He was the millionth quadrillionth baby to
be born on Earth. Naturally the event had to be
celebrated. And it was--in a devastating manner!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
February 1954
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ginny stood anxiously in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on the
hem of her apron.
"You shouldn't upset the boy by yelling at him, Lester," she said. "I
know you're worried, but...."
"He upsets me, doesn't he?" Lester said defensively. He sat in the
lounge chair by the window, and the light from the reading lamp,
slanting across his face, sketched in the lines of consternation
with dark shadows. "Just look at that class paper!" he exploded.
"'Excellent,' it says. That's four 'excellents' already this month!"
"I know," Ginny said quietly. "I saw it when he brought it home this
afternoon." Her blue eyes misted. "He was awfully proud."
"The worst comment he's ever had was a 'very good,'" Lester said
heedlessly. "If only he'd get a 'poor' once in a while--or even a
'rotten.' But that's too much to hope for."
"Maybe it's not really as bad as it seems," Ginny said hopefully. "He
said himself that he's weak in spelling."
"Not weak enough for comfort," Lester said. "That little head of his is
just crammed with brains. Sometimes I look at it and all I can think
of is a stuffed bell pepper!" Suddenly his grey eyes came alight with
inspiration. "Maybe if we cut down on his food--They say in those ads
that if a child is properly undernourished he begins to get sluggish
and...."
"Lester!" Ginny said, thoroughly shocked. "Of all things!"
For a moment they were silent, not quite looking at each other.
"Where did he go?" Ginny asked finally.
"Into his room," Lester sighed. "To study, no doubt."
Ginny nodded and moved toward the entrance to the hall. "I'd better see
if he's all right," she said. "You really shouldn't have yelled at him."
Lester watched broodingly as she left the room. For a moment his gaze
remained darkly fixed, then moved back and down to the toes of his
shoes. He sighed again, and the lines of worry, as though of sheer
exhaustion, relaxed.
In repose, Lester's face, an average specimen in the galloping run
of the world's faces, was not unpleasant. It was a face that had been
come by honestly, if not spectacularly, in the thirty-one years of its
existence. In total, Lester was a tolerable young man, though one had
the feeling that if he played tennis and wore tennis shorts--neither of
which he did--he would prove a bit knobby in the knee and bowed in the
leg.
As for Ginny, she was the completely average companion piece to
Lester's average man. Her hair was honey-colored, her features were
regular and her figure, though a trifle fleshier than the dented-fender
types photographed for the magazines, was highly desirable.
Together, Lester and Ginny were, in all but one respect, very nearly
indistinguishable from the millions of other like couples who
predominately inhabit the nation. The single thing that set them apart
from the mob was a marked tendency to shatter like a couple of dropped
crystal goblets at the sight of an 'excellent' on their male child's
class papers.
This oddness, this single curious distinction, however, was no
indication of mere capriciousness. The root of the trouble was firmly
set in reality, and if its subsequent fruit appeared somewhat eccentric
it was probably because those forces which had dropped the original
seed into the soil of Lester and Ginny's young lives had not made
themselves and their motives clearly understood. It is not, after all,
uncommon for the human animal to fear that which it cannot understand,
and so it was with Lester and Ginny.
* * * * *
It all started on the night that young Freddie was born. Preparations
for the little newcomer's arrival (though it was not known then whether
it was to be Frederick or Frederica) had gone apace for several months,
and the doctor and the hospital had been engaged well in advance.
Ginny, according to custom, had been assiduously showered by her
friends with every gadget and garment that any manufacturer, domestic
or foreign, had ever rendered in pink and/or blue. The stage was set,
swept and lighted. The curtain rose.
It was exactly one minute past three A.M. when Lester raced for
the front door, fell over the overnight bag which had been placed
strategically in the path, picked himself up and hurried outside to
back the Chevy coupe out of the garage and up to the porch. Leaping
out, he hurried back into the house to help Ginny to the car and nearly
collided with her in the doorway.
"It's all right, Gin!" he said excitedly. "It's all going to be all
right!"
"I know, dear," Ginny said uncertainly and, picking up the felled bag,
carried it swiftly past him to the car. "Don't forget to lock the door."
