Dark Benediction

by Walter Michael Miller

  “Born nine months ago?”

  “Mmmh. But two years by the development scale, human equivalent. Newts would be fully mature at nine or ten, if they didn’t stop at an age-set. Fast maturation.”

  “But she’s brighter than most two year olds.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’ve heard her talk.”

  “You can’t make degree-comparisons between two species, Anne. Not easily anyhow. ‘Bright’?—signifying I.Q.?—by what yardstick.”

  “Bright—signifying on-the-ball—by my yardstick. And if you turn her over to Franklin, I’ll leave you.”

  “Car coming,” he grunted tonelessly. “Get in the house. It’s slowing down.”

  Anne slipped out of her chair and hurried inside. Norris lingered only a moment, then followed. The headlights paused in front of a house down the block, then inched ahead. He watched from deep in the hall.

  “Shall I take her out to the kennels right quick?” Anne called tensely.

  “Stick where you are,” he muttered, and a moment later regretted it. The headlights stopped in front. The beam of a powerful flashlight played over the porch, found the house-number, winked out. The driver cut the engine. Norris strode to the living room.

  “Play bouncey!” he growled at Peony.

  “Don’t want to,” she grumbled back.

  “There’s a man coming, and you’d better play bouncey if you ever want to see your Dadda again!” he hissed.

  Peony yeeped and backed away from him, whimpering. “Terry! What’re you talking about? You should be ashamed!”

  “Shut up…. Peony, play bouncey.”

  Peony chattered and leaped to the back of the sofa with monkey-like grace.

  “She’s frightened! She’s acting like a common newt!”

  “That’s bouncey,” he grunted. “That’s good.”

  The car door slammed. Norris went to put on the porch light and watch the visitor come up the steps—a husky, bald gentleman in a black suit and Roman collar. He blinked and shook his head. Clergyman? The fellow must have the wrong house.

  “Good evening.”

  “Uh—yeah.”

  “I’m Father Mulreany. Norris residence?” The priest had a slight brogue; it stirred a vague hunch in Norris’ mind, but failed to clear it.

  “I’m Norris. What’s up?”

  “Uh, well, one of my parishioners—I think you’ve met him—”

  “Countryman of yours?”

  “Mmm.”

  “O’Reilley?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’d he do, hang himself?”

  “Nothing that bad. May I come in?”

  “I doubt it. What do you want?”

  “Information.”

  “Personal or official?”

  The priest paused, studied Norris’s silhouette through the screen. He seemed not taken aback by the inspector’s brusqueness, perhaps accepting it as normal in an era that had little regard for the cloth.

  “O’Reilley’s in bad shape, Inspector,” Mulreany said quietly. “I don’t know whether to call a doctor, a psychiatrist, or a cop.”

  Norris stiffened. “A cop?”

  “May I come in?”

  Norris hesitated, feeling a vague hostility, and a less vague suspicion. He opened the screen, let the priest in, led him to the living room. Anne muttered half-politely, excused herself, snatched Peony, and headed for the rear of the house. The priest’s eyes followed the neutroid intently.

  “So O’Reilley did something?”

  “Mmm.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  Mulreany frowned. “In addition to things you wouldn’t understand—he was my sister’s husband.”

  Norris waved him into a chair. “Okay, so—?”

  “He called me tonight. He was loaded. Just a senseless babble, but I knew something was wrong. So I went over to the shop.” Mulreany stopped to light a cigarette and frown at the floor. He looked up suddenly. “You see him today?”

  Norris could think of no reason not to admit it. He nodded irritably.

  Mulreany leaned forward curiously. “Was he sober?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sane?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Did he impress you as the sort of man who would suddenly decide to take a joint of pipe and a meat cleaver and mass-slaughter about sixty helpless animals?”

  Norris felt slightly dazed. He sank back, shaking his head and blinking. There was a long silence. Mulreany was watching him carefully.

  “I can’t help you,” Norris muttered. “I’ve got nothing to say.”

  “Look, Inspector, forget this, will you?” He touched his collar. Norris shook his head, managed a sour smile. “I can’t help you.”

