The Ugly Little Boy (15 page)

Miss Fellowes scooped him into her arms. He clung tightly to her, shivering.

"Yes," she said soothingly. "Yes, yes, yes, it's been a busy day. Much too busy. And you an? just a little boy. A little lost boy."

Far from home, far from anything you ever knew.

"Did you have brothers and sisters?" she asked him, speaking more to herself than to him. Not expecting an answer; simply offering the comfort of a soft voice close to his ear. "What was your mother like? Your father? And your friends, your playmates. All gone. All gone. They must already seem like something out of a dream to you. How long will you remember anything about them at all, I wonder?"

Little lost boy. My little lost boy.

"How about some nice warm milk?" she suggested. "And then, I think, a nap."

IN THE NIGHT Silver Cloud dreamed of the sea.

He was young again, in his dream. He dreamed that he was only a boy, just a summer or two older than the boy Skyfire Face who had been taken by the Goddess in a whirl of light. He stood by the edge of the sea, feeling the strange wet wind blowing against his lips. His father and mother were with him, Tall Tree and Sweet As A Flower, and they were holding his hands and leading him gently toward the water.

"No," he said. "It's cold. I'm afraid to go into it."

"It can't hurt you," Tall Tree said.

But that wasn't true. No one went into the sea, no one, not ever. Every child learned that as soon as he was old enough to learn anything. The sea killed. The sea would drain your life away m an instant, and cast you back up on the shore, empty and still. Only last year the warrior Speared Five Mammoths had slipped on a snowy cliff and fallen into the sea, and when he washed ashore a little while later he was dead, and they had had to bury him in a little cavern in the rock near the place where he fell, chanting all night and burning a strange-colored fire.

Now here were his own father and mother urging him toward the sea. Did they want him to die the way Speared Five Mammoths had died? Were they tired of him? What kind of betrayal was this?

"The sea will make you strong," Sweet As A Flower told him. "The sea will make you a man."

"But Speared Five Mammoths died in it!"

"It was his time to die. The sea called to him and took him. But your time to die is far away, boy. You have no reason to be afraid."

Was it true? Could he trust them?

They were his mother and his father. Why would they want him to die?

He held their hands tighdy and stepped forward with them, toward the brink of the sea.

He had never been this close to it before, although his tribe had always lived in the coastal plain, wandering up and down along the shore following the game animals. Now he stared at the water in wonder and fear. It was like a great powerful flat beast lying before him, dark and shining. A roaring sound came from it, and along its edges a part of it was rippling and surging with white foam. Here and there a piece of the sea would rise up high into the air and come crashing down against the rocks along the edge. Sometimes, standing on cliffs much like the one where Speared Five Mammoths had fallen to his death, Silver Cloud had looked far out into the sea and had seen graceful animals moving about in it, moving among the floating blocks of ice. They were different animals from the mammoths and niusk oxen and rhinos of the land- slim, sleek, shining things that moved through the sea as though they were flying through air.

Last spring one of those sea animals had come ashore, and the Hunting Society had fallen on it and killed it, Aid the tribe had enjoyed a great feast. How tender its meat had been! How strange! And its thick beautiful fur-how soft, how wonderfully soft. Tall Tree had made a mantle for Sweet As A Flower from the sea-creature's dark rich fur, and she wore it proudly on the special days of the year.

Were they going to give him to the sea in return for the fur of the sea-creature? Was that it?

"Take another step, boy," Tall Tree urged. "There's nothing to be afraid of."

Silver Cloud looked up. But his father was smiling.

He had to trust his father. He stepped forward, clinging tightly to their hands. The edge of the sea came up around his ankles. He had expected it to be cold, but no, no, it was warm, it was hot, it burned like fire. Yet after a moment he no longer felt the burning. The sea pulled back from him, and then it returned, higher than before, up to his knees, his thighs, his belly. Tall Tree and Sweet As A Flower walked farther out into it, taking him with them. The ground on the floor of the sea was very soft, as soft as the sea animal's fur, and it seemed to move about under his feet as he walked.

He was chest-deep in the sea, now. It wrapped itself around him like a warm blanket.

"Are your feet still touching the bottom?" Tall Tree asked him.

"Yes. Yes."

"Good. Bend forward. Put your head in the sea. Cover your face with the sea."

