The Ugly Little Boy

by Isaac Asimov

  “Well—”

  The other questions produced results nearly as uncertain. Tribal structure? Miss Fellowes managed to extract from Timmie, after a lot of verbal gyration, that there the tribe had had a “big man,” by which he evidently meant a chief. No surprise there. Primitive tribes of historic times always had chiefs; it was reasonable to expect that Neanderthal tribes had had them, too. She asked if he knew the big man’s name, and Timmie answered with clicks. Whatever the chiefs name might be, the boy couldn’t translate it into English words or even render a phonetic equivalent: he had to fall back on Neanderthal sounds.—Did the chief have a wife? the scientists wanted to know. Timmie didn’t know what a wife was.—How was the chief chosen? Timmie couldn’t understand the question.—What about religious beliefs and practices? Miss Fellowes was able, by dint of giving Timmie all sorts of scientifically dubious prompting, to get some sort of description from the boy of a holy place made of rocks, which he had been forbidden to go near, and a cult which might or might not have been run by a high priestess. She was sure it was a priestess, not a priest, because he kept pointing to her as he spoke; but whether he really understood what she was trying to learn from him was something not at all certain to her.

  “If only they had managed to bring a child who was older than this across time!” the anthropologists kept lamenting. “Or a full-grown Neanderthal, for God’s sake! If only! If only! How maddening, to have nothing but an ignorant little boy as our one source of information.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Miss Fellowes agreed, without much compassion in her tone of voice. “But that ignorant little boy is one more Neanderthal than any of you ever expected to have a chance to interrogate. Never in your wildest dreams did you think you’d have any Neanderthals at all to talk to.”

  “Even so! If only! If only!”

  “If only, yes,” said Miss Fellowes, and told them that their time for interviewing Timmie was over for that day.

  [39]

  Then Hoskins reappeared, arriving at the dollhouse without advance word one morning.

  “Miss Fellowes? May I speak with you?”

  He was using that sheepish tone of his again, the one that conveyed extreme embarrassment. As well he might, Miss Fellowes thought.

  She came out coldly, smoothing her nurse’s uniform. Then she halted in confusion. Hoskins wasn’t alone. A pale woman, slender and of middle height, was with him, hovering at the threshold of the Stasis zone. Her fair hair and complexion gave her an appearance of fragility. Her eyes, a very light blue in color, were searching worriedly over Miss Fellowes’ shoulders, looking diligently for something, flickering uneasily around the room as though she expected a savage gorilla to jump out from behind the door to Timmie’s playroom.

  Hoskins said, “Miss Fellowes, this is my wife, Annette. Dear, you can step inside. It’s perfectly safe. You’ll feel a trifling discomfort at the threshold, but it passes.—I want you to meet Miss Fellowes, who has been in charge of the boy since the night he came here.”

  (So this was his wife? She wasn’t much like what Miss Fellowes would have expected Hoskins’ wife to be; but then, she considered, she had never really had any clear expectations of what Hoskins’ wife ought to be like. Someone more substantial, a little less fidgety, than this all too obviously ill-at-ease woman, at any rate. But, then, why? A strong-willed man like Hoskins might have preferred to choose a weak thing as his foil. Well, if that was what he wanted, so be it. On the other hand, Miss Fellowes had imagined Hoskins’ wife would be young, young and sleek and glamorous, the usual sort of second wife that she had been told successful businessmen of Hoskins’ age liked to acquire. Annette Hoskins didn’t quite fall into that category. She was a good deal younger than Hoskins, yes, and younger than Miss Fellowes, too, for that matter. But she wasn’t really young: forty, perhaps. Or close to it.)

  Miss Fellowes forced a matter-of-fact greeting. “Good morning, Mrs. Hoskins. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  “Annette.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Call me Annette, Miss Fellowes. Everyone does. And your name is—”

  Hoskins cut in quickly. “What’s Timmie doing, Miss Fellowes? Taking a nap? I’d like my wife to meet him.”

  “He’s in his room,” Miss Fellowes said. “Reading.”

  Annette Hoskins gave a short, sharp, almost derisive-sounding laugh. “He can read?”

