Slowly, painfully, he said, "Then the-tra-in-blew its-whuh-its whuh-whuh-is-its whuh-is-"
"Its whistle!" she finished for him. "You can read, Timmie! You can actually read!"
Excited nearly to frenzy, she swung him up into her arms and danced him around the room while he stared at her in huge-eyed amazement.
"You can read! You can read!"
(Ape-boy, was he? Cave-boy? Some lesser form of human life? The cat ran up the tree. The train blew its whistle. Show me the chimp that can read those lines! Show me the gorilla that can! The train blew its whistle. Oh, Timmie, Timmie-)
"Miss Fellowes?" he said, sounding a little starded, as she swung him wildly around.
She laughed and put him down.
This was a breakthrough that she had to share. The answer to Timmie's unhappiness was in her hand. Picture tapes might keep him amused for a time, but he was bound to outgrow them. Now, though, as he grew older, he would have access to the full, rich world of books. If Timmie couldn't leave the Stasis bubble to enter the world, the world could be brought into these three rooms to Timmie-the whole world in books. He must be educated to his full capacity. That much was owed to him.
"You stay here with your books," she told him. "I'll be back in a little while. I have to see Dr. Hoskins."
She made her way along the catwalks and through the tortuous passageways that led out of the Stasis zone, and into the executive area. Hoskins' receptionist looked up in surprise as Miss Fellowes came bursting into the anteroom of Hoskins' office.
"Is Dr. Hoskins here?"
"Miss Fellowes! Dr. Hoskins isn't expecting-"
"Yes, I know that. But I want to see him."
"Is there some problem?"
Miss Fellowes shook her head. "News. Exciting news. Please, just tell him I'm here."
The receptionist pressed a button. "Miss Fellowes to see you, Dr. Hoskins. She has no appointment."
(Since when do I need-?)
There was an uncomfortable pause. Miss Fellowes wondered if she was going to have to make a scene in order to be admitted to Hoskins' presence. Whatever he might be doing in there, it couldn't be as important as what she had to tell him.
Hoskins' voice out of the intercom said, "Tell her to come in."
The door rolled open. Hoskins rose from behind the desk with its GERALD A. HOSKTNS, PH.D. nameplate to greet her.
He looked flushed and excited himself, as though his mood was precisely analogous to hers: a kind of triumph and glory. "So you've heard?" he said at once. "No, of course, you couldn't have. We've done it. We've actually done it."
"Done what?"
"We have intertemporal detection at close range."
He was so mil of his own success that for a moment Miss Fellowes allowed it to shove her own spectacular news into the background.
"You can reach historical times, you mean?" she said.
"That's exactly what I mean. We have a fix on a fourteenth-century individual right now. Imagine. Imagine!
We're ready to launch Project Middle Ages. Oh, Miss Fellowes, if you could only know how glad I'll be to shift from the eternal concentration on the Mesozoic-to get away from all these trilobites and rock samples and bits and pieces of ferns and things-to send the paleontologists home and bring some historians in here at last-" He stopped in midflow. -"But there's something you want to tell me, isn't there? And here I am, running on and on, without giving you a chance to speak. Well, go ahead. Go ahead, Miss Fellowes! You find me in a very fine mood, indeed. Anything you want, just ask for it."
Miss Fellowes smiled. "I'm glad to hear it. Because I wonder if we can start bringing in tutors for Timmie."
"Tutors?"
"To give him instruction. I can teach him only so much, and then I ought to step aside in favor of someone who has the proper training for it."
"Instruction? In what?"
"Well, in everything. History, geography, science, arithmetic, grammar, the whole elementary school curriculum. We have to set up a kind of school in here for Timmie. So that he'll be able to learn all that he needs to know."
Hoskins stared at her as though she were speaking some alien language.
"You want to teach him long division? The story of the Pilgrims? The history of the American Revolution?"
"Why not?"
"We can try to teach him, yes. And trigonometry and calculus, too, if you like. But how much can he learn, Miss Fellowes? He's a great little boy, no question of it. But we must never lose sight of the fact that he's only a Neanderthal."
"Only?"
"They were a people of very limited intellectual capacity, according to all the-"
"He already knows how to read, Dr. Hoskins."
Hoskins' jaw sagged open.
"What?"
"The cat ran up the tree. He read it to me right off the page. The train blew its whistle. I picked the book and showed him the page and he read me the words."
"He can read?" said Hoskins in wonder. "Really?"
"I showed him how the letters were shaped, and how they were put together in words. And he did the rest. He's learned it in an astonishingly short span of time. I can't wait for Dr. Mclntyre and the rest of the crew to find out about it. So much for the very limited intellectual capacity of the Neanderthals, eh, Dr. Hoskins? He can read a storybook. And as time goes along you'll see him reading books without any pictures at all, reading newspapers, magazines, textbooks-"
Hoskins sat there, seemingly suddenly depressed. "I don't know, Miss Fellowes."
She said, "You just told me that anything I wanted-"
"I know, and I shouldn't have said that."
"A tutor for Timmie? Is that such a big expense?"
"It isn't the expense I'm concerned with," said Hoskins. "And it's a wonderful thing that Timmie can read. Astonishing. I mean that. I want to see a demonstration of it right away. But you talk about setting up a school for him. You talk about all the things he'll learn as time goes along. -Miss Fellowes, there isn't much more time."
She blinked. "There isn't?"
"I'm sure you must be aware that we aren't able to maintain the Timmie experiment indefinitely."
A surge of horror swept through her. She felt as though the floor had turned to quicksand beneath her feet.
What did he mean? Miss FeUowes wasn't sure that she understood. We aren't able to maintain the Timmie experiment indefinitely. What? What?
With an agonizing flash of recollection, she recalled Professor Adamewski and his mineral specimen that was taken away after two weeks because the Stasis facility that contained it had to be cleared for the next experiment.
"You're going to send him back?" she said in a tiny voice.
"I'm afraid so."
"But you're talking about a boy, Dr. Hoskins. Not about a rock."
Uneasily Hoskins said, "Even so. He can't be given undue importance, you know. We've learned just about as much from him as we're likely to. He doesn't remember anything about his life in the Neanderthal era that's of any real scientific value. The anthropologists can't make much sense out of what he says, and the questions they've put to him with you as the interpreter haven't yielded a lot of worthwhile data, and so-"
"I don't believe this," Miss Fellowes said numbly.
"Please, Miss Fellowes. It's not going to happen today, you know. But there's no escaping the necessity of it." He indicated the research materials on his desk. "Now that we expect to be bringing back individuals out of historical time, we'll need Stasis space-all we can get."
She couldn't grasp it.
"But you can't. Timmie-Timmie-"
"Please don't get so upset, Miss Fellowes."
"The world's only living Neanderthal, and you're talking about sending him back?"
"As I've said. We've learned all we can. Now we have to move along."
"No."
"Miss Fellowes, please. Please. I know you're deeply attached to the boy. And who can blame you? He's a terrific kid. And you've lived with him day and night for a long time now. But you're a professional, Miss Fellowes. You understand that the children under your care constantly come and go, that you can't hope to keep them forever. This is nothing new. -Besides, Timmie isn't going to go right away; perhaps not for months. Meanwhile, if you want a tutor for him, yes, yes, of course, we'll do whatever we can."