Sam goes to celebrate his sixteenth birthday. His birthday is on the 14th of November, 2016. That same night as the “Super Moon”, and New Zealand suffers its biggest earthquake for over eighty years. It is recorded at 7.8 on the Richter scale. Sam and Hugo use their combined abilities to save lives among the devastation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: Apr 21, 2018

Bernie Hanvey

Born in Manchester, the author left his home and military life in Hereford to move to New Zealand. His future search centred on a better life with more prospects than the UK had to offer at the time. He now lives in Tauranga with his wife, Janet, in the Bay of Plenty region of the North Island.

Book preview

Part One

***

Chapter One

The baby was born in a filthy alley behind a small back street pub in the centre of Hereford. It had closed its doors for the final time that evening after succumbing to the competition.

It was ten o’clock in the evening, and the date was 14 November 2000. It was a miracle that the baby had not died minutes later in the same spot where he’d been born. There was no fanfare at the event, and it was no surprise to anyone who knew her that the mother had died giving birth. She had been drinking cheap wine for most of the day. Her third bottle was half-empty, still hidden in its brown paper bag. The other two empties were discarded close-by, against the alley wall.

The closer she had got to the baby’s arrival, the more wine she drank. She was a very scared young woman who had zero support from family or friends. In fact, she didn’t have either. Dying was a good way out as far as she had been concerned

It was pure luck that the alcohol that had helped to kill her had not killed her baby too. How the baby hadn’t suffered from foetal alcohol syndrome was anyone’s guess. His brain being in full working order was the second miracle that had happened that evening.

Moments after the birth, the baby lay in the rain, half on the pavement and half across his mother’s legs. It was obvious that he had a good set of lungs on him; it was his intention to yell and scream for as long as it would take to attract someone’s attention.

His salvation came in the form of a young married couple who were passing the entrance to the alley in their car. The window on the driver’s side was down, and the man had been looking at street signs and building numbers through the heavy rain. It was lucky that it wasn’t cold, as well as pouring down with rain, or the baby would have probably died from hypothermia soon after its birth.

The baby’s loud crying made the man stop the car and find out what the noise was. As the car stopped, he said to his wife, Can you hear that? He got out of the car and said, Wait here a minute, Lily. I’m going to check what’s happening – something doesn’t sound right, especially at this time of the night.

As he entered the alley, the crying got louder. Eventually, he saw the woman lying spread-eagled with rain splashing onto her upturned face. He yelled for his wife to join him, frantically waving his arms at her.

He could see at a glance that the woman was dead, her eyes were wide-open, and the rain was falling straight onto her pupils without any reaction.

There was enough blood around for him to wonder if the woman had been attacked. But, it soon became clear that she had only just given birth a few minutes before he arrived; the baby was still attached to her by the umbilical cord.

After his initial shock at the sight in front of him, he knelt down beside the dead woman and provided a temporary cover for the baby with his body. He then slipped his raincoat off and covered the baby where it lay to keep the rain at bay.

He was still trying to cover the baby properly as he handed his wife his mobile phone. He was almost shouting to be heard above the noise of the rain, Lily, call emergency services, please, and ask for the police and an ambulance. As she was dialling, he explained what he thought might have happened.

The hospital was only a few blocks away, so the ambulance was there in less than ten minutes.

David and Lily Tyler were the people who saved the baby’s life that night. The police and ambulance officers praised them for their actions. Before the paramedic left for the hospital, he’d said, There’s no doubt about it, if you hadn’t been on the scene to assist after the birth, he would have died.

It turned out, according to the police the following day, that there was no foul play involved and the mother had died as a direct result of birth complications. The huge amount she’d been drinking for months before the birth certainly hadn’t helped her situation.

Only David, Lily, and the baby went to her funeral. A social worker waited close by; she had responsibility for the baby until his future could be determined by the authorities.

It had rained for the entire day of the funeral. Later, the grave diggers had to rush the job of filling the hole; there was a high chance that it would flood if they didn’t get the soil back into the ground. It was not a very dignified funeral for the lonely young woman.

