Isaac Asimov - The Ugly Little Boy

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The Ugly Little Boy
By
Isaac Asimov
And, alone in the dim emptiness of the sleeping forecasde he appeared bigger, colossal, very
old; old as Father time himself, who should have come there into this place as quiet as a sepulchre
to contemplate with patient eyes the short victory of sleep, the consoler. Yet he was only a child of
time, a lonely relic of a devoured and forgotten generation...
-JOSEPH CONRAD, The Nigger of the Narcissus
PROLOGUE - Silver Cloud
SNOW HAD COME IN during the night, a fine dusting of it, thin as mist, traveling on the western
wind. It was snow that must have come a great distance. The scent of the sea was still on it, rising now
from the bleak broad tundra as die warmth of die early morning sun began to go to work on it.
Silver Cloud had seen the sea once, a long time ago, when he was a boy and the People still hunted in
the western lands. The sea was huge and dark and resdess, and when die sunlight struck it in a certain
way it gleamed like strange liquid fire. To enter it was death, but to look upon it was wonderful. He
would never see it again; that much he knew. The lands bordering the sea were held by the Other Ones
now, and the People were in retreat, steadily moving closer and closer each year to the place where die
sun is born. And even if the Other Ones were to disappear as suddenly as they had come, Silver Cloud
understood diat he would have no hope of returning to die coastal territory. He was too old, too lame,
too close to his end. It would take half a lifetime for the tribe to retrace its eastward path, perhaps more.
Silver Cloud did not have half a lifetime left. Two or three years, if he was lucky: mat was more like it.
But that was all right. He had seen the sea once, which was more than anyone else in the tribe could
say. He would never forget the scent of it, or its great surging strength. Now he stood on the high ground
overlooking the encampment, staring out at the unexpectedly snowy plains-opening his nostrils wide,
breathing deeply, letting the musky odor of the sea rise to him from below on the fiimes from the melting
snow. For just a moment he felt young again.
For just a moment.
A voice behind him said, "You mentioned nothing about snow last night when we made camp, Silver
Cloud."
It was the voice of She Who Knows. Why had she followed him up here? He had come up here to be
alone in the quiet time of the dawn. And she was the last person he wanted to be bothered by in this
private moment.
Slowly Silver Cloud swung round to face her.
"Is snow so unusual that I need to give warning every time it's on the way?"
"This is the fifth week of summer, Silver Cloud."
He shrugged. "It can snow in the summertime as well, woman."
"In the fifth week?"
"In any week," said Silver Cloud. "I remember summers when the snow never stopped, when it came
day after day after day. You could see the bright summer sun shining through it, and still the snow fell.
And that was in the western lands, where the summers are warmer than they are here."
"That was a very long time ago, before I was born. The summers are getting better everywhere, so
they all say, and it seems to be true. -You should have let us know that snow was coming, Silver Cloud."
"Is that so very much snow? It's only a light little dusting, She Who Knows."
"We could have put out the sleeping-rugs."
"For such a little dusting? Such a trifle of snow?"
"Yes. Who likes awakening with snow in the face? You ought to have told us."
"It didn't seem important," said Silver Cloud irritably.
"You should have told us anyway. Unless you didn't know it was coming, of course."
She Who Knows gave him a long hostile look, full of malice. She was becoming a very annoying
woman as age bit deeper into her, Silver Cloud thought. He could remember a time when she had been
the beautiful slender girl Falling River, with cascades of thick dark hair and breasts like summer melons.
Everyone in the tribe had desired her then: he too, he would not deny that. But now she had passed her
thirtieth winter and her hair had turned to white strings and her breasts were empty and men no longer
looked at her with desire, and she had changed her name to She Who Knows, and was putting on lofty
airs of wisdom as though the Goddess had entered into her soul.
He glared at her.
"I knew that the snow was coming. But I knew also that it wouldn't be worth mentioning. I felt the
snow in my thigh, where the old wound is, where I always feel the oncoming snow."
"I wonder if you really did."
"Am I a liar? Is that it?"
"You would have told us, if you knew snow was coming. You would have liked having a sleeping-rug
over you as much as anyone else. Even more so, I think."
