"To cut off a tail and skin a tattooed foot. Go to the store and buy
some brown hair-dye and a pair of boy's trousers, age two. Peony's
going to get a crew-cut. From now on, she's Mike."
"We're class-C, Terry! We can't pass her off as our own."
"We're class-A, honey. I'm going to forge a heredity certificate."
Anne put her face in her hands and rocked slowly to and fro.
"Don't feel bad, baby. It was Franklin or a little girl. And from now
on, it's society or the Norrises."
"What'll we do?"
"Go to Atlanta and work for Anthropos. I'll take up where Delmont left
off."
"_Terry!_"
"Peony will need a husband. They may find all of Delmont's males. I'll
_make_ her one. Then we'll see if a pair of chimp-Ks can do better than
their makers."
Wearily, he stretched out on the sofa.
"What about that priest? Suppose he tells about Peony. Suppose he
guesses about Franklin and tells the police?"
"The police," he said, "would then smell a motive. They'd figure it out
and I'd be finished. We'll wait and see. Let's don't talk; I'm tired.
We'll just wait for Miler to come in."
She began rubbing his temples gently, and he smiled.
"So we wait," she said. "Shall I read to you, Terry?"
"That would be pleasant," he murmured, closing his eyes.
She slipped away, but returned quickly. He heard the rustle of dry
pages and smelled musty leather. Then her voice came, speaking old
words softly. And he thought of the small child-thing lying peacefully
in her cage while angry men stalked about her. A small life with a
mind; she came into the world as quietly as a thief, a burglar in the
crowded house of Man.
"_I will send my fear before thee, and I will destroy the peoples
before whom thou shalt come, sending hornets to drive out the Hevite
and the Canaanite and the Hethite before thou enterest the land. Little
by little I will drive them out before thee, till thou be increased,
and dost possess the land. Then shalt thou be to me a new people, and I
to thee a God...._"
And on the quiet afternoon in May, while he waited for the police to
finish puzzling in the kennels, it seemed to Terrell Norris that an end
to scheming and pushing and arrogance was not too far ahead. It should
be a pretty good world then.
He hoped Man could fit into it somehow.