"Leo wants to learn German. What were you going to say?"
Len closed his eyes for a moment. "About this PTA business--you sure
you want to go?"
"Well, of course. It's pretty important, isn't it? Unless you think I
look too sloppy--"
"No. No, damn it! But are you feeling up to it?"
There were faint violet crescents under Moira's eyes; she had been
sleeping badly. "Sure," she said.
"All right. And you'll go see the doctor tomorrow?"
"I said I would."
"And you won't say anything about Leo to Mrs. Greer or anybody?"
* * * * *
She looked slightly embarrassed. "Not till he's born, I think, don't
you? It would be an awful hard thing to prove--even you wouldn't have
believed me if you hadn't felt him kick."
This experiment had not been repeated, though Len had asked often
enough. All little Leo had wanted, Moira said, was to establish
communication with his mother--he didn't seem to be interested in Len
at all. "Too young," she explained.
And still--Len recalled the frogs his biology class had dissected last
semester. One of them had had two hearts. _This disorderly cell growth ...
like a cancer._ Unpredictable: extra fingers or toes or a double dose of
cortex?
"And I'll burp like a lady, if at all," Moira assured him cheerfully
as they got ready to leave.
* * * * *
The room was empty, except for the ladies of the Committee, two
nervously smiling male teachers and the impressive bulk of
Superintendent Greer when the Conningtons arrived. Card-table legs
skreeked on the bare floor; the air was heavy with wood polish and
musk.
Greer advanced, beaming fixedly. "Well, isn't this nice? How are you
young folks this warm evening?"
"Oh, we thought we'd be earlier, Mr. Greer," said Moira with pretty
vexation. She looked surprisingly schoolgirlish and chic; the lump
that was Leo was hardly noticeable unless you caught her in profile.
"I'll go right now and help the ladies. There must be something I can
still do."
"No, now, we won't hear of it. But I'll tell you what you can do--you
can go right over there and say hello to Mrs. Greer. I know she's
dying to sit down and have a good chat with you. Go ahead now, don't
worry about this husband of yours; I'll take care of him."
Moira receded into a scattering of small shrieks of pleasure, at least
half of them arcing across a gap of mutual dislike.
Greer, exhibiting perfect dentures, exhaled Listerine. His pink skin
looked not only scrubbed but disinfected; his gold-rimmed glasses
belonged in an optometrist's window, and his tropical suit had
obviously come straight from the cleaner's. It was impossible to think
of Greer unshaven, Greer smoking a cigar, Greer with a smudge of axle
grease on his forehead, or Greer making love to his wife.
"Well, sir, this weather--"
"When I think of what this valley was like twenty years ago--"
"At today's prices--"
Len listened with growing admiration, putting in comments where
required. He had never realized before that there were so many
absolutely neutral topics of conversation.
A few more people straggled in, raising the room temperature about
half a degree per capita. Greer did not perspire; he merely glowed.
* * * * *
Across the room, Moira was now seated chummily with Mrs. Greer, a
large-bosomed woman in an outrageously unfashionable hat. Moira
appeared to be telling a joke; Len knew perfectly well that it was a
clean one, but he listened tensely, all the same, until he heard Mrs.
Greer yelp with laughter. Her voice carried well: "Oh, that's
_priceless_! Oh, dear, I _only_ hope I can remember it!"
Len had resolutely not been thinking of ways to turn the conversation
toward the Oster vacancy. He stiffened again when he realized that
Greer had abruptly begun to talk shop. His heart began pounding
absurdly; Greer was asking highly pertinent questions in a
good-humored but businesslike way--drawing Len out, and not even
bothering to be the slightest bit Machiavellian about it.
Len answered candidly, except when he was certain that he knew what
the Superintendent wanted to hear; then he lied like a Trojan.
Mrs. Greer had conjured up a premature pot of tea and, oblivious of
the stares of the thirsty teachers present, she and Moira were hogging
it, heads together, as if they were plotting the overthrow of the
Republic or exchanging recipes.
Greer listened attentively to Len's final reply, which was delivered
with as pious an air as if Len had been a Boy Scout swearing on the
Manual. But since the question had been "Do you plan to make teaching
your career?" there was not a word of truth in it.
