The Meddlers (7 page)

The baby moved again, opened his eyes, and puckered his face as he pulled his hands up toward his mouth; and Isobel smiled again as he mouthed at his fingers. He really was a baby and a half, this one! He’d taken a full seven ounces at ten, and in just ten minutes on each breast too. Even Miss Hervey had remarked on it when she did the test weigh; seven days old, and taking so much already. And now he was curling his mouth and going for his fingers as though he could start all over again, not two hours later! Really, a baby and a half.

Her nipples tingled a little as she looked at him. She oughtn’t to want him to wake properly, but she did. And she couldn’t ring for them unless he was really awake. They’d told her, on no account was he to be allowed to cry for a feed, but that at the same time he wasn’t to be put to the breast unless he really wanted to. She’d soon develop a judgment about it, they’d said, and she was beginning to.

He moved again, and gladly she leaned over and pressed the bell on the wall beside the cot and got up to get the breast tray. By the time Dr. Briant and Miss Hervey came in she was ready.

“He’s hungry, sir, I think,” she said as Dr. Briant walked over to the crib. “Though he took a lot at the ten o’clock feed.”

“Splendid!” Dr. Briant said. “Splendid! Look, Barbara. Really a most well-defined rooting reflex, isn’t it?” He touched the baby’s cheek with his forefinger, and Isobel could see even from her chair between the cameras that the baby’s lip curled at once toward it.

“I’ve rerun the film twice,” Miss Hervey said. “It’s a little early
to be sure, but there certainly seems to be a pattern to it. The time lag in the nocturnal response is quite marked—averages point nine plus of a second greater. Most interesting. And it seems undoubtedly to be more rapid when he’s put to the breast. You’ll see when we see today’s film run that this response won’t have been nearly as rapid as the one he’ll show when Miss Quinn takes him.”

“Which suggests a considerable ability to modify a reflex with learned behavior,” Dr. Briant said. “It’s really very gratifying to have such early confirmation of one of our projections.” And they nodded at each other, for all the world, Isobel thought, like a pair of well-fed penguins. The idea pleased her suddenly. Comparing them with such stupid birds made them less alarming, somehow less powerful.

“Well, come along, come along, Miss Quinn,” Dr. Briant said, using the bright rallying voice he always did when speaking to her, and obediently she picked up the baby and carried him to the scales. Miss Hervey took the reading and entered it, and Isobel settled herself in the chair, the baby on her lap, and unbuttoned her blouse.

It was funny how quickly she had got used to it, sitting there with them watching her while she swabbed her nipple and lifted the baby close to her so that he could reach it. Even knowing the cameras were always working, filming every single thing she and the baby did, didn’t bother her any more. At first it had been like being spied on, but now she forgot them most of the time, except when she wanted to do something she shouldn’t.

Like now, wanting to hold her breast and guide it to the baby’s mouth, but they wouldn’t let her. Dr. Briant had said, when they taught her how to handle him at the beginning, “He must never be coerced—coaxed—to do anything. Nor helped, particularly when he is feeding. We have to see exactly what he is doing by himself, and what he learns by himself—not what you teach him, do you understand?”

Well, she didn’t really see what difference it could make, but she was obedient. It was too good a job to risk doing otherwise, and besides, the cameras were always there, so she had to.

And he was already so bright, anyway. He turned his head,
mouthing eagerly, and found the nipple so fast you’d think it was made of iron and he was a magnet.

As he fed, and she sat looking down at his absorbed face and regularly pumping jaws, his eyes tight closed and his clenched fist resting lightly on her skin, she slid into the blissfully familiar peace of it, even enjoying the faint sense of shame that came with the pleasure. It was a good thing the cameras couldn’t take pictures of the way she felt, she thought, and smiled inside herself. That
would
be embarrassing!

And when he’d finished and been weighed again and she’d changed his diaper and put it in the special container to go away for the chemical analysis—And a nasty old job that must be to do! Isobel thought—and he was back sleeping in his cot, it was gone twelve and time for the daily briefing. Then it would be her lunch-time, and probably another feed, and after that they’d send her for her afternoon rest, and then collect the specimens and the data from him for the next day’s test session. But Isobel didn’t want to think about that.

