by Isaac Asimov
* * * *
“Don’t we look happy,” Hys said, shambling towards them.
“Fall dead and make me even happier then,” Lea snapped bitterly.
Hys ignored the acid tone of her answer and sat down on the couch next to them. Since leaving command of his rebel Nyjord Army he seemed much mellower. “Going to keep on working for the Cultural Relationships Foundation, Brion?” he asked. “You’re the kind of man we need.”
Brion’s eyes widened as the meaning of the last words penetrated. “Are you in the C.R.F.?”
“Field agent for Nyjord,” he said. “I hope you don’t think those helpless office types like Faussel or Mervv really represented us there? They just took notes and acted as a front and cover for the organization. Nyjord is a fine planet, but a gentle guiding hand behind the scenes is needed, to help them find their place in the galaxy before they are pulverized.”
“What’s your dirty game, Hys?” Lea asked, scowling. “I’ve had enough hints to suspect for a long time that there was more to the C.R.F. than the sweetness-and-light-part I have seen. Are you people egomaniacs, power hungry or what?”
“That’s the first charge that would be leveled at us, if our activities were publicly known,” Hys told her. “That’s why we do most of our work under cover. The best fact I can give you to counter the charge is money. Just where do you think we get the funds for an operation this size?” He smiled at their blank looks. “You’ll see the records later so there won’t be any doubt. The truth is that all our funds are donated by planets we have helped. Even a tiny percentage of a planetary income is large—add enough of them together and you have enough money to help other planets. And voluntary gratitude is a perfect test, if you stop to think about it. You can’t talk people into liking what you have done. They have to be convinced. There have always been people on C.R.F. worlds who knew about our work, and agreed with it enough to see that we are kept in funds.”
“Why are you telling me all this super-secret stuff,” Lea asked.
“Isn’t that obvious? We want you to keep on working for us. You can name whatever salary you like, as I’ve said there is no shortage of ready cash.” Hys glanced quickly at them both and delivered the clinching argument. “I hope Brion will go on working with us, too. He is the kind of field agent we desperately need, and it is almost impossible to find.”
“Just show me where to sign,” she said, and there was life in her voice once again.
“I wouldn’t exactly call it blackmail,” Brion smiled, “yet I suppose if you people can juggle planetary psychologies, you must find that individuals can be pushed around like chess men. Though you should realize that very little pushing is required this time.”
“Will you sign on?” Hys asked.
“I must go back to Anvhar,” Brion said, “but there really is no pressing hurry.”
“Earth,” said Lea, “is overpopulated enough as it is.”
ANGEL’S EGG, by Edgar Pangborn
LETTER OF RECORD, BLAINE TO McCARRAN, DATED AUGUST 10, 1951.
Mr. Cleveland McCarran
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington, D.C.
Dear Sir:
In compliance with your request I enclose herewith a transcript of the pertinent sections of the journal of Dr. David Bannerman, deceased. The original document is being held at this office until proper disposition can be determined.
Our investigation has shown no connection between Dr. Bannerman and any organization, subversive or otherwise. So far as we can learn, he was exactly what he seemed, an inoffensive summer resident, retired, with a small independent income—a recluse to some extent, but well spoken of by local tradesmen and other neighbors. A connection between Dr. Bannerman and the type of activity that concerns your Department would seem most unlikely.
The following information is summarized from the earlier parts of Dr. Bannerman’s journal, and tallies with the results of our own limited inquiry. He was born in 1898 at Springfield, Massachusetts, attended public school there, and was graduated from Harvard College in 1922, his studies having been interrupted by two years’ military service. He was wounded in action in Argonne, receiving a spinal injury. He earned a doctorate in biology in 1926. Delayed aftereffects of his war injury necessitated hospitalization, 1927-28. From 1929 to 1948 he taught elementary sciences in a private school in Boston. He published two textbooks in introductory biology, 1929 and 1937. In 1948 he retired from teaching: a pension and a modest income from textbook royalties evidently made this possible. Aside from the spinal deformity, which caused him to walk with a stoop, his health is said to have been fair. Autopsy findings suggested that the spinal condition must have given him considerable pain; he is not known to have mentioned this to anyone, not even to his physician, Dr. Lester Morse. There is no evidence whatever of drug addiction or alcoholism.
