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 along 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.”
“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—?”