He did as he was told. The sea swept up and over him, and it was like being covered by a blanket made of snow. Snow too ceased to be cold, when you got deep down into it. It became warm, like fire, and if you stayed in it long enough you would fall asleep as if you were wrapped in a rug. That was what an older girl had told him: she had watched, once, as an old woman of the tribe whose bones were bent and whose eyes were dim was taken out and put into the snow; she had closed her eyes and gone to sleep, very peacefully indeed.

So now I will go to sleep in the sea, Silver Cloud thought, and that will be the end of me. And somehow dying no longer seemed to matter. He raised his head to see whether his father and mother had their faces covered with the sea also, but to his surprise they were no longer beside him, nowhere to be seen at all. He was entirely alone.

He could hear his father's voice coming to him from far away, telling him, "Come out of the sea, now, boy. Turn around and walk out."

Yes. He would do that.

But as he walked toward the shore he felt his body changing with every step he took, stretching, growing taller and thicker, and he realized that he was turning into a man, getting older moment by moment. His shoulders were becoming broad, his chest was deepening, his thighs had become thick and strong. By the time he stepped out onto the rocky shore he was a warrior in the prime of his life. He looked down at his naked body and it was a man's body, dark and hairy. He laughed. He rubbed his chest and slapped his hands against his thighs. In the distance he saw the fires of the encampment, and he began to sprint toward it to tell everyone of the strange thing that had happened to him.

As he ran, though, another strangeness overtook him: for he realized that he was continuing to grow older every moment. Age had him in its grip and would not release him. He had left his childhood in the sea. Then, coming out of the sea, he had been full of the jubilant strength of young manhood. But now he was panting a little, then gasping for breath, slowing down from a sprint to a (rot, and then to a walk. And then he was limping along, hobbling, for something had happened to his left thigh and his whole leg was stiff and sore. He looked down at it. There was blood all over it, as though an animal had raked it with its claws. And he remembered, yes, yes, he had been hunting with the Hunting Society, and the snow-leopard had come down suddenly on him from aboveHow difficult it was to walk, now. How old and tired I am, he thought. I can no longer stand straight. Look, my hair is turning silver all over my body.

There was pain in him everywhere. He felt his strength going from him. What a strange, troublesome dream this was! First a boy entering the sea, and then coming forth and rapidly growing old, and now he was dying, dying, in some unfamiliar inland place far from the sea, where the earth was cold and hard and the wind was dry, and there were only strangers all about him. Where was Tall Tree, where was Sweet As A Flower-where was Silver Cloud?

"Help me," he called, sitting up in his sleep. "The sea has killed me! The sea-the sea-"

"Silver Cloud?"

Someone was at his side. He blinked and peered. She Who Knows, it was, kneeling next to him, staring at him anxiously. He struggled to regain control of himself. He was trembling like a sick old woman and his chest was heaving wildly. No one must see him like this-no one. He fumbled about for his staff, caught its end, levered himself awkwardly to a standing position.

"A dream," he muttered. "Bad omens. I'll need to make a sacrifice right away. Where's Goddess Woman? Get me Goddess Woman!"

"She's gone down there," She Who Knows said. "She's cleansing the shrine."

"Shrine? What? Where?"

"At the Three Rivers. -What's wrong with you, Sil-ver Cloud? You seem all confused!"

"The dream," he said. "Very bad."

He stomped forward, leaning on his staff. His mind was beginning to grow clear again. He knew where he was. There were three rivers meeting in the valley beyond.

Yes. The long pilgrimage backward along the trail had come to its end. They were camped on the high sloping plateau that looked down into the flat place where the three rivers flowed together. By the misty light of dawn Silver Cloud saw the rivers below, the largest one coming sluggishly in from the north carrying with it a rich cargo of blocks of ice, the two smaller and swifter ones merging at sharp angles out of the east and west.

Last year-it seemed like ages ago-they had paused in this very place for many weeks, hungry weeks at that, until the Goddess had miraculously sent them a herd of reindeer, so dazed with hunger themselves that the Hunting Society was easily able to drive a dozen of the bewildered beasts over the edge of a cliff. What a fine harvest of meat that had been! In gratitude they had built a wonderful shrine to the Goddess at the place where the rivers met, using the heaviest blocks of stone they could lift, and decorating them with a curious shining rock that they had been able to pry out of the side of the cliff in thin glittering sheets; and then they had moved onward, continuing their long eastward migration.

And now they had returned.

"I don't see Goddess Woman down there," Silver Cloud said to She Who Knows.

"She should be at the shrine."

"I see the shrine. I don't see Goddess Woman."