At one point early in his journal Dr. Bannerman describes himself as “a naturalist of the puttering type—I would rather sit on a log than write monographs: it pays off better.” Dr. Morse, and others who knew Dr. Bannerman personally, tell me that this conveys a hint of his personality.
I am not qualified to comment on the material of this journal, except to say I have no evidence to support (or to contradict) Dr. Bannerman’s statements. The journal has been studied only by my immediate superiors, by Dr. Morse, and by myself. I take it for granted you will hold the matter in strictest confidence.
With the journal I am also enclosing a statement by Dr. Morse, written at my request for our records and for your information. You will note that he says, with some qualifications, that “death was not inconsistent with an embolism.” He has signed a death certificate on that basis. You will recall from my letter of August 5 that it was Dr. Morse who discovered Dr. Bannerman’s body. Because he was a close personal friend of the deceased, Dr. Morse did not feel able to perform the autopsy himself. It was done by a Dr. Stephen Clyde of this city, and was virtually negative as regards cause of death, neither confirming nor contradicting Dr. Morse’s original tentative diagnosis. If you wish to read the autopsy report in full I shall be glad to forward a copy.
Dr. Morse tells me that so far as he knows Dr. Bannerman had no near relatives. He never married. For the last twelve summers he occupied a small cottage on a back road about twenty-five miles from this city, and had few visitors. The neighbor, Steele, mentioned in the journal is a farmer, age 68, of good character, who tells me he “never got really acquainted with Dr. Bannerman.”
At this office we feel that unless new information comes to light, further active investigation is hardly justified.
Respectfully yours,
Garrison Blame
Capt., State Police
Augusta, Me.
Encl: Extract from Journal of David Bannerman, dec’d. Statement by Lester Morse, M.D.
* * * *
LIBRARIAN’S NOTE: The following document, originally attached as an unofficial “rider” to the foregoing letter, was donated to this institution in 1994 through the courtesy of Mrs. Helen McCarran, widow of the martyred first President of the World Federation. Other personal and state papers of President McCarran, many of them dating from the early period when he was employed by the FBI, are accessible to public view at the Institute of World History, Copenhagen.
PERSONAL NOTE, BLAINE TO McCARRAN, DATED AUGUST 10, 1951
Dear Cleve:
Guess I didn’t make it clear in my other letter that that bastard Clyde was responsible for my having to drag you into this. He is something to handle with tongs.
Happened thusly—
When he came in to heave the autopsy report at me, he was already having pups just because it was so completely negative (he does have certain types of honesty), and he caught sight of a page or two of the journal on my desk. Doc Morse was with me at the time. I fear we both got upstage with him (Clyde has that effect, and we were both in a State of Mind anyway), so right away the old drip thinks he smells somethin
g subversive. Belongs to the atomize-’em-NOW-WOW-WOW school of thought—’nuf sed? He went into a grand whuff-whuff about referring to Higher Authority, and I knew that meant your hive, so I wanted to get ahead of the letter I knew he’d write. I suppose his literary effort couldn’t be just sort of quietly transferred to File 13, otherwise known as the Appropriate Receptacle?
He can say what he likes about my character, if any, but even I never supposed he’d take a sideswipe at his professional colleague. Doc Morse is the best of the best and I would not dream of suppressing any evidence important to us, as you say Clyde’s letter hints. What Doc did do was to tell Clyde, pleasantly, in the privacy of my office, to go take a flying this-and-that at the moon. I only wish I’d thought of the expression myself. So Clyde rushes off to tell teacher. See what I mean about the tongs? However (knock on wood) I don’t think Clyde saw enough of the journal to get any notion of what it’s all about.
