The Simulacra

And there was probably little he could do about it.

From outside the house Nat Flieger heard children playing.

They chanted some sort of dirge-like rhythm, unfamiliar to him. And he had been in the music business all his life. No matter how hard he tried he could not make out the words; they were strangely blurred, run-together.

‘Mind if I look?' he asked Beth Kongrosian, rising to his feet from the creaky wicker chair.

Turning pale, Beth Kongrosian said, ‘I -- would rather you didn't. Please don't look at the children. Please!'

Nat said gently, ‘We're a recording company, Mrs Kongrosian. Anything and everything in the way of music is our business.' He absolutely could not refrain from going to the window to look; the instinct, right or wrong, was in his blood -- it came before civility or kindness, before all else. Peering out, he saw them, seated in a circle. And they were all chuppers. He wondered which was Plautus Kongrosian. They all looked so much alike to him. Perhaps the little boy in yellow shorts and T-shirt off to the side. Nat motioned to Molly and Jim; they joined him at the window.

Five Neanderthal children, Nat thought. Plucked out of time; a sequence from the past snipped out and pasted here in this day and age, in the present, for us of EME to overhear, to record. I wonder what sort of an album cover our art department will want to put on this. He shut his eyes, no longer wishing to face the scene outside the window.

But we will go ahead, he knew. Because we came here to get something; we can't -- or at least we don't want to -- go back with nothing at all. And this is important.

This has to be dealt with, professionally. Perhaps it's more important even than Richard Kongrosian, good as he is. And we can't afford the luxury of paying attention to our delicate sensibilities.

‘Jim,' he said presently. ‘Get out the Ampek F-a2. Right away. Before they stop.'

Beth Kongrosian said, ‘I won't let you record them.'

‘We will,' Nat said to her. ‘We're used to this, in folk music sessions done on the spot. It's been tested in USEA courts many times and the recording firm has always won.'

He followed after Jim Planck, in order to help assemble their recording gear.

‘Mr Flieger, do you understand what they are?' Mrs Kongrosian called after him.

‘Yes,' he said. And continued on.

Presently they had the Ampek F-a2 set up; the organism pulsed sleepily, undulating its pseudopodia as if hungry. The moist weather seemed to have affected it little; it was, if anything, torpid.

Appearing beside them, composed, her face rigid with determination, Beth Kongrosian said in a low voice, ‘Listen to me, please. At night, in fact tonight in particular, there's going to be a gathering of them. The adults. At their hall, back in the woods very near here, on the red-rock side road they all use; it belongs to them, their organization. There will be a great deal of dancing and singing. What you want exactly. Much more than what you'll find here with these little children. So please; wait and record that instead.'

Nat said, ‘We'll get both.' And signalled Jim to carry the Ampek F-a2 towards the circle of children.

‘I'll put you up for the night, here in the house,' Beth Kongrosian said, hurrying after him. ‘Very late, around two in the morning, they sing wonderfully -- it's hard to understand the words but -- ‘ She caught hold of his arm. ‘Richard and I have been trying to train our child away from this. The children, as young as they are, don't really participate; you won't get the real thing from them. When you see the adults -- ‘ She broke off and then finished drably, ‘Then you'll see what I mean.'

Molly said to Nat, ‘Let's wait.'

Hesitating, Nat turned to Jim Planck. Jim nodded.

‘Okay,' Nat said to Mrs Kongrosian. ‘If you'll take us to their hall, where they meet. And see that we get in.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I will. Thank you, Mr Flieger.'

I feel guilty, Nat said to himself. But he said aloud, ‘Okay. And you -- ‘ His guilt overcame him, then. ‘Heck, you don't have to put us up. We'll stay in Jenner.'

‘I'd like to,' Beth Kongrosian said. ‘I'm terribly lonely; I need the company, when Richard's away. You don't know what it means to have people from -- the outside come in here for a little while.'

The children, noticing the adults, broke off suddenly, shyly; they peeped at Nat and Molly and Jim wide-eyed. It would probably not have been possible to get them down anyhow, Nat realized. So he had lost nothing by his deal.

‘Does this frighten you?' Beth Kongrosian asked him.

He shrugged. ‘No. Not really.'

‘The government knows about it,' she said. ‘There have been many ethnologists and god knows what else sent out here to investigate. They all say it proves one thing; in prehistoric times, during the epoch before Cro-Magnon Man appeared -- ‘ She ceased, helplessly.

‘They interbred,' Nat finished for her. ‘Like the skeletons found in the caves in Israel indicated.'

‘Yes.' She nodded. ‘Possibly all the so-called sub-races. The races that didn't survive. They were absorbed by HomoSapiens.'

‘I'd make a different guess,' Nat said. ‘It would seem more to me that the the so-called sub-races were mutations which existed for a short while and then dwindled away because they couldn't adapt as well. Perhaps there were radiation problems in those days.'

‘I don't agree,' Beth Kongrosian said. ‘And work they've done with the von Lessinger equipment tends to back me up. By your theory they would just be -- sports. But I believe they're true races ... I think they evolved separately from the original primate, from Proconsul. And at last came together, when Homo Sapiens migrated into their hunting lands.'

Molly said, ‘Could I get another cup of coffee? I'm cold.'

She shivered. ‘This damp air gets me down.'

‘We'll go back into the house,' Beth Kongrosian agreed.

‘Yes, you're not accustomed to the weather up here; I understand. I remember how it was when we first moved here.'

‘Plautus was not born here,' Nat said.

‘No.' She nodded. ‘We came here because of him.'

‘Wouldn't the government have taken him?' Nat asked.

‘They maintain special schools for radiation survivors.' He avoided using the exact term; it would have been radiation sports.

‘We thought he would be happier here,' Beth Kongrosian said. ‘Most of them -- the chuppers, as they speak of themselves -- are here. They've come from every part of the world, during the last two decades.'

The four of them re-entered the warm, dry house.

‘He's actually a lovely-looking little boy,' Molly said.

‘Very sweet and sensitive-looking, despite -- ‘ She faltered.

‘The jaw and the shambling gait,' Mrs Kongrosian said matter of factly, ‘haven't fully formed. That begins in about the thirteenth year.' In the kitchen she began to heat water for their coffee.

Strange, what we're going to bring back from this trip, Nat Flieger thought to himself. So different from what we and Leo expected.

He thought, I wonder how it'll sell.

Amanda Conner's sweet, pure voice came from the intercom, startling Dr Egon Superb as he sat examining his schedule of tomorrow's appointments. ‘Someone to see you, doctor. A Mr Wilder Pembroke.'

Wilder Pembroke! Dr Superb sat up rigidly, and laid aside his appointment book reflexively. What did the NP official want this tune? He felt immediate, instinctive wariness and he said into the intercom, ‘Just a minute, please.'

Has he finally come to shut me down? he wondered. Then I must have seen that one, particular patient without realizing it.

The one I exist to serve; or rather, not to serve. The man I'm here to fail with.