The Ugly Little Boy

There was so much to explain in even the simplest story, so much that was outside the perspective of his three rooms. Timmie took to having his dreams more often now that the outside was being introduced to him.

They were always the same, about the outside. He tried haltingly to describe them to Miss Fellowes. In his dreams, he was outside, an empty outside, but very large, with children and queer indescribable objects half- digested in his thought out of bookish descriptions half-understood, or out of distant Neanderthal memories half- recalled.

But the children and objects ignored him and though he was in the world, he was never part of it, but was as alone as though he were in his own room—and would wake up crying.

Miss Fellowes tried to laugh at the dreams, but there were nights in her own apartment when she cried, too.

One day, as Miss Fellowes read, Timmie put his hand under her chin and lifted it gently so that her eyes left the book and met his.

He said, “How do you know what to say, Miss Fellowes?”

She said, “You see these marks? They tell me what to say. These marks make words.”

He stared at them long and curiously, taking the book out of her hands. “Some of these marks are the same.”

She laughed with pleasure at this sign of his shrewdness and said, “So they are. Would you like to have me show you how to make the marks?”

“All right. That would be a nice game.”

It did not occur to her that he could learn to read. Up to the very moment that he read a book to her, it did not occur to her that he could learn to read.

Then, weeks later, the enormity of what had been done struck her. Timmie sat in her lap, following word by word the printing in a child’s book, reading to her. He was reading to her!

She struggled to her feet in amazement and said, “Now Timmie, I’ll be back later. I want to see Dr. Hoskins.”

Excited nearly to frenzy, it seemed to her she might have an answer to Timmie’s unhappiness. If Timmie could not leave to enter the world, the world must be brought into those three rooms to Timmie—the whole world in books and film and sound. He must be educated to his full capacity. So much the world owed him.

She found Hoskins in a mood that was oddly analogous to her own; a kind of triumph and glory. His offices were unusually busy, and for a moment, she thought she would not get to see him, as she stood abashed in the anteroom.

But he saw her, and a smile spread over his broad face. “Miss Fellowes, come here.” He spoke rapidly into the intercom, then shut it off.

“Have you heard?—No, of course, you couldn’t have. We’ve done it. We’ve actually done it. We have intertemporal detection at close range.”

“You mean,” she tried to detach her thought from her own good news for a moment, “that you can get a person from historical times into the present?”

“That’s just what I mean. We have a fix on a fourteenth century individual right now. Imagine. Imagine! If you could only know how glad I’ll be to shift from the eternal concentration on the Mesozoic, replace the paleontologists with the historians—But there’s something you wish to say to me, eh? Well, go ahead; go ahead. You find me in a good mood. Anything you want you can have.”

Miss Fellowes smiled. “I’m glad. Because I wonder if we might not establish a system of instruction for Timmie?”

“Instruction? In what?”

“Well, in everything. A school. So that he might learn.”

“But can he learn?”

“Certainly, he is learning. He can read. I’ve taught him so much myself.”

Hoskins sat there, seeming suddenly depressed. “I don’t know, Miss Fellowes.”

She said, “You just said that anything I wanted—”

“I know and I should not have. You see, Miss Fellowes, I’m sure you must realize that we cannot maintain the Timmie experiment forever.”

She stared at him with sudden horror, not really understanding what he had said. How did he mean “cannot maintain”? With an agonizing flash of recollection, she recalled Professor Ademewski and his mineral specimen that was taken away after two weeks. She said, “But you’re talking about a boy. Not about a rock—”

Dr. Hoskins said uneasily, “Even a boy can’t be given undue importance, Miss Fellowes. Now that we expect individuals out of historical time, we will need Stasis space, all we can get.”

She didn’t grasp it. “But you can’t. Timmie—Timmie—”

“Now, Miss Fellowes, please don’t upset yourself. Timmie won’t go right away; perhaps not for months. Meanwhile we’ll do what we can.”

She was still staring at him.

“Let me get you something, Miss Fellowes.”

“No,” she whispered. “I don’t need anything.” She arose in a kind of nightmare and left.

Timmie, she thought, you will not die. You will not die.

It was all very well to hold tensely to the thought that Timmie must not die, but how was that to be arranged? In the first weeks, Miss Fellowes clung only to the hope that the attempt to bring forward a man from the fourteenth century would fail completely. Hoskins’ theories might be wrong or his practice defective. Then things could go on as before.

Certainly, that was not the hope of the rest of the world and, irrationally, Miss Fellowes hated the world for it. “Project Middle Ages” reached a climax of white-hot publicity. The press and the public had hungered for something like this. Stasis, Inc. had lacked the necessary sensation for a long time now. A new rock or another ancient fish failed to stir them. But this was it.

A historical human; an adult speaking a known language; someone who could open a new page of history to the scholar.

Zero-time was coming and this time it was not a question of three onlookers from the balcony. This time there would be a world-wide audience. This time the technicians of Stasis, Inc. would play their role before nearly all of mankind.

Miss Fellowes was herself all but savage with waiting. When young Jerry Hoskins showed up for his scheduled playtime with Timmie, she scarcely recognized him. He was not the one she was waiting for.

(The secretary who brought him left hurriedly after the barest nod for Miss Fellowes. She was rushing for a good place from which to watch the climax of Project Middle Ages.—And so ought Miss Fellowes with far better reason, she thought bitterly, if only that stupid girl would arrive.)

Jerry Hoskins sidled toward her, embarrassed. “Miss Fellowes?” He took the reproduction of a news-strip out of his pocket.

“Yes? What is it, Jerry?”

“Is this a picture of Timmie?”

Miss Fellowes stared at him, then snatched the strip from Jerry’s hand. The excitement of Project Middle Ages had brought about a pale revival of interest in Timmie on the part of the press.

Jerry watched her narrowly, then said, “It says Timmie is an ape-boy. What does that mean?”

Miss Fellowes caught the youngster’s wrist and repressed the impulse to shake him. “Never say that, Jerry, Never, do you understand? It is a nasty word and you mustn’t use it.”

Jerry struggled out of her grip, frightened.

Miss Fellowes tore up the news-strip with a vicious twist of the wrist. “Now go inside and play with Timmie. He’s got a new book to show you.”

And then, finally, the girl appeared. Miss Fellowes did not know her. None of the usual stand-ins she had used when businesss took her elsewhere was available now, not with Project Middle Ages at climax, but Hoskins’ secretary had promised to find someone and this must be the girl.

Miss Fellowes tried to keep querulousness out of her voice. “Are you the girl assigned to Stasis Section One?”