"So kill me," Silver Cloud said. "I admit everything. I failed to feel the snow on the way. Therefore I
failed to give the warning and you woke up with snow on your face. It's a terrible sin. Call the Killing
Society, and have them take me behind the hill and hit me twelve times with the ivory club. Do you think
I'd care, She Who Knows? I've seen forty winters and a few more. I'm very old and very tired. If you'd
like to run the tribe for a while, She Who Knows, I'd be happy to step aside and-"
"Please, Silver Cloud."
"It's true, isn't it? Day by day you grow ever more bright within with great wisdom, and I simply grow
old. Take my place. Here. Here." He undid his bearskin mantle of office and thrust it brusquely in her
face. "Go on, take it! And the feather cap, the ivory wand, and all the rest. We'll go down below and tell
everybody. My time is over. You can be chieftain now. Here! The tribe is yours!"
"You're being foolish. And insincere as well. The day you'll give up the feather cap and the ivory wand
is the day we find you cold and stiffen the ground in the morning, not a moment before." She pushed the
mantle back at him. "Spare me your grand gestures. I don't have any desire to take your place, now or
after you're dead, and you know it."
"Then why have you come up here to bother me about this miserable little snowfall?"
"Because it's the fifth week of summer."
"So? We've already discussed this. Snow can come at any time of the year and you're perfectly well
aware of that."
"I've looked at the record-sticks. We haven't had snow this late in the year since I was a girl."
"You looked at the record-sticks?" Silver Cloyd asked, taken aback. "This morning, you mean?"
"When else? I woke up, I saw the snow, and it frightened me. So I went to Keeps The Past and
asked her to show me the sticks. We counted everything together. Seventeen years ago it snowed in the
fifth week of summer. Not since. -Do you know what else happened that summer? Six of our people
died in the rhinoceros hunt and four were killed in a stampede of mammoths. Ten deaths in a single
summer."
"What are you telling me, She Who Knows?"
"I'm not telling you anything. I'm asking you if you think this snow's an omen."
"I think this snow is snow. Nothing more."
"Not that the Goddess may be angry with us?"
"Ask the Goddess, not me. The Goddess doesn't speak much with me these days."
She Who Knows' mouth quirked in exasperation. "Be serious, Silver Cloud. What if this snow means
that there's some sort of danger lying in wait for us here?"
"Look," he said, gesturing grandly toward the valley and the plains. "Do you see danger out there? I
see a little snow, yes. Very little. And I also see the People awake and smiling, going about their
business, starting forth on another good day. That's what I see, She Who Knows. If you see the anger of
the Goddess, show me where it lies." Indeed everything seemed wonderfully peaceful to him down there.
In the main encampment the women and girls were building the morning fire. Boys too young to hunt
were wandering about nearby, rummaging through the light covering of snow to gather twigs and bits of
withered sod to be used as fuel. Off to the left in the domain of the Mothers he saw the babies being
given their morning meal-there was Milky Fountain, that inexhaustible woman, with an infant at each
breast, and Deep Water was leading the toddlers in a circle game, pausing now to comfort a small
boy-Skyfire Face, it was -who had fallen and barked his knee. Behind the place of the Mothers, the
three Goddess Women had built a cairn of rocks to serve as a shrine to Her and were very busy at it:
one of the priestesses setting out an offering of berries, another pouring onto the bloodstone the blood of
the wolf that had been killed yesterday, a third kindling the day-fire. Over on the other side Mammoth
Rider had set up his workshop and was already turning out flint blades, which he still made with perfect
workmanship despite the palsy that was steadily overtaking his limbs. Moon Dancer and one of her
daughters sat behind him, at work on their usual task of chewing hides to make them soft enough to turn
into cloaks. And far off on the horizon Silver Cloud saw the men of the Hunting Society in the field,
fanning out over the tundra, spears and throwing-sticks at the ready. The uneven long line of their
footprints still showed, a bare suggestion of them, anyway, the dark oudines of heels and splayed toes
proceeding outward from the camp in the rapidly vanishing snow.
Everything seemed peaceful, yes. Everything seemed normal and regular, a new day dawning in the life
of the People, who were as old as time and would endure until the end of days. Why should a little
midsummer snow cause any concern? Life was hard; snow was a commonplace thing and always would
be, all the year round; the Goddess had never promised anyone that the summer would be free from
snow, however kindly She had been in that regard in recent years.