  “All right,” Mulreany sighed, starting to his feet. “I’m just trying to find out if what he says…”

  “Men talking about Dadda?” came a piping voice from the kitchen.

  Mulreany shot a quick glance toward it. “…is true,” he finished softly.

  There was a sudden hush. He could hear Anne whispering in the kitchen, saw her steal a glance through the door. “So it is true,” Mulreany murmured.

  Face frozen, Norris came to his feet. “Anne,” he called in a bitter voice. “Bouncey’s off.”

  She came in carrying Peony and looking murderous. “Why did you ask him in?” she demanded in a hiss.

  Mulreany stared at the small creature. Anne stared at the priest.

  “It’s poison to you, isn’t it!” she snapped, then held Peony up toward him. “Here! Look at your enemy. Offends your humanocentrism, doesn’t she?”

  “Not at all,” he said rather wistfully.

  “You condemn them.”

  He shook his head. “Not them. Only what they’re used for by society.” He looked at Norris, a bit puzzled. “I’d better leave.”

  “Maybe not. Better spill it. What do you want?”

  “I told you. O’Reilley went berserk, made a butcher shop out of his place. When I got there, he was babbling about a talking neutroid—‘his baby’—said you took it to the pound to destroy it. Threatened to kill you. I got a friend to stay with him, came over to see if I could find out what it’s all about.”

  “The newt’s a deviant. You’ve heard of the Delmont case?”

  “Rumors.”

  “She’s it.”

  “I see.” Mulreany looked glum, grim, gloomy. “Nothing more I need to know I guess. Well—”

  Norris grabbed his arm as he turned. “Sit a spell,” he grunted ominously.

  The priest looked puzzled, let himself be guided back to the chair. Norris stood looking down at him.

  “What’s the matter with Dadda?” Peony chirped. “I wanna go see Dadda.”

  “Well?” Norris growled. “What about her?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You people are down on Anthropos, aren’t you?”

  Mulreany kept patience with an effort. “To make nitroglycerin for curing heart trouble is good, to make it for blowing open safes is bad. The stuff itself is morally neutral. The same goes for mutant animals. As pets, okay; as replacements for humans, no.”

  “Yeah, but you’d just as soon see them dead, eh?”

  Mulreany hesitated. “I admit a personal dislike for them.”

  “This one?”

  “What about her?”

  “Better dead, eh?”

  “You couldn’t admit she might be human?”

  “Don’t know her that well. Human? How do you mean—biologically? Obviously not. Theologically? Why should you care?”

  “I’m interested in your particular attitude, buster.”

  Mulreany gazed at him, gathering a glower. “I’m a little doubtful about my status here,” he growled. “I came for information; the roles got switched somewhere. Okay, Norris, but I’m sick of neo-pagan innocents like you. Now sit down, or show me the door.”

  Norris sat down slowly.

  The pri
est watched the small neutroid for a moment before speaking. “She’s alive, performs the function of living, is evidently aware. Life—a kind of functioning. A specific life—an in-variant kind of functioning—with sameness-of-self about it. Invariance of functioning—a principle. Self, soul, call it what you like. Whatever’s alive has it.” He paused to watch Norris doubtfully.

  Norris nodded curtly. “Go on.”

  “Doesn’t have to be anything immortal about it. Not unless she were known to be human. Or intelligent.”

  “You heard her,” Anne snapped.

  “I’ve heard metal boxes speak with great wisdom,” Mulreany said sourly. “And if I were a Hottentot, a vocalizing computer would…”

  “Skip the analogies. Go on.”

  “What’s intelligence? A function of Man, immortal. What’s Man? An intelligent immortal creature, capable of choice.”

  “Quit talking in circles.”

  “That’s the point. I can’t—not where Peony’s concerned. What do you want to know? If I think she’s equal to Man? Give me all the intelligence test results, and all the data you can get—I still couldn’t decide.”

  “Whattaya need? Mystic writings in the sky?”

  “Precisely.”

