The Ugly Little Boy

by Isaac Asimov

  It was on one of these forays into the city that Miss Fellowes began to realize just how thoroughly accustomed to Timmie she had become. One day she found herself staring at an ordinary boy in the street and finding something bulgy and unattractive about his high domed forehead and jutting chin, his flat brows, his insignificant little nub of a nose. She had to shake herself to break the spell.

  Just as she had come to accept Timmie as he was, and no longer saw anything especially strange or unusual about him, Timmie, too, seemed to be settling fairly quickly into his new life. He was becoming less timid with strangers; his dreams appeared not to be as harrowing as they had been; he was as comfortable with Miss Fellowes now as though she were his actual mother. He dressed and undressed himself, now, climbing in and out of the overalls that he usually wore with distinct signs of pleasure in the accomplishment. He had learned to drink from a glass and to use—however clumsily—a plastic fork to convey his food to his mouth.

  He even seemed to be trying to learn how to speak English.

  Miss Fellowes had not managed to get anywhere in decoding Timmie’s own language of clicks and growls. Though Hoskins had indeed recorded everything, and she had listened over and over to the playbacks of Timmie’s statements, there didn’t seem to be any intelligible verbal pattern behind them. They were just clicks, just growls. He made certain sounds when he was hungry, certain sounds when he was tired, certain sounds when he was frightened. But, as Hoskins had pointed out long ago, even cats and dogs made recognizable sorts of sounds in response to particular situations, but no one had ever identified specific “words” in any cat or dog “language.”

  Perhaps she was just failing to hear the linguistic patterns. Perhaps they all were. She still was sure that there was a language there—one so remote in its structure from modern tongues that no one alive today could begin to comprehend how it was organized. But in darker moments Miss Fellowes feared that Timmie simply wasn’t going to turn out to be capable of learning true language at all—either because Neanderthals were too far back along the evolutionary path to have the intellectual capacity for speech, or else because, having passed his formative years among people who spoke only the simplest, most primitive of languages, it was too late now for Timmie to master anything more complex.

  She did some research on the subject of feral children—children who had spent prolonged periods living wild, virtually animal lives, on their own in primitive regions—and discovered that even after these children had been found and brought back into civilization, they usually never did develop the knack of uttering more than a few crude grunts. It appeared that even where the physiological and intellectual capability for speech existed, the right learning stimuli needed to be provided in the early years of life, or else the child would never learn how to speak.

  Miss Fellowes desperately wanted Timmie to prove her—and Dr. McIntyre—wrong about that, so that no one could doubt that he was human. And what trait was there that more clearly distinguished human beings from beasts than that of being able to speak?

  “Milk,” she said, pointing. “A glass of milk.”

  Timmie made what she took to be the hunger-clicks.

  “Yes. Hungry. Do you want some milk?”

  No response.

  She tried a different tack.

  “Timmie—you. You—Timmie.” Pointing.

  He stared at her finger but said nothing.

  “Walk.”

  “Eat.”

  “Laugh.”

  “Me—Miss Fellowes. You—Timmie.”

  Nothing each time.

  Hopeless, Miss Fellowes thought bitterly. Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless!

  “Talk?”

  “Drink?”

  “Eat?”

  “Laugh?”

  “Eat,” Timmie said suddenly.

  She was so astounded that she nearly dropped the plate of food she had just prepared for him.

  “Say that again!”

  “Eat.”

  The same sound. Not really clear. More like “Eeeh.” She hadn’t been able to detect the final consonant either time. But it was the right sound for the context.

  She held the plate toward him, too high for him to be able to reach it.

  “Eeeh!” he said again, more insistently.

  “Eat?” she asked. “You want to eat?”

  “Eeeeh!” Real impatience now.

  “Here,” Miss Fellowes said. “Eat, yes, Timmie. Eat! Eat your food!”

  “Eeeh,” he said in satisfaction, and seized his fork and fell to vigorously.

  “Was it good?” she asked him afterward. “Did you like your lunch?”

  But that was expecting too much of him. Even so, she wasn’t going to give up now. Where there was one word there might be others. Had to be others.

  She pointed to him. “Timmie.”

  “Mmm-mmm,” he said.

  Was that his way of saying “Timmie”?

  “Does Timmie want to eat some more? Eat?”

  She pointed to him, then to her mouth, and made eating motions. He looked at her and said nothing. Well, why should he? He wasn’t hungry any longer.

  But he knew that he was Timmie. Didn’t he?

  “Timmie,” she said again, and pointed to him.

  “Mmm-mmm,” he said, and tapped his chest.

  There could be no mistake about that. A stunning surge of—was it pride? Joy? Astonishment?—ran through her. All three. Miss Fellowes thought for a moment that she was going to burst into tears.

  Then she ran for the intercom. “Dr. Hoskins! Will you come in here, please? And you’d better send for Dr. McIntyre, too!”

  [31]

  “It’s Bruce Mannheim again, Dr. Hoskins.”

  Hoskins stared at the telephone in his hand as though it had turned into a serpent. This was the third call from Mannheim in less than two weeks. But he tried to sound jovial.

