I Sing the Body Electric

“I can hold on,” she said, sitting there looking ahead as the green country swung under them. “As long as I know something good will happen, I won’t let it hurt or shock me. I’ll wait six months, and then maybe I’ll kill myself.”

“Polly!”

She looked at him as if he’d just come in. “Pete, I’m sorry. But this sort of thing doesn’t happen. Once it’s over and the baby is finally ‘born’ I’ll forget it so quick it’ll never have occurred. But if the doctor can’t help us, then a mind can’t take it, a mind can only tell the body to climb out on a roof and jump.”

“Things’ll be all right,” he said, holding to the guide-wheel. “They have to be.”

She said nothing, but let the cigarette smoke blow out of her mouth in the pounding concussion of the helicopter fan.

Three weeks passed. Every day they flew in to the Institute to visit “Py.” For that was the quiet calm name that Polly Horn gave to the blue pyramid that lay on the warm sleeping-table and blinked up at them. Dr. Wolcott was careful to point out that the habits of the “child” were as normal as any others; so many hours sleep, so many awake, so much attentiveness, so much boredom, so much food, so much elimination. Polly Horn listened, and her face softened and her eyes warmed.

At the end of the third week, Dr. Wolcott said, “Feel up to taking him home now? You live in the country, don’t you? All right, you have an enclosed patio, he can be out there in the sunlight, on occasion. He needs a mother’s love. That’s trite, but nevertheless true. He should be suckled. We have an arrangement where he’s been fed by the new feed-mech; cooing voice, warmth, hands, and all.” Dr. Wolcott’s voice was dry. “But still I feel you are familiar enough with him now to know he’s a pretty healthy child. Are you game, Mrs. Horn?”

“Yes, I’m game.”

“Good. Bring him in every third day for a checkup. Here’s his formula. We’re working on several solutions now, Mrs. Horn. We should have some results for you by the end of the year. I don’t want to say anything definite, but I have reason to believe we’ll pull that boy right out of the fourth dimension, like a rabbit out of a hat.”

The doctor was mildly surprised and pleased when Polly Horn kissed him, then and there.

Pete Horn took the copter home over the smooth rolling greens of Griffith. From time to time he looked at the pyramid lying in Polly’s arms. She was making cooing noises at it, it was replying in approximately the same way.

“I wonder,” said Polly.

“What?”

“How do we look to it?” asked his wife.

“I asked Wolcott about that. He said we probably look funny to him, also. He’s in one dimension, we’re in another.”

“You mean we don’t look like men and women to him?”

“If we could see ourselves, no. But remember, the baby knows nothing of men or women. To the baby whatever shape we’re in, we are natural. It’s accustomed to seeing us shaped like cubes or squares or pyramids, as it sees us from its separate dimension. The baby’s had no other experience, no other norm with which to compare what it sees. We are its norm. On the other hand, the baby seems weird to us because we compare it to our accustomed shapes and sizes.”

“Yes, I see. I see.”

Baby was conscious of movement. One White Cube held him in warm appendages. Another White Cube sat further over, within an oblong of purple. The oblong moved in the air over a vast bright plain of pyramids. hexagons, oblongs, pillars, bubbles, and multi-colored cubes.

One White Cube made a whistling noise. The other White Cube replied with a whistling. The White Cube that held him shifted about. Baby watched the two White Cubes, and watched the fleeing world outside the traveling bubble.

Baby felt—sleepy. Baby closed his eyes, settled his pyramidal youngness upon the lap of the White Cube, and made faint little noises…

“He’s asleep,” said Polly Horn.

Summer came, Peter Horn himself was busy with his export-import business. But he made certain he was home every night. Polly was all right during the day, but, at night, when she had to be alone with the child, she got to smoking too much, and one night he found her passed out on the davenport, an empty sherry bottle on the table beside her. From then on, he took care of the child himself nights. When it cried it made a weird whistling noise, like some jungle animal lost and wailing. It wasn’t the sound of a child.

Peter Horn had the nursery soundproofed.

“So your wife won’t hear your baby crying?” asked the workman.

“Yes,” said Pete Horn. “So she won’t hear.”

They had few visitors. They were afraid that someone might stumble on Py, dear sweet pyramid little Py.

“What’s that noise?” asked a visitor one evening, over his cocktail. “Sounds like some sort of bird. You didn’t tell me you had an aviary, Peter?”

“Oh, yes,” said Horn, closing the nursery door. “Have another drink. Let’s drink, everyone.”

It was like having a dog or a cat in the house. At least that’s how Polly looked upon it. Peter Horn watched her and observed exactly how she talked and petted the small Py. It was Py this and Py that, but somehow with some reserve, and sometimes she would look around the room and touch herself, and her hands would clench, and she would look lost and afraid, as if she were waiting for someone to arrive.

In September, Polly reported to her husband: “He can say Father. Yes he can. Come on. Py. Say, Father!”

She held the blue warm pyramid up.

“Wheelly,” whistled the little warm blue pyramid.

“Again,” repeated Polly.

“Wheelly!” whistled the pyramid.

“For God’s sake, stop!” said Pete Horn. He took the child from her and put it in the nursery where it whistled over and over that name, that name, that name. Horn came out and poured himself a stiff drink. Polly was laughing quietly.

“Isn’t that terrific?” she said. “Even his voice is in the fourth dimension. Won’t it be nice when he learns to talk later? We’ll give him Hamlet’s soliloquy to memorize and he’ll say it but it’ll come out like something from James Joyce! Aren’t we lucky? Give me a drink.”

“You’ve had enough,” he said.

“Thanks, I’ll help myself,” she said and did.

October, and then November. Py was learning to talk now. He whistled and squealed and made a bell-like tone when he was hungry. Dr. Wolcott visited. “When his color is a constant bright blue,” said the doctor, “that means he’s healthy. When the color fades, dull—the child is feeling poorly. Remember that.”

“Oh, yes, I will, I will,” said Polly. “Robin’s-egg blue for health, dull cobalt for illness.”

“Young lady,” said Wolcott. “You’d better take a couple of these pills and come see me tomorrow for a little chat. I don’t like the way you’re talking. Stick out your tongue. Ah-hmm. You been drinking? Look at the stains on your fingers. Cut the cigarettes in half. See you tomorrow.”

“You don’t give me much to go on,” said Polly. “It’s been almost a year now.”

“My dear Mrs. Horn, I don’t want to excite you continually. When we have our mechs ready we’ll let you know. We’re working every day. There’ll be an experiment soon. Take those pills now and shut that nice mouth.” He chucked Py under the “chin.” “Good healthy baby, by God! Twenty pounds if he’s an ounce!”

Baby was conscious of the goings and comings of the two nice White Cubes who were with him during all of his waking hours. There was another cube, a gray one, who visited on certain days. But mostly it was the two White Cubes who cared for and loved him. He looked up at the one warm, rounder, softer White Cube and made the low warbling soft sound of contentment. The White Cube fed him. He was content. He grew. All was familiar and good.

The New Year, the year 1989, arrived.

Rocket ships flashed on the sky, and helicopters whirred and flourished the warm California winds.

Peter Horn carted home large plates of specially poured blue and gray polarized glass, secretly. Through these, he peered at his “child.” Nothing. The pyramid remained a pyramid, no matter if he viewed it through X-ray or yellow cellophane. The barrier was unbreakable. Horn returned quietly to his drinking.

The big thing happened early in February. Horn, arriving home in his helicopter, was appalled to see a crowd of neighbors gathered on the lawn of his home. Some of them were sitting, others were standing, still others were moving away, with frightened expressions on their faces.

Polly was walking the “child” in the yard.