The Ugly Little Boy (35 page)

Midnight, she thought. That's the right time.

There would be no problem about her leaving and coming back that late. She often went there at night, even on nights when she had decided to sleep at her own apartment and had already left for the day. The guard knew her well and wouldn't dream of questioning her. He wouldn't think twice about why she happened to be carrying a suitcase, either. She rehearsed the noncommital phrase, "Some games for the boy," and the calm smile.

Games for the boy? Bringing them in at midnight?

But why should anyone doubt her? She lived only for Timmie. Everyone around here knew that. If she was bringing games for him in the middle of the night, well, that was the way she was. Why should he take any notice?

He didn't.

"Evening, Miss Fellowes. Big day today, wasn't it?"

"Very big, yes. -Some games for the boy," she said, waving the suitcase and smiling.

And went on past the security barrier.

Timmie was still awake when she entered the doll-house.

"Miss Fellowes-Miss Fellowes-"

She maintained a desperate pretense of normality to avoid frightening him. Had he been sleeping? A little, he said. He had had the dream again, and it had awakened him. So she sat with him for a rime, talking about his dreams with him, and listened to him ask wistfully about Jerry. She was as patient as she could force herself to be. There's no hurry, she told herself. Why should anyone be suspicious? I have every right to be in here.

And there would be few to see her when she left, no one to question the bundle she would be carrying. Timmie would be very quiet and then the thing would be done. It would be done and what would be the use of trying to undo it? They would let her be. They would let them both be. Even if what she was about to do blew every power line in six counties, there'd be no point afterward in bringing Timmie back to his place.

She opened the suitcase.

She took out die overcoat, the woolen cap with the ear-flaps, and the rest.

Timmie said, with a note of bewilderment and perhaps distress in his voice, "Why are you putting all these clothes on me, Miss Fellowes?"

She said, "I'm going to take you outside, Timmie. To where your dreams are."

"My dreams?" His face twisted in sudden yearning, yet fear was there, too.

"You don't need to be afraid. You'll be with me. You won't be afraid if you're with me, will you, Timmie?"

"No, Miss Fellowes." He buried his little misshapen head against her side, and under her enclosing arm she could feel his small heart thud.

She lifted him into her arms. She disconnected the alarm and opened the door softly.

And screamed.

Gerald Hoskins was standing there, facing her across the open door.

There were two men with Hoskins and he stared at her, looking as astonished as she was.

Miss Fellowes recovered first by a second, and made a quick attempt to push past him into the corridor; but even with the second's delay Hoskins had enough time to stop her. He caught her roughly and hurled her back through the door of the bubble and up against a chest of drawers. Then he waved the other two men in and confronted her, blocking the door.

"I didn't expect this. Are you completely insane?"

Miss Fellowes had managed to interpose her shoulder so that it, rather than Timmie, had struck the chest. Now she turned, clinging to Timmie tightly and glaring defiantly at Hoskins. But the defiance went out of her as she began to speak. In a pleading tone, she said, "What harm can it do if I take him, Dr. Hoskins? You can't put something like an energy loss ahead of a human life."

Hoskins nodded to the others, and they stepped in alongside her, looking ready to restrain her if it turned out to be necessary. Hoskins himself reached forward and took Timmie out of her arms.

He said, "A power surge of the size that doing what you were about to do would black out an immense area. It would cripple the whole city all the next day. Computers would be down, alarms wouldn't function, data would be lost, all kinds of trouble. There'd be a thousand lawsuits and we'd be on the receiving end of all of them.

The costs would run into the millions for us. Way up in the millions. We might even find ourselves facing bankruptcy. At the very minimum it would mean a terrible financial setback for Stasis Technologies, and a colossal public-relations fiasco. Imagine what people will say when they find out that all that trouble was caused by a sentimental nurse acting irrationally for the sake of an ape-boy."

"Ape-boy!" said Miss Fellowes, in helpless fury. "You know that that's what the reporters like to call him," said Hoskins. "And ordinary people all think of him that way. They still don't understand what a Neanderthal actually is. And I don't think they ever will."

One of the other men had gone out of the bubble. He returned now, looping a nylon rope through eyelets along the upper portion of the wall.

Miss Fellowes gasped. She remembered the rope attached to the pull-lever outside the room containing Professor Adamewski's rock specimen so long ago. She cried out, "No! You mustn't!" But Hoskins put Timmie down and gently removed the overcoat he was wearing. "You stay here, Timmie. Nothing will happen to you. We're just going outside for a moment. All right?"

