"Lewis Padgett - When the Bough Breaks 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Padgett Lewis)

"Alexander's going to talk English. I've got my rights." "Well, Bordent doesn't seem anxious to infringe on them. He said Alexander needed a home environment."
"That's the only reason I haven't gone crazy," Myra said. "As long as he... they... don't take our baby away from us-"


A week later it was thoroughly clear that Bordent had no intention of encroaching on parental rights-at least, any more than was necessary, for two hours a day. During that period the four little men fulfilled their orders by cramming Alexander with all the knowledge his infantile but super brain could hold. They did not depend on blocks or nursery rhymes or the abacus. Their weapons in the battle were cryptic, futuristic, but effective. And they taught Alexander, there was no doubt of that. As B-1 poured on a plant's roots forces growth, so the vitamin teaching of the dwarfs soaked into Alexander, and his potentially superhuman brain responded, expanding with brilliant, erratic speed.
He had talked intelligibly on the fourth day. On the seventh day he was easily able to hold conversations, though his baby muscles, lingually undeveloped, tired easily. His cheeks were still sucking-disks; he was not yet fully human, except in sporadic flashes. Yet those flashes came oftener now, and closer together.
The carpet was a mess. The little men no longer took their equipment back with them; they left it for Alexander to use. The infant crept-he no longer bothered to walk much, for he could crawl with more efficiency-among the Objects, selected some of them, and put them together. Myra had gone out to shop. The little men wouldn't show up for half an hour. Calderon, tired from his day's work at the University, fingered a highball and looked at his offspring.
"Alexander," he said.
Alexander didn't answer. He fitted a gadget to a Thing, inserted it peculiarly in a Something Else, and sat back with an air of satisfaction. Then-"Yes?" he said. It wasn't perfect pronunciation, but it was unmistakable. Alexander talked somewhat like a toothless old man.
"What are you doing?" Calderon said.
"No."
"What's that?"
"No."
"No?"
"I understand it," Alexander said. "That's enough."
"I see." Calderon regarded the prodigy with faint apprehension. "You don't want to tell me."
"No."
"Well, all right."
"Get me a drink," Alexander said. For a moment Calderon had a mad idea that the infant was demanding a highball. Then he sighed, rose, and returned with a bottle.
"Milk," Alexander said, refusing the potation.
"You said a drink. Water's a drink, isn't it?" My God, Calderon thought, I'm arguing with the kid. I'm treating him like . . . like an adult. But he isn't. He's a fat little baby squatting on his behind on the carpet, playing with a tinkertoy.
The tinkertoy said something in a thin voice. Alexander murmured, "Repeat." The tinkertoy did.
Calderon said, "What was that?"
"No."
"Nuts." Calderon went out to the kitchen and got milk. He poured himself another shot. This was like having relatives drop in suddenly-relatives you hadn't seen for ten years. How the devil did you act with a superchild?
He stayed in the kitchen, after supplying Alexander with his milk. Presently Myra's key turned in the outer door. Her cry brought Calderon hurrying.
Alexander was vomiting, with the air of a research man absorbed in a fascinating phenomenon.
"Alexander!" Myra cried. "Darling, are you sick?"
"No," Alexander said. "I'm testing my regurgitative processes. I must learn to control my digestive organs."
Calderon leaned against the door, grinning crookedly. "Yeah. You'd better start now, too."
"I'm finished," Alexander said. "Clean it up."
Three days later the infant decided that his lungs needed developing. He cried. He cried at all hours, with interesting variations-whoops, squalls, wails, and high-pitched bellows. Nor would he stop till he was satisfied. The neighbors complained. Myra said, "Darling, is there a pin sticking you? Let me look-"
"Go away," Alexander said. "You're too warm. Open the window. I want fresh air."
"Yes, d-darling. Of course." She came back to bed and Calderon put his arm around her. He knew there would be shadows under her eyes in the morning. In his crib Alexander cried on.


So it went. The four little men came daily and gave Alexander his lessons. They were pleased with the infant's progress. They did not complain when Alexander indulged in his idiosyncrasies, such as batting them heavily on the nose or ripping their paper garments to shreds. Bordent tapped his metal helmet and smiled triumphantly at Calderon.
"He's coming along. He's developing."
"I'm wondering. What about discipline?"
Alexander looked up from his rapport with Quat. "Homo sap discipline doesn't apply to me, Joseph Calderon."
"Don't call me Joseph Calderon. I'm your father, after all."
"A primitive biological necessity. You are sufficiently well developed to provide the discipline I require. Your purpose is to give me parental care."
"Which makes me an incubator," Calderon said.
"But a deified one," Bordent soothed him. "Practically a logos. The father of the new race."
"I feel more like Prometheus," the father of the new race said dourly. "He was helpful, too. And he ended up with a vulture eating his liver."
"You will learn a great deal from Alexander."
"He says I'm incapable of understanding it."
"Well, aren't you?"
"Sure. I'm just the papa bird," Calderon said, and subsided into a sad silence, watching Alexander, under Quat's tutelary eye, put together a gadget of shimmering glass and twisted metal. Bordent said suddenly. "Quat! Be careful of the egg!" And Finn seized a bluish ovoid just before Alexander's chubby hand could grasp it.
"It isn't dangerous," Quat said. "It isn't connected."