“Joe!” She fell info Calderon’s arms. “Quick, give me a drink or . . . or hold me tight or something.”
“What is it?” He thrust the bottle into her hands, went to the door, and looked out. “Alexander? He’s quiet. Eating candy.”
Myra didn’t bother with a glass. The bottle’s neck clicked against her teeth. “Look at me. Just look at me. I’m a mess.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Alexander’s turned into a black magician, that’s all.” She dropped into a chair and passed a palm across her forehead. “Do you know what that genius son of ours just did?”
“Bit you,” Calderon hazarded, not doubting it for a minute.
“Worse, far worse. He started asking me for candy. I said there wasn’t any in the house. He told me to go down to the grocery for some. I said I’d have to get dressed first, and I was too tired.”
“Why didn’t you ask me to go?”
“I didn’t have the chance. Before I could say boo that infantile Merlin waved a magic wand or something. I . . . I was down at the grocery. Behind the candy counter.”
Calderon blinked. “Induced amnesia?”
“There wasn’t any time-lapse. It was just phweet—and there I was. In this rag of a dress, without a speck of make-up on, and my hair coming down in tassels. Mrs. Busherman was there, too, buying a chicken—that cat across the hall. She was kind enough to tell me I ought to take more care of myself. Meow,” Myra ended furiously. “Good Lord.”
“Teleportation. That’s what Alexander says it is. Something new he’s picked up. I’m not going to stand for it, Joe. I’m not a rag doll, after all.” She was half hysterical.
Calderon went into the next room and stood regarding his child. There was chocolate smeared around Alexander’s mouth.
“Listen, wise guy,” he said. “You leave your mother alone, hear me?”
“I didn’t hurt her,” the prodigy pointed out, in a blobby voice. “I was simply being efficient.”
“Well, don’t be so efficient. Where did you learn that trick, anyhow?”
“Teleportation? Quat showed me last night. He can’t do it himself, but I’m X Free super, so I can. The power isn’t disciplined yet. If I’d tried to teleport Myra Calderon over to Jersey, say, I might have dropped her in the Hudson by mistake.”
Calderon muttered something uncomplimentary. Alexander said, “Is that an Anglo-Saxon derivative?”.
“Never mind about that. You shouldn’t have all that chocolate, anyway. You’ll make yourself sick. You’ve already made your mother sick. And you nauseate me.”
“Go away,” Alexander said. “I want to concentrate on the taste.”
“No. I said you’d make yourself sick. Chocolate’s too rich for you. Give it here. You’ve had enough.” Calderon reached for the paper sack. Alexander disappeared. In the kitchen Myra shrieked.
Calderon moaned despondently, and turned. As he had expected, Alexander was in the kitchen, on top of the stove, hoggishly stuffing candy into his mouth. Myra was concentrating on the bottle.
“What a household,” Calderon said. “The baby teleporting himself all over the apartment, you getting stewed in the kitchen, and me heading for a nervous breakdown.” He started to laugh. “O.K., Alexander. You can keep the candy. I know when to shorten my defensive lines strategically.”
“Myra Calderon,” Alexander said. “I want to go back into the other room.”
“Fly in,” Calderon suggested. “Here, I’ll carry you.”
“Not you. Her. She has a better rhythm when she walks.”
“Staggers, you mean,” Myra said, but she obediently put aside the bottle, got up, and laid hold of Alexander. She went out. Calderon was not much surprised to hear her scream a moment later. When he joined the happy family, Myra was sitting on the floor, rubbing her arms and biting her lips. Alexander was laughing.
“What now?”
“H-he sh-shocked me.” Myra said in a child’s voice. “He’s like an electric eel. He d-did it on purpose, too. Oh, Alexander, will you stop laughing!”
“You fell down,” the infant crowed in triumph. “You yelled and fell down.”
Calderon looked at Myra, and his mouth tightened. “Did you do that on purpose?” he asked.
“Yes. She fell down. She looked funny.”
