“He did not! You just got mad because he did it that one time!”
“I—uh … Well, I guess maybe …”
“To be precise, there had been three complaints recorded about your dog’s excessive noise. On each occasion you had gone out and left him alone for several hours.”
“Right! Thank you, Buddy! See?”
“But you didn’t have to kill him!”
“Correct, Tim. You did not. You could have become acquainted with him, and then looked after him when it was necessary to leave him by himself.”
“Ah, who’d want to care for a dog like that shaggy brute?”
“Perhaps someone who never was allowed his own dog?”
“Okay. Okay! Sure I wanted a dog, and they never let me have one! Kept saying I’d—I’d torture it or something! So I said fine, if that’s how you think of me, let’s go right ahead! You always like to be proven right!”
“Kind of quiet around here tonight,” Jack Patterson said. “What’s been going on?”
“You can thank Buddy,” Lorna answered.
“Can I now? So what’s he done that I can’t do, this time?”
“Persuaded Tim to go to bed on time and without yelling his head off, that’s what!”
“Don’t feed me that line! ‘Persuaded’! Cowed him, don’t you mean?”
“All I can say is that tonight’s the first time he’s let Buddy sleep inside the room instead of on the landing by the door.”
“You keep saying I didn’t read the instructions—now it turns out you didn’t read them! Friends don’t sleep, not the way we do at any rate. They’re supposed to be on watch twenty-four hours per day.”
“Oh, stop it! I he first peaceful evening we’ve had in heaven knows how long, and you’re determined to ruin it!”
“I am not!”
“Then why the hell don’t you keep quiet?”
Upstairs, beyond the door of Tim’s room, which was as ever ajar, Buddy’s ears remained alert with their tips curled over to make them acoustically ultrasensitive.
“Who—? Oh! I know you You’re Tim Patterson, aren’t you? Well, what do you want?”
“I … I . .
“Tim wishes to know whether your son would care to play ball with him, madam.”
“You have to be joking! I’m not going to let Teddy play with Tim after the way Tim broke his elbow with a baseball bat!”
“It did happen quite a long time ago, madam, and—”
“No! That’s final! No!”
Slam!
“Well, thanks for trying, Buddy. It would have been kind of fun to … Ah, well!”
“That little girl is ill-advised to play so close to a road carrying fast traffic—Oh, dear. Tim, I shall need help in coping with this emergency. Kindly take off your belt and place it around her leg about here…. That’s correct. Now pull it tight. See how the flow of blood is reduced? You’ve put a tourniquet on the relevant pressure point, that’s to say a spot where a large artery passes near the skin. If much blood were allowed to leak, it might be fatal. I note there is a pen in the pocket of her dress. Please write a letter T on her forehead, and add the exact time; you see, there’s a clock over there. When she gets to the hospital the surgeon will know how long the blood supply to her leg has been cut off. It must not be restricted more than twenty minutes.”
“Uh … Buddy, I can’t write a T. And I can’t tell the time either.”
“How old did you say you were?”
“Well … Eight. And a half.”
“Yes, Tim. I’m actually aware both of your age and of your incompetence. Give me the pen, please…. There. Now go to the nearest house and ask someone to telephone for an ambulance. Unless the driver, who I see is backing up, has a phone right in his car.”
“Yes, what do you want?” Jack Patterson stared at the couple who had arrived without warning on the doorstep.
“Mr. Patterson? I’m William Vickers, from up on the 1100 block, and this is my wife, Judy. We thought we ought to call around after what your boy, Tim, did today. Louise—that’s our daughter—she’s still in the hospital, of course, but… Well, they say she’s going to make a quick recovery.”
“What the hell is that about Tim?” From the living area Lorna emerged, glowering and reeking of gin. “Did you say Tim put your daughter in the hospital? Well, that finishes it! Jack Patterson, I’m damned if I’m going to waste any more of my life looking after your goddamn son! I am through with him and you both—d’you hear me? Through!”
