Young Mutants

by Asimov, Isaac

  “We were talking about expense. Well, let me remind you that it costs a lot of money to maintain Tim in the special school you’ve been compelled to send him to because he made life hell for his classmates at a regular school. The companionship of a Friend is legally equivalent to a formal course of schooling. Maybe you weren’t aware of that.”

  “Sure!” Jack snapped. “But—oh, hell! I simply don’t fancy the idea of turning my son over to some ambulating alien artifact!”

  “I grant it may seem to you to be a radical step, but juvenile maladjustment is one area where the old saw remains true, about desperate diseases requiring desperate measures. And have you considered the outcome if you don’t adopt a radical solution?”

  It was clear from their glum faces that they had, but he spelled it out for them nonetheless.

  “By opting for a modified child, you rendered yourselves liable for his maintenance and good behavior for a minimum period of twenty years, regardless of divorce or other legal interventions. If Tim is adjudged socially incorrigible, you will find yourselves obliged to support him indefinitely in a state institution. At present the annual cost of keeping one patient in such an establishment is thirty-thousand dollars. Inflation at the current rate will double that by the twenty-year mark, and in view of the extensive alterations you insisted on having made in Tim’s heredity, I think it unlikely that any court would agree to discontinue your liability as early as twelve years from now. I put it to you that the acquisition of a Friend is your only sensible course of action—whatever you may think of the way alien intelligences have evaluated our society. Besides, you don’t have to buy one. You can always rent.”

  He glanced at his desk clock. “I see your time is up. Good morning. My bill will be faxed to you this afternoon.”

  That night there was shouting from the living area of the Patterson house. Tim heard it, lying in bed with the door ajar, and grinned from ear to shell-like ear. He was an extremely beautiful child, with curly fair hair, perfectly proportioned features, ideally regular teeth, eyes blue and deep as mountain pools, a sprinkling of freckles as per specification to make him a trifle less angelic, a fraction more boylike, and—naturally—he was big for his age. That had been in the specification, too.

  Moreover, his vocabulary was enormous compared to an unmodified kid’s—as was his IQ, theoretically, though he had never cooperated on a test which might have proved the fact—and he fully understood what was being said.

  “You and your goddamn vanity! Insisting on all those special features like wavy golden hair and baby-blue eyes and—and, my God, freckles! And now the little devil is apt to drive us into bankruptcy! Have you seen what it costs to rent a Friend, even a cheap one from Procyon?”

  “Oh, stop trying to lay all the blame on me, will you? They warned you that your demand for tallness and extra strength might be incompatible with the rest, and you took not a blind bit of notice—”

  “But he’s a boy, dammit, a boy, and if you hadn’t wanted him to look more like a girl—”

  “I did not, I did not! I wanted him to be handsome and you wanted to make him into some kind of crazy beefcake type, loaded down with useless muscles! Just because you never made the college gladiator squad he was condemned before birth to—”

  “One more word about what I didn’t do, and I’ll smash your teeth down your ugly throat! How about talking about what I have done for a change? Youngest area manager in the corporation, tipped to be the youngest-ever vice-president … small thanks to you, of course. When I think where I might have gotten to by now if you hadn’t been tied around my neck—”

  Tim’s grin grew so wide it was almost painful. He was becoming drowsy because that outburst in the counselor’s office had expended a lot of energy, but there was one more thing he could do before he dropped off to sleep. He crept from his bed, went to the door on tiptoe, and carefully urinated through the gap onto the landing carpet outside. Then, chuckling, he scrambled back under the coverlet and a few minutes later was lost in colorful dreams.

  The doorbell rang when his mother was in the bathroom and his father was calling on the lawyers to see whether the matter of the dog could be kept out of court after all.

  At once Lorna yelled, “Tim, stay right where you are— I’ll get it!”

  But he was already heading for the door at a dead run. He liked being the first to greet a visitor. It was such fun to show himself stark naked and shock puritanical callers, or scream and yell about how Dad had beaten him mercilessly, showing off bruises collected by banging into furniture and blood trickling from cuts and scratches. But today an even more inspired idea came to him, and he made a rapid detour through the kitchen and raided the garbage pail as he passed.