“You’re going to look a lot funnier in a minute. X Free super or not, what you need is a good paddling.”
“Toe—” Myra said.
“Never mind. He’s got to learn to be considerate of the rights of others.”
“I’m homo superior,” Alexander said, with the air of one clinching an argument.
“It’s homo posterior I’m going to deal with,” Calderon announced, and attempted to capture his son. There was a stinging blaze of jolting nervous energy that blasted up through his synapses; he went backwards ignominiously, and slammed into the wall, cracking his head hard against it. Alexander laughed like an idiot.
“You fell down, too,” he crowed. “You look funny.”
“Joe,” Myra said. “Joe. Are you hurt?”
Calderon said sourly that he supposed he’d survive. Though, he added, it would probably be wise to lay in a few splints and a supply of blood plasma. “In case he gets in crested in vivisection.”
Myra regarded Alexander with troubled speculation. “You’re kidding. I hope.”
“I hope so, too.”
“Well—here’s Bordent. Let’s talk to him.”
Calderon answered the door. The four little men came in solemnly. They wasted no time. They gathered about Alexander, unfolded fresh apparatus from the recesses of their paper clothes, and set to work. The infant said, “I teleported her about eight thousand feet.”
“That far, eh?” Quat said. “Were you fatigued at all?”
“Not a bit.”
Calderon dragged Bordent aside. “I want to talk to you. I think Alexander needs a spanking.”
“By voraster!” the dwarf said, shocked. “But he’s Alexander! He’s Free X type super!”
“Not yet. He’s still a baby.”
“But a superbaby. No, no, Joseph Calderon. I must tell you again that disciplinary measures can be applied only by sufficiently intelligent authorities.”
“You?”
“Oh, not yet,” Bordent said. “We don’t want to overwork him. There’s a limit even to super brain power, especially in the very formative period. He’s got enough to do, and his attitudes for social contacts won’t need forming for a while yet.”
Myra joined them. “I don’t agree with you there. Like all babies, he’s antisocial. He may have superhuman powers but he’s subhuman as far as mental and emotional balance go.”
“Yeah,” Calderon agreed. “This business of giving us electric shocks—”
“He’s only playing,” Bordent said.
“And teleportation. Suppose he teleports me to Times Square when I’m taking a shower?”
“It’s only his play. He’s a baby still.”
“But what about us?”
“You have the hereditary characteristic of parental tolerance,” Bordent explained. “As I told you before, Alexander and his race are the reason why tolerance was created in the first place. There’s no great need for it with homo sap. I mean there’s a wide space between normal tolerance and normal provocation. An ordinary baby may try his parents severely for a few moments at a time, but that’s about all. The provocation is far too small to require the tremendous store of tolerance the parents have. But with the X Free type, it’s a different matter.”
“There’s a limit even to tolerance,” Calderon said. “I’m wondering about a crèche.”
Bordent shook his shiny metallic-sheathed head. “He needs you.”
“But,” Myra said, “but! Can’t you give him just a little discipline?”
“Oh, it isn’t necessary. His mind’s still immature, and he must concentrate on more important things. You’ll tolerate him.”
<
br /> “It’s not as though he’s our baby any more,” she murmured. “He’s not Alexander.”
“But he is. That’s just it. He’s Alexander!”
“Look, it’s normal for a mother to want to hug her baby. But how can she do that if she expects him to throw her halfway across the room?”
Calderon was brooding. “Will he pick up more . . . more super powers as he goes along?”
“Why, yes. Naturally.”
“He’s a menace to life and limb. I still say he needs discipline. Next time I’ll wear rubber gloves.”
“That won’t help,” Bordent said, frowning. “Besides, I must insist . . . no, Joseph Calderon, it won’t do. You mustn’t interfere. You’re not capable of giving him the right sort of discipline—which he doesn’t need yet anyway.”
“Just one. spanking,” Calderon said wistfully. “Not for revenge. Only to show him he’s got to consider the rights of others.”