“But you’ve got it all wrong,” Vickers protested feebly. “Thanks to his quick thinking, and that Friend who goes with him everywhere, Louise got off amazingly lightly. Just some cuts, and a bit of blood lost—nothing serious. Nothing like as badly hurt as you’d expect a kid to be when a car had knocked her down.”
Lorna’s mouth stood half open like that of a standard fish. There was a pause; then Judy Vickers plucked at her husband’s sleeve.
“Darling, I—uh—think we came at a bad moment. We ought to get on home. But… Well, you do understand how grateful we are, don’t you?”
She turned away, and so, after a bewildered glance at both Jack and Lorna, did her husband.
“You stupid bitch!” Jack roared. “Why the hell did you have to jump to such an idiotic conclusion? Two people come around to say thanks to Tim for—for whatever the hell he did, and you have to assume the worst! Don’t you have any respect for your son at all … or any love?”
“Of course I love him! I’m his mother! I do care about him!” Lorna was returning to the living area, crabwise because her head was turned to shout at Jack over her shoulder. “For you, though, he’s nothing but a possession, a status symbol, a—”
“A correction, Mrs. Patterson,” a firm voice said. She gasped and whirled. In the middle of the living area’s largest rug was Buddy, his green fur making a hideous clash with the royal blue of the oblong he was standing on.
“Hey! What are you doing down here?” Jack exploded. “You’re supposed to be up with Tim!”
“Tim is fast asleep and will remain so for the time being,” the Friend said calmly. “Though I would suggest that you keep your voices quiet.”
“Now look here! I’m not going to take orders from—”
“Mr. Patterson, there is no question of orders involved. I simply wish to clarify a misconception on your wife’s part.
While she has accurately diagnosed your attitude toward your son—as she just stated, you have never regarded him as a person, but only as an attribute to bolster your own total image, which is that of the successful corporation executive—she is still under the misapprehension that she, quote unquote, ‘loves’ Tim. It would be more accurate to say that she welcomes his intractability because it offers her the chance to vent her jealousy against you. She resents—No, Mrs. Patterson, I would not recommend the employment of physical violence. I am engineered to a far more rapid level of nervous response than human beings enjoy.”
One arm upraised, with a heavy cut-crystal glass in it poised ready to throw, Lorna hesitated, then sighed and repented.
“Yeah, okay. I’ve seen you catch everything Tim’s thrown at you… . But you shut up, hear me?” With a return of her former rage. “It’s no damned business of yours to criticize me! Or Jack either!”
“Right!” Jack said. “I’ve never been so insulted in my life!”
“Perhaps it would have been salutary for you to be told some unpleasant truths long ago,” Buddy said. “My assignment is to help actualize the potential which—I must remind you—you arranged to build into Tim’s genetic endowment. He did not ask to be born the way he is. He did not ask to come into the world as the son of parents who were so vain they could not be content with a natural child, but demanded the latest luxury model. You have systematically wasted his talents. No child of eight years and six months with an IQ in the range 160-175 should be incapable of reading, writing, telling the time, counting, and so forth. This is the pred
icament you’ve wished on Tim.”
“If you don’t shut up I’ll—”
“Mr. Patterson, I repeat my advice to keep your voice down.”
“I’m not going to take advice or any other kind of nonsense from you, you green horror!”
“Nor am I!” Lorna shouted. “To be told I don’t love my own son, and just use him as a stick to beat Jack with—”
“Right, right I And I’m not going to put up with being told I treat him as some kind of ornament, a … What did you call it?”
Prompt, Buddy said, “An attribute to bolster your image.”
“That’s it—Now just a second!” Jack strode toward the Friend. “You’re mocking me, aren’t you?”
“And me!” Lorna cried.
“Well, I’ve had enough! First thing tomorrow morning I call the rental company and tell them to take you away. I’m sick of having you run our lives as though we were morons unfit to look after ourselves, and above all I’m sick of my son being put in charge of—Tim! What the hell are you doing out of bed?”
“I did advise you to speak more quietly,” Buddy murmured.
