"I don't think that would be likely to improve things, Miss Fellowes."
"Why not?"
"His English really isn't very good, you know."
She was indignant at once. "What do you mean? He's got an amazing vocabulary, considering the point that he started from. And learning more words every day."
Hoskins' eyes seemed very weary. "You're the only one who can understand him. To the rest of us the things he says might just as well be Neanderthal words. They're practically unintelligible."
"You aren't listening carefully to him, then."
"No," Hoskins said without much vigor. "Perhaps not."
He shrugged and looked away and seemed to sink into some sort of reverie. Miss Fellowes picked up her book again and opened it to the page she had been on, without looking down at it, hoping that he would take the hint. But Hoskins sat where he was.
"-If only that miserable woman hadn't become involved in this thing!" he burst out suddenly, after a time.
"Marianne Levien?"
"That robot, yes."
"Surely she isn't!"
"No, not really," Hoskins said, with a tired little smile. "She just seems like one to me. Here we have a boy out of the past in the next room, and a woman who seems like something out of the future comes around to make trouble for me. I wish I'd never met her in the first place. Mannheim by himself isn't so bad-just one of those fuzzy-brained socially conscious guys, full of all sorts of lofty ideals, who goes running around all over the place determined to make the world a better place according to his own lights; that sort of thing. Your basic high-minded do-gooder. But Levien-that chrome-plated bitch-excuse my language, Miss Fellowes-"
"But that's exactly what she is."
"Yes. Yes, she is, isn't she?"
Miss Fellowes nodded. "I have trouble believing that a woman like that was once actually being considered for the job of looking after Timmie."
"One of the first to apply. Eager for the job. Hungry for it, as a matter of fact."
"She seems so-unsuitable."
"Her credentials were terrific. It was her personality that turned me off. She was very surprised not to be hired. -Well, somehow she's gotten herself entangled with Mannheim's crowd now, more's the pity. Probably deliberately, by way of paying me back for not giving her the job. Her way of getting revenge. Hell hath no fury, and so forth. She'll stir him up and stir him up and stir him up-she'll fill his head with her silly jargon, as though he doesn't have enough goofy psychobabble of his own stirring around in there-she'll keep him coming after me, fire him up to persecute me steadily-"
His voice was starting to rise.
Firmly Miss Fellowes said, "I don't think you can call it persecution when someone suggests that Timmie is a very lonely child and that something needs to be done about it."
"Something will be done about it."
"But why do you think she's being vengeful, when it seems to me she's simply pointing out-"
"Because she is vengeful!" Hoskins said, more loudly than before. "Because she wanted to come in here and take charge of this project when it was just getting under way, but she didn't get the opportunity, and now she intends to bring it all down around our ears. She'll have no mercy. Mannheim's a pushover compared with her. He can be manipulated, if you know the right buttons to push. He'll settle for constant statements of good intentions, polite reassurances that I'm going to follow his party line. But she'll be demanding on-site inspections every other Tuesday, now that she's calling the tune for him, and she'll want results. Changes. Things that'll keep us in turmoil all the time. She'll want Timmie to have psychotherapy next, or orthodontia, or plastic surgery to give him a nice cheerful Homo sapiens face-she'll meddle and meddle and meddle, one damned intrusion after another, making use of Mannheim's publicity machine to smear us, to make us look like evil mad scientists coldbloodedly tormenting an innocent child-" He turned away and stared at Timmie's closed bedroom door. Morosely Hoskins said, "Mannheim's helpless in the power of a woman like that. She's probably sleeping with him, too. She must own him by now. He doesn't stand a chance against her."
Miss Fellowes' eyes widened. "What a thing to say!"
"Which?"
"That she and he-that she would use her- You have no proof of that. The whole suggestion's out ofline, Dr. Hoskins. Absolutely out ofline."
"Is it?" Hoskins' anger seemed to dissolve in an instant. He looked toward her and grinned shamefacedly. "-Yes, I suppose it is. You're right. I don't know anything about who Mannheim may be sleeping with, if anybody, and I don't care. Or Levien. I just want them to get out of our hair so we can do our research, Miss Fellowes. You know that. You also know that I've taken every step possible to make Timmie happy here. But I'm so tired, now-so damned tired-"
Impulsively Miss Fellowes went to him and seized his hands in hers. They were cold. She held them for a moment, wishing she could pump life and energy into them.
"When was the last time you had a vacation, Dr. Hoskins?"
"A vacation?" He chuckled hollowly. "I don't diink I know what the word means."
"Maybe that's the problem."
"I can't. I simply can't. I turn my back for a minute, Miss Fellowes, and anything will happen here. A dozen different Adamewskis trying to steal scientific specimens out of Stasis. People running strange new experiments without authorization, doing God knows what at God knows what cost. Equipment that we can't afford purchased to set up projects that don't have a chance of working. We've got a lot of wild characters around this place, and I'm the only policeman. Until we've finished this phase of our work I don't dare take time off."
"A long weekend, at least? You need some rest."
"I know that. God, do I know that! -Thank you for caring so much, Miss Fellowes. Thank you for everything. In this whole madhouse of a research institute you've been one of the few pillars of sanity and dependability."
"And will you try to get a little rest?"
"I'll try, yes."
"Starting now?" she asked. "It's getting toward six o'clock. Your wife's expecting you at home. Your litde boy."
"Yes," Hoskins said. "I'd better be heading out of here. And once again: thank you for everything, Miss Fellowes. Thank you. Thank you."
In the night she was awakened by the sound of sobbing coming from Timmie's room. It was the first time she had heard that in a long while.
She got quickly out of bed and went to him. She had long ago mastered the skill of waking up in a hurry when a troubled child was calling out.
"Timmie?" she called.
She turned the night-light on. He was sitting up in bed, staring straight forward, with his eyes wide open, making the eerie high-pitched sound that was his kind of sobbing. But he didn't seem to see her. He took no notice of her at all as she entered the room, and the sobbing went on and on.
"Timmie, it's me. Miss Fellowes." She sat down beside him and slipped her arm around his shoulders. "It's all right, Timmie. It's all right!"
Slowly the sobbing stopped.
He looked at her as though he had never seen her before in his life. His eyes had a weirdly glassy look and his lips were drawn back in a bizarre way. In the half-darkness the lightning-bolt birthmark stood out fiercely on his cheek. She had virtually stopped noticing it but his face seemed pallid, almost bloodless, just now and the birthmark looked brighter than it had ever been before.
He's still asleep, she thought.
"Timmie?"
He made clicking sounds at her, Neanderthal speech. He seemed to be talking not so much to her as through her, to some invisible entity standing behind her.
Miss Fellowes hugged him and rocked him lightly from side to side, murmuring his name, crooning to him. His small body was rigid. He might almost have been under some kind of a spell. The clicking went on and on, interspersed with the sort of feral growls he had uttered in the early weeks of his stay. It was frightening to hear him revert like that to his prehistoric self.
"There, there, Timmie-little boy-Miss Fellowes' little boy-it's all right, everything's all right, there's nothing to worry about. -Would you like some milk, Timmie?"
She felt him grow less stiff. He was waking up now.
"Miss-Fellowes," he said haltingly.
"Milk? A little warm milk, Timmie?"
"Milk. Yes. Want milk."
"Come," she said, and swooped him up out of the bed, carrying him into the kitchen. It didn't strike her as a good idea to leave him alone just now. She perched him on the stool next to the refrigeration unit, got out a flask of milk, popped it in the heater for a moment.*.