The Ugly Little Boy

Chapter Four. Studying

  17

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

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

  He said, "May I come in?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "A little warm oatmeal can work wonders. "

  "He seems very attached to you already. "

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

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

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

  "Not an animal at all. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Of course. "

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Well, we hadn't thought about-"

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

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

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

  "Miss Fellowes!"

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

  "Please, Miss Fellowes. Please. "

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

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

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

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

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

  18

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

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

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

  "So I would hope. "

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

  "Three and a half years. "

  "You like him?"

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

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

  "Me? No. No, nothing of the kind!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Timmie?

  Where had that come from? She had no idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Timmie- Timmie-"

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

  She rang the bell and summoned Mortenson and Elliot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "I don't think there is," said the doctor. "We aren't going to get anywhere holding him down by brute force while I try to take my readings. "

  No, Miss Fellowes thought. The boy wasn't going to have any enthusiasm for having a tongue depressor pushed into his mouth or lights shined into his eyes, no tolerance at all for surrendering a sample of his blood, no willingness to have his temperature taken, even by a remote-control thermocouple relay. Reluctantly she nodded.

  Jacobs produced an ultrasonic tranquilizer ampoule from his kit and started to activate it.

  "You don't know anything about the appropriate dose," Miss Fellowes said.

  The doctor looked at her in surprise. "These doses are calibrated for a body weight of up to thirty kilograms. This should be well within tolerance. "

  "Calibrated for a human body weight of up to thirty kilograms, doctor. This is a Neanderthal child. We don't have any data on their circulatory systems at all. "

  Her own line of reasoning startled her. In some chagrin she realized that she had drawn a distinction between Neanderthals and humans once again. She didn't seem able to maintain a consistent philosophy about the boy. He is human, she told herself vehemently. Human, human, human. He's Timmie and he's human.

  But to Jacobs it was an issue not even worth discussing, apparently.

  "Even if he were a young gorilla or orangutan, Fellowes, I'd regard this as an appropriate dose. Human, Neanderthal, what does his circulatory system have to do with it? It's body mass that matters. -All right, a half dose this time. Just to take no risks with Hoskins' precious little creature. "

  Not only Hoskins', Miss Fellowes found
herself thinking, to her own astonishment.

  Jacobs stepped the dosage down and touched the ampoule to Timmie's forearm. There was a little buzz and the tranquilizer instantly began to do its work.

  "Well, now," the doctor said. "Let's get a little of that paleolithic blood of his, and a little prehistoric urine. -Do you have a stool sample for me, Fellowes?"

  "He hasn't moved his bowels since he's been here, Dr. Jacobs. The dislocation of the trip through time-"

  "Well, when he does, suppose you scrape some up off the floor and let me know, will you?"

  "He uses the toilet, doctor," Miss Fellowes said in a tone of ringing indignation.

  Jacobs looked up at her. Surprise and what could have been anger were evident in his expression; but then he laughed. "You're very quick to defend him, I see. "

  "Yes. Yes, I am. Is there anything wrong with that?"

  "I suppose there isn't. -All right, when die boy next uses the toilet, I want that sample if he happens to move his bowels. I take it he doesn't flush afterward yet, eh, Fellowes?"

  This time both Elliott and Mortenson laughed also. Miss Fellowes didn't share in the general amusement.

  Timmie seemed asleep-passive, at any rate, quiescent, tolerant. Jacobs had no difficulty opening his mouth to study his dentition. Miss Fellowes, who hadn't had an opportunity of seeing Timmie's teeth before, stared over Jacobs' shoulder, afraid that she was going to behold fierce, savage, ape-like fangs. But no, no: his teeth were nothing like that. They were somewhat large, larger than a modern child's, and they looked strong, but they were nicely shaped, evenly arranged, a very fine set of teeth indeed. And human, definitely human, no terrifying jutting incisors, no great projecting canine teeth. Miss Fellowes let out her breath slowly in a deep sigh of relief

  Jacobs closed the boy's mouth, peered into his ears, rolled back his eyelids. Looked at the palms of his hands, the soles of his feet, tapped his chest, palpated his abdomen, flexed his arms and his legs, dug his fingers lightly into the musculature of his forearms and thighs.

  "A little powerhouse is what he is. As you've already had reason to discover. Small for his age and slightly on the thin side but there's no indication of malnutrition. Once we get that stool sample I'll have some idea of what sorts of things he'd been eating, but the most probable guess is a high-protein low-starch diet, pretty much what you'd expect among hunters and gatherers living in a time of adverse climate. "

  "Adverse?" Miss Fellowes asked.

