Dark Benediction

“Nothing. Use the back way. Go tell Fred to run over to the kennels and pick up the substitute. I’ve called Mrs. Norris. Oh yeah, and tell Fred to stop in here first. I’ll have something for him to take out.”

The nurse glanced down at the squirming, whimpering newt, shivered slightly, and left the room. When the door closed, Georges bent over the table with the hypo. When the door opened again, Georges looked up to see his son looking in.

“Take this along,” he grunted, and handed Fred the bundle wrapped in newspapers.

“What’ll I do with it?” the youth asked.

“Chuck it in Norris’s incinerator.”

Fred glanced at the empty examining table and nodded indifferently. “Can Miss Laskell come back now?” he asked in going.

“Tell her yeah. And hurry with that other neut.”

“Sure, Pop. See you later.”

The nurse looked in uncertainly before entering.

“Get cleaned up,” he told her. “And go sit with Mrs. Glubbes.”

“What’ll I say?”

“The ‘baby’ will recover. She can take it home late this afternoon if she gets some rest first.”

“What’re you going to do?—about the substitute.”

“Give it a shot to put it to sleep, give her some codeine to feed it.”

“Why?”

“So it’ll be too groggy for a few days to even notice her, so it’ll get addicted and attached to her because she gives it the coedine.”

“The serial number?”

“I’ll put the tattooed foot in a cast. V-18 paralysis—you know.”

“Smart,” she muttered, but there was no approval in her voice.

When she had changed clothes in the anteroom, she unlocked the door to the office, but paused before passing on into the reception room. The door was ajar, and she gazed through the crack at the woman who sat on the sofa.

Sarah Glubbes was gray and gaunt and rigid as stone. She sat with her hands clenched in her lap, her wide empty eyes—dull blue spots on yellowed marble orbs—staring ceilingward while the colorless lips of a knife-slash mouth moved tautly in earnest prayer. The nurse’s throat felt tight. She rubbed it for a moment. After all, the thing was only an animal.

She straightened her shoulders, put on a cheerful smile, and marched on into the reception room. The yellowed orbs snapped demandingly toward her.

“Everything’s all right, Mrs. Glubbes,” she began.

“Finished,” Norris grunted at three o’clock that afternoon.

“Thirty-six K-99s,” murmured the Anthropos file-clerk, gazing over Norris’s shoulder at the clip-board with the list of doubtful neuts and the dealers to whom they had been sent. “Lots of owners may be hard to locate.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Andy, and you too, Mabel.”

The girl smiled and handed him a slip of paper. “Here’s a list of owners for thirteen of them. I called the two local shops for you. Most of them live here close.”

He glanced at the names, felt tension gathering in his stomach. It wasn’t going to be easy. What could he say to them?

Howdy, Ma’am, excuse me, but I’ve come to take your little boy away to jail… Oh, yes ma’am, he’ll have a place to stay—in a little steel cage with a forkful of straw, and he’ll get vitaminized mush every day. What’s that? His sleepy-time stories and his pink honey-crumbles? Sorry, ma’am, your little boy is only a mutated chimpanzee, you know, and not really human at all.

“That’ll go over great,” he grumbled, staring absently at the window.

“Beg pardon, sir?” answered the clerk.

“Nothing, Andy, nothing.” He thanked them again and strode out into the late afternoon sunlight. Still a couple of hours working time left, and plenty of things to do. Checking with the other retail dealers would be the least unpleasant task, but there was no use saving the worst until last. He glanced at the list Mabel had given him, checked it for the nearest address, then squared his shoulders and headed for the kennel truck.

Anne met him at the door when he came home at six. He stood on the porch for a moment, smiling at her weakly. The smile was not returned.

“Doctor Georges’ boy came,” she told him. “He signed for the—”

She stopped to stare at him, then opened the screen, reached up quickly to brush light fingertips over his cheek.

“Terry! Those welts! What happened—get scratched by a cat-Q?”

“No, by a human-F,” he grumbled, and stepped past her into the hall; Anne followed, eyeing him curiously while he reached for the phone and dialed.

“Who’re you calling?” she asked.

“Society’s Watchdog,” he answered as the receiver buzzed in his ear.

“Your eye, Terry—it’s all puffy. Will it turn black?”

“Maybe.”

“Did the human-F do that too?”

“Uh-uh. Human-M—name of Pete Klusky…