by Rod Serling
"Victor's an ugly, bird-head freak!"
Victor sat on the floor in the corner of the room, a stocking cap pulled down over his head so that it rested just above his eyes. It looked like a wilted dunce cap, or a wind sock in the middle of a calm. As he sat there in the cool, quiet, comfortable darkness, he heard his father's voice in a last, hopeless tirade.
"And don't come back, you crummy kids," his father yelled from below, "or you'll be sorry! I guarantee it! You'll be sorry!"
Victor heard the sound of the screen door closing and was glad that there would be no more chanting from the kids and no more remonstrative yelling from his father for that day. The summer evenings were, of course, the worst. Usually just before the supper hour. Kids played in the street then, and got hungry and bored. Victor didn't hate them or even resent them. He had only a passive regret that they disturbed the quiet of the early evening and forced his father to react like a child himself, and shout back at them, which simply guaranteed they'd be back the next evening.
Mrs. Koch, Victor's mother, heard the voices from outside, and her husband's response. She waited until the screen door had slammed closed, then walked tentatively into the living room.
Paul Koch was just sitting back down in his easy chair. He made a pretense of picking up the newspaper, but Mrs. Koch noticed how his hand shook, and over the top of the paper she saw the set, grim look on his face.
"Sometimes, Paul," she said softly, "it's best that you just ignore them."
For a moment Koch was silent; then he slammed down the paper. "Ignore them?" He jerked his thumb toward the window. "A pack of wild little animals calling our kid a freak— and we're supposed to ignore them?" He rose from the chair. "I'll tell you what the hell I wish we could do! I wish we could take a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun and fill it with buckshot—"
"Paul," Mrs. Koch interrupted him in as loud a voice as she could conjure up; then, much more softly: "It doesn't do any good to talk that way. It really doesn't," She looked up toward the ceiling. "Sometimes I think he's grown used to it."
"Oh, for God's sake, Doris," Koch said, "how in the hell could he grow used to it? Could you grow used to it? Once a day, seven days a week—those little monsters screaming filth at the top of their lungs? And we're just supposed to sit here, read the evening paper, and make believe it's some kind of a benediction?"
He was right, of course, Doris Koch thought. Painfully, miserably right. But it was not in her gentle nature to shout back at anyone, especially children. And being closer to her son—physically closer, daily closer—she was more aware of the boy's own special sensitivity, which was much like her own.
Koch picked up the paper, then shook his head and threw it back down. He took a deep breath.
"Doris. We've got . . . we've got some decisions to make."
His wife half-closed her eyes.
"He's seventeen," Koch persisted. "He's not a child anymore."
Doris Koch's fingers traveled nervously along the fringe of her apron, plucking, twisting, pulling. "I won't have him put away," she said in a quiet, desperate kind of fury.
Koch shook his head, and his voice was very soft. "Honey," he said, "I don't think we have any choice. He can't live the rest of his life huddled in a corner of his bedroom. It's destroying him—it's destroying us."
Mrs. Koch's voice was broken. "Where would they send him?"
Koch shook his head. "I don't know. But much more of this . . . we wouldn't have a son, anyway. We'd have just a . . . just a silent piece of scar tissue who cringes in dark corners . . ."
He felt his own voice break, and he had to turn away from her abruptly. He moved across the room into the hallway to the foot of the stairs.
Doris Koch followed him. "Paul," she said, not really believing that it could happen this way, rejecting the idea that at a quarter to six on a given summer evening one just walked up a flight of stairs and condemned a son to—what? God only knew what.
"Must it be now?"
Koch stared at her for a moment, a special agony of his own twisting up his face. "It should have been years ago," he answered; then he whirled around and started up the stairs, his heavy body lurching, as if suddenly palsied or drunk. He continued up the stairs and moved directly over to Victor's bedroom door. He knocked briefly, then opened it, went inside, and closed the door behind him.
"Vic," he said to the dark, huddled figure in the corner. "I'd like to talk to you, son."
