The Ugly Little Boy

Miss Fellowes, disheveled and trembling uncontrollably, glared at her. "Where's Timmie?"

Mortenson had appeared from somewhere and was swabbing the arm of a wailing Jerry with disinfectant. Elliott was there, too, preparing an anti-tetanus shot. There was a bright bloodstain on Jerry's clothes.

"He bit me, Miss Fellowes," Jerry screamed in rage. "He bit me!"

But Miss Fellowes looked right through him.

"What did you do with Timmie?" she cried out.

"I locked him in the bathroom," Mandy Terris said. "I just threw the little monster in there and barricaded it with some chairs."

Miss Fellowes ran into the dollhouse, scarcely even noticing the ripple of disorientation as she entered Stasis. She pushed the chairs aside and fumbled at the bathroom door. It took an eternity to get it open.

At last. She looked down on the ugly little boy, cowering miserably in the corner.

"Don't whip me, Miss Fellowes," Timmie said huskily. His eyes were red. His lips were quivering. "I didn't mean to hurt him. You aren't going to whip me, are you?"

"Oh, Timmie, who told you about whips?" She drew him to her, hugging him wildly.

He said tremulously, "She did. The new one. She said you'd hit me with a long whip, that you would hit me and hit me."

"She was wicked to say that. You won't be whipped. -But what happened? What happened, Timmie?"

He stared up at her. His eyes looked enormous.

In a low voice he said, "He called me an ape-boy."

"What!"

"He said I wasn't a real boy. That he read it in the newspaper. He said I was just an animal." Timmie was fighting to hold back tears; and dien they came, a flood of them. His words grew indistinct as he snuffled, and yet she could make out every syllable all too clearly. "He said he wasn't going to play with a monkey any more. I said I wasn't a monkey. I'm not a monkey. I know what a monkey is."

"Timmie-Timmie-"

"He said I was all fu

Miss Fellowes said, amid sobs, "It isn't true. You know that, Timmie. You're a real boy. You're a dear real boy and the best boy in the world. And no one, no one, will ever take you away from me."

She went outside again. Elliott and Mortenson were still busding around, patching Jerry up. Mandy Terris was nowhere to be seen.'

Miss Fellowes said, "Get that boy out of here. Take him to his father's office and finish whatever it is you need to do with him there. And if you see Ms. Terris, tell her she can pick up her paycheck and clear out."

They nodded. They backed away from her as if she had begun to breathe fire.

She turned and went back inside, to Timmie.

Her mind was made up, now. It had been very easy: the sudden awareness of what had to be done, die sudden resolve to do it right away, quickly, no hesitation possible. Maybe there were dangers in it that she didn't understand, but she had to take diat chance. If she didn't act at iall, Timmie would surely be sent back across time to die. If she did what she pla

No, it would have to be done this night, this night, while the celebration over the success of Project Middle Ages still had everyone distracted.

She wished she could call Bruce Ma

Midnight, she thought. That's the right time.

There would be no problem about her leaving and coming back that late. She often went there at night, even on nights when she had decided to sleep at her own apartment and had already left for the day. The guard knew her well and wouldn't dream of questioning her. He wouldn't think twice about why she happened to be carrying a suitcase, either. She rehearsed the noncommital phrase, "Some games for the boy," and the calm smile.

Games for the boy? Bringing them in at midnight?

But why should anyone doubt her? She lived only for Timmie. Everyone around here knew that. If she was bringing games for him in the middle of the night, well, that was the way she was. Why should he take any notice?

He didn't.

"Evening, Miss Fellowes. Big day today, wasn't it?"

"Very big, yes. -Some games for the boy," she said, waving the suitcase and smiling.

And went on past the security barrier.

Timmie was still awake when she entered the doll-house.

"Miss Fellowes-Miss Fellowes-"

She maintained a desperate pretense of normality to avoid frightening him. Had he been sleeping? A little, he said. He had had the dream again, and it had awakened him. So she sat with him for a rime, talking about his dreams with him, and listened to him ask wistfully about Jerry. She was as patient as she could force herself to be. There's no hurry, she told herself. Why should anyone be suspicious? I have every right to be in here.

