The Ugly Little Boy

Chapter Seven. Resisting

  33

  SAM AICKMAN said, "Play the bastard's call one more rime, will you, Jerry?"

  Hoskins slipped the transcript cube into the access slot. On the screen at the front end of the boardroom Bruce Mannheim's face appeared, reproduced just as it had been on the screen of Hoskins' own telephone at the rime of the call. An insistendy blinking green rosette at the lower right-hand corner of the screen signaled that the call had been recorded with die knowledge and permission of the caller.

  Mannheim was a youngish, full-faced man with dense waves of thick red hair clinging close to his scalp and a ruddy, florid complexion. Though beards had been out of fashion for some years except among extremely young men and very old ones, he wore a short, neatly trimmed goatee and a bushy little mustache.

  The well-known advocate for the rights of children looked very sincere, very earnest, very serious.

  To Hoskins he also looked very annoying.

  On-screen, Mannheim said, "The situation is, Dr. Hoskins, dial our most recent discussion was not at all fruitful, and I simply can't take your word any longer that the boy is being held under acceptable conditions. "

  "Why?" die Hoskins on the screen replied. "Has my word suddenly become untrustworthy?"

  "That's not the point, doctor. We have no reason to doubt your word. But we have no reason to take it at face value, either, and some members of my advisory board have begun to feel that I've been too willing up to now to accept your own evaluations of the boy's status. The point is that diere's been no on-site inspection. "

  "You speak of die child as though he's some kind of hidden weapon, Mr. Mannheim. "

  Mannheim smiled, but there wasn't much amusement visible in his pale gray eyes. "Please understand my position. I'm under considerable pressure from die sector of public opinion diat I represent, Dr. Hoskins, Despite all your publicity releases, many people continue to feel that a child who was brought here as this one was and who is kept in what amounts to solitary confinement for an indefinite period is a child who is being subjected to cruel and inhuman punishment. "

  "You and I have been through all this more dian once," said Hoskins. "The child is receiving the best care in the world, and you know it. He has twenty-four-hour-a-day nursing attention and daily medical checkups and he's on a perfectly balanced diet that has already done wonders for his physical condition. We'd be crazy to do tilings any other way, and whatever else we may be, we aren't crazy. "

  "I grant you that you've told me all that. But you still aren't allowing any outside confirmation of the things you claim. And the letters and calls that I'm receiving daily- the outcries, the pressure from concerned individuals-"

  "If you're under pressure, Mr. Mannheim," said Hoskins unceremoniously, "may I suggest that it's because you've stirred this matter up by yourself in the first place, and now your own people are turning on you a little of the heat that you singlehandedly chose to generate?"

  "That's the way to talk to him, Jerry-boy!" said Charlie McDermott, the comptroller.

  "Maybe a bit on the blunt side, seems to me," Ned Cassiday said. He was the head of Legal: it was his job to err on the side of prudence.

  The recorded conversation was proceeding on the screen.

  "-neither here nor there, Dr. Hoskins. We have to keep returning to one basic point here, which is that a child has been ripped away from his parents and his home-"

  "A Neanderthal child, Mr. Mannheim. Neanderthal Man was a primitive, savage, nomadic form of humanity. It's anybody's guess whether or not Neanderthals had homes of any real sort, or even that they understood the concept of the parent-child relationship as we know it. For all we know we may have pulled this child out of an absolutely brutish, hostile, miserable existence-much more likely, I'd say, than the picture you offer of our callously yanking him out of his idyllic little Christmas-card family life back there in the Pleistocene. "

  "Are you telling me that Neanderthals are no more than animals?" Mannheim asked. "That the child you've brought back from the Pleistocene is actually just some kind of ape that walks on his hind legs?"

  "Certainly not. We aren't trying to pretend anything of the sort. Neanderthals were primitive but they were unquestionably human. "

  "-Because if you're going to try to claim that your captive has no human rights because he isn't human, Dr. Hoskins, then I must point out that scientists are completely unanimous in their belief that Homo neanderthatensis is in fact simply a subspecies of our own race, Homo sapiens, and therefore-"

  "Jesus Suffering Christ," Hoskins exploded, "aren't you listening to me at all? I just got through saying that we concede the point that Tirnmie is human. "

  "Timmie?" Mannheim said.

  "The child has been nicknamed Timmie around here, yes. It's been in all the news reports. "

  From the sidelines Ned Cassiday murmured, "Which was probably a mistake. Creates too much identification with the child as child per se. You give them names, you start making them seem too real in the eyes of the public, and then if there happens to be any sort of trouble-"

  "The child is real, Ned," Hoskins said. "And there's not going to be any trouble. "

  On screen Mannheim was saying, "Very well, doctor. We both agree that we're talking about a human child. And we have no real disagreement on another basic point, which as I said a few moments back is that you've taken custody of this child by your own decision and you have no legal claim to him. You've essentially kidnapped this child, I could quite accurately say. "

  "Legal claim? What legality? Where? Tell me what laws I've broken. Show me the Pleistocene court where I can be brought to justice!"