"Now, don't worry, honey," Lester said as he climbed into the car
beside her, "just don't think about it." He started the engine and
began backing toward the street. "Just think how nice it's going to be
to have a baby all our own."
Ginny put a hand to his sleeve. "I love you, Lester," she murmured, and
let it go at that.
It was approximately at this point in the proceedings that certain
celestial complications began to set in. As Lester and Ginny sped
toward the hospital, their heads filled with the approaching disaster
of parenthood, they were totally unaware of a distant moiling and
broiling in the night-darkened heavens above them. Humanly earthbound
as they were, their thinking was characteristically horizontal. It
would never in a million years have occurred to them that their real
trouble lay, not ahead of them, but above them.
* * * * *
High in those dim and timeless reaches of space without measure
where the fate of mortal man is weighed and judged according to the
individual, a storm of unique and dismaying design was at the moment of
its inception. Like many another event of eventual magnitude it began
with deceptive insignificance. It was merely that Mac, that kindly and
somewhat addled angel, in tallying the lists on the tabulation sheets,
had come on the knowledge that the very next baby, the one due for the
four A.M. shipment, would be the million quadrillionth baby born on
Earth since the beginning of the human race. It was a fact from which
Mac seemed to derive a certain surprised pleasure. Brushing aside an
intervening cloud vapor, he turned to Haywood Veere, his heavenly
coworker, and grinned importantly.
"Right on the nose, Haywood!" he announced loudly. "The million
quadrillionth baby. What do you think of that?" He twitched his wings
happily. "Makes you feel kind of important, don't it?"
Haywood remained studiously bent over his dispatch sheets. "I fail to
see why," he said with characteristic dryness. "We can hardly look
on the event as any sort of personal accomplishment. It took all of
humanity all this while to bring it about."
"But I'm the one that marked it down," Mac said. "And it's you who's
makin' out the papers on him. Probably nobody knows about it except
us."
"It's probably just as well," Haywood murmured.
"But it's kind of like an anniversary," Mac insisted. "Don't you see?"
A grin of reminiscence came over his homely face. "Besides, I done my
part, I guess, when I was a mortal. I had a couple of kids--even if
they did both wind up in the pokey."
At this Haywood glanced up from the cloud bank upon which were spread
the papers. He turned around slowly, holding his wings back with one
hand so that they would not get smudged with ink. He regarded Mac
reflectively.
"I suppose that's true," he said. "If you want to look at it that way
we can all take a bit of the credit. Even I can."
Mac's eyes widened with surprise. "But you was never married," he said.
"If you had kids then they was...."
"I didn't," Haywood put in quickly. "But it still works out. If you
hadn't fathered your children and I hadn't--refrained, so to speak,
this particular baby wouldn't be the million quadrillionth baby at all.
It's curious the way it all works out."
"Sure it is!" Mac said triumphantly. "You see, it's like I said, a sort
of millstone!"
"Mile stone," Haywood corrected absently. "I suppose you could regard
the little chap as a sort of anniversary baby at that."
"You're darned right!" Mac nodded emphatically. "It's like we ought to
do something about it--to kind of celebrate--like when a show house
has fifty thousand customers and the fifty thousandth guy gets a free
ticket or a smoke stand with a naked lady on top."
"But that's all in the line of advertising," Haywood said primly.
"Crass commercialism."
"And what's wrong with advertising about babies?" Mac asked. "Babies
are the best darned product in the world. It's about time something was
done to stimulate trade, I guess."
"Well, I really doubt ..." Haywood began.
"You never was a father," Mac broke in elegantly. "It's a very
broadening experience, even when your kids turn out to be brats."
"But don't you think," Haywood mused, "that it's rather been taken care
of--the stimulation part of it, I mean?"
"Not near enough," Mac said firmly, "not when there are guys like you
who get left out."
* * * * *
An introspective look came into Haywood's intelligent eyes. "Perhaps
you're right," he said quietly. "Working here in the dispatching office
has given me pause to think from time to time." He tapped his slender
fingers soundlessly on the cloud bank, producing a series of delicately
swirled vapors. "But we haven't any free tickets or smoke stands with
naked ladies to give away--and no way to give them, even if we had."
"Then we'll have to give something else," Mac said solemnly. "Something
like it's not something you can touch and pick up, but something like
maybe these people can just think about it and it will make them happy."