The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

  It was a pleasant apartment, at that. The sun came into it at times, and there were more rooms than they had any right to expect, for the price. The next-door neighbor, a billowy blonde who talked of little except her migraine, said that it was hard to keep tenants in 4-D. It wasn't exactly haunted, but it had the queerest visitors. The last lessee, an insurance man who drank heavily, moved out one day talking about little men who came ringing the bell at all hours asking for a Mr. Pott, or somebody like that. Not until some time later did Joe identify Pott with Cauldron—or Calderon.

  They were sitting on the couch in a pleased manner, looking at Alexander. He was quite a baby. Like all infants, he had a collar of fat at the back of his neck, and his legs, Calderon said, were like two vast and trunkless limbs of stone—at least they gave that effect. The eye stopped at their incredible bulging pinkness, fascinated. Alexander laughed like a fool, rose to his feet, and staggered drunkenly toward his parents, muttering unintelligible gibberish. "Madman," Myra said fondly, and tossed the child a floppy velvet pig of whom he was enamored.

  "So we're all set for the winter," Calderon said. He was a tall, thin, harassed-looking man, a fine research physicist, and very much interested in his work at the University. Myra was a rather fragile red-head, with a tilted nose and sardonic red-brown eyes. She made deprecatory noises.

  "If we can get a maid. Otherwise I'll char."

  "You sound like a lost soul," Calderon said. "What do you mean, you'll char?"

  "Like a charwoman. Sweep, cook, clean. Babies are a great trial. Still, they're worth it."

  "Not in front of Alexander. He'll get above himself."

  The doorbell rang. Calderon uncoiled himself, wandered vaguely across the room, and opened the door. He blinked at nothing. Then he lowered his gaze somewhat, and what he saw was sufficient to make him stare a little.

  Four tiny men were standing in the hall. That is, they were tiny below the brows. Their craniums were immense, watermelon large and watermelon shaped, or else they were wearing abnormally huge helmets of glistening metal. Their faces were wizened, peaked tiny masks that were nests of lines and wrinkles. Their clothes were garish, unpleasantly colored, and seemed to be made of paper.

  "Oh?" Calderon said blankly.

  Swift looks were exchanged among the four. One of them said, "Are you Joseph Calderon?"

  "Yeah."

  "We," said the most wrinkled of the quartet, "are your son's descendants. He's a super child. We're here to educate him."

  "Yes," Calderon said. "Yes, of course. I ... listen!"

  "To what?"

  "Super—"

  "There he is," another dwarf cried. "It's Alexander! We've hit the right time at last!" He scuttled past Calderon's legs and into the room. Calderon made a few futile snatches, but the small men easily evaded him. When he turned, they were gathered around Alexander. Myra had drawn up her legs under her and was watching with an amazed expression.

  "Look at that," a dwarf said. "See his potential tefeetzie?" It sounded like tefeetzie.

  "But his skull, Bordent," another put in. "That's the important part. The vyrings are almost perfectly coblastably."

  "Beautiful," Bordent acknowledged. He leaned forward. Alexander reached forward into the nest of wrinkles, seized Bordent's nose, and twisted painfully. Bordent bore it stoically until the grip relaxed.

  "Undeveloped," he said tolerantly. "We'll develop him."

  -

  Myra sprang from the couch, picked up her child, and stood at bay, facing the little men. "Joe," she said, "are you going to stand for this? Who are these bad-mannered goblins?"

  "Lord knows," Calderon said. He moistened his lips. "What kind of a gag is that? Who sent you?"

  "Alexander," Bordent said. "From the year ... ah ... about 2450, reckoning roughly. He's practically immortal. Only violence can kill one of the Supers, and there's none of that in 2450."

  Calderon sighed. "No, I mean it. A gag's a gag. But—"

  "Time and again we've tried. In 1940, 1944, 1947—all around this era. We were either too early or too late. But now we've hit on the right time-sector. It's our job to educate Alexander. You should feel proud of being his parents. We worship you, you know. Father and mother of the new race."

  "Tuh!" Calderon said. "Come off it!"