  "The fact that Pleistocene people have no courts doesn't mean that they have no rights," said Mannheim smoothly. "You'll notice that I use the present tense to refer to these extinct people. Now that time travel has become a working reality, everything is present tense. If we are capable of intruding on the lives of people who lived 40,000 years ago, then we must of necessity extend to those people the same human rights and courtesies that we regard as inalienable in our own society. You certainly wouldn't try to tell me that Stasis Technologies, Ltd.

  would have the right to reach into some village in contemporary Brazil or Zaire or Indonesia and simply seize any child it felt like seizing, purely for the sake of-"

  "This is a unique experiment of immense scientific importance, Mr. Mannheim!" Hoskins sputtered.

  "Now I think you're failing to listen to me, Dr. Hoskins. I'm not discussing motive; I'm discussing simple legalities. Even for the sake of scientific research, would you feel justified in swooping down on some child in his native village in some present-day tribal culture and bringing him here so that anthropologists could study him, regardless of the feelings of the child's parents or other guardians?"

  "Of course not. "

  "But tribal cultures of the past are fair game?"

  Hoskins said, "There's no analogy. The past is a closed book. The child now in our custody has been dead, Mr. Mannheim, for 40,000 years. "

  Ned Cassiday let out a gasp and began to shake his head violently. It struck Hoskins that Cassiday must see novel and disturbing legal ramifications here that probably should never have been allowed into the discussion.

  Mannheim said, "I see. The child is dead, but he receives round-the-clock nursing care? Come off it, Dr. Hoskins. Your reasoning's absurd. In the era of time travel the old distinctions between 'dead' and 'alive' no longer have the same validity. You've opened the closed book that you just spoke of, and you can't just close it again by your own say-so. Like it or not, we live in an age of paradox now. The child's as alive as you and I, now that you've moved him from his proper era to our own, and we both agree that he's human and deserving of the sort of treatment that any child is entitled to. And that brings us right back to the question of the care he's receiving while he's here among us. Call him a kidnap victim, call him the subject of a uniq
ue scientific experiment, call him an involuntary guest in our era, whatever semantic spin you want to put on things-all that really matters is that you've arbitrarily removed a child from his native environment without the consent of anybody concerned and you're keeping him locked up in some kind of containment unit. Must we continue to go around in circles? There's only one issue here. You know what it is. I represent a large body of concerned opinion and I've been asked to ascertain that the human rights of this unfortunate child are being properly respected. "

  "I object to your use of the word 'unfortunate. ' I've made it clear again and again that the child is-"

  "All right. I retract the word if it bothers you so much. The rest of my statement stands as is. "

  Hoskins said, making no attempt to conceal his thinning patience, "What is it specifically that you want from us, Mr. Mannheim?"

  "I've told you. On-site inspection, so that we can see the child's condition and attitude for ourselves. "

  The on-screen Hoskins closed his eyes a moment. "You're very persistent, aren't you? Nothing will please you short of coming in here and checking things out in person?"

  "You know the answer to that. "

  "Well, I'll have to get back to you, Mr. Mannheim. We've been allowing only qualified scientific investigators to see Timmie up till this point, and I'm not sure you fit that category. I'll need to convene a meeting of my advisory board to discuss all this. Thank you very much for calling, Mr. Mannheim. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. "

  The screen went dark.

  Hoskins looked around the room.

  "Well? There it is. You see the problem. He's like a bulldog who's got his teeth in the cuff of my pants. He won't let go no matter how I try to shake him off. "

  Ned Cassiday said, "And if you do manage somehow to shake the bulldog off, he'll come right at you again, and this time the teeth very likely will clamp onto your leg, Jerry, not just your pants cuff. "

  "What are you telling me, Ned?"

  "That we ought to let him have his on-site inspection. As a gesture of good will. "

  "That's your considered legal opinion?"

  Cassiday nodded. "You've been stonewalling this guy for weeks now, right? He calls, you give him a run-around, he calls again, you find some new way of deflecting his arguments, and so on and so on and so on. But you can't keep it up forever. He's just as stubborn as you are, and the difference is that in his case stubbornness looks like dedication to a worthy cause, and in your case it looks like willful obstructionism. -This is the first time he's actually asked to set foot on the premises, isn't it?"

  "Right," Hoskins said.