  “I feel a bush being beat about,” Anne said suddenly. “Is this guy going to make things tough, or isn’t he?”

  Mulreany looked puzzled again.

  “To the point, then,” Norris said. “Would you applaud if she gets the gasser?”

  “Hardly.”

  “If you had it to decide for yourself—”

  “What? Whether to destroy her or not?” Mulreany snorted irritably. “Not if there was the least doubt in my mind about her. She’s a shadow in the brush. Maybe it’s ten to one that the shadow’s a bear and not a man—but on the one chance, don’t shoot, son, don’t shoot.”

  “You think the authorities have a right to kill her, maybe?” Anne asked.

  “Who, him?” Mulreany jerked his head toward Norris.

  “Well, say him.”

  “I’d have to think about it. But I don’t think so.”

  “Why? The government made her. Why can’t it un-make her?”

  “Made her? Did it now?”

  “Delmont did,” Norris corrected.

  “Did he now?” said Mulreany.

  “Why not?” Anne snorted.

  “I, the State, am Big Fertility,” Norris said sourly; then baiting

  Mulreany: “Thou shalt accept no phallus but the evolvotron.” Mulreany reddened, slapped his knee, and chortled. The Norrises exchanged puzzled glances.

  “I feel an affinity,” Anne murmured suspiciously.

  Norris came slowly to his feet. “If you talk to anybody about Peony, you may be responsible for her death.”

  “I don’t quite see—”

  “You don’t need to.”

  Mulreany shrugged.

  “Tell O’Reilley the same.”

  Mulreany nodded. “You’ve got my word.”

  “Your which?”

  “Sorry, I forgot. Ancient usage. I won’t mention Peony. I’ll see that O’Reilley doesn’t.”

  Norris led him to the door. The priest was obviously suppressing large quantities of curiosity, but contained it well. On the steps, he paused to look back, wearing a curious smirk.

  “It just occurred to me—if the child is ‘human’ in the broad sense, she’s rather superior to you and I.”

  “Why?”

  “Hasn’t picked an apple yet.” Norris shrugged slightly.

  “And Inspector—if Delmonte made her—ask yourself: Just what was it that he ‘made’?” He nodded quickly. “Goodnight.”

  “What do you make of him?” Anne hissed nervously.

  “Backworldsman. Can’t say.”

  “Fool, why’d you bring him in?”

  “I’m no good at conspiracies.”

  “Then you will do it?”

  “What?”

  “Hide her, or something.”

  He stared at her doubtfully. “The only thing I can hope to do is falsify the test reports and send her back to O’Reilley as a standard model.”

  “That’s better than nothing.”

  “And then spend the rest of our days waiting for it to be uncovered,” he added grimly.

  “You’ve got to, Terry.”

  Maybe, he thought, maybe.

  If he gave her back to O’Reilley, there was a good chance she’d be discovered when the auditor came to microfilm the records and check inventory. He certainly couldn’t keep her himself—not with other Bio-agents wandering in and out every few days. She could not be hidden.

  He sat down for a smoke and watched Anne tiptoe to the sofa with the sleeping Peony. It would be easy to obey the law, turn her over to Franklin, and tell Anne that he had done something else with her, something like…

  He shuddered and chopped the thought off short. She glanced at him curiously.

  “I don’t like the way you’re looking at me,” she muttered. “You imagine things.”

  “Uh-uh. Listen to me, Terry, if you let that baby…”

  “I’m sick of your ifs!” he barked. “If I hear another goddam threat of your leaving if, then to hell with it, you can leave any time!”

  “Terry!”

  She puzzled in his direction for a moment, then slowly wandered out, still puzzling. He sank lower in the chair, brooding. Then it hit him. It wasn’t Anne that worried him; it was a piece of himself. It was a piece of himself that threatened to go, and if he let Peony be packed off to Central Lab, it would go, and thereafter he would not be able to stomach anything, even himself.

  The morning news from the Scriber was carefully folded beside his plate when he came to the table for breakfast. It was so deliberately folded that he bothered to notice the advertisement in the center of the displayed portion.

