It was all baby-talk, all gobbledygook, but she felt that she had to keep trying. Some day, surely, one of them would let a little truth show through their empty explanations.
"But you have different kinds of manna for breakfast, lunch and dinner," Wendy said, "and sometimes you go right off one kind for weeks on end. Maybe some day you'll go off me, and want a different one."
"No we won't, darling," he answered, gently. "There are matters of taste and matters of taste. Manna is fuel for the body. Variety of taste just helps to make the routine of eating that little bit more interesting. Relationships are something else. It's a different kind of need. We love you, Beauty, more than anything else in the world. Nothing could ever replace you."
She thought about asking about what would happen if Father and Mother ever got divorced, but decided that it would be safer to leave the matter alone for now. Even though time was pressing, she had to be careful.
They watched TV for a while before Mother came home. Father had a particular fondness for archive film of extinct animals-not the ones which the engineers had re-created but smaller and odder ones: weirdly shaped sea-dwelling creatures. He could never have seen such creatures even if they had still existed when he was young, not even in an aquarium; they had only ever been known to people as things on film. Even so, the whole tone of the tapes which documented their one-time existence was nostalgic, and Father seemed genuinely affected by a sense of personal loss at the thought of the sterilization of the seas during the last ecocatastrophe but one.
"Isn't it beautiful?" he said, of an excessively tentacled sea anemone which sheltered three vivid clown-fish while ungainly shrimps passed by. "Isn't it just extraordinary?"
"Yes," she said, dutifully, trying to inject an appropriate reverence into her tone. "It's lovely." The music on the sound-track was plaintive; it was being played on some fluty wind-instrument, possibly by a human player. Wendy had never heard music like it except on TV sound-tracks; it was as if the sound were the breath of the long-lost world of nature, teeming with undesigned life.
"Next summer," Father said, "I want us to go out in one of those glassbottomed boats that take sight-seers out to the new barrier reef. It's not the same as the original one, of course, and they're deliberately setting out to create something modern, something new, but they're stocking it with some truly weird and wonderful creatures."
"Mother wants to go up the Nile," Wendy said. "She wants to see the sphinx, and the tombs."
"We'll do that the year after," Father said. "They're just ruins. They can wait. Living things .. ." He stopped. "Look at those!" be said, pointing at the screen. She looked at a host of jellyfish swimming close to the silvery surface, their bodies pulsing like great translucent hearts.
It doesn't matter, Wendy thought. I won't be there. I won't see the new barrier reef or the sphinx and the tombs. Even if they find a cure, and even if you both want me cured, I won't be there. Not the real me. The real me will have died, one way or another, and there'll be nothing left except a girl who'll be thirteen forever, and a randomizing factor which will make it seem that she has a lively mind.
Father put his arm around her shoulder, and hugged her fondly.
Father must really love her very dearly, she thought. After all, he had loved her for thirty years, and might love her for thirty years more, if only she could stay the way she was ... if only she could be returned to what she had been before ... The evening TV schedules advertised a documentary on progeria, scheduled for late at night, long after the nation's children had been put to bed. Wendy wondered if her parents would watch it, and whether she could sneak downstairs to listen to the sound-track through the closed door. In a way, she hoped that they wouldn't watch it. It might put ideas into their heads. It was better that they thought of the plague as a distant problem: something that could only affect other people; something with which they didn't need to concern themselves.
She stayed awake, just in case, and when the luminous dial of her bedside clock told her it was time she silently got up, and crept down the stairs until she could hear what was going on in the living room. It was risky, because the randomizing factor wasn't really supposed to stretch to things like that, but she'd done it before without being found out.
It didn't take long to ascertain that the TV wasn't even on, and that the only sound to be heard was her parents' voices. She actually turned around to go back to bed before she suddenly realized what they were talking about. "Are you sure she isn't affected mentally?" Mother was saying.
"Absolutely, certain," Father replied. "I watched her all afternoon, and she's perfectly normal."
"Perhaps she hasn't got it at all," Mother said, hopefully.
"Maybe not the worst kind," Father said, in a voice that was curiously firm. "They're not sure that even the worst cases are manifesting authentic selfconsciousness, and there's a strong contingent which argues that the vast majority of cases are relatively minor dislocations of programming. But there's no doubt about the physical symptoms. I picked her up to carry her indoors and she's a stone heavier. She's got hair growing in her armpits and she's got tangible tits. We'll have to be careful how we dress her when we take her to public places."
"Can we do anything about her food-reduce the calorific value of her manna or something?"
"Sure-but that'd be hard evidence if anyone audited the house records. Not that anyone's likely to, now that the doctor's been and gone, but you never know. I read an article which cites a paper in the latest Nature to demonstrate that a cure is just around the corner. If we can just hang on until then ... she's a big girl anyhow, and she might not put on more than an inch or two. As long as she doesn't start behaving oddly, we might be able to keep it secret."
"If they do find out," said Mother, ominously, "there'll be hell to pay.
"I don't think so," Father assured her. "I've heard that the authorities are quite sympathetic in private, although they have to put on a sterner face for publicity purposes."