  "You see? He can always keep coming up with new maneuvers. And you can't counter this one with more press releases, or another interview with Candide Deveney on the sub-etheric. Mannheim'11 go public right away with claims that there's a cover-up going on here, that we have something terrible to hide. -Let him come and see the little boy. It might just shut him up long enough for us to get our work on this project finished. "

  Sam Aickman shook his head. "I don't think there's a reason in the world why we need to cave in to that colossal pain in the neck, Ned. If we were keeping the kid chained up in a closet, maybe-if he was just a miserable sickly bag of bones with pimples and scurvy, who cries bloody murder all day and all night-but the kid is flourishing, according to Jerry. He's putting on a little weight,

  I hear that he's even learning to speak some English-he's never had it so good and that ought to be obvious, even to Bruce Mannheim. "

  "Exacdy," Cassiday said. "We don't have anything to hide. So why should we give Mannheim the chance to make it seem as though we do?"

  "Good point," said Hoskins. He glanced around the room. "I'd like a show of opinion on this. Do we invite Mannheim here to see Timmie or don't we?"

  "I say to hell with him," Sam Aickman said. "He's nothing more than a pest. No reason in the world why we should cave in to him. "

  "I'm with Ned Cassiday," said Frank Bruton. "Let him come in so we can get this over with. "

  "It's risky," said Charlie McDermott. "Once he's in the door, there's no telling what further issues he'll raise. As Ned says, there's always some new maneuver. Allowing him to visit the boy won't get him off our backs and might just make the situation worse for us. I say no. "

  "What about you, Elena?" Hoskins said, turning toward Elena Saddler, who ran materiels procurement.

  "I vote for letting him come. As Ned says, we've got nothing to hide. We can't let this man go on smearing us the way he's done. Once he's been here, it's simply his word against ours, and we've got our televised glimpses of Timmie to show the world that we're right and he's wrong. "

  Hoskins nodded glumly. "Two for it, two against. So I get to cast the deciding vote. -Okay. So be it. I'll tell Mannheim he can come. "

  Aickman said, "Jerry, are you sure you want to-"

  "Yes," said Hoskins. "I don't like him any more than you do, Sam. Or want him sniffing around this place for so much as two minutes. He's a pest, just as you say. And it's precisely because he is such a pest that I've come around to thinking we'd better give him his way. Let him see Timmie, thriving and flourishing. Let him meet Miss Fellowes and find out for himself whether there's any sort of child abuse going on around here. I agree with Ned that the visit might just shut him up. If it doesn't, well, we're no worse off" than we are now: he'll continue to agitate and howl, and we'll continue to deny all his accusations. But if we simply refuse his request to visit, he'll wrap all sorts of bizarre new charges around our necks, and God only knows what we'll have to do to counter them. So my vote is for tossing the bulldog a bone. That way we stand a chance against him; the other way, we're sunk. Mannheim gets an invitation to come here, and so be it. -Meeting adjourned. "

  34

  Miss Fellowes was giving Tinimie his bath when the intercom sounded in the next room. The interruption drew a scowl from her. She looked at the boy in the tub. Bath-time was no longer an ordeal for him. It was more like sport: he looked forward to it every day. The sensation of lying half submerged in warm water no longer was threatening to him. Plainly it was a wondrous luxurious treat for him, not only the feel of the warm water itself, but the delight of coming forth pink, clean, sweet-smelling. And of course there was the fun of doing a litde splashing around. The longer he lived here, the more like an ordinary little boy Timmie was coming to seem. Miss Fellowes thought.

  But she didn't like the idea of leaving him in the tub for long, unattended. Not that she worried much about his drowning. Litde boys his age didn't generally drown in their tubs, and this one seemed to have a healthy enough sense of self-preservation. But if he decided to get out on his own, and somehow slipped and fellShe said, "I'll be right back, Timmie. You stay in the tub by yourself, all right?"

  He nodded.

  "Stay in the tub. In the tub. You understand?"

  "Yes, Miss Fellowes. "

  Nobody in the world would have recognized the sounds Timmie had uttered as being Yes, Miss Fellowes. Nobody but Miss Fellowes.

  Still a litde uneasy, she hurried into the other room and said to the intercom vent, "Who's calling?"

  "It's Dr. Hoskins, Miss Fellowes. I'd like to know if Timmie can stand another visitor this afternoon. "

  "He's supposed to have free time this afternoon. I'm already giving him his bath. He never has visitors after he's had his bath. "

  "Yes, I know. This is a special case. "

  Miss Fellowes listened for sounds from the bathroom. Timmie was splashing around vociferously, and obviously having a wonderful time. She heard the boy's pealing laughter.

  She said reproachfully, "They're all special cases, aren't they, Dr. Hoskins? If I let everybody in here who was some sort of special case, the boy would be on display to special cases all day and all night too. "

  "This one is really special, Miss Fellowes. "

  "I'd still rather not. Timmie's enti
tled to some time off, just like anyone else. And if you don't mind, Dr. Hoskins, I'd like to get back to his bath before-"

  "This visitor is Bruce Mannheim, Miss Fellowes. "

  "What?"

  "You're aware that Mannheim's been plaguing us with his standard sort of trumped-up charges and inflammatory nonsense practkally from the moment we announced that Timmie was here, aren't you?"