“Get back to your room at once!” Lorna stormed at the small tousle-haired figure descending the stairs in blue pajamas. Tears were streaming across his cheeks, glistening in the light of the living area’s lamps.
“Didn’t you hear your mother?” Jack bellowed. “Get back to bed this minute!”
But Tim kept on coming down, with stolid determined paces, and reached the floor level and walked straight toward Buddy and linked his thin pink fingers with Buddy’s green furry ones. Only then did he speak.
“You’re not going to send Buddy away! This is my friend!”
“Don’t use that tone to your father! I’ll do what the hell I like with that thing!”
“No, you won’t.” Tim’s words were full of finality. “You aren’t allowed to. I read the contract. It says you can’t.”
“What do you mean, you ‘read the contract’?” Lorna rasped. “You can’t read anything, you little fool!”
“As a matter of fact, he can,” Buddy said mildly. “I taught him to read this afternoon.”
“You—you what?”
“I taught him to read this afternoon. The skill was present in his mind but had been rendered artificially latent, a problem which I have now rectified. Apart from certain inconsistent sound-to-symbol relationships, Tim should be capable of reading literally anything in a couple of days.”
“And I did so read the contract!” Tim declared. “So I know Buddy can be with me for ever and ever!”
“You exaggerate,” Buddy murmured.
“Oh, sure I do! But ten full years is a long time.” Tim tightened his grip on Buddy’s hand. “So let’s not have any more silly talk, hmm? And no more shouting either, please. Buddy has explained why kids my age need plenty of sleep, and I guess I ought to go back to bed. Coming, Buddy?”
“Yes, of course. Good night, Mr. Patterson, Mrs. Patterson. Do please ponder my remarks. And Tim’s too, because he knows you so much better than I do.”
Turning toward the stairs, Buddy at his side, Tim glanced back with a grave face on which the tears by now had dried.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m not going to be such a handful any more. I realize now you can’t help how you behave.”
“He’ s so goddamn patronizing!” Jack Patterson exploded next time he and Lorna were in Dr. Hend’s office. As part of the out-of-court settlement of the dead-dog affair they were obliged to bring Tim here once a month. It was marginally cheaper than hiring the kind of legal computer capacity which might save the kid from being institutionalized.
“Yes, I can well imagine that he must be,” Dr. Hend sighed. “But, you see, a biofact like Buddy is designed to maximize the characteristics which leading anthropologists from Procyon, Regulus, Sigma Draconis, and elsewhere have diagnosed as being beneficial in human society but in dangerously short supply. Chief among these, of course, is empathy. Fellow-feeling, compassion, that kind of thing. And to encourage the development of it, one must start by inculcating patience. Which involves setting an example.”
“Patience? There’s nothing patient about Tim!” Lorna retorted. “Granted, he used to be self-willed and destructive and foul-mouthed, and that’s over, but now he never gives us a moment’s peace! All the time it’s gimme this, gimme that, I want to make a boat, I want to build a model starship, I want glass so I can make a what’s-it to watch ants breeding in … I want, I want! It’s just as bad and maybe worse.”
“Right!” Jack said morosely. “What Buddy’s done is turn our son against us.”
“On the contrary. It’s turned him for you. However belatedly, he’s now doing his best to live up to the ideals you envisaged in the first place. You wanted a child with a lively mind and a high IQ. You’ve got one.” Dr. Hend’s voice betrayed the fact that his temper was fraying. “He’s back in a regular school, he’s establishing a fine scholastic record, he’s doing well at free-fall gymnastics and countless other subjects. Buddy has made him over into precisely the sort of son you originally ordered.”
“No, I told you!” Jack barked. “He—he kind of looks down on us, and I can’t stand it!”
“Mr. Patterson, if you stopped to think occasionally, you might realize why that could not have been avoided!”
“I say it could and should have been avoided!”
“It could not! To break Tim out of his isolation in the shortest possible time, to cure him of his inability to relate to other people’s feelings, Buddy used the most practical means at hand. It taught Tim a sense of pity—a trick I often wish I could work, but I’m only human, myself. It wasn’t Buddy’s fault, any more than it was Tim’s, that the first people the boy learned how to pity had to be you.
