The Ugly Little Boy

by Isaac Asimov

  Her husband had been a doctor, too—with a Ph.D. in physics, like Hoskins. Miss Fellowes wondered strangely whether she would be calling him “doctor” too, as she did Hoskins, if they had managed to stay married all these years. A curious thought. She rarely thought of him at all any more; the whole notion of being married, of having a husband, had come to seem remote and implausible to her. She had been married for such a short time, such a long time ago.

  “What would you prefer?” she asked. “Should I call you ‘Mr. Hoskins,’ then?”

  “Most people around here call me ‘Jerry.’”

  Miss Fellowes looked at him strangely. “I couldn’t do that!”

  “You couldn’t?”

  “It—wouldn’t feel right.”

  “Wouldn’t feel right,” Hoskins repeated, musingly. “To call me ‘Jerry.’” He studied her closely, as though seeing her for the first time. His wide, fleshy face broke into a warm smile. “You really are a very formal person. I hadn’t realized quite how formal, I guess. All right, then: you can go on calling me ‘Dr. Hoskins,’ if that’s what you’re most comfortable with. And I’ll go on calling you ‘Miss Fellowes.’”

  What did he mean by that? she wondered.

  Had he been thinking of calling her ‘Edith’?

  Nobody did that. Hardly anyone, at any rate: maybe six people in all the world. Most of the time she was ‘Miss Fellowes’ even to herself, whenever she thought of herself in the third person, which wasn’t often. It was just a habit: she never gave it any thought at all. But how odd, she told herself now, to think of yourself that way. How austere, how stiff. I have really become someone quite peculiar now that I’m middle-aged, Miss Fellowes thought. And I’ve never even noticed it.

  Hoskins was still looking steadily at her, still smiling.

  There was something very warm about the man, she realized suddenly, very likable. That too was a fact she hadn’t noticed before. In their earlier meetings he had struck her mainly as someone who presented himself to the world as taut, guarded, inflexible, with only occasional moments when a little humanity showed through. But possibly the tensions of the final days before the Stasis experiment had made him seem that way; and now that the time-scoop had done its work and the success of the project was confirmed, he was more relaxed, more human, more himself. And quite a nice man indeed.

  Miss Fellowes found herself wondering for an idle moment if Hoskins was married.

  The speculation astonished and embarrassed her. He had told her a couple of weeks back that he had a son, hadn’t he? A small son, barely old enough to know how to walk. Of course he was married. Of course. What could she be thinking of? She thrust the whole line of inquiry aside in horror.

  “Timmie!” she called. “Come here, Timmie!”

  Like Hoskins, the boy also appeared to be in a cheerful, outgoing mood this morning. He had slept well; he had eaten well; now he came hustling out of his bedroom, showing no uneasiness whatever at Hoskins’ presence. He walked boldly up to Hoskins and uttered a stream of clicks.

  “Do you think he’s saying something, Miss Fellowes? Not just making sounds for the fun of hearing his own voice?”

  “What else can he be doing but saying something, doctor? Dr. McIntyre asked me the same thing yesterday when he heard Timmie speaking. How can anybody doubt that the boy’s using a language—and a very elaborate one at that?”

  “Dr. McIntyre’s extremely conservative. He doesn’t believe in jumping to conclusions.”

  “Well, neither do I. But that’s a genuine language or I’m not speaking one myself.”

  “Let’s hope so, Miss Fellowes. Let’s certainly hope so. If we can’t develop any way of communicating with Timmie, then much of the value of having brought him here will be lost. Naturally we want him to tell us things about the world he came from. All manner of things.”

  “He will, doctor. Either in his language or in ours. And my guess is that he’ll learn to speak ours long before we’ve found out anything about his.”

  “You may be right, Miss Fellowes. Time will tell, won’t it? Time will tell.”

  Hoskins crouched down so that his face was on the same level as Timmie’s and let his hands rest lightly on the boy’s rib-cage, fingers outspread. Timmie remained calm. Miss Fellowes realized after a moment that Hoskins was ever so gently tickling the boy, working his fingertips lightly around in an easy, playful way that bespoke more than a little knowledge of how to handle small boys. And Timmie liked being tickled.