  "I suppose so," Miss Fellowes said. She hadn't actually been paying much attention.

  "Well, he's been calling here about every third day to register this or that expression of outrage. And finally 1 asked him what he wants from us and he said he insists on on-site inspection. That was the term he used: 'on-site inspection. ' Of Timmie. As if we had some sort of missile emplacement here. We aren't enthusiastic about it, but we had a board meeting and decided finally that it would do more harm than good to refuse. I'm afraid there's no choice, Miss Fellowes. We have to let him come in. "

  "Today?"

  "About two hours from now. He's a very insistent man.

  "You could have given me a little more notice. " "I would have if I could, Miss Fellowes. But Mannheim caught me by surprise when I called him to say we'd let him in. He told me he'd be right over; and when I said I wasn't sure that was workable, he started in again on all his suspicions and accusations. I think he was implying that we were playing for time so we'd be able to cover up all of the bruises Timmie has from the whippings we give him, or some such crazy thing. In any case, he also said that he'd be going before the monthly meeting of his board of directors tomorrow, and that this would be a fine chance for him to report to them on Timmie's condition, and therefore-" Hoskins let his voice trail off. "I know it's short notice, Miss Fellowes. Please don't put up a fuss, all right? Please. "

  She felt a burst of pity for him. Caught between the tireless political agitator on the one hand and the ill-tempered gorgon of a nurse on the other-the poor weary man.

  "All right, Dr. Hoskins," she said. "Just this once. - I'll see what I can do about having all the bruises covered over with makeup before he gets here. "

  She went back to the bathroom while Hoskins' gratitude was still coming out of the intercom. Timmie was busy conducting a naval battle between a green plastic duck and a purple plastic sea monster. The duck seemed to be winning.

  "You're going to have company this afternoon," Miss Fellowes told the boy. She was bubbling over with fury. "A man's coming here to check up on us. To see whether we've been mistreating you, if you can believe that. Mistreating!"

  Timmie gave her a blank look. His fledgling vocabulary didn't stretch anywhere nearly that far. Miss Fellowes hadn't really expected it to.

  "Who coming?" he asked.

  "A man," she said. "A visitor. "

  Timmie nodded. "Nice visitor?"

  "Let's hope so. -Come on, now, it's time to get you out of the tub and dry you off. "

  "More bath! More bath!"

  "More bath tomorrow. Come on, now, Timmie!"

  Reluctantly he clambered out of the tub. Miss Fellowes toweled him off and gave him a quick inspection. No, no whip marks showing. No sign of damage at all. The boy was in fine shape. Especially when she compared him with the filthy, scrufty, bruised and scratched child who had tumbled out of the Stasis scoop amidst a mass of dirt and pebbles and ants and chunks of grass on that first strange, frightening night. Timmie was glowing with good health. He had gained several pounds since then; his scratches had healed and his assortment of bruises had vanished long ago. His hair was neatly cut; his fingernails were trimmed. Let Bruce Mannheim try to find something to complain about. Let him try!

  Ordinarily she would have put Timmie into his pajamas after the bath; but everything was changed now, because of the visitor who was coming, the very special visitor. That called for formal dress: the purple overalls with the red buttons, Miss Fellowes thought.

  Timmie grinned when he saw them. They were his favorite overalls, too.

  "And now, I think, a nice little snack, before the company gets here. What do you say to that, Timmie?"

  She was still shaking with anger.

  Bruce Mannheim, she thought icily. That busybody. That troublemaker. A children's advocate, he called himself! Who had ever asked him to advocate anything? A professional agitator; that was all he was. A public nuisance.

  "Miss Fellowes?"

  Hoskins' voice was coming through on the intercom again.

  "What is it, doctor? Mr. Mannheim isn't due here for another half an hour, I thought. "

  "He's early," Hoskins said. "That's the sort of person he is, I'm afraid. " There was something strangely sheepish about his voice. -"And I'm afraid that he's brought someone with him, too, without telling us he was going to. "

  "Two visitors is too many," Miss Fellowes said adamantly.

  "I know. I know. Please, Miss Fellowes. I had no idea he was bringing someone else. But Mannheim's pretty insistent on having her see Timmie with him. And now that we've gone this far-the risk of offending him-you see? You see?"

  So he was begging again. This Mannheim really had him terrified. Where was the strong and indomitable Dr. Gerald Hoskins she once had known?

  "And who's this other person?" she asked, after a moment. "This unexpected guest?"

  "An associate of his, a consultant to his organization. You may even know her. You probably do. She's an expert on troubled children, someone mixed up with all sorts of governmental commissions and institutions, a very high-profile individual. She was even under consideration for a while, I should tell you, for the very job you have today, although we felt - I felt - that she didn't quite have the kind of warmth and sympathy we were looking for. Her name's Marianne Levien. I think she might be a litde dangerous. The last thing we can risk is to turn her away at the entrance, now that she's here. "

  Miss Fellowes put her hand over her mouth in horror.