Timmie, white-faced and wordless, managed to nod. Hoskins steered Miss Fellowes out of the dollhouse ahead of himself. For the moment she was beyond resistance. Dully she noticed the red-handled pull-lever being adjusted in the hallway outside. Odd how she had never paid attention to it before, never let it enter her consciousness.

The sword of the executioner, she thought. "I'm sorry, Miss Fellowes," Hoskins said. "I would have spared you this if I could. I planned it for midnight so that you'd find out only when it was over."

She said in a weary whisper, "You're doing this because your son was hurt. Don't you realize that jerry tormented this child into striking out at him?"

"This has nothing to do with what happened to Jerry."

"I'm sure it doesn't," Miss Fellowes said acidly.

"No. Believe me. I understand about the incident today and I know it was Jerry's fault. -Well, I suppose what happened today has speeded things up a little. The story has leaked out. No way that it wouldn't have, with the media crawling all over the lab today because of Project Middle Ages. And we'll be hearing stuff about 'negligence,' 'savage Neanderthalers,' all that nonsense, getting into the news, spoiling the coverage of today's successful experiment. Better to end the Timmie experiment right here and now. Timmie would have had to leave soon anyway. Better to send him back tonight and give the sensationalists as small a peg as possible on which they can hang their trash."

"It's not like sending a rock back. He's a human being, and you'll be killing him."

"Not killing. We've got no reason to think that the return trip is harmful. He'll arrive more or less in the same place we took him from, at a point in time that we calculate will be roughly ten weeks after his departure- plus or minus a couple of weeks, factoring in entropic drift and other little technicalities. And he won't feel a thing. He'll be back home-a Neanderthal boy in a Neanderthal world. He won't be a prisoner and an alien any more. He'll have a chance at a free life."

"What chance? He's seven years old at best, accustomed to be taken care of, fed, clothed, sheltered. Now he'll be alone in an ice age. Don't you think his tribe may have wandered off somewhere else in ten weeks* time? They don't simply sit still-they follow the game, they move along the trail. And even if by some miracle they were still there, do you think they'll recognize him? Three years older in ten weeks? They'd run screaming away. He'd be alone and he'd have to look after himself. How will he know how to do it?"

Hoskins shook his head. His expression was bleak, stony, implacable.

"He'll find his tribe again, and they'll take him in and welcome him back. I'm completely certain of it. Trust me, Miss Fellowes."

She looked at him in anguish.

"Trust you?"

"Please," he said, and suddenly there was anguish in his eyes too. "There's no way around this. I'm sorry, Miss Fellowes. Believe me, I am-sorrier than you'll ever give me credit for. But the boy has to go, and that's all there is to it. Don't make it any harder for me than it already is."

Her eyes were fixed on his. She stared steadily, in silence, for a long terrible moment.

At last she said, sadly, "Well, then. At least let me say goodbye to him. Give me five minutes alone with him. You can let me have that, can't you?"

Hoskins hesitated. Then he nodded.

"Go ahead," he said.

Timmie ran to her. For the last time he ran to her and for the last time Miss Fellowes clasped him in her arms.

For a moment, she hugged him blindly. She caught at a chair with the toe of one foot, moved it against the wall, set it down.

"Don't be afraid, Timmie." ^

"I'm not afraid if you're here, Miss Fellowes. -Is that man mad at me, the man out there?"

"No, he isn't. He just doesn't understand about us. -Timmie, do you know what a mother is?"

"Like Jerry's mother?"

"Well-yes. Like Jerry's mother. Do you know what a mother does?"

"A mother is a lady who takes care of you and who's very nice to you and who does good things."

"That's right. That's what a mother does. Have you ever wanted a mother, Timmie?"

Timmie pulled his head away from her so that he could look into her face. Slowly, he put his hand to her cheek and hair and stroked her, just as long, long ago she had stroked him.

He said, "Aren't you my mother?"

"Oh, Timmie."

"Are you angry because I said that?"

"No. Of course not."

"Because I know your name is Miss Fellowes, but- but sometimes, I call you 'Mother' inside. The way Jerry does his mother, only he does it out loud. Is that all right, that I was calling you that inside?"

"Yes. Yes, it's all right. And I won't leave you any more and nothing will hurt you. I'll be with you to care for you always. Call me Mother, so I can hear you."

"Mother," said Timmie contentedly, leaning his cheek against hers.

She rose, and still holding him, stepped up on the chair.

She remembered what Hoskins had said, about objects that weren't anchored being swept along in time with the transit object. A lot of the things in the room were anchored; some were not. Such as the chair she was standing on. Well, so be it: the chair would go. That wasn't important. Other things might go, too. She didn't know which would be caught in the time field and which would not. She didn't care. It was no problem of hers.

"Hey!" Hoskins shouted, from outside the bubble.