"All right." Victor's voice, as always, was toneless, unrevealing. Always passive, always accepting.
"Your mother and I," Koch said, ". . . we've been discussing this . . ."
He saw the outline of his son's face turn to him. He hadn't been aware that the boy had had his back to him. Just vaguely, through the darkness of the bedroom, he could see the outline of the face, the stocking cap, but nothing more.
"What have you been discussing?' Victor asked.
Koch moved over to sit on the bed. "I know . . . we both know . . . how miserable it is here for you. We think it's imperative that . . ." He stopped of his own accord. He could go no further. He simply couldn't put the words out into the air.
Victor rose from his place on the floor. "You want to send me away."
It was not an accusation; there was no anger in the voice. It was just a flat, neutral, almost rhetorical kind of thing. The way a man might say something when ordering it off a menu, or the way the bailiff of a court in the middle of a long docket might read out a statement of charges. Impersonal. Very quiet. Nothing implied at all.
Koch felt himself sweating. "Son—there are places . . . perhaps . . . where boys like yourself . . ."
"There aren't any 'boys like myself.' " Victor's voice was still flat, but just a little higher. "I'm unique. Didn't you know that? I'm a one-of-a-kind collector's item!"
Koch saw his son's shrug, and just barely heard his last words.
"Do whatever you want with me," Victor said.
"That's not the point." Koch felt some curious, unexplainable anger rising in him impatience, frustration; it was almost as if he were standing out on the porch again, screaming at the children. "I want to do what you want, Vic. Understand? But just to stay here hiding in your room—that's no kind of life."
"All right, Dad," Victor said softly. "You give me an alternative kind of life." He waited for a moment. His father was silent. "Or I'll give you some. If there were still freak shows, I could be the star attraction. Or Pickle me and stick me in a jar. Or why don't you rent me out for parties and conventions . . ."
Koch felt an agony, like some gigantic cramp all over his body. "Vic," he shouted, "no more!"
In the silence, he heard the sound of his son turning away, and his footsteps back across the room.
"You're quite right, Dad." Victor's voice was almost a whisper. "No more. Please get out."
Koch stood there, trying to think of something to say, desperately searching in his mind for one comforting phrase, one reasonably gentle euphemism—but nothing came to him. He walked across the bedroom, opened the door, and went out. As he started down the stairs, he heard Victor close the door.
Koch reached the foot of the stairs, heard the sound of dishes and silverware in the dining room; then, from somewhere, and with a clenched fist, he reached out for a resolve and a firmness and a strength that he knew would supersede the evening's dinner, the evening's conversation—and all the other evenings that were to come.
He moved into the small, telephonic viewing room—a phone-booth kind of cubicle—and stood in front of a dark screen. Then he punched several numbers on a small console. There were several beep-beep sounds, a few jagged lines across the screen; then it brightened and came to life, and an image of a woman appeared.
"Information," the woman said.
Koch almost held his breath. "I'd like . . . I'd like the government office that . . . that's involved in population."
"There are several sublistings under 'Population,' sir. What particul
ar department did you have in mind?"
"Whatever the outfit is that . . ." He found himself running out of words and out of breath.
The woman's face took on the look of brittle impatience, like all the put-upon civil-service employees who had ever been daily stifled by the deadly dull bureaucracy of their lives.
"Go on, sir," the woman said. "I'm waiting."
Koch's voice was quieter "Whoever is involved With deformed children."
The woman nodded, and he could see her punch several buttons and read some information off a computerized scanning device. Her eyes moved up to look back to him.
"That would be the Office of Special Urban Problems. Just a moment, sir, I'll connect you."
There were more beep-beep sounds and more lines crisscrossing the screen; then another woman appeared.
"Special Urban Problems," the second woman said. "How may I help you?"
Koch cleared his throat. "My . . . my son," he began. He coughed. "Well, my son has a deformity . . ."
