The Ugly Little Boy (12 page)

She continued singing, the same quiet, sinuous musical phrase over and over, while she rocked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

He had stopped crying, somewhere along the way. After a while the smooth, even purr of his breathing told Miss Fellowes that he was asleep.

With infinite care she nudged his bed back against the wall, pushing it into place with her knee, and laid him down on it. She pulled the covers over him-had he ever known a coverlet before? Certainly not a bed!-and tucked them in and stood over him for a time, staring down at him. His face looked wondrously peaceful as he slept.

Somehow it didn't matter so much now that it was so ugly. Really.

She made her way out of the room on tiptoes. But as she reached the door she paused and halted, thinking: What if he wakes up!

He might be even more troubled than before, expecting to find her comforting presence close at hand and not knowing where she had gone. He might panic; he might run amok.

Miss Fellowes hesitated, battling irresolutely with herself. She stood above the bed again, studying him as he slept. Then she sighed. There was only one thing to do. Slowly she lowered herself to the bed and ky down beside him.

The bed was much too small for her. She had to draw her legs up close against her chest, and her left elbow pressed against the wall, and to avoid disturbing the boy she had to twist herself around into an intricate uncomfortable curve. She lay there wide awake, cramped and bent, feeling like Alice after she had sampled the "Drink Me" botde in Wonderland. Very well: so she'd get no sleep this night. This was only the first night. Things would be easier later on. Sometimes there were higher priorities than sleep.

She felt a touch against her hand. The child's fingers, grazing her palm. He was reaching for her in his sleep. The rough litde hand crept into hers.

Miss Fellowes smiled.

She awoke with a start, wondering where she was, why she felt so stiff and sore. There was the unfamiliar smell of another person in her nostrils and the unfamiliar sense of someone's body pressing against hers.

She had to fight back a wild impulse to scream. She was able just barely to suppress it into a gurgle.

The boy was sitting up, looking at her wide-eyed. The ugly little boy, the child snatched from time. The little Neanderthal child.

It took a long moment for Miss Fellowes to remember getting into bed with him. Then it all came back. She realized that she had managed somehow to fall asleep, despite everything. And now it was morning.

Slowly, without unfixing her eyes from his, she stretched one leg carefully and let it touch the floor, and then the other. Her muscles were tensed for quick disengagement in case the boy should go into a panic.

She cast a quick and apprehensive glance toward the open ceiling. Were they watching, up there? Cameras grinding away as she made her bleary-eyed entry into the new day?

Then the boy's stubby fingers reached out and touched her lips. He said something: two quick clicks and a growl.

Miss Fellowes shrank involuntarily away from him at the touch. She glanced down at him. A little shiver ran through her. She hated herself for it, but there was no preventing it. He was terribly ugly in the light of day.

The boy spoke again. He opened his own mouth and gestured with his hand as though something were coming out.

The meaning wasn't hard to decode. Tremulously Miss Fellowes said, "Do you want me to sing again? Is that it?"

The boy said nothing, but he was staring at her mouth.

In a voice that was quavering and slightly off-key with tension, Miss Fellowes began the little song that she had sung the night before. The ugly little boy smiled. He seemed to recognize the melody, and he swayed clumsily in rough time to it, waving his arms about. He made a little gurgly sound that might have been the beginnings of a laugh.

Miss Fellowes sighed inwardly. Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast. Well, whatever would helpShe said, "You wait. Let me get myself fixed up. It'll just take a minute. Then I'll make breakfast for you."

She rinsed her face and brushed out her hair, maddeningly conscious the whole time of the lack of ceiling covering, the invisible staring electronic eyes. Perhaps not only electronic ones, she thought.

The boy remained in bed, looking toward her. He seemed calm. The fierce frenzied wildness of his first few hours in the twenty-first century seemed long ago, now. Whenever she turned his way, Miss Fellowes waved at him. Eventually he waved back, an awkward but charming gesture that sent a little chill of surprise and delight down her spine.

When she was done she said, "You could use something solid, I suspect. What about some oatmeal with your milk?"

He smiled, almost as though he had understood her. Almost.

It took only a moment to prepare the cereal in the microwave oven. Then she beckoned to the boy.

Whether he understood the gesture or was simply following the aroma, Miss Fellowes had no way of knowing; but he got out of bed and came stumping over to her. His legs were very short in proportion to his stocky trunk, which made them look more bowed than in fact they were.

