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He gazed solemnly at her, saying nothing. _ "You do see, don't you, Timmie?"
He made a little growling sound, two syllables. To her astounded ears, it sounded like Timmie.
Could it be? Did he know his own name already?
"Say it again! Timmie. Timmie."
He uttered the two muffled syllables again. This time she wasn't so sure that he was saying Timmie at all. That could have been her own over-eager imagination. But the possibility was worth following up.
She pointed at him. "Timmie-that's you. Timmie. Timmie. Timmie."
He was staring in silence again.
"And I am-" She pointed to herself, momentarily stymied. Miss Fellowes seemed like too much of a mouthful. But Edith didn't sound right. Nurse? No, not right, either. Miss Fellowes it would have to be. "I-Miss Fellowes. You-Timmie." She pointed. "I-Miss Fellowes. You-Timmie." She went through the routine three*or four more times. He didn't respond at all. -"You think
I'm crazy, don't you?" she asked him, laughing at her own foolishness. "Making all these incomprehensible noises at you, pointing, chanting. And I think all that's on your mind just now is your lunch, right? Am I right, Timmie? Lunch? Food? Hungry?"
He uttered the two growled syllables again, and a few clicks for good measure.
"Hungry, yes. Time for some high-protein low-starch food. The Ice Age special, right, Timmie? Well, let's see what we have here, now-"
Dr. Mclntyre of the Smithsonian's Department of Anthropology arrived in early afternoon. Hoskins took the precaution of calling in on the intercom to ask Miss Fellowes if she thought the boy would be able to handle another visitor so soon after the last one. She looked across the room. Timmie had eaten ravenously-an entire flask of some synthetic vitamin drink that Dr. Jacobs had recommended, plus another bowl of oatmeal and a small piece of toast, the first solid food she had risked letting him have. Now he was sitting on the edge of his bed, looking relaxed and contented, kicking his heels rhythmically back against the underside of the mattress, seeming for all the world like an ordinary little boy amusing himself after lunch.
"What do you say, Timmie? You think you can stand another examination?"
She didn't seriously expect a reply from him, and the clicking sounds that he made didn't seem to constitute one. The boy wasn't looking in her direction and went on kicking his heels. Just talking to himself, no doubt. But he definitely appeared to be in a good mood.
"I think we can risk it," she said to Hoskins.
"Good. -What was that I heard you call him? "Tim-mie?* What does that mean?"
"It's his name."
"He told you his name?" Hoskins said, sounding thunderstruck.
"Of course not. 'Timmie' is simply what I call him."
There was a short uncomfortable pause.
"Ah," said Hoskins finally. "You call him 'Timmie.' "
"I have to call him something, Dr. Hoskins."
"Ah. Yes. Yes. 'Timmie.' "
" 'Timmie,' " Miss Fellowes said firmly.
" Timmie.' Yes. Very well. -I'll send Dr. Mclntyre in now, if that's all right, Miss Fellowes. To see Timmie."
Dr. Mclntyre turned out to be slender and dapper and very much younger than Miss Fellowes had been expecting-no more than thirty or thirty-five, she guessed. He was a small man, delicately built, with fine gleaming golden hair and eyebrows so pale and soft that they were virtually invisible, who moved in a precise, fastidious, elaborately ma
As for Mclntyre, he appeared so overwhelmed by the sight of Timmie that he was barely able to speak. For a long moment he stood frozen just within the door, staring at the boy just as intently as Timmie was staring at him; then he took a few steps to his left, halted, stared again; and then he moved back past the door to the othfer side of the room, stopped there, stared some more.
A trifle acidly Miss Fellowes said, "Dr. Mclntyre, this is Timmie. Timmie-Dr. Mclntyre. Dr. Mclntyre has come here to study you. And I suppose you can study him also, if you want to."
Mclntyre's pallid cheeks reddened. "I don't believe it," he said in a light voice husky with emotion. "I absolutely can't bring myself to believe it. The child is a pure Neanderthal! Alive, right before my eyes, an actual Neanderthal! -Forgive me, Miss Fellowes. You have to understand-this is something completely staggering for me, so utterly phenomenal, so totally astounding-"
He was virtually in tears. It was an embarrassing display, all this effusiveness. Miss Fellowes found it a little irksome. But then, abruptly, her a
"How beautiful he is, Miss Fellowes!" Mclntyre said, after a long moment of silence.
"Beautiful? I haven't heard many people say that about him so far."
"But he is, he is! What a perfect little Neanderthal face! The supraorbital ridges-they've only just begun to develop, yet already they're unmistakable. The platycephalic skull. The elongated occipital region.
— May I touch his face, Miss Fellowes? I'll be gentle. I don't want to frighten him, but I'd like to check a few points of the bony structure-"
"It looks as though he'd like to touch yours," Miss Fellowes said.
Indeed, Timmie's hand was outstretched toward Mc-Intyre's forehead. The man from the Smithsonian leaned a little closer and Timmie's fingers began to explore Mc-Intyre's brilliant golden hair. The boy stroked it as though he had never seen anything so wondrous in his life. Then, suddenly, he twined a few strands of it around his middle finger and tugged. It was a good hard tug.
Mclntyre yelped and backed away, his face reddening.
"I think he wants some of it," Miss Fellowes said.
"Not that way. -Here, let me have a scissors." Mclntyre, gri
She thought a moment. Hoskins-Deveney-Elliott
— Mortenson-Stratford-Dr. Jacobs-all of them had brown hair or black or gray. Her own was brown shading into gray.
"No. Not that I recall. You must be the first." "The first ever, I wonder? We have no idea, of course, what color Neanderthal hair might have been. In the popular reconstructions it's almost always shown as dark, I suppose because Neanderthals are commonly thought of as brutal apish creatures, and most of the modern great apes have dark hair. But dark hair is more common among warm-weather peoples than it is in northern climates, and the Neanderthals certainly were well adapted to extreme cold. So they might have been as blond as your average Russian or Swede or Fi
"And yet his reaction to your hair, Dr. Mclntyre-"
"Yes. No doubt about it, the sight of it does something special for him. -Well, maybe the tribe he came from was entirely dark-haired, or perhaps the entire population in his part of the world. Certainly there's nothing very Nordic about this dusky skin of his. But we can't draw much that's conclusive from a sample consisting of just one child. At least we have that one child, though! And how wonderful that is, Miss Fellowes! I can't believe - I absolutely can't believe-" For an instant she feared that Mclntyre was going to allow himself to be overcome by awe all over again. But he seemed to be keeping himself under control. With great delicacy he pressed the tips of his fingers to Timmie's cheeks, his sloping forehead, his little receding chin. As he worked he muttered things under his breath, technical comments, apparently, words plainly meant for himself alone.
Timmie endured the examination with great patience.
Then, after a time, the boy launched into an extended monolog of clicks and growls, the first time he had spoken since the paleoanthropologist had entered the room.
Mclntyre looked up at Miss Fellowes, his face crimsoning with excitement.
"Did you hear those sounds? Has he made any sounds like that before?"
"Of course he has. He talks all the time."
"Talks?"
"What do you think he's doing, if not talking? He's saying something to us,"
"You mean you assume that he's saying something to us."
"No," Miss Fellowes said, begi
"What kind of patterns, Miss Fellowes?"
"Patterns of clicks and growls. I'm starting to recognize them. There's one set of sounds to tell me that he's hungry. Another to show impatience or restlessness. One that indicates fear. -I know these are only my own interpretations, and not very scientific. But I've been in here with this boy around the clock since the moment of his arrival, and I've had some experience in dealing with speech-impaired children, Dr. Mclntyre. I listen to them very carefully."