  He opened the door with his left hand and delivered a soggy mass of rotten fruit, vegetable peelings, and coffee grounds with his right, as hard as he could and at about face height for a grownup.

  Approximately half a second later the whole loathsome mass splattered over him, part on his face so that his open mouth tasted the foulness of it, part on his chest so that it dropped inside his open shirt. And a reproachful voice said, “Tim! I’m your Friend! And that’s no way to treat a friend, is it?”

  Reflex had brought him to the point of screaming. His lungs were filling, his muscles were tensing, when he saw what had arrived on the threshold and his embryo yell turned into a simple gape of astonishment.

  The Friend was humanoid, a few inches taller than himself and a great deal broader, possessed of two legs and two arms and a head with eyes and a mouth and a pair of ears … but it was covered all over in shaggy fur of a brilliant emerald green. Its sole decoration—apart from a trace of the multicolored garbage it had caught and heaved back at him, which still adhered to the palm of its left hand—was a belt around its waist bearing a label stamped in bright red letters—AUTHORIZED AUTONOMIC ARTIFACT (SELF-DELIVERING)—followed by the Patterson family’s address.

  “Invite me in,” said the apparition. “You don’t keep a friend standing on the doorstep, you know, and I am your Friend, as I just explained.”

  “Tim! Tim!” At a stumbling run, belting a robe around her, his mother appeared from the direction of the bathroom, a towel clumsily knotted over her newly washed hair. On seeing the nature of the visitor, she stopped dead.

  “But the rental agency said not to expect you until—” She broke off. It was the first time in her life she had spoken to an alien biofact, although she had seen many both live and on tri-vee.

  “We were able to include more than the anticipated quantity in the last shipment from Procyon,” the Friend said. “There has been an advance in packaging methods. Permit me to identify myself.” It marched past Tim and removed its belt, complete with label, and handed it to Lorna. “I trust you will find that I conform to your requirements.”

  “You stinking bastard! I won’t have you fucking around in my home!” Tim shrieked. He had small conception of what the words he was using meant, except in a very abstract way, but he was sure of one thing: they always made his parents good and mad.

  The Friend, not sparing him a glance, said, “Tim, you should have introduced me to your mother. Since you did not, I am having to introduce myself. Do not compound your impoliteness by interrupting, because that makes an even worse impression.”

  “Get out!” Tim bellowed, and launched himself at the Friend in a flurry of kicking feet and clenched fists. At once he found himself suspended a foot off the floor with the waistband of his pants tight in a grip like a crane’s.

  To Lorna the Friend said, “All you’re requested to do is thumbprint the acceptance box and fax the datum back to the rental company. That is, if you do agree to accept me.”

  She looked at it, and her son, for a long moment, and then firmly planted her thumb on the reverse of the label.

  “Thank you. Now, Tim!” The Friend swiveled him around so that it could look directly at him. “I’m sorry to see how dirty you are. It’s not the
way one would wish to find a friend. I shall give you a bath and a change of clothes.”

  “I had a bath!” Tim howled, flailing arms and legs impotently.

  Ignoring him, the Friend continued, “Mrs. Patterson, if you’ll kindly show me where Tim’s clothes are kept, I’ll attend to the matter right away.”

  A slow smile spread over Lorna’s face. “You know something?” she said to the air. “I guess that counselor was on the right track after all. Come this way—uh … Say! What do we call you?”

  “It’s customary to have the young person I’m assigned to select a name for me.”

  “If I know Tim,” Lorna said, “he’ll pick something so filthy it can’t be used in company!”

  Tim stopped screaming for a moment. That was an idea which hadn’t occurred to him.

  “But,” Lorna declared, “we’ll avoid that, and just call you Buddy right from the start. Is that okay?”

  “I shall memorize the datum at once. Come along, Tim!”