  “Simple picture books, Mrs. Hoskins. With short captions. He’s not quite ready for real reading yet. But he does like to look at books. This one’s about life in the far north. Eskimos, walrus-hunting, igloos, that sort of thing. He reads it at least once a day.”

  (Reading wasn’t exactly the most accurate description of what Timmie did, Miss Fellowes knew. In fact it was something of a fib. Timmie wasn’t reading at all. As far as she could tell, Timmie only looked at the pictures; the words printed under them seemed to have no more than a decorative value to him, mere strange little marks. He had showed no curiosity about them at any time thus far. Perhaps he never would. But he was looking at books, and apparently understanding their content. That was the next best thing to actual reading. For the purpose of this conversation it might just be a good idea to let Hoskins’ wife jump to the conclusion that Timmie really could read, though surely Hoskins himself was aware of the truth.)

  Hoskins said in a robust, curiously pumped-up tone, “Isn’t that amazing, Miss Fellowes? Do you remember what he was like the night we brought him in? That wild, screaming, dirty, frantic little prehistoric creature?”

  (As though I could ever forget, Miss Fellowes thought.)

  “And now—sitting quietly in there, reading a book—learning about Eskimos and igloos—” Hoskins beamed with what seemed almost like paternal pride. “How marvelous that is! How absolutely splendid, isn’t it! What wonderful progress the boy has been making in your care!”

  Miss Fellowes studied Hoskins suspiciously. There was something odd and unreal about this suddenly grandiose oratorical tone of his. What was he up to? He knew Timmie wasn’t really able to read. And why bring his wife here after all this time, why be making all this insincere-sounding noise about Timmie’s wonderful progress?

  And then she understood.

  In a more normal voice Hoskins said, “I have to apologize for stopping by so infrequently of late, Miss Fellowes. But as you can guess I’ve been tied up having to deal with all manner of peripheral distractions. Not the least of which is our friend Mr. Bruce Mannheim.”

  “I imagine you have been.”

  “He’s called me just about every week since the day he was here. Asking me this, asking me that, fretting about Timmie as if the boy was his own son and I was the headmaster of some school he had sent him away to.—Some ghastly school out of a novel by Charles Dickens, one would think.”

  “Asking you particularly about what you’ve been doing to get Timmie a companion?” Miss Fellowes said.

  “Especially that.”

  “And what actually have you been doing along those lines, Dr. Hoskins?”

  Hoskins winced. “Having a very difficult time. We’ve interviewed at least half a dozen children, perhaps more, as potential playmates for Timmie. And interviewed their parents as well, naturally.”

  That was news to Miss Fellowes. “And?”

  “What it comes down to is that there were two little boys who seemed suitable, but their parents raised all sorts of special conditions and objections that we were in no position to deal with. There was another boy who might have worked out, and we were just about ready to bring him in here for a trial visit with Timmie, but at the last moment it was conditions and objections again; the parents brought in a lawyer who wanted us to post bond, tie ourselves up in some very elaborate contractual guarantees, and commit ourselves to various other things that our lawyers thought were unwise. As for the rest of the children we saw, the question of liability didn’t arise, because their parents seemed only interested in the fee we were offering. But
the kids all struck us as wild little roughnecks who’d do Timmie more harm than good. Naturally we turned them down.”

  “So you don’t have anyone, is what you’re saying.”

  Hoskins moistened his lips. “We decided finally that we’d stay in-house for this—that we’d use the child of a staff member. This particular staff member standing here in front of you. Me.”

  “Your own son?” Miss Fellowes asked.

  “You recall, don’t you, that when Mannheim and Dr. Levien were here I said, more in anger than otherwise, that if necessary I’d make my own boy available? Well, it’s come down to that. I’m a man of my word, Miss Fellowes, as I think you realize. I’m not going to ask anyone else in the company to do something that I’m not prepared to do. I’ve decided to put my boy Jerry forth as the playmate that Timmie needs so badly.—But of course that can’t be my unilateral decision alone.”

  “So you brought Mrs. Hoskins here so that she could satisfy herself that your son wouldn’t be in any danger at Timmie’s hands,” Miss Fellowes said.

  Hoskins looked overwhelmed with gratitude. “Yes, Miss Fellowes. Yes, exactly so!”