She smiled. She clutched Timmie tightly and reached up with her free hand, and yanked with all her weight at the cord where it hung suspended between two eyelets.

And Stasis was punctured and the room was empty.

SILVER CLOUD walked over to Goddess Woman where she squatted drawing magical circles in the snow and said, "I need to talk to you."

She went on doing what she was doing. "Talk, then."

"Can you stop drawing the circles for a moment?"

"The circles protect us."

"Stop anyway," Silver Cloud said. "Stand up and look me in the eye. I have a serious matter to discuss."

Goddess Woman gave him a sour, scowling look and got slowly to her feet. He thought he could hear her bones creaking as she came out of her squat.

The snow had stopped, at least for a little while. The sun was shining weakly, a late-season sun, low on the horizon.

"Well?" Goddess Woman said. "Talk."

"We have to leave this place," said Silver Cloud.

"Of course we do. Everyone's known that for a long time."

"We're going to leave this place, is what I mean. Today."

Goddess Woman scratched her rump thoughtfully. "We still haven't been able to worship at the shrine."

"No. We haven't."

"We came here to do that. If we leave without doing it-after having failed to hold the Summer Festival-the Goddess will be angry at us."

Silver Cloud said, in irritation, "The Goddess is angry at us. We know that already. She sent the Other Ones to occupy the riverbank and keep us from using the shrine. All right, then we can't use the shrine. But we can't stay any longer, either. We have no real shelter here and not much food and we're right on the edge of winter."

"You should have admitted these things to yourself a long time ago, Silver Cloud."

"Yes. I should have. But at least I'm admitting them now. When we are finished talking, I will give the order to break camp, and you will perform the rites of departure, and we will leave. Is that understood?"

Goddess Woman stood staring at him for a time.

Then she said, "Understood, yes. But you can no longer be chieftain after this, Silver Cloud."

"I know that. The Killing Society will convene and do what has to be done. I can be left behind as an offering to the Goddess. Some other chieftain will lead us up the hill and out to the east to find shelter."

"Yes," Goddess Woman said. What he had just said didn't seem to perturb her in any way. "And who will be chieftain after you? Blazing Eye? Broken Mountain?"

"Whoever wants to be," said Silver Cloud.

"And if more than one wants to be?"

He shrugged. "They can fight it out, then."

"But this is wrong. You should make a choice."

"No," he said. "My wisdom is used up. My day is over. Go, get yourself ready for what happens next, Goddess Woman. I am done talking with you." 

He walked away. She called his name, but he paid no attention. She hurled a snowball after him, and it struck his shoulder and snow ran down his back, but still he kept walking. He had no wish to talk with anyone now. This was his last day of life and he simply wanted to be calm, to be quiet, to pass the time peacefully until the Killing Society came for him with the ivory club. Tomorrow his leg would no longer hurt and someone else would bear his burdens of power.
 He stood by himself, looking across the way to the shrine that his people had never been able to use.

Some Other Ones were stirring about down there, by the edge of the river. Warriors, they were, and armed. What were they up to? Young Antelope was on sentry duty near the shrine, and he was pacing back and forth in an uneasy way. An attack? Was that what they had in mind? Taking the shrine by force?

It would be just my luck, Silver Cloud thought. We sit here in stalemate week after week, each side afraid of the other, neither one willing to risk seizing the shrine by force. And the very day I decide to withdraw and give the place to them, they decide to take it from us in battle. And we have no way of communicating with them, so we will have to fight, and many of us will die. Needlessly. If they would wait until tomorrow, the shrine would be theirs without a fight, for we would be gone from here.

"Blazing Eye!" he called. "Tree Of Wolves!"

The men came jogging over. Silver Cloud indicated what was going on down by the shrine.

"Are they going to start a fight?" Tree Of Wolves asked.

"The Goddess only knows, boy. But you'd better get yourselves ready, just in case. Tell the others. Tell everyone. Even the old ones." Silver Cloud held up his own spear. "I'll be fighting right alongside you, if they attack."

Blazing Eye looked at him incredulously. "You, Silver Cloud?"

"Why not? You think I've forgotten how?" Better to die in battle, he told himself, than to have to face the ivory club of the Killing Society. Though he would prefer no battle, and the peaceful departure of the People from this place.

Blazing Eye and Tree Of Wolves ran off to sound the alarm.

Then, suddenly, the woman She Who Knows came leaping forward out of nowhere, as though she had been stung. She had gone off by herself this morning, as she often did: wandering back up the trail along the hill that led to the east. She grew stranger and stranger every day, that one did.

"Silver Cloud! Silver Cloud! Look!"

