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"What are you telling me, Ned?"
"That we ought to let him have his on-site inspection. As a gesture of good will."
"That's your considered legal opinion?"
Cassiday nodded. "You've been stonewalling this guy for weeks now, right? He calls, you give him a run-around, he calls again, you find some new way of deflecting his arguments, and so on and so on and so on. But you can't keep it up forever. He's just as stubborn as you are, and the difference is that in his case stubbor
"Right," Hoskins said.
"You see? He can always keep coming up with new maneuvers. And you can't counter this one with more press releases, or another interview with Candide Deveney on the sub-etheric. Ma
Sam Aickman shook his head. "I don't think there's a reason in the world why we need to cave in to that colossal pain in the neck, Ned. If we were keeping the kid chained up in a closet, maybe-if he was just a miserable sickly bag of bones with pimples and scurvy, who cries bloody murder all day and all night-but the kid is flourishing, according to Jerry. He's putting on a little weight,
I hear that he's even learning to speak some English-he's never had it so good and that ought to be obvious, even to Bruce Ma
"Exacdy," Cassiday said. "We don't have anything to hide. So why should we give Ma
"Good point," said Hoskins. He glanced around the room. "I'd like a show of opinion on this. Do we invite Ma
"I say to hell with him," Sam Aickman said. "He's nothing more than a pest. No reason in the world why we should cave in to him."
"I'm with Ned Cassiday," said Frank Bruton. "Let him come in so we can get this over with."
"It's risky," said Charlie McDermott. "Once he's in the door, there's no telling what further issues he'll raise. As Ned says, there's always some new maneuver. Allowing him to visit the boy won't get him off our backs and might just make the situation worse for us. I say no."
"What about you, Elena?" Hoskins said, turning toward Elena Saddler, who ran materiels procurement.
"I vote for letting him come. As Ned says, we've got nothing to hide. We can't let this man go on smearing us the way he's done. Once he's been here, it's simply his word against ours, and we've got our televised glimpses of Timmie to show the world that we're right and he's wrong."
Hoskins nodded glumly. "Two for it, two against. So I get to cast the deciding vote. -Okay. So be it. I'll tell Ma
Aickman said, "Jerry, are you sure you want to-"
"Yes," said Hoskins. "I don't like him any more than you do, Sam. Or want him sniffing around this place for so much as two minutes. He's a pest, just as you say. And it's precisely because he is such a pest that I've come around to thinking we'd better give him his way. Let him see Timmie, thriving and flourishing. Let him meet Miss Fellowes and find out for himself whether there's any sort of child abuse going on around here. I agree with Ned that the visit might just shut him up. If it doesn't, well, we're no worse off" than we are now: he'll continue to agitate and howl, and we'll continue to deny all his accusations. But if we simply refuse his request to visit, he'll wrap all sorts of bizarre new charges around our necks, and God only knows what we'll have to do to counter them. So my vote is for tossing the bulldog a bone. That way we stand a chance against him; the other way, we're sunk. Ma
Miss Fellowes was giving Tinimie his bath when the intercom sounded in the next room. The interruption drew a scowl from her. She looked at the boy in the tub. Bath-time was no longer an ordeal for him. It was more like sport: he looked forward to it every day. The sensation of lying half submerged in warm water no longer was threatening to him. Plainly it was a wondrous luxurious treat for him, not only the feel of the warm water itself, but the delight of coming forth pink, clean, sweet-smelling. And of course there was the fun of doing a litde splashing around. The longer he lived here, the more like an ordinary little boy Timmie was coming to seem. Miss Fellowes thought.
But she didn't like the idea of leaving him in the tub for long, unattended. Not that she worried much about his drowning. Litde boys his age didn't generally drown in their tubs, and this one seemed to have a healthy enough sense of self-preservation. But if he decided to get out on his own, and somehow slipped and fellShe said, "I'll be right back, Timmie. You stay in the tub by yourself, all right?"
He nodded.
"Stay in the tub. In the tub. You understand?"
"Yes, Miss Fellowes."
Nobody in the world would have recognized the sounds Timmie had uttered as being Yes, Miss Fellowes. Nobody but Miss Fellowes.
Still a litde uneasy, she hurried into the other room and said to the intercom vent, "Who's calling?"
"It's Dr. Hoskins, Miss Fellowes. I'd like to know if Timmie can stand another visitor this afternoon."
"He's supposed to have free time this afternoon. I'm already giving him his bath. He never has visitors after he's had his bath."
"Yes, I know. This is a special case."
Miss Fellowes listened for sounds from the bathroom. Timmie was splashing around vociferously, and obviously having a wonderful time. She heard the boy's pealing laughter.
She said reproachfully, "They're all special cases, aren't they, Dr. Hoskins? If I let everybody in here who was some sort of special case, the boy would be on display to special cases all day and all night too."
"This one is really special, Miss Fellowes."
"I'd still rather not. Timmie's entitled to some time off, just like anyone else. And if you don't mind, Dr. Hoskins, I'd like to get back to his bath before-"
"This visitor is Bruce Ma
"What?"
"You're aware that Ma
"I suppose so," Miss Fellowes said. She hadn't actually been paying much attention.
"Well, he's been calling here about every third day to register this or that expression of outrage. And finally 1 asked him what he wants from us and he said he insists on on-site inspection. That was the term he used: 'on-site inspection.' Of Timmie. As if we had some sort of missile emplacement here. We aren't enthusiastic about it, but we had a board meeting and decided finally that it would do more harm than good to refuse. I'm afraid there's no choice, Miss Fellowes. We have to let him come in."
"Today?"
"About two hours from now. He's a very insistent man.
"You could have given me a little more notice." "I would have if I could, Miss Fellowes. But Ma
She felt a burst of pity for him. Caught between the tireless political agitator on the one hand and the ill-tempered gorgon of a nurse on the other-the poor weary man.
"All right, Dr. Hoskins," she said. "Just this once. - I'll see what I can do about having all the bruises covered over with makeup before he gets here."
She went back to the bathroom while Hoskins' gratitude was still coming out of the intercom. Timmie was busy conducting a naval battle between a green plastic duck and a purple plastic sea monster. The duck seemed to be wi
"You're going to have company this afternoon," Miss Fellowes told the boy. She was bubbling over with fury. "A man's coming here to check up on us. To see whether we've been mistreating you, if you can believe that. Mistreating!"
Timmie gave her a blank look. His fledgling vocabulary didn't stretch anywhere nearly that far. Miss Fellowes hadn't really expected it to.
"Who coming?" he asked.
"A man," she said. "A visitor."
Timmie nodded. "Nice visitor?"
"Let's hope so. -Come on, now, it's time to get you out of the tub and dry you off."
"More bath! More bath!"
"More bath tomorrow. Come on, now, Timmie!"
Reluctantly he clambered out of the tub. Miss Fellowes toweled him off and gave him a quick inspection. No, no whip marks showing. No sign of damage at all. The boy was in fine shape. Especially when she compared him with the filthy, scrufty, bruised and scratched child who had tumbled out of the Stasis scoop amidst a mass of dirt and pebbles and ants and chunks of grass on that first strange, frightening night. Timmie was glowing with good health. He had gained several pounds since then; his scratches had healed and his assortment of bruises had vanished long ago. His hair was neatly cut; his fingernails were trimmed. Let Bruce Ma
Ordinarily she would have put Timmie into his pajamas after the bath; but everything was changed now, because of the visitor who was coming, the very special visitor. That called for formal dress: the purple overalls with the red buttons, Miss Fellowes thought.