  "An ice age," Jacobs said, a Hide patronizingly. "That's what was going on most of the time during the Neanderthal era-a glacial period. "

  How would you know? she thought belligerently. Were you there? Are you an anthropologist?

  But she held her tongue. Dr. Jacobs was doing everything possible to rub her the wrong way; but nevertheless he was her colleague now, and they would have to maintain a civil relationship. For Timmie's sake, if for no other reason.

  19

  Timmie stirred and became restless by the time the medical exam was half over, and a little while later it was obvious that the tranquilizer had all but worn off. Which meant that a normal dose for an ordinary child of his size would have been the correct one, as Jacobs had insisted, and that Miss Fellowes had erred on the side of over-protectiveness. However else he might differ from a modern child, Timmie had reacted to the sedative just about the same way a modern child would have done. He was coming to seem more and more human as she got to know things about him.

  But Jacobs had accomplished all that he could by then anyway, and he packed up and left, saying that he'd return in a day or so to follow up on anything that looked unusual in the preliminary analysis.

  "Do you want us to stay?" Mortenson asked.

  "No need. Leave me with the boy. "

  Timmie grew calm as soon as they were gone. Evidently he had already adapted to Miss Fellowes' company; it was others who still made him nervous. But time would take care of that, Miss Fellowes thought.

  "That wasn't so bad, was it, Timmie? A little poking, a little prodding-but we have to find out a lot of things about you, don't you see?"

  He gazed solemnly at her, saying nothing. _ "You do see, don't you, Timmie?"

  He made a little growling sound, two syllables. To her astounded ears, it sounded like Timmie.

  Could it be? Did he know his own name already?

  "Say it again! Timmie. Timmie. "

  He uttered the two muffled syllables again. This time she wasn't so sure that he was saying Timmie at all. That could have been her own over-eager imagination. But the possibility was worth following up.

  She pointed at him. "Timmie-that's you. Timmie. Timmie. Timmie. "

  He was staring in silence again.

  "And I am-" She pointed to herself, momentarily stymied. Miss Fellowes seemed like too much of a mouthful. But Edith didn't sound right. Nurse? No, not right, either. Miss Fellowes it would have to be. "I-Miss Fellowes. You-Timmie. " She pointed. "I-Miss Fellowes. You-Timmie. " She went through the routine three*or four more times. He didn't respond at all. -"You think

  I'm crazy, don't you?" she asked him, laughing at her own foolishness. "Making all these incomprehensible noises at you, pointing, chanting. And I think all that's on your mind just now is your lunch, right? Am I right, Timmie? Lunch? Food? Hungry?"

  He uttered the two growled syllables again, and a few clicks for good measure.

  "Hungry, yes. Time for some high-protein low-starch food. The Ice Age special, right, Timmie? Well, let's see what we have here, now-"

  20

  Dr. Mclntyre of the Smithsonian's Department of Anthropology arrived in early afternoon. Hoskins took the precaution of calling in on the intercom to ask Miss Fellowes if she thought the boy would be able to handle another visitor so soon after the last one. She looked across the room. Timmie had eaten ravenously-an entire flask of some synthetic vitamin drink that Dr. Jacobs had recommended, plus another bowl of oatmeal and a small piece of toast, the first solid food she had risked letting him have. Now he was sitting on the edge of his bed, looking relaxed and contented, kicking his heels rhythmically back against the underside of the mattress, seeming for all the world like an ordinary little boy amusing himself after lunch.

  "What do you say, Timmie? You think you can stand another examination?"

  She didn't seriously expect a reply from him, and the clicking sounds that he made didn't seem to constitute one. The boy wasn't looking in her direction and went on kicking his heels. Just talking to himself, no doubt. But he definitely appeared to be in a good mood.

  "I think we can risk it," she said to Hoskins.

  "Good. -What was that I heard you call him? "Tim-mie?* What does that mean?"

  "It's his name. "

  "He told you his name?" Hoskins said, sounding thunderstruck.

  "Of course not. 'Timmie' is simply what I call him. "

  There was a short uncomfortable pause.

  "Ah," said Hoskins finally. "You call him 'Timmie. ' "

  "I have to call him something, Dr. Hoskins. "

  "Ah. Yes. Yes. 'Timmie. ' "

  " 'Timmie,' " Miss Fellowes said firmly.