  Marianne Levien! she thought, aghast. God preserve me. God preserve us all!

  35

  The oval door to the dollhouse opened and Hoskins came in, with two figures close behind him. Hoskins looked dreadful. His fleshy face seemed to be sagging, so that he appeared to have aged ten years in a day. His skin was leaden. His eyes had an oddly defeated, almost cowed expression that Miss Fellowes found strange and frightening.

  She scarcely recognized him. What was going on?

  He said, in a low, uneasy tone, "This is Edith Fellowes, Timmie's nurse. -Bruce Mannheim, Miss Fellowes. Marianne Levien. "

  "And this is Timmie?" Mannheim asked.

  "Yes," Miss Fellowes said, booming the word out to make up for Hoskins' sudden diffidence. "This is Tim-mie!"

  The boy had been in the back room, his bedroom and playroom, but he had tentatively poked forward when he had heard the visitors entering. Now he came toward them in a steady, bouncy, outgoing stride that drew a silent cheer from Miss Fellowes.

  You show them, Timmie! Are we mistreating you? Are you hiding under your bed, quivering with fear and misery?

  Resplendent in his finest overalls, the boy marched up to the newcomers and stared up at them in frank curiosity.

  Good for you, Miss Fellowes thought. And good for all of us!

  "Well," Mannheim said. "So you're Timmie. "

  "Timmie," said Timmie, though Miss Fellowes was the only one in the room who realized that that was what he was saying.

  The boy reached upward toward Mannheim. Mannheim evidently thought he wanted to shake hands, and offered his own. But Timmie didn't know anything about handshakes. He avoided Mannheim's outstretched hand and waggled his own in an impatient little side-to-side gesture, while continuing to strain upward as far as he could. Mannheim seemed puzzled.

  "Your hair," Miss Fellowes said. "I suspect he's never seen anyone with red hair before. They must not have had it in Neanderthal times and no redheads have visited him here. Fair hair of any sort appears to fascinate him tremendously. "

/>   "Ah," Mannheim said. "So that's it. "

  He grinned and knelt and Timmie immediately dug his fingers into Mannheim's thick, springy crop of hay-. Not only the color but also the coiling texture of it must have been new to him, and he explored it thoughtfully.

  Mannheim tolerated it with great good humor. He was, Miss Fellowes found herself conceding, not at all what she had imagined. She had expected him to be some sort of wild-eyed fire-breathing radical who would immediately begin issuing denunciations, manifestos, and uncompromising demands for reform. But he was turning out in fact to be rather pleasant and gentle, a thoughtful and serious-looking man, younger than she had expected, who seemed to be losing no time making friends with Timmie.

  Marianne Levien, though, was a very different sort of item. Even Timmie, when he had grown tired of examining Bruce Mannheim's hair and had turned to get a look at the other visitor, seemed hard-pressed to know what to make of her.

  Miss Fellowes had already formed her opinion: she disliked Levien on sight. And she suspected that it was Levien's unexpected arrival, rather than the presence of Bruce Mannheim, that was causing Dr. Hoskins such obvious distress.

  What is she doing here? Miss Fellowes wondered. What kind of trouble is she planning to make for us?

  Levien was known far and wide through the child-care profession as an ambitious, aggressive, controversial woman, highly skilled at self-promotion and the steady advancement of her career. Miss Fellowes had never actually come face to face with her before; but, as the nurse looked at her now, Levien appeared every bit as formidable and disagreeable as her reputation suggested.

  She seemed more like an actress-or a businesswoman -or like an actress playing the role of a businesswoman- than any sort of child-care specialist. She was wearing some slinky shimmering dress made from close-woven strands of metallic fabric, with a huge blazing golden pendant in the form of a sun on her breast and a band of intricately woven gold around her broad forehead. Her hair was dark and shining, pulled back tight to make her look all the more dramatic. Her lips were bright red, her eyes were flamboyantly encircled with makeup. An invisible cloud of perfume surrounded her,

  Miss Fellowes stared at her in distaste. It was hard to imagine how Dr. Hoskins could have considered this woman even for a fraction of a second as a potential nurse for Timmie. She was Miss Fellowes' antithesis in every respect. And why, Miss Fellowes wondered, had Marianne Levien been interested in the job in the first place? It required seclusion and total dedication. Whereas Levien, Miss Fellowes knew, was forever on the go, constantly buzzing all around the world to scientific meetings, standing up and offering firmly held opinions that other people of greater experience tended to find controversial and troublesome. She was full of startling ideas about how to use advanced technology to rehabilitate difficult children -substituting wondrous glittering futuristic machinery for the down-to-earth love and devotion that had usually managed to do the job throughout most of humanity's existence.

  And she was an adept politician, too-always turning up on this committee or that, consultant to one or another influential task force, popping up everywhere in all manner of significant capacities. A highly visible person, rising like a rocket in her profession. If she had wanted the job here that Miss Fellowes ultimately had gained, it must only have been because she saw it, somehow, as the springboard to very much bigger things.