He turned toward her. "Look at what?"

"On the hill! The light!" She whirled, pointing back behind herself. "Do you see it?"

"What? -Where?"

He narrowed his eyes and peered upward. He saw nothing unusual up there.

"Along the path," She Who Knows said. "Where we came down. You see a light?"

"No. -Yes! Yes!"

Silver Cloud felt a strange chill. It was a light of a sort that he had seen once before. The air was sparkling up there, giving off dazzling flashes of red and green. Shining loops and whorls of color danced in a wild wreath-like shape. And at the center of it was a zone of fierce white light so brilliant he could barely stand to look straight at it.

There had been light like that when they had descended the hill into this place many weeks before. On the day when the Goddess had seized the boy Skyfi^e Face.

He muttered a hoarse prayer. He heard Goddess

Woman chanting something behind him, and then the other two Goddess Women taking up the chant as well.

"What is that light, Silver Cloud?" someone asked him. "Tell us. Tell us!"

He shook the questioners off. Slowly, numbly, like a man who has walked too long in the snow and whose feet have turned to stone, he began to move toward the path that led up the hill. He had to get closer. He had to see.

"The Goddess is here again," a woman's voice whispered behind him.

He kept walking. He could hear the others following at his back. And, glancing down toward the shrine, Silver Cloud saw that the Other Ones too were aware of the apparition on the hillside, that they had halted whatever it was they were doing by the riverbank and were moving slowly toward it, drawn as irresistibly as he was by the urge to have a closer look.

"The Goddess is up there!" some woman moaned. "I see Her. I see Her!"

"The Goddess, yes!"

"The Goddess. And the Goddess is an Other One!"

"The Goddess is an Other One! Look at her! Look!"

Silver Cloud narrowed his eyes, straining to see what the others saw. But the light was too bright-that strange light, that bewildering whorl of color with the whirling whiteness at its heartThen the light began to fade. And Silver Cloud saw the Goddess.

She stood serenely on the hillside at the place where the strange light had glowed. She was of the Other Ones' kind, yes, very tall, very slender. Her skin was pale and her hair seemed fair and her lips were red, and her brow rose steeply and smoothly. She was wearing white robes of a kind that Silver Cloud had never seen before.

And she held a child in her arms. A child of the People.

Slowly, calmly, the Goddess descended the trail, coming down the hill to the group gathered at the base. Silver Cloud continued to go toward her. She Who Knows was at his left hand now, and Goddess Woman on his right, and Keeps The Past just behind him. They clustered close to him, as if they were as mystified as he was and wanted the protection of the chieftain's sacred presence as they went toward Her.

She was very near, now.

How strange her face was! And-though it was an Other One face, unquestionably an Other One face- how beautiful, how tranquil! She was smiling and her eyes were shining with joy.

And the boy she was holding-half-grown, he was, and dressed in a strange kind of robe-his eyes were shining, too.

"The mark on his face-" She Who Knows said. "Do you see? The skyfire sign! You know who that child is. Where is Red Smoke At Sunrise? Look, Red Smoke At Sunrise, the Goddess has brought back your lost son Skyfire Face!"

"But Skyfire Face was only a little boy. And this one is-"

"The mark, though! The mark on his face!" "Skyfire Face! Skyfire Face!" The shout went up on all sides.

Yes, Silver Cloud thought. Skyfire Face. It had to be him. How happy he looked! He was smiling, waving, calling out to them. In just a few weeks he had grown years older-some miracle of the Goddess, no doubt- but beyond question it was Skyfire Face, truly returned to them. Where had the boy been? Why had he been brought back now? Who could say? It was all some great and wondrous deed of the Goddess.

"Look," Keeps The Past whispered. "The Other Ones are coming."

Silver Cloud glanced around. Yes: the enemy was practically upon them, he saw. But not to make war: he could see that in their faces. Not only the warriors of the Other Ones were advancing up the hill, but all of them, the women and children and the old ones, too. And they all seemed as stunned by the appearance of the Goddess as were the People themselves-just as awed, just as humbled by this divine vision.

The Goddess stood waiting, holding the boy Skyfire Face still in her arms, and smiling. A golden light seemed to stream from them both.

Silver Cloud fell to his knees before them. Joy flooded from them in waves, bringing strange tears to his eyes, and he had to kneel to give thanks. Goddess Woman knelt also, and She Who Knows; and then he looked around and saw that the others too were dropping down to worship Her, both the People and the Other Ones. Everybody side by side, all thoughts of warfare forgotten, one by one kneeling in the snow, looking up with wondering eyes to pay homage to the shining figure with the smiling child in her arms who stood in their midst like a harbinger of springtime and peace.