When the baby arrived the way it had, it seemed like an answer to their prayers. Well, Lily Tyler’s prayers really. She was the one who had offered prayers every night of the seven years they had been trying for a baby.

She didn’t have any religious upbringing to speak of, and a baby was all that she had ever asked for when she prayed. She had no idea who she was talking to in her prayers, but it made her feel as though she was helping in the overall effort to have a baby.

As there were no relatives, and the Tyler’s were keen to adopt, they decided to see if they could get a fast-track adoption and be officially responsible for the baby, full-time.

They filled in enough paperwork to fell a small forest. The Tylers attended an average of three meetings a week for almost two months – with people from a variety of official agencies – before they eventually succeeded in adopting the baby. He became an instant part of their family. He was christened ‘Sam’, Sam Tyler.

***

Chapter Two

After the adoption, the Tylers were amazed at the lack of crying or tantrums from Sam. He was a perfectly healthy boy with spiked , sand-coloured hair and bright blue eyes; he was unbelievably quiet and well-behaved. A stranger looking in on the family would have seen that Sam went to bed between eight and nine in the evening, and then stayed in bed, asleep, until six or six-thirty the following morning.

It was also uncanny how Sam looked like Lily; their hair colouring was the same. They both had blue eyes and similar facial features. Where things differed was that Sam’s nose was shaped just like David’s, and so were his ears. If people did not know that Sam was an adopted son, they would have picked him as David and Lily’s own flesh and blood.

The couple made a habit of reading to Sam from the time he was a few months old. It didn’t take long for them to notice that Sam watched their fingers intently as they pointed to the words.

Sam was walking, unaided, by the age of nine months. At eleven months he was not even wobbling, his walking technique was that of a three-year-old.

As he got to twelve months old, Sam began talking, and it was not just ‘baby-talk’. He was speaking enough to be understood quite easily; he was forming sentences and was able to ask for most things that he wanted. Within weeks of being shown numbers, Sam was able to count up to twenty without any difficulty at all; then there was no stopping him, his counting was up as high as he wanted to go. Occasionally he would need a little help, but only ever once, and then it was not necessary to repeat the answer or the question.

When Sam was questioned about items in the ‘ABC– 123’ books, he was quick to point out the picture that was referred to by the description. He rarely, if ever, asked for the same story to be read to him twice, he wanted new stories because he insisted that ‘he knew’ the ones he’d heard already. David and Lily continued to be surprised daily by his progress in so many areas.

David’s job meant that he had to have a lot of patience. He was the manager of surgical services at the Hereford Hospital. The surgeons reported to David for all non-clinical issues; he likened this to herding feral cats. When a friend asked David what this meant, he said, Well, let me put it another way. Imagine the Royal Ballet putting on a performance and every female in the company is under the impression that she is the Prima Ballerina. You have a similar situation when managing the surgical services at a large hospital. The thing that maintains my sanity is working in close partnership with the Head of Surgery. He helps to keep the ‘herding’ going in the right direction. The job kept David very busy.

David’s working partner at the hospital, the said Head of Surgery, was always a doctor with a surgical specialty; normally chosen by his or her peers. He or she was responsible for all medical issues in the surgical team.

David did not have the title of ‘doctor’, but Lily did. However, she was not an MD; she was a PhD. She ran the Bio Lab facility at the Hereford Hospital. The Bio Lab was where she and David had first met.

Their relationship didn’t get off to a good start, with Lily pouring an odd smelling concoction all over the front of David’s jacket and trousers as he came into the lab. He had been trying to introduce himself to the new manager, Lily.

From that first day, there had been several apologies from Lily, and then an offer of dinner from David was accepted. After that dinner, they slowly but surely fell in love and had been in love for what seemed like every minute since. There had rarely been a cross word or a significant argument in the eight years since they had been married. They thought this might change when Sam came along, but it hadn’t; their relationship had just got closer and better.

The patience that David had was to come in handy on many occasions when dealing with Sam. Their child was not only learning at an extraordinary pace, but he was also obviously a very strong-minded boy with an equally strong will. A continuous flow of questions was normal.