  I must be very old fashioned, Miss Fellowes thought. All I saw was a chance to do some good for an unusual little boy who needed an unusual amount of loving care.

  Timmie put his hand out toward Marianne Levien's shimmering metallic dress. His eyes were glowing with delight.

  "Pretty," he said.

  Levien stepped back quickly, out of his reach. "What did he say?"

  "He admires your dress," Miss Fellowes said. "He just wants to touch it. "

  "I'd rather he didn't. It's easily damaged. "

  "You'd better watch out, then. He's very quick. "

  "Pretty," Timmie said again. "Want!"

  "No, Timmie. No. Mustn't touch. "

  "Want!"

  "I'm sorry. No. N-O. "

  Timmie gave her an unhappy look. But he made no second move toward Marianne Levien.

  "Does he understand you?" Mannheim asked.

  "Well, he isn't touching the dress, is he?" said Miss Fellowes, smiling.

  "And you can understand him?"

  "Some of the time. Much of the time. "

  "Those grunts of his," said Marianne Levien. "What do you think they could have meant?"

  "He said, 'pretty. ' Your dress. Then he said, 'want!' To touch, he meant. "

  "He was speaking English?" Mannheim asked in surprise. "I wouldn't have guessed. "

  "His articulation isn't good, probably for some physiological reason. But I can understand him. He's got a vocabulary of-oh, about a hundred English words, I'd say, maybe a little more. He learns a few every day. He picks them up on his own by this time. He's probably about four years old, you realize. Even though he's getting such a late start, he's got the normal linguistic ability that you'd expect in a child of his age, and he's catching up in a hurry. "

  "You say that a Neanderthal child has the same linguistic ability as a human child?" Marianne Levien asked.

  "He is a human child. "

  "Yes. Yes, of course. But different. A separate subspecies, isn't that so? And therefore it would be reasonable to expect differences in mental aptitude that could be as considerable as the differences in physical appearance. His extremely primitive facial structure-"

  Miss Fellowes said sharply, "It's not all that primitive, Ms. Levien. Go look at a chimpanzee sometime if you want to see what a truly subhuman face is like. Timmie has some unusual anatomical features, but-"

  "You used the word subhuman, not me," Levien said.

  "But you were thinking it. "

  "Miss Fellowes! Dr. Levien! Please! There's no need for such rancor!"

  Doctor Levien? Miss Fellowes thought, with a quick glance at Hoskins. Well, yes, yes, probably so.

  Mannheim said, glancing around, "These little rooms here-this is the boy's entire living environment?"

  "That's correct," Miss Fellowes replied. "That's his bedroom and playroom back there. He takes his meals here, and that's his bathroom. I have my own living area over here, and these are the storage facilities. "

  "He never goes beyond this enclosed area?"

  "No," Miss Fellowes said. "This is the Stasis bubble. He doesn't leave the bubble, not ever. "

  "A very confining sort of life, wouldn't you agree?"

  Hoskins said quickly, too quickly, "It's an absolutely necessary confinement. There are technical reasons for it, having to do with the buildup of temporal potential involved in bringing the boy across time, that I could explain in detail if you wanted the full background. But what it comes down to is that the energy cost of allowing the boy to cross the Stasis boundary would be prohibitive. "

  "So to save a little money, you plan to keep him cooped up in these few small rooms indefinitely?" Levien asked.

  "Not just a little money, Dr. Levien," Hoskins said, looking more harried than ever. "I said that the cost would be prohibitive. It goes even beyond cost. The available metropolitan energy supply would have to be diverted in a way that I think would cause insuperable problems for the entire utility district. There's no problem when you or I or Miss Fellowes cross the Stasis line, but for Timmie to do it would be, well, simply not possible. Simply not possible. "

  "If science can find a way to bring a child across forty thousand years of time," Marianne Levien said grandly, "science can find a way to make it possible for him to walk down that hallway if he wanted to. "

  "I wish that were true, Dr. Levien," Hoskins said.

  "So the child is permanendy restricted to these rooms," said Mannheim, "and if I understand you rightly, no research is currently under way to find a way around that pro
blem?"

  "That's correct. As I've tried to explain, it can't be done, not within the real-world considerations that we have to put up with. We want the boy to be comfortable, but we simply can't divert our resources into trying to solve insoluble problems. -As I told you, I can provide you later on with the full technical analysis, if you want to check it over. "

  Mannheim nodded. He seemed to be checking something off on some list he kept in his mind.

  Levien said, "What sort of diet is the boy on?"

  "Would you like to examine the pantry?" Miss Fellowes asked, in no very friendly way.

  "Yes, as a matter of fact. Yes, I would. "

  Miss Fellowes made a sweeping gesture toward the refrigeration cabinets.

