“Doubt if it’s still around,” O’Reilley repeated.
“Look, pop!” Norris snapped. “You’re required to keep sales receipts until they’re microfilmed. There hasn’t been a micro-filming for over a year.”
“Get out of my shop!”
“If I go, you won’t have a shop after tomorrow.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Yeah.”
For a moment, Norris thought the old man would attack him. But O’Reilley spat a sudden curse, scurried toward the counter, grabbed a fat book from beneath the cash register, then hurried away toward the stairs at the rear of the shop.
“Hey, pop! Where you going?”
“Get me glasses!”
“You’re wearing your glasses!” Norris started after him. “New ones. Can’t see through them.” O’Reilley bounded up-stairs.
“Leave the book here and I’ll check it!”
Norris stopped with his foot on the bottom step. O’Reilley slammed the door at the head of the stairs, locked it behind him. Grumbling suspiciously, the inspector went back to the counter to wait.
Five minutes passed. The door opened. O’Reilley came downstairs, looking less angry but decidedly nervous. He slammed the book on the counter, riffled its pages, found a place, muttered “Here it is, see for yourself,” and held it at a difficult angle.
“Give it here.”
O’Reilley reluctantly released it, began babbling about bureaucracy and tin-horn inspectors who acted like dictators and inspection codes that prescribed and circumscribed and prohibited. Norris ignored him and stared at the duplicate receipt.
“Adelia Schultz… received Chimpanzee-K-99-LJZ-35i on…”
It was the number on the list from Anthropos. It was the number of the animal he wanted for normalcy tests. But it was not the number of Mrs. Schultz’s neutroid, nor was it the number written on Mrs. Schultz’s copy of this very same invoice.
O’Reilley was still babbling at him. Norris held the book up to his eye, took aim at the bright doorway across the surface of the page. O’Reilley stopped babbling.
“Rub marks,” the inspector grunted. “Scrape marks on the paper.”
O’Reilley’s breathing sounded asthmatic. Norris lowered the book.
“Nice erasure job—for a carbon copy. Do it while you were upstairs?”
O’Reilley said nothing. Norris took a scrap of paper, folded his handkerchief over the point of his pocketknife blade, used the point to clean out the eraser dust from between the receipts, emptied the dust on the paper, folded it and put it in his pocket.
“Evidence.”
O’Reilley said nothing.
Norris tore out the erased receipt, pocketed it, put on his hat and started for the door.
“See you in court, O’Reilley.”
“Wait!”
He turned. “Okay—I’m waiting.”
“Let’s go sit down first,” the deflated oldster muttered weakly.
“Sure.”
They walked up the flight of stairs and entered a dingy parlor. He glanced around, sniffed at the smell of cabbage boiling and sweaty bedclothing. An orange-haired neutroid lay sleeping on a dirty rug in the corner. Norris stared down at it curiously. O’Reilley made a whining sound and slumped into a chair, his breath coming in little whiffs that suggested inward sobbing. Norris gazed at him expressionlessly for a moment, then went to kneel beside the newt.
“K-99-LJZ-35i,” he read aloud, peering at the sole of the tattooed foot. The newt stirred in its sleep at the sound of a strange voice. When Norris looked at O’Reilley again, the old man was staring at his feet, his forehead supported by a leathery old hand that shielded his eyes.
“Lots of good explanations, O’Reilley?”
“Ye’ve seen what ye’ve seen; now do what ye must. I’ll say nothing to ye.”
“Look, O’Reilley, the newt is what I’m after. So I found it. I don’t know what else I’ve found, but juggling serial numbers is a serious offense. If you’ve got a story, you better tell it. Otherwise, you’ll be telling it behind bars. I’m willing to listen here and now. You’d better grab the chance.”
O’Reilley sighed, looked at the sleeping newt in the corner. “What’ll ye do with her?”
“The newt? Take her in.”
O’Reilley sat in gloomy silence while he thought things over. “We were class-B, me and the missus,” he mumbled suddenly, “allowed a child of our own if we could have ‘un. Fancy that, eh? Ugly old coot like me—class-B.”
