The Ugly Little Boy

by Isaac Asimov

  He said tremulously, “She did. The new one. She said you’d hit me with a long whip, that you would hit me and hit me.”

  “She was wicked to say that. You won’t be whipped.—But what happened? What happened, Timmie?”

  He stared up at her. His eyes looked enormous.

  In a low voice he said, “He called me an ape-boy.”

  “What!”

  “He said I wasn’t a real boy. That he read it in the newspaper. He said I was just an animal.” Timmie was fighting to hold back tears; and then they came, a flood of them. His words grew indistinct as he snuffled, and yet she could make out every syllable all too clearly. “He said he wasn’t going to play with a monkey any more. I said I wasn’t a monkey. I’m not a monkey. I know what a monkey is.”

  “Timmie—Timmie—”

  “He said I was all funny-looking. He said I was horrible and ugly. He kept saying and saying and I bit him.”

  They were both crying now.

  Miss Fellowes said, amid sobs, “It isn’t true. You know that, Timmie. You’re a real boy. You’re a dear real boy and the best boy in the world. And no one, no one, will ever take you away from me.”

  She went outside again. Elliott and Mortenson were still bustling around, patching Jerry up. Mandy Terris was nowhere to be seen.

  Miss Fellowes said, “Get that boy out of here. Take him to his father’s office and finish whatever it is you need to do with him there. And if you see Ms. Terris, tell her she can pick up her paycheck and clear out.”

  They nodded. They backed away from her as if she had begun to breathe fire.

  She turned and went back inside, to Timmie.

  [54]

  Her mind was made up, now. It had been very easy: the sudden awareness of what had to be done, the sudden resolve to do it right away, quickly, no hesitation possible. Maybe there were dangers in it that she didn’t understand, but she had to take that chance. If she didn’t act at all, Timmie would surely be sent back across time to die. If she did what she planned now to do, there was at least the hope that things would work out. On the one hand, the certainty of death—on the other, hope. An easy choice, that one. And there wasn’t any time for considering and reconsidering, not now, not when Hoskins’ own son had been mangled like this.

  No, it would have to be done this night, this night, while the celebration over the success of Project Middle Ages still had everyone distracted.

  She wished she could call Bruce Mannheim to let him know. But she didn’t dare risk it. The switchboard computers might have some kind of security program in them; they might listen in and report what she was intending to do. She would have to get in touch with him after it was done. Mannheim wouldn’t mind being awakened in the small hours of the night, not for this. And then he could get to work doing his part.

  Midnight, she thought. That’s the right time.

  There would be no problem about her leaving and coming back that late. She often went there at night, even on nights when she had decided to sleep at her own apartment and had already left for the day. The guard knew her well and wouldn’t dream of questioning her. He wouldn’t think twice about why she happened to be carrying a suitcase, either. She rehearsed the noncommittal phrase, “Some games for the boy,” and the calm smile.

  Games for the boy? Bringing them in at midnight?

  But why should anyone doubt her? She lived only for Timmie. Everyone around here knew that. If she was bringing games for him in the middle of the night, well, that was the way she was. Why should he take any notice?

  He didn’t.

  “Evening, Miss Fellowes. Big day today, wasn’t it?”

  “Very big, yes.—Some games for the boy,” she said, waving the suitcase and smiling.

  And went on past the security barrier.

  Timmie was still awake when she entered the dollhouse.

  “Miss Fellowes—Miss Fellowes—”

  She maintained a desperate pretense of normality to avoid frightening him. Had he been sleeping? A little, he said. He had had the dream again, and it had awakened him. So she sat with him for a time, talking about his dreams with him, and listened to him ask wistfully about Jerry. She was as patient as she could force herself to be. There’s no hurry, she told herself. Why should anyone be suspicious? I have every right to be in here.

  And there would be few to see her when she left, no one to question the bundle she would be carrying. Timmie would be very quiet and then the thing would be done. It would be done and what would be the use of trying to undo it? They would let her be. They would let them both be. Even if what she was about to do blew every power line in six counties, there’d be no point afterward in bringing Timmie back to his place.

