"He's doing very well, yes."
There was a pause. She hoped the children's advocate wasn't leading up to telling her that he had wangled permission to pay another call on the dollhouse so that he could check up on Timmie's new friendship. Timmie didn't need any more visitors than he already had; and Miss Fellowes was wary of having an outsider like Mannheim on hand while Timmie and Jerry were together. Their developing relationship, while it was just as peaceful as she had told Mannheim it was, had a subtext of potential volatility that was all too likely to turn into something troublesome in the presence of a stranger.
But Mannheim wasn't planning to visit, it seemed. He said, after a moment, "I just want to tell you, Miss Fellows, how pleased we all are that a capable nurse like you is looking after Timmie."
"That's very kind of you."
"The boy's been put through a very frightening experience and he's made a wonderful adaptation-so far. Much of the credit for that must go to you."
(What did he mean, so far?)
— "We'd much rather have preferred it, of course, that Timmie had been left to live out his natural life among his own people," Mannheim continued. "But since that option wasn't allowed him, it's good to know that a devoted, dedicated woman like you has been placed in charge of him, that you've been giving him the kind of care you have ever since he came to our era. You've worked wonders. I have no other word for it."
"That's very kind of you," Miss Fellowes said again, more lamely than before. She had never cared much for praise; and Mannheim was laying it on pretty thickly.
"And Dr. Levien feels the same way that I do."
"Ah," said Miss Fellowes. "Yes." And, coolly, stiffly: "That's-very good to hear."
"I'd like to give you my number," Mannheim said.
(Why?)
"I can always reach you through Dr. Hoskins," Miss Fellowes replied.
"Yes, of course. But a time might come when you'd want to reach me more directly."
(Why? Why? What is this all about?)
"Well, perhaps-"
"I feel that you and I are natural allies in this enterprise, Miss Fellowes. The one thing we have at heart, above all else, is Timmie's welfare. However we may feel about child-care techniques, about politics, about anything in the world, we both are concerned with Timmie. Deeply so. And therefore if you need to talk to me about Timmie's welfare, if any changes take place in the setup at Stasis Technologies that might have an unfavorable impact on Timmie's existence there-"
(Ah. You want me to be a spy for you.)
"I'm sure that everything's going to keep on going very smoothly, Mr. Mannheim."
"Of course it will. Of course. But all the same-"
He gave her the number. She wrote it down, not knowing why.
Just in case, Miss Fellowes told herself.
In case of what?
"Is Jerry coining again today, Miss Fellowes?" Tim-mie asked.
"Tomorrow."
The boy's disappointment was all too obvious. His round face dissolved into wrinkles, his jutting brow knotted in a frown. "Why not today?"
"Today isn't Jerry's day, Timmie. Jerry has-a place to go today."
"What place?"
"A place," she said, being deliberately vague. How could she describe kindergarten to him? What would Timmie think, knowing that other children, many of them, came together to play games, to chase each other in laughter around a schoolyard, to daub pieces of paper with gloriously gooey fingerpaints. "Jerry'11 be here tomorrow,"
"I wish he could come every day."
"So do I," Miss Fellowes said.
(But do I? Really?)
The problem was not that Timmie had a friend, but that the friend was becoming too confident, too aggressive, as time went along. Jerry had overcome his initial timidity entirely by now, and he was very much the dominant member of the pair.
He had been bigger than Timmie to start with, and he seemed to be growing faster now. The height differential was close to an inch and a half by this time, and Jerry was heavier than Timmie as well. And quicker and stronger and-Miss Fellowes had trouble with this aspect of it-quite possibly more intelligent, too. Jerry seemed to figure out new toys much more swiftly than Timmie, and to find interesting things to do with them. And when she gave them paints or crayons or modeling clay to play with, Jerry quickly set to work creating designs and shapes, while Timmie simply made messes. Timmie appeared to have no artistic aptitude at all, not even the minimal skills one would expect from any reasonably intelligent child his age.
Of course, she argued, Jerry goes to kindergarten every day. He's learned all about how to use crayons and paints and clay there.
But Timmie had had them too, long before Jerry had first come here. He had never managed to master them, but that hadn't troubled Miss Fellowes at the time; she hadn't been comparing Timmie with any other children then, and she was making allowances for the blankness of his first few years.
Now she remembered what she had read in the books Dr. Mclntyre had given her. About the total absence of any known examples of Neanderthal art. No cave paintings, no statuettes, no designs carved on walls.
(What if they really were inferior? And that was why they died out when we came along.)
Miss Fellowes didn't want to think about that.
Yet here was Jerry, swaggering in here now twice a week as if he owned the place. "Let's play with the blocks," he would say to Timmie. Or "let's paint" or "let's watch the whirloscreen." And Timmie would go along with it, never suggesting some preference of his own, always blandly following Jerry's agenda. Jerry had forced Timmie into a completely secondary role. The only thing that reconciled Miss Fellowes to the developing situation was that, despite difficulties, Timmie looked forward with more and more delight to the periodic appearances of his playfellow.
Jerry is all he has, she told herself mournfully.
And once, as she watched them, she thought: Hos-kins' two children, one by his wife and one by Stasis.
Whereas she herselfHeavens, she thought, putting her fists to her temples and feeling ashamed: I'm jealous!
Chapter Ten. Reaching
Miss FELLOWES," Timmie said, "when will I be starting to go to school?"
The question, coming out of nowhere, hit her with the force of a thunderbolt.
She looked down at those eager brown eyes turned up to hers and passed her hand softly through his thick, coarse hair, automatically picking through the rough tangles of it and trying to straighten them. Timmie's hair was always disheveled. Miss Fellowes cut it herself while he squirmed restlessly under the scissors. The idea of having a barber in here for Timmie displeased her; and in any case the very clumsiness of the cut she gave him served to mask the retreating fore part of his skull and the bulging hinder part.
Carefully Miss Fellowes said, "Where did you hear about school, Timmie?"
"Jerry goes to school."
(Of course. Where else would he have heard of it but from Jerry?)
"Jerry goes to kin-der-gar-ten." Timmie pronounced the long word slowly and with unusual precision. "That's only one of the places he goes. He goes to the store with his mother. He goes to the movies. The zoo. All kinds of places outside. -When can I go outside, Miss Fellowes?"
A small pain centered in Miss Fellowes' heart.
It was inevitable, she knew, that Jerry would talk about the outside world with Timmie. They communicated freely and easily-two small boys who understood each other without difficulty. And Jerry, the emissary from the mysterious and forbidden world beyond the door of the Stasis bubble, would certainly want to tell Timmie all about it. There was no way of avoiding that.
But it was a world that Timmie could never enter.
Miss Fellowes said, with a studied gaiety that was her best attempt at distracting him from the anguish he must surely feel, "Why, whatever would you do out there, Timmie? Why would you want to go there? Do you know how cold it gets out there in the winter?"