The Ugly Little Boy

by Isaac Asimov

  “So you agree it’s a language, then!” She Who Knows said in triumph.

  “Yes,” said Silver Cloud glumly. “For whatever good that does.”

  The parley was over. The Other One, looking irritated and morose, swung around and walked quickly away, back toward his own encampment. Silver Cloud watched, astonished by the loose-jointed free-wheeling stride of the man. It seemed a wonder that his arms and legs didn’t fall off as he walked, so poorly strung together was he, so badly designed. Or that his head didn’t roll right off his flimsy neck. Silver Cloud felt grateful for his own sturdy, compact body, weary and aching though it had become of late. It had served him well for a great many years. It was the work of the Goddess, that body. He pitied the Other Ones for their fragility and their ugliness.

  As the envoy of the Other Ones passed the sentry zone again, Broken Mountain once more shook his spear at him and made a hissing sound of defiance. The Other One took no notice. Broken Mountain looked to Silver Cloud for instruction, but Silver Cloud shook his head and told him to hold his peace. The Other One disappeared into the distant encampment of his people.

  So that was that. Nothing accomplished.

  Silver Cloud felt racked by doubts. Whatever he did these days led only to muddle. The Goddess had gone unworshipped, a little boy had vanished into thin air, the shrine they had come all this way to venerate was inaccessible to them, and the season was quickly turning against them; and now he had failed to achieve anything at all by way of parley. No doubt She Who Knows was right, as she usually was, much as he hated to admit that to himself: he was too old for the job. Time to step aside, to let the Killing Society do its work, and lie down in the sleep that never ends.

  Blazing Eye would be chieftain in his place. Let Blazing Eye worry about what to do next.

  But even as the thought crossed his mind, Silver Cloud was angered by it. Blazing Eye? A fool. He would do foolish things, as fools can be expected to do. It would be a sin to hand the tribe over to Blazing Eye.

  Who, then? Broken Mountain? Tree Of Wolves? Young Antelope?

  All fools. He couldn’t give the tribe to any one of them. Maybe they would outgrow their foolishness someday; but he wasn’t very confident of that.

  Then who will be chieftain after me?

  Let the Goddess decide, Silver Cloud told himself. After I’m gone. It’ll be Her problem then, not mine.

  He would not resign. He would wait for death to claim him. He knew that he was a fool, too—or else they would not be here in this useless deadlock now—but at least he was less foolish than the younger men, and he might just as well keep his chieftainship a little while longer.

  “What are you going to do now, Silver Cloud?” She Who Knows asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “What is there to do?”

  He went back to the camp and sat down by the fire. Some child came over to him—he couldn’t remember her name—and he drew her close against his side, and they sat there staring at the leaping flames for a long while. The presence of the child lifted a little of the sadness that had come over him. From this little girl the People of tomorrow someday would come forth, long after he was gone. That was a comforting thought: that chieftains might die, that warriors died, that everyone died sooner or later, but the People would go on and on, into time immemorial, world without end. Yes. Yes. A good thing to bear in mind.

  Shortly it began to snow, and the snow went on falling late into the night.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Becoming

  [40]

  THREE DAYS LATER Hoskins stopped by to see Miss Fellowes and said, “It’s all been worked out. My wife has no further problem about letting Jerry come here to play with Timmie, and Ned Cassiday has drafted a liability agreement that he thinks will stand legal muster.”

  “Liability? Liability for what, Dr. Hoskins?”

  “Why, any sort of injury that might be inflicted.”

  “By Timmie on Jerry, you mean.”

  “Yes,” Hoskins said, in that sheepish voice of his once again.

  Miss Fellowes instantly began to bristle. “Tell me: do you seriously think there’s any chance of that happening? Does your wife?”

  “If we were really worried about that, we wouldn’t be volunteering Jerry to be Timmie’s playmate. My wife had her doubts at first, as you know, but it didn’t take long for Timmie to win her over. Still, there’s always the chance, when you bring two small boys together who don’t know each other, that one of them will take a swing at the other, Miss Fellowes. I surely don’t have to remind you of that.”