  " Timmie. ' Yes. Very well. -I'll send Dr. Mclntyre in now, if that's all right, Miss Fellowes. To see Timmie. "

  Dr. Mclntyre turned out to be slender and dapper and very much younger than Miss Fellowes had been expecting-no more than thirty or thirty-five, she guessed. He was a small man, delicately built, with fine gleaming golden hair and eyebrows so pale and soft that they were virtually invisible, who moved in a precise, fastidious, elaborately mannered way, as if following some mysterious inner choreography. Miss Fellowes was taken aback by his elegance and daintiness: that wasn't at all how she had expected a paleoanthropologist to look. Even Timmie seemed mystified by his appearance, so very different from that of any of the other men he had encountered since his arrival. Eyes wide with wonder, he stared at Mclntyre as
though he were some glittering godlike creature from another star.

  As for Mclntyre, he appeared so overwhelmed by the sight of Timmie that he was barely able to speak. For a long moment he stood frozen just within the door, staring at the boy just as intently as Timmie was staring at him; then he took a few steps to his left, halted, stared again; and then he moved back past the door to the othfer side of the room, stopped there, stared some more.

  A trifle acidly Miss Fellowes said, "Dr. Mclntyre, this is Timmie. Timmie-Dr. Mclntyre. Dr. Mclntyre has come here to study you. And I suppose you can study him also, if you want to. "

  Mclntyre's pallid cheeks reddened. "I don't believe it," he said in a light voice husky with emotion. "I absolutely can't bring myself to believe it. The child is a pure Neanderthal! Alive, right before my eyes, an actual Neanderthal! -Forgive me, Miss Fellowes. You have to understand-this is something completely staggering for me, so utterly phenomenal, so totally astounding-"

  He was virtually in tears. It was an embarrassing display, all this effusiveness. Miss Fellowes found it a little irksome. But then, abruptly, her annoyance dissolved and empathy took its place. She imagined how a historian would feel if he were to walk into a room and find himself offered a chance to hold a conversation with Abraham Lincoln or Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great: or how a Biblical scholar would react if confronted with the authentic stone tablets of the Law that Moses had carried down from the summit of Mount Sinai. Of course he'd be overwhelmed. Of course. To have spent years studying something that was known only from the sketchiest of ancient relics, trying to understand it, painstakingly recreating the lost reality of it in your mind, and then unexpectedly to encounter the thing itself, the actual genuine itemBut Mclntyre made a swift recovery. In that deft graceful manner of his he moved quickly across the room and knelt just in front of Timmie, his face just a short distance from the boy's. Timmie showed no sign of fear. It was the first time he had reacted so calmly to anyone new. The boy was smiling and humming tunelessly and rocking lightly from side to side as though enjoying a visit from a favorite uncle. That bright glow of wonder still was gleaming in his eyes. He seemed altogether fascinated by the paleoanthropologist.

  "How beautiful he is, Miss Fellowes!" Mclntyre said, after a long moment of silence.

  "Beautiful? I haven't heard many people say that about him so far. "

  "But he is, he is! What a perfect little Neanderthal face! The supraorbital ridges-they've only just begun to develop, yet already they're unmistakable. The platycephalic skull. The elongated occipital region.

  - May I touch his face, Miss Fellowes? I'll be gentle. I don't want to frighten him, but I'd like to check a few points of the bony structure-"

  "It looks as though he'd like to touch yours," Miss Fellowes said.

  Indeed, Timmie's hand was outstretched toward Mc-Intyre's forehead. The man from the Smithsonian leaned a little closer and Timmie's fingers began to explore Mc-Intyre's brilliant golden hair. The boy stroked it as though he had never seen anything so wondrous in his life. Then, suddenly, he twined a few strands of it around his middle finger and tugged. It was a good hard tug.

  Mclntyre yelped and backed away, his face reddening.

  "I think he wants some of it," Miss Fellowes said.

  "Not that way. -Here, let me have a scissors. " Mclntyre, grinning now, snipped a bit of hair from his forehead and passed the shining strands to Timmie, who beamed and gurgled with pleasure. -"Tell me, Miss Fellowes, has anyone else who's been in here had blond hair?"

  She thought a moment. Hoskins-Deveney-Elliott

  - Mortenson-Stratford-Dr. Jacobs-all of them had brown hair or black or gray. Her own was brown shading into gray.