Strange that he hadn't felt it coming toward them the night before, though. Or had he, and not paid
close attention? There were so many aches and pains these days; it was harder and harder to interpret
each one of them.
But all seemed well, nevertheless.
"I'm going down now," he said to She Who Knows.
"I just came up here for a little quiet time alone. But I see that I'm not going to be allowed to have it."
"Let me help you," she said.
Furiously Silver Cloud brushed away the hand she had extended toward him.
"Do I look like a cripple to you, woman? Keep your hands to yourself!"
She shook her shoulders indifferently. "Whatever you say, Silver Cloud."
But the track down from the high ground was rough and troublesome, and the light coating of melting
snow hid some of the small treacherous rocks from view and made them slick and slippery beneath his
feet. Before he had gone ten paces Silver Cloud found himself wishing his pride had allowed him to take
She Who Knows up on her offer. That would have been impossible, though. Nobody minded if he
limped a little, but if he started needing assistance on a gently sloping path like this they might begin
thinking it was time to help him to his final rest. Old people were revered, yes, but diey couldn't be
coddled beyond a certain point. In his day he had helped other old ones to their final rest, and a sad
business it was, too, making nests for them in the snow and standing by until the chill had carried them
into their last sleep. He wanted no such help for himself: let his time come when it came, not an hour
before. It would be soon enough anyway.
He was panting a little when he reached the bottom of the hill, and he felt warm and sweat-sticky
beneath his cloak of thick gray fur. But the descent hadn't been too bad. He was still strong enough to
hold his own.
Cooking smells reached Silver Cloud's nostrils. The laughter of children and the piercing cries of
infants drifted through the air. The sun was climbing swiftly. A sense of well-being pervaded his spirit.
In three more days it would be time for the Summer Festival, when he would have to dance in the
circle and sacrifice a young bullock and rub its blood on the chosen virgin of the year. And then take her
aside and embrace her to insure the success of the autumn hunt. Silver Cloud had been a little uneasy as
the time of the Summer Festival approached, thinking that he was getting a bit too lame to do a proper
job of dancing, and perhaps might bungle the sacrifice of the bullock as he had once seen another aging
chieftain do long ago; and as for the embracing of the virgin, he was a trifle uncertain about that part too.
But in the warmth of the morning all those fears dropped away. She Who Knows was becoming a
quavering old fool. The snow signified nothing. Nothing! This was a fine bright day. For the People a
glorious summer lay ahead, unfolding in ever-increasing warmth.
A pity that the Summer Festival wasn't to be held today, Silver Cloud thought. While his spirit was in
this upward-turning phase; while his body was, for the moment at least, experiencing a little rush of
renewed vigor. The dancing-the bullock-the embracing of the virgin-
"Silver Cloud! Silver Cloud!"
Hoarse breathless voices, ragged exhausted gasps, coming from the open 6elds beyond the place
where the Goddess Women were tending their shrine.
What was this? Hunters returning so soon? And in such haste?
He shaded his eyes and looked into the sun. Yes, it was Tree Of Wolves and Broken Mountain,
running toward the camp with all their might and calling his name as they ran. Tree Of Wolves was
waving his spear about in a frantic, almost crazy way; Broken Mountain didn't seem to have his weapons
with him at all.
They came staggering into camp and fell practically at
Silver Cloud's feet, wheezing, moaning, struggling for breath. They were two of the strongest and
swiftest of the men, but they must have run at full tilt all the way back from the hunting field and they were
at the end of their endurance.
Silver Cloud felt a great uneasiness coming over him, driving away that all-too-brief moment of joy and
peace.
"What is it?" he demanded, giving them no time to catch dieir breath. "Why are you back this early?"
Broken Mountain pointed back behind him. His arm was trembling like an old man's. His teeth were
chattering.
"Other Ones!" he blurted.
"What? Where?"
Broken Mountain shook his head. He had no strength left in him for words.
Tree Of Wolves said, with a tremendous effort, "We -didn't-see-them. Just their tracks."
"In the snow."
"In the snow, yes." Tree Of Wolves was on his knees, head hanging downward. Great racking
movements almost like convulsions ran through him from his shoulders to his waist. After a moment he
was able to speak again. "Their prints. The long narrow feet. Like this." He drew the shape of a foot in
the air with his fingers. "Other Ones. No doubt about it."