  “Of course. But parents don’t usually insist on liability agreements before they’ll allow their child to play with other children.”

  Hoskins laughed. “You don’t understand. It’s the company that insists on the liability agreement, not us. Annette and I are the ones who are guaranteeing to the company that we won’t take any legal action against Stasis Technologies, Ltd., in case something happens.—It’s a waiver of liability, Miss Fellowes.”

  “Oh,” she said, in a very small voice.—“I see. When will you be bringing Jerry here, then?”

  “Tomorrow morning? How would that be?”

  [41]

  Miss Fellowes waited until breakfast time to tell him. She hadn’t wanted to say anything the night before, thinking that the excitement of anticipation might unsettle Timmie’s sleep, making him edgy and unpredictable when Jerry arrived.

  “You’ll be getting a friend today, Timmie.”

  “A friend?”

  “Another little boy. To play with you.”

  “A little boy just like me?”

  “Just like you, yes.” In every way that really mattered, Miss Fellowes told herself fiercely. “His name is Jerry. He’s Dr. Hoskins’ son.”

  “Son?” He gave her a puzzled look.

  “Dr. Hoskins is his father,” she said, as though that would help.

  “Father.”

  “Father—son.” She held her hand high in the air, then lower down. “The father is the big man. The son is the little boy.”

  He still looked baffled. There were so many basic assumptions of life, so many things that everyone took for granted, that were alien to him. It was because he had spent all this time in the isolation of the Stasis bubble. But certainly he knew what parents were. Or had he forgotten even that? Not for the first time Miss Fellowes found herself detesting Gerald Hoskins and everyone else connected with Stasis Technologies, Ltd., for having ripped this little boy out of his own proper time and place. She could almost agree with the Bruce Mannheim crowd that a very sophisticated kind of child abuse had taken place here.

  Rummaging in Timmie’s pile of storybooks, Miss Fellowes found one of his favorites, a retelling of the story of William Tell. What meaning the story itself had for him was something she couldn’t even begin to guess, but the book was boldly and vividly illustrated and he pored over it again and again, lightly rubbing his fingers over the bright pictures. She opened it now to the two-page spread showing William Tell shooting the apple off his son’s head with a bolt from his crossbow, and indicated, first the archer in his medieval costume, then his son.

  “Father—son—father—son—”

  Timmie nodded gravely.

  What, she wondered, was he thinking? That Dr. Hoskins was really a handsome man with long blond hair who wore strange clothing and carried a curious machine under his arm? Or that someone was going to come here to shoot apples off his head? Perhaps it had been an error to muddle the moment with abstract concepts like “father” and “son.”

  Well, all that was really important was that Timmie would have a friend soon.

  “He’ll be coming after we’ve finished breakfast,” Miss Fellowes told him. “He’s a very nice boy.” She profoundly hoped that he was. “And you’ll show him what a nice boy you are too, won’t you?”

  “Nice boy. Yes.”

  “You’ll be his friend. He’ll be your friend.”

  “Frie
nd. Nice boy.”

  His eyes were gleaming. But did he understand? Did he understand any of this at all?

  She felt all sorts of unexpected misgivings as the time of Jerry Hoskins’ arrival drew near. She saw all sorts of problems that she had not considered before.

  Stop it, she told herself.

  (You’ve wanted this for Timmie for months. And now it’s happening. There’s nothing to worry about. Nothing.)

  “Miss Fellowes?”

  Hoskins’ voice, on the intercom.

  “Here they are,” she said to Timmie. “Jerry’s coming!”

  To her surprise, Timmie went scuttling into his playroom and closed the door partway. He peered out uneasily. Not a good sign, she thought.

  “Timmie—” she began.

  And then the whole Hoskins family was at the threshold of the Stasis bubble.

  Hoskins said, “This is my boy Jerry. Say hello to Miss Fellowes, Jerry.”

  She saw a round-faced, large-eyed child, with pale cheeks and loose, unruly brown hair, clutching at Annette Hoskins’ skirt. He looked very much like his father: a five-year-old version of Gerald Hoskins, yes.

  “Say hello,” Hoskins said to the boy, a little ominously this time.