  "No. Not that I recall. You must be the first. " "The first ever, I wonder? We have no idea, of course, what color Neanderthal hair might have been. In the popular reconstructions it's almost always shown as dark, I suppose because Neanderthals are commonly thought of as brutal apish creatures, and most of the modern great apes have dark hair. But dark hair is more common among warm-weather peoples than it is in northern climates, and the Neanderthals certainly were well adapted to extreme cold. So they might have been as blond as your average Russian or Swede or Finn, for all we know. "

  "And yet his reaction to your hair, Dr. Mclntyre-"

  "Yes. No doubt about it, the sight of it does something special for him. -Well, maybe the tribe he came from was entirely dark-haired, or perhaps the entire population in his part of the world. Certainly there's nothing very Nordic about this dusky skin of his. But we can't draw much that's conclusive from a sample consisting of just one child. At least we have that one child, though! And how wonderful that is, Miss Fellowes! I can't believe - I absolutely can't believe-" For an instant she feared that Mclntyre was going to allow himself to be overcome by awe all over again. But he seemed to be keeping himself under control. With great delicacy he pressed the tips of his fingers to Timmie's cheeks, his sloping forehead, his little receding chin. As he worked he muttered things under his breath, technical comments, apparently, words plainly meant for himself alone.

  Timmie endured the examination with great patience.

  Then, after a time, the boy launched into an extended monolog of clicks and growls, the first time he had spoken since the paleoanthropologist had entered the room.

  Mclntyre looked up at Miss Fellowes, his face crimsoning with excitement.

  "Did you hear those sounds? Has he made any sounds like that before?"

  "Of course he has. He talks all the time. "

  "Talks?"

  "What do you think he's doing, if not talking? He's saying something to us,"

  "You mean you assume that he's saying something to us. "

  "No," Miss Fellowes said, beginning to grow annoyed. "He's speaking, Dr. Mclntyre. In the Neanderthal language. There are definite patterns in the things he says. I've been trying to make them out, even to imitate them, but so far no luck. "

  "What kind of patterns, Miss Fellowes?"

  "Patterns of clicks and growls. I'm starting to recognize them. There's one set of sounds to tell me that he's hungry. Another to show impatience or restlessness. One that indicates fear. -I know these are only my own interpretations, and not very scientific. But I've been in here with this boy around the clock since the moment of his arrival, and I've had some experience in dealing with speech-impaired children, Dr. Mclntyre. I listen to them very carefully. "

  "Yes, I'm sure you do. " Mclntyre gave her a skeptical glance. "This is important, Miss Fellowes. Has anyone been taping these clicks and growls of his?"

  "I hope so. I don't know. " (She realized that she had been going to ask Dr. Hoskins about that. But she had forgotten all about it. )

  Timmie said something again, this time with a different intonation, more melodic, almost plaintive.

  "You see, Dr. Mclntyre? That was nothing like what he said before. -I think he wants to play with your hair again. "

  "You're only guessing about that, aren't you?"

  "Of course I am. I don't speak Neanderthal very fluently yet. But look-look, he's reaching out for you the way he did just before. "

  Mclntyre didn't seem to care for having his hair yanked again. He smiled and extended a finger to Timmie instead, but the boy had no interest in that. He said so, with an extended series of clicks punctuated by three unfamiliar high-pitched sounds that were midway between a growl and a whine.

  "I think you're right, Miss Fellowes!" said Mclntyre, his own voice rising. He looked flustered. "It does sound like formal speech! Definite formal speech. -How old do you think this child is?"

  "Somewhere between three and four. Closer to four, is my guess. There's no reason to be so surprised that he can speak so well. Four-year-olds are quite articulate, Dr. Mclntyre. If you have any children yourself-"

  "I do, as a matter of fact. She's almost diree and she has quite a lot to say. But this is a Neanderthal child.
"

  "Why should that matter? Wouldn't you expect a Neanderthal child of his age to know how to speak?"

  "At this point we have no real reason, Miss Fellowes, to assume that any Neanderthals of any age were capable of speech as we understand the concept. That's why the sounds this child is making are of such immense importance to our knowledge of prehistoric man. If they represent speech, actual organized patterns of sound with distinct grammatical structure-"

  "But of course that's what they represent!" Miss Fellowes burst out. "Speech is the one thing that distinguishes human beings from animals, isn't it? And if you think that you can get me to believe for one moment that this little boy isn't a human being, you-"

  "Certainly the Neanderthals were human, Miss Fellowes. I'd be the last person to dispute that. But that doesn't mean they had a spoken language. "

  "What? How could they have been human and not be able to speak?"