"How many?"
Tree Of Wolves shook his head. He closed his eyes.
"Many," said Broken Mountain, finding his voice again suddenly. He held up both his hands and
flashed all his fingers-again, again, again. "More than us. Two, three, four times as many. Marching from
south to north."
"And a little west," said Tree Of Wolves somberly.
"Toward us, you mean?"
"Maybe. Not-sure."
"Toward us, I think," said Broken Mountain. "Or us toward them. We might walk right into them if we
don't take care."
"Other Ones out here?" Silver Cloud said, as though speaking only to himself. "But they don't like the
open plains. This isn't their kind of country. There's nothing for them here. They should be staying closer
to the sea. Are you sure about the feet, Tree Of Wolves? Broken Mountain?"
They nodded.
"They are crossing our path, but I think that they won't come toward us," said Tree Of Wolves.
"I think they will," Broken Mountain said.
"I think they don't know we're here."
"I think they do," said Broken Mountain.
Silver Cloud put his hands to his face and tugged at his beard-hard, so hard that it hurt. He peered into
the east as though if he only looked intensely enough he would be able to see the band of Other Ones
marching across the track his people meant to take. But all he saw was the rising glare of the morning.
Then he turned and his eyes met those of She Who Knows.
He expected that she would be looking at him in a smug, self-righteous, vindicated way. The
unexpected midsummer snow had been a bad omen after all, hadn't it? And not only had he completely
failed to predict its coming, he had also utterly misinterpreted its dire significance. I told you so, She Who
Knows should be saying now. We are in great trouble and you are no longer Jit to lead.
But to his amazement there was no trace of any such vindictiveness in She Who Knows' expression.
Her face was dark with sorrow and silent tears were rolling down her cheeks.
She held her hand out toward him and there was something almost tender in the way she did it.
"Silver Cloud-" she said softly. "Oh, Silver Cloud."
She's not simply weeping for herself, Silver Cloud thought. Or for the danger to the tribe.
She's weeping for me, he realized in astonishment.
CHAPTER ONE - Loving
EDITH FELLOWES smoothed her working smock as she always did before opening the elaborately
locked door and stepping across the invisible dividing line between die is and die is not. She carried her
notebook and her pen although she no longer took notes except when she felt the absolute need for some
report.
This time she also carried a suitcase. ("Some games for the boy," she had said, smiling, to the
guard-who had long since stopped even thinking of questioning her and who waved her cheerfully on
through the security barrier.)
And, as always, the ugly little boy knew that she had entered his private world, and he came running to
her, crying, "Miss Fellowes-Miss Fellowes-" in his soft, slurring way.
"Timmie," she said, and ran her hand tenderly through die shaggy brown hair on his strangely shaped
little head. "What's wrong?"
He said, "Where's Jerry? Will he be back to play with me today?"
"Not today, no."
"I'm sorry about what happened."
"I know you are, Timmie."
"And Jerry-?"
"Never mind about Jerry now, Timmie. Is that why you've been crying? Because you miss Jerry?"
He looked away. "Not just because of that, Miss Fel-lowes. I dreamed again."
"The same dream?" Miss Fellowes' lips set. Of course, the Jerry affair would bring back the dream.
He nodded. "The same dream, yes."
"Was it very bad this time?"
"Bad, yes. I was-outside. There were children there, lots of them. Jerry was there, too. They were all
looking at me. Some were laughing, some were pointing at me and making faces, but some were nice to
me. They said, Come on, come on, you can make it, Timmie. Just take one step at a time. Just keep on
going and you'll be free. And I did. I walked right away from here into the outside. And I said, Now
come and play with me, but then they turned all wavery and I couldn't see them any more, and I started
sliding backward, back into here. I wasn't able to stop myself. I slid all the way back inside and there
was a black wall all around me, and I couldn't move, I was stuck, I was-"
"Oh, how terrible. I'm sorry, Timmie. You know that I am."
His too-large teeth showed as he tried to smile, and his lips stretched wide, making his mouth seem to
thrust even farther forward from his face than it actually did.
"When will I be big enough to go out there, Miss Fellowes? To really go outside? Not just in dreams?"