  “Hello.” It was barely audible. Jerry receded a bit farther into the folds of the maternal skirt.

  Miss Fellowes gave him her warmest, most inviting smile. “Hello, Jerry. Would you like to come in? This is where Timmie lives.—Timmie’s going to be your friend.”

  Jerry stared. He looked as though he would much rather bolt and run.

  “Lift him over the threshold,” Hoskins said to his wife, not very patiently.

  She gathered the boy into her arms—it was a distinct effort; Jerry was big for his age—and stepped over the threshold. Jerry squirmed visibly as the threshold sensations of Stasis passed through him.

  “He isn’t happy, Gerald,” Mrs. Hoskins said.

  “I can see that. It’ll take a little time for him to feel at ease. Put him down.”

  Annette Hoskins’ eyes searched the room. The muscles in her arms tensed visibly. However much she might have been won over by Timmie on her earlier visit, she seemed more than a little apprehensive now. Her precious little child, turned loose in the cage of this ape-boy—

  “Put him down, Annette.”

  She nodded. The boy backed up against her, staring worriedly at the pair of eyes which were staring back at him from the next room.

  “Come out here, Timmie,” Miss Fellowes said. “This is your new friend, Jerry. Jerry wants very much to meet you. Don’t be afraid.”

  Slowly Timmie stepped into the room. Jerry squirmed. Hoskins bent to disengage Jerry’s fingers from his mother’s skirt. In a stage whisper he said, “Step back, Annette. For God’s sake, give the children a chance.”

  The youngsters faced one another, standing virtually nose to nose. Although Jerry was almost certainly some months younger than Timmie, nevertheless he was an inch taller. And in the presence of Jerry’s straightness and his high-held well-proportioned head, Timmie’s grotesqueries of appearance were suddenly almost as pronounced in Miss Fellowes’ eyes as they had been in the earliest days.

  Miss Fellowes’ lips quivered.

  There was a long silent awkward moment of mutual staring. It was the little Neanderthal who spoke first, finally, in childish treble.

  “My name is Timmie.”

  And he thrust his face suddenly forward as though to inspect the other’s features more closely.

  Startled, Jerry responded with a vigorous shove that sent Timmie tumbling. Both began crying loudly, and Mrs. Hoskins snatched up her child, while Miss Fellowes, flushed with repressed anger, lifted Timmie quickly and comforted him. The little animal! she thought vehemently. The vicious little beast!

  But she knew that she was being much too harsh. Timmie had startled Jerry; Jerry had defended himself in the only way he knew. Nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. Something like this was exactly what they should have expected at the outset, Miss Fellowes told herself.

  “Well,” Hoskins said. “Well!”

  Annette Hoskins said, “I knew this wasn’t a good idea. They just instinctively don’t like each other.”

  “It isn’t instinctive,” Miss Fellowes said firmly.

  “No,” Hoskins said. “It’s not instinctive at all. Any more than when any two children dislike each other on first sight. Put Jerry down and let him get used to the situation.”

  “What if that cave-boy hits Jerry back?”

  “It won’t be at all amazing if he does,” said Hoskins. “But he can take care of himself. And if he can’t, it’s time he started learning how. We just have to let him get accustomed to this by himself.”

  Annette Hoskins still looked uncertain.

  “In fact,” her husband went on, “I think the best thing is for you and me to leave. If there are any problems, Miss Fellowes will know how to handle them. And after an hour or so she can bring Jerry to my office and I’ll have him taken home.”

  [42]

  It was a long hour. Timmie retreated to the far end of the room and glowered malevolently at Jerry as though trying to eradicate him from the universe by the intensity of his glare alone. Evidently he had decided not to take refuge in the back room as he often did when he felt troubled, perhaps thinking that it was unwise to withdraw and thereby concede the front section of his domain to the enemy by default.

  As for Jerry, he huddled miserably at the opposite end of the room, crying for his mother. He looked so unhappy that Miss Fellowes, though aware that she risked upsetting Timmie even further, went to him and tried to reassure him that his mother was nearby, that he hadn’t been abandoned at all, that he’d be seeing her again in just a short while.

