Miss Fellowes had already formed her opinion: she disliked Levien on sight. And she suspected that it was Levien's unexpected arrival, rather than the presence of Bruce Mannheim, that was causing Dr. Hoskins such obvious distress.
What is she doing here? Miss Fellowes wondered. What kind of trouble is she planning to make for us?
Levien was known far and wide through the child-care profession as an ambitious, aggressive, controversial woman, highly skilled at self-promotion and the steady advancement of her career. Miss Fellowes had never actually come face to face with her before; but, as the nurse looked at her now, Levien appeared every bit as formidable and disagreeable as her reputation suggested.
She seemed more like an actress-or a businesswoman -or like an actress playing the role of a businesswoman- than any sort of child-care specialist. She was wearing some slinky shimmering dress made from close-woven strands of metallic fabric, with a huge blazing golden pendant in the form of a sun on her breast and a band of intricately woven gold around her broad forehead. Her hair was dark and shining, pulled back tight to make her look all the more dramatic. Her lips were bright red, her eyes were flamboyantly encircled with makeup. An invisible cloud of perfume surrounded her,
Miss Fellowes stared at her in distaste. It was hard to imagine how Dr. Hoskins could have considered this woman even for a fraction of a second as a potential nurse for Timmie. She was Miss Fellowes' antithesis in every respect. And why, Miss Fellowes wondered, had Marianne Levien been interested in the job in the first place? It required seclusion and total dedication. Whereas Levien, Miss Fellowes knew, was forever on the go, constantly buzzing all around the world to scientific meetings, standing up and offering firmly held opinions that other people of greater experience tended to find controversial and troublesome. She was full of startling ideas about how to use advanced technology to rehabilitate difficult children -substituting wondrous glittering futuristic machinery for the down-to-earth love and devotion that had usually managed to do the job throughout most of humanity's existence.
And she was an adept politician, too-always turning up on this committee or that, consultant to one or another influential task force, popping up everywhere in all manner of significant capacities. A highly visible person, rising like a rocket in her profession. If she had wanted the job here that Miss Fellowes ultimately had gained, it must only have been because she saw it, somehow, as the springboard to very much bigger things.
I must be very old fashioned, Miss Fellowes thought. All I saw was a chance to do some good for an unusual little boy who needed an unusual amount of loving care.
Timmie put his hand out toward Marianne Levien's shimmering metallic dress. His eyes were glowing with delight.
"Pretty," he said.
Levien stepped back quickly, out of his reach. "What did he say?"
"He admires your dress," Miss Fellowes said. "He just wants to touch it."
"I'd rather he didn't. It's easily damaged."
"You'd better watch out, then. He's very quick."
"Pretty," Timmie said again. "Want!"
"No, Timmie. No. Mustn't touch."
"Want!"
"I'm sorry. No. N-O."
Timmie gave her an unhappy look. But he made no second move toward Marianne Levien.
"Does he understand you?" Mannheim asked.
"Well, he isn't touching the dress, is he?" said Miss Fellowes, smiling.
"And you can understand him?"
"Some of the time. Much of the time."
"Those grunts of his," said Marianne Levien. "What do you think they could have meant?"
"He said, 'pretty.' Your dress. Then he said, 'want!' To touch, he meant."
"He was speaking English?" Mannheim asked in surprise. "I wouldn't have guessed."
"His articulation isn't good, probably for some physiological reason. But I can understand him. He's got a vocabulary of-oh, about a hundred English words, I'd say, maybe a little more. He learns a few every day. He picks them up on his own by this time. He's probably about four years old, you realize. Even though he's getting such a late start, he's got the normal linguistic ability that you'd expect in a child of his age, and he's catching up in a hurry."
"You say that a Neanderthal child has the same linguistic ability as a human child?" Marianne Levien asked.
"He is a human child."
"Yes. Yes, of course. But different. A separate subspecies, isn't that so? And therefore it would be reasonable to expect differences in mental aptitude that could be as considerable as the differences in physical appearance. His extremely primitive facial structure-"
Miss Fellowes said sharply, "It's not all that primitive, Ms. Levien. Go look at a chimpanzee sometime if you want to see what a truly subhuman face is like. Timmie has some unusual anatomical features, but-"
"You used the word subhuman, not me," Levien said.
"But you were thinking it."
"Miss Fellowes! Dr. Levien! Please! There's no need for such rancor!"
Doctor Levien? Miss Fellowes thought, with a quick glance at Hoskins. Well, yes, yes, probably so.
Mannheim said, glancing around, "These little rooms here-this is the boy's entire living environment?"
"That's correct," Miss Fellowes replied. "That's his bedroom and playroom back there. He takes his meals here, and that's his bathroom. I have my own living area over here, and these are the storage facilities."
"He never goes beyond this enclosed area?"
"No," Miss Fellowes said. "This is the Stasis bubble. He doesn't leave the bubble, not ever."
"A very confining sort of life, wouldn't you agree?"
Hoskins said quickly, too quickly, "It's an absolutely necessary confinement. There are technical reasons for it, having to do with the buildup of temporal potential involved in bringing the boy across time, that I could explain in detail if you wanted the full background. But what it comes down to is that the energy cost of allowing the boy to cross the Stasis boundary would be prohibitive."
"So to save a little money, you plan to keep him cooped up in these few small rooms indefinitely?" Levien asked.
"Not just a little money, Dr. Levien," Hoskins said, looking more harried than ever. "I said that the cost would be prohibitive. It goes even beyond cost. The available metropolitan energy supply would have to be diverted in a way that I think would cause insuperable problems for the entire utility district. There's no problem when you or I or Miss Fellowes cross the Stasis line, but for Timmie to do it would be, well, simply not possible. Simply not possible."
"If science can find a way to bring a child across forty thousand years of time," Marianne Levien said grandly, "science can find a way to make it possible for him to walk down that hallway if he wanted to."
"I wish that were true, Dr. Levien," Hoskins said.
"So the child is permanendy restricted to these rooms," said Mannheim, "and if I understand you rightly, no research is currently under way to find a way around that problem?"
"That's correct. As I've tried to explain, it can't be done, not within the real-world considerations that we have to put up with. We want the boy to be comfortable, but we simply can't divert our resources into trying to solve insoluble problems. -As I told you, I can provide you later on with the full technical analysis, if you want to check it over."
Mannheim nodded. He seemed to be checking something off on some list he kept in his mind.
Levien said, "What sort of diet is the boy on?"
"Would you like to examine the pantry?" Miss Fellowes asked, in no very friendly way.
"Yes, as a matter of fact. Yes, I would."
Miss Fellowes made a sweeping gesture toward the refrigeration cabinets.
Take a good look, she thought. I think you'll be happy when you do.