Timmie, white and wordless, managed to nod.
Hoskins steered Miss Fellowes out of the dollhouse ahead of himself. For the moment, Miss Fellowes was beyond resistance. Dully, she noticed the hand-pull being adjusted outside the dollhouse.
"I’m sorry, Miss Fellowes," said Hoskins. "I would have spared you this. I planned it for the night so that you would know only when it was over."
She said in a weary whisper, "Because your son was hurt. Because he tormented this child into striking out at him."
"No. Believe me. I understand about the incident today and I know it was Jerry’s fault. But the story has leaked out. It would have to with the press surrounding us on this day of all days. I can’t risk having a distorted story about negligence and savage Neanderthalers, so-called, distract from the success of Project Middle Ages. Timmie has to go soon anyway; he might as well go now and give the sensationalists as small a peg as possible on which to hang their trash."
"It’s not like sending a rock back. You’ll be killing a human being."
"Not killing. There’ll be no sensation. He’ll simply be a Neanderthal boy in a Neanderthal world. He will no longer be a prisoner and alien. He will have a chance at a free life."
"What chance? He’s only seven years old, used to being taken care of, fed, clothed, sheltered. He will be alone. His tribe may not be at the point where he left them now that four years have passed. And if they were, they would not recognize him. He will have to take care of himself. How will he know how?"
Hoskins shook his head in hopeless negative. "Lord, Miss Fellowes, do you think we haven’t thought of that? Do you think we would have brought in a child if it weren’t that it was the first successful fix of a human or near-human we made and that we did not dare to take the chance of unfixing him and finding another fix as good? Why do you suppose we kept Timmie as long as we did, if it were not for our reluctance to send a child back into the past? It’s just" – his voice took on a desperate urgency – "that we can wait no longer. Timmie stands in the way of expansion! Timmie is a source of possible bad publicity; we are on the threshold of great things, and I’m sorry, Miss Fellowes, but we can’t let Timmie block us. We cannot. We cannot. I’m sorry, Miss Fellowes."
"Well, then," said Miss Fellowes sadly. "Let me say good-by. Give me five minutes to say good-by. Spare me that much."
Hoskins hesitated. "Go ahead."
Timmie ran to her. For the last time he ran to her and for the last time Miss Fellowes clasped him in her arms.
For a moment, she hugged him blindly. She caught at a chair with the toe of one foot, moved it against the wall, sat down.
"Don’t be afraid, Timmie."
"I’m not afraid if you’re here, Miss Fellowes. Is that man mad at me, the man out there?"
"No, he isn’t. He just doesn’t understand about us. – Timmie, do you know what a mother is?"
"Like Jerry’s mother?"
"Did he tell you about his mother?"
"Sometimes. I think maybe a mother is a lady who takes care of you and who’s very nice to you and who does good things."
"That’s right. Have you ever wanted a mother, Timmie?"
Timmie pulled his head away from her so that he could look into her face. Slowly, he put his hand to her cheek and hair and stroked her, as long, long ago she had stroked him. He said, "Aren’t you my mother?"
"Oh, Timmie."
"Are you angry because I asked?"
"No. Of course not."
"Because I know your name is Miss Fellowes, but – but sometimes, I call you ‘Mother’ inside. Is that all right?"
"Yes. Yes. It’s all right. And I won’t leave you any more and nothing will hurt you. I’ll be with you to care for you always. Call me Mother, so I can hear you."
"Mother," said Timmie contentedly, leaning his cheek against hers.
She rose, and, still holding him, stepped up on the chair. The sudden beginning of a shout from outside went unheard and, with her free hand, she yanked with all her weight at the cord where it hung suspended between two eyelets.
And Stasis was punctured and the room was empty.
The Billiard Ball
James Priss – I suppose I ought to say Professor James Priss, though everyone is sure to know whom I mean even without the title – always spoke slowly.
I know. I interviewed him often enough. He had the greatest mind since Einstein, but it didn’t work quickly. He admitted his slowness often. Maybe it was because he had so great a mind that it didn’t work quickly.
He would say something in slow abstraction, then he would think, and then he would say something more. Even over trivial matters, his giant mind would hover uncertainly, adding a touch here and then another there.
Would the Sun rise tomorrow, I can imagine him wondering. What do we mean by "rise"? Can we be certain that tomorrow will come? Is the term "Sun" completely unambiguous in this connection?
Add to this habit of speech a bland countenance, rather pale, with no expression except for a general look of uncertainty; gray hair, rather thin, neatly combed; business suits of an invariably conservative cut; and you have what Professor James Priss was – a retiring person, completely lacking in magnetism.
That’s why nobody in the world, except myself, could possibly suspect him of being a murderer. And even I am not sure. After all, he was slow-thinking; he was always slow-thinking. Is it conceivable that at one crucial moment he managed to think quickly and act at once?
It doesn’t matter. Even if he murdered, he got away with it. It is far too late now to try to reverse matters and I wouldn’t succeed in doing so even if I decided to let this be published.
Edward Bloom was Priss’s classmate in college, and an associate, through circumstance, for a generation afterward. They were equal in age and in their propensity for the bachelor life, but opposites in everything else that mattered.
Bloom was a living flash of light; colorful, tall, broad, loud, brash, and self-confident. He had a mind that resembled a meteor strike in the sudden and unexpected way it could seize the essential. He was no theroetician, as Priss was; Bloom had neither the patience for it, nor the capacity to concentrate intense thought upon a single abstract point. He admitted that; he boasted of it.
What he did have was an uncanny way of seeing the application of a theory; of seeing the manner in which it could be put to use. In the cold marble block of abstract structure, he could see, without apparent difficulty, the intricate design of a marvelous device. The block would fall apart at his touch and leave the device.
It is a well-known story, and not too badly exaggerated, that nothing Bloom ever built had failed to work, or to be patentable, or to be profitable. By the time he was forty-five, he was one of the richest men on Earth.
And if Bloom the Technician were adapted to one particular matter more than anything else, it was to the way of thought of Priss the Theoretician. Bloom’s greatest gadgets were built upon Priss’s greatest thoughts, and as Bloom grew wealthy and famous, Priss gained phenomenal respect among his colleagues.
Naturally it was to be expected that when Priss advanced his Two-Field Theory, Bloom would set about at once to build the first practical anti-gravity device.
My job was to find human interest in the Two-Field Theory for the subscribers to Tele-News Press, and you get that by trying to deal with human beings and not with abstract ideas. Since my interviewee was Professor Priss, that wasn’t easy.
Naturally, I was going to ask about the possibilities of anti-gravity, which interested everyone; and not about the Two-Field Theory, which no one could understand – "Anti-gravity?" Priss compressed his pale lips and considered. "I’m not entirely sure that it is possible, or ever will be. I haven’t – uh – worked the matter out to my satisfaction. I don’t entirely see whether the Two-Field equations would have a finite solution, which they would have to have, of course, if – " And then he went off into a brown study.