  “Want her now!” Jerry said.

  (You probably think you’ve been left here to live in this room forever, don’t you, child? Just you and Timmie, locked up in this little dollhouse with each other. And you hate the idea. Of course you do. Just as Timmie must.)

  “Home!” Jerry said. “Now!”

  “You’ll be going home soon, Jerry,” she told the boy. “This is only a little visit.”

  He struck out at her with his clenched fists.

  “No,” Miss Fellowes said, catching him deftly by his belt and holding him at arm’s length while he flailed unsuccessfully at her. “No, Jerry! No, don’t hit.—How would you like a lollipop, Jerry?”

  “No! No! No!”

  Miss Fellowes laughed. “I think you would, though. You stay right where you are and I’ll get one for you.”

  She unlocked the hidden lollipop cache—Timmie had already proved he couldn’t be trusted to keep away from the supply she kept on hand—and pulled out a huge spherical green one, almost too big to fit in the boy’s mouth.

  Jerry’s eyes went wide and he stopped wailing instantly.

  “I thought so,” Miss Fellowes said, with a grin. She handed the lollipop to him, and he stuck it into his mouth with no difficulty at all.

  From behind her Timmie made a low growling sound.

  “Yes, I know, you want one, too. I haven’t forgotten about you, Timmie.”

  She pulled a second one out, orange this time, and held it out toward him. Timmie grabbed at it with the ferocity of a caged animal, pulling it from her hand.

  Miss Fellowes gave him a troubled look. She hadn’t expected this visit to go serenely; but this was disturbing, these signs of reversion to savagery in Timmie.

  Savagery? No, she thought. That was too harsh an interpretation of Timmie’s behavior. It had been Jerry who struck the first blow, Miss Fellowes reminded herself. Timmie had come over and introduced himself to Jerry in a polite, civilized way, after all. And Jerry had pushed him. Quite probably Timmie reasoned that savage growls and snarls were the only sensible response to that sort of behavior.

  The children glared at each other now over their lollipops across the whole width of the room.

  The f
irst hour wasn’t going to be a lot of fun for anyone, Miss Fellowes realized.

  But this sort of thing was nothing new to her, and not all that intimidating. She had presided over many a pitched battle between angered children—and had seen many a truce come into being eventually, and then friendships. Patience was the answer. In dealing with children, it almost always was. Problems like this had a way of solving themselves, given time.

  “What about blocks?” she asked them. “Timmie, would you like to play with your blocks?”

  Timmie gave her a dark, sullen look—more or less an acquiescent one, she decided, though she wasn’t altogether confident she was right about that.

  “Good,” she said. She went into the other room and brought the blocks out—state-of-the-art stuff, smoothly machined cubes that clicked together elegantly and made a soft chiming sound when you brought the similarly-colored faces into contact. Miss Fellowes laid them out in the middle of the floor.—“And is it all right if Jerry plays with your blocks too, Timmie?”

  Timmie made a grumbling sound.

  “It is all right,” she said. “Good boy! I knew you wouldn’t mind.—Come on over here, Jerry. Timmie’s going to let you play with his blocks.”

  Hesitantly Jerry approached. Timmie was down on the floor already, picking through the blocks for the ones he considered his favorites. Jerry watched in a gingerly way from a comfortable distance. Miss Fellowes came up behind him and gently but forcefully nudged him downward toward the blocks.

  “Play with the blocks, Jerry. Go ahead. It’s all right. Timmie doesn’t mind.”

  He looked back and up at her, very doubtfully.

  Then he cautiously selected a block. Timmie made a louder grumbling noise, but stayed where he was when Miss Fellowes shot him a swift warning look. Jerry took another block. Another. Timmie snatched up two of them, and moved them around in back of himself. Jerry took a third block.

  In hardly any time at all the pile of blocks had been divided roughly in half, and Timmie was playing with one group of them on one side of the room and Jerry was studiously playing with the others at the opposite end, close to the door. The two children ignored each other as thoroughly as though they had been on two different planets. There was no contact at all between them, not even a furtive glance.