  "They need proof, Dobish," someone said. "Remember, this is their first inkling that Alexander is homo superior."

  "Homo nuts," Myra said. "Alexander's a perfectly normal baby."

  "He's perfectly supernormal," Dobish said. "We're his descendents."

  "That makes you a superman," Calderon said skeptically, eyeing the small man.

  "Not in toto. There aren't many of the X Free type. The biological norm is specialization. Only a few are straight-line super. Some specialize in logic, others in vervainity, others—like us—are guides. If we were X Free supers, you couldn't stand there and talk to us. Or look at us. We're only parts. Those like Alexander are the glorious whole."

  "Oh, send them away," Myra said, getting tired of it. "I feel like a Thurber woman."

  Calderon nodded. "O.K. Blow, gentlemen. Take a powder. I mean it."

  "Yes," Dobish said, "they need proof. What'll we do? Skyskinate?"

  "Too twisty," Bordent objected. "Object lesson, eh? The stiller."

  "Stiller?" Myra asked.

  Bordent took an object from his paper clothes and spun it in his hands. His fingers were all double-jointed. Calderon felt a tiny electric shock go through him.

  "Joe," Myra said, white-faced. "I can't move."

  "Neither can I. Take it easy. This is ... it's—" He slowed and stopped.

  "Sit down," Bordent said, still twirling the object. Calderon and Myra backed up to the couch and sat down. Their tongues froze with the rest of them.

  Dobish came over, clambered up, and pried Alexander out of his mother's grip. Horror moved in her eyes.

  "We won't hurt him," Dobish said. "We just want to give him his first lesson. Have you got the basics, Finn?"

  "In the bag." Finn extracted a foot-long bag from his garments. Things came out of that bag. They came out incredibly. Soon the carpet was littered with stuff—problematical in design, nature, and use. Calderon recognized a tesseract.

  The fourth dwarf, whose name, it turned out, was Quat, smiled consolingly at the distressed parents. "You watch. You can't learn; you've not got the potential. You're homo saps. But Alexander, now—"

  Alexander was in one of his moods. He was diabolically gay. With the devil-possession of all babies, he refused to collaborate. He crept rapidly backwards. He burst into loud, squalling sobs. He regarded his feet with amazed joy. He stuffed his fist into his mouth and cried bitterly at the result. He talked about invisible things in a soft, cryptic monotone. He punched Dobish in the eye.

  The little men had inexhaustible patience. Two hours later they were through. Calderon couldn't see that Alexander had learned much.

  Bordent twirled the object again. He nodded affably, and led the retreat. The four little men went out of the apartment, and a moment later Calderon and Myra could move.

  She jumped up, staggering on numbed legs, seized Alexander, and collapsed on the couch. Calderon rushed to the door and flung it open. The hall was empty.

  "Joe—" Myra said, her voice small and afraid. Calderon came back and smoothed her hair. He looked down at the bright fuzzy head of Alexander.

  "Joe. We've got to—do something."

  "I don't know," he said. "If it happened—"

  "It happened. They took those things with them. Alexander. Oh!"

  "They didn't try to hurt him," Calderon said hesitatingly.

  "Our baby! He's no superchild."

  "Well," Calderon said, "I'll get out my revolver. What else can I do?"

  "I'll do something," Myra promised. "Nasty little goblins! I'll do something, just wait."

  And yet there wasn't a great deal they could do.

  -

  Tacitly they ignored the subjec
t the next day. But at 4 p.m., the same time as the original visitation, they were with Alexander in a theater, watching the latest technicolor film. The four little men could scarcely find them here— Calderon felt Myra stiffen, and even as he turned, he suspected the worst. Myra sprang up, her breath catching. Her fingers tightened on his arm.

  "He's gone!"

  "G-gone?"

  "He just vanished. I was holding him ... let's get out of here."

  "Maybe you dropped him," Calderon said inanely, and lit a match. There were cries from behind. Myra was already pushing her way toward the aisle. There were no babies under the seat, and Calderon caught up with his wife in the lobby.

  "He disappeared," Myra was babbling. "Like that. Maybe he's in the future. Joe, what'll we do?"

