The Perfect Host (40 page)

“Well, tell me a story.”

“No, Andi!”

He rolled over with his face to the wall. She could see him tensing his body. At the first wave of fury from him she cried out and struck herself on the temples. “All right, all right! What story do you want to hear?”

“Tell me about the bear and the liger.”

She sat down wearily on the bed. He hunkered up with his back to the wall, his strange auburn eyes round and completely, unmercifully, awake.

“Lie down and I’ll tell you.”

“I do-wanna.”

“Andi,” she said sternly. For once it worked. He lay down. She covered up his smooth pink body, tucking the sheet-blanket carefully around him in the way she sometimes did for the others at bedtime. It was a deft operation, soothing, suggesting warmth and quiet and, above all, sleep. It did nothing of the kind for Andi.

“Once upon a time there was a bear who was bare because his mother was radioactive,” she began, “and one day he was walking along beside a neon mine, when a liger jumped out. Now a liger is half lion and half tiger. And
he
said,

“ ‘Hey, you, bear; you have no hair;

You’re not normal; get away there!’

“And the bear said,

‘You chase me, liger, at your peril

You’re not normal because you’re sterile.’

“So they began to fight. The liger fought the bear because he thought it was right to be natural-born, even if he couldn’t have babies. And the bear fought the liger because he thought it was right to be what he was as long as he could have babies, even if his mother was radioactive. So they fought and they fought until they killed each other dead. And
that
was because they were both wrong.

“And then from out of the rocks around the neon mine came a whole hundred lemmings. And they frisked and played around the dead bear and the dead liger, and they bred, and pretty soon they had their babies, a thousand of them, and they all lived and grew fat. And do you know why?”

“What was they?”

“Lemmings. Well, they—”

“I want some lemonade,” said Andi.

Mayb threw up her hands in exasperation. You can’t cure an Irregular by indoctrination, she thought. She said, “I haven’t finished. You see, the lemmings lived because their babies were the same as
they
were. That’s called breeding true. They were Nor—”

“You know what I’d do if I was a bear without any hair?” Andi shouted, popping up from under the covers. “I’d rear back at that
old liger and I’d say don’t touch me, you. I hate you and you can’t touch me.” A wave of emotion from the child nearly knocked Mayb off the bed. “If you come near me, I’ll make your brains FRY!” and with the last syllable he loosed a flood of psychic force that made Mayb grunt as if she had walked into the end of an I-beam in the dark.

Andi lay down again and gave her a sweet smile. “Thass what I’d do,” he said gently.

“My!” said Mayb. She rose and backed off from him as if he were loaded with high explosive. The movement was quite involuntary.

“You can go away now,” said Andi.

“All right. Good night, Andi.”

“You better hurry, you ol’ liger you,” he said, raising himself on one elbow.

She hurried. Outside, she leaned against the door jamb, sweating profusely. She waited tensely for some further sign from within the cubicle, and when there was none after minutes, she heaved a vast sigh of relief and started back to her bed. This was the third time this week, and the unscheduled nightwork made her feel every one of her twenty-eight years of service to the Crèche. Fuming and yawning, she composed herself for what was left of her night’s sleep.

“Mayb!”

She twitched in her sleep.
Not again
, said her subconscious.
Oh, not again. Send him to the Quiet Room and have done with it
. Again she made the futile, unconscious gesture of pulling the covers over her head.

“Mayb! Mayb!”

The annunciator light seemed fainter now, like the slight blush of a pale person. Mayb lowered the covers from her face and looked at the wall, blinked, and sat upright with a squeal. Her eye fell on the clock; she had to look three times to believe what it told her. “Oh no, oh no,” she said, and threw the toggle. “Yes Examiner. Oh, I’m so
sorry!
I overslept and it’s three whole hours. Oh, what shall I do?”

“That part’s all right,” said the speaker. “I had your gong
disconnected. You needed the sleep. But you’d better come to my office. Andi’s gone.”

“Gone? He can’t be gone. He was just about to go to sl—oh.
Oh!
The door! I was so distraught when I left him; I must have left the door unl … oh-h, Examiner, how awful!”

“It isn’t good,” said the speaker. “Essie took over for you and she’s new and doesn’t know all the children. So he wasn’t missed until the Free Time when Observation 2 missed him. Well, come on in. We’ll see what we can do.” The light went out, and the toggle clicked back.