  Mclntyre drew a deep breath, the kind of exaggerated gesture of carefully hoarded patience that Miss Fellowes recognized all too well. She had spent her whole working life around people who assumed that she knew less than they did, because she was "only" a nurse. Most of the time that wasn't so, at least in the hospital. But this wasn't the hospital; and when it came to Neanderthals, she knew virtually nothing at all, and this fair-haired young man was an expert. She compelled herself to maintain an expression of studious interest.

  "Miss Fellowes," Mclntyre began, in an unmistakable here-comes-the-lecture tone, "in order for a creature to be able to speak, it needs not only a certain degree of intelligence but also the physical capacity to produce complex sounds. Dogs are quite intelligent, and have considerable vocabularies-but there's a difference between knowing what 'sit' and 'fetch' mean and being able to say 'sit' and 'fetch' yourself, and no dog since time began has ever been able to manage anything better than 'woof And surely you know that chimpanzees and gorillas can be taught to communicate quite well, through signs and gestures-but they can't shape words any more than dogs can. They simply don't have the anatomical equipment for it. "

  "I wasn't aware of that. "

  "Human speech is a very complicated thing," said Mclntyre. He tapped his throat. "The key to it is a tiny U-shaped bone called the hyoid, at the base of the tongue. It controls eleven small muscles that move the tongue and the lower jaw and also are capable of lifting and depressing the larynx to bring forth the vowels and consonants that make up speech. The hyoid bone isn't present in apes. Therefore all they can do is grunt and hiss. "

  "What about parrots and myna birds? They can speak actual words. Are you telling me that the hyoid bone evolved in them, and not in chimpanzees?"

  "Birds like parrots and mynas simply mimic the sounds humans make, using entirely different anatomical structures. But what they do can't be regarded as speech. There isn't any verbal understanding there. They don't have any idea of what they're saying. It's just a playback of the sounds they hear. "

  "All right. And Neanderthals-don't they have hyoid bones? If they're considered human beings, they must. "

  "We haven't been sure that they do," Mclntyre said. "You need to bear in mind, first, that the total number of Neanderthal skeletons ever discovered, since the first one came to light in 1856, is not quite two hundred, and a lot of those are fragmentary or otherwise badly damaged. And, second, that the hyoid bone is very small and isn't connected to any other bones of the body, only to the muscles of the larynx. When a body decays, the hyoid falls away and can easily be separated from the rest of the skeleton. Of all the Neanderthal fossils we've examined, Miss Fellowes, a total of one-one-still had a hyoid bone in place. "

  "But if one of them had it, all of them must have!"

  Mclntyre nodded. "Very likely so. But we've never seen a Neanderthal larynx. Soft tissues don't survive, of course. And so we don't know what function the hyoid served in the Neanderthal. Hyoid or not, we've had no way of being certain that the Neanderthals actually were capable of speech. All we can say is that the anatomy of the vocal apparatus was probably the same in Neanderthals as it is in modern humans. Probably. But whether it was developed sufficiently to allow them to articulate understandable words-or whether their brains were advanced enough to handle the concept of speech-"

  Timmie was clicking and growling again.

  "Listen to him," Miss Fellowes said triumphantly. "There's your answer! He's got a fine language and he speaks it perfectly well. And before he's been here much longer, he'll be speaking English, too, Dr. Mclntyre. I'm certain of that. And then you won't need to speculate any longer about whether the Neanderthals were capable of speech. "

  21

  Mclntyre seemed to want to solve all the Neanderthal riddles at once. He made clicking sounds at Timmie in the hope of eliciting clicks in return; he produced colored plastic blocks from his briefcase, some sort of intelligence test, no doubt, and tried to get Timmie to arrange them in sequences of size and color; he offered the boy crayons and paper and stood back waiting for him to draw something, which Timmie seemed to have no interest in doing; he had Miss Fellowes lead Timmie around the room by the hand, and photographed him as he moved. There were other tests he wanted to carry out on Timmie, too; but Timmie had his own thoughts about that. Just as Mclntyre began to set up some arrangement of spools and spindles, which looked like a toy but was actually a device to measure the boy's coordination, Timmie sat down in the middle of the floor and began to cry. Loudly.