As for that journal, damn it, Cleve, I don’t know. If you
have any ideas I want them, of course. I’m afraid I believe
in angels, myself. But when I think of the effect on local opinion if the story ever gets out—brother! Here was this old Bannerman living alone with a female angel and they wuzn’t even common-law married. Aw, gee… And the flood of phone calls from other crackpots anxious to explain it all to me. Experts in the care and feeding of angels. Methods of angel-proofing. Angels right outside the window a minute ago. Make Angels a Profitable Enterprise in Your Spare Time!!!
When do I see you? You said you might have a week clear in October. If we could get together maybe we could make sense where there is none. I hear the cider promises to be good this year. Try and make it. My best to Ginny and the other young fry, and Helen of course.
Respeckfully yourn,
Garry
P.S. If you do see any angels down your way, and they aren’t willing to wait for a Republican Administration, by all means have them investigated by the Senate—then we’ll know we’re all nuts.
G.
* * * *
EXTRACT FROM JOURNAL OF DAVID BANNERMAN, JUNE 1-JULY 29, 1951
June 1
It must have been at least three weeks ago when we had that flying saucer flurry. Observers the other side of Katahdin saw it come down this side; observers this side saw it come down the other. Size anywhere from six inches to sixty feet in diameter (or was it cigar-shaped?) and speed whatever you please. Seem to recall that witnesses agreed on a rosy-pink light. There was the inevitable gobbledegookery of official explanation designed to leave everyone impressed, soothed, and disappointed. I paid scant attention to the excitement and less to the explanations—naturally, I thought it was just a flying saucer. But now Camilla has hatched out an angel.
It would have to be Camilla. Perhaps I haven’t mentioned my hens enough. In the last day or two it has dawned on me that this journal may be of importance to other eyes than mine, not merely a lonely man’s plaything to blunt the edge of mortality: an angel in the house makes a difference. I had better show consideration for possible readers.
I have eight hens, all yearlings except Camilla: this is her third spring. I boarded her two winters at my neighbor Steele’s farm when I closed this shack and shuffled my chilly bones off to Florida, because even as a pullet she had a manner which overbore me. I could never have eaten Camilla: if she had looked at the ax with that same expression of rancid disapproval (and she would), I should have felt I was beheading a favorite aunt. Her only concession to sentiment is the annual rush of maternity to the brain—normal, for a case-hardened White Plymouth Rock.
This year she stole a nest successfully in a tangle of blackberry. By the time I located it, I estimated I was about two weeks too late. I had to outwit her by watching from a window—she is far too acute to be openly trailed from feeding ground to nest. When I had bled and pruned my way to her hideout she was sitting on nine eggs and hating my guts. They could not be fertile, since I keep no rooster, and I was about to rob her when I saw the ninth egg was nothing of hers. It was a deep blue and transparent, with flecks of inner light that made me think of the first stars in a clear evening. It was the same size as Camilla’s own. There was an embryo, but I could make nothing of it. I returned the egg to Camilla’s bare and fevered breastbone and went back to the house for a long, cool drink.
That was ten days ago. I know I ought to have kept a record; I examined the blue egg every day, watching how some nameless life grew within it. The angel has been out of the shell three days now. This is the first time I have felt equal to facing pen and ink.
I have been experiencing a sort of mental lassitude unfamiliar to me. Wrong word: not so much lassitude as a preoccupation, with no sure clue to what it is that preoccupies me. By reputation I am a scientist of sorts. Right now I have no impulse to look for data; I want to sit quiet and let truth come to a relaxed mind if it will. Could be merely a part of growing older, but I doubt that. The broken pieces of the wonderful blue shell are on my desk. I have been peering at them—into them—for the last ten minutes or more. Can’t call it study: my thought wanders into their blue, learning nothing I can retain in words. It does not convey much to say I have gone into a vision of open sky—and of peace, if such a thing there be.