  She opened the suitcase.

  She took out the overcoat, the woolen cap with the ear-flaps, and the rest.

  Timmie said, with a note of bewilderment and perhaps distress in his voice, “Why are you putting all these clothes on me, Miss Fellowes?”

  She said, “I’m going to take you outside, Timmie. To where your dreams are.”

  “My dreams?” His face twisted in sudden yearning, yet fear was there, too.

  “You don’t need to be afraid. You’ll be with me. You won’t be afraid if you’re with me, will you, Timmie?”

  “No, Miss Fellowes.” He buried his little misshapen head against her side, and under her enclosing arm she could feel his small heart thud.

  She lifted him into her arms. She disconnected the alarm and opened the door softly.

  And screamed.

  Gerald Hoskins was standing there, facing her across the open door.

  [55]

  There were two men with Hoskins and he stared at her, looking as astonished as she was.

  Miss Fellowes recovered first by a second, and made a quick attempt to push past him into the corridor; but even with the second’s delay Hoskins had enough time to stop her. He caught her roughly and hurled her back through the door of the bubble and up against a chest of drawers. Then he waved the other two men in and confronted her, blocking the door.

  “I didn’t expect this. Are you completely insane?”

  Miss Fellowes had managed to interpose her shoulder so that it, rather than Timmie, had struck the chest. Now she turned, clinging to Timmie tightly and glaring defiantly at Hoskins. But the defiance went out of her as she began to speak. In a pleading tone, she said, “What harm can it do if I take him, Dr. Hoskins? You can’t put something like an energy loss ahead of a human life.”

  Hoskins nodded to the others, and they stepped in alongside her, looking ready to restrain her if it turned out to be necessary. Hoskins himself reached forward and took Timmie out of her arms.

  He said, “A power surge of the size that doing what you were about to do would black out an immense area. It would cripple the whole city all the next day. Computers would be down, alarms wouldn’t function, data would be lost, all kinds of trouble. There’d be a thousand lawsuits and we’d be on the receiving end of all of them. The costs would run into the millions for us. Way up in the millions. We might even find ourselves facing bankruptcy. At the very minimum it would mean a terrible financial setback for Stasis Technologies, and a colossal public-relations fiasco. Imagine what people will say when they find out that all that trouble was caused by a sentimental nurse acting irrationally for the sake of an ape-boy.”

  “Ape-boy!” said Miss Fellowes, in helpless fury.

  “You know that that’s what the reporters like to call him,” said Hoskins. “And ordinary people all think of him that way. They still don’t understand what a Neanderthal actually is. And I don’t think they ever will.”

  One of the other men had gone out of the bubble. He returned now, looping a nylon rope through eyelets along the upper portion of the wall.

  Miss Fellowes gasped. She remembered the rope attached to the pull-lever outside the room containing Professor Adamewski’s rock specimen so long ago.

  She cried out, “No! You mustn
’t!” But Hoskins put Timmie down and gently removed the overcoat he was wearing. “You stay here, Timmie. Nothing will happen to you. We’re just going outside for a moment. All right?”

  Timmie, white-faced and wordless, managed to nod.

  Hoskins steered Miss Fellowes out of the dollhouse ahead of himself. For the moment she was beyond resistance. Dully she noticed the red-handled pull-lever being adjusted in the hallway outside. Odd how she had never paid attention to it before, never let it enter her consciousness.

  The sword of the executioner, she thought.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Fellowes,” Hoskins said. “I would have spared you this if I could. I planned it for midnight so that you’d find out only when it was over.”

  She said in a weary whisper, “You’re doing this because your son was hurt. Don’t you realize that Jerry tormented this child into striking out at him?”

  “This has nothing to do with what happened to Jerry.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t,” Miss Fellowes said acidly.