  It was the first time he had really cried-as opposed to sobbing or whimpering or moaning-since the night he had arrived. It was the very familiar cranky bawling of a very tired child who had been pushed too far. Miss Fef-lowes was glad to hear it, though she was astonished at how wide his mouth could get when he opened it to its full extent, how his nose suddenly seemed even bigger than it already was, how far those strange heavy ridges of bone over his eyes protruded when he scrunched his eyes closed the way he was doing now. With his face distorted like this in anguish, he looked almost terrifyingly alien.

  And yet, and yet-that wailing sound, that ululating outpouring of emotion-if she didn't look at him, she could easily believe that the child who was thumping his heels against the floor and screaming his heart out was simply any ordinary four-year-old having a severe attack of impatience.

  "What did I do that upset him like that?" Mclntyre asked.

  "You outlasted his attention span, I imagine," said Miss Fellowes. "You wore out your welcome. He's only a little boy, Dr. Mclntyre. He can't be expected to put up with an endless amount of chivvying and probing. -A little boy who's very recently been through a highly traumatic separation from anything and everything that he can understand, I ought to remind you. "

  "But I wasn't chivvying and-well, perhaps I was. I'm sorry about that. -Here, Timmie-here, see the hair? See the bright hair? Do you want to play with my hair? Do you want to pull my hair?"

  Mclntyre was dangling his golden forelock practically in Timmie's face. Timmie took no notice. His screaming grew even louder.

  Disgustedly Miss Fellowes said, "He doesn't want to play with your hair right now, Dr. Mclntyre. And if he does decide to pull it, I think you'll regret it. Best to let him be. There'll be plenty of other opportunities to examine him. "

  "Yes. So there will. " The paleoanthropologist stood up, looking abashed. "You understand, Miss Fellowes, this is like being handed a sealed book containing the answers to all the mysteries of the ages. I want to open it and read it right away. Every page of it. "

  "I understand. But I'm afraid that your book is hungry and cranky and I think he'd like to go to the bathroom, besides. "

  "Yes. Yes, of course. "

  Mclntyre hastily began to gather up all of his testing equipment. As he started to put the spools and spindles away, Miss Fellowes said, "Can you leave one of those here?"

  "You want to test his intelligence yourself?"

  "I have no need to test his intelligence, doctor. He seems quite in
telligent to me. But I think he could use a few toys, and this one already happens to be here. "

  Color came to Mclntyre's cheeks once again. He seemed to blush very readily, Miss Fellowes thought.

  "Of course. Here. "

  "And-speaking of open books, Dr. Mclntyre, do you think you could arrange to get me some material about Neanderthal Man? Two or three basic texts, something that might provide me with a little of the fundamental information that nobody has bothered to supply me with up till now? -They can be fairly technical. I'm quite capable of reading scientific prose. I need to know things about the Neanderthal anatomy, their way of life, the sort of foods they ate, whatever has been discovered up to this point. Could you do that for me?"

  "I'll have everything you'll need sent over first thing tomorrow. Though I warn you, Miss Fellowes, that what we know about Neanderthals now is next to nothing, compared with what we're going to find out from Tim-mie as this project unfolds. "

  "All in due course. " She grinned. "You are eager to get at him, aren't you?"

  "Obviously. "

  "Well, you'll have to be patient about it, I'm afraid. I won't let you wear the boy out. We've subjected him to too much intrusion today, and that isn't going to happen again. "

  Mclntyre looked uncomfortable. He managed a rigid little smile and headed for the door.

  "And when you pick out the books for me, doctor-"

  "Yes?" Mclntyre said.

  "I particularly would like to have one that discusses Neanderthals in terms of their relationship to humans. To modern humans, I mean to say. How they differed from us, how they're similar. The evolutionary scheme as we understand it. That's the information I want most of all. " She looked at him fiercely. -"They are humans, aren't they, Dr. Mclntyre? A little different from us, but not all that much. Isn't that so?"

  "That's essentially so, yes. But of course-"

  "No," she said. "No 'but of courses. ' We're not dealing with some sort of ape, here, that much I already know. Timmie's not any kind of missing link. He's a little boy, a little human boy. -Just get me some books, Dr. Mclntyre, and thank you very much. I'll see you again soon. "

  The paleontologist went out. The moment he was gone, Timmie's wailing tapered off into a querulous uncertain sobbing, and then, swiftly, to silence.

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

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

  Far from home, far from anything you ever knew.

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

  Little lost boy. My little lost boy.

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