"Why?" asked the four-year-old mind, waging a losing battle to keep the ten-month-old body awake.
Margaret went into the kitchenette and set the timer for the roast. She examined the table, and got her clothes from the closet, new dress, new shoes, new slip, new everything, bought weeks before and saved for the day Hank's telegram came. She stopped to pull a paper from the facsimile, and, with clothes and news, went into the bathroom, and lowered herself gingerly into the steaming luxury of a scented tub.
She glanced through the paper with indifferent interest. Today at least there was no need to read the national news. There was an article by a geneticist. The same geneticist. Mutations, he said, were increasing disproportionately. It was too soon for recessives; even the first mutants, born near Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1946 and 1947 were not old enough yet to breed. But my baby's all right. Apparently, there was some degree of free radiation from atomic explosions causing the trouble. My baby's fine. Precocious, but normal. If more attention had been paid to the first Japanese mutations, he said ...
There was that little notice in the paper in the spring of '47. That was when Hank quit at Oak Ridge. "Only two or three percent of those guilty of infanticide are being caught and punished in Japan today..."
But MY BABY’S all right.
She was dressed, combed, and ready to the last light brush-on of lip paste, when the door chime sounded. She dashed for the door, and heard, for the first time in eighteen months the almost-forgotten sound of a key turning in the lock before the chime had quite died away.
"Hank!"
"Maggie!"
And then there was nothing to say. So many days, so many months, of small news piling up, so many things to tell him, and now she just stood there, staring at a khaki uniform and a stranger's pale face. She traced the features with the finger of memory.
The same high-bridged nose, wide-set eyes, fine feathery brows; the same long jaw, the hair a little farther back now on the high forehead, the same tilted curve to his mouth. Pale ... Of course, he'd been underground all this time. And strange, stranger because of lost familiarity than any newcomer's face could be.
She had time to think all that before his hand reached out to touch her, and spanned the gap of eighteen months. Now, again, there was nothing to say, because there was no need. They were together, and for the moment that was enough.
"Where's the baby?"
"Sleeping. She'll be up any minute."
No urgency. Their voices were as casual as though it were a daily exchange, as though war and separation did not exist. Margaret picked UP the coat he'd thrown on the chair near the door, and hung it carefully ui the hall closet. She went to check the roast, leaving him to wander through the rooms by himself, remembering and coming back. She found him, finally, standing over the baby's crib.
She couldn't see Iiis face, but she had no need to.
"I think we can wake her just this once." Margaret pulled the covers down, and lifted the white bundle from the bed. Sleepy lids pulled back heavily from smoky brown eyes.
"Hello." Hank's voice was tentative.
"Hello." The baby's assurance was more pronounced.
He had heard about it, of course, but that wasn't the same as hearing it. He turned eagerly to Margaret. "She really can—?"
"Of course she can, darling. But what's more important, she can even do nice normal things like other babies do, even stupid ones. Watch her crawl!" Margaret set the baby on the big bed.
For a moment young Henrietta lay and eyed her parents dubiously.
"Crawl?" she asked.
"That's the idea. Your Daddy is new around here, you know. He wants to see you show off."
"Then put me on my tummy.''
"Oh, of course." Margaret obligingly rolled the baby over.
"What's the matter?" Hank's voice was still casual, but an undercurrent in it began to charge the air of the room. "I thought they turned over first."
' This baby," Margaret would not notice the tension, ' 'This baby does things when she wants to."
This baby's father watched with softening eyes while the head advanced and the body hunched up propelling itself across the bed.
"Why the little rascal," he burst into relieved laughter. "She looks like one of those potato-sack racers they used to have on picnics. Got her arms pulled out of the sleeves already." He reached over and grabbed the knot at the bottom of the long nightie.
"I'll do it, darling." Margaret tried to get there first.
"Don't be silly, Maggie. This may be your first baby, but / had five kid brothers."
He laughed her away, and reached with his other hand for the string that closed one sleeve. He opened the sleeve bow, and groped for an arm.
"The way you wriggle," he addressed his child sternly, as his hand touched a moving knob of flesh at the shoulder, "anyone might think you are a worm, using your tummy to crawl on, instead of your hands and feet."
Margaret stood and watched, smiling. "Wait till you hear her sing, darling—"
His right hand traveled down from the shoulder to where he thought an arm would be, traveled down, and straight down, over firm small muscles that writhed in an attempt to move against the pressure of his hand. He let his fingers drift up again to the shoulder. With infinite care, he opened the knot at the bottom of the nightgown.
His wife was standing by the bed, saying: "She can do 'Jingle Bells,' and—"
His left hand felt along the soft knitted fabric of the gown, up towards the diaper that folded, flat and smooth, across the bottom end of his child. No wrinkles. No kicking. No ...
"Maggie." He tried to pull his hands from the neat fold in the diaper, from the wriggling body. "Maggie." His throat was dry; words came hard, low and grating. He spoke very slowly, thinking the sound of each word to make himself say it. His head was spinning, but he had to know before he let it go. "Maggie, why ... didn't you ...
tell me?"
"Tell you what, darling?" Margaret's poise was the immemorial patience of woman confronted with man's childish impetuosity. Her sudden laugh sounded fantastically easy and natural in that room; it was all clear to her now. "Is she wet? I didn't know."
She didn 't know. His hands, beyond control, ran up and down the soft-skinned baby body, the sinuous, limbless body. Oh God, dear God—his head shook and his muscles contracted, in a bitter spasm of hysteria. His fingers tightened on his child—
Oh God, she didn't know...
SCANNERS LIVE IN VAIN
by Cordwainer Smith
First published in 1948 ("Cordwainer Smith" was the pseudonym of Dr. Paul
Linebarger)
Martel was angry. He did not even adjust his blood away from anger. He stamped across the room by judgment, not by sight. When he saw the table hit the floor, and could tell by the expression on Luci's face that the table must have made a loud crash, he looked down to see if his leg were broken. It was not. Scanner to the core, he had to scan himself. The action was reflex and automatic. The inventory included his legs, abdomen, Chestbox of instruments, hands, arms, face and back with the Mirror. Only then did Martel go back to being angry. He talked with his voice, even though he knew that his wife hated its blare and preferred to have him write.
"I tell you, I must cranch. I have to cranch. It's my worry, isn't it?"
When Luci answered, he saw only a part of her words as he read her lips: