The Project Gutenberg eBook of And a little child

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Title: And a little child

Author: Marcia Kamien

Release date: July 31, 2024 [eBook #74160]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: King-Size Publications, Inc, 1954

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AND A LITTLE CHILD ***

And a Little Child

By Marcia Kamien

Only on Mars could children such

as these walk proudly under the

stars. How ungrateful seemed their

bitter hatred of their teachers!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Fantastic Universe September 1954.

Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that

the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Marcia Kamien is new to science fiction. It is not often that a story of such brilliance arrives on our desk unsolicited, and our surprise was even greater when the author informed us in an accompanying letter she wasn't quite sure we'd buy it. We are afraid she just does not understand editors. We know quite a few, and they all agree that there are stories which would never stay forever clipped to a rejection slip.

On the last day of school Professor Dayton looked with pleasure at his class. Fine men and women, all of them. If, the professor amended silently, one could call them "men" and "women." He, himself, preferred their new name: Martians.

They sat in front of him, ranged in rows, twenty-year-olds stirring restlessly in their seats, as thousands of generations of pupils had done before them.

Only this classroom was a bit different.

In the first place, Professor Dayton sat under a small glass dome with a dashboard of dials and meters directly at his elbow. His class, on the other hand, sat in the open air.

Now and then a head turned to gaze through one of the windows at the dull, brick-colored desert land outside, the low, gently rolling hills that quietly told the story of Mars' long and ancient past.

"Today is your last day of class," Professor Dayton said into the portable microphone. "You have been good students, all of you, a credit to your mother-Earth. Now, I should like to—"

He stopped abruptly. One of the young men was standing, waving him to silence. Dayton knew him well, a bright eager youngster who called himself Bar. All of the others turned their faces to him as to a natural leader.

Leader! Dayton felt a shiver of apprehension. How long had he half-expected this? Since the day, seven years before, when they had all changed their names? Or even earlier, when they had begun to notice?

He stared out, directly at Bar, keeping his face expressionless. We're powerless, he thought, powerless against them. Bar was six feet and eight inches tall, and his height was not unusual in his group. His skin had been burnt through the years by an unhampered Mars sun to a russet-brown; and out of the saddle color, his blue eyes gleamed like sapphires.

Bar was broad, broader than any man had ever been, with a huge rib-cage to take in the thin air of Mars. Around his waist was fastened a one-piece garment of light-weight cloth which was his costume night and day; for Bar, like the others now gazing up at him almost in adoration, had a thick layer of skin that hardly felt the piercing cold of a Martian night. Thinking of this, Dayton shivered a little in his warm woolen robes.

For the hundredth time, Dayton told himself: "We did too good a job." He was thinking of the master-plan that had made a new race of Martians out of ordinary Earth children, the plan which had started twenty years before.

Dayton had looked at the fifty-three babies two decades before with mixed emotions of hope and fear, sharing the misgivings that had plagued the other scientists and teachers. It had been a daring idea, this patient dream that was now reaching fulfillment. First the babies would have to become accustomed gradually to the thin atmosphere, and lower gravity of Mars. Then, as adults, they would be able to march at will over the planet, breathing freely.

Dayton's immediate superior, Dr. L'Hai of Evolutionary-Biogenetics, had voiced the half-felt sentiment, as the two of them, so long ago, had watched the young children crawling in their elaborately constructed play-pen of glass. The dial on the outside showed that the infants were receiving only a small percentage less oxygen than was normally found on Earth. The dial also pointed to a temperature of 58°, comfortable but cool for such young children.

"Look at them," L'Hai said proudly. "They hardly know the difference. In three months—" with a gesture toward the dials—"a bit lower temperature, a bit thinner air. Slowly they will develop until they will be completely free of our prison. And they will build Mars!"

Dayton gazed around him at the flat countryside and the time-eroded mountains some five hundred miles distant, looming so clearly in the thin air they seemed barely fifty feet away.

For acre upon acre, the flatland was unbroken, save by scrubs of a dingy greenish-blue hue and the ever-present crawling, red-tinged lichen. Not far from where the two scientists stood, there were three large plexi-glass bubbles, filled with oxygen: greenhouses containing vegetables, fruit, and stored protein foods.