  “What a sturdy little fellow,” Hoskins said. “Tough as they come.—So you’re going to learn English, are you, Timmie? And then you’ll dictate a book to us all about life in the Paleolithic Era, and everybody will want to read it and it’ll be a big bestseller, and we’ll start to see a little return on our investment in you, eh, Timmie? Eh?” He glanced up at Miss Fellowes.—“We’ve got a tremendous amount riding on this boy, you know. I hardly need tell you. Not simply money, but our entire professional futures.”

  “Yes. I imagine you do.”

  Hoskins tousled Timmie’s thick unruly hair, patted the boy, and stood up. “We’ve been working on a shoestring budget for years, scrounging funds a dime at a time wherever we could. You can’t believe the energy costs involved in maintaining Stasis, even for a moment—enough to power up a whole city for days—and the energy’s only one part of the overhead we run here. We’ve been right on the edge of going under at least half a dozen times. We had to shoot the works on one big show to save ourselves. It was everything—or nothing. And when I say the works, I mean it. But Timmie here has saved us. He’s going to put Stasis Technologies, Ltd. on the map. We’re in, Miss Fellowes, we’re in!”

  “I would have thought bringing back a live dinosaur would have sufficed to achieve that, Dr. Hoskins.”

  “We thought so, too. But somehow that never captured the public’s imagination.”

  “A dinosaur didn’t?”

  Hoskins laughed. “Oh, if we had brought back a full-grown brontosaurus, I suppose, or a rip-snorting tyrannosaur, something on that order. But we had our mass limitations to deal with, you know, and they tied our hands considerably. Not that we would have known how to keep a tyrannosaur under control, even if we’d been able to bring one back.—I should take you across the way one of these days and let you see our dinosaur, I guess.”

  “You should, yes.”

  “He’s very cute.”

  “Cute? A dinosaur?”

  “You’ll see. Yes. A cute little dinosaur. Unfortunately, people don’t seem to be very excited by cute little dinosaurs. ‘How interesting,’ they said, ‘these scientists have brought a live dinosaur back from prehistoric times.’ But then they got a look at the dinosaur on television and they didn’t find it very interesting at all, because it wasn’t twice as high as a house and breathing fire, I guess. A Neanderthal boy, now—an actual prehistoric human being, quite strange-looking but nevertheless something everyone can identify with and care deeply about—that’ll be our salvation.—Do you hear that, Timmie? You’re our salvation.” To Miss Fellowes again Hoskins said, “If this hadn’t worked out, I’d have been through. No doubt about it. This whole corporation would have been through.”

  “I see.”

  “But we’re all right now. We’ll have plenty of money soon. Funds have been promised from every source. This is all wonderful, Miss Fellowes. So long as we can keep Timmie healthy and happy, and maybe get him to speak a few words of English—‘Hello, everybody out there, this is Timmie from the Stone Age’—”

  “Or some such thing,” Miss Fellowes said drily.

  “Yes. Some such thing.—Healthy and happy, that’s the key to it all. If anything happens to him, our name is mud, and worse than mud, Miss Fellowes. Which makes you the central figure in our whole operation, do you realize that? We depend on you to provide a supportive, nourishing environment for our boy. Your word will be law: whatever Timmie needs, Timmie gets. You were absolutely right yesterday when you r
efused to let the media have a whack at him so soon.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Naturally, you understand that we do want to have a press conference just as soon as possible—that it’s vital to everybody’s interests that we maximize the publicity value of the Timmie project as quickly as we can—”

  Suddenly Hoskins seemed less genial and likable again, more the driven executive who said things like “Trust me” when he was at his least trustworthy.

  Coolly Miss Fellowes said, “Does that mean you want to bring them in here this afternoon?”

  “Well, if you thought he was ready for—”

  “I don’t. Not yet.”

  Hoskins moistened his lips. “Your word is law. Just tell us when.”

  “I will.”

  “I mean, can you give us an estimate now? What about our having the press conference tomorrow?—The day after tomorrow?”

