The Ugly Little Boy

by Isaac Asimov

  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 Fellowes 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?” McIntyre asked.

  “You outlasted his attention span, I imagine,” said Miss Fellowes. “You wore out your welcome. He’s only a little boy, Dr. McIntyre. 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?”

  McIntyre 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. McIntyre. 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.”

  McIntyre 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 intelligent to me. But I think he could use a few toys, and this one already happens to be here.”

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

  “Of course. Here.”

  “And—speaking of open books, Dr. McIntyre, 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 Timmie 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.”

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

  “And when you pick out the books for me, doctor—”

  “Yes?” McIntyre 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. McIntyre? 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. McIntyre, 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 are 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.”

  INTERCHAPTER THREE

  The Place

  of Three Rivers

  IN THE NIGHT Silver Cloud dreamed of the sea.

  He was young again, in his dream. He dreamed that he was only a boy, just a summer or two older than the boy Skyfire Face who had been taken by the Goddess in a whirl of light. He stood by the edge of the sea, feeling the strange wet wind blowing against his lips. His father and mother were with him, Tall Tree and Sweet As A Flower, and they were holding his hands and leading him gently toward the water.

  “No,” he said. “It’s cold. I’m afraid to go into it.”

  “It can’t hurt you,” Tall Tree said.

  But that wasn’t true. No one went into the sea, no one, not ever. Every child learned that as soon as he was old enough to learn anything. The sea killed. The sea would drain your life away m an instant, and cast you back up on the shore, empty and still. Only last year the warrior Speared Five Mammoths had slipped on a snowy cliff and fallen into the sea, and when he washed ashore a little while later he was dead, and they had had to bury him in a little cavern in the rock near the place where he fell, chanting all night and burning a strange-colored fire. Now here were his own father and mother urging him toward the sea. Did they want him to die the way Speared Five Mammoths had died? Were they tired of him? What kind of betrayal was this?

  “The sea will make you strong,” Sweet As A Flower told him. “The sea will make you a man.”

  “But Speared Five Mammoths died in it!”

  “It was his time to die. The sea called to him and took him. But your time to die is far away, boy. You have no reason to be afraid.”

  Was it true? Could he trust them?

  They were his mother and his father. Why would they want him to die?

  He held their hands tightly and stepped forward with them, toward the brink of the sea.

  He had never been this close to it before, although his tribe had always lived in the coastal plain, wandering up and down along the shore following the game animals. Now he stared at the water in wonder and fear. It was like a great powerful flat beast lying before him, dark and shining. A roaring sound came from it, and along its edges a part of it was rippling and surging
with white foam. Here and there a piece of the sea would rise up high into the air and come crashing down against the rocks along the edge. Sometimes, standing on cliffs much like the one where Speared Five Mammoths had fallen to his death, Silver Cloud had looked far out into the sea and had seen graceful animals moving about in it, moving among the floating blocks of ice. They were different animals from the mammoths and musk oxen and rhinos of the land—slim, sleek, shining things that moved through the sea as though they were flying through air.

  Last spring one of those sea animals had come ashore, and the Hunting Society had fallen on it and killed it, and the tribe had enjoyed a great feast. How tender its meat had been! How strange! And its thick beautiful fur—how soft, how wonderfully soft. Tall Tree had made a mantle for Sweet As A Flower from the sea-creature’s dark rich fur, and she wore it proudly on the special days of the year.

  Were they going to give him to the sea in return for the fur of the sea-creature? Was that it?

  “Take another step, boy,” Tall Tree urged. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  Silver Cloud looked up. But his father was smiling.

  He had to trust his father. He stepped forward, clinging tightly to their hands. The edge of the sea came up around his ankles. He had expected it to be cold, but no, no, it was warm, it was hot, it burned like fire. Yet after a moment he no longer felt the burning. The sea pulled back from him, and then it returned, higher than before, up to his knees, his thighs, his belly. Tall Tree and Sweet As A Flower walked farther out into it, taking him with them. The ground on the floor of the sea was very soft, as soft as the sea animal’s fur, and it seemed to move about under his feet as he walked.

  He was chest-deep in the sea, now. It wrapped itself around him like a warm blanket.

  “Are your feet still touching the bottom?” Tall Tree asked him.

  “Yes. Yes.”

  “Good. Bend forward. Put your head in the sea. Cover your face with the sea.”

  He did as he was told. The sea swept up and over him, and it was like being covered by a blanket made of snow. Snow too ceased to be cold, when you got deep down into it. It became warm, like fire, and if you stayed in it long enough you would fall asleep as if you were wrapped in a rug. That was what an older girl had told him: she had watched, once, as an old woman of the tribe whose bones were bent and whose eyes were dim was taken out and put into the snow; she had closed her eyes and gone to sleep, very peacefully indeed.

  So now I will go to sleep in the sea, Silver Cloud thought, and that will be the end of me. And somehow dying no longer seemed to matter. He raised his head to see whether his father and mother had their faces covered with the sea also, but to his surprise they were no longer beside him, nowhere to be seen at all. He was entirely alone.

  He could hear his father’s voice coming to him from far away, telling him, “Come out of the sea, now, boy. Turn around and walk out.”

  Yes. He would do that.