  “You lay this out for my benefit?” he asked.

  “Not particularly,” she said casually.

  He read it with a suspicious frown:

  BIOLOGISTS WANTED

  by

  ANTHROPOS INCORPORATED

  for

  Evolvotron Operators

  Incubator Tenders

  Nursery Supervisors

  Laboratory Personnel

  in

  NEW ATLANTA PLANT

  Call or write:

  Personnel Manager

  ANTHROPOS INCORPORATED

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Note: Secure Labor Department release from present job before applying.

  “What’s this supposed to mean to me?” he demanded.

  “Nothing in particular. Why? Does it mean something to you?”

  He brushed the paper aside and decided to ignore the subtlety, if any. She picked it up, glanced at it as if she had not seen it before. “New jobs, new places to live,” she murmured.

  After breakfast, he went down to police headquarters to sign a statement concerning the motive in Doctor Georges’ murder. Sarah Glubbes had been stashed away in a psychopathic ward, according to Chief Miler, and would probably stay awhile.

  “Funny thing, Norris,” the cop said. “What people won’t do over a newt! You know, it’s a wonder you don’t get your head blown off. I don’t covet your job.”

  “Good.” He signed the paper and glanced at Miler coolly.

  “Must take an iron gut, huh, Norris?”

  “Sure. Just a matter of adaptation.”

  “Guess so.” Miler patted his paunch and yawned. “How you coming on this Delmont business? Picked up any deviants yet?”

  Norris pitched the fountain pen on the desk, splattering ink. “What made you ask that?” he said stiffly.

  “Nothing made me. I did it myself. Touchy today?”

  “Maybe.”

  Miler shrugged. “Something made you jump when I said ‘deviants.’”

  “Nothing made me. I—”

  “Ya, ya, sure, but—”

  “Save it for a suspect, Fat.�
� He stalked out of the office, leaving Miler tapping his pencil and gazing curiously after him. A phone rang somewhere behind him. He hurried on—angry with himself for jumpiness and for indecisiveness. He had to make a choice, and make it soon. It was the lack of a choice that left him jumpy, susceptible to a jolt from either side.

  “Norris… Hey, Norris…”

  Miler’s voice. He whirled to see the cop trotting down the steps behind him, his pudgy face glistening in the morning sun. “Your wife’s on the phone, Norris. Says it’s urgent.”

  When he got back to the office, he heard the faint, “Hello, hello!” coming from the receiver on the desk, caught it up quickly.

  “Anne? What’s wrong?”

  Her voice was low and strained beneath a cheerful overnote. “Nothing’s wrong, darling. We have a visitor. Come right home. Chief Franklin’s here.”

  It knocked the breath out of him. He felt himself going white. He glanced at Chief Miler, sitting calmly nearby.

  “Can you tell me about it now?” he asked her.

  “Not very well. Please hurry home. He wants to talk to you about the K-99s.”

  “Have the two of them met?”

  “Yes, they have.” She paused, as if waiting for him to speak, then said, “Oh, that! Bouncey, honey—remember bouncey?”

  “Good, I’ll be right home.” He hung up and started out.

  “Troubles?” the chief called after him.

  “Just a sick newt, if it’s any of your business,” he called back.

  Franklin’s helicopter was parked in the empty lot next door when Norris drove up in front of the house. The departmental chief heard the truck and came out on the porch to watch his agent walk up the path. His bulky body was loosely draped in gray tweeds, and his hawk face was a dark solemn mask. He greeted Norris with a slow, almost sarcastic nod.

  “I see you don’t read your mail. If you’d looked at it, you’d have known I was coming. I wrote you yesterday.”

  “Sorry, Chief, I didn’t have a chance to stop by the message office this morning.”

  Franklin grunted. “Then you don’t know why I’m here?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Let’s sit out on the porch,” Franklin said, and perched his bony frame on the railing. “We’ve got to get busy on these Bermuda-K-99s, Norris. How many have you got?”

  “Thirty-four, I think.”

  “I counted thirty-five.”

  “Maybe you’re right. I—I’m not sure.”