He then inspected his paunch and assumed a mild theatrical frown. Len,
with that social sixth sense which is unmistakable when it operates,
knew that his next words were going to be: "You may have heard that
Oster High will be needing a new science teacher next fall...."
At this point Moira made a noise like a seal.
The ensuing silence was broken a moment later by a hearty scream,
followed instantly by a clatter and a bone-shaking thud.
Mrs. Greer was sitting on the floor, legs sprawled, hat over her eye.
She appeared to be attempting to perform some sort of excessively
pagan dance.
* * * * *
"It was Leo," Moira incoherently told Len at home. "You know she's
English--she said of course a cup of tea wouldn't hurt me, and she
insisted I go ahead and drink it while it was hot, and I couldn't--"
"No, no--wait," said Len in a controlled fury. "What--"
"So I _drank_ some. And Leo kicked up and made me burp the burp I was
saving. And--"
"Oh, Lord!"
"--then he kicked the teacup out of my hand into her lap, and I wish I
was _dead_!"
[Illustration]
On the following day, Len took Moira to the doctor's office, where
they read dog-eared copies of _The Rotarian_ and _Field and Stream_
for an hour.
Dr. Berry was a round little man with soulful eyes and a
twenty-four-hour bedside manner. On the walls of his office, where it
is customary for doctors to hang all sorts of diplomas and
certificates of membership, Berry had only three. The rest of the
space was filled with enlarged colored photographs of beautiful,
beautiful children.
When Len followed Moira determinedly into the consulting room, Berry
looked mildly shocked for a moment, then apparently decided to carry
on as if nothing outre had happened. You could not say that he spoke,
or even whispered; he rustled.
"Now, Mrs. Connington, we're looking just fine today. How have we been
feeling?"
"Just fine. My husband thinks I'm insane."
"That's g--Well, that's a funny thing for him to think, isn't it?"
Berry glanced at the wall midway between himself and Len, then
shuffled some file cards rather nervously. "Now. Have we had any
soreness in our stomach?"
[Illustration]
"Yes. He's been kicking me black and blue."
Berry misinterpreted Moira's brooding glance at Len, and his eyebrows
twitched involuntarily.
"The baby," said Len. "The _baby_ kicks her."
Berry coughed. "Any headaches? Dizziness? Vomiting? Swelling in our
legs or ankles?"
"No."
"All rightie. Now let's just find out how much we've gained, and then
we'll get up on the examination table."
Berry drew the sheet down over Moira's abdomen as if it were an
exceptionally fragile egg. He probed delicately with his fat
fingertips, then used the stethoscope.
"Those X-rays," said Len. "Have they come back yet?"
"Mm-hm," said Berry. "Yes, they have." He moved the stethoscope and
listened again.
"Did they show anything unusual?" Len asked.
Berry's eyebrows twitched a polite question.
"We've been having a little argument," Moira said in a strained voice,
"about whether this is an ordinary baby or not."
Berry took the stethoscope tubes away from his ears. He gazed at Moira
like an anxious spaniel.
"Now let's not worry about _that_. We're going to have a perfectly
healthy wonderful baby, and if anybody tells us differently, why,
we'll just tell them to go jump in the lake, won't we?"
"The baby is absolutely normal?" Len said in a marked manner.
"Absolutely." Berry applied the stethoscope again. His face blanched.
"What's the matter?" Len asked after a moment.
The doctor's gaze was fixed and glassy.
"Vagitus uterinus," Berry muttered. He pulled the stethoscope off
abruptly and stared at it. "No, of course it couldn't be. Now isn't
that a nuisance? We seem to be picking up a radio broadcast with our
little stethoscope here. I'll just go and get another instrument."
Moira and Len exchanged glances. Moira's was almost excessively bland.
Berry confidently came in with a new stethoscope, put the diaphragm
against Moira's belly, listened for an instant and twitched once all
over, as if his mainspring had snapped. Visibly jangling, he stepped
away from the table. His jaw worked several times before any sound
came out.
"Excuse me," he said, and walked out in an uneven line.
Len snatched up the instrument he had dropped.