Mayb muttered a little while she dressed. Up the corridor she flew, down a resilient ramp and round to the right, where she burst into the door over which the letters EXAMINER drifted in midair. “Oh dear,” she said as she huddled to a stop in the middle of a room which was more lounge than office. “
Dear
oh, dear—”

“Poor Mayb.” The Examiner was a beaming, tight-skinned pink man with cotton hair. “You’ve had the worst of this case all along. Don’t blame yourself so!”

“What shall we do?”

“Do you know Andi’s mother?”

“Yes. Library-Beth.”

“Oh, yes,” the Examiner nodded. “I was going to look her up and vize her, but I thought perhaps you’d rather.”

“Anything, Examiner, anything I can do. Why, that poor little tyke wandering around loose—”

The Examiner laughed shortly. “Think of the poor little people he wanders against.. Uh—call her home first.”

Mayb went to the corner and wheeled the index to the Library designations, found the number and spoke it into the screen, which lit up. A moment later its blankness dissolved away like windblown fog, to show a young woman’s face. She was the true redhead from whom Andi had his eyes, that was certain.

“You remember me,” said Mayb. “Crèche-Mayb; I’m Andi’s Sector-Guardian.”

“Uh-huh,” said the woman positively.

“Is … is Andi there?”

“Uh-uh,” said the woman negatively.

“Now Beth—are you sure?”

The woman wet her lips. “Sure I’m sure. Isn’t he locked up in your old crèche? What are you trying to do; trick me again into signing that paper to have him put in the Quiet Room?”

“Why, Beth! No one ever tried to trick you! We just sent you a report and our recommendation.”

“I know, I know,” said the woman sullenly. “And if I sign it you’ll put him away, and if I don’t sign it you’ll appeal it and the Examining Board’ll back you up. They always do.”

“That’s because we’re very careful. Guardians—”

“Guardians!” snarled Beth. “What kind of Guardians let a four-year-old child wander out of the Crèche?”

“We are not guardians of the children,” said Mayb with sudden dignity, “we are Guardians of the Norm.”

“Well, you’ll never get him back!” screamed Beth. “Never, you hear?” The screen went black.

“Is Andi there?” The Examiner’s eyes twinkled.

“My goodness,” murmured Mayb. “My, my goodness!”

“I wish the predisposal examinations had never passed the Board. If it weren’t for them, this would never have happened. Why, ten years ago, we’d have quietly put the little fellow out of the way when we found he was an Irregular. Now we have to wait three weeks, and poke and prod and pry to see if the irregularity can possibly turn into a talent. I tell you, it’ll break the crèches. The mother of every last freak on earth is going to cry that her little monster is a genius.”

“Oh, if only I hadn’t been careless with that silly old door!” She wrung her hands.

“Mayb, don’t get worked up. It’ll be all right. I’m sure it will.”

“You’re so nice!” Her voice was shockingly loud in the still room. “Oh dear! Suppose that woman really does hide him? I mean, suppose she takes him away? Do you realize what it will be like if that child is allowed to grow up?”

“Now that is a terrifying thought.”

“Think of it! He already knows what he can do, and he’s only four years old. Think of those radiations of his grown up man-sized!
Suppose he suddenly appeared, grown up, in the middle of a city. Why, when he wanted anything, he’d get it. He’d
have
to get it. And he couldn’t be stopped! He can’t be reached at all when he does that!”

The Examiner took her arms and gently led her to a mirror on the wall. “Look at yourself, Mayb. You know, you don’t look at all like the fine, reliable Guardian you are. Suppose Essie saw you now; you’d never be able to teach her a thing. I’m head of the Crèche. That’s a privilege and there’s a certain amount of worrying I have to do to earn it. So let me do the worrying.”

“You’re so good,” she sobbed. “But—I’m
afraid!
”

“I’m afraid, too,” he agreed soberly. “It’s a bad business. But—don’t worry. Tell you what. You just go and lie down for a while. Cry yourself out if you want to—it’ll do you good. And then go on with your work.” He patted her on the shoulder. “This isn’t the end of the world.”