  Take a good look, she thought. I think you'll be happy when you do.

  Indeed Levien seemed pleased by what she found-a bunch of vials and ampoules and drip-globes and mixa-tion pods. The entire inhuman assortment of synthetic diets, so remote from anything that Miss Fellowes thought of as wholesome food, that Dr. Jacobs and his associates had insisted Timmie had to eat against Miss Fellowes* vehement objections. Levien prowled through the racks of high-tech foodstuffs with evident approval. It was just the kind of superfuturistic stuff she'd be likely to go for, Miss Fellowes thought angrily. She probably ate nothing but synthetics herself. If she ate anything at all.

  "No complaints there," Levien said after a time. "Your nutrition people seem to know what they're doing. "

  "The boy does appear healthy," said Mannheim. "But I'm concerned about this enforced solitude of his. "

  "Yes," Marianne Levien chimed in. "So am I. Very much so. "

  Mannheim said, "It's bad enough that he's being deprived of the supportive tribal structures into which he was born-but the fact that Timmie has to do without companionship of any sort does indeed seem extremely troublesome to me. "

  "Don't I count as companionship, Mr. Mannheim?" Miss Fellowes asked, with some asperity. "I'm with him virtually all the time, you know. "

  "I was referring to die need for someone close to his own age. A playmate. This experiment is planned to run for a considerable length of time, Dr. Hoskins, is it not?"

  "There's a great deal we hope to learn from Timmie about the era from which he comes. As his command of English improves-and Miss Fellowes assures me that he's becoming quite fluent, even though it's not easy for some of us to make out exactly what he's saying-"

  "In other words, you intend to keep him here for a period of some years, Dr. Hoskins?" Marianne Levien said.

  "That could be, yes. "

  Mannheim said, "Perpetually penned up in a few small rooms? And never being exposed to contact with children of his own age? Is that any kind of life for a healthy young boy like Timmie, do you think?"

  Hoskins' eyes moved quickly from one to the other. He looked outnumbered and beleaguered.

  He said, "Miss Fellowes has already brought up the issue of getting a playmate for Timmie. I assure you that we've got no desire whatever to cripple the boy's emotional development or any other aspect of his existence. "

  Miss Fellowes glanced at him in surprise. She had brought the issue up, yes. But nothing had come of it. Since that one inconclusive conversation in the company cafeteria, Hoskins hadn't said the slightest thing to her in response to her request that Timmie be given a child to keep him company. He had brushed the idea off then as unworkable, and he had seemed so taken aback by the whole notion, in fact, that Miss Fellowes had hesitated to bring it up with him a second time. For the moment Timmie had been getting along quite satisfactorily on his own. But lately she had begun to look ahead, thinking that Timmie's adaptation to modern life was proceeding so quickly that the moment to raise the point again with Hoskins was approaching.

  And now Mannheim was raising it first, for which Miss Fellowes was immensely grateful. The children's advocate was absolutely right. Timmie couldn't be kept in here all by himself like an ape in a cage. Timmie wasn't an ape. And even a gorilla or a chimpanzee wouldn't do well cut off indefinitely from the society of his peers.

  Mannheim said, "Well, then, if you've already been working on getting a companion for him, I'd like to know what progress has been made along those lines. "

  Suddenly his tone was no longer so amiable.

  Sounding flustered, Hoskins said, "So far as bringing a second Neanderthal back to the present rime to put in here with Timmie goes, which was Miss Fellowes' original suggestion, I have to tell you that we simply don't intend-"

  "A second Neanderthal? Oh, no, Dr. Hoskins," said Mannheim. "We wouldn't want that at all. "

  "It's a serious enough matter that there's one already incarcerated here," Marianne Levien said. "To capture a second one would only compound the problem. "

  Hoskins shot her a venomous glare. Sweat was streaming down his face.

  "I said that we don't intend to bring a second Neanderthal here," he replied, virtually between clenched teeth. "That's never been under consideration. Never! There are a dozen different reasons why. When Miss Fellowes brought it up the first time, I told her-"

  Mannheim and Levien exchanged glances. They appeared bothered by Hoskins' sudden vehemence. Even Timmie began to seem a little alarmed, and moved up close against Miss Fellowes' side as though seeking protection.