  “Let’s just put it on hold, doctor. All right? I simply don’t want to commit Timmie to anything as stressful as a press conference at this point. He’s still catching his breath, so to speak, still getting his feet on the ground—whatever metaphor you want to use. He’s made fine progress after those first terrified moments. But he could revert in a second to the wild, frightened child you saw that night. Even Dr. McIntyre yesterday managed to get him upset, after a while.”

  Hoskins looked troubled. “We can’t keep the press out indefinitely, Miss Fellowes.”

  “I’m not talking about indefinitely. I’m talking about a few days. Two, three, four—let me be the judge of it, yes, Dr. Hoskins? My word is law?”

  “Your word is law,” Hoskins said, not sounding terribly pleased. He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “You haven’t been out of the Stasis zone since the night of the experiment, have you, Miss Fellowes? Not even for a moment.”

  “No!” she said indignantly. “I know my responsibilities, Dr. Hoskins, and if you think—”

  “Please, Miss Fellowes.” He smiled and held up his hand. “I’m not implying anything. I’m just working my way around to pointing out that we really don’t intend to cage you up in here with the boy twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I’m aware that in the critical first few couple of days it was best that you be on hand round the clock, and that in fact I told you at our first interview that you’d be on duty constantly in the beginning, at least. But Timmie seems to be stabilizing very nicely now. You’ll need to work out a schedule of time off for recreation and relaxation. Ms. Stratford can fill in for you for an hour or so at first, and then perhaps you can have whole afternoons off, later on.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “You don’t sound very enthusiastic. I didn’t realize you were such a workaholic, Miss Fellowes.”

  “That’s not quite the right word. It’s simply that—well, Timmie’s in such a frighteningly vulnerable position. Disoriented, isolated, far from home—so much in need of love and protection as he comes to terms with what’s happened to him. I haven’t wanted to leave him even for a short while.”

  “Very commendable of you. But now that the worst of the transition is over, you’ve got to start coming out of here, if only for short breaks.”

  “If that’s what you want, doctor.”

  “I think it’s best. For your own good, Miss Fellowes. You’re entitled to a little respite from your work. And I wouldn’t want Timmie to become totally dependent on having you right here at hand, either. There’s no telling what sort of intense bonding might develop if this full-time nursing goes on very much longer. And then, if for some reason you have to leave the Stasis zone, Timmie might not be able to handle that. The situation wouldn’t be entirely healthy. Do you follow me?”

  Miss Fellowes nodded. “You have a point there.”

  “Good. Do you want to try a little experiment, then? We’ll call Ms. Stratford in and let her look after Timmie for an hour or two, and you come out with me this very day and I’ll take you on a tour of the rest of the laboratory.”

  “Well—”

  “You don’t like it, do you?—Look, we’ll put a beeper on you. If Ms. Stratford starts running into the slightest problem with Timmie, we’ll have you back inside here in five minutes, okay? Trust me.”

  “All right,” Miss Fellowes said, less grudgingly than before. She had to admit the validity of Hoskins’ reasoning. Now that she had eased Timmie through the first two days, it probably would be wise to test the boy’s ability to withstand her absence for a short while. “I’m willing to give it a try. Take me to see your dinosaur.”

  “I’ll show you everything,” said Hoskins. “Animal, vegetable, and mineral in equal parts.” He looked at his watch. “Suppose I give you—ah—ninety minutes to finish up whatever you were doing when I arrived this morning, and to brief Ms. Stratford on what she needs to watch out for. Then I’ll come back here and pick you up for a personal tour.”

  Miss Fellowes thought for a moment. “Make it two hours, I think.”

  “Two hours? Fine. I’ll be back at eleven sharp. See you then.—You don’t have any problems about this, do you?”

  She smiled happily. “Actually, I’m looking forward to it.—You can spare me for a little while, can’t you, Timmie?”

  The boy made clicking sounds.

  “You see, doctor? He knows when I’m asking him a question, and he responds, even if he doesn’t know what I’m actually saying to him. There’s a real intelligence inside that head of his.”