The first and only small sign of slight discontent in the Tyler household was when Lily thought that it was too early for Sam to be walking any long distances. She would say, His legs are not strong enough for that much walking yet, David.

Yes they are, look at the way his little muscles are bulging with the effort.

Precisely! Lily said, losing her patience. If he falls and starts crying, it will be your job to stay up at night with him.

OK, said a determined David, although he couldn’t recall one occasion where this had happened.

It was David who always seemed to be confident in Sam’s unusual abilities. It was normally Lily who didn’t want him pushed into doing anything that was too hard or too soon for Sam – in her opinion. This was not to say that Lily didn’t do her own pushing; when it came to teaching Sam, she was in there, boots and all.

Pushing and being pushed are probably the wrong terms for what David and Lily did with Sam; they loved him unconditionally, and they tried all they could to let him achieve; which was very often at all levels, physical and mental.

David and Lily both spent as much quality time with Sam as possible. They decided that Lily would be the one to take the available parental leave – and be the daytime caregiver for Sam until he was older. David got home as quickly as possible after work so that he could be the evening and nighttime caregiver. He would have felt cheated if this had not been the case.

At the age of two and a half years and after seeing Sam’s progress, David and Lily decided to take him to a local ‘play-group’, a pre-school situation in the local community. It was one of the best decisions they made and helped them to discover just how special a child Sam was to become.

After the first day, he was able to tell Lily not only what the teacher’s name was but told her every child’s name that attended pre-school. Lily said to him, How on earth do you know everyone’s name, Sam, and so quickly?

Sam replied, The teachers told us their names. The children’s names are also above each coat peg inside the front door of Room One. I watched to see who picked up which coat and matched up their names.

Oh, said Lily, looking over at her husband with a surprised expression.

Sam went to pre-school two half days a week, to begin with, then soon after this, Lily increased it to two full days. At the end of three months, this increased again to three full days a week. After six months, he was going four days a week and soon after that he went every weekday.

David and Lily were often told by Sam’s teachers at pre-school that they were surprised at how advanced Sam was for his age. Sam would often tell the teachers that the calendar on the wall needed changing or that the clock hanging inside the door was showing the wrong time.

It’s a pity that he doesn’t seem to get on as well as we would like with the other children, said one teacher. "Don’t get me wrong, he is not disliked by any of the other children; he just seems to prefer talking to adults than the other kids.

Maybe he’s shy with them? said Lily.

No, he’s anything but shy, said the teacher. He’s brimming with confidence in fact.

As Sam progressed to full time at pre-school, he was reading at a level that was that of an eight-year-old. It was easy to forget that he was still only three years old.

Sam had a reasonable grasp of how to write and do relatively complicated maths; not just adding and subtraction but division, multiplication, and simple equations. He had just picked this up by reading about it by himself. He had access to the internet through his parents’ laptops, and he was always asking questions aloud to himself, and then going online to verify the answer.

David and Lily made sure that every spare minute they had was invested in Sam either teaching him something new or simply being with him. The small amount of reading that they had both done on the subject of child education said that what they saw Sam do was perfectly normal and that it would help, rather than hinder, Sam to continue in this way.

When Sam had his school progress assessment, the assessor could simply not believe what she saw. Instead of playing with the toys that he’d been given by the assessor, Sam was reading the posters on the wall of the office where the assessment was taking place. He was not just looking at the posters but reading the content.

The assessor asked Sam what he thought of the posters. He answered, I think they’re OK. I don’t like all of them, and I don’t agree with what is being said in some of them, but they’re OK.

The assessor couldn’t help smiling. Yes, I agree with you, Sam. I don’t like that one at all, pointing at a particularly bad poster on the wall of the office she was using. His smile was agreement enough for the assessor.

She quietly carried on with her assessment and eventually sent Sam back to his classroom. She had never assessed a child of Sam’s age with the apparent abilities that he had; she was wondering what she should do next to help him and the Tyler family as a whole.

Mary Bonner was a small, stocky woman who had salt and pepper hair and a permanent smile on her face. She had a Yorkshire accent that always came across as friendly and completely down-to-earth. Her confident manner seemed to put people quickly at ease, whether they were children or adult.