  Smoothly Mannheim said, "We're all agreed, Dr. Hoskins, that a second Neanderthal would be a bad idea. That's not the point at all. What we want to know is whether it would be possible for Timmie to be given a- well, what word do I want? Not human, because Timmie is human. But modern. A modern playmate. A child of this era. "

  "A child who could visit Timmie on a regular basis," said Marianne Levien, "and provide him with the kind of developmental stimuli that would tend to further the healthy sociocultural assimilation which we all agree is necessary. "

  "Just a minute," Hoskins snapped. "What assimilation? Are you imagining a pleasant future life in some cozy little suburb for Timmie? Applying for American citizenship, joining a church, settling down and getting married? May I remind you that what we have here is a prehistoric child from an era so remote that we can't even call it barbaric-a Stone Age child, a visitor from what you yourself, Dr. Levien, once described with some accuracy as an alien society. And you think he's going to become-"

  Levien cut in coolly. "Timmie's hypothetical citizenship application and church membership aren't the issue, Dr. Hoskins, or any other such reductio ad absurdum. Timmie is still a child, and it's the quality of the childhood that he experiences that Mr. Mannheim and I are primarily concerned with. The conditions under which he's being held as of now are unacceptable. They would, I'm sure, have been unacceptable in Timmie's own society, however alien from ours in some respects it must surely have been. Every human society we know, no matter how remote its paradigms and parameters may be from ours, assures its children the right to a nurturing integration into its social matrix. There's no way that we can regard Timmie's present living conditions as providing him with that sort of adequately nurturant social matrix. "

  Acidly Hoskins said, "Which means in words of one syllable comprehensible by a mere physicist like myself,

  Dr. Levien, that you think Timmie ought to have a playmate. "

  "Not merely 'ought to,' " Levien said. "Must. "

  "I'm afraid we're going to take the position that companionship for the child is essential," said Mannheim in a less belligerent tone than Levien's.

  "Essential," Hoskins repeated bleakly.

  "A minimum first step," Levien said. "This is not to say that we are prepared to regard the boy's incarceration in our era for a prolonged period as acceptable or permissible. But for the moment, at least, we think we can waive our other outstanding objections and therefore the experiment can be permitted to continue-is that not so, Mr. Mannheim?"

  "Permitted!" Hoskins cried.

  "Provided," Marianne Levien continued serenely, "that Timmie be allowed the opp
ortunity to enjoy regular and emotionally nourishing contact with other children of his chronological peer group. "

  Hoskins looked toward Miss Fellowes for some sort of support under this onslaught. But she could offer him no help.

  "I have to agree, Dr. Hoskins," said Miss Fellowes, feeling like a traitor. "I've felt this way all along, and it's becoming more urgent now. The boy's coming along very nicely, indeed. But the point is close at hand where continuing to live in this kind of social vacuum will be very bad for him. And since there aren't going to be any other children of Timmie's own subspecies available to him-"

  Hoskins turned to her as if to say, You're against me too?

  There was silence for a moment in the room. Timmie, who seemed increasingly disturbed by the vocifet-ousness of the discussion, clung ever tighter to Miss Fellowes.

  At length Hoskins said, "Those are your terms, Mr. Mannheim? Dr. Levien? A playmate for Timmie or you'll bring your hordes of protesters down on my head?"

  Mannheim said, "No threats are being made, Dr. Hoskins. But even your own Miss Fellowes sees the need for implementing our recommendation. "

  "Right. And you think it'll be easy to find people who'll cheerfully let their young children come in here and play with a little Neanderthal? With all those fantastic notions circulating out there about how savage and ferocious and primitive Neanderthal Man must have been?"

  "It should be no harder," Mannheim said, "than being able to bring a little Neanderthal child into die twenty-first century in the first place. A good deal easier, I'd like to think. "

  "I can imagine what our counsel would have to say about that. The cost of liability insurance alone-assuming we can find anyone crazy enough to allow their child inside the Stasis bubble with Timmie-"

  "Timmie doesn't seem all that ferocious to me," said Mannheim. "He seems quite gentle, as a matter of fact. Wouldn't you say so, Miss Fellowes?"

  "And as Miss Fellowes pointed out earlier," Marianne Levien said with icy sweetness, "we must not regard Timmie as being in any way subhuman, merely as unusual in certain physical aspects. "

  "So of course you'd be delighted to let your own small child come in and play with him," said Hoskins. "Except you don't happen to have any children, do you, Dr. Levien? No, of course you don't. -What about you, Mannheim? Do you have a little boy you'd like to volunteer for us?"

  Mannheim looked stung. Stiffly he said, "That's neither here nor there, Dr. Hoskins. I assure you that if I had been fortunate enough to have children, I wouldn't hesitate to offer to help. -I understand your resentment at what you see as outside interference, doctor. But by transporting Timmie to our era, you've taken the law into your own hands. It's time now to consider the full implications of what you've done. You can't keep the boy in solitary confinement simply because there's a scientific experiment going on here. You can't, Dr. Hoskins. "

  Hoskins closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.

  "All right," he said finally. "Enough of this. I concede the point. We'll get a playmate for Timmie. Somewhere. Somehow. " His eyes blazed with sudden fury. "Unlike either of you, I do have a child. And if necessary, I'll bring him in to be Timmie's friend. My own son, if I have to. Is that enough of a guarantee for you? Timmie won't be left lonely and miserable any longer. All right? All right?" Hoskins glowered at them. -"Now that that's settled, do you have any further requests to make? Or can we be permitted to continue with our scientific work in peace?"