  “Yes, Mr. Mannheim! Good to hear from you!”

  “I just wanted to let you know that I’ve discussed the results of my very amiable conversation with you last week with my board of advisers.”

  “Yes?” Hoskins said, not so jovially. He hadn’t found the last conversation quite as amiable as Mannheim apparently had. He had found it prying and intrusive and generally outrageous.

  “I told them that you had answered my preliminary queries very satisfactorily.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “And the general feeling around here is that we don’t intend to take action at this time concerning the Neanderthal boy, but that we’ll need to monitor the situation closely while we complete our studies of the entire question. I’ll be calling you next week with a further list of points that need to be satisfied. I thought you’d like to know that.”

  “Ah—yes,” Hoskins said. “Thank you very much for telling me, Mr. Mannheim.”

  He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe slowly in and out.

  Thank you very much, Mr. Mannheim. How kind of you to allow us to continue our work for the time being. While you complete your studies of the entire question, that is. Thank you. Very much. Very, very, very, much.

  [32]

  The day Timmie spoke his first words of English was a wondrous one for Miss Fellowes. But other days followed soon afterward that were much less wondrous.

  The problem was that Timmie wasn’t just a little boy who happened to have been placed in her care. He was an extraordinary scientific specimen, and scientists from all over the world were jostling with one another for the privilege of studying him. Dr. Jacobs and Dr. McIntyre had been only the tip of the wave, the first indications of the deluge to follow.

  Jacobs and McIntyre were still very much in evidence, of course. They had been lucky enough to have first shot at Timmie, and they still had the inside track with him because of their priority status. But they were aware that they could not have a monopoly on him. A horde of anthropologists, physiologists, cultural historians, and specialists of a dozen other
sorts was at the door, knocking to get in. And each one had his own agenda for the little Neanderthal boy.

  The fact that Timmie could speak English now made them all the more eager. Some of them acted as if they could simply sit down with the boy and start asking him questions about life in the Paleolithic Era as he remembered it:

  “What species of animals did your tribe hunt?”

  “What were your people’s religious beliefs like?”

  “Did you migrate with the seasons?”

  “Was there warfare between tribes?”

  “What about warfare between your subspecies and the other one?”

  He was the only possible source. Their minds bubbled with queries that Timmie alone could answer. Tell us, tell us, tell us, tell us! We want to know all that there is to know about your people’s—

  kinship structures—

  totemic animals—

  linguistic groups—

  astronomical concepts—

  technological skills—

  But of course no one got to ask Timmie any of these fascinating and important questions, because Timmie’s command of English, though it was growing stronger day by day, was still confined at the moment to phrases like “Timmie eat now” and “Man go away now.”

  Besides which, Miss Fellowes was the only one who could understand Timmie’s words with any degree of reliability. To the others, even those who saw the boy virtually every day, his thick, strangled attempts at pronunciation were only barely recognizable as carrying meaning. Evidently the original speculations about Neanderthal linguistic ability were correct, at least in part: though the Neanderthals obviously did have the intellectual capacity for speech, and the anatomical ability to produce intelligible words, their tongues and larynxes were apparently unable to create sounds with the degree of articulation required by modern-day languages. At least, Timmie couldn’t manage it. Even Miss Fellowes had to strain much of the time to figure out what he was trying to say.

  It was a frustrating business for everyone—for Timmie, for Miss Fellowes, and especially for the scientists who were so anxious to question the boy. And it reinforced the poignancy of Timmie’s isolation. Even now that he was beginning to learn how to communicate with his captors—and that’s what we are, Miss Fellowes found herself thinking again and again, his captors—it was a terrible struggle for him to get even the simplest of concepts across to the one person who could at least partially understand him.

  How lonely he must be! she thought.

  And how baffled and frightened by all the hubbub that went on constantly around him!

  She did her best to protect him. She could not and would not allow herself to accept the fact that what she was engaged in was simply a scientific experiment. It certainly was that; but there was a small unhappy child at the center of it; and she would not let him be treated only as an experimental subject.

  The physiologists put him on special diets. She purchased toys for him. They plagued her with requests for blood samples, X-ray pictures, even clipping of Timmie’s hair. She taught him songs and nursery rhymes. They put Timmie through exhaustive and exhausting tests of his coordination and reflexes, his visual acuity, his hearing, his intuitive intelligence. Miss Fellowes comforted him afterward, holding him and stroking him until he was calm again.

  They demanded more and more of his time.

  She insisted on strict limits to the daily inquisitions. Most of the time her wishes prevailed, though not always. The visiting scientists undoubtedly thought she was an ogre, an impediment to knowledge, a stubborn and irrational woman. Miss Fellowes didn’t care. Let them think whatever they wanted; it was Timmie’s interests that concerned her, not theirs.

  The closest thing to an ally she had was Hoskins. He came to visit the dollhouse virtually every day. It was obvious to Miss Fellowes that Hoskins welcomed any chance to escape from his increasingly difficult role as head of Stasis Technologies, Ltd., and that he took a sentimental interest in the child who had caused all this furor; but it seemed to her also that he enjoyed talking to her.

