Kirkham looked at the discarded lid on the floor. “BIODOH helps your child understand the Miracle of Life!” The fools, he thought, don’t they know that if you understand a miracle it ceases to be a mirade?
Timmy leafed through the glossy instruction manual. “What should I make first, Mum?”
“What does it suggest?”
“Let me see … a giant caterpillar! Simple invertebrate…blind…Shall I try it? Right now?”
“There’s no time like the present,” Dora said. “Come on—I’ll help.”
They put their heads together and—working intently, with frequent consultations of the manual—began to build an eight-inch caterpillar. A muscle strip of suitable length was chosen first. Load-spreaders, like miniature umbrellas, were attached to each extremity. A blue nerve cord was added, cut in two at the centre of its length and silver nerve connectors fitted to the severed ends.
Pale green surface flesh was taken from the appropriate compartment and formed in the shape of a hotdog roll which had a longitudinal slit. The muscle, complete with nerve, was then laid in the slit and the load-spreaders were firmly pressed into the green flesh at each end.
Finally, Timmy took a pellet of the grey putty, pressed it against his wrist and determinedly opened and shut his hand in a steady rhythm for about a minute, to imprint the nerve impulse pattern in the receptive material.
“This is it,” he said breathlessly. “Do you think it will work, Mum?”
“I think so. You did everything exactly right.”
Timmy looked up at his father, seeking praise, but Kirkham could only stare at the lifeless green object on the workboard. It both horrified and fascinated him. Timmy dropped the grey pellet into the thing’s interior and pressed the two silver nerve connectors into it.
On the instant, the caterpillar began to squirm.
Timmy gave a startled cry and dropped it. The pseudo-creature lay on the board, sideways, stretching and contracting. At each contraction its body opened obscenely and Kirkham saw the muscle swelling within.
You lied to us, Christ, he thought in his dread. There is nothing special or sacred about life. Anybody can create it—therefore we have no souls.
Timmy laughed delightedly. He picked up the caterpillar and sealed it along its length by pressing the sides of the wound together. The pale flesh melded. Timmy, working with uncanny certitude, fashioned little foot-like blobs along the creature’s underside and set it down again. This time, stabilised and aided by its feet, the caterpillar crawled along the workboard, moving blindly, with the rhythm it had learned from the boy’s clenching fist. Timmy looked into his mother’s face, triumphant, intoxicated.
“Good boy!” Dora exclaimed.
Timmy turned to his father. “Dad?”
“I … I’ve never …” Kirkham sought inspiration. “What name are you going to give it, son?”
“Name?” Timmy looked surprised. “I’m not going to keep it, Dad. I’ll need the materials for other projects.”
Kirkham’s lips were numb. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Put it back into inventory, of course.” Timmy lifted the dumbly working caterpillar, split it open in the middle with his thumbs and extracted the grey pellet. As soon as the nerve connectors were separated from the ganglion the pseudo-creature lapsed into stillness.
“That’s all there is to it,” Timmy commented.
Kirkham nodded, and left the room.
“I’m sorry to have to say this, John and Dora, but your boy has very little time left.” Bert Rowntree stirred the tea Dora had made for him, his spoon creating irrelevant little ringing sounds in the quietness of the afternoon. His brow was creased with unprofessional sadness.
In contrast, Dora’s face was carefully relaxed. “How much time?”
“Probably less than a week. I’ve just taken new tissue compatibility readings, and the ratio is falling off very quickly. I … There’s no point in my trying to paint a falsely optimistic picture.”
“We wouldn’t want you to do that, Bert,” Kirkham said. “You’re sure there’ll be no pain?”
“Positive—the bioclay has built-in blocks. Timmy will simply go to sleep.”
“That’s something we can thank God for.”
Dora’s.hand quivered abruptly, causing a rivulet of tea to slip down the side of her cup, and Kirkham knew she had wanted to challenge him. You mean, something we can thank the makers of bioclay for. He wished again that she would voice her thoughts and begin the process of spiritual catharsis. She had to be reassured that God’s message had not changed and never would change.
Come off it, John, that other Kirkham snickered, you don’t take everything in the Bible as gospel.
“Timmy was showing me his Biodoh kit,” Rowntree said. “He seems to have made some quite advanced constructions.”
“He has a talent for it.” Dora was calm again. “He got on so well I had to buy him all the supplementary packs. Equilibrium units, voice simulators—that sort of thing.”
“Really?”
“Yes, though I haven’t seen everything he’s been doing. He says he’s going to give me a special surprise.”
“It’s incredible that he’s been able to go so far in such a short time.”
“He has the touch. It’s a pity that…”Dora stopped speaking and shook her head, choking up.
“I don’t think I like him having that stuff,” Kirkham said. “There’s something unwholesome about it and I think it takes too much out of him.”
“Nonsense, John. If you want my professional opinion, you were very lucky to find something to occupy the boy’s mind at this stage. Keeps him from brooding too much.”
“That’s the way I feel about it,” Dora said, scoring a point over Kirkham.
Rowntree finished his tea and set the cup down. “You have to admit that Biodoh is a fascinating material. You know it’s an unrefined form of surgical bioclay? Well, I’ve read the impurities in it sometimes introduce random properties which lead to some very strange effects. In a way, it suggests that life itself is …”
“If you don’t mind,” Kirkham interrupted, getting to his feet, “I have to record this week’s sermon.”
Rowntree stood up too. “Of course, John—I’m due back at the clinic anyway.”
Kirkham saw the doctor to the door and when he returned he found that Dora had gone upstairs, probably to Timmy’s room. He hesitated for a moment, then went into his study and tried to work on his sermon, but suitable words refused to assemble in his mind. He knew what Rowntree had been about to say, and the other Kirkham kept repeating the same statement.
Life itself, the relentless voice gloated, is only a chemical impurity.
On the eighth day of January Timmy drifted into a coma, and from then on John Kirkham and Dora could do nothing but wait. The prolonged vigil had a dreamlike quality for Kirkham because he felt it was outside of normal time. His son had already left one world and was awaiting the completion of certain formalities before he could be admitted to the next.
Now that the ultimate trial had begun, Kirkham found himself enduring better than he had feared. He slept quite a lot, always for short periods, and occasionally awoke with the conviction that he had heard sounds of movement from Timmy’s room. But each time he opened the door and looked in, the boy was lying perfectly still. Pea-sized lights on the diagnostic panel at the head of the bed glowed steadily, in fixed patterns, indicating that there had been no abrupt changes in Timmy’s condition.