"Your name and sector, sir." The woman's voice sounded stamped in the air. It was colder and more impersonal than anything Koch had ever heard before.
"Koch," he said. "Paul Koch. Southeast sector . . . residential 2-B."
"And your son's name," the woman said in her digital-computer voice.
"Victor," Koch answered.
"Age?"
"Seventeen . . . seventeen-and-a-half."
"And the deformity, sir—birth or accident?"
Koch thought he heard something at the top of the stairs. He looked up briefly.
"Sir?" The woman's voice seemed to follow his glance.
"Deformed at birth," Koch said.
"And the nature of the deformity?"
This time Koch could hear his wife's footsteps approaching, and he unconsciously took a step sideways.
"You're moving off the screen, sir." The woman's voice followed him accusatively. "I can no longer see you. Would you step back into my vision, please?"
Koch looked at his wife, who stood there, eyes closed, her hands gripped together, as if by some incredible strength of will and resolve she could blot out the sight and the sound of what she knew was transpiring.
Koch forced his eyes away from her to look back into the screen. "What . . . what was it you asked?"
"The nature of the deformity, sir," the woman on the screen said.
In the Special Urban Problem office a line of women sat in front of their respective telephonic screens, the hum of their voices a continuous beehive drone underneath.
The woman speaking to Koch tried to keep the edge off her voice. So many people lately were so damned vague about things, so reluctant to give out information, it made the job that much harder. But, she had to admit, deformity cases were rather special, and they were frequently sad.
"If you could just give me some general idea, sir," the woman said to Koch's reflection on her screen, her voice just a shade kindlier. "Is it a mental deformity . . . physical . . . and if physical, is it . . ."
She was unprepared for what she saw. The figure of Koch was pushed violently away, and in its place she found herself looking into the face of a teen-age boy—a face that covered the screen. Staring at her was a distorted horror. A funnel-shaped head full of concentric flesh furrows that traveled up toward its peak like a rutted mountain road, ending at a point from which just a sprout of dank hair emerged. It was like some kind of grotesque-looking cartoon, but it was painfully, shockingly real. It—whatever it was—spoke to her from the other side of the screen.
"Get a good look for yourself, sister," the boy's voice said. "Now appearing on your screen Victor Koch. Ugly, ugly, ugly . . . bird-head, bird-head, bird-head . . ." There was one quick, spasmodic, quaking sob, and then his voice continued almost in a whisper. "Freak, freak, freak . . ." Then the screen went black.
The woman sat there, motionless and quiet for a moment, then turned to her companion to the left.
"Did you see that?" she asked in a strained voice.
The girl shook her head. "Who was it?" she asked.
"What was it," the woman corrected her. "God, I've seen all kinds! But nothing remotely like that . . . that thing."
Paul Koch sat tensely on the edge of a contoured plastic chair, looking across at the official whose low, free-form desk had the same pristine, hospital-white color that helped give the room an antiseptic look.
The official put the tips of his fingers together, tapped them, then leaned back. "Well, I'm afraid that's it," he said in an end-of-interview kind of voice. "There's very little this office can do, Mr. Koch. At least in the area of placement."
Koch cleared his throat. "There are no institutions . . .?"
The official made a negative shrug. "Not for a case like your son's." He half-turned in his chair, then pushed a button, sliding the shades over the windows behind him to a semi-closed position, shutting out the sunlight. At the same time, an artificial cream-colored, indirect lighting brightened the room as a replacement.
"The Federal Conformity Act of 1993," the official said, as if delivering a speech to a sizable assemblage, "covered cases of mental incompetence. But, of course, if his condition were alterable, medically speaking . . ."
Koch felt even the tiniest semblance of hope slip away. "We've been to a dozen doctors," he admitted. "They tell us there isn't anything that can be done surgically."
The official made a little shrug. He hoped that Koch wouldn't get emotional. So many of them got emotional. Then he sighed and started to fiddle with a metal pencil.
"That's unfortunate, Mr. Koch, and it leaves us pretty much back where we started."