  “I’m sure there is,” Hoskins said. He nodded and smiled and left.

  Miss Fellowes found herself humming as she went through her morning chores. She had told the truth when she said she was looking forward to getting out of the Stasis bubble for a while. Much as she loved caring for Timmie, even she needed to take a break.

  Or was it just the thought of spending some time in Hoskins’ company?

  Really—to think so was ridiculous, she knew—but really, it was almost like—like making a date.

  He has a young son, she told herself again, very sternly. Which means he’s almost certainly got a wife. A young and pretty wife.

  Even so, Miss Fellowes had changed from her nurse’s uniform into a dress when Hoskins returned at eleven to get her. A dress of conservative cut, to be sure—she had no other kind—but she hadn’t felt so feminine in years.

  He complimented her on her appearance with staid formality and she accepted with equally formal grace. It was really a perfect prelude, she thought. And then the next thought came inexorably. Prelude to what?

  [23]

  She said goodbye to Timmie and assured him that she’d be coming back soon. She made sure Ms. Stratford knew what to give him for lunch, and when. The young orderly seemed a little uneasy about taking on the responsibility of being alone with Timmie, Miss Fellowes thought. But then Ms. Stratford remarked that Mortenson would be nearby in case Timmie turned difficult, and Miss Fellowes realized that the woman was more worried about finding herself with a wild battle on her hands than she was about any harm that might come to Timmie while he was in her care. Perhaps she needs to be transferred to some other duties, Miss Fellowes thought. But there was no choice other than to turn Timmie over to her for now. The beeper in her purse would summon her quickly enough, if need should develop.

  They went out. From Timmie came one little whimper of—surprise? Despair?

  “Don’t worry, Timmie! I’ll be coming back! I’ll be coming back!”

  The break had to be made, she thought. The sooner the better—for the boy, for her.

  Hoskins led her upward through the maze of harshly lit hallways and echoing vaults and gloomy metal staircases that they had traversed on the night of Timmie’s arrival, a night which to Miss Fellowes now seemed so long ago that it felt more like the memory of a dream than an actual event. For a brief while they were outside the building entirely, blinking into the midday brilliance of a clear, golden day; and then they plunged into another bleak, barn-like building very much like the one
where Timmie’s Stasis bubble had been formed.

  “This is the old Stasis lab,” Hoskins told her. “Where it all began.”

  Again, security checks; again, clattering staircases and musty passageways and dismal cavernous vaults. At last they were in the heart of a bustling research zone, far busier than the other. Men and women in laboratory coats were going this way and that, carrying stacks of reports, files, computer cubes. Hoskins greeted many of them by first name, and they hailed him the same way. Miss Fellowes found the informality jarring.

  But this is not a hospital, she told herself. These people simply work here. There’s a difference.

  “Animal, vegetable, mineral,” Hoskins said. “Just as I promised. Animal right down there: our most spectacular exhibits. Before Timmie, I mean.”

  The space was divided into many rooms, each a separate Stasis bubble somewhat smaller than the one Timmie was housed in. Hoskins led her to the view-glass of one and she looked inside.

  What she saw impressed her at first as a scaled, tailed chicken. It ran back and forth from one wall to the other in a nervous, frenzied way, skittering on two thin legs, looking this way and that. But there had never been a chicken that looked anything like this one: a wingless chicken with two small dangling arms terminating in handlike paws, which clenched and unclenched constantly. Its narrow head was delicate and birdlike, with weirdly glittering scarlet eyes. Its skull was surmounted by a bony keel a little like the comb of a rooster, but bright blue in color. Its body was green with darker stripes, and there was a gleaming reptilian sheen to it. The thin serpentine tail lashed nervously from side to side.

  Hoskins said, “There’s our dinosaur. Our pride and joy—until Timmie came here.”

  “Dinosaur? That?”

  “I told you it was small. You want it to be a giant, don’t you, Miss Fellowes?”

  She dimpled. “I do, I suppose. It’s only natural. The first thing anyone thinks of when dinosaurs are mentioned is their enormous size. And this one is, well, so tiny.”