Microcosmic God (16 page)

—“you’ll damn well do, after this. You better, Goldilocks.” Gurrah knocked the two small heads together, breaking the connection
and probably the heads, and turned grinning to Harry. “You see,” he explained, “that Iridel feller is a damn good supervisor, but he’s a stickler for detail. He sends people to Limbo for the silliest little mistakes. He never forgives anyone and he never forgets a slip. He’s the cause of half the misery back here, with his hurry-up orders. Now things are gonna be different. The boss has wanted to give Iridel a dose of his own medicine for a long time now, but Irrie never gave him a chance.”

Harry said patiently, “About me getting back now—”

“My fran’!” Gurrah bellowed. He delved into a pocket and pulled out a watch like Iridel’s. “It’s eleven forty on Tuesday,” he said. “We’ll shoot you back there now. You’ll have to dope out your own reasons for disappearing. Don’t spill too much, or a lot of people will suffer for it—you the most. Ready?”

Harry nodded; Gurrah swept out a hand and opened the curtain to nothingness. “You’ll find yourself quite a ways from where you started,” he said, “because you did a little moving around here. Go ahead.”

“Thanks,” said Harry.

Gurrah laughed. “Don’t thank me, chum. You rate all the thanks! Hey—if, after you kick off, you don’t make out so good up there, let them toss you over to me. You’ll be treated good; you’ve my word on it. Beat it; luck!”

Holding his breath, Harry Wright stepped through the doorway.

He had to walk thirty blocks to the garage, and when he got there the boss was waiting for him.

“Where you been, Wright?”

“I—lost my way.”

“Don’t get wise. What do you think this is—vacation time? Get going on the spring job. Damn it, it won’t be finished now till tomorra.”

Harry looked him straight in the eye and said, “Listen. It’ll be finished tonight. I happen to know.” And, still grinning, he went back into the garage and took out his tools.

“It’s strictly a short order proposition,” said Michaele, tossing her searchlight hair back on her shoulders. “We’ve got to have a baby eight days from now or we’re out a sweet pile of cash.”

“We’ll get one somewhere. Couldn’t we adopt one or something?” I said, plucking a stalk of grass from the bank of the brook and jamming it between my front teeth.

“Takes weeks. We could kidnap one, maybe.”

“They got laws. Laws are for the protection of people.”

“Why does it always have to be other people?” Mike was beginning to froth up. “Shorty, get your bulk up off the ground and think of something.”

“Think better this way,” I said. “We could borrow one.”

“Look,” said Mike. “When I get my hands on a kid, that child and I have to go through a short but rigorous period of training. It’s likely to be rough. If
I
had a baby and someone wanted to borrow it for any such purpose, I’d be damned if I’d let it go.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t be too tough,” I said. “You’ve got maternal instincts and stuff.”

“Shorty, you don’t seem to realize that babies are very delicate creatures and require the most skilled and careful handling. I don’t know
anything
about them. I am an only child, and I went right from high school into business college and from there into an office. The only experience I ever had with a baby was once when I minded one for an afternoon. It cried all the time I was there.”

“Should’ve changed its diapers.”

“I did.”

“Must’ve stuck it with a pin then.”

“I did not! You seem to know an awful lot about children,” she said hotly.

“Sure I do. I was one myself once.”

“Heel!” She leaped on me and rolled me into the brook. I came up spluttering and swearing. She took me by the neck, pulled me half up on the bank and began thudding my head on the soft bank.

“Let go my apple,” I gasped. “This is no choking matter.”

“Now will you cooperate? Shorty, quit your kidding. This is serious. Your Aunt Amanda has left us thirty grand, providing we can prove to her sister Jonquil that we are the right kind of people. ‘Those who can take care of a baby can take care of money,’ she used to say. We’ve got to be under Jonquil’s eye for thirty days and take care of a baby. No nursemaids, no laundresses, no nothing.”

“Let’s wait till we have one of our own.”

“Don’t be stupid! You know as well as I do that that money will set you up in a business of your own as well as paying off the mortgage on the shack.
And
decorating it.
And
getting us a new car.”

“
And
a fur coat.
And
a star sapphire. Maybe I’ll even get a new pair of socks.”

“Shorty!”
A full lip quivered, green eyes swam.

“Oh darling, I didn’t mean—Come here and be kissed.”