“It might be,” she gasped, “with creatures like that loose in it, forcing and pressing and pushing and not to be stopped until they had what they wanted.”

“Go on now.”

She went, wringing her hands.

It was almost exactly the same time the next morning when Mayb was summoned from the Assembly Room where she was teaching her children to sing

and in the midst of the children’s shrill merriment at Smitti’s comic predicament, she got the Examiner’s call.

The thin veil of laughter fell from her face and she rose. “Free time!” she called. The children took the signal as a permission to play; the hidden watchers behind one-way glass in Observation 1
and 2 bent toward their panes, Normalcy Reaction charts at their elbows.

Mayb hurried to the Examiner’s office. She found him alone rubbing his hands. “Well, Mayb! I knew it would be all right.”

“It’s about Andi? You’ve found him? Did you get the police?”

“She got them.” He laughed. “She got them, herself. She just couldn’t take it—his own mother.”

“Where is he?”

“She’s bringing him … and I’ll bet that’s her, right now.”

The door swung open. An Under-Guardian said, “Library-Beth, Examiner.”

Pushing past the underling, Library-Beth entered. Her flaming hair was unkempt; her face was white and her eyes wild. In her arms she carried the limp form of Andi.

“Here he is … 
here!
Take him; I can’t stand it! I thought I could, but I can’t. I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m a good citizen; I want to do my duty; I care about the law, and the Norm, and the race. I was crazy, I guess. I had a thing all made up to tell you, about Andi, about him surviving, that was it—he can survive better than anyone else on earth, he can; he can get anything he wants just by wanting it, and no one can say no to him, not so it makes any difference to him.” It poured from her in a torrent. She put the limp form down on the settee. “But I didn’t know it was like this. And he badgered me all night and I couldn’t sleep, and he ran away in the morning and I couldn’t find him, and he hated me and when I saw him and ran to him he hated me with his mind, more and more and more the nearer I got, so that I couldn’t touch him, and people gathered round and looked at him as if he was a monster, and he is, and he hated them all, every one of them. And somebody got a policeman and he threw sleep-dust, and Andi made a hate then that made everyone cry out and run away, and he hated everyone until he fell asleep. Now take him. Where is that paper? Where is it?”

“Beth, Beth, don’t. Please don’t. You’ll flurry everyone in the place, and all the children.”

“Where’s the paper?” she screamed, joltingly. It made Mayb’s ears ring.

The Examiner went for the form, handed two copies and a stylus to Beth. She signed them, and then collapsed weeping into a chair.

“M-mayb?” The voice was faint.

“He’s waking up. Quick, Mayb. Take him to the Quiet Room!”

Mayb scooped up the child and ran, kicking the door open. Two doors down the hall was a cubicle exactly like all the other cubicles, except that it had a black door. And certain concealed equipment. This time she did not forget to press the door until it was locked. Gray with tension, she went back to the office. “All right, Examiner.”

The Examiner nodded and stepped swiftly to his button-board. He pressed a certain button firmly, and a red light appeared.

“Andi!” Beth moaned.

Mayb went to her and put her arms around her. “There now. It’s for the best. This doesn’t happen much any more. We used to have to do it all the time. Soon we’ll never have to do it again.”

The Examiner’s expression was bitter, and sad, too. Minority victims don’t give a damn for statistics, he thought.

Mayb changed her approach. “Beth, we’re getting our norm back. Think—really think what that means. Humans used to live in complete confidence that they would be real, hundred per cent humans, with all the senses and talents and abilities that humans can have. And we’re getting that back! It’s a pity, a thousand times a pity, but it has to be done like this. There is no other way!”

Her carefully chosen thoughts could not override the mental pressure which began to squeeze at them from somewhere—from the Quiet Room.

The light on the board turned yellow.

“Andi—”

“And it’s a good norm,” thought Mayb desperately, “chosen in a congress of the most wonderful, objective minds we have ever had on earth. Why, some of them weren’t normal according to the Code they drew up! Think how brave—”

The agonizing, yammering call blared up, dwindled, flickered a moment, surged again and was suddenly gone. Through Mayb’s mind trickled the phrase “in at the death.” She knew it came from the Examiner, who was standing stiffly, his face registering a harrowing
repulsion. He turned abruptly and threw a lever. The incinerator was fed.