That was news to Miss Fellowes. "And?"
"What it comes down to is that there were two little boys who seemed suitable, but their parents raised all sorts of special conditions and objections that we were in no position to deal with. There was another boy who might have worked out, and we were just about ready to bring him in here for a trial visit with Timmie, but at the last moment it was conditions and objections again; the parents brought in a lawyer who wanted us to post bond, tie ourselves up in some very elaborate contractual guarantees, and commit ourselves to various other things that our lawyers thought were unwise. As for the rest of the children we saw, the question of liability didn't arise, because their parents seemed only interested in the fee we were offering. But the kids all struck us as wild little roughnecks who'd do Timmie more harm than good. Naturally we turned them down."
"So you don't have anyone, is what you're saying."
Hoskins moistened his lips. "We decided finally that we'd stay in~house for this-that we'd use the child of a staff member. This particular staff member standing here in front of you. Me."
"Your own son?" Miss Fellowes asked.
"You recall, don't you, that when Mannheim and Dr. Levien were here I said, more in anger than otherwise, that if necessary I'd make my own boy available? Well, it's come down to that. I'm a man of my word, Miss Fellowes, as I think you realize. I'm not going to ask anyone eke in the company to do something that I'm not prepared to do. I've decided to put my boy Jerry forth as the playmate that Timmie needs so badly. -But of course that can't be my unilateral decision alone."
"So you brought Mrs. Hoskins here so that she could satisfy herself that your son wouldn't be in any danger at Timmie's hands," Miss Fellowes said.
Hoskins looked overwhelmed with gratitude. "Yes, Miss Fellowes. Yes, exactly so!"
Miss Fellowes glanced again at Hoskins* wife. The woman was chewing her lip and staring once more at the door behind which the terrifying Neanderthal lurked.
She must believe that Timmie's an ape, Miss Fellowes thought. A gorilla. A chimpanzee. Who will instandy leap on her precious little baby and rend him limb from limb.
Icily Miss Fellowes said, "Well, shall I bring him out and show him to her now?"
Mrs. Hoskins tensed visibly, and she had been tense to begin with. "I suppose you should-Miss Fellowes."
The nurse nodded.
"Timmie?" she called. "Timrnie, will you come out here for a moment? We have visitors."
Timmie peered shyly around the edge of the door.
"It's all right, Timmie. It's Dr. Hoskins and his wife. Come on out."
The boy stepped forward. He looked quite presentable, Miss Fellowes thought, uttering a little prayer of gratitude. He was wearing the blue overalls with the big green circles on them, his second-favorite pair, and his hair, which Miss Fellowes had brushed out thoroughly an hour ago, was still relatively unmussed and unsnarled. The slender book he had been looking at dangled from his left hand.
He peered up expectantly at the visitors. His eyes were very wide. Plainly Timmie recognized Hoskins, even after all this time, but he didn't seem sure what to make of Hoskins' wife. No doubt something in her body language, something tightly strung and wary about her, had put the boy on guard. Primitive reflexes-instincts, you could almost say-coming to the fore in him, perhaps?
There was a long awkward silence.
Then Timmie smiled.
It was a warm, wonderful smile, Timmie's extraspecial ear-to-ear smile. Miss Fellowes loved him for it. She could have gathered him up and hugged him. How deUV cious he looked when he did that! How sweet, how trusting, how childlike. Yes. A little boy coming out of his nursery to greet the company. How could Annette Hoskins possibly resist that smile?
"Oh," the woman said, as though she had just found a beetle in her soup. "I didn't realize he'd look so- strange."
Miss Fellowes gave her a baleful scowl.
Hoskins said, "It's mostly his facial features, you know. From the neck down he just looks like a very muscular little boy. More or less."
"But his face, Gerald-that huge mouth-that enormous nose-the eyebrows bulging like that-the chin- he's so ugly, Gerald. So weird."
"He can understand much of what you're saying," Miss Fellowes warned in a low, frosty voice.