As they went into her office, she said, Mr and Mrs Tyler, thanks for coming in on such short notice. My name is Mary Bonner.

She shook hands with David and Lily, and then said, Please, call me Mary, or Dr Bonner if you like. I know that you’re a Doctor yourself, Mrs Tyler, so we can drop the formalities to first names if that’s OK with you? Lily quickly agreed as David was nodding his head – and the discussion continued.

I wanted to talk to you both, face-to-face, rather than you seeing the written report about Sam; one you may not grasp if I’m not there to explain what I’m actually saying?

Is there something wrong? asked Lily, with a worried look on her face. She grabbed for David’s hand, somehow preparing for the worst, whatever that might be.

Mary Bonner smiled and said, Please don’t get the impression that anything is wrong, far from it. Everything is remarkably right. I’m just pleased that we have picked this up as early as we have. We should be able to do something so that Sam doesn’t go the way of others with his obvious abilities.

Both David and Lily now looked more puzzled than worried, because they still didn’t know what to make of what was being suggested.

When I assess children at this early age, I am often pleased to see that all is well and report to the parents that there’s nothing to worry about. I tell them that Jimmy or Jenny is doing fine academically and they should do well when they go from pre-school to their next level of schooling.

David and Lily couldn’t help sitting further forward in their seats; they were almost off the front edge as they tried to anticipate what she was about to say next. Without wishing to sound rude, Mrs Bonner, said Lily. Sorry, Mary. Please, can you get to the point? We are now concerned about Sam, and your explanation is making us more worried.

I apologise, Mary Bonner said. That is the last thing I want to do. You seem to have made a wonderful job of Sam’s early education; in fact, I would like to talk to you more about how you achieved this at a later time. As David and Lily tried to relax, they found that it was becoming increasingly more difficult.

OK, said Mary Bonner, let me explain some fundamentals about Sam. First of all, his reading level is well above his actual age, a long way above. She smiled again, and then continued, I’m sure that you will have noticed this? After a small sigh, she said, This in itself is unusual, but he doesn’t just have a grasp of other important subjects, he is four to five years above his age level in some. What is even more puzzling is that his actual understanding of concepts goes well beyond that of even an eight or nine-year-old. This is more unusual than the high intellect in the disciplines of maths, writing and so on.

There was a pause in the conversation, and then she went on, The results I have, which I would like to have verified by one of my colleagues, put him in the first percentile of the whole country. I will not be in the slightest bit surprised if he’s within the first or second percentile of all other OECD countries that use similar test methods.

Lily, with her mouth slightly open, could not comprehend what was being said, but David said, So, Sam’s quite clever then?

Mary Bonner grinned and said, Sam’s not simply ‘quite clever’, David, he is at the upper end of the genius level. His test marks are literally, off-the-scale. I have only read about this; I’ve certainly not witnessed anything like this until today.

David rubbed his hands together nervously and said, Well, what should we do? Is there anything we can do? Do we physically need to do anything that we’re not already doing? David, looking frustrated, was about to continue when Mary Bonner waved her hands as though asking him to slow down.

Hold on David, hold on. She sounded like a cowboy pulling back on the reins as she actually said, Whoa! to him.

Lily had finally come out of her surprised state, Mary, I can see what you are saying. Sam is ‘special’, and he’s unique and all those other things. So, what can David and I do to ensure that we keep providing what we seem to have done so far by accident?

If you have done what you have so far by accident, then you have done what most parents are not able to do ever. Simply keep it up!

Mary Bonner stretched a little and began to relax back into her chair, then started to explain about Sam once again. There is no doubt in my mind that you’re going to need some help shortly with Sam. Very soon he will be at a stage where he may well become bored with what you and ‘ordinary’ teachers can teach him. He’ll need experts to assist with his education. At the same time, we don’t want to exclude him from his childhood. He is, after all, very young indeed.

Well, what are you suggesting? asked Lily before David had a chance to speak.