“So if you want him to switch over to respecting you, you’d better ask Buddy’s advice. He’ll explain how to go about it. After all, that’s what Friends are for: to make us better at being human.
“Now you must excuse me, because I have other clients waiting. Good afternoon!”
The Wonder Horse
by George Byram
From Atlantic Monthly comes this flavorful story of Red Eagle, a horse who could fly without leaving the ground.
* * *
Webster says a mutation is a sudden variation, the offspring differing from the parents in some well-marked character or characters—and that certainly fits Red Eagle. He was foaled of registered parents, both his sire and dam descending from two of the best bloodlines in the breed. But the only thing normal about this colt was his color, a beautiful chestnut.
I attended Red Eagle’s arrival into the world. He was kicking at the sac that enclosed him as I freed his nostrils from the membrane. He was on his feet in one minute. He was straight and steady on his pasterns by the time his dam had him licked dry. He had his first feeding before he was five minutes old, and he was beginning to buck and rear and prance by the time I got my wits about me and called Ben.
Ben came in the other end of the ramshackle barn from the feed lot. He was small as men go, but big for a jockey. Not really old at forty-two, his hair was gray and he was old in experience of horses.
Ben came into the box stall and as he saw the colt he stopped and whistled. He pushed back his hat and studied the red colt for a full five minutes. Even only minutes old a horseman could see he was markedly different. The bones from stifle to hock and elbow to knee were abnormally long. There was unusual length and slope of shoulder. He stood high in the croup and looked like he was running downhill. He had a very long underline and short back. All this spelled uniquely efficient bone levers, and these levers were connected and powered by the deepest hard-twisted muscles a colt ever brought into this world. Unbelievable depth at the girth and immense spring to the ribs meant an engine of heart and lungs capable of driving those muscled levers to their maximum. Red Eagle’s nostrils were a third larger than any we had ever seen and he had a large, loose
windpipe between his broad jaws. He would be able to fuel the engine with all the oxygen it could use. Most important of all, the clean, sharp modeling of his head and the bigness and luster of his eyes indicated courage, will to win. But because of his strange proportions he looked weird.
“Holy Mary,” said Ben softly, and I nodded agreement.
Ben and I had followed horses all our lives. I as a veterinarian and trainer for big breeders, Ben as a jockey. Each of us had outserved his usefulness. Ben had got too heavy to ride; I had got too cantankerous for the owners to put up with. I had studied bloodlines and knew the breeders were no longer improving the breed, but I could never make anyone believe in my theories. One owner after another had decided he could do without my services. Ben and I had pooled our savings and bought a small ranch in Colorado. We had taken the mare that had just foaled in lieu of salary from our last employer. Barton Croupwell had laughed when we had asked for the mare rather than our money.
“Costello,” he said to me, “you and Ben have twenty-five hundred coming. That mare is nineteen years old. She could drop dead tomorrow.”
“She could have one more foal too,” I said.
“She could, but it’s five to two she won’t.”
“That’s good enough odds for the kind of blood she’s carrying.”
Croupwell was a gambler who raised horses for only one reason: to make money. He shook his head. “I’ve seen old codgers set in their thinking, but you’re the worst. I suppose you’ve got a stallion picked out—in case this mare’ll breed.”
“He doesn’t belong to you,” I said.
That needled him. “I’ve got stallions that bring five thousand for a stud fee. Don’t tell me they aren’t good enough.”
“Their bloodlines are wrong,” I answered. “Mr. Carvelliers has a stallion called Wing Away.”
“Carvelliers’ stallions cost money. Are you and Ben that flush?” He already knew what I had in mind.
‘‘You and Carvelliers trade services,” I said. ‘‘It wouldn’t cost you anything to have the mare bred.”
He threw back his head and laughed. He was a tall, thin man, always beautifully tailored, with black hair and a line of mustache. ‘‘I’m not a philanthropist,” he said. ‘‘Do you really want this mare?”
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