  “No. Believe me. I understand about the incident today and I know it was Jerry’s fault.—Well, I suppose what happened today has speeded things up a little. The story has leaked out. No way that it wouldn’t have, with the media crawling all over the lab today because of Project Middle Ages. And we’ll be hearing stuff about ‘negligence,’ ‘savage Neanderthalers,’ all that nonsense, getting into the news, spoiling the coverage of today’s successful experiment. Better to end the Timmie experiment right here and now. Timmie would have had to leave soon anyway. Better to send him back tonight and give the sensationalists as small a peg as possible on which they can hang their trash.”

  “It’s not like sending a rock back. He’s a human being, and you’ll be killing him.”

  “Not killing. We’ve got no reason to think that the return trip is harmful. He’ll arrive more or less in the same place we took him from, at a point in time that we calculate will be roughly ten weeks after his departure—plus or minus a couple of weeks, factoring in entropic drift and other little technicalities. And he won’t feel a thing. He’ll be back home—a Neanderthal boy in a Neanderthal world. He won’t be a prisoner and an alien any more. He’ll have a chance at a free life.”

  “What chance? He’s seven years old at best, accustomed to being taken care of, fed, clothed, sheltered. Now he’ll be alone in an ice age. Don’t you think his tribe may have wandered off somewhere else in ten weeks’ time? They don’t simply sit still—they follow the game, they move along the trail. And even if by some miracle they were still there, do you think they’ll recognize him? Three years older in ten weeks? They’d run screaming away. He’d be alone and he’d have to look after himself. How will he know how to do it?”

  Hoskins shook his head. His expression was bleak, stony, implacable.

  “He’ll find his tribe again, and they’ll take him in and welcome him back. I’m completely certain of it. Trust me, Miss Fellowes.”

  She looked at him in anguish.

  “Trust you?”

  “Please,” he said, and suddenly there was anguish in his eyes too. “There’s no way around this. I’m sorry, Miss Fellowes. Believe me, I am—sorrier than you’ll ever give me credit for. But the boy has to go, and that’s all there is to it. Don’t make it any harder for me than it already is.”

  Her eyes were fixed on his. She stared steadily, in silence, for a long terrible moment.

  At last she said, sadly, “Well, then. At least let me say goodbye to him. Give me five minutes alone with him. You can let me have that, can’t you?”

  Hoskins hesitated. Then he nodded.

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  [56]

  Timmie ran to her. For the last time he ran to her and for the last time Miss Fellowes clasped him in her arms.

  For a moment, she hugged him blindly. She caught at a chair with the toe of one foot, moved it against the wall, set it down.

  “Don’t be afraid, Timmie.”

  “I’m not afraid if you’re here, Miss Fellowes.—Is that man mad at me, the man out there?”

  “No, he isn’t. He just doesn’t understand about us.—Timmie, do you know what a mother is?”

  “Like Jerry’s mother?”

  “Well—yes. Like Jerry’s mother. Do you know what a mother does?”

  “A mother is a lady who takes care of you and who’s very nice to you and who does good things.”

  “That’s right. That’s what a mother does. Have you ever wanted a mother, Timmie?”

  Timmie pulled his head away from her so that he could look into her face. Slowly, he put his hand to her cheek and hair and stroked her, just as long, long ago she had stroked him.

  He said, “Aren’t you my mother?”

  “Oh, Timmie.”

  “Are you angry because I said that?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Because I know your name is Miss Fellowes, but—but sometimes, I call you ‘Mother’ inside. The way Jerry does his mother, only he does it out loud. Is that all right, that I was calling you that inside?”

  “Yes. Yes, it’s all right. And I won’t leave you any more and nothing will hurt you. I’ll be with you to care for you always. Call me Mother, so I can hear you.”

  “Mother,” said Timmie contentedly, leaning his cheek against hers.

  She rose, and still holding him, stepped up on the chair.

  She remembered what Hoskins had said, about objects that weren’t anchored being swept along in time with the transit object. A lot of the things in the room were anchored; some were not. Such as the chair she was standing on. Well, so be it: the chair would go. That wasn’t important. Other things might go, too. She didn’t know which would be caught in the time field and which would not. She didn’t care. It was no problem of hers.

