“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 studiously 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
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…
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…
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
“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.”
“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?
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?”
“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
