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Chapter Eight. Dreaming
LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, long after Bruce Ma
"Is Timmie sleeping?" he asked.
Miss Fellowes nodded. "Finally. He needed plenty of calming down." She put down the book she had been reading and regarded Hoskins without warmth. It had been a tense, disturbing afternoon, and she would just as soon have been left alone now.
Hoskins said, "I'm sorry things got so testy."
"There was a lot of shouting, yes. More than the boy really needed. Don't you think that discussion could have taken place someplace else?"
"I'm sorry," Hoskins said again. "I flew off the handle, I guess. -That man is going to drive me crazy."
"Actually, he didn't seem as awful as I had expected. I think he's genuinely got Timmie's welfare at heart."
"No doubt he does. But to come butting in here uninvited, telling us what to do-"
"The boy does need a playmate."
Hoskins gave her a despondent look, as though he thought the debate was going to get started all over again. But he managed to master himself in time.
"Yes," he said quietly. "So he does. I won't argue with you about that. But where are we going to get one? The problems are enormous."
"You weren't serious about bringing your own son in here if ail else failed, then?"
Hoskins seemed startled. Perhaps she might be pushing him too far. But she hadn't asked him to come back here a second time today.
"Serious? -Yes, yes, of course I was serious. If we can't find anybody else. Do you think I'm afraid my boy would come to some harm at Timmie's hands? But my wife would have some objections, I suspect. She'd see risks. A lot of people on the outside seem to think Timmie's some kind of wild ape-boy. A savage creature that lived in caves and ate raw meat."
"What if we had an interview with him go out on the subetheric?" Miss Fellowes suggested. She was surprised to hear herself proposing more media incursions on Timmie's privacy; but if it would help overcome popular prejudices about the boy, it would be worth the strain on him. "Now that he speaks English-if people knew that he does-"
"I don't think that would be likely to improve things, Miss Fellowes."
"Why not?"
"His English really isn't very good, you know."
She was indignant at once. "What do you mean? He's got an amazing vocabulary, considering the point that he started from. And learning more words every day."
Hoskins' eyes seemed very weary. "You're the only one who can understand him. To the rest of us the things he says might just as well be Neanderthal words. They're practically unintelligible."
"You aren't listening carefully to him, then."
"No," Hoskins said without much vigor. "Perhaps not."
He shrugged and looked away and seemed to sink into some sort of reverie. Miss Fellowes picked up her book again and opened it to the page she had been on, without looking down at it, hoping that he would take the hint. But Hoskins sat where he was.
"-If only that miserable woman hadn't become involved in this thing!" he burst out suddenly, after a time.
"Maria
"That robot, yes."
"Surely she isn't!"
"No, not really," Hoskins said, with a tired little smile. "She just seems like one to me. Here we have a boy out of the past in the next room, and a woman who seems like something out of the future comes around to make trouble for me. I wish I'd never met her in the first place. Ma
"But that's exactly what she is."
"Yes. Yes, she is, isn't she?"
Miss Fellowes nodded. "I have trouble believing that a woman like that was once actually being considered for the job of looking after Timmie."
"One of the first to apply. Eager for the job. Hungry for it, as a matter of fact."
"She seems so-unsuitable."
"Her credentials were terrific. It was her personality that turned me off. She was very surprised not to be hired. -Well, somehow she's gotten herself entangled with Ma
His voice was starting to rise.
Firmly Miss Fellowes said, "I don't think you can call it persecution when someone suggests that Timmie is a very lonely child and that something needs to be done about it."
"Something will be done about it."
"But why do you think she's being vengeful, when it seems to me she's simply pointing out-"
"Because she is vengeful!" Hoskins said, more loudly than before. "Because she wanted to come in here and take charge of this project when it was just getting under way, but she didn't get the opportunity, and now she intends to bring it all down around our ears. She'll have no mercy. Ma
Miss Fellowes' eyes widened. "What a thing to say!"
"Which?"
"That she and he-that she would use her- You have no proof of that. The whole suggestion's out ofline, Dr. Hoskins. Absolutely out ofline."
"Is it?" Hoskins' anger seemed to dissolve in an instant. He looked toward her and gri
Impulsively Miss Fellowes went to him and seized his hands in hers. They were cold. She held them for a moment, wishing she could pump life and energy into them.
"When was the last time you had a vacation, Dr. Hoskins?"
"A vacation?" He chuckled hollowly. "I don't diink I know what the word means."
"Maybe that's the problem."
"I can't. I simply can't. I turn my back for a minute, Miss Fellowes, and anything will happen here. A dozen different Adamewskis trying to steal scientific specimens out of Stasis. People ru
"A long weekend, at least? You need some rest."
"I know that. God, do I know that! -Thank you for caring so much, Miss Fellowes. Thank you for everything. In this whole madhouse of a research institute you've been one of the few pillars of sanity and dependability."
"And will you try to get a little rest?"
"I'll try, yes."
"Starting now?" she asked. "It's getting toward six o'clock. Your wife's expecting you at home. Your litde boy."
"Yes," Hoskins said. "I'd better be heading out of here. And once again: thank you for everything, Miss Fellowes. Thank you. Thank you."
In the night she was awakened by the sound of sobbing coming from Timmie's room. It was the first time she had heard that in a long while.
She got quickly out of bed and went to him. She had long ago mastered the skill of waking up in a hurry when a troubled child was calling out.
"Timmie?" she called.
She turned the night-light on. He was sitting up in bed, staring straight forward, with his eyes wide open, making the eerie high-pitched sound that was his kind of sobbing. But he didn't seem to see her. He took no notice of her at all as she entered the room, and the sobbing went on and on.
"Timmie, it's me. Miss Fellowes." She sat down beside him and slipped her arm around his shoulders. "It's all right, Timmie. It's all right!"
Slowly the sobbing stopped.
He looked at her as though he had never seen her before in his life. His eyes had a weirdly glassy look and his lips were drawn back in a bizarre way. In the half-darkness the lightning-bolt birthmark stood out fiercely on his cheek. She had virtually stopped noticing it but his face seemed pallid, almost bloodless, just now and the birthmark looked brighter than it had ever been before.
He's still asleep, she thought.
"Timmie?"
He made clicking sounds at her, Neanderthal speech. He seemed to be talking not so much to her as through her, to some invisible entity standing behind her.