"Your eyes are no good any more. Silver Clofcd. Here, let me look."

She stepped in front of him and looked into the misty valley. After a moment she said, sounding perplexed, "No, you're right, she's not there. She must be on her way back already. But she said she was going to stay down there all morning, saying the prayers and purifying the shrine-"

"Silver Cloud! Silver Cloud!"

"Goddess Woman? What are you-"

The priestess came rushing up the side path that led from the valley. Her face was flushed and her robes hung askew and she was sucking in breath as though she had run all the way.

"What is it? What is it, Goddess Woman?"

"Other Ones!"

"What? Where?"

"All around the shrine. I didn't see them, but their footprints were everywhere. The long feet-I know those feet. The prints everywhere in the wet ground. Fresh prints, Silver Cloud. They're all over the place, down there. We've walked right into their midst!"

HOSKINS SAID, "And how's our boy doing this morning, Miss Fellowes?"

"Why don't you see for yourself, doctor?"

Hoskins' face registered a mixture of amusement and annoyance. "Why do you call me 'doctor' all the time?" he asked.

"Because you are one, or so I believe," she said, thinking of that "Ph.D." label so proudly engraved on the name-plate in his office.

"A doctorate in physics; that's all."

"A doctorate is a doctorate."

"And you've been accustomed for a long time to calling people in positions of authority 'doctor,' is that it? Especially if they happen to be men?"

His words startled her. They were right on the mark, of course: throughout her career the senior figures at the hospitals where she had worked had all had medical degrees. Most of them, by no means all, had been men. She fell easily and automatically into the habit of tacking the word "doctor" to every other sentence when addressing someone she regarded as her superior.

Her husband had been a doctor, too-with a Ph.D. in physics, like Hoskins. Miss Fellowes wondered strangely whether she would be calling him "doctor" too, as she did Hoskins, if they had managed to stay married all these years. A curious thought. She rarely thought of him at all any more; the whole notion of being married, of having a husband, had come to seem remote and implausible to her. She had been married for such a short time, such a long time ago.

"What would you prefer?" she asked. "Should I call you 'Mr. Hoskins,' then?"

"Most people around here call me 'Jerry.* "

Miss Fellowes looked at him strangely. "I couldn't do that!"

"You couldn't?"

"It-wouldn't feel right."

"Wouldn't feel right," Hoskins repeated, musingly. "To call me 'Jerry.' " He studied her closely, as though seeing her for the first time. His wide, fleshy face broke into a warm smile. "You really are a very formal person. I hadn't realized quite how formal, I guess. All right, then: you can go on calling me 'Dr. Hoskins,' if that's what you're most comfortable with. And I'll go on calling you 'Miss Fellowes.' "

What did he mean by that? she wondered.

Had he been thinking of calling her 'Edith'?

Nobody did that. Hardly anyone, at any rate: maybe six people in all the world. Most of the time she was 'Miss Fellowes' even to herself, whenever she thought of herself in the third person, which wasn't often. It was just a habit: she never gave it any thought at all. But how odd, she told herself now, to think of yourself diat way. How austere, how stiff. I have really become someone quite peculiar now that I'm middle-aged, Miss Fellowes thought. And I've never even noticed it.

Hoskins was still looking steadily at her, still smiling.

There was something very warm about the man, she realized suddenly, very likable. That too was a fact she hadn't noticed before. In their earlier meetings he had struck her mainly as someone who presented himself to the world as taut, guarded, inflexible, with only occasional moments when a little humanity showed through. But possibly the tensions of the final days before the Stasis experiment had made him seem that way; and now that the time-scoop had done its work and the success of the project was confirmed, he was more relaxed, more human, more himself. And quite a nice man indeed.

Miss Fellowes found herself wondering for an idle moment if Hoskins was married.

The speculation astonished and embarrassed her. He had told her a couple of weeks back that he had a son, hadn't he? A small son, barely old enough to know how to walk. Of course he was married. Of course. What could she be thinking of? She thrust the whole line of inquiry aside in horror.

"Timmie!" she called. "Come here, Timmie!"

Like Hoskins, the boy also appeared to be in a cheerful, outgoing mood this morning. He had slept well; he had eaten well; now he came hustling out of his bedroom, showing no uneasiness whatever at Hoskins' presence. He walked boldly up to Hoskins and uttered a stream of clicks.

"Do you think he's saying something, Miss Fellowes? Not just making sounds for the fun of hearing his own voice?"

