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 planned it for midnight so that you'd find out only when it was over."
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."
"It's not like sending a rock back. He's a human being, and you'll be killing him."
"Not killing. We've got no reason to think that the return trip is harmful. He'll arrive more or less in the same place we took him from, at a point in time that we calculate will be roughly ten weeks after his departure- plus or minus a couple of weeks, factoring in entropic drift and other little technicalities. And he won't feel a thing. He'll be back home-a Neanderthal boy in a Neanderthal world. He won't be a prisoner and an alien any more. He'll have a chance at a free life."
"What chance? He's seven years old at best, accustomed to be taken care of, fed, clothed, sheltered. Now he'll be alone in an ice age. Don't you think his tribe may have wandered off somewhere else in ten weeks* time? They don't simply sit still-they follow the game, they move along the trail. And even if by some miracle they were still there, do you think they'll recognize him? Three years older in ten weeks? They'd run screaming away. He'd be alone and he'd have to look after himself. How will he know how to do it?"
Hoskins shook his head. His expression was bleak, stony, implacable.
"He'll find his tribe again, and they'll take him in and welcome him back. I'm completely certain of it. Trust me, Miss Fellowes."
She looked at him in anguish.
"Trust you?"
"Please," he said, and suddenly there was anguish in his eyes too. "There's no way around this. I'm sorry, Miss Fellowes. Believe me, I am-sorrier than you'll ever give me credit for. But the boy has to go, and that's all there is to it. Don't make it any harder for me than it already is."
Her eyes were fixed on his. She stared steadily, in silence, for a long terrible moment.
At last she said, sadly, "Well, then. At least let me say goodbye to him. Give me five minutes alone with him. You can let me have that, can't you?"
Hoskins hesitated. Then he nodded.
"Go ahead," he said.
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, set it 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?"
"Well-yes. Like Jerry's mother. Do you know what a mother does?"
"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. That's what a mother does. 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, just as long, long ago she had stroked him.
He said, "Aren't you my mother?"
"Oh, Timmie."
"Are you angry because I said that?"
"No. Of course not."
"Because I know your name is Miss Fellowes, but- but sometimes, I call you 'Mother' inside. The way Jerry does his mother, only he does it out loud. Is that all right, that I was calling you that inside?"
"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.
She remembered what Hoskins had said, about objects that weren't anchored being swept along in time with the transit object. A lot of the things in the room were anchored; some were not. Such as the chair she was standing on. Well, so be it: the chair would go. That wasn't important. Other things might go, too. She didn't know which would be caught in the time field and which would not. She didn't care. It was no problem of hers.
"Hey!" Hoskins shouted, from outside the bubble.
She smiled. She clutched Timmie tightly and reached up with her free hand, and yanked with all her weight at the cord where it hung suspended between two eyelets.
And Stasis was punctured and the room was empty.
Epilogue. Skyfire Face
SILVER CLOUD walked over to Goddess Woman where she squatted drawing magical circles in the snow and said, "I need to talk to you."
She went on doing what she was doing. "Talk, then."
"Can you stop drawing the circles for a moment?"