"Soon," she said softly, feeling her heart break. "Soon."
Miss Fellowes let him take her hand. She lovea the warm touch of the thick dry skin of his palm
against hers.
He tugged at her, drawing her inward, leading her through the three rooms that made up the whole of
Stasis Section One-comfortable enough, yes, but an eternal prison for the ugly little boy all the seven
(Was it seven? Who could be sure?) years of his life.
He led her to the one window, looking out onto a scrubby woodland section of the world of is (now
hidden by night). There was a fence out there, and a dour glaring notice on a billboard, warning all and
sundry to keep out on pain of this or that dire punishment.
Timmie pressed his nose against the window.
"Tell me what's out there again, Miss Fellowes."
"Better places. Nicer places," she said sadly.
As she had done so many times before over the past three years, she studied him covertly out of the
corner of her eye, looking at his poor little imprisoned face outlined in profile against the window. His
forehead retreated in a flat slope and his thick coarse hair lay down upon it in tufts that she had never
been able to straighten. The back of his skull bulged weirdly, giving his head an overheavy appearance
and seemingly making it sag and bend forward, forcing his whole body into a stoop. Already, stark
bulging bony ridges were beginning to force the skin outward above his eyes. His wide mouth thrust
forward more prominendy than did his wide and flattened nose and he had no chin to speak of-only a
jawbone that curved smoothly down and back. He was small for his years, almost dwarfish despite his
already powerful build, and his stumpy legs were bowed. An angry red birthmark, looking for all the
world like a jagged streak of lightning, stood out startlingly on his broad, strong-boned cheek.
He was a very ugly little boy and Edith Fellowes loved him more dearly than anything in the world.
She was standing with her own face behind his line of vision, so she allowed her lips the luxury of a
tremor.
They wanted to kill him. That was what it amounted to. He was only a child, an unusually helpless one
at that, and they were planning to send him to his death.
They would not. She would do anything to prevent it. Anything. Interfering with their plan would be a
massive dereliction of duty, she knew, and she had never committed any act in her life that could be
construed as going against her duty as she understood it, but that didn't matter now. She had a duty to
them, yes, no question of that, but she had a duty to Timmie also, not to mention a duty to herself. And
she had no doubt at all about which the highest of those three duties was, and which came second, and
which was third.
She opened the suitcase.
She took out the overcoat, the woolen cap with the ear-flaps, and the rest.
Timmie turned and stared at her. His eyes were so very big, so brightly gleaming, so solemn.
"What are those things, Miss Fellowes?"
"Clothes," she said. "Clothes for wearing outside." She beckoned to him. "Come here, Timmie."
She had actually been the third one that Hoskins had interviewed for the job, and the other two had
been the preferred choices of the Personnel people. But Gerald Hoskins was a hands-on kind of chief
executive who didn't necessarily accept the opinions of those to whom he had delegated authority without
taking the trouble to check those opinions out for himself. There were people in the company who
thought that that was his biggest fault as a manager. There were times when he agreed with them. All the
same, he had insisted on interviewing all three of the women personally.
The first one came with a three-star rating mom Sam Aickman, who was Stasis Technologies'
Personnel chief. That in itself made Hoskins a little suspicious, because Aickman had a powerful bias in
favor of hard-edge state-of-the-art sorts of people. Which was just the right thing if you happened to be
looking for an expert in implosion-field containment, or someone who could deal with a swarm of unruly
positrons on a first-name basis. But Hoskins wasn't convinced that one of Sam's high-tech types was
exactly the right choice for this particular job.
Her name was Marianne Levien and she was a real tiger. Somewhere in her late thirties: sleek, lean,
trim, glossy. Not actually beautiful-that wasn't the most precise word for her-but striking, definitely
striking.
She had magnificent cheekbones and jet-black hair that was pulled back tight from her forehead and
cool glittering eyes that didn't miss a thing. She was wearing an elegant business suit of deep rich brown
with gold piping that she might have picked up in Paris or San Francisco the day before yesterday, and
an oh-so-under-played little cluster of pearl-tipped gold strands at her throat that didn't strike Hoskins as
the sort of jewelry one usually wore to a job interview, especially one of this sort. She looked more like
an aggressive youngish executive who had a slot on the board of directors as her ultimate target than like
his notion of what a nurse ought to be.