  Calderon, through some miracle, got a taxi. "We'll go home. That's the most likely place. I hope."

  "Yes. Of course it is. Give me a cigarette."

  "He'll be in the apartment—"

  He was, squatting on his haunches, taking a decided interest in the gadget Quat was demonstrating. The gadget was a gayly-colored egg beater with four-dimensional attachments, and it talked in a thin, high voice. Not in English.

  Bordent flipped out the stiller and began to twirl it as the couple came in. Calderon got hold of Myra's arms and held her back, "Hold on," he said urgently. "That isn't necessary. We won't try anything."

  "Joe!" Myra tried to wriggle free. "Are you going to let them—"

  "Quiet!" he said. "Bordent, put that thing down. We want to talk to you."

  "Well—if you promise not to interrupt—"

  "We promise." Calderon forcibly led Myra to the couch and held her there. "Look, darling. Alexander's all right. They're not hurting him."

  "Hurt him, indeed!" Finn said. "He'd skin us alive in the future if we hurt him in the past."

  "Be quiet," Bordent commanded. He seemed to be the leader of the four. "I'm glad you're co-operating, Joseph Calderon. It goes against my grain to use force on a demigod. After all, you're Alexander's father."

  Alexander put out a fat paw and tried to touch the whirling rainbow egg beater. He seemed to be fascinated. Quat said, "The kivelish is sparking. Shall I vastinate?"

  "Not too fast," Bordent said. "He'll be rational in a week, and then we can speed up the process. Now, Calderons, please relax. Anything you want?"

  "A drink."

  "They mean alcohol," Finn said. "The Rubaiyat mentions it, remember?"

  "Rubaiyat?"

  "The singing red gem in Twelve Library."

  "Oh, yes," Bordent said. "That one. I was thinking of the Yahveh slab, the one with the thunder effects. Do you want to make some alcohol, Finn?"

  Calderon swallowed. "Don't bother. I have some in that sideboard. May I—"

  "You're not prisoners." Bordent's voice was shocked. "It's just that we've got to make you listen to a few explanations, and after that—well, it'll be different."

  Myra shook her head when Calderon handed her a drink, but he scowled at her meaningly. "You won't feel it. Go ahead."

  She hadn't once taken her gaze from Alexander. The baby was imitating the thin noise of the egg beater now. It was subtly unpleasant.

  "The ray is working," Quat said. "The viewer shows some slight cortical resistance, though."

  "Angle the power," Bordent told him.

  Alexander said, "Modjewabba?"

  "What's that?" Myra asked in a strained voice. "Super language?"

  Bordent smiled at her. "No, just baby talk."

  Alexander burst into sobs. Myra said, "Super baby or not, when he cries like that, there's a good reason. Does your tutoring extend to that point?"

  "Certainly," Quat said calmly. He and Finn carried Alexander out. Bordent smiled again.

  "You're beginning to believe," he said. "That helps."

  Calderon drank, feeling the hot fumes of whiskey along the backs of his cheeks. His stomach was crawling with cold uneasiness.

  "If you were human—" he said doubtfully.

  "If we were, we wouldn't be here. The old order changeth. It had to start sometime. Alexander is the first homo superior."

  "But why us?" Myra asked.

  "Genetics. You've both worked with radioactivity and certain short-wave radiations that effected the germ plasm. The mutation just happened. It'll happen again from now on. But you happen to be the first. You'll die, but Alexander will live on. Perhaps a thousand years."

  Calderon said, "This business of coming from the future ... you say Alexander sent you?"

  "The adult Alexander. The mature superman. It's a different culture, of course—beyond your comprehension. Alexander is one of the X Frees. He said to me, through the interpreting-machine, of course, 'Bordent, I wasn't recognized as a super till I was thirty years old. I had only ordinary homo sap development till then. I didn't know my potential myself. And that's bad.' It is bad, you know," Bordent digressed. "The full capabilities of an organism can't emerge unless it's given the fullest chance of expansion from birth on. Or at least from infancy. Alexander said to me, 'It's about five hundred years ago that I was born. Take a few guides and go into the past. Locate me as an infant. Give me specialized training, from the beginning. I think it'll expand me.' "

  "The past," Calderon said. "You mean it's plastic?"

