by Damon Knight
eyebrows twitched a polite question.
"We've been having a little argument," Moira said in a strained voice,"about whether this is an ordinary baby or not."
Berry took the stethoscope tubes away from his ears. He gazed at Moiralike an anxious spaniel.
"Now let's not worry about _that_. We're going to have a perfectlyhealthy wonderful baby, and if anybody tells us differently, why,we'll just tell them to go jump in the lake, won't we?"
"The baby is absolutely normal?" Len said in a marked manner.
"Absolutely." Berry applied the stethoscope again. His face blanched.
"What's the matter?" Len asked after a moment.
The doctor's gaze was fixed and glassy.
"Vagitus uterinus," Berry muttered. He pulled the stethoscope offabruptly and stared at it. "No, of course it couldn't be. Now isn'tthat a nuisance? We seem to be picking up a radio broadcast with ourlittle stethoscope here. I'll just go and get another instrument."
Moira and Len exchanged glances. Moira's was almost excessively bland.
Berry confidently came in with a new stethoscope, put the diaphragmagainst Moira's belly, listened for an instant and twitched once allover, as if his mainspring had snapped. Visibly jangling, he steppedaway from the table. His jaw worked several times before any soundcame out.
"Excuse me," he said, and walked out in an uneven line.
Len snatched up the instrument he had dropped.
Like a bell ringing under water, muffled but clear, a tiny voice wasshouting: "_You bladder-headed pillpusher! You bedside vacuum! Youfifth-rate tree surgeon! You inflated--_" A pause. "_Is that you,Connington? Get off the line; I haven't finished with Dr. Bedpanyet._"
Moira smiled, like a Buddha-shaped bomb.
"Well?" she said.
* * * * *
"We've got to think," Len kept saying over and over.
"_You've_ got to think." Moira was combing her hair, snapping the combsmartly at the end of each stroke. "I've had plenty of time to think,ever since it happened. When you catch up--"
Len flung his tie at the carved wooden pineapple on the corner of thefootboard. "Moy, be _reasonable_. The chances against the kid kickingthree times in any one-minute period are only about one in a hundred.The chances against anything like--"
Moira grunted and stiffened for a moment. Then she cocked her head toone side with a listening expression ... a new mannerism of hers thatwas beginning to send intangible snakes crawling up Len's spine.
"What now?" he asked sharply.
"He says to keep our voices down. He's thinking."
Len's fingers clenched convulsively, and a button flew off his shirt.Shaking, he pulled his arms out of the sleeves and dropped the shirton the floor. "Look. I just want to get this straight. When he talksto you, you don't hear him shouting all the way up past your liver andlights. What--"
"You know perfectly well he reads my mind."
"That isn't the same as--" Len took a deep breath. "Let's not get offon that. What I want to know is, what is it like? Do you seem to heara real voice, or do you just know what he's telling you, withoutknowing how you know?"
Moira put the comb down in order to think better. "It isn't likehearing a voice. You'd never confuse one with the other. It'smore--the nearest I can come to it, it's like remembering a voice.Except that you don't know what's coming."
Len picked his tie off the floor and abstractedly began knotting it onhis bare chest. "And he sees what you see, he knows what you'rethinking, he can hear when people talk to you?"
"Of course."
"This is tremendous!" Len began to blunder around the bed-room, notlooking where he was going. "They thought Macaulay was a genius. Thiskid isn't even born. I _heard_ him. He was cussing Berry out likeMonty Woolley."
"He had me reading _The Man Who Came to Dinner_ two days ago."
Len made his way around a small bedside table by trial and error."That's another thing. How much could you say about his--hispersonality? I mean does he seem to know what he's doing, or is hejust striking out wildly in all directions?" He paused. "Are you surehe's really conscious at all?"
* * * * *
Moira began, "That's a silly--" and stopped. "Define consciousness,"she said doubtfully.
"All right, what I really mean--_why_ am I wearing this necktie?" Heripped it off and threw it over a lampshade. "What I mean--"
"Are you sure you're really conscious?"
"Okay. You make joke, I laugh, ha-ha. What I'm trying to ask is, haveyou seen any evidence of creative thought, organized thought, or is hejust--integrating, along the lines of--of instinctive responses? Doyou--"
"I know what you mean. Shut up a minute.... I don't know."
"I mean is he awake, or asleep and dreaming about us, like the RedKing?"
"I don't _know_!"
"And if that's it, what'll happen when he wakes up?"
Moira took off her robe, folded it neatly, and maneuvered herselfbetween the sheets. "Come to bed."
Len got one sock off before another thought struck him. "He reads yourmind. Can he read other people's?" He looked appalled. "Can he readmine?"
"He doesn't. Whether it's because he can't, I don't know. I think hejust doesn't care."
Len pulled the other sock halfway down and left it there. In a stiffertone, he said, "One of the things he doesn't care about is whether Ihave a job."
"No. He thought it was funny. I wanted to sink through the floor, butI had all I could do to keep from laughing when she fell down.... Len,what are we going to do?"
He swiveled around and looked at her.
"Look," he said, "I didn't mean to sound that gloomy. We'll dosomething. We'll fix it. Really."
"I hope so."
Careful of his elbows and knees, Len climbed into the bed beside her."Okay now?"
"Mm.... Ugh." Moira tried to sit up suddenly, and almost made it. Shewound up propped on one elbow, and said indignantly, "Oh, no!"
Len stared at her in the dimness. "What--?"
She grunted again. "Len, get up. All _right_. Len, _hurry_!"
Len fought his way convulsively past a treacherous sheet and staggeredup, goose-pimpled and tense. "What's wrong?"
"You'll have to sleep on the couch. The sheets are in the bottom--"
"On that couch? Are you crazy?"
"I can't help it," she said in a small faint voice. "Please don'tlet's argue. You'll just have to."
"_Why?_"
"We can't sleep in the same bed," she wailed. "He saysit's--oh!--unhygienic!"
* * * * *
Len's contract was not renewed. He got a job waiting on tables in aresort hotel, an occupation which pays more money than teaching futurecitizens the rudiments of three basic sciences, but for which Len hadno aptitude. He lasted three days at it; he was then idle for a weekand a half until his four years of college physics earned himemployment as a clerk in an electrical shop. His employer was acheerfully aggressive man who assured Len that there were greatopportunities in radio and television, and firmly believed thatatom-bomb tests were causing all the bad weather.
Moira, in her eighth month, walked to the county library every day andtrundled a load of books home in the perambulator. Little Leo, itappeared, was working his way simultaneously through biology,astrophysics, phrenology, chemical engineering, architecture,Christian Science, psychosomatic medicine, marine law; businessmanagement, Yoga, crystallography, metaphysics and modern literature.
His domination of Moira's life remained absolute, and his experimentswith her regimen continued. One week, she ate nothing but nuts andfruit, washed down with distilled water; the next, she was on a dietof porterhouse steak, dandelion greens and Hadacol.
With the coming of full summer, fortunately, few of the high schoolstaff were in evidence. Len met Dr. Berry once on the street. Berrystarted, twitched, and walked off rapidly in an entirely newdirection.
The diabolical even
t was due on or about July 29th. Len crossed offeach day on their wall calendar with an emphatic black grease pencil.It would, he supposed, be an uncomfortable thing at best to be theparent of a super-prodigy. Leo would no doubt be dictator of the worldby the time he was fifteen, unless he would be assassinated first, butalmost anything would be a fair price for getting Leo out of hismaternal fortress.
Then there was the day