But a nurse was what she was, fundamentally, even if that seemed a very modest designation for
someone of her professional affiliations and accomplishments. Her resume was a knockout. Doctorates in
heuristic pedagogy and rehabilitative technology. Assistant to the head of Special Services at Houston
General's childrens' clinic. Consultant to the Katzin Commission, the Federal task force on remedial
education. Six years' experience in advanced artificial-intelligence interfacing for autistic kids. Software
bibliography a mile long.
Just what Stasis Technologies, Ltd. needed for this job?
So Sam Aickman seemed to think, at any rate.
Hoskins said, "You understand, don't you, diat we'll be asking you to give up all your outside projects,
the Washington stuff, the Houston affiliation, any consulting work that might require travel. You'll basically
be pinned down here on a full-time basis for a period of several years, dealing with a single highly
specialized assignment."
She didn't flinch. "I understand that."
"I see that in the last eighteen months alone you've appeared at conferences in Sao Paulo, Winnipeg,
Melbourne, San Diego, and Baltimore, and that you've had papers read on your behalf at five other
scientific meetings that you weren't able to attend personally."
"That's correct."
"And yet you're quite sure that you'll be able to make the transition from the very active professional
career outlined in your resume to the essentially isolated kind of existence you'll need to adopt here?"
There was a cold, determined glint in her eyes. "Not only do I think I'll be completely capable of
making the transition, I'm quite ready and eager to do so."
Something sounded just a little wrong about that to Hoskins.
He said, "Would you care to expand on that a bit? Perhaps you don't fully grasp how-ah-monastic we
tend to be at Stasis Technologies, Ltd. And how demanding your own area of responsibility in particular
is likely to be."
"I think I do grasp that, Dr. Hoskins."
"And yet you're ready and eager?"
"Perhaps I'm a trifle less eager to run around from Winnipeg to Melbourne to Sao Paulo than I used to
be."
"A little touch of burnout, maybe, is that what you're saying, Dr. Levien?"
A shadow of a smile appeared on her lips, the first sign of any human warmth that Hoskins had seen
her display since she had entered his office. But it was gone almost as quickly as it had appeared.
"You might call it that, Dr. Hoskins."
"Yes, but would you?"
She looked startled at his unexpected sally. But then she drew a deep breath and reconstructed her all
but imperturbable poise with hardly any show of effort.
"Burnout might be too extreme a term for my current attitudinal orientation. Let me just say that I'm
interested in repositioning my energy expenditures-which as you see have been quite diffusely
manifested-so that they're allocated to a single concentration of output."
"Ah-yes. Exactly so."
Hoskins regarded her with a mixture of awe and horror. Her voice was a perfectly pitched contralto;
her eyebrows were flawlessly symmetrical; she sat splendidly upright with the finest posture imaginable.
She was extraordinary in every way. But she didn't seem real.
He said, after a little pause, "And what is it, exactly, that led you to apply for this job, other than the
aspect of allowing you a single concentration of energy expenditure?"
"The nature of the experiment fascinates me."
"Ah. Tell me."
"As every first-rate author of children's literature knows, the world of the child is very different from
the world of adults-an alien world, in fact, whose values and assumptions and realities are entirely other.
As we grow older, most of us make the transition from that world to this one so completely that we
forget the nature of the world we've left behind. Throughout my work with children I've attempted to
enter into dieir minds and comprehend the other-worldly nature of them as profoundly as my limitations
as an adult will enable me to do."
Hoskins said, trying to keep the surprise out of his voice, "You think children are alien beings?"
"In a metaphorical way, yes. Obviously not literally."
"Obviously." He scanned her resume, frowning. "You've never been married?"
"No, never," she said coolly.
"And I assume you haven't gone in for single parenting, either?"
"It was an option I considered quite seriously some years ago. But my work has provided me with a
sense of surrogate parenting that has been quite sufficient."
"Yes. I suppose that it has. -Now, you were saying a moment ago that you see the world of the child
as a fundamentally alien place. How does that statement relate to my question about what led you to
apply for this job?"