  But as he walked toward the shore he felt his body changing with every step he took, stretching, growing taller and thicker, and he realized that he was turning into a man, getting older moment by moment. His shoulders were becoming broad, his chest was deepening, his thighs had become thick and strong. By the time he stepped out onto the rocky shore he was a warrior in the prime of his life. He looked down at his naked body and it was a man’s body, dark and hairy. He laughed. He rubbed his chest and slapped his hands against his thighs. In the distance he saw the fires of the encampment, and he began to sprint toward it to tell everyone of the strange thing that had happened to him.

  As he ran, though, another strangeness overtook him: for he realized that he was continuing to grow older every moment. Age had him in its grip and would not release him. He had left his childhood in the sea. Then, coming out of the sea, he had been full of the jubilant strength of young manhood. But now he was panting a little, then gasping for breath, slowing down from a sprint to a trot, and then to a walk. And then he was limping along, hobbling, for something had happened to his left thigh and his whole leg was stiff and sore. He looked down at it. There was blood all over it, as though an animal had raked it with its claws. And he remembered, yes, yes, he had been hunting with the Hunting Society, and the snow-leopard had come down suddenly on him from above—

  How difficult it was to walk, now. How old and tired I am, he thought. I can no longer stand straight. Look, my hair is turning silver all over my body.

  There was pain in him everywhere. He felt his strength going from him. What a strange, troublesome dream this was! First a boy entering the sea, and then coming forth and rapidly growing old, and now he was dying, dying, in some unfamiliar inland place far from the sea, where the earth was cold and hard and the wind was dry, and there were only strangers all about him. Where was Tall Tree, where was Sweet As A Flower—where was Silver Cloud?

  “Help me,” he called, sitting up in his sleep. “The sea has killed me! The sea—the sea—”

  “Silver Cloud?”

  Someone was at his side. He blinked and peered. She Who Knows, it was, kneeling next to him, staring at him anxiously. He struggled to regain control of himself. He was trembling like a sick old woman and his chest was heaving wildly. No one must see him like this—no one. He fumbled about for his staff, caught its end, levered himself awkwardly to a standing position.

  “A dream,” he muttered. “Bad omens. I’ll need to make a sacrifice right away. Where’s Goddess Woman? Get me Goddess Woman!”

  “She’s gone down there,” She Who Knows said. “She’s cleansing the shrine.”

  “Shrine? What? Where?”

  “At the Three Rivers.—What’s wrong with you, Silver Cloud? You seem all confused!”

  “The dream,” he said. “Very bad.”

  He stomped forward, leaning on his staff. His mind was beginning to grow clear again. He knew where he was. There were three rivers meeting in the valley beyond.

  Yes. The long pilgrimage backward along the trail had come to its end. They were camped on the high sloping plateau that looked down into the flat place where the three rivers flowed together. By the misty light of dawn Silver Cloud saw the rivers below, the largest one coming sluggishly in from the north carrying with it a rich cargo of blocks of ice, the two smaller and swifter ones merging at sharp angles out of the east and west.

  Last year—it seemed like ages ago—they had paused in this very place for many weeks, hungry weeks at that, until the Goddess had miraculously sent them a herd of reindeer, so dazed with hunger themselves that the Hunting Society was easily able to drive a dozen of the bewildered beasts over the edge of a cliff. What a fine harvest of meat that had been! In gratitude they had built a wonderful shrine to the Goddess at the place where the rivers met, using the heaviest blocks of stone they could lift, and decorating them with a curious shining rock that they had been able to pry out of the side of the cliff in thin glittering sheets; and then they had moved onward, continuing their long eastward migration.

  And now they had returned.

  “I don’t see Goddess Woman down there,” Silver Cloud said to She Who Knows.

  “She should be at the shrine.”

  “I see the shrine. I don’t see Goddess Woman.”

  “Your eyes are no good any more. Silver Cloud. Here, let me look.”

  She stepped in front of him and looked into the misty valley. After a moment she said, sounding perplexed, “No, you’re right, she’s not there. She must be on her way back already. But she said she was going to stay down there all morning, saying the prayers and purifying the shrine—”

  “Silver Cloud! Silver Cloud!”

  “Goddess Woman? What are you—”

  The priestess came rushing up the side path that led from the valley. Her face was flushed and her robes hung askew and she was sucking in breath as though she had run all the way.

  “What is it? What is it, Goddess Woman?”

  “Other Ones!”

  “What?
Where?”

  “All around the shrine. I didn’t see them, but their footprints were everywhere. The long feet—I know those feet. The prints everywhere in the wet ground. Fresh prints, Silver Cloud. They’re all over the place, down there. We’ve walked right into their midst!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Misjudging

  [22]

  HOSKINS SAID, “And how’s our boy doing this morning, Miss Fellowes?”

  “Why don’t you see for yourself, doctor?”

  Hoskins’ face registered a mixture of amusement and annoyance. “Why do you call me ‘doctor’ all the time?” he asked.

  “Because you are one, or so I believe,” she said, thinking of that “Ph.D.” label so proudly engraved on the name-plate in his office.

  “A doctorate in physics; that’s all.”

  “A doctorate is a doctorate.”

  “And you’ve been accustomed for a long time to calling people in positions of authority ‘doctor,’ is that it? Especially if they happen to be men?”

  His words startled her. They were right on the mark, of course: throughout her career the senior figures at the hospitals where she had worked had all had medical degrees. Most of them, by no means all, had been men. She fell easily and automatically into the habit of tacking the word “doctor” to every other sentence when addressing someone she regarded as her superior.