She slid down the sides and clambered up the heap in the center. What had become of him? Was he under the mound? She listened. She could hear nothing. After a moment she sat down and pressed her ear to the rock. It felt still warm from the heat of the sun.
She listened. She could hear only the beating of her heart. And then, far down, a long way off, a rustle within the heap like that made by a mole’s soft paws.
After that, things changed. Brenda’s father had to go back to the office, since his vacation was over. He could visit Moss Island only on weekends. Brenda’s mother began to complain that Brenda was getting hard to handle, no longer obeyed.
The children who had rejected the girl now sought her out. They came to the cottage as soon as breakfast was over, asking for Brenda, and she went off with them at once, deaf to all that her mother could say. She would return only at dusk, pale with exhaustion, but still blazing with frantic energy.
Her new energy seemed inexhaustible. The physical feats that had once repelled her drew her irresistibly. She tumbled, climbed, dove, chinned herself, did splits and cartwheels. The other children watched her admiringly and applauded. For the first time in her life she tasted the pleasure of leadership.
If that had been all, only Brenda’s parents would have complained. But she drew her new followers after her into piece upon piece of mischief. They were destructive, wanton, irrepressible. By the end of the summer everyone on Moss Island was saying that Brenda Alden needed disciplining. Her parents complained bitterly that she was impossible to control. They sent her off ahead of time to school.
There the events of the late summer were repeated. Brenda’s schoolmates accepted her blindly. The teachers punished and threatened. Her grades, for the first time in her life, were bad. She was within an inch of being expelled.
The year passed. Spring came, and summer. The Aldens, fearing more trouble, left Brenda at school after the school year was over. She did not get back to Moss Island until late July.
The last few months had changed Brenda physically. Her narrow body had rounded and grown more womanly. Under her shirt—she still wore slacks and shirt—her breasts had begun to swell and lift. She seemed to have outgrown her tomboy ways. Her parents began to congratulate themselves.
She did not go at once to the cairn in the quarry. She often thought of it. But she felt a sweet reluctance, an almost tender disinclination toward going. It could wait. August was well advanced before she visited the mound.
The day was warm. She was winded after the walk through the woods. She let herself down the side of the quarry delicately, paused for breath, and went up the mound with long, slipping steps. When she got to the top she sat down.
Was there, in the hot air, the faint hint of rottenness? She inhaled doubtfully. Then, as she had done last year, she pressed her ear to the mound.
There was silence. Was he—but of course, he couldn’t be dead. “Hi,” she called softly, her lips against the rock. “Hi. I’ve come back. It’s me.”
The scrabble began far down and seemed to come nearer. But there was too much rock in the way. Brenda sighed. “Poor old thing,” she said. Her tone was rueful. “You want to be born, don’t you? And you can’t get out. It’s too bad.”
The scrabbling continued. Brenda, after a moment, stretched herself out against the rock. The sun was warm, the heat from the stones beat uplullingly against her body. She lay in drowsy contentment for a long time, listening to the noises within the mound.
The sun began to wester. The cool of evening roused her. She sat up.
The air was utterly silent. There were no bird calls anywhere. The only sounds came from within the mound.
Brenda leaned forward quickly, so that her long hair fell over her face. “I love you,” she said softly to the rock. “I’ll always love you. You’re the only one I could ever love.”
She halted. The scrabbling within had risen to a crescendo. She laughed. Then she drew a long wavering sigh. “Be patient,” she said. “Someday I’ll let you out. I promise. We’ll be born together, you and I.”
SHORT IN THE CHEST
The girl in the marine-green uniform turned up her hearing aid a trifle—they were all a little deaf, from the cold-war bombing—and with an earnest frown regarded the huxley that was seated across the desk from her.
“You’re the queerest huxley I ever heard of,” she said flatly. “The others aren’t at all like you.”
The huxley did not seem displeased at this remark. It took off its windowpane glasses, blew on them, polished them on a handkerchief, and retu rned them to its nose. Sonya’s turning up the hearing aid had activated the short in its chest again; it folded its hands protectively over the top buttons of its dove-gray brocaded waistcoat.
“And in what way, my dear young lady, am I different from other huxleys?” it asked.
“Well— you tell me to speak to you frankly, to tell you exactly what is in my mind. I’ve only been to a huxley once before, but it kept talking about giving me the big, overall picture, and about using dighting[1] to transcend myself. It spoke about in-group love, and intergroup harmony, and it said our basic loyalty must be given to Defense, which in the cold-war emergency is the country itself.
“You’re not like that at all, not at all philosophic. I suppose that’s why they’re called huxleys—because they’re philosophic rob—I beg your pardon.”
“Go ahead and say it,” the huxley encouraged. “I’m not shy. I don’t mind being called a robot.”
“I might have known. I guess that’s why you’re so popular. I never saw a huxley with so many people in its waiting room.”
“I am a rather unusual robot,” the huxley said, with a touch of smugness. “I’m a new model, just past the experimental stage, with unusually complicated relays. But that’s beside the point. You haven’t told me yet what’s troubling you.”
The girl fiddled nervously with the control of her hearing aid. After a moment she turned it down; the almost audible sputtering in the huxley’s chest died away.
“It’s about the pigs,” she said.
“The pigs!” The huxley was jarred out of its mechanical calm. “You know, I thought it would be something about dighting,” it said after a second. It smiled winningly. “It usually is.”
“Well… it’s about that too. But the pigs were what started me worrying. I don’t know whether you’re clear about my rank. I’m Major Sonya Briggs, in charge of the Zone 13 piggery.”
“Oh,” said the huxley.
“Yes… Like the other armed services, we Marines produce all our own food. My piggery is a pretty important unit in the job of keeping up the supply of pork chops. Naturally, I was disturbed when the newborn pigs refused to nurse.
“If you’re a new robot, you won’t have much on your memory coils about pigs. As soon as the pigs are born, we take them away from the sow—we use an aseptic scoop—and put them in an enclosure of their own with a big nursing tank. We have a recording of a sow grunting, and when they hear that they’re supposed to nurse. The sow gets an oestric, and after a few days she’s ready to breed again. The system is supposed to produce a lot more pork than letting the baby pigs stay with the sow in the old-fashioned way. But as I say, lately they’ve been refusing to nurse.
“No matter how much we step up the grunting record, they won’t take the bottle. We’ve had to slaughter several litters rather than let them starve to death. And at that the flesh hasn’t been much good—too mushy and soft. As you can easily see, the situation is getting serious.”
1
In the past, I have been accused of making up some of the unusual words that appear in my stories. Sometimes this accusation has been justified; sometimes, as in “Vulcan’s Dolls” (see Plant Life of the Pacific World) it has not. For the record, therefore, be it observed that “dight” is a middle English word meaning, among other things, “to have intercourse with.” (See Poets of the English Language, Auden and Pearson, Vol. 1, p. 173.) “Dight” was reintroduced by a late twentieth-century philologist who disliked the “sleep with” euphemism, and who saw that the language desperately needed a transitive verb that would be “good usage.”