"If I can accept at face value the remarkable preliminary description of your experiment that I've been
given, it would involve me in caring for a child who quite literally comes from an alien world. Not in
space, but in time; nevertheless, the essence of the existential situation is equivalent. I'd welcome a
chance to study such a child's fundamental differences from us, by way of obtaining some parallactic
displacement that might provide additional insights for my own work."
Hoskins stared at her.
No, he thought. Not real at all. A cleverly made android of some sort. A robotic nursoid. Except they
hadn't perfected robots of this level of quality yet-he was pertain of that. So she had to be a
flesh-and-Wood human being. But she certainly didn't act like one.
He said, "That may not be so easy. There may be difficulties in communication. The child very likely
will have a speech impediment, you know. As a matter of fact there's a good chance that it may be
virtually incapable of speech at all."
"It?"
"He, she. We can't tell you which, just yet. You do realize that the child won't be arriving here for
another three weeks, give or take a day or two, and until the moment it arrives we'll basically know
nothing about its actual nature."
She seemed indifferent to that. "I'm aware of the risks. The child may be drastically handicapped
vocally, physically, and perhaps intellectually."
"Yes, you may well have to deal with it the way you'd deal with a severely retarded child of our own
era. We just don't know. We'll be handing you a complete unknown."
"I'm prepared to meet that challenge," she said. "Or any other. Challenge is what interests me, Dr.
Hoskins."
He believed that. The conditional and even speculative nature of the job description had produced no
reaction in her. She seemed ready to face anything and didn't seem concerned with the whys and
wherefores.
It wasn't hard to see why Sam Aickman had been so impressed with her.
Hoskins was silent again for a moment, just long enough to give her an opening. Marianne Levien
didn't hesitate to take advantage of it.
She reached into her attache case and drew forth a hand-held computer, no bigger than a large coin.
"I've brought with me," she said, "a program that I've been working on since the word came across on
the computer network that you were open for applications for this position. It's a variation on some work
I did with brain-damaged children seven yean ago in Peru: six algorithms defining and modifying
communications flow. Essentially they bypass the normal verbal channels of the mind and-"
"Thank you," Hoskins said smoothly, staring at the tiny device in her outstretched hand as though she
were offering him a bomb. "But there are all sorts of legal complexities preventing me from looking at
your material until you're actually an employee of Stasis Technologies, Ltd. Once you're under contract,
naturally, I'U be glad to discuss your prior research with you in detail, but until then-"
"Of course," she said. Color flooded her flawless cheeks. A tactical error, and she knew it:
overeagerness, even pushiness. Hoskins watched her elaborately making her recovery. "I quite see the
situation. It was foolish of me to try to jump past the formalities like that. But I hope you can understand,
Dr. Hoskins, tliat despite this very carefully burnished facade of mine that you see I'm basically a
researcher, with all the enthusiasm of a brand-new graduate student setting out to uncover the secrets of
the universe, and sometimes despite all my knowledge of what's feasible and appropriate I tend to
sidestep the customary protocols out of sheer feverish desire to get to the heart of-"
Hoskins smiled. Hoskins nodded. Hoskins said, "Of course, Dr. Levien. It's no sin to err on the side of
enthusiasm. -And this has been a very valuable conversation. We'll be in touch with you just as soon as
we've made our decision."
She gave him an odd look, as though surprised he wasn't hiring her on the spot. She had the good
sense not to say anything else except "Thank you very much" and "Goodbye," though.
At the door of his office she paused, turned, flashed one final high-voltage smile. Then she was gone,
leaving an incandescent image behind on the retina of Hoskins' mind.
Whew, Hoskins thought.
He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his forehead.
The second candidate was different from Marianne Levien in almost every way. She was twenty years
older, for one thing; for another, there was nothing in the least elegant, cool, intimidating, incandescent, or
androidal about her. Dorothy Newcombe was her name. She was plump, matronly, almost
overabundant; she wore no jewelry and her clothing was simple, even dowdy; her demeanor was mild
and her face was pleasantly jolly.