  Miss Fellowes glanced again at Hoskins’ wife. The woman was chewing her lip and staring once more at the door behind which the terrifying Neanderthal lurked.

  She must believe that Timmie’s an ape, Miss Fellowes thought. A gorilla. A chimpanzee. Who will instantly leap on her precious little baby and rend him limb from limb.

  Icily Miss Fellowes said, “Well, shall I bring him out and show him to her now?”

  Mrs. Hoskins tensed visibly, and she had been tense to begin with. “I suppose you should—Miss Fellowes.”

  The nurse nodded.

  “Timmie?” she called. “Timmie, will you come out here for a moment? We have visitors.”

  Timmie peered shyly around the edge of the door.

  “It’s all right, Timmie. It’s Dr. Hoskins and his wife. Come on out.”

  The boy stepped forward. He looked quite presentable, Miss Fellowes thought, uttering a little prayer of gratitude. He was wearing the blue overalls with the big green circles on them, his second-favorite pair, and his hair, which Miss Fellowes had brushed out thoroughly an hour ago, was still relatively unmussed and unsnarled. The slender book he had been looking at dangled from his left hand.

  He peered up expectantly at the visitors. His eyes were very wide. Plainly Timmie recognized Hoskins, even after all this time, but he didn’t seem sure what to make of Hoskins’ wife. No doubt something in her body language, something tightly strung and wary about her, had put the boy on guard. Primitive reflexes—instincts, you could almost say—coming to the fore in him, perhaps?

  There was a long awkward silence.

  Then Timmie smiled.

  It was a warm, wonderful smile, Timmie’s extraspecial ear-to-ear smile. Miss Fellowes loved him for it. She could have gathered him up and hugged him. How delicious he looked when he did that! How sweet, how trusting, how childlike. Yes. A little boy coming out of his nursery to greet the company. How could Annette Hoskins possibly resist that smile?

  “Oh,” the woman said, as though she had just found a beetle in her soup. “I didn’t realize he’d look so—strange.”

  Miss Fellowes gave her a baleful scowl.

  Hoskins said, “It’s mostly his facial features, you know. From the neck down he just looks like a very muscular little boy. More or less.”

  “But his face, Gerald—that huge mouth—that enormous nose—the eyebrows bulging like that—the chin—he’s so ugly, Gerald. So weird.”

  “He can understand much of what you’re saying,” Miss Fellowes warned in a low, frosty voice.

  Mrs. Hoskins nodded. But she still wasn’t able to stop herself. “He looks very different in person from the way he looks on television. He definitely seems much more human when you see him on—”

  “He is human, Mrs. Hoskins,” Miss Fellowes said curtly. She was very tired of having to tell people that. “He’s simply from a different branch of the human race, that’s all. One that happens to be extinct.”

  Hoskins, as though sensing the barely suppressed rage in Miss Fellowes’ tone, turned to his wife and said with some urgency, “Why don’t you talk to Timmie, dear? Get to know him a little. That’s why you came here today, after all.”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  She seemed to be working up her courage.

  “Timmie?” the woman said, in a thin, tense voice. “Hello, Timmie. I’m Mrs. Hoskins.”

  “Hello,” Timmie said.

  He put out his hand to her. That was what Miss Fellowes had taught him to do.

  Annette Hoskins glanced quickly at her husband. He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and nodded.

  She reached out uncertainly and took Timmie’s hand as though she were shaking hands with a trained chimpanzee at the circus. She gave it a quick unenthusiastic shake and let go of it in a hurry.

  Timmie said, “Hello, Mrs. Hoskins. Pleased to meet you.”

  “What did he say?” Annette Hoskins asked. “Was he saying something to me?”

  “He said hello,” Miss Fellowes told her. “He said he was pleased to meet you.”

  “He speaks? English?”

  “He speaks, yes. He can understand easy books. He eats with a knife and a fork. He can dress and undress himself. It shouldn’t be any surprise that he can do all those things. He’s a normal little boy, Mrs. Hoskins, and he’s something more than five years old. Maybe five and a half.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “We can only guess,” Miss Fellowes said. “He didn’t have his birth certificate in his pocket when he came here.”

  Mrs. Hoskins looked at her husband again. “Gerald, I’m not so sure about this. Jerry isn’t quite five yet.”