"I'm not talking about the bloody bureaucrats," Mother retorted, "I'm talking about the estate. If the neighbors find out we're sheltering a center of infection ... well, bow would you feel if the Johnsons' Peter turned out to have the disease and hadn't warned us about the danger to Wendy?"
"They're not certain bow it spreads," said Father, defensively, "They don't know what kind of vector's involved-until they find out there's no reason to think that Wendy's endangering Peter just by living next door. It's not as if they spend much time together. We can't lock her up-that'd be suspicious in itself. We have to pretend that things are absolutely normal, at least until we know how this thing is going to turn out. I'm not prepared to run the risk of their taking her away-not if there's the slightest chance of avoiding it. I don't care what they say on the newstapes-this thing is getting out of control and I really don't know how it's going to turn out. I'm not letting Wendy go anywhere, unless I'm absolutely forced. She may be getting heavier and hairier, but inside she's still Wendy, and I'm not letting them take her away."
Wendy heard Father's voice getting louder as he came toward the door, and she scuttled back up the stairs as fast as she could go. Numb with shock, she climbed back into bed. Father's words echoed inside her head: "I watched her all afternoon, and she's perfectly normal ... inside she's still Wendy ... .. They were putting on an act too, and she hadn't known. She hadn't been able to tell. She'd been watching them, and they'd seemed perfectly normal ... but inside, where it counted ... It was a long time before she fell asleep, and when she finally did, she dreamed of shadow-men and shadow-music, which drew the very soul from her even as she fled through the infinite forest of green and gold.
The men from the Ministry of Health arrived next morning, while Wendy was finishing her honey and almond manna. She saw Father go pale as the man in the gray suit held up his identification card to the door camera. She watched Father's lip trembling as he thought about telling the man in the gray suit that he couldn't come in, and
then realized that it wouldn't do any good. As Father got up to go to the door he exchanged a bitter glance with Mother, and murmured: "That bastard house-doctor."
Mother came to stand behind Wendy, and put both of her hands on Wendy's shoulders. "It's all right, darling," she said. Which meant, all too clearly, that things were badly wrong.
Father and the man in the gray suit were already arguing as they came through the door. There was another man behind them, dressed in less formal clothing. He was carrying a heavy black bag, like a rigid suitcase.
"I'm sorry," the man in the gray suit was saying. "I understand your feelings, but this is an epidemic-a national emergency. We have to check out all reports, and we have to move swiftly if we're to have any chance of containing the problem."
"If there'd been any cause for alarm," Father told him, hotly, "I'd have called you myself." But the man in the gray suit ignored him; from the moment he had entered the room his eyes had been fixed on Wendy. He was smiling. Even though Wendy had never seen him before and didn't know the first thing about him, she knew that the smile was dangerous.
"Hello, Wendy," said the man in the gray suit, smoothly. "My name's Tom Cartwright. I'm from the Ministry of Health. This is Jimmy Li. I'm afraid we have to carry out some tests."
Wendy stared back at him as blankly as she could. In a situation like this, she figured, it was best to play dumb, at least to begin with.
"You can't do this," Mother said, gripping Wendy's shoulders just a little too hard. "You can't take her away."
"We can complete our initial investigation here and now," Cartwright answered, blandly. "Jimmy can plug into your kitchen systems, and I can do my part right here at the table. It'll be over in less than half an hour, and if all's well we'll be gone in no time." The way he said it implied that he didn't really expect to be gone in no time.
Mother and Father blustered a little more, but it was only a gesture. They knew how futile it all was. While Mr. Li opened up his bag of tricks to reveal an awesome profusion of gadgets forged in metal and polished glass Father came to stand beside Wendy, and like Mother he reached out to touch her.
They both assured her that the needle Mr. Li was preparing wouldn't hurt when he put it into her arm, and when it did hurt-bringing tears to her eyes in spite of her efforts to blink them away-they told her the pain would go away in a minute. It didn't, of course. Then they told her not to worry about the questions Mr. Cartwright was going to ask her, although it was as plain as the noses on their faces that they were terrified by the possibility that she would give the wrong answers.
In the end, though, Wendy's parents had to step back a little, and let her face up to the man from the Ministry on her own.
I mustn't play too dumb, Wendy thought. That would be just as much of a giveaway as being too clever. I have to try to make my mind blank, let the answers come straight out without thinking at all. It ought to be easy. After all, I've been thirteen for thirty years, and unthirteen for a matter of months ... it should be easy.
She knew that she was lying to herself. She knew well enough that she had crossed a boundary that couldn't be re-crossed just by stepping backward.
"How old are you, Wendy?" Cartwright asked, when Jimmy Li had vanished into the kitchen to play with her blood.
"Thirteen," she said, trying to return his practiced smile without too much evident anxiety.
"Do you know what you are, Wendy?"
"I'm a girl," she answered, knowing that it wouldn't wash.
"Do you know what the difference between children and adults is, Wendy? Apart from the fact that they're smaller."
There was no point in denying it. At thirteen, a certain amount of self knowledge was included in the package, and even thirteen-year-olds who never looked at an encyclopedia learned quite a lot about the world and its ways in the course of thirty years.
"Yes," she said, knowing full well that she wasn't going to be allowed to get away with minimal replies.