The briefing was the same as it had been every day since he was born. They talked together about the tests (and Isobel thanked God she understood so little of it; it all sounded so complicated and unfriendly), and she watched the baby on the monitor screen high on the wall and the patterns on the machines, the ones linked up to the cot with its attachments for measuring his heartbeats and his breathing and his body temperature.

And then they turned to her and reminded her again how she was to handle him, no trying to make him do as she wanted, only to do as he wanted. But there was something different today, and it pleased her.

“You are to start talking to him, Miss Quinn. Just the way any woman talks to a baby, you understand? It doesn’t matter what you say—not at this stage. Later on we will modify the program—give you a list of specific sounds we want you to make—but at present you are quite free to talk as you wish. There is just one thing. I want you to wear this.”

He picked up a small square object from his desk, with wires leading from it.

“It’s simply a tape recorder. You’ll wear the box strapped to your back, and these little microphones will rest against your throat. I’m sure you’ll soon get used to it—because we need to have an accurate recording of the sounds you make to the baby, you see?” He looked closely at her and spoke in a slightly louder voice and more slowly. Just as though I were a bit daft, Isobel thought with sudden resentment.

“A child learns to speak by imitation, you see, Miss Quinn. And we need to know precisely what sort of sounds are most rapidly learned. We’ve already recorded all the sounds he’s heard since he’s been in the unit, of course, but this little gadget will help us to have an even more detailed record. You see?”

“Yes, sir,” Isobel said in her usual colorless voice. “I see.” As if it matters that much, she thought as she stared back at him. Scientists! Everyone knows babies learn by copying, so why all this performance to prove it?

“Well, thank you, Miss Quinn. You go and have your lunch now, and your rest. Oh, and I’ve changed the dosage of the red capsules. Dr. Saxby tells me you’re having some discomfort, and a smaller dosage will help. You really are a most efficient milk-making machine!”

She reddened, and Briant thought, Oh, damn. I’ve embarrassed her, and looked away, feeling surprisingly embarrassed himself.

He had chosen this woman specifically because she was the sort she was—a simple type, immediately responsive to the baby, no outside involvements, so she was free to give her entire time to him, willing to do without time off while the baby was still on the breast, and not expecting the massive salary most women would want for a job like this. But her very virtues carried their own faults, and not the least of them was the possibility of her being upset by matters she could not understand. A woman as passive and yet responsive as she was could well suffer emotional distress which she would not overtly express. And that might affect her milk, which would be a nuisance, to put it mildly. He would have to watch more carefully the way he spoke to her.

But she seemed to have got over her momentary embarrassment, so he smiled at her as warmly as he could, and she went away to eat
her solitary lunch in the small bed-sitting-room alongside the nursery, which was the only part of the Unit that wasn’t monitored with cameras and tape recorders.

He had indeed upset her, but not in the way he thought. Isobel found nothing odd any more in public discussion of her breasts and the milk and the way the baby acted during feeding. But she didn’t like being called a machine, even an efficient one. No one would, she told herself, no one with any feelings. If he had any, he’d know that.

And the small seed of anger against him knotted itself inside her into a hard little core of resentment.

  “Have you enough data yet to offer any sort of evaluation of your early projections?” Miriam asked. “This is good coffee. The stuff they’ve been giving me in the ward was like a milk soup. I’ve been longing for something with a bit of bite to it.”

She laughed then, a little awkwardly. “I’m sorry. That’s a habit I seemed to have got into during the pregnancy. I’m only just realizing that I did.”

“Habit?”

“Asking a question, saying something, and then veering off onto a completely different tangent. It’s maddening. All that folklore about women operating on a different intellectual level because of their hormone differences would appear to have some basis in fact. I’m certainly forced to admit I’ve noticed it in myself—my thinking hasn’t been nearly as controlled as it used to be. I imagine it’s a temporary change. I certainly hope so! Grim if producing an infant damages one’s thinking processes for good and all.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t!” Briant said. “I can think of several women who did excellent post-maternity work. Marie Curie, for example. As for going off at tangents, my dear, I do it myself, hormone balance notwithstanding. And it
is
good coffee, and the stuff they provide on Maternity
is
revolting!”