“So?”
“The government said we could have a child, but Nature said we couldn’t.”
“Tough.”
“But since we were class B, we weren’t entitled to own a newt. See?”
“Yeah. Where’s your wife?”
“With the saints, let’s hope.”
Norris wondered what sort of sob-story this was getting to be. The oldster went on quietly, all the while staring at the sleeping figure in the corner.
“Couldn’t have a kid, couldn’t own a newt either—so we opened the pet shop. It wasn’t like havin’ yer own, though. Missus always blubbered when I sold a newt she’d got to feeling like a mother to. Never swiped one, though—not till Peony came along. Last year this Bermuda shipment come in, and I sold most of ’em pretty quick, but Peony here was puny. People ‘fraid she’d not last long. Couldn’t sell her. Kept her around so long that we both loved her. Missus died last year. ‘Don’t let anybody take Peony,’ she kept saying afore she passed on. I promised I wouldn’t. So I switched ’em around and moved her up here.”
“That all?”
O’Reilley hesitated, then nodded.
“Ever done this before?”
O’Reilley shook his head.
There was a long silence while Norris stared at the child-thing. “Your license could be revoked,” he said absently.
“I know.”
He ground his fist thoughtfully in his palm, thought it over some more. If O’Reilley told the truth, he couldn’t live with himself if he reported the old man… unless it wasn’t the whole truth.
“I want to take your books home with me tonight.”
“Help yourself.”
“I’m going to make a complete check, investigate you from stem to stern.”
He watched O’Reilley closely. The oldster was unaffected. He seemed concerned—grief-stricken—only by the thought of losing the neutroid.
“If plucking a newt out of stock to keep you company was the only thing you did, O’Reilley, I won’t report you.”
O’Reilley was not consoled. He continued to gaze hungrily at the little being on the rug.
“And if the newt turns out not to be a deviant,” he added gently, “I’ll send it back. We’ll have to attach a correction to that invoice, of course, and you’ll just have to take your chances about somebody wanting to buy it, but… “ He paused. O’Reilley was staring at him strangely.
“And if she is a deviant, Mr. Norris?”
He started to reply, hesitated.
“Is she, O’Reilley?”
The oldster said nothing. His face tightened slowly. His shoulders shook slightly, and his squinted eyes were brimming. He choked.
“I see.”
O’Reilley shook himself, produced a red bandana, dabbed at his eyes, blew his nose loudly, regathered his composure. “How do you know she’s deviant?”
O’Reilley gave him a bitter glance, chuckled hoarsely, shuffled across the room and sat on the floor beside the sleeping newt. He patted a small bare shoulder.
“Peony?… Peony-girl… Wake up, me child, wake up.”
Its fluffy tail twitched for a moment. It sat up, rubbed its eyes, and yawned. There was a lazy casualness about its movements that caused Norris to lean closer to stare. Neutroids usually moved in bounces and jerks and scrambles. This one stretched, arched its back, and smiled—like a two year old with soft brown eyes. It glanced at Norris. The eyes went wider for a moment, then it studiousl
y ignored him.
“Shall I play bouncey, Daddy?” it piped.
Norris sucked in a long slow breath and sat frozen.
“No need to, Peony.” O’Reilley glanced at the inspector. “Bouncey’s a game we play for visitors,” he explained. “Making believe we’re a neutroid.”
The inspector could find nothing to say.
Peony licked her lips. “Wanna glass of water, Daddy.”
O’Reilley nodded and hobbled away to the kitchen, leaving the man and the neutroid to stare at each other in silence. She was quite a deviant. Even a fully age-set K-108 could not have spoken the two sentences that he had heard, and Peony was still a long way from age-set, and a K-99 at that.
O’Reilley came back with the water. She drank it greedily, holding the glass herself while she peered up at the old man. “Daddy’s eyes all wet,” she observed.
O’Reilley began trembling again. “Never mind, child. You go get your coat.”