"What else can he be doing but saying something, doctor? Dr. Mclntyre asked me the same thing yesterday when he heard Timmie speaking. How can anybody doubt that the boy's using a language-and a very elaborate one at that?"

"Dr. Mclntyre's extremely conservative. He doesn't believe in jumping to conclusions."

"Well, neither do I. But that's a genuine language or I'm not speaking one myself."

"Let's hope so, Miss Fellowes. Let's certainly hope so. If we can't develop any way of communicating with Timmie, then much of the value of having brought him here will be lost. Naturally we want him to tell us things about the world he came from. All manner of things."

"He will, doctor. Either in his language or in ours. And my guess is that he'll learn to speak ours long before we've found out anything about his."

"You may be right, Miss Fellowes. Time will tell, won't it? Time will tell."

Hoskins crouched down so that his face was on the same level as Timmie*s and let his hands rest lightly on the boy's rib-cage, fingers outspread. Timmie remained calm. Miss Fellowes realized after a moment that Hoskins was ever so gendy tickling the boy, working his fingertips lighdy around in an easy, playful way that bespoke more than a litde knowledge of how to handle small boys. And Timmie liked being tickled.

"What a sturdy litde fellow," Hoskins said. "Tough as they come. -So you're going to learn English, are you, Timmie? And then you'll dictate a book to us all about life in the Paleolithic Era, and everybody will want to read it and it'll be a big bestseller, and we'll start to see a little return on our investment in you, eh, Timmie? Eh?" He glanced up at Miss Fellowes. -"We've got a tremendous amount riding on this boy, you know. I hardly need tell you. Not simply money, but our entire professional futures."

"Yes. I imagine you do."

Hoskins tousled Timmie's thick unruly hair, patted the boy, and stood up. "We've been working on a shoestring budget for years, scrounging funds a dime at a time wherever we could. You can't believe the energy costs involved in maintaining Stasis, even for a moment- enough to power up a whole city for days-and the energy's only one part of the overhead we run here. We've been right on the edge of going under at least half a dozen times. We had to shoot the works on one big show to save ourselves. It was everything-or nothing. And when I say the works, I mean it. But Timmie here has saved us. He's going to put Stasis Technologies, Ltd. on the map. We're in, Miss Fellowes, we're in!"

"I would have thought bringing back a live dinosaur would have sufficed to achieve that, Dr. Hoskins."

"We thought so, too. But somehow that never captured the public's imagination."

"A dinosaur didn't?"

Hoskins laughed. "Oh, if we had brought back a full-grown brontosaurus, I suppose, or a rip-snorting tyran-nosaur, something on that order. But we had our mass limitations to deal with, you know, and they tied our hands considerably. Not that we would have known how to keep a tyrannosaur under control, even if we'd been able to bring one back. -I should take you across the way one of these days and let you see our dinosaur, I guess."

"You should, yes."

"He's very cute."

"Cute? A dinosaur?"

"You'll see. Yes. A cute little dinosaur. Unfortunately, people don't seem to be very excited by cute little dinosaurs. 'How interesting,' they said, 'these scientists have brought a live dinosaur back from prehistoric times.' But then they got a look at the dinosaur on television and they didn't find it very interesting at all, because it wasn t twice as high as a house and breathing fire, I guess. A

Neanderthal boy, now-an actual prehistoric human being, quite strange-looking but nevertheless something everyone can identify with and care deeply about-that'll be our salvation. -Do you hear that, Timmie? You're our salvation." To Miss Fellowes again Hoskins said, "If this hadn't worked out, I'd have been through. No doubt about it. This whole corporation would have been through."

"But we're all right now. We'll have plenty of money soon. Funds have been promised from every source. This is all wonderful, Miss Fellowes. So long as we can keep Timmie healthy and happy, and maybe get him to speak a few words of English-'Hello, everybody out there, this is Timmie from the Stone Age'-"

"Or some such thing," Miss Fellowes said drily.

"Yes. Some such thing. -Healthy and happy, that's the key to it all. If anything happens to him, our name is mud, and worse than mud, Miss Fellowes. Which makes you the central figure in our whole operation, do you realize that? We depend on you to provide a supportive, nourishing environment for our boy..Your word will be law: whatever Timmie needs, Timmie gets. You were absolutely right yesterday when you refused to let the media have a whack at him so soon."

"Thank you."