“He’ll learn to consider the rights of other X Free supers. You must not attempt anything of the sort. A spanking—even if you succeeded, which is far from probable—might warp him psychologically. We are his tutors, his mentors. We must protect him. You understand?”
“I think so,” Calderon said slowly. “That’s a threat.”
“You are Alexander’s parents, but it’s Alexander who is important. If I must apply disciplinary measures to you, I must.”
“Oil, forget it,” Myra sighed. “Joe, let’s go out and walk in the park while Bordent’s here.”
“Be hack in two hours,” the little man said. “Good-by.”
As time went past, Calderon could not decide whether Alexander’s moronic phases or his periods of keen intelligence were more irritating. The prodigy had learned new powers; the worst of that was that Calderon never knew what to expect, or when some astounding gag would he sprung on him. Such as the time when a mess of sticky taffy had materialized in his bed, filched from the grocery by deft teleportation. Alexander thought it was very funny. He laughed.
And, when Calderon refused to go to the store to buy candy, because he said he had no money—“Now don’t try to teleport me. I’m broke.”—Alexander had utilized mental energy, warping gravity lines shockingly. Calderon found himself hanging upside-down in midair, being shaken, while loose coins cascaded out of his pocket. He went after the candy.
Humor is a developed sense, stemming basically from cruelty. The more primitive a mind, the less selectivity exists. A cannibal would probably be profoundly amused by the squirmings of his victim in the seething kettle. A man slips on a banana peel and breaks his back. The adult stops laughing at that point, the child does not. And a civilized ego finds embarrassment as acutely distressing as physical pain. A baby, a child, a moron, is incapable of practicing empathy. He cannot identify himself with another individual. He is regrettably autistic; his own rules are arbitrary, and garbage strewn around the bedroom was funny to neither Myra nor Calderon.
There was a little stranger in the house. Nobody rejoiced. Except Alexander. He had a lot of fun.
“No privacy,” Calderon said. “He materializes everywhere, at all hours. Darling, I wish you’d see a doctor.”
“What would he advise?” Myra asked. “Rest, that’s all. Do you realize it’s been two months since Bordent took over?”
“And we’ve made marvelous progress,” Bordent said, coming over to them. Quat was en rapport with Alexander on the carpet, while the other two dwarfs prepared the makings of a new gadget. “Or, rather, Alexander has made remarkable progress.”
“We need a rest,” Calderon growled. “If I lose my job, who’ll support that genius of yours?” Myra looked at her husband quickly, noting the possessive pronoun he had used.
Bordent was concerned. “You are in difficulty?”
“The Dean’s spoken to me once or twice. I can’t control my classes any more. I’m too irritable.”
“You don’t need to expend tolerance on your students. As for money, we can keep you supplied. I’ll arrange to get some negotiable currency for you.”
“But I want to work. I like my job.”
“Alexander is your job.”
“I need a maid,” Myra said, looking hopeless. “Can’t you make me a robot or something? Alexander scares every maid I’ve managed to hire. They won’t stay a day in this madhouse.”
“A mechanical intelligence would have a bad effect on Alexander,” Bordent said. “No.”
“I wish we could have guests in once in a while. Or go out visiting. Or just be alone,” Myra sighed.
“Some day Alexander will be mature, and you’ll reap your reward. The parents of Alexander. Did I ever tell you that we have images of you two in the Great Fogy Hall?”
“They must look terrible,” Calderon said. “I know we do now.”
“Be patient. Consider the destiny of your son.”
“I do. Often. But he gets a little wearing sometimes. That’s quite an understatement.”
“Which is where tolerance comes in,” Bordent said. “Nature planned well for the new race.”
“Mm-tn-m.”
“He is working on sixth-dimensional abstractions now. Everything is progressing beautifully.”
“Yeah,” Calderon said. And he went away, muttering, to join Myra in the kitchen.