“Whyyyy?”
“You’re going for a ride with Mr. Norris.”
She whirled to stare hostilely at the stunned visitor. “I don’t want to!”
The old man choked out a sob and flung himself down to seize her in his arms and hug her against his chest. He tearfully uttered a spasmodic babble of reassurances that would have frightened even a human child.
The deviant neutroid began to cry. Standard neutroids never cried; they whimpered and yeeped. Norris felt weak inside. Slowly, the old man lifted his head to peer at the inspector, blinking away tears. He began loosening Peony from the embrace. Suddenly he put her down and stood up.
“Take her quickly,” he hissed, and strode away to the kitchen. He slammed the door behind him. The latch clicked.
Peony scampered to the door and began beating on it with tiny fists. “Daddy… Daddy!!! Open a door!” she wailed.
Norris licked his lips and swallowed a dry place. Still he did not budge from the sofa, his gaze fastened on the child-thing. Disjointed phrases tumbled through his mind… what Man hath wrought… out of the slime of an ape… fat legs and baby fists and a brain to know… and the State spoke to Job out of a whirlwind, saying…
“Take her!” came a roaring bellow from the kitchen. “Take her before I lose me wits and kill ye!”
Norris got unsteadily to his feet and advanced toward the frightened child-thing. He carried her, kicking and squealing, out into the early evening. By the time he turned into his own driveway, she had subsided a little, but she was still crying.
He saw Anne coming down from the porch to meet him. She was staring at the neutroid who sat on the front seat beside him, while seven of its siblings chattered from their cages in the rear of the truck. She said nothing, only stared through the window at the small tear-stained face.
“Home… I want to go home!” it whined.
Norris lifted the newt and handed it to his wife. “Take it inside. Keep your mouth shut about it. I’ll be in as soon as I chuck the others in their cages.”
She seemed not to notice his curtness as she cradled the being in her arms and walked away. The truck lurched on to the kennels.
He thought the whole thing over while he worked. When he was finished, he went back in the house and stopped in the hall to call Chief Franklin. It was the only thing to do: get it over with as quickly as possible. The operator said, “His office fails to answer. No taped readback. Shall I give you the locator?”
Anne came into the hall and stood glaring at him, her arms clenched across her bosom, one foot tapping the floor angrily. Peony stood behind her, no longer crying, and peering at him curiously around Anne’s skirt.
“Are you doing what I think you’re doing, Terry?”
He gulped. “Cancel the call,” he told the operator. “It’ll wait till tomorrow.” He dropped the phone hard and sank down in the straight chair. It was the only thing to do: delay it as long as he could.
“We’d better have a little talk,” she said.
“Maybe we’d better,” he admitted.
They went into the living room. Peony’s world had evidently been restricted to the pet shop, and she seemed awed by the clean, neat house, no longer frightened, and curious enough about her surroundings to forget to cry for O’Reilley. She sat in the center of the rug, occasionally twitching her tail as she blinked around at the furniture and the two humans who sat in it.
“The deviant?”
“A deviant.”
“Just what are you going to do?”
He squirmed. “You know what I’m supposed to do.”
“What you were going to do in the hall?”
“Franklin’s bound to find out anyway.”
“How?”
“Do you imagine that Franklin would trust anybody?”
“So?”
“So, he’s probably already got a list of all serial numbers from the District Anthropos Wholesalers. As a double check on us. And we’d better deliver.”
“I see. That leaves you in a pinch, doesn’t it?”
“Not if I do what I’m supposed to.”
“By whose law?”
He tugged nervously at his collar, stared at the child-thing who was gazing at him fixedly. “Heh heh,” he said weakly, waggled a finger at it, held out his hands invitingly. The child-thing inched away nervously.
“Don’t evade, Terry.”
“I wanna go home… I want Dadda.”
“I gotta think. Gotta have time to think.”
“Listen, Terry, you know what calling Franklin would be? It would be M, U, R, D, E, R.”
“She’s just a newt.”