A golden aura of maternal warmth seemed to surround her. She looked like any child's ideal fantasy
grand-mother. She seemed so simple and easy-going that it was hard to believe that she had the
prerequisite background in pediatrics, physiology, and clinical chemistry. But it was all there on her
resume, and one other surprising specialty besides-a degree in anthropological medicine. For all the
wonders of twenty-first-century civilization, there still were primitive regions here and there on the globe,
and Dorothy Newcombe had worked in six or seven of them, in various parts of the world-Africa, South
America, Polynesia, Southeast Asia. No wonder she had Sam Aickman's seal of approval. A woman
who could have served as a model for a statue of the goddess of motherly love, and who was
experienced besides in the handling of children in backward societies-
She seemed exactly right in every way. After the oppressive hyperglossy perfection of the
too-awesome Marianne Levien, Hoskins felt so much at ease in this woman's presence that he had to
fight back a strong impulse to offer her the position right away, without even bothering to interview her. It
wouldn't have been the first time that he had allowed himself the luxury of giving way to a spontaneous
feeling.
But he managed to master it.
And then, to his astonishment and dismay, Dorothy Newcombe managed to disqualify herself for die
job before the interview had lasted five minutes.
Everything had gone beautifully up to the fatal point. She was warm and personable. She loved
children, of course: she had had three of her own, and even before that, as the eldest child in a large
family with an ailing mother, she had been involved in child-rearing from an early age, caring for her many
brothers and sisters as far back as she could remember. And she had the right professional background.
She came with the highest recommendations from the hospitals and clinics where she had worked; she
had stood up under the strangest and most taxing conditions of remote tribal areas without difficulty; she
enjoyed working with disadvantaged children of all sorts and was looking forward with the greatest
excitement to tackling the unique problems that the Stasis Technologies project was certain to involve.
But then the conversation came around to the subject of why she would be willing to leave her present
post-an important and apparently highly rewarding position as head of nursing at a child-care center of
one of the Southern states-for the sake of immuring herself in the secretive and closely guarded
headquarters of Stasis Technologies. And she said, "I know that I'll be giving up a great deal to come
here. Still, I'll be gaining a great deal, too. Not only the chance to do work of the kind I like best in an
area that nobody has ever worked in before. But also it'll give me a chance to get that damned nuisance
Bruce Mannheim out of my hair at last."
Hoskins felt a chill run through him.
"Bruce Mannheim? You mean the 'children in crisis' advocate?"
"Is there some other one?"
He drew his breath in deeply and held it. Mannheim! That loudmouth! That troublemaker! How on
earth had Dorothy Newcombe gotten herself mixed up with him? This was completely unexpected and
not at all welcome.
After a moment he said carefully, "Are you saying that there's sort of a problem between you and
Bruce Mannheim, then?"
She laughed. "A problem? I guess you could call it that. He's suing my hospital. Suing me, I suppose
I'd have to say. I'm one of the named defendants, actually. It's been a tremendous distraction for us for
the past six months."
A sickly sensation churned in the pit of Hoskins' stomach. He fumbled with the papers on his desk and
struggled to regain his equilibrium.
"There's nothing about this in your Personnel report."
"No one asked me. Obviously I wasn't trying to conceal anything or I wouldn't have mentioned it now.
But the subject just never came up."
"Well, I'm asking you now, Ms. Newcombe. What's this all about?"
"You know what kind of professional agitator Mannheim is? You know that he takes the most
far-fetched positions imaginable by way of showing everybody how concerned ha is for the welfare of
children?"
It didn't seem wise to get drawn into spouting opinions. Not where Bruce Mannheim was concerned.
Warily Hoskins said, "I know there are people who think of him that way."
"You phrase that in such a diplomatic way, Dr. Hoskins. Do you think he's got your office bugged?"
"Hardly. But I don't necessarily share your obvious distaste for Mannheim and his ideas. As a matter
of fact, I don't really have much of a position about him. I haven't been paying a lot of attention to the
issues he's been raising." That was a flat lie, and Hoskins felt uncomfortable about it. One of the earliest
planning papers dealing with the current project had said: Take every step to make sure that we keep
pests like Bruce Mannheim from landing on our backs. But Hoskins was interviewing her, not the other
way around. He didn't feel obliged to tell her anything more than seemed appropriate.
He leaned forward. "All I know, actually, is that he's a very vocal crusader with a lot of articulate ideas
about how children in public custody ought to be raised. Whether his ideas are right or not, I'm not really
qualified to say. About this lawsuit, Ms. Newcombe-"
"We've taken some small children off the streets. Most of them are third-generation drug users, even
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