  “Well, I guess it’s good to find such prompt service these days,” Jack Patterson muttered, looking at the green form of Buddy curled up by the door of Tim’s bedroom. Howls, yells, and moans were pouring from the room, but during the past half-hour they had grown less loud, and sometimes intervals of two or three minutes interrupted the racket, as though exhaustion were overcoming the boy. “I still hate to think what the neighbors are going to say, though. It’s about the most public admission of defeat that parents can make, to let their kid be seen with one of those things at his heels!”

  “Stop thinking about what the neighbors will say and think about how I feel for once!” rapped his wife. “You had an easy day today—”

  “The hell I did! Those damned lawyers—”

  “You were sitting in a nice quiet office! If it hadn’t been for Buddy, I’d have had more than even my usual kind of hell! I think Dr. Hend had a terrific idea. I’m impressed.”

  “Typical!” Jack grunted. “You can’t cope with this, buy a machine; you can’t cope with that, buy another machine… . Now it turns out you can’t even cope with your own son. I’m not impressed!”

  “Why, you goddamn—”

  “Look, I paid good money to make sure of having a kid who’d be bright and talented and a regular all-around guy, and I got one. But who’s been looking after him? You have! You’ve screwed him up with your laziness and bad temper!”

  “How much time do you waste on helping to raise him?” She confronted him, hands on hips and eyes aflame. “Every evening it’s the same story, every weekend it’s the same— ‘Get this kid off my neck because I’m worn out!’ ”

  “Oh, shut up. It sounds as though he’s finally dropped off. Want to wake him again and make things worse? I’m going to fix a drink. I need one.”

  He spun on his heel and headed downstairs. Fuming, Lorna followed him.

  By the door of Tim’s room, Buddy remained immobile except that one of his large green ears swiveled slightly and curled over at the tip.

  At breakfast the next day Lorna served hot cereal—to Buddy as well as Tim, because among the advantages of this model of Friend was the fact that it could eat anything its assigned family was eating.

  Tim picked up his dish as soon as it was set before him and threw it with all his might at Buddy. The Friend caught it with such dexterity that hardly a drop splashed on the table.

  “Thank you, Tim,” it said, and ate the lot in a single slurping mouthful. “According to my instructions you like this kind of cereal, so giving it to me is a very generous act. Though you might have delivered the dish somewhat more gently.”

  Tim’s semi-angelic face crumpled like a mask made of wet paper. He drew a deep breath, and then flung himself forward across the table aiming to knock everything off it onto the floor. Nothing could break—long and bitter experience had taught the Pattersons to buy only resilient plastic utensils—but spilling the milk, sugar, juice, and other items could have made a magnificent mess.

  A hair’s breadth away from the nearest object, the milk bottle, Tim found himself pinioned in a gentle but inflexible clutch.

  “It appears that it is time to begin lessons for the day,” Buddy said. “Excuse me, Mrs. Patterson. I shall take Tim into the backyard, where there is more space.”

  “To begin lessons?” Lorna echoed. “Well—uh … But he hasn’t had any breakfast yet!”

  “If you’ll forgive my saying so, he has. He chose not to eat it. He is somewhat overweight, and one presumes that lunch will be served at the customary time. Between now and noon it is unlikely that malnutrition will claim him. Besides, this offers an admirable opportunity for a practical demonstration of the nature of mass, inertia, and friction.”

  With no further comment Buddy rose and, carrying Tim in effortless fashion, marched over to the door giving access to the yard.

  * So how has that hideous green beast behaved today?” Jack demanded.

  “Oh, it’s fantastic! I’m starting to get the hang of what it’s designed to do.” Loma leaned back in her easy chair with a smug expression.

  “Yes?” Jack’s face by contrast was sour. “Such as what?”

  “Well, it puts up with everything Tim can do—and that’s a tough job because he’s pulling out all the stops he can think of—and interprets it in the most favorable way it can. It keeps insisting that it’s Tim’s Friend, so he’s doing what a friend ought to do.”