Mrs. Hoskins nodded. But she still wasn't able to stop herself. "He looks very different in person from the way he looks on television. He definitely seems much more human when you see him on-"
"He is human, Mrs. Hoskins," Miss Fellowes said curtly. She was very tired of having to tell people that. "He's simply from a different branch of the human race, that's all. One that happens to be extinct."
Hoskins, as though sensing the barely suppressed rage in Miss Fellowes' tone, turned to his wife and said with some urgency, "Why don't you talk to Timmie, dear? Get to know him a little. That's why you came here today, after all."
"Yes. Yes."
She seemed to be working up her courage.
"Timmie?" the woman said, in a thin, tense voice. "Hello, Timmie. I'm Mrs. Hoskins."
"Hello," Timmie said.
He put out his hand to her. That was what Miss Fellowes had taught him to do.
Annette Hoskins glanced quickly at her husband. He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and nodded.
She reached out uncertainly and took Timmie's hand as though she were shaking hands with a trained chimpanzee at the circus. She gave it a quick unenthusiastic shake and let go of it in a hurry.
Timmie said, "Hello, Mrs. Hoskins. Pleased to meet you."
"What did he say?" Annette Hoskins asked. "Was he saying something to me?"
"He said hello," Miss Fellowes told her. "He said he was pleased to meet you."
"He speaks"? English?"
"He speaks, yes. He can understand easy books. He eats with a knife and a fork. He can dress and undress himself. It shouldn't be any surprise that he can do all those things. He's a normal little boy, Mrs. Hoskins, and he's something more than five years old. Maybe five and a half."
"You don't know?"
"We can only guess," Miss Fellowes said. "He didn't have his birth certificate in his pocket when he came here."
Mrs. Hoskins looked at her husband again. "Gerald, I'm not so sure about this. Jerry isn't quite five yet."
"I know how old our son is, dear," Hoskins said stonily. "He's big and sturdy for his age, though. Bigger than Timmie is. -Look, Annette, if I thought there was any risk at all-the slightest possibility of-"
"I don't know. I just don't know. How can we be certain that it's safe?"
Miss Fellowes said at once, "If you mean is Timmie safe to be with your son, Mrs. Hoskins, the answer is yes, of course he is. Timmie's a gentle little boy."
"But he's a sav-savage."
(The ape-boy label from the media, again! Didn't people ever think for themselves?)
Miss Fellowes said emphatically, "He is not a savage, not in the slightest. Does a savage come out of his room carrying his book, and put out his hand for a handshake? Does a savage smile like that and say hello and tell you that he's pleased to meet you? You see him right in front of you. What does he really look like to you, Mrs. Hoskins?"
"I can't get used to his face. It's not a human face."
Miss Fellowes would not let herself explode in wrath. Tautly she said, "As I've already explained, he's as human as any of us. And not a savage at all. He is just as quiet and reasonable as you can possibly expect a five-and-some-months-year-old boy to be. It's very generous of you, Mrs. Hoskins, to agree to allow your son to come here to play with Timmie, but please don't have any fears about it."
"I haven't said that I've agreed," Mrs. Hoskins replied with some mild heat in her voice.
Hoskins gave her a desperate glare. "Annette-"
"I haven't!"
(Then why don't you get out of here and let Timmie go back to his book?)
Miss Fellowes struggled to keep her temper.
(Let Dr. Hoskins handle this. She's his wife.)
Hoskins said, "Talk to the boy, Annette. Get to know him a litde. You did agree to do that much."
"Yes. Yes, I suppose." She approached the boy again. "Timmie?" she said tentatively. Timmie looked up. He wasn't doing the ear-to-ear smile this time. He had already learned, stricdy from the verbal intonations he was picking up, that this woman was no friend of his.
Mrs. Hoskins did smile, but it wasn't a very convincing one. -"How old are you, Timmie?"
"He's not very good at counting," Miss Fellowes said quietly.
But to her astonishment Timmie held up the five fingers of his left hand, splayed out distinctly.
"Five!" the boy cried.
"He put up five fingers and he said five," Miss Fellowes said, amazed. "You heard him, didn't you?"