He glanced down at the floor, plainly in the expectation that she was going to set the bowl of oatmeal in front of him down there for him to lick.

"No," she said. "You're a civilized little boy now. Or at least you're going to be one. Civilized little boys don't eat on the floor."

Clicks. Growls.

"I know you don't understand anything I'm saying. But you will, sooner or later. I don't think I can learn your language, but I'm pretty certain you're capable of learning mine."

She took a spoon from the drawer and showed it to him.

"Spoon."

He looked at it stolidly, without interest.

"To eat with. Spoon."

She dipped it into the oatmeal and carried it to her mouth. His eyes widened and his broad nostrils flared even wider and he made a strange uneasy drawn-out noise, like a very quiet howl: the sound, Miss Fellowes suspected, of a hungry creature that thinks some other creature is going to steal its breakfast.

She pantomimed putting the spoon into her mouth, swallowing the oatmeal, licking her lips in pleasure. Round-eyed, unhappy-looking, he watched the process, all too obviously failing to comprehend.

"Now you try it," Miss Fellowes said. She dumped the oatmeal back into the bowl, turning the empty spoon toward him to show him that she hadn't eaten any of it. Then she scooped more onto the spoon and held it out to him.

He drew back, eyes wide with alarm as though the spoon were a weapon. His tawny little face puckered in fright and he uttered a sound that was not quite a sob, not quite a growl.

"Look," she said. "Spoon. Oatmeal. Mouth."

No. Hungry as he was, he didn't want to know anything about the spoon. Well, time enough for that, Miss Fellowes thought. She put the spoon away.

"But you're going to have to hold the bowl in your hands. You know how to do that. There's going to be no crouching on the floor to eat around here."

She offered him the bowl. He glanced at it and looked down at the floor.

"Hold it in your hands."

Clicks. She thought she recognized them as a familiar pattern, but she couldn't be certain. By God, Hoskins would have to tape those sounds! If he wasn't already doing so.

"In your hands," Miss Fellowes said again, firmly. "Here."

He understood. He took the bowl into his hands, with his thumbs sticking into the oatmeal, and lifted it to his face. He did it clumsily enough and it was incredibly messy but most of it did get into him.

So he was a quick learner-when he wasn't numbed by fear. Miss Fellowes doubted that there'd be much more animal-like lapping of food on the floor.

She watched him closely as he ate. He seemed to be in good health, sturdy and strong. His eyes were bright, his color was high, there were no outward signs of fever or illness. So far he appeared to be withstanding the rigors of his extraordinary journey very well indeed.

Although she knew no more than anybody else about the growth patterns of Neanderthal children, Miss Fellowes started to think now that he probably was older than she had originally thought, definitely closer to four years of age than three. He was small, yes, but his physiological development was beyond the modern child's three-year-old level. Of course, some of that might just be the result of the conditions under which he had lived, back there in the Stone Age world. (Stone Age? Yes, of course. Neanderthals must be Stone Age. She was reasonably certain of that. There was so much that she needed to learn, when she had the chance.)

She tried having him drink his milk in a glass this time. He seemed to catch on swiftly to the idea of holding the glass in his hands-he needed both hands to do it, but that was the way most children his age held glasses, and at least he didn't find the glass as threatening as the spoon appeared to have been. But he had trouble with the opening, which was too small for him to get his face into conveniently, and he began to whine, a high-pitched keening sound of frustration that was starting to edge upward into anger. Miss Fellowes put her own hand over the little boy's, making him tip the glass, forcing his mouth to the rim.

Again a mess, but again most went into him. And she was used to messes.

The washroom, to her surprise and immense relief, was a less difficult matter. At first he appeared to think that the toilet bowl was some sort of fountain that might be fun to splash around in, and she was afraid that he was going to climb into it. But Miss Fellowes held him back and stood him in front of it and opened his robe, and he understood right away what it was she expected him to do.

She found herself patting his head, saying, "Good boy. Smart boy."

And to Miss Fellowes* exceeding pleasure, the boy smiled up at her.

It was going to be a morning of discoveries, Miss Fellowes realized pleasantly. For him and for her as well. He was learning about spoons and milk glasses and toilet bowls. She was learning about him. Discovering the essential humanity that lay behind that strange and ugly- oh, so ugly!-face of his.*

She replied to his smile with one of her own. He smiled again. It was a very normal smile, the smile of a child who has seen that his smile has brought a pleasing response.

