[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

All her ambivalence dissolved at once. For the first time, Miss Fellowes thought with a pang: Poor
thing! Poor terrified child!
Of course it was a child. What did the shape of its head matter, or the texture of its hair? It was a
child that had been orphaned as no child had ever been orphaned before. Hoskins had said it, and said it
accurately, at their first meeting: "This will be the most lonely child in the history of the world." Not just its
mother and father were gone, but all its species, every last one. Snatched callously out of its proper time,
it was now the only creature of its kind in the world.
The last. The only.
She felt her pity for it strengthen and deepen, and with that came shame at her own callousness: the
repugnance she had allowed herself to feel for the child, the irritation she had let herself show at its wild
ways. How, she wondered, could she have been so cruel? So unprofessional Bad enough to be
kidnapped like this; worse to be looked upon with disdain by the very person who was supposed to care
for you and teach you to find your way in your bewildering new life.
Tucking her nightgown carefully about her calves--the overhead sensors, she couldn't stop worrying
about those idiotic sensors! Miss Fellowes got out of bed and tiptoed into the boy's room.
"Little boy," she called in a whisper. "Little boy."
She knelt and started to reach under the bed. But then the thought came--shameful but prudent, born
of long experience with troubled children--that he might try to bite her, and she pulled back her hand.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Instead she turned on the night light and moved the bed away from the wall.
The poor thing was huddled miserably in the corner, knees up against his chin, looking up at her with
blurred and apprehensive eyes.
In the dim light she was able to ignore his repulsiveness, the thick blunt features, the big misshapen
head.
"Poor little boy," she murmured. "Poor frightened little boy."
Miss Fellowes stroked his hair, that harsh tangled bristly hair that had felt so disagreeable to her a
few hours before. Now it merely seemed unusual. He stiffened at the first touch of her hand, but then she
saw him relax.
"Poor child," she said. "Let me hold you."
He made a soft clicking sound. Then a little low growl, a kind of gentle unhappy rumbling.
She sat down on the floor next to him and stroked his hair again, slowly, rhythmically. The tension
was visibly going from his body. Perhaps no one had ever stroked his hair before, back in whatever
ferocious prehistoric life it was that he had left behind. He seemed to like it. Gently, tenderly, she played
with his hair, smoothing it, straightening it, picking a few burrs out of it, but mainly just running her hand
along the top of his head, slowly, slowly, almost hypnotically.
She stroked his cheek, his arm. He allowed it. Softly she began to sing a slow and gentle song, a
wordless repetitive one, a tune that she had known since childhood, one that she had sung to many
disturbed children to soothe them, to calm them.
He lifted his head at that, staring at her mouth in the dimness, as though wondering at the sound.
She maneuvered him closer, gathering him in while he listened to her. He offered no resistance.
Slowly she pressed her hand against the side of his head, gently guiding it toward her until it rested on her
shoulder. She put her arm under his thighs and with a smooth and unhurried motion lifted him into her lap.
She continued singing, the same quiet, sinuous musical phrase over and over, while she rocked back
and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
He had stopped crying, somewhere along the way. After a while the smooth, even purr of his
breathing told Miss Fellowes that he was asleep.
With infinite care she nudged his bed back against the wall, pushing it into place with her knee, and
laid him down on it. She pulled the covers over him--had he ever known a coverlet before? Certainly not
a bed!--and tucked them in and stood over him for a time, staring down at him. His face looked
wondrously peaceful as he slept.
Somehow it didn't matter so much now that it was so ugly. Really.
She made her way out of the room on tiptoes. But as she reached the door she paused and halted,
thinking: What if he wakes up!
He might be even more troubled than before, expecting to find her comforting presence close at hand
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
and not knowing where she had gone. He might panic; he might run amok.
Miss Fellowes hesitated, battling irresolutely with herself. She stood above the bed again, studying
him as he slept. Then she sighed. There was only one thing to do. Slowly she lowered herself to the bed
and lay down beside him.
The bed was much too small for her. She had to draw her legs up close against her chest, and her left
elbow pressed against the wall, and to avoid disturbing the boy she had to twist herself around into an
intricate uncomfortable curve. She lay there wide awake, cramped and bent, feeling like Alice after she
had sampled the "Drink Me" bottle in Wonderland. Very well: so she'd get no sleep this night. This was
only the first night. Things would be easier later on. Sometimes there were higher priorities than sleep.
She felt a touch against her hand. The child's fingers, grazing her palm. He was reaching for her in his
sleep. The rough little hand crept into hers.
Miss Fellowes smiled.
She awoke with a start, wondering where she was, why she felt so stiff and sore. There was the
unfamiliar smell of another person in her nostrils and the unfamiliar sense of someone's body pressing
against hers.
She had to fight back a wild impulse to scream. She was able just barely to suppress it into a gurgle.
The boy was sitting up, looking at her wide-eyed. The ugly little boy, the child snatched from time.
The little Neanderthal child.
It took a long moment for Miss Fellowes to remember getting into bed with him. Then it all came
back. She realized that she had managed somehow to fall asleep, despite everything. And now it was
morning.
Slowly, without unfixing her eyes from his, she stretched one leg carefully and let it touch the floor,
and then the other. Her muscles were tensed for quick disengagement in case the boy should go into a
panic.
She cast a quick and apprehensive glance toward the open ceiling. Were they watching, up there?
Cameras grinding away as she made her bleary-eyed entry into the new day?
Then the boy's stubby fingers reached out and touched her lips. He said something: two quick clicks
and a growl.
Miss Fellowes shrank involuntarily away from him at the touch. She glanced down at him. A little
shiver ran through her. She hated herself for it, but there was no preventing it. He was terribly ugly in the
light of day.
The boy spoke again. He opened his own mouth and gestured with his hand as though something
were coming out.
The meaning wasn't hard to decode. Tremulously Miss Fellowes said, "Do you want me to sing
again? Is that it?"
The boy said nothing, but he was staring at her mouth.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
In a voice that was quavering and slightly off-key with tension, Miss Fellowes began the little song
that she had sung the night before. The ugly little boy smiled. He seemed to recognize the melody, and he
swayed clumsily in rough time to it, waving his arms about. He made a little gurgly sound that might have
been the beginnings of a laugh.
Miss Fellowes sighed inwardly. Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast. Well, whatever
would help-- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]