Galaxy Science Fiction Super Pack #2. Edgar Pangborn
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now. There’s a man coming to see us. Can you play neutroid for me? We’ll give you lots of candy. Just don’t talk. Pretend you’re asleep.”
“Now?”
“Now.” He heard the door chimes ringing.
“Who is it?” Anne asked.
“I don’t know. He may have the wrong house. Take Peony in the bedroom. I’ll answer it.”
His wife caught the child-thing up in her arms and hurried away. The chimes sounded again. Norris stalked down the hall and switched on the porch-light. The visitor was an elderly man, erect in his black suit and radiating dignity. As he smiled and nodded, Norris noticed his collar. A clergyman. Must have the wrong place, Norris thought.
“Are you Inspector Norris?”
The agent nodded, not daring to talk.
“I’m Father Paulson. I’m calling on behalf of a James O’Reilley. I think you know him. May I come in?”
Grudgingly, Norris swung open the door. “If you can stand the smell of paganism, come on in.”
The priest chuckled politely. Norris led him to the parlor and turned on the light. He waved toward a chair.
“What’s this all about? Does O’Reilley want something?”
Paulson smiled at the inspector’s brusque tone and settled himself in the chair. “O’Reilley is a sick man,” he said.
The inspector frowned. “He didn’t look it to me.”
“Sick of heart, Inspector. He came to me for advice. I couldn’t give him any. He told me the story—about this Peony. I came to have a look at her, if I may.”
Norris said nothing for a moment. O’Reilley had better keep his mouth shut, he thought, especially around clergymen. Most of them took a dim view of the whole mutant business.
“I didn’t think you’d associate with O’Reilley,” he said. “I thought you people excommunicated everybody that owns a neutroid. O’Reilley owns a whole shopful.”
“That’s true. But who knows? He might get rid of his shop. May I see this neutroid?”
“Why?”
“O’Reilley said it could talk. Is that true or is O’Reilley suffering delusions? That’s what I came to find out.”
“Neutroids don’t talk.”
The priest stared at him for a time, then nodded slowly, as if approving something. “You can rest assured,” he said quietly, “that I’ll say nothing of this visit, that I’ll speak to no one about this creature.”
Norris looked up to see his wife watching them from the doorway.
“Get Peony,” he said.
“It’s true then?” Paulson asked.
“I’ll let you see for yourself.”
Anne brought the small child-thing into the room and set her on the floor. Peony saw the visitor, chattered with fright, and bounded upon the back of the sofa to sit and scold. She was playing her game well, Norris thought.
The priest watched her with quiet interest. “Hello, little one.”
Peony babbled gibberish. Paulson kept his eyes on her every movement. Suddenly he said, “I just saw your daddy, Peony. He wanted me to talk to you.”
Her babbling ceased. The spell of the game was ended. Her eyes went sober. Then she looked at Norris and pouted. “I don’t want any candy. I wanna go home.”
Norris let out a deep breath. “I didn’t say she couldn’t talk,” he pointed out sullenly.
“I didn’t say you did,” said Paulson. “You invited me to see for myself.”
Anne confronted the clergyman. “What do you want?” she demanded. “The child’s death? Did you come to assure yourself that she’d be turned over to the lab? I know your kind! You’d do anything to get rid of neutroids!”
“I came only to assure myself that O’Reilley’s sane,” Paulson told her.
“I don’t believe you,” she snapped.
He stared at her in wounded surprise; then he chuckled. “People used to trust the cloth. Ah, well. Listen, my child, you have us wrong. We say it’s evil to create the creatures. We say also that it’s evil to destroy them after they’re made. Not murder, exactly, but—mockery of life, perhaps. It’s the entire institution that’s evil. Do you understand? As for this small creature of O’Reilley’s—well, I hardly know what to make of her, but I certainly wouldn’t wish her—uh—d-e-a-d.”
Peony was listening solemnly to the conversation. Somehow Norris sensed a disinterested friend, if not an ally, in the priest. He looked at his wife. Her eyes were still suspicious.
“Tell me, Father,” Norris asked, “if you were in my position, what would you do?”
Paulson fumbled with a button of his coat and stared at the floor while he pondered. “I wouldn’t be in your position, young man. But if I were, I think I’d withhold her from my superiors. I’d also quit my job and go away.”
It wasn’t what Norris wanted to hear. But his wife’s expression suddenly changed; she looked at the priest with a new interest. “And give Peony back to O’Reilley,” she added.
“I shouldn’t be giving you advice,” he said unhappily. “I’m duty-bound to ask O’Reilley to give up his business and have nothing further to do with neutroids.”
“But Peony’s human,” Anne argued. “She’s different.”
“I fail to agree.”
“What!” Anne confronted him again. “What makes you human?”
“A soul, my child.”
Anne put her hands on her hips and leaned forward to glare down at him like something unwholesome. “Can you put a voltmeter between your ears and measure it?”
The priest looked helplessly at Norris.
“No!” she said. “And you can’t do it to Peony either!”
“Perhaps I had better go,” Paulson said to his host.
Norris sighed. “Maybe you better, Padre. You found out what you wanted to know.”
Anne stalked angrily out of the room, her dark hair swishing like a battle-pennant with each step. When the priest was gone, Norris picked up the child and held her in his lap. She was shivering with fright, as if she understood what had been said. Love them in the parlor, he thought, and kill them in the kennels.
“Can I go home? Doesn’t Daddy want me any more?”
“Sure he does, baby. You just be good and everything’ll be all right.”
*
Norris felt a bad taste in his mouth as he laid her sleeping body on the sofa half an hour later. Everything was all wrong and it promised to remain that way. He couldn’t give her back to O’Reilley, because she would be caught again when the auditor came to microfilm the records. And he certainly couldn’t keep her himself—not with other Bio-agents wandering in and out every few days. She could not be concealed in a world where there were no longer any sparsely populated regions. There was nothing to do but obey the law and turn her over to Franklin’s lab.
He closed his eyes and shuddered. If he did that, he could do anything—stomach anything—adapt to any vicious demands society made of him. If he sent the child away to die, he would know that he had attained an “objective” outlook. And what more could he want from life than adaptation and objectivity?
Well—his wife, for one thing.