He wasn't at all a normal child, she reminded herself. It would be a serious mistake to allow herself any illusions about that.

But when he smiles, she thought, he's quite bearable. Really.

MID-MORNING. She had bathed him again-far less of a battle than it had been yesterday-and given him a fairly close physical inspection-he showed some bruises and scratches of the sort you would expect a boy who had been living under primitive conditions to have, but no obvious signs of disease or serious injury- and had even succeeded, with a great deal of patience and an endless amount of singing to lull him into a peaceful mood, in trimming his fingernails. The toenails would have to wait until later. Neither she nor the boy had sufficient endurance to tackle any further manicure chores today.

Without her noticing it, the door to the Stasis bubble had opened while Miss Fellowes was going about her chores, and Hoskins was standing before her, silent, his arms folded. He might have been there for minutes.

He said, "May I come in?"

Miss Fellowes nodded curtly. "You seem already to have done that, haven't you?"

"I mean into the working area. -You didn't answer when I spoke to you on the intercom from outside."

"I was busy. You may need to speak louder. But come in, come in!"

The boy drew back as Hoskins entered. He gave Hoskins an uneasy look and seemed about to bolt into the rear room. Miss Fellowes smiled and beckoned to him and he came forward instead and clung to her, curling his little bandy legs-so thin, so very thin-about her.

A look of something close to awe blossomed on Hoskins' face.

"You've made great progress, Miss Fellowes!"

"A little warm oatmeal can work wonders."

"He seems very attached to you already."

"I know how to do the things I'm supposed to do, Dr. Hoskins. Is that so astonishing?"

He reddened. "I didn't mean to imply-"

"No, of course not. I understand. He was a wild little animal when you last saw him yesterday, and now-"

"Not an animal at all."

"No," Miss Fellowes said. "Not an animal at all." She hesitated just a moment. Then she said, "I had some doubts about that at first."

"How could I forget it? You were quite indignant."

"But no longer. I over-reacted. At first glance I suppose I really did think he was an ape-boy, and I wasn't prepared to be taking on anything like that. But he's settling down amazingly. He's no ape, Dr. Hoskins. He's actually quite intelligent. We're getting along very well."

"I'm glad to hear it. Does that mean you've decided to keep the job, then?"

She gave him a steely glance. "That was never in doubt, was it, Dr. Hoskins?"

"Well-" Hoskins shrugged. "I suppose not. -You know, Miss Fellowes, you aren't the only one who's been a little on edge here. I think you can appreciate what a tremendous effort has gone into this project, and how much we've had riding on its success. And now that it is a success, an overwhelming success, we can't help but feel somewhat stunned. Like 3 man who has gathered up all his strength to go charging through a door that's barring his way. Suddenly he makes his mighty charge, and the door gives way under the onslaught with hardly any of the resistance he'd expected, and he bursts into the place that he's been wanting so hard to reach; and now that he's there, he stops and looks around, a little contused, and says to himself, All right, I'm finally here, and now what?"

"A good question, Dr. Hoskins. Now what? You'll be bringing all sorts of experts in to examine the boy, won't you? Specialists in prehistoric life, and people like that?"

"Of course."

"You'll have someone here soon to give him a thorough medical exam, I assume."

"Yes, naturally. -He's all right, though, wouldn't you say? Basically?"

"Basically, yes. He's a rugged little fellow. But I'm not a doctor and he hasn't had any sort of internal examination whatever. There's a difference between seeming healthy and being healthy. He could be carrying a load of parasites around: amoebas, protozoan infestations, all kinds of things. Probably is. Maybe they're harmless to him, maybe not. Even if they don't seriously threaten his welfare, they might threaten ours."

"We've already thought of that. Dr. Jacobs will be coming in at noon, to run a group of preliminary tests. He's the doctor you'll be working with as long as the project continues. If Dr. Jacobs doesn't upset the boy too much, Dr. Mclntyre of the Smithsonian will be seeing him after that for the first anthropological examination. -And then the media will be coming here, too, of course."

That caught her short. "The media? What media? Who? When?"