"Naturally, you understand that we do want to have a press conference just as soon as possible-that it's vital to everybody's interests that we maximize the publicity value of the Timmie project as quickly as we can-"

Suddenly Hoskins seemed less genial and likable again, more the driven executive who said things like "Trust me" when he was at his least trustworthy.

Coolly Miss Fellowes said, "Does that mean you want to bring them in here this afternoon?"

"Well, If you thought he was ready for-"

"I don't. Not yet."

Hoskins moistened his lips. "Your word is law. Just tell us when."

"I will."

"I mean, can you give us an estimate now? What about our having the press conference tomorrow? -The day after tomorrow?"

"Let's just put it on hold, doctor. All right? I simply don't want to commit Timmie to anything as stressful as a press conference at this point. He's still catching his breath, so to speak, still getting his feet on the ground- whatever metaphor you want to use. He's made fine progress after those first terrified moments. But he could revert in a second to the wild, frightened child you saw that night. Even Dr. Mclntyre yesterday managed to get him upset, after a while."

Hoskins looked troubled. "We can't keep the press out indefinitely, Miss Fellowes."

"I'm not talking about indefinitely. I'm talking about a few days. Two, three, four-let me be the judge of it, yes, Dr. Hoskins? My word is law?"

"Your word is law," Hoskins said, not sounding terribly pleased. He was silent for a moment. Then he said, "You haven't been out of the Stasis zone since the night of the experiment, have you, Miss Fellowes? Not even for a moment."

"No!" she said indignantly. "I know my responsibilities, Dr. Hoskins, and if you think-"

"Please, Miss Fellowes." He smiled and held up his hand. "I'm not implying anything. I'm just working my way around to pointing out that we really don't intend to cage you up in here with the boy twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I'm aware that in the critical first few couple of days it was best that you be on hand round the clock, and that in fact I told you at our first interview that you'd be on duty constantly in the beginning, at least. But Timmie seems to be stabilizing very nicely now. You'll need to work out a schedule of time off for recreation and relaxation. Ms. Stratford can fill in for you for an hour or so at first, and then perhaps you can have whole afternoons off, later on."

"Whatever you say."

"You don't sound very enthusiastic. I didn't realize you were such a workaholic, Miss Fellowes."

"That's not quite the right word. It's simply that- well, Timmie's in such a frighteningly vulnerable position. Disoriented, isolated, far from home-so much in need of love and protection as he comes to terms with what's happened to him. I haven't wanted to leave him even for a short while."

"Very commendable of you. But now that the worst of the transition is over, you've got to start coming out of here, if only for short breaks."

"If that's what you want, doctor."

"I think it's best. For your own good, Miss Fellowes. You're entitled to a little respite from your work. And I wouldn't want Timmie to become totally dependent on having you right here at hand, either. There's no telling what sort of intense bonding might develop if this full-time nursing goes on very much longer. And then, if for some reason you have to leave the Stasis zone, Timmie might not be able to handle that. The situation wouldn't be entirely healthy. Do you follow me?"

Miss Fellowes nodded. "You have a point there."

"Good. Do you want to try a little experiment, then? We'll call Ms. Stratford in and let her look after Timmie for an hour or two, and you come out with me this very day and I'll take you on a tour of the rest of the laboratory."

"Well-"

"You don't like it, do you? -Look, we'll put a beeper on you. If Ms. Stratford starts running into the slightest problem with Timmie, we'll have you back inside here in five minutes, okay? Trust me."

"All right," Miss Fellowes said, less grudgingly than before. She had to admit the validity of Hoskins' reasoning. Now that she had eased Timmie through the first two days, it probably would be wise to test the boy's ability to withstand her absence for a short while. "I'm willing to give it a try. Take me to see your dinosaur."

"I'll show you everything," said Hoskins. "Animal, vegetable, and mineral in equal parts." He looked at his watch. "Suppose I give you-ah-ninety minutes to finish up whatever you were doing when I arrived this morning, and to brief Ms. Stratford on what she needs to watch out for. Then I'll come back here and pick you up for a personal tour."

Miss Fellowes thought for a moment. "Make it two hours, I think."

"Two hours? Fine. I'll be back at eleven sharp. See you then. -You don't have any problems about this, do you?"

She smiled happily. "Actually, I'm looking forward to it. -You can spare me for a little while, can't you, Timmie?"

The boy made clicking sounds.

"You see, doctor? He knows when I'm asking him a question, and he responds, even if he doesn't know what I'm actually saying to him. There's a real intelligence inside that head of his."