  “Hey!” Hoskins shouted, from outside the bubble.

  She smiled. She clutched Timmie tightly and reached up with her free hand, and yanked with all her weight at the cord where it hung suspended between two eyelets.

  And Stasis was punctured and the room was empty.

  EPILOGUE

  Skyfire Face

  SILVER CLOUD walked over to Goddess Woman where she squatted drawing magical circles in the snow and said, “I need to talk to you.”

  She went on doing what she was doing. “Talk, then.”

  “Can you stop drawing the circles for a moment?”

  “The circles protect us.”

  “Stop anyway,” Silver Cloud said. “Stand up and look me in the eye. I have a serious matter to discuss.”

  Goddess Woman gave him a sour, scowling look and got slowly to her feet. He thought he could hear her bones creaking as she came out of her squat.

  The snow had stopped, at least for a little while. The sun was shining weakly, a late-season sun, low on the horizon.

  “Well?” Goddess Woman said. “Talk.”

  “We have to leave this place,” said Silver Cloud.

  “Of course we do. Everyone’s known that for a long time.”

  “We’re going to leave this place, is what I mean. Today.”

  Goddess Woman scratched her rump thoughtfully. “We still haven’t been able to worship at the shrine.”

  “No. We haven’t.”

  “We came here to do that. If we leave without doing it—after having failed to hold the Summer Festival—the Goddess will be angry at us.”

  Silver Cloud said, in irritation, “The Goddess is angry at us. We know that already. She sent the Other Ones to occupy the riverbank and keep us from using the shrine. All right, then we can’t use the shrine. But we can’t stay any longer, either. We have no real shelter here and not much food and we’re right on the edge of winter.”

  “You should have admitted these things to yourself a long time ago, Silver Cloud.”

  “Yes. I should have. But at least I’m admitting them now. When we are finished talking, I will give the order to break camp, and you will perform the rites of depart
ure, and we will leave. Is that understood?”

  Goddess Woman stood staring at him for a time.

  Then she said, “Understood, yes. But you can no longer be chieftain after this, Silver Cloud.”

  “I know that. The Killing Society will convene and do what has to be done. I can be left behind as an offering to the Goddess. Some other chieftain will lead us up the hill and out to the east to find shelter.”

  “Yes,” Goddess Woman said. What he had just said didn’t seem to perturb her in any way. “And who will be chieftain after you? Blazing Eye? Broken Mountain?”

  “Whoever wants to be,” said Silver Cloud.

  “And if more than one wants to be?”

  He shrugged. “They can fight it out, then.”

  “But this is wrong. You should make a choice.”

  “No,” he said. “My wisdom is used up. My day is over. Go, get yourself ready for what happens next, Goddess Woman. I am done talking with you.”

  He walked away. She called his name, but he paid no attention. She hurled a snowball after him, and it struck his shoulder and snow ran down his back, but still he kept walking. He had no wish to talk with anyone now. This was his last day of life and he simply wanted to be calm, to be quiet, to pass the time peacefully until the Killing Society came for him with the ivory club. Tomorrow his leg would no longer hurt and someone else would bear his burdens of power.

  He stood by himself, looking across the way to the shrine that his people had never been able to use.

  Some Other Ones were stirring about down there, by the edge of the river. Warriors, they were, and armed. What were they up to? Young Antelope was on sentry duty near the shrine, and he was pacing back and forth in an uneasy way. An attack? Was that what they had in mind? Taking the shrine by force?

  It would be just my luck, Silver Cloud thought. We sit here in stalemate week after week, each side afraid of the other, neither one willing to risk seizing the shrine by force. And the very day I decide to withdraw and give the place to them, they decide to take it from us in battle. And we have no way of communicating with them, so we will have to fight, and many of us will die. Needlessly. If they would wait until tomorrow, the shrine would be theirs without a fight, for we would be gone from here.