Alexander worked with facility at his gadgets, his pudgy fingers already stronger and surer. He still had an illicit passion for the blue ovoid, but under Bordent’s watchful eye he could use it only along the restricted lines laid out by his mentors. When the lesson was finished, Quat selected a few of the objects and locked them in a cupboard, as was his custom. The rest he left on the carpet to provide exercise for Alexander’s ingenuity.
“He develops,” Bordent said. “Today we’ve made a great step.”
Myra and Calderon came in in time to hear this. “What goes?” he asked.
“A psychic bloc-removal. Alexander will no longer need to sleep.”
“What?” Myra said.
“He won’t require sleep. It’s an artificial habit anyway. The super race has no need of it.”
“He won’t sleep any more, eh?” Calderon said. He had grown a little pale.
“Correct. He’ll develop faster now, twice as fast.”
At 3:30 a. m. Calderon and Myra lay in bed, wide awake, looking through the open door into the full blaze of light where Alexander played. Seen there clearly, as if upon a lighted stage, he did not look quite like himself any more. The difference was subtle, but it was there. Under the golden down his head had changed shape slightly, and there was a look of intelligence and purpose upon the blobby features. It was not an attractive look. It didn’t belong there. It made Alexander look less like a super-baby than a debased oldster. All a child’s normal cruelty and selfishness—perfectly healthy, natural traits in the developing infant—flickered across Alexander’s face as he played absorbedly with solid crystal blocks which he was fitting into one another like a Chinese puzzle. It was quite a shocking face-to watch.
Calderon heard Myra sigh beside him.
“He isn’t our Alexander any more,” she said. “Not a bit.”
Alexander glanced up and his face suddenly suffused. The look of paradoxical age and degeneracy upon it vanished as he opened his mouth and bawled with rage, tossing the blocks in all directions. Calderon watched one roll through the bedroom door and come to rest upon the carpet, spilling out of its solidity a cascade of smaller and smaller solid blocks that tumbled winking toward him. Alexander’s cries filled the apartment. After a moment windows began to slam across the court, and presently the phone rang. Calderon reached for it, sighing.
When he hung up he looked across at Myra and grimaced. Above the steady roars he said, “Well, we have notice to move.” Myra said, “Oh. Oh, well.”
“That about covers it.”
They were silent for a moment. Then Calderon said, “Nineteen years more of it. I think we can expect about that. They did say he’d mature at twenty,
didn’t they?”
“He’ll be an orphan long before now,” Myra groaned. “Oh, my bead! I think I caught cold when he teleported us up to the roof just before dinner, Joe, do you suppose we’re the first parents who ever got . . . got caught like this?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, was there ever another super-baby before Alexander? It does seem like a waste of a lot of tolerance if we’re the first to need it.”
“We could use a lot more. We’ll need a lot.” He said nothing more for awhile, but he lay there thinking and trying not to hear his superchild’s rhythmic howling. Tolerance. Every parent needed a great deal of it. Every child was intolerable from time to time. The race bad certainly needed parental love in vast quantities to permit its infants to survive. But no parents before had ever been tried consistently up to the very last degree of tolerance. No parents before had ever had to face twenty years of it, day and night, strained to the final notch. Parental love is a great and all-encompassing emotion, but—
“I wonder,” he said thoughtfully. “I wonder if we are the first.”
Myra’s speculations had been veering. “I suppose it’s like tonsils and appendix,” she murmured. “They’ve outlived their use, but they still hang on. This tolerance is vestigial in reverse. It’s been hanging on all these millenniums, waiting for Alexander.”
“Maybe. I wonder—Still, if there ever had been an Alexander before now, we’d have heard of him. So—”
Myra rose on one elbow and looked at her husband. “You think so?” she said softly. “I’m not so sure. I think it might have happened before.”
Alexander suddenly quieted. The apartment rang with silence for a moment. Then a familiar voice, without words, spoke in both their brains simultaneously.
“Get me some more milk. And I want it just warm, not hot.”
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