  "Well, it affects the future. You can't alter the past without altering the future, too. But things tend to drift back. There's a temporal norm, a general level. In the original time sector, Alexander wasn't visited by us. Now that's changed. So the future will be changed. But not tremendously. No crucial temporal apexes are involved, no keystones. The only result will be that the mature Alexander will have his potential more fully realized."

  -

  Alexander was carried back into the room, beaming. Quat resumed his lesson with the egg beater.

  "There isn't a great deal you can do about it," Bordent said. "I think you realize that now."

  Myra said, "Is Alexander going to look like you?" Her face was strained.

  "Oh, no. He's a perfect physical specimen. I've never seen him, of course, but—"

  Calderon said, "Heir to all the ages. Myra, are you beginning to get the idea?"

  "Yes. A superman. But he's our baby."

  "He'll remain so," Bordent put in anxiously. "We don't want to remove him from the beneficial home and parental influence. An infant needs that. In fact, tolerance for the young is an evolutionary trait aimed at providing for the superman's appearance, just as the vanishing appendix is such a preparation. At certain eras of history mankind is receptive to the preparation of the new race. It's never been quite successful before—there were anthropological miscarriages, so to speak. My squeevers, it's important! Infants are awfully irritating. They're helpless for a very long time, a great trial to the patience of the parents—the lower the order of animal, the faster the infant develops. With mankind, it takes years for the young to reach an independent state. So the parental tolerance increases in proportion. The superchild won't mature, actually, till he's about twenty."

  Myra said, "Alexander will still be a baby then?"

  "He'll have the physical standards of an eight-year-old specimen of homo sap. Mentally ... well, call it irrationality. He won't be leveled out to an intellectual or emotional norm. He won't be sane, any more than any baby is. Selectivity takes quite a while to develop. But his peaks will be far, far above the peaks of, say, you as a child."

  "Thanks," Calderon said.

  "His horizons will be broader. His mind is capable of grasping and assimilating far more than yours. The world is really his oyster. He won't be limited. But it'll take a while for his mind, his personality, to shake down."

  "I want another drink," Myra said.

  Calderon got it. Alexander inserted his thumb in Quat's eye and tried to gouge it out. Quat submitted passively.

  "Alexander!" Myra said.

  "Sit still," Bordent said. "Quat's tolerance in this regard is naturally higher developed
than yours."

  "If he puts Quat's eye out," Calderon said, "it'll be just too bad."

  "Quat isn't important, compared to Alexander. He knows it, too."

  Luckily for Quat's binocular vision, Alexander suddenly tired of his new toy and fell to staring at the egg beater again. Dobish and Finn leaned over the baby and looked at him. But there was more to it than that, Calderon felt.

  "Induced telepathy," Bordent said. "It takes a long time to develop, but we're starting now. I tell you, it was a relief to hit the right time at last. I've rung this doorbell at least a hundred times. But never till now—"

  "Move," Alexander said clearly. "Real. Move."

  Bordent nodded. "Enough for today. We'll be here again tomorrow. You'll be ready?"

  "As ready," Myra said, "as we'll ever be, I suppose." She finished her drink.

  They got fairly high that night and talked it over. Their arguments were biased by their realization of the four little men's obvious resources. Neither doubted any more. They knew that Bordent and his companions had come from five hundred years in the future, at the command of a future Alexander who had matured into a fine specimen of superman.

  "Amazing, isn't it?" Myra said. "That fat little blob in the bedroom turning into a twelfth-power Quiz Kid."

  "Well, it's got to start somewhere. As Bordent pointed out."

  "And as long as he isn't going to look like those goblins—ugh!"

  "He'll be super. Deucalion and what's-her-name—that's us. Parents of a new race."

  "I feel funny," Myra said. "As though I'd given birth to a moose."

  "That could never happen," Calderon said consolingly. "Have another slug."

  "It might as well have happened. Alexander is a swoose."