The angel chipped the shell deftly in two parts. This was evidently done with the aid of small horny outgrowths on her elbows; these growths were sloughed off on the second day. I wish I had seen her break the shell, but when I visited the blackberry tangle three days ago she was already out. She poked her exquisite head through Camilla’s neck feathers, smiled sleepily, and snuggled back into darkness to finish drying off. So what could I do, more than save the broken shell and wriggle my clumsy self out of there? I had removed Camilla’s own eggs the day before—Camilla was only moderately annoyed. I was nervous about disposing of them, even though they were obviously Camilla’s, but no harm was done. I cracked each one to be sure. Very frankly rotten eggs and nothing more.
In the evening of that day I thought of rats and weasels, as I should have done earlier. I prepared a box in the kitchen and brought the two in, the angel quiet in my closed hand. They are there now. I think they are comfortable.
Three days after hatching, the angel is the length of my forefinger, say three inches tall, with about the relative proportions of a six-year-old girl. Except for head, hands, and probably the soles of her feet, she is clothed in down the color of ivory; what can be seen of her skin is a glowing pink—I do mean glowing, like the inside of certain sea shells. Just above the small of her back are two stubs which I take to be infantile wings. They do not suggest an extra pair of specialized forelimbs. I think they are wholly differentiated organs; perhaps they will be like the wings of an insect. Somehow, I never thought of angels buzzing. Maybe she won’t. I know very little about angels. At present the stubs are covered with some dull tissue, no doubt a protective sheath to be discarded when the membranes (if they are membranes) are ready to grow. Between the stubs is a not very prominent ridge—special musculature, I suppose. Otherwise her shape is quite human, even to a pair of minuscule mammalian buttons just visible under the down; how that can make sense in an egg-laying organism is beyond my comprehension. (Just for the record, so is a Corot landscape; so is Schubert’s Unfinished; so is the flight of a hummingbird, or the other-world of frost on a window pane.) The down on her head has grown visibly in three days and is of different quality from the body down—later it may resemble human hair, as a diamond resembles a chunk of granite…
A curious thing has happened. I went to Camilla’s box after writing that. Judy1 was already lying in front of it, unexcited. The angel’s head was out from under the feathers, and I thought—with more verbal distinctness than such thoughts commonly take, “So here I am, a naturalist of middle years and cold sober, observing a three-inch oviparous mammal with down and wings.” The thing is—she giggled. Now, it might have been only amusement at my appearance, which to her must be enormously gross and
comic. But another thought formed unspoken: “I am no longer lonely.” And her face (hardly bigger than a dime) immediately changed from laughter to a brooding and friendly thoughtfulness.
Judy and Camilla are old friends. Judy seems untroubled by the angel. I have no worries about leaving them alone together. I must sleep.
* * * *
June 3
I made no entry last night. The angel was talking to me, and when that was finished I drowsed off immediately on a cot that I have moved into the kitchen so as to be near them.
I had never been strongly impressed by the evidence for extrasensory perception. It is fortunate my mind was able to accept the novelty, since to the angel it is clearly a matter of course. Her tiny mouth is most expressive but moves only for that reason and for eating—not for speech. Probably she could speak to her own kind if she wished, but I dare say the sound would be outside the range of my hearing as well as of my understanding.
Last night after I brought the cot in and was about to finish my puttering bachelor supper, she climbed to the edge of the box and pointed, first at herself and then at the top of the kitchen table. Afraid to let my vast hand take hold of her, I held it out flat and she sat in my palm. Camilla was inclined to fuss, but the angel looked over her shoulder and Camilla subsided, watchful but no longer alarmed.
The table top is porcelain, and the angel shivered. I folded a towel and spread a silk handkerchief on top of that; the angel sat on this arrangement with apparent comfort, near my face. I was not even bewildered. Possibly she had already instructed me to blank out my mind. At any rate, I did so, without conscious effort to that end.
She reached me first with visual imagery. How can I make it plain that this had nothing in common with my sleeping dreams? There was no weight of symbolism from my littered past; no discoverable connection with any of yesterday’s commonplaces; indeed, no actual involvement of my personality at all. I saw. I was moving vision, though without eyes or other flesh. And while my mind saw, it also knew where my flesh was, slumped at the kitchen table. If anyone had entered the kitchen, if there had been a noise of alarm out in the henhouse, I should have known it.