And there would be few to see her when she left, no one to question the bundle she would be carrying. Timmie would be very quiet and then the thing would be done. It would be done and what would be the use of trying to undo it? They would let her be. They would let them both be. Even if what she was about to do blew every power line in six counties, there'd be no point afterward in bringing Timmie back to his place.

She opened the suitcase.

She took out die overcoat, the woolen cap with the ear-flaps, and the rest.

Timmie said, with a note of bewilderment and perhaps distress in his voice, "Why are you putting all these clothes on me, Miss Fellowes?"

She said, "I'm going to take you outside, Timmie. To where your dreams are."

"My dreams?" His face twisted in sudden yearning, yet fear was there, too.

"You don't need to be afraid. You'll be with me. You won't be afraid if you're with me, will you, Timmie?"

"No, Miss Fellowes." He buried his little misshapen head against her side, and under her enclosing arm she could feel his small heart thud.

She lifted him into her arms. She disco

And screamed.

Gerald Hoskins was standing there, facing her across the open door.

There were two men with Hoskins and he stared at her, looking as astonished as she was.

Miss Fellowes recovered first by a second, and made a quick attempt to push past him into the corridor; but even with the second's delay Hoskins had enough time to stop her. He caught her roughly and hurled her back through the door of the bubble and up against a chest of drawers. Then he waved the other two men in and confronted her, blocking the door.

"I didn't expect this. Are you completely insane?"

Miss Fellowes had managed to interpose her shoulder so that it, rather than Timmie, had struck the chest. Now she turned, clinging to Timmie tightly and glaring defiantly at Hoskins. But the defiance went out of her as she began to speak. In a pleading tone, she said, "What harm can it do if I take him, Dr. Hoskins? You can't put something like an energy loss ahead of a human life."

Hoskins nodded to the others, and they stepped in alongside her, looking ready to restrain her if it turned out to be necessary. Hoskins himself reached forward and took Timmie out of her arms.

He said, "A power surge of the size that doing what you were about to do would black out an immense area. It would cripple the whole city all the next day. Computers would be down, alarms wouldn't function, data would be lost, all kinds of trouble. There'd be a thousand lawsuits and we'd be on the receiving end of all of them.

The costs would run into the millions for us. Way up in the millions. We might even find ourselves facing bankruptcy. At the very minimum it would mean a terrible financial setback for Stasis Technologies, and a colossal public-relations fiasco. Imagine what people will say when they find out that all that trouble was caused by a sentimental nurse acting irrationally for the sake of an ape-boy."

"Ape-boy!" said Miss Fellowes, in helpless fury. "You know that that's what the reporters like to call him," said Hoskins. "And ordinary people all think of him that way. They still don't understand what a Neanderthal actually is. And I don't think they ever will."

One of the other men had gone out of the bubble. He returned now, looping a nylon rope through eyelets along the upper portion of the wall.

Miss Fellowes gasped. She remembered the rope attached to the pull-lever outside the room containing Professor Adamewski's rock specimen so long ago. She cried out, "No! You mustn't!" But Hoskins put Timmie down and gently removed the overcoat he was wearing. "You stay here, Timmie. Nothing will happen to you. We're just going outside for a moment. All right?"

Timmie, white-faced and wordless, managed to nod. Hoskins steered Miss Fellowes out of the dollhouse ahead of himself. For the moment she was beyond resistance. Dully she noticed the red-handled pull-lever being adjusted in the hallway outside. Odd how she had never paid attention to it before, never let it enter her consciousness.

The sword of the executioner, she thought. "I'm sorry, Miss Fellowes," Hoskins said. "I would have spared you this if I could. I pla

She said in a weary whisper, "You're doing this because your son was hurt. Don't you realize that jerry tormented this child into striking out at him?"

"This has nothing to do with what happened to Jerry."

"I'm sure it doesn't," Miss Fellowes said acidly.

"No. Believe me. I understand about the incident today and I know it was Jerry's fault. -Well, I suppose what happened today has speeded things up a little. The story has leaked out. No way that it wouldn't have, with the media crawling all over the lab today because of Project Middle Ages. And we'll be hearing stuff about 'negligence,' 'savage Neanderthalers,' all that nonsense, getting into the news, spoiling the coverage of today's successful experiment. Better to end the Timmie experiment right here and now. Timmie would have had to leave soon anyway. Better to send him back tonight and give the sensationalists as small a peg as possible on which they can hang their trash."