She laughed again and shook her head. “Stop humoring me. If you start that, then I’ll know I’m beyond redemption. It would mean you see me as a woman who happens to be in science, and
not as a scientist. And that would be depressing, to say the least.”

“You’re a scientist,” he said. “No doubt about that. No one who can be as objective about her own thinking processes as you are could be otherwise. You’re quite entitled to be… well, a bit off center at the moment. Anyone can experience alterations in their thought patterns under stress; I know I do. When I have problems with my wife or one of the children, I have to make considerable effort to keep my mind on work, I assure you.”

He paused, a little surprised at himself. “Do you know something? I’ve never said that to anyone—admitted I have family problems on occasions, that is. The psychoanalysts might suggest that your own temporary alteration of intellectual function has been projected on to me.”

“Analysts!” she said with a fine scorn. “Sympathetic magicians would be a better label.”

“Good girl! I couldn’t agree more. Though you know that.”

“I’ll be honest with you. It was as much to disprove some of their absurd assumptions as to help you prove your own theories that I agreed to come in on this project. They annoy me so much! A somewhat unscientific approach, perhaps—”

“Not at all! The desire to disprove a false idea is as valid a basis for a piece of research as the desire to establish the truth of a new set of ideas. Better in some ways. There’s a greater danger of reaching a false conclusion when you’re hell-bent on proving your own thinking. When you’re trying to demolish a false promise, I suspect you are less likely to close your eyes to unacceptable facts.”

“Oh, surely not! Remember Jefferson—that very bright man in my year? When he did his thesis on the portal shunt in rats, he completely ignored the work Peders had done, because it proved conclusively what
he
was trying to discredit. He made a complete idiot of himself over that, and I swear it wasn’t done deliberately. He just managed to close his mind to what he didn’t want to know, because it spoiled his beautiful graphs.”

“A bad scientist, Jefferson.”

She nodded and looked at him a little wickedly. “Maybe that’s why he got such a lucrative job. I’ve always suspected industry prefers bad scientists.”

“Cynic! But you’re probably right. And how’s all this for a tangent? I’ve quite forgotten what it was you asked.”

“What? Oh, yes. I just wondered what progress you’d made so far. Or is it still too young for you to make any evaluations apart from tentative ones?”

He frowned sharply at her bent head as she poured another cup of coffee for both of them.

“That’s odd,” he said.

“What is?” She looked up, startled at the change in his voice.

“That you should refer to the child in the neuter. It, rather than he.”

She reddened slightly and opened her mouth to speak, but they were interrupted. The medical staff dining room was almost empty, and the last group of people were just leaving. Dr. Saxby detached himself as he passed their table and put his hand on Briant’s shoulder.

“Do you want to spend some time on those ECG tracings this afternoon, George? My registrar can take my clinic—it’s a small one—so I could be with you from three until four-thirty if you like.”

“Three? Yes, I think so. I should have the blood work through by then, and that would help. Fine. You’ll come to the Unit?”

“By all means. Hello, Miss Lawton! Good to see you about again. Miss Guttner tells me you’re progressing well.”

“Very well, thank you. I’m returning to work next week.”

“Good! No therapy like it, is there? And you can be pleased with yourself. That’s a splendid infant you produced. Splendid.”

“It was a team job,” she said in a colorless voice.

“Oh, of course. But they couldn’t have got far without you, could they?” Saxby produced his big comfortable laugh. “We haven’t reached Huxley’s Brave New World yet! It’ll be a long time before the word ‘mother’ becomes as dirty a word as he suggested it would. Though the way you lot are going, George, it mayn’t be
that
long. Well, I’ve a ward round to get through before I can come over to your unit, George, so I’d better get moving. At three then.” And nodding cheerfully at them both, he went away.

There was a short silence as they both drank coffee, and then
Miriam said sharply, “Why should it be odd to refer to the infant in the neuter? It’s not as though the gender were all that relevant to the work you’re doing.”