  Jack blinked at her. “What the hell are you talking about?” he rasped.

  “If you’d listen, you might find out!” she snapped back.

  He threw his breakfast at Buddy, so Buddy ate it and said thank you. Then because he got hungry he climbed up and got at the candy jar, and Buddy took that and ate the lot and said thank you again, and … Oh, it’s all part of a pattern, and very clever.”

  “Are you crazy? You let this monstrosity eat not only Tim’s breakfast but all his candy, and you didn’t try and stop it?”

  “I don’t think you read the instructions,” Lorna said.

  “Quit needling me, will you? Of course I read the instructions!”

  “Then you know that if you interfere with what a Friend does, your contract is automatically void and you have to pay the balance of the rental in a lump sum!”

  “And how is it interfering to give your own son some more breakfast in place of what the horrible thing took?”

  “But Tim threw his dish at—”

  “If you gave him a decent diet he’d—”

  It continued. Above, on the landing outside Tim’s door, Buddy kept his furry green ears cocked, soaking up every word.

  “Tim!”

  “Shut up, you fucking awful nuisance!”

  “Tim, if you climb that tree past the first fork, you will be on a branch that’s not strong enough to bear your weight. You will fall about nine feet to the ground, and the ground is hard because the weather this summer has been so dry.”

  “Shut up! All I want is to get away from you!”

  Crack!

  “What you are suffering from is a bruise, technically called a subcutaneous hemorrhage. That means a leak of blood under the skin. You also appear to have a slight rupture of the left Achilles tendon. That’s this sinew here, which …”

  “In view of your limited skill in swimming, it’s not advisable to go more than five feet from the edge of this pool. Beyond that point the bottom dips very sharply.”

  “Shut up! I’m trying to get away from you, so—glug!”

  “Insufficient oxygen is dissolved in water to support an air-breathing creature like a human. Fish, on the other hand, can utilize the oxygen dissolved in water, because they have gills and not lungs. Your ancestors …”

  “Why, there’s that little bastard Tim Patterson! And look at what he’s got trailing behind him! Hey, Tim! Who said you had to live with this funny green teddy bear? Did you have to go have your head shrunk?”

  Crowding around him, a dozen neighborhood kids, both sexes, various
ages from nine to fourteen.

  “Tim’s head, as you can doubtless see, is of normal proportions. I am assigned to him as his Friend.”

  “Hah! Don’t give us that shit! Who’d want to be a friend of Tim’s? He busted my brother’s arm and laughed about it!”

  “He set fire to the gym at my school!”

  “He killed my dog—he killed my Towser!”

  “So I understand. Tim, you have the opportunity to say you were sorry, don’t you?”

  “Ah, he made that stinking row all the time, barking his silly head off—’’

  “You bastard! You killed my dog!”

  “Buddy, help! Help!”

  “As I said, Tim, you have an excellent opportunity to say how sorry you are… . No, little girl: please put down that rock. It’s extremely uncivil, and also dangerous, to throw things like that at people.’’

  “Shut up.”

  “Let’s beat the hell out of him! Let him go whining back home and tell how all those terrible kids attacked him, and see how he likes his own medicine!’’

  “Kindly refrain from attempting to inflict injuries on my assigned charge.’’

  “I told you to shut up, greenie!”

  “I did caution you, as you’ll recall. I did say that it was both uncivil and dangerous to throw rocks at people. I believe what I should do is inform your parents. Come, Tim.’’

  “No!”

  “Very well, as you wish. I shall release this juvenile to continue the aggression with rocks.’’

  “No!”

  “But, Tim, your two decisions are incompatible. Either you come with me to inform this child’s parents of the fact that rocks were thrown at you, or I shall have to let go and a great many more rocks will probably be thrown— perhaps more than I can catch before they hit you.”

  “I—uh … I—I’m sorry that I hurt your dog. It just made me so mad that he kept on barking and barking all the time, and never shut up!”

  “But he didn’t bark all the time! He got hurt—he cut his paw and he wanted help!”

  “He did so bark all the time!”