The Ugly Little Boy

PROPHYLAXIS FOR THAT INFECTED SCRATCH OF HIS. TRIM HIS FINGERNAILS AND TOENA1LS. BLOOD TESTS. IMMUNE-SYSTEM VULNERABILITY? VACCINATIONS? A COURSE OF PREVENTIVE ANTIBIOTIC TREATMENTS? HAIRCUT.

STOOL SAMPLES. INTESTINAL PARASITES? DENTAL EXAMINATION. CHEST X HAY. GENERAL SKELETAL X RAY, TOO.

And half a dozen other items of varying degrees of urgency. But then she realized what the top priority of all must be, at least for the ugly little boy.

Briskly she said, "Have you provided food? Milk?"

They had. Ms. Stratford, her third assistant, wheeled in a gleaming mobile unit. In the refrigeration compartment Miss Fellowes found three quarts of milk, with a warming unit and a supply of fortifications in the form of vitamin supplements, copper-cobalt-iron syrup, and other things she had no time to be concerned with now. Another compartment held an assortment of baby foods in self-warming cans.

Milk, simply milk, that was the thing to begin with. Whatever else he had been eating in the place from which he had been taken-half-charred meat, wild berries, roots and insects, who knew what?-milk was a safe bet to have been part of a child's diet. Savages, she speculated, would be likely to go on nursing their children to an advanced age.

But savages wouldn't know how to handle cups. That much seemed certain. Miss Fellowes poured a little of the milk into a saucer and popped it into the microwave for a few seconds' worth of warming.

They were all watching her-Hoskins, Candide Deveney, the three orderlies, and everyone else who had managed to crowd into the Stasis area. The boy was staring at her too.

"Yes, look at me," she said to the boy. "There's a good fellow."

She held the saucer carefully in her hands, brought it to her mouth, and pantomimed the act of lapping up the milk.

The boy's eyes followed. But did he understand?

"Drink," she said. "This is how to drink."

Miss Fellowes pantomimed the lapping again. She felt a little absurd. But she brushed the feeling away. She would do whatever felt right to do. The boy had to be taught how to drink.

"Now you," she said.

She offered him the saucer, holding it out toward him so that all he had to do was move his head forward slightly and lick up the milk. He looked at it solemnly, without the slightest sign of comprehension.

"Drink," she said. "Drink." She let her tongue flick out again as though to show him once more.

No response. Just a stare. He was trembling again, though the room was warm and the nightgown surely was more than sufficient.

Direct measures were in order, the nurse thought.

She put the saucer down on the floor. Then she seized the boy's upper arm in one hand and, bending, she dipped three fingers of her other hand in the milk, scooping some up and dashing it across his lips. It dripped down his cheeks and over his receding chin.

The boy uttered a high-pitched cry of a kind she hadn't heard from him before. He looked baffled and displeased. Then his tongue slowly moved over his wetted lips. He frowned. Tasted. The tongue licked out again.

Was that a smile?

Yes. Yes. A sort of smile, anyway. Miss Fellowes stepped back.

"Milk," she said. "That's milk. Go on. Have a little more of it."

Tentatively the boy approached the saucer. He bent toward it, then looked up and over his shoulder sharply as though expecting to find some enemy crouching behind him. But there was nothing behind him. He bent again, stiffly, clumsily, pushed his head forward, licked at the milk, first in a cautious way and then with increasing eagerness. He lapped it the way a cat would. He made a slurping noise. He showed no interest in using his hands to raise the saucer to his face. He was like a little animal, squatting on the floor lapping up the milk.

Miss Fellowes felt a sudden surge of revulsion, even though she knew that she was the one who had pantomimed the lapping in the first place. She wanted to think of him as a child, a human child, but he kept reverting to some animal level, and she hated that. She hated it. She knew that her reaction must be apparent on her face. But she couldn't help it. Why was the child so bestial? It was prehistoric, yes-forty thousand years!-but did that have to mean it would seem so much like an ape? It was human, wasn't it? Wasn't it? What kind of child had they given her?

Candide Deveney caught that, perhaps. He said, "Does the nurse know, Dr. Hoskins?"

"Know what?" Miss Fellowes demanded.

Deveney hesitated, but Hoskins (again that look of detached amusement on his face) said, "I'm not sure.

Why don't you tell her?"

"What's all this mystery?" she asked. "Come on, tell me, if there's some secret I'm supposed to find out about!"

Deveney turned to her. "I just was wondering, Miss -whether you're actually aware that you happen to be the first civilized woman in history ever to be asked to take care of a young Neanderthal?"