"Why-they'll want to see the boy as soon as they can, Miss Fellowes. Candide Deveney's already broken the story. We'll have every newspaper and television network in the world banging on our doors by the end of the day."

Miss Fellowes looked down at the child and put her arm protectively to his shoulder. He quivered, just the tiniest of flinches, but made no move to escape her touch.

"You're going to fill this Utde place with journalists and cameras? On his first full day here?"

"Well, we hadn't thought about-"

"No," she said, "you hadn't thought. That much is obvious. Listen, Dr. Hoskins, he's your little Neanderthal and you can do whatever you want with him. But there'll be no media people in here until he's had his medical checkup and come out with a clean bill of health, at the very minimum. And preferably not until he's had more time to adapt to being here. You do understand what I'm saying, don't you?"

"Miss Fellowes, surely you know that publicity is an essential part of-"

"Yes. Publicity is an essential part of everything, these days. Imagine the publicity you'll get if this child dies of a panic attack right on camera!"

"Miss Fellowes!"

"Or if he catches a cold from one of your precious reporters. I tried to point out to you, when I was asking for a sterile environment, that he's probably got zero resistance to contemporary infectious microorganisms. Zero. No antibodies, no inherent resistance, nothing to ward off-"

"Please, Miss Fellowes. Please."

"And what if he gives them all some nice little Stone Age plague that we have no immunity to?"

"All right, Miss Fellowes. You've made your point."

"I want to be completely sure that I have. Let your media wait, is what I'm saying. He needs all sorts of protective inoculation first. It's bad enough that he's been exposed to as many people as he was last night; but I'm not going to let a whole mob of reporters in here, not today and not tomorrow, either. If they like, they can photograph him from upstairs, for the time being, outside the Stasis zone entirely, just as though we had a newborn infant in here, and I want them to be quiet about it, too. We can work out a video schedule later in the day. -Oh, and speaking of upstairs. I'm still not happy about the degree of exposure here. I want my quarters roofed over -a tarpaulin of some sort will do for the moment; I don't want workmen clattering around here with construction equipment just yet-and I think the rest of the dolihouse could safely be given a ceiling, too."

Hoskins smiled. "You mince no words. You're a very forceful woman, Miss Fellowes." His tone seemed to have as much admiration as annoyance in it.

"Forceful?" she said. "I suppose I am. At least where my children are concerned."

Jacobs was a burly, blunt-faced man of about sixty, with thick white hair cropped close to his skuD, military-fashion. He had an efficient, no-nonsense manner, a little on the brusque side, which some might say would be more suitable for an army doctor than for a pediatrician. But Miss Fellowes knew from long experience that children weren't troubled by mat sort of brusqueness, so long as it was tempered by a fundamental kindliness. They expected a doctor to be an authority-figure. They wanted him to be one. They looked elsewhere for gentleness, tenderness, comfort. The doctor was supposed to be godlike, the solver of problems, the dispenser of cures.

Miss Fellowes wondered what kind of doctors had ministered to the needs of the little boy's tribe back there in 40,000 B.C. Witch-doctors, no doubt. Terrifying figures with bones through their noses and painted red circles around their eyes, who performed their diagnoses by leaping and cavorting around campfires that burned blue and green and scarlet. How would Dr. Jacobs look with a bone through his nose? she wondered. With a bear-skin around his shoulders instead of that prosaic white coat?

He offered her a quick, uncondescending handshake. "I've heard good things about you, Fellowes."

"So I would hope."

"You worked under Gallagher at Valley General, didn't you? Or so Hoskins said. Fine man, Gallagher. Dogmatic son of a bitch, but at least he swore by the right dogmas. How long were you in his department?"

"Three and a half years."

"You like him?"

Miss Fellowes shrugged. "Not particularly. I heard him say some things once to a young nurse that I thought were out of line. But he and I worked well together. I learned a great deal from him."

"A shrewd man, yes." Jacobs shook his head. "Pity about the way he handled his nurses. In more than one sense of the word. -You didn't happen to have any sort of run-in with him yourself, did you?"

"Me? No. No, nothing of the kind!"

"No, I guess he wouldn't have tried anything with you," Jacobs said.

Miss Fellowes wondered what he had meant by that. Not Gallagher's type, maybe? She wasn't anyone's type.

and that was the way she had preferred things to be for many years. She let the remark pass.