Like a bell ringing under water, muffled but clear, a tiny voice was
shouting: "_You bladder-headed pillpusher! You bedside vacuum! You
fifth-rate tree surgeon! You inflated--_" A pause. "_Is that you,
Connington? Get off the line; I haven't finished with Dr. Bedpan
yet._"
Moira smiled, like a Buddha-shaped bomb.
"Well?" she said.
* * * * *
"We've got to think," Len kept saying over and over.
"_You've_ got to think." Moira was combing her hair, snapping the comb
smartly at the end of each stroke. "I've had plenty of time to think,
ever since it happened. When you catch up--"
Len flung his tie at the carved wooden pineapple on the corner of the
footboard. "Moy, be _reasonable_. The chances against the kid kicking
three times in any one-minute period are only about one in a hundred.
The chances against anything like--"
Moira grunted and stiffened for a moment. Then she cocked her head to
one side with a listening expression ... a new mannerism of hers that
was beginning to send intangible snakes crawling up Len's spine.
"What now?" he asked sharply.
"He says to keep our voices down. He's thinking."
Len's fingers clenched convulsively, and a button flew off his shirt.
Shaking, he pulled his arms out of the sleeves and dropped the shirt
on the floor. "Look. I just want to get this straight. When he talks
to you, you don't hear him shouting all the way up past your liver and
lights. What--"
"You know perfectly well he reads my mind."
"That isn't the same as--" Len took a deep breath. "Let's not get off
on that. What I want to know is, what is it like? Do you seem to hear
a real voice, or do you just know what he's telling you, without
knowing how you know?"
Moira put the comb down in order to think better. "It isn't like
hearing a voice. You'd never confuse one with the other. It's
more--the nearest I can come to it, it's like remembering a voice.
Except that you don't know what's coming."
Len picked his tie off the floor and abstractedly began knotting it on
his bare chest. "And he sees what you see, he knows what you're
thinking, he can hear when people talk to you?"
"Of course."
"This is tremendous!" Len began to blunder around the bed-room, not
looking where he was going. "They thought Macaulay was a genius. This
kid isn't even born. I _heard_ him. He was cussing Berry out like
Monty Woolley."
"He had me reading _The Man Who Came to Dinner_ two days ago."
Len made his way around a small bedside table by trial and error.
"That's another thing. How much could you say about his--his
personality? I mean does he seem to know what he's doing, or is he
just striking out wildly in all directions?" He paused. "Are you sure
he's really conscious at all?"
* * * * *
Moira began, "That's a silly--" and stopped. "Define consciousness,"
she said doubtfully.
"All right, what I really mean--_why_ am I wearing this necktie?" He
ripped it off and threw it over a lampshade. "What I mean--"
"Are you sure you're really conscious?"
"Okay. You make joke, I laugh, ha-ha. What I'm trying to ask is, have
you seen any evidence of creative thought, organized thought, or is he
just--integrating, along the lines of--of instinctive responses? Do
you--"
"I know what you mean. Shut up a minute.... I don't know."
"I mean is he awake, or asleep and dreaming about us, like the Red
King?"
"I don't _know_!"
"And if that's it, what'll happen when he wakes up?"
Moira took off her robe, folded it neatly, and maneuvered herself
between the sheets. "Come to bed."
Len got one sock off before another thought struck him. "He reads your
mind. Can he read other people's?" He looked appalled. "Can he read
mine?"
"He doesn't. Whether it's because he can't, I don't know. I think he
just doesn't care."
Len pulled the other sock halfway down and left it there. In a stiffer
tone, he said, "One of the things he doesn't care about is whether I
have a job."
"No. He thought it was funny. I wanted to sink through the floor, but
I had all I could do to keep from laughing when she fell down.... Len,
what are we going to do?"
He swiveled around and looked at her.
"Look," he said, "I didn't mean to sound that gloomy. We'll do
something. We'll fix it. Really."
"I hope so."
Careful of his elbows and knees, Len climbed into the bed beside her.
"Okay now?"
"Mm.... Ugh." Moira tried to sit up suddenly, and almost made it. She
wound up propped on one elbow, and said indignantly, "Oh, no!"