"Tell me what you know about the difference," he said.
"It's not such a big difference," she said, warily. "Children are made out of the same things adults are made of-but they're made so they stop growing at a certain age, and never get any older. Thirteen is the oldest-some stop at eight."
"Why are children made that way, Wendy?" Step by inexorable step he was leading her toward the deep water, and she didn't know how to swim. She knew that she wasn't clever enough-yet-to conceal her cleverness.
"Population control," she said.
"Can you give me a more detailed explanation, Wendy?"
"In the olden days," she said, "there were catastrophes. Lots of people died, because there were so many of them. They discovered bow not to grow old, so that they could live for hundreds of years if they didn't get killed in bad accidents. They had to stop having so many children, or they wouldn't be able to feed everyone when the children kept growing up, but they didn't want to have a world with no children in it. Lots of people still wanted children, and couldn't stop wanting them-and in the end, after more catastrophes, those people who really wanted children a lot were able to have them ... only the children weren't allowed to grow up and have more children of their own. There were lots of arguments about it, but in the end things calmed down."
"There's another difference between children and adults, isn't there?" said Cartwright, smoothly.
"Yes," Wendy said, knowing that she was supposed to have that information in her memory and that she couldn't refuse to voice it. "Children can't think very much. They have limited self-consciousness." She tried hard to say it as though it were a mere formula, devoid of any real meaning so far as she was concerned.
"Do you know why children are made with limited self-consciousness?"
"No." She was sure that no was the right answer to that one, although she'd recently begun to make guesses. It was so they wouldn't know what was happening if they were ever sent back, and so that they didn't change too much as they learned things, becoming unchildlike in spite of their appearance.
"Do you know what the word progeria means, Wendy?"
"Yes," she said. Children watched the news. Thirteen-year-olds were supposed to be able to hold intelligent conversations with their parents. "It's when children get older even though they shouldn't. It's a disease that children get. It's happening a lot."
"Is it happening to you, Wendy? Have you got progeria?"
For a second or two she hesitated between no and I don't know, and then realized how bad the hesitation must look. She kept her face straight as she finally said: "I don't think so."
"What would you think if you found out you had got progeria, Wendy?" Cartwright asked, smug in the knowledge that she must be way out of her depth by now, whatever the truth of the matter might be.
"You can't ask her that!" Father said. "She's thirteen! Are you trying to scare her half to death? Children can be scared, you know. They're not robots."
"No," said Cartwright, without taking his eyes off Wendy's face. "they're not. Answer the question, Wendy."
"I wouldn't like it," Wendy said, in a low voice. "I don't want anything to happen to me. I want to be with Mummy and Daddy. I don't want anything to happen."
While she was speaking, Jimmy Li had come back into the room. He didn't say a word and his nod was almost imperceptible, but Tom Cartwright wasn't really in any doubt.
"I'm afraid it has, Wendy," he said, softly. "It has happened, as you know very well.
"No she doesn't!" said Mother, in a voice that was halfway to a scream. "She doesn't know any such thing!"
"It's a very mild case," Father said. "We've been watching her like hawks. It's purely physical. Her behavior hasn't altered at all. She isn't showing any mental symptoms whatsoever."
"You can't take her away," Mother said, keeping her shrillness under a tight rein. "We'll keep her in quarantine. We'll join one of the drug-trials. You can monitor her but you can't take her away. She doesn't understand what's happening. She's jus
t a little girl. It's only slight, only her body."
Tom Cartwright let the storm blow out. He was still looking at Wendy, and his eyes seemed kind, full of concern. He let a moment's silence endure before he spoke to her again.
"Tell them, Wendy," he said, softly. "Explain to them that it isn't slight at all."
She looked up at Mother, and then at Father, knowing how much it would hurt them to be told. "I'm still Wendy," she said, faintly. "I'm still your little girl. I .. ."
She wanted to say I always will be, but she couldn't. She had always been a good girl, and some lies were simply too difficult to voice.
I wish I was a randomizing factor, she thought, fiercely wishing that it could be true, that it might be true. I wish I was ... Absurdly, she found herself wondering whether it would have been more grammatical to have thought I wish I were ... It was so absurd that she began to laugh, and then she began to cry, helplessly. It was almost as if the flood of tears could wash away the burden of thought almost, but not quite.
Mother took her back into her bedroom, and sat with her, holding her hand. By the time the shuddering sobs released her-long after she had run out of tears-wendy felt a new sense of grievance. Mother kept looking at the door, wishing that she could be out there, adding her voice to the argument, because she didn't really trust Father to get it right. The sense of duty which kept her pinned to Wendy's side was a burden, a burning frustration. Wendy didn't like that.
Oddly enough, though, she didn't feel any particular resentment at being put out of the way while Father and the Ministry of Health haggled over her future. She understood well enough that she had no voice in the matter, no matter how unlimited her self-consciousness bad now become, no matter what progressive leaps and bounds she had accomplished as the existential fetters had shattered and fallen away.
She was still a little girl, for the moment.
She was still Wendy, for the moment. When she could speak, she said to Mother: "Can we have some music?"
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection Page 67