She did. Then she went right on where she had left off. She’s like that. She can puddle up at the drop of a cynicism, and when I apologize she sniffs once and the tears all go back into her eyes without being used. She holds them for when they’ll be needed instead of wasting them. “But you know perfectly well that unless we get our hands on money—lots of it—and darn soon, we’ll lose that little barn and the garage that we built just to
put
a new car in. Wouldn’t that be silly?”

“No. No garage, no need for a car. Save lots of money!”

“Shorty—please.”

“All right, all right. The fact that everything you say is correct doesn’t help to get us a baby for thirty days. Damn money anyway! Money isn’t everything!”

“Of course it isn’t, darling,” said Michaele sagely, “but it’s what you buy everything with.”

A sudden splash from the brook startled us. Mike screamed, “Shorty—grab him!”

I plunged into the water and hauled out a very tiny, very dirty—baby. It was dressed in a tattered romper, and it had an elfin face, big blue eyes and a golden topknot. It looked me over and sprayed me—
b-b-b-b-b-br-r-r
—with a combination of a mouthful of water and a Bronx cheer.

“Oh, the poor darling little angel!” said Mike. “Give him to me, Shorty! You’re handling him like a bag of sugar!”

I stepped gingerly out of the brook and handed him over. Michaele cradled the filthy mite in her arms, completely oblivious to the child’s effect on her white linen blouse. The same white linen blouse, I reflected bitterly, that I had been kicked out of the house for, when I pitched some cigar ashes on it. It made me feel funny, watching Mike handle that kid. I’d never pictured her that way.

The baby regarded Mike gravely as she discoursed to it about a poor drowned woofum-wuffums, and did the bad man treat it badly, then. The baby belched eloquently.

“He belches in English!” I remarked.

“Did it have the windy ripples?” cooed Mike. “Give us a kiss, honey lamb.”

The baby immediately flung its little arms around her neck and planted a whopper on her mouth.

“Wow!” said Mike when she got her breath. “Shorty, could you take lessons!”

“Lessons my eye,” I said jealously. “Mike, that’s no baby, that’s some old guy in his second childhood.”

“The idea.” She crooned to the baby for a moment, and then said suddenly, “Shorty—what were we talking about before heaven opened up and dropped this little bundle of—” Here the baby tried to squirm out of her arms and she paused to get a better grip.

“Bundle of what?” I asked, deadpan.

“Bundle of joy.”

“Oh! Bundle of joy. What were we talking about? Ba—Hey! Babies!”

“That’s right. And a will. And thirty grand.”

I looked at the child with new eyes. “Who do you think belongs to the younker?”

“Someone who apparently won’t miss him if we take him away for thirty days,” she said. “No matter what bungling treatment I give him, it’s bound to be better than what he’s used to. Letting a mere babe crawl around in the woods! Why, it’s awful!”

“The mere babe doesn’t seem to mind,” I said. “Tell you what we’ll do—we’ll take care of him for a few days and see if anyone claims him. We’ll listen to the radio and watch the papers and the ol’ grapevine. If anybody does claim him, maybe we can make a deal for a loan. At any rate we’ll get to work on him right away.”

At this juncture the baby eeled out of Mike’s arms and took off across the grass. “Sweet Sue! Look at him go!” she said, scrambling to her feet. “Get him, Shorty!”

The infant, with twinkling heels, was crawling—running, on hands and knees—down toward the brook. I headed him off just as he reached the water, and snagged him up by the slack of his pants. As he came up off the ground he scooped up a handful of mud and pitched it into my eyes. I yelped and dropped him. When I could see a little daylight again I beheld Michaele taking a running brodie into a blackberry bush. I hurried over there, my eyelids making a nasty grating sound. Michaele was lying prone behind the baby, who was also lying prone, his little heels caught tightly in Mike’s hands. He was nonchalantly picking blackberries.

Mike got her knees and then her feet under her, and picked up the baby, who munched contentedly. “I’m disgusted with you,” she said, her eyes blazing. “Flinging an innocent child around like that! Why, it’s a wonder you didn’t break every bone in his poor little body!”

“But I—He threw mud in my—”

“Pick on someone your size, you big bully! I never knew till now that you were a sadist with an inferiority complex.”

“And I never knew till now that it’s true what they say about the guy in the three-cornered pants—the king can do no wrong! What’s happened to your sense of justice, woman? That little brat there—”

“Shorty! Talking that way about a poor little baby! He’s beautiful! He didn’t mean anything by what he did. He’s too young to know any better.”

In the biggest, deepest bass voice I have ever heard, the baby said, “Lady, I do know what I’m doin’. I’m old enough!”