But what drew Dayton's eye, and interest more than anything else was far off. In the distance, one could discern the outlines of a half-toppled building, its crumbling contours jagged against the deep-blue sky. It was an old building of the dead Martians—the Martians who had embellished their civilization with huge, ornately carved stones; and then had died, leaving only the enormous blocks behind on a desolate waste land as mute testimony that once they had lived proudly.

"Our children will rebuild Mars," Dayton murmured to his colleague. "They will pick up that torch, and rekindle it!"

Dr. L'Hai shrugged the thought away. He cared little for the extinct generations of Martians, only for the new one, budding carefully under the hands of Earth-science. And then the air in their head-covering plastic bubbles had run short, and they had returned clumsily in the vague and always-alien atmosphere toward their bubble-home, where the generators made air that was always fresh and breathable.

And now here was Bar, one of those babies grown, burnt by an alien sun, and an alien defiance. "We did much too good a job," the professor thought again, and waited for the young man to speak.

"You're looking at me," Bar boomed. He didn't need a microphone; his resonant voice carried easily. "I'm different from you now, aren't I, Professor?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Yes, I'm different. We're all different. We can breathe this air while you must stay in your domes. We are strong and big. You, and all your kind—are weak and puny.

"You made one mistake, Professor Dayton. You carefully nurtured us, fifty-three kids, so that we could breathe and walk on Mars as free men. You did it, Professor, and it was a marvelous job.

"But now, esteemed Professor, we want to be free. We don't want to walk on our planet for Earthlings. We are Martians...."

There was a murmur of assent from the others.

"We are bronze-skinned Martians," Bar went on. "And Mars is ours, by all rights. Earth may be our mother, but Mars is our father. And, like all good sons, we stay with our father!"

A cheer went up, and again Dayton shivered. His mind flashed back and for the second time he asked himself: "How long have I half-expected this?"

The children were all seven and a half years old, and they had made remarkable progress. One month earlier, they had been taken out of their air-bubbles. All the scientists had watched them with trepidation, but nothing had gone wrong. The children had not even noticed the difference. Their little lungs had already swelled and they inhaled and exhaled the vague air as they might have inhaled the normal air on Earth.

They were still bundled tightly against the cold, but—for the first time—they were permitted to run around. They could actually run; they didn't leap and spring like so many pogo-sticks, as did the older men. They ran, they played, and the heavy little muscles in their young legs held them down.

Around them were always three men, supervising. Dayton was one of the supervisors that day. Bar was the ring-leader, only then his name had been David Lombardy. He was a sharp one, the first to discover that they could out-run, out-leap, out-maneuver their elders.

"Catch me!" he taunted Dayton, evading the latter's grip at every turn. "Catch me, if you can!"

And the others took it up, laughing and screaming and running helter-skelter.

Dayton had forgotten all the others. David Lombardy was his nemesis and he must catch him. He raced across the dry baked ground after the little boy, red with frustration and exertion.

At last he had clutched the little shoulder, and without rational thought, had shaken the boy, his eyes clouded with rage, biting back the words that threatened to pour out.

Damn them! Damn this boy, in particular! When did he discover ... how will we ever keep them under control? They're so young, such kids, to have so much power over us. We might have known this would happen!

Then David Lombardy had looked up at the anger-ridden features of his teacher. "Bubble-head!" he laughed, pointing to the globe which held Dayton's air. "Bubble-head!"

The other children had picked up the cruel name immediately. Like all seven-year-olds, they had little sense of kindness in them. They were just young animals. But they knew, then, that they had an advantage. They knew they could breathe where Dayton and the others never could, and never would.

By punishment, the scientists had managed to repress the name of "Bubble-head." It had never been uttered outright since that day. But, always, Dayton felt that the growing children remembered, and remembered clearly.

Was it since that day? Or was it since the day when, at age thirteen, David Lombardy had walked up to him and said: "We look different. We talk different. You wanted us to be different, didn't you?"

"Yes, David, that's true." Even then, Dayton had felt a tremor of something half-expected, half-feared. "Why?"

"Well, then, you can't expect us to have the same names as all of you. We want our own names, different from any others."

Dayton paused, gazing out at the boy's earnest face. At thirteen, he seemed to recall from some psychology book, all children liked to live in a make-believe world. Here was a make-believe world come true for David Lombardy and his mates. Why not let them change their names? Would it hurt?

"Very well Da—what is your name now?"

