“And me!” Loma 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 pyjamas. 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 towards 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, hm? 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 towards 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 realise now you can’t help how you behave.”
“He’s so goddamned patronising!” 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 institutionalised.
“Yes, I can well imagine that he must be,” Dr Hend sighed. “But, you see, a biofact like Buddy is designed to maximise 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 medicare 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 realise 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. It’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!”