"He's a bright boy," Koch said intensely. "He's got an exceptionally high I.Q. And he's . . . he's a nice kid, too . . ."
The official averted Koch's intense stare. "I have no doubt, Mr. Koch. But you've pretty much reached the proper conclusions on your own—in terms of the boy remaining at home . . ."
Koch nodded. "I know he can't stay with us anymore. But there must be someplace . . ."
The official exhaled, and his voice carried with it just a suggestion of a belated impatience. "Of course, he can't. But I've already told you that there are no private or government sectors which institutionalize this kind of case." There was a long silence while he examined the pencil, then looked back up. "Which leaves us with the only remaining alternative, Mr. Koch." He let another moment pass. "And there's no sense in our walking around tiptoe and in agony, not saying aloud what that alternative is."
Koch's voice was cold. "Kill him, you mean."
The official winced. "That would be in the nature of a medieval value judgment, Mr. Koch. Hardly applicable in this day and age. To mercifully put someone to sleep for humanitarian reasons is certainly not an act of murder."
Of course not, Koch thought. To kill out of compassion—why, by God, that was the next best thing to a kiss. Waves of something rose up in him. Revulsion, sickness, an overpowering awareness of his desperate weakness. "Beautiful." He spit the word out. "Just beautiful. I love your value judgments. You take a human life, mister—and you can spray that act with euphemisms like they were perfume—but it's still taking a human life. It's taking my son's life!"
Once again the official leaned back in the chair and surveyed Koch. Emotional, damn it. Always emotional, these people. Now, why couldn't they accept things as they came? So a kid is born a monstrous freak—so they want to keep him alive indefinitely, and for no other bloody reason than some misplaced, ancient, anachronistic ethic.
The official shrugged. "You can suit yourself, Mr. Koch. You have the alternatives. He can remain with you for the rest of his life . . . or you can do the right thing . . . really the most charitable thing . . ."
Koch had already left the chair and was moving toward the door. "Thank you for your trouble," Koch said.
As he reached for the doorknob, a red light went on on the console alongside of the official's desk; then a small bell rang. The official flic
ked a switch and called across the room. "Just a moment, Mr. Koch." He turned his face in the direction of a wire-meshed rectangular speaker that was flush in the console. "Yes," he said.
A filtered voice came from the speaker. "Are you handling a case involving a deformity— seventeen-year-old boy—file number 783?"
"Koch." The official supplied the name. "That's correct."
"Check contemporary bulletin in your relocation rulings."
The official nodded. "Immediately." He flicked off the switch and again looked across the room. "Just a moment, Mr. Koch—apparently there are some new procedural considerations still open to us." He flicked another switch, then pushed a button. There was a low hum, and then from a slot on his desk appeared an official-looking paper. The official ripped it off, read it, nodded several times, then looked at Koch. "Sit down for a moment, Mr. Koch," he said in a different, friendlier tone.
Koch retraced his steps back over to the chair, but just stood there without sitting down.
The official continued to study the paper and then looked up. "As you know, Mr. Koch," he said, "we have exchange programs with several of the populated planets."
Koch just stared at him.
The official cleared his throat. "In most cases these are cultural exchanges . . . scientific exchanges . . . usually for prescribed periods. I'm reminded"—he pointed to the paper—"of a new arrangement with a planet called Boreon. Tiny little world just beyond Mars. Unknown to us ten years ago."
Koch held himself rigid, not daring to breathe. Any plan—whatever it was, wherever it took place—was a reprieve.
"We've had no mutual visitations with the planet," the official continued, "but considerable voice communication. In our last exchange they told us that they were extremely anxious for émigrés. Seems the place is seriously underpopulated. Further than that, they've indicated that they would place no restrictions of any kind on whomever we wanted to send. That is to say—well—here they are, soliciting any and all kinds of people . . ." He spread out his hands, as if emphasizing the enormity of this extraterrestrial compassion.