I would like to begin this process with one of my colleagues, Dr Abu Mistry, at the University of Aberystwyth. I’d like to ask Dr Mistry to re-test Sam and check my findings. Abu is an expert in the field of gifted children, specifically in the subjects of IQ, EQ and other measurements concerning highly intelligent people, regardless of their age. He is a member of Mensa himself and does some of their verification testings.

Gifted children – Mensa? said David, looking puzzled.

I know these may be new words and terms to you, Mary continued, but what it means is that Sam has the intellectual abilities of someone much older. However, we need to ensure that his emotional needs don’t get totally out of kilter with his intellectual needs. She took a deep breath and sank further back in her chair as she said, His emotional needs are primarily age-related. Being responsible for a person with these two levels of ability and needs can be very difficult. It can mean a huge stress for the parents, for the teachers and the children themselves. There is a disparity between Sam’s intellectual, social and emotional needs – and this will continue to happen; probably for a long time, if not forever.

Mary Bonner then said, As Sam becomes a teenager and gets older emotionally, there may be a complete change that takes place in the levels of his intellectual ability and his emotional and social needs. In other words, the gap will often get much narrower or maybe even wider. There’s no instruction manual that comes with children; gifted or otherwise.

That’s a pity. David sighed with a sad looking smile on his face.

Mary thanked them both for their time and understanding and said that she would be in touch with them soon.

Now that they had discovered just how different Sam was from anyone else, they admitted to themselves that they did require the help that Mary Bonner had spoken of. But, before this, they wanted to learn a little more about her tests and what the results meant, for them as well as Sam.

To find out more about children with special abilities and their needs, David and Lily discussed just how they could, or should, go about this. They decided that as the next day was Saturday, they would split their effort in two directions and double the possibility of getting some useful answers.

As well as getting the weeks’ supply of groceries while she was out, Lily arranged for a few hours at the public library in Hereford. David put Sam into his car seat and went to the university library at Aberystwyth for the day. He had already decided that if the library at the University did not provide the answers he was after, he would go on to the National Library of Wales, also in Aberystwyth. Both libraries had over one million books on each site, so it was a good place to do research.

Sam was fascinated during the time that he and his dad spent at the university library and the National Library of Wales. He had never seen so many books in one place before. He was able to read most of the titles on the shelves and the description at the end of each row. He was very interested in the titles on the shelves where his dad was spending most of his time. He kept asking questions constantly, which David tried to answer as honestly as he could.

With David in Aberystwyth and Lily in Hereford, they had both delved into shelves covered in books concerning Mensa, IQ, EQ, ‘Test Methods’, ‘Gifted Children’, ‘Accelerated Learning’ and a raft of other subjects on the education of people that have higher than normal intellect. A lot of what they read was new to them, but they tried their best to gather as much useful information as possible.

When they compared notes later that afternoon, they found that they had both been drawn to reading about accelerated learning in children and the opinions of experts and parents alike.

They agreed that there were probably going to be problems if Sam followed what was considered the ‘standard’ or ‘normal’ pathway for a child with a high intellect.

The one thing that continually mystified Lily and David was that Sam seemed to get on fine with most of the other children at pre-school as well as the teachers. The main reason they were mystified was that most of what they had read said that a common trait of people with an unusually high intellect was that they were normally loners or had difficulty relating to other people. Sam was the exact opposite of this – even though he preferred to speak with the teachers rather than his classmates.

One of the things that both of them had read was that some people falling into this ‘genius’ category were also autistic and Mary Bonner had mentioned this. She suggested having Sam checked by their GP to rule this out. They had arranged for an appointment to have Sam tested the following week. The result was provided quickly, and the doctor said that Sam was not autistic.

They had then read that children with a higher than normal IQ sometimes had difficulty sleeping. However, Sam didn’t have any problem at all sleeping. In fact, it had amazed both David and Lily that they had not had one late night or early morning as a result of Sam crying or misbehaving in any way since they had become his parents.

On the rare occasions that Sam had cried during the early months, it was because he needed his nappy changing. When he began speaking he simply told Lily that he needed a new nappy, then nappies became a thing of the past, and he was using the toilet like anyone else.

David and Lily began to think of the term ‘gifted-children’ as awful, it sounded like something elitist; but