The boy's mouth had curved in a knowing smile. "Bar. That's my name. You call me Bar ... Professor." The last word came almost as an after-thought. Then, Bar had turned and walked out, still smiling secretly.

Yes, I knew then, Dayton thought. I knew that day that no matter how much they grew up, they would never change their names back again. Yet, they must be taught only so much at a time. He could not be impatient; he must not ask Da—Bar point-blank. And since then, every day he had waited for this day, for what he knew must happen, and what must not happen.

"All right, Bar, what is it you want?" he said aloud. A bare minute had passed since the cheer had gone up, had shivered in the cool air, and had died quietly in the corners of the large room.

Bar's voice was triumphant, and his chest swelled as he spoke: "It's good you feel that way, Professor, because we knew we would win. We want no more of you puny Earthlings. We want no more of your science that thinks it knows all, yet cannot even walk without a bubble on its head. We want no more of teachers who teach, yet cannot run without bouncing into the air like mountain-goats. You have given us all you can; now you only take away. Go ... get out ... go away from Mars where no one belongs but us. Go Home, Earthmen!"

"Go Home Earthmen!" The shout from fifty-three throats was almost deafening.

"And if you don't," Bar shouted above the din, "we'll destroy all your domes, and you'll die like the fish out of water that you are. So get out, go—and leave us to raise future generations of real Martians. Mars for the Martians!"

"Mars for the Martians!" echoed the other voices, the amplified shouts swelling out the windows into the red desert.

Dayton felt only dull shock. He had known so well. Almost as if he had written a twenty-year-long script, and now the final lines were being spoken at last. Still, there was much he must say before they left.

"Wait a little, Bar. We'll leave, but first there are many things you should—"

"No, Professor! Go now!" A mighty fist doubled, and a large dark-brown finger pointed out the window. The professor followed the finger's direction with his eyes, until they lighted upon the slim bullet-shaped ship in the near distance—the space ship, Albatross, lying securely berthed in a hammock of sand that shimmered eerily in the clashing sunlight.

That night, the fifty-three Martians herded their former teachers into the Albatross. The scientists stood at the video screen in the nose of the ship, and watched the greenhouses, the ranches, the home-dwellings, all the marks of Earth, being wrecked with fiery precision. Then, their beloved charts, the carefully-written notes, the photograph albums, everything that told of the slow growth of fifty-three Earthling babies to huge-chested Martians ... all these, piled in a heap, to be ignited.

Someone—Bar, Dayton thought—took the torch and threw it on the paper. In the clear cold air, the books took fire slowly, tiny blue flames licking up through them, and then, suddenly, a brief, intense glare of red and orange and yellow. In the firelight, the brown faces looked almost savage.

The pilot shrugged his shoulders. "There'll be a war in twenty-five years," he said.

"No," Dayton said softly, and behind him, the others nodded silently. "We have no need to worry."

The pilot looked at him strangely, then shrugged. Ah well, he had a job: to get them home and warn the Earth government.

The silver ship took off with hardly a sound from the dim sands of Mars. In three minutes, it was a tiny star, flickering in the skies with billions of other winking pin-points of light. And down below, the new, self-appointed citizens of Mars danced around the still glowing ashes of their history....

Dayton got the inter-space call five years later. He knew what it was. He had awaited it with the same patience and silence with which he had awaited Bar's speech on Mars.

It was Bar, of course, and his voice, though loud, had lost its fiery timbre. "Professor—" he began.

"Never mind, I know," Dayton said quietly. "You bred, didn't you? And you found out what I could have told you, had you not been so young, so impatient. It was suicide to destroy those domes. Oh, Bar, what a pity! To delude yourselves into thinking that we, mere scientists, mere men, could create a brand-new race! Bar, we merely trained you and adapted you to your environment."

"We know that now."

"Your wives gave birth. But the babies—were white and weak and thin-chested. They were Earth babies, just as you are really made-over Earthmen. And the babies choked. And they died."

It was a whisper. "Yes. They died."

The professor almost smiled. "And, now, Bar?"

"We are still children. We need our mother. Will you forgive us and come back?" Bar said humbly.

Now Dayton smiled openly. "Leave the creating of races to God, Bar. Yes, we'll come back. A mother always goes back to care for her wayward children."

He cut off, then, and eagerly began punching buttons which would summon them all back. Back to teach another generation of Martians!

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AND A LITTLE CHILD ***

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Table of Contents

And a Little Child

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