“She?”
“Probably. Have to examine her to make sure.”
“Great. Intelligent, capable of reproduction. Just great.”
“Well, what they do with her after I’m finished with the normalcy tests is none of my affair.”
“It’s not? Look at me, Terry… No, not with that patiently suffering…. Terry!”
He stopped doing it and sat with his head in his hands, staring at the patterns in the rug, working his toes anxiously. “Think—gotta think.”
“While you’re thinking, I’ll feed the child,” she said crisply. “Come on, Peony.”
“How’d you know her name?”
“She told me, naturally.”
“Oh.” He sat trying grimly to concentrate, but the house was infused with Anne-ness, and it influenced him. After a while, he got up and went out to the kennels where he could think objectively. But that was wrong too. The kennels were full of Franklin and the system he represented. Finally he went out into the back yard and lay on the cool grass to stare up at the twilight sky. The problem shaped up quite formidably. Either he turned her over to Franklin to be studied and ultimately destroyed, or he didn’t. If he didn’t, he was guilty of Delmont’s crime. Either he lost Anne and maybe something of himself, or his job and maybe his freedom.
A big silence filled the house during dinner. Only Peony spoke, demanding at irregular intervals to be taken home. Each time the child-thing spoke, Anne looked at him, and each time she looked at him, her eyes said “See?”—until finally he slammed down his fork and marched out to the porch to sulk in the gloom. He heard their voices faintly from the kitchen.
“You’ve got a good appetite, Peony.”
“I like Dadda’s cooking better.”
“Well, maybe mine’ll do for awhile.”
“I wanna go home.”
“I know—but I think your dadda wants you to stay with us for awhile.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Why don’t you like it here?”
“I want Dadda.”
“Well maybe we can call him on the phone, eh?”
“Phone?”
“After you get some sleep.”
The child-thing whimpered, began to cry. He heard Anne walking with it, murmuring softly. When he had heard as much as he could take, he trotted down the steps and went for a long walk in the night, stalking slowly alon
g cracked sidewalks beneath overhanging trees, past houses and scattered lights of the suburbs. Suburbs hadn’t changed much in a century, only grown more extensive. Some things underwent drastic revision with the passing years, other things—like walking sticks and garden hoes and carving knives and telephones and bicycles—stayed pretty much as they were. Why change something that worked well as it was? Why bother the established system?
He eyed the lighted windows through the hedges as he wandered past. Fluorescent lights, not much different than those of a century ago. But once they had been campfires, the fires of shivering hunters in the forest, when man was young and the world was sparsely planted with his seed. Now the world was choked with his riotous growth, glittering with his lights and his flashing signs, full of the sound of his engines and the roar of his rockets. He had inherited it and filled it—filled it too full, perhaps.
There was no escaping from the past. The last century had glutted the Earth with its children and grandchildren, had strained the Earth’s capacity to feed, and the limit had been reached. It had to be guarded. There was no escape into space, either. Man’s rockets had touched two planets, but they were sorry worlds, and even if he made them better, Earth could beget children—if allowed—faster than ships could haul them away. The only choice: increase the death rate, or decrease the birth rate—or, as a dismal third possibility—do nothing, and let Nature wield the scythe as she had once done in India and China. But letting-Nature-do-it was not in the nature of Man, for he could always do it better. If his choice robbed his wife of a biological need, then he would build her a disposable baby to pacify her. He would give it a tail and only half a mind, so that she would not confuse it with her own occasional children.
Peony, however, was a grim mistake. The mistake had to be quickly corrected before anyone noticed.
What was he, Norris, going to do about it, if anything? Defy the world? Outwit the world? The world was made in the shape of Franklin, and it snickered at him out of the shadows. He turned and walked back home.
Anne was rocking on the porch with Peony in her arms when he came up the sidewalk. The small creature dozed fitfully, muttered in its sleep.
“How old is she, Terry?” Anne asked.
“About nine months, or about two years, depending on what you mean.”
Dark Benediction Page 28
