I Sing the Body Electric (5 page)

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.

Polly was quite drunk. She held the small blue pyramid by the hand and walked him up and down. She did not see the helicopter land, nor did she pay much attention as Horn came running up.

One of the neighbors turned. “Oh, Mr. Horn, it's the cutest thing. Where'd you
find
it?”

One of the others cried, “Hey, you're quite the traveler, Horn. Pick it up in South America?”

Polly held the pyramid up. “Say Father!” she cried, trying to focus on her husband.

“Wheel!” cried the pyramid.

“Polly!” Peter Horn said.

“He's friendly as a dog or a cat,” said Polly moving the child with her. “Oh, no, he's not dangerous. He's friendly as a baby. My husband brought him from Afghanistan.”

The neighbors began to move off.

“Come back!” Polly waved at them. “Don't you want to see my baby? Isn't he simply beautiful!”

He slapped her face.

“My baby,” she said, brokenly.

He slapped her again and again until she quit saying it and collapsed.
He picked her up and took her into the house. Then he came out and took Py in and then he sat down and phoned the Institute.

“Dr. Wolcott, this is Horn. You'd better have your stuff ready. It's tonight or not at all.”

There was a hesitation. Finally Wolcott sighed. “All right. Bring your wife and the child. We'll try to have things in shape.”

They hung up.

Horn sat there studying the pyramid.

“The neighbors thought he was grand,” said his wife, lying on the couch, her eyes shut, her lips trembling…

The Institute hall smelled clean, neat, sterile. Dr. Wolcott walked along it, followed by Peter Horn and his wife Polly, who was holding Py in her arms. They turned in at a doorway and stood in a large room. In the center of the room were two tables with large black hoods suspended over them.

Behind the tables were a number of machines with dials and levers on them. There was the faintest perceptible hum in the room. Pete Horn looked at Polly for a moment.

Wolcott gave her a glass of liquid. “Drink this.” She drank it. “Now. Sit down.” They both sat. The doctor put his hands together and looked at them for a moment.

“I want to tell you what I've been doing in the last few months,” he said. “I've tried to bring the baby out of whatever hell dimension, fourth, fifth, or sixth, that it is in. Each time you left the baby for a checkup we worked on the problem. Now, we have a solution, but it has nothing to do with bringing the baby out of the dimension in which
it
exists.”

Polly sank back. Horn simply watched the doctor carefully for anything he might say. Wolcott leaned forward.

“I can't bring Py out, but I can put you people
in
. That's it.” He spread his hands.

Horn looked at the machine in the corner. “You mean you can send
us
into Py's dimension?”

“If you want to go badly enough.”

Polly said nothing. She held Py quietly and looked at him.

Dr. Wolcott explained. “We know what series of malfunctions, mechanical and electrical, forced Py into his present state. We can reproduce those accidents and stresses. But bringing him
back
is something else. It might take a million trials and failures before we got the combination. The combination that jammed him into another space was an accident, but luckily we saw, observed, and recorded it. There are no records for bringing one back. We have to work in the dark. Therefore, it will be easier to put
you
in the fourth dimension than to bring Py into ours.”

Polly asked, simply and earnestly, “Will I see my baby as he really is, if I go into his dimension?”

Wolcott nodded.

Polly said, “Then, I want to go.”

“Hold on,” said Peter Horn. “We've only been in this office five minutes and already you're promising away the rest of your life.”

“I'll be with my real baby. I won't care.”

“Dr. Wolcott, what will it be like, in that dimension on the other side?”

“There will be no change that
you
will notice. You will both seem the same size and shape to one another. The pyramid will become a baby, however. You will have added an extra sense, you will be able to interpret what you see differently.”

“But won't we turn into oblongs or pyramids ourselves? And won't you, doctor, look like some geometrical form instead of a human?”

“Does a blind man who sees for the first time give up his ability to hear or taste?”

“No.”

“All right, then. Stop thinking in terms of subtraction. Think in terms of addition. You're gaining something. You lose nothing. You know what a human looks like, which is an advantage Py doesn't have, looking out from his dimension. When you arrive ‘over there' you can see Dr. Wolcott as
both
things, a geometrical abstract or a human, as you choose. It will probably make quite a philosopher out of you. There's one other thing, however.”

“And that?”

“To everyone else in the world you, your wife and the child will look like abstract forms. The baby a triangle. Your wife an oblong perhaps. Yourself a hexagonal solid. The world will be shocked, not you.”

“We'll be freaks.”

“You'll be freaks. But you won't know it. You'll have to lead a secluded life.”

“Until you find a way to bring all three of us out together.”

“That's right. It may be ten years, twenty. I won't recommend it to you, you may both go quite mad as a result of feeling apart, different. If there's a grain of paranoia in you, it'll come out. It's up to you, naturally.”

Peter Horn looked at his wife, she looked back gravely.

“We'll go,” said Peter Horn.

“Into Py's dimension?” said Wolcott.

“Into Py's dimension.”

They stood up from their chairs. “We'll lose no other sense, you're
certain, doctor? Will you be able to understand us when we talk to you? Py's talk is incomprehensible.”

“Py talks that way because that's what he thinks we sound like when our talk comes through the dimensions to him. He imitates the sound. When you are over there and talk to me, you'll be talking perfect English, because you know
how
. Dimensions have to do with senses and time and knowledge.”

“And what about Py? When we come into his strata of existence. Will he see us as humans, immediately, and won't that be a shock to him? Won't it be dangerous?”

“He's awfully young. Things haven't got too set for him. There'll be a slight shock, but your odors will be the same, and your voices will have the same timber and pitch and you'll be just as warm and loving, which is most important of all. You'll get on with him well.”

Horn scratched his head slowly. “This seems such a long way around to where we want to go.” He sighed. “I wish we could have another kid and forget all about this one.”

“This baby is the one that counts. I dare say Polly here wouldn't want any other, would you, Polly?”

“This baby,
this
baby,” said Polly.

Wolcott gave Peter Horn a meaningful look. Horn interpreted it correctly. This baby or no more Polly ever again. This baby or Polly would be in a quiet room somewhere staring into space for the rest of her life.

They moved toward the machine together. “I guess I can stand it, if she can,” said Horn, taking her hand. “I've worked hard for a good many years now, it might be fun retiring and being an abstract for a change.”