Jacobs seemed to have memorized her entire resume. He mentioned this hospital and that, this doctor and that one, spoke with easy familiarity of heads of nursing and boards of directors. Plainly he had been around. All she knew of Dr. Jacobs, on the other hand, was that he was something big at the state medical institute and had a considerable private practice on the side. Their paths had never crossed professionally. If Hoskins had seen fit to let him see her resume, he might have thought of letting her see his. But Miss Fellowes let that point pass, too.

"And I suppose that now it's about time that we had a look at this little Neanderthal of yours," Jacobs said. "Where's he hiding?"

She gestured toward the other room. The boy was lurking uneasily in there, now and again peeping out, with a lock of his matted hair showing behind the barrier of the door and, occasionally, the corner of an eye.

"Shy, is he? That's not what I heard from the orderlies. They said he's as wild as a little ape."

"Not any more. His initial terror has worn off, and now he simply feels lost and frightened."

"As well he should, poor little critter. But we've got to get down to this. Call him out here, please. Or will you have to go in there and get him?"

"Maybe I can call him," Miss Fellowes said.

She turned to face the boy. "You can come out, Tim-mie. This is Dr. Jacobs. He won't hurt you."

Timmie?

Where had that come from? She had no idea.

The name had just surged up out of the well of her unconscious that moment. She had never known a Timmie in her life. But the boy had to be called something, didn't he? And it seemed that she had named him, now.

Timothy. Timmie for short. So be it. A real name, a human name. Timmie.

"Timmie?" she said again, liking the sound of it, enjoying being able to call him by name. She could stop thinking of him as "the child," "the Neanderthal," "the ugly little boy." He was Timmie. He was a person. He had a name.

And as she approached the other room Timmie slipped back behind the door, out of sight.

"All right," Jacobs said, with some impatience. "We can't spend all day at this. Go in there and bring him out, will you, Fellowes?"

He slipped a surgical mask over his face-as much for his protection, Miss Fellowes guessed, as for Timmie's.

But the mask was a mistake. Timmie peeked out and saw it and let out a shrill piercing howl as though he had seen some demon out of his Stone Age nightmares. As Miss Fellowes reached the door, he flung himself violently against the wall on the far side of the room, like a caged creature fleeing its keeper, and pressed up against it, shivering fearfully. 

"Timmie- Timmie-"

No use. He wouldn't let her near him, not with Jacobs anywhere about. The boy had tolerated Hoskins' presence well enough, but Jacobs seemed to scare the daylights out of him. So much for her theory that children wanted their doctors to be brusque no-nonsense military types. Not this child, at any rate.

She rang the bell and summoned Mortenson and Elliot.

"We're going to need a little help, I think," Miss Fellowes told them.

The two husky orderlies looked at each other uncertainly. There was a visible bulge along Elliot's left arm, under his uniform jacket-a bandage, no doubt, covering the scratch that Timmie had inflicted yesterday.

"Oh, come on," Miss Fellowes said. "He's only a small child, you know."

But the boy, in his terror, had reverted completely to his original feral mode. Flanked by Mortenson and El-liott, Miss Fellowes entered his room and attempted to take hold of him, but he went scrambling wildly around the room with truly anthropoid agility, and they were hard put to get a grip on him. Finally Mortenson, with a lunge, caught him by the midsection and spun him up off the ground. Elliott cautiously took hold of him by the ankles and tried to prevent him from kicking.

Miss Fellowes went over to him. Softly she said, "It's all right, Timmie-no one will hurt you-"

She might just as well have said, "Trust me." The boy struggled furiously, with nearly as much enterprise as he had shown the day before when they were trying to give him a bath.

Feeling preposterous. Miss Fellowes tried crooning the litde tune of the night before at him in an attempt to lull him into cooperating. That was useless, too.

Dr. Jacobs leaned close. "We'll have to sedate him, I guess. -God, he's an ugly little thing!"

Miss Fellowes felt a sharp stab of fury, almost as though Timmie were her own child. How dare he say anything like that! How dare he!

Crisply she retorted, "It's a classic Neanderthal face. He's very handsome, by Neanderthal standards." She wondered where she had gotten that from. She knew practically nothing about what a classic Neanderthal face was supposed to be like, and nothing whatever about Neanderthal standards of handsomeness. "-I don't much like the idea of sedating him. But if there's no other alternative-"