  (She had learned a few things about him by this time. He had invented the method of analyzing the reflections cast by the past-penetrating mesonic beam; he had been one of the inventors of the method of establishing Stasis; his often chilly, exceedingly businesslike manner was only an effort to hide a kindly nature that was sometimes too easy for others to take advantage of; and, oh yes, he was married, very definitely and happily so.)

  One day Hoskins walked in on her just in time to catch her in the process of erupting.

  It had been a bad day, very bad. A new team of physiologists from California had showed up with a whole new series of tests they wanted to put Timmie through—right now—something having to do with his posture and pelvic structure. The tests involved an intricate arrangement of cold metal rods and a lot of pushing and pressing. Timmie wasn’t much in the mood just then to be pushed and pressed against cold metal rods. Miss Fellowes, watching them manipulating him as though he were some sort of laboratory animal, found herself being swept by the hot urge to kill.

  “Enough!” she cried, finally. “Out! Out!”

  They gaped and gawped at her.

  “I said, Out! Session’s over! The boy is tired. You’re twisting his legs and straining his back. Don’t you see that he’s crying? Out! Out!”

  “But, Miss Fellowes—”

  She began to gather up their instruments. They snatched them hastily from her. She pointed to the door. Muttering among themselves, they scuttled out.

  She was staring after them in a blind fury, looking out the open door and wondering what kind of intolerable intrusion was next on the schedule, while Timmie stood sobbing behind her. And then she realized that Hoskins was there.

  He said, “Is there a problem?”

  She glowered at him. “I’ll say there is!”

  Turning to Timmie, she gestured and he came running to her, clinging to her, twining his legs around her. She heard the boy murmur something, very low, words she couldn’t quite make out. She held him close.

  Hoskins said gravely, “He doesn’t seem happy.”

  “Would you be, in his place? They’re at him every day now with their blood samples and their probings and their tests. You should have seen what they were doing to him just now—trying to find out which way his legs were fastened to his body, is what it looked like. And now his food’s been changed too. The synthetic diet that Jacobs has had him on since Monday is stuff that I wouldn’t feed a pig.”

  “Dr. Jacobs says that it’ll build up his strength, that it’ll make him better able to withstand—”

  “Withstand what? Even more testing?”

  “You have to bear in mind, Miss Fellowes, that the primary purpose of this experiment is to learn as much as can be learned about—”

  “I do bear that in mind, doctor. And you bear in mind that what we have here isn’t a hamster or a guinea pig or even a chimpanzee—but an actual human being.”

  “No one denies that,” Hoskins said. “But—”

  She cut him off yet again. “But you’re all ignoring the fact that that’s what he is: a human being, a human child. I suppose you see him as nothing more than some kind of little ape wearing overalls, and you think that you can—”

  “We do not see him as—”

  “You do! You do! Dr. Hoskins, I insist. You told me it was Timmie’s coming that put your company on the map. If you have any gratitude for that at all, you’ve got to keep them away from the poor child at least until he’s old enough to understand a little more of what’s being asked of him. After he’s had a bad session with them, he has nightmares, he can’t sleep, he screams for hours sometimes. Now I warn you” (and she reached a sudden peak of fury) “I’m not letting them in here any more. Not!”

  (She realized that her voice had been growing louder and louder as she spoke and now she was screaming. But she couldn’t help it.)

  Hoskins was looking at her in deep chagri
n.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, in a much more temperate tone. “I didn’t mean to yell that way.”

  “I understand that you’re upset. I understand why you’re upset.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Dr. Jacobs assures me that the boy’s health is fine, that he’s not in any way impaired by the program of research to which he’s being—subjected.”

  “Then Dr. Jacobs ought to spend a night sleeping in here and he might have a different view,” Miss Fellowes said. She saw a startled look come into Hoskins’ eyes and her face blossomed with embarrassment at the unintended, implausible other meaning of what she had just said.—“To listen to him crying in the dark. To watch me have to go into his bedroom and hold him and sing lullabies to him. Not impaired, Dr. Hoskins? If he hasn’t been impaired by all this, it’s because he spent the first few years of his life under the most dreadful conditions imaginable and somehow survived them. If a child can survive an ice-age winter, he can probably survive a lot of poking and testing by a pack of people in white coats. But that doesn’t mean it’s good for him.”

  “We’ll need to discuss the research schedule at the next staff meeting.”

  “Yes. We will. Everyone is to be reminded that Timmie has a right to humane treatment. To human treatment.”

  Hoskins smiled. She gave him an interrogative look.

  He said, “I was just thinking how you’ve changed since the first day, when you were so angry because I had foisted a Neanderthal on you. You were ready to quit, do you remember?”

  “I would never have quit,” Miss Fellowes said softly.

  “‘I’ll stay with him—for a while,’ you said. Those were your exact words. You seemed quite distraught. I had to convince you that you really would be taking care of a child and not some sort of little primate that belonged in a zoo.”