  “I know how old our son is, dear,” Hoskins said stonily. “He’s big and sturdy for his age, though. Bigger than Timmie is.—Look, Annette, if I thought there was any risk at all—the slightest possibility of—”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know. How can we be certain that it’s safe?”

  Miss Fellowes said at once, “If you mean is Timmie safe to be with your son, Mrs. Hoskins, the answer is yes, of course he is. Timmie’s a gentle little boy.”

  “But he’s a sav—savage.”

  (The ape-boy label from the media, again! Didn’t people ever think for themselves?)

  Miss Fellowes said emphatically, “He is not a savage, not in the slightest. Does a savage come out of his room carrying his book, and put out his hand for a handshake? Does a savage smile like that and say hello and tell you that he’s pleased to meet you? You see him right in front of you. What does he really look like to you, Mrs. Hoskins?”

  “I can’t get used to his face. It’s not a human face.”

  Miss Fellowes would not let herself explode in wrath. Tautly she said, “As I’ve already explained, he’s as human as any of us. And not a savage at all. He is just as quiet and reasonable as you can possibly expect a five-and-some-months-year-old boy to be. It’s very generous of you, Mrs. Hoskins, to agree to allow your son to come here to play with Timmie, but please don’t have any fears about it.”

  “I haven’t said that I’ve agreed,” Mrs. Hoskins replied with some mild heat in her voice.

  Hoskins gave her a desperate glare. “Annette—”

  “I haven’t!”

  (Then why don’t you get out of here and let Timmie go back to his book?)

  Miss Fellowes struggled to keep her temper.

  (Let Dr. Hoskins handle this. She’s his wife.)

  Hoskins said, “Talk to the boy, Annette. Get to know him a little. You did agree to do that much.”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose.” She approached the boy again. “Timmie?” she said tentatively. Timmie looked up. He wasn’t doing the ear-to-ear smile this time. He had already learned, strictly from the verbal intonations he was picking up, that this woman was no friend of his.

  Mrs. Hoskins did smile, but
it wasn’t a very convincing one.—“How old are you, Timmie?”

  “He’s not very good at counting,” Miss Fellowes said quietly.

  But to her astonishment Timmie held up the five fingers of his left hand, splayed out distinctly.

  “Five!” the boy cried.

  “He put up five fingers and he said five,” Miss Fellowes said, amazed. “You heard him, didn’t you?”

  “I heard it,” said Hoskins.—“I think.”

  “Five,” Mrs. Hoskins said, grimly continuing. She was working at making contact with Timmie now. “That’s a very nice age. My boy Jerry is almost five himself. If I bring Jerry here, will you be nice to him?”

  “Nice,” Timmie said.

  “Nice,” Miss Fellowes translated. “He understood you. He promised to be nice.”

  Mrs. Hoskins nodded. Under her breath she said, “He’s small, but he looks so strong.”

  “He’s never tried to hurt anyone,” Miss Fellowes said, conveniently allowing herself to overlook the frantic battles of the long-ago first night. “He’s extremely gentle. Extremely. You’ve got to believe that, Mrs. Hoskins.” To Timmie she said, “Take Mrs. Hoskins into your room. Show her your toys and your books. And your clothes closet.” Make her see that you’re a real little boy, Timmie. Make her look past your brow ridges and your chinless chin.

  Timmie held out his hand. Mrs. Hoskins, after only a moment of hesitation, took it. For the first time since she had entered the Stasis bubble something like a genuine smile appeared on her face.

  She and Timmie went into Timmie’s room. The door closed behind them.

  “I think it’s going to work,” Hoskins said in a low voice to Miss Fellowes, the moment his wife was gone. “He’s winning her over.”

  “Of course he is.”

  “She’s not an unreasonable woman. Trust me on that. Or an irrational one. But Jerry’s very precious to her.”

  “Naturally so.”

  “Our only child. We’d been married for several years, and there were fertility problems in the beginning, and then we managed—we were finally able—”

  “Yes,” Miss Fellowes said. “I understand.” She wasn’t enormously interested in hearing about the fertility problems of Dr. and Mrs. Hoskins. Or how they had finally been able to overcome them.