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the world like an ordinary little boy amusing himself after lunch.
"What do you say, Timmie? You think you can stand another examination?"
She didn't seriously expect a reply from him, and the clicking sounds that he
made didn't seem to constitute one. The boy wasn't looking in her direction
and went on kicking his heels. Just talking to himself, no doubt.
But he definitely appeared to be in a good mood.
"I have to call him something, Dr. Hoskins."
"Ah. Yes. Yes. 'Timmie.' "
" 'Timmie,' " Miss Fellowes said firmly.
" Timmie.' Yes. Very well. -I'll send Dr. Mclntyre in now, if that's all
right, Miss Fellowes. To see Timmie."
Dr. Mclntyre turned out to be slender and dapper and very much younger than
Miss Fellowes had been expecting-no more than thirty or thirty-five, she
guessed. He was a small man, delicately built, with fine gleaming golden hair
and eyebrows so pale and soft that they were virtually invisible, who moved in
a precise, fastidious, elaborately mannered way, as if following some
mysterious inner choreography. Miss Fellowes was taken aback by his elegance
and daintiness: that wasn't at all how she had expected a paleoanthropologist
to look. Even Timmie seemed mystified by his appearance, so very different
from that of any of the other men he had encountered since his arrival. Eyes
wide with wonder, he stared at Mclntyre as though he were some glittering
godlike creature from another star.
As for Mclntyre, he appeared so overwhelmed by the sight of Timmie that he was
barely able to speak. For a long moment he stood frozen just within the door,
staring at the boy just as intently as Timmie was staring at him; then he took
a few steps to his left, halted, stared again; and then he
Neanderthal! -Forgive me, Miss Fellowes. You have to understand-this is
something completely staggering for me, so utterly phenomenal, so totally
astounding-"
He was virtually in tears. It was an embarrassing display, all this
effusiveness. Miss Fellowes found it a little irksome. But then, abruptly, her
annoyance dissolved and empathy took its place. She imagined how a historian
would feel if he were to walk into a room and find himself offered a chance to
hold a conversation with Abraham Lincoln or Julius Caesar or
Alexander the Great: or how a Biblical scholar would react if confronted with
the authentic stone tablets of the Law that Moses had carried down from the
summit of Mount Sinai. Of course he'd be overwhelmed. Of course. To have spent
years studying something that was known only from the sketchiest of ancient
relics, trying to understand it, painstakingly recreating the lost reality of
it in your mind, and then unexpectedly to encounter the thing itself, the
actual genuine item-
But Mclntyre made a swift recovery. In that deft graceful manner of his he
moved quickly across the room and knelt just in front of Timmie, his face just
a short distance from the boy's. Timmie showed no sign of fear. It was the
first time he had reacted so calmly to anyone new. The boy was smiling and
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
humming tunelessly and rocking lightly from side to side as though enjoying a
visit from a favorite uncle. That bright glow of wonder still
-May I touch his face, Miss Fellowes? I'll be gentle. I don't want to frighten
him, but I'd like to check a few points of the bony structure-"
"It looks as though he'd like to touch yours," Miss Fellowes said.
Indeed, Timmie's hand was outstretched toward Mc-Intyre's forehead.
The man from the Smithsonian leaned a little closer and Timmie's fingers began
to explore Mc-Intyre's brilliant golden hair. The boy stroked it as though he
had never seen anything so wondrous in his life. Then, suddenly, he twined a
few strands of it around his middle finger and tugged. It was a good hard tug.
Mclntyre yelped and backed away, his face reddening.
"I think he wants some of it," Miss Fellowes said.
"Not that way. -Here, let me have a scissors." Mclntyre, grinning now, snipped
a bit of hair from his forehead and passed the shining strands to
Timmie, who beamed and gurgled with pleasure. -"Tell me, Miss Fellowes, has
anyone else who's been in here had blond hair?"
She thought a moment. Hoskins-Deveney-Elliott
-Mortenson-Stratford-Dr. Jacobs-all of them had brown hair or black or gray.
Her own was brown shading into gray.
"No. Not that I recall. You must be the first." "The first ever, I wonder?
We have no idea, of course,
"And yet his reaction to your hair, Dr. Mclntyre-"
"Yes. No doubt about it, the sight of it does something special for him. -
Well, maybe the tribe he came from was entirely dark-haired, or perhaps the
entire population in his part of the world. Certainly there's nothing very
Nordic about this dusky skin of his. But we can't draw much that's conclusive
from a sample consisting of just one child. At least we have that one child,
though! And how wonderful that is, Miss Fellowes! I can't believe
- I absolutely can't believe-" For an instant she feared that Mclntyre was
going to allow himself to be overcome by awe all over again. But he seemed to
be keeping himself under control. With great delicacy he pressed the tips of
his fingers to Timmie's cheeks, his sloping forehead, his little receding
chin. As he worked he muttered things under his breath, technical comments,
apparently, words plainly meant for himself alone.
Timmie endured the examination with great patience.
Then, after a time, the boy launched into an extended monolog of clicks and
growls, the first time he had spoken since the paleoanthropologist had entered
the room.
Mclntyre looked up at Miss Fellowes, his face crimsoning with excitement.
"Did you hear those sounds? Has he made any sounds like that before?"
but so far no luck."
"What kind of patterns, Miss Fellowes?"
"Patterns of clicks and growls. I'm starting to recognize them. There's one
set of sounds to tell me that he's hungry. Another to show impatience or [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]