We both sat down.

“Did you say that?” Mike wanted to know.

I shook my head dazedly.

“Coupla dopes,” said the baby.

“Who—What are you?” asked Mike breathlessly.

“What do I look like?” said the baby, showing his teeth. He had very sharp, very white teeth—two on the top gum and four on the lower.

“A little bundle of—”

“Shorty!” Mike held up a slim finger.

“Never mind him,” growled the child. “I know lots of four-letter words. Go ahead, bud.”

“You go ahead. What are you—a midget?”

I no sooner got the second syllable of that word out when the baby scuttled over to me and rocked my head back with a surprising right to the jaw. “That’s the last time I’m going to be called that by anybody!” he roared deafeningly. “No! I’m not a … a … what you said. I’m a pro tem changeling, and that’s all.”

“What on earth is that?” asked Mike.

“Just what I said!” snapped the baby, “A pro tem changeling. When people treat their babies too well—or not well enough—I show up in their bassinets and give their folks what for. Only I’m always the spitting image of their kid. When they wise up in the treatment, they get their kids back—not before.”

“Who pulls the switch? I mean, who do you work for?”

The baby pointed to the grass at our feet. I had to look twice before I realized what he was pointing at. The blades were dark and glossy and luxuriant in a perfect ring about four feet in diameter.

Michaele gasped and put her knuckles to her lips. “The Little People!” she breathed.

I was going to say, “Don’t be silly, Mike!” but her taut face and the baby’s bland, nodding head stopped me.

“Will you work for us?” she asked breathlessly. “We need a baby for thirty days to meet the conditions of a will.”

“I heard you talking about it,” said the baby. “No.”

“No?”

“No.”

A pause. “Look, kid,” I said, “what do you like? Money? Food? Candy? Circuses?”

“I like steaks,” said the child gruffly. “Rare, fresh, thick. Onions. Cooked so pink they say, ‘Moo!’ when you bite ’em. Why?”

“Good,” I said. “If you work for us, you’ll get all the steaks you can eat.”

“No.”

“What would you want to work for us?”

“Nothin’. I don’t wanna work for you.”

“What are we going to do?” I whispered to Mike. “This would be perfect!”

“Leave it to me. Look—baby—what’s your name, anyway?”

“Percival. But don’t call me Percival! Butch.”

“Well, look, Butch; we’re in an awful jam. If we don’t get hold of a sockful of money darn soon, we’ll lose that pretty little house over there.”

“What’s the matter with
him?
Can’t he keep up the payments? What is he—a bum?”

“Hey, you—”

“Shut up, Shorty. He’s just beginning, Butch. He’s a graduate caterer. But he has to get a place of his own before he can make any real money.”

“What happens if you lose th’ house?”

“A furnished room. The two of us.”

“What’s the matter with that?”

I tensed. This was a question I had asked her myself.

“Not for me. I just couldn’t live that way.” Mike would wheedle, but she wouldn’t lie.

Butch furrowed his nonexistent eyebrows. “Couldn’t? Y’know, I like that. High standards.” His voice deepened; the question lashed her. “Would you live with him in a furnished room if there were no other way?”

“Well, of course.”

“I’ll help you,” said Butch instantly.

“Why?” I asked. “What do you expect to get out of it?”

“Nothing—some fun, maybe. I’ll help you because you need help. That’s the only reason I ever do anything for anybody. That’s the only thing you should have told me in the first place—that you were in a jam. You and your bribes!” he snapped at me, and turned back to Mike. “I ain’t gonna like that guy,” he said.

I said, “I already don’t like you.”

As we started back to the house Butch said, “But I’m gonna get my steaks?”

Aunt Jonquil’s house stood alone in a large lot with its skirts drawn primly up and an admonishing expression on its face. It looked as if it had squeezed its way between two other houses to hide itself, and some scoundrel had taken the other houses away.

And Aunt Jonquil, like her house, was five times as high as she was wide, extremely practical, unbeautifully ornate, and stood alone. She regarded marriage as an unfortunate necessity. She herself never married because an unkind nature had ruled that she must marry a man, and she thought that men were uncouth. She disapproved of smoking, drinking, swearing, gambling, and loud laughter. Smiles she enjoyed only if she could fully understand what was being smiled at; she mistrusted innuendo. A polite laugh was a thing she permitted herself perhaps twice a week, providing it was atoned for by ten minutes of frozen-faced gravity. Added to which, she was a fine person. Swell.