Рэй Брэдбери: The Small Assassin

She crushed his hand in hers, a supernatural whiteness in her face.

«Oh, Dave, once it was just you and me. We protected each other, and now we protect the baby, but get no protection from it. Do you understand? Lying in the hospital I had time to think a lot of things. The world is evil―»

«Is it?»

«Yes. It is. But laws protect us from it. And when there aren't laws, then love does the protecting. You're protected from my hurting you, by my love. You're vulnerable to me, of all people, hut love shields you. I feel no fear of you, because love cushions all your irritations, unnatural instincts, hatreds and immaturities. But―what about the baby? It's too young to know love, or a law of love, or anything, until we teach it. And in the meantime be vulnerable to it.»

«Vulnerable to a baby?» He held her away and laughed gently.

«Does a baby know the difference between right and wrong?» she asked.

«No. But it'll learn.»

«But a baby is so new, so amoral, so conscience-free.» She stopped. Her arms dropped from him and she turned swiftly. «That noise? What was it?»

Leiber looked around the room. «I didn't hear―»

She stared at the library door. «In there,» she said, slowly.

Leiber crossed the room, opened the door and switched the library lights on and off. «Not a thing.» He came back to her. «You're worn out. To bed with you―right now.»

Turning out the lights together, they walked slowly up the soundless hall stairs, not speaking. At the top she apologized. «My wild talk, darling. Forgive me. I'm exhausted.»

He understood, and said so.

She paused, undecided, by the nursery door. Then she fingered the brass knob sharply, walked in. He watched her approach the crib much too carefully, look down, and stiffen as if she'd been struck in the face. «David!»

Leiber stepped forward, reached the crib.

The baby's face was bright red and very moist; his small pink mouth opened and shut, opened and shut; his eyes were a fiery blue. His hands leapt about on the air.

«Oh,» said Dave, «he's just been crying.»

«Has he?» Alice Leiber seized the crib-railing to balance herself. «I didn't hear him.»

«The door was closed.»

«Is that why he breathes so hard, why his face is red?»

«Sure. Poor little guy. Crying all alone in the dark. He can sleep in our room tonight, just in case he cries.»

«You'll spoil him,» his wife said.

Leiber felt her eyes follow as he rolled the crib into their bedroom. He undressed silently, sat on the edge of the bed. Suddenly he lifted his head, swore under his breath, snapped his fingers. «Damn it! Forgot to tell you. I must fly to Chicago Friday.»

«Oh, David.» Her voice was lost in the room.

«I've put this trip off for two months, and now it's so critical I just _have_ to go.»

«I'm afraid to be alone.»

«We'll have the new cook by Friday. She'll be here all the time. I'll only be gone a few days.»

«I'm afraid. I don't know of what. You wouldn't believe me if I told you. I guess I'm crazy.»

He was in bed now. She darkened the room; he heard her walk around the bed, throw back the cover, slide in. He smelled the warm woman-smell of her next to him. He said, «If you want me to wait a few days, perhaps I could―»

«No,» she said, unconvinced. «You go. I know it's important. It's just that I keep thinking about what I told you. Laws and love and protection. Love protects you from me. But, thebaby―» She took a breath. «What protects you from him, David?»

Before he could answer, before he could tell her how silly it was, speaking of infants, she switched on the bed light, abruptly.

«Look,» she said, pointing.

The baby lay wide-awake in its crib, staring straight at him, with deep, sharp blue eyes.

The lights went out again. She trembled against him.

«It's not nice being afraid of the thing you birthed.» Her whisper lowered, became harsh, fierce, swift. «He tried to kill me! He lies there, listens to us talking, waiting for you to go away so he can try to kill me again! I swear it!» Sobs broke from her.

«Please,» he kept saying, soothing her. «Stop it, stop it. Please.»

She cried in the dark for a long time. Very late she relaxed, shakingly, against him. Her breathing came soft, warm, regular, her body twitched its worn reflexes and she slept.

He drowsed.

And just before his eyes lidded wearily down, sinking him into deeper and yet deeper tides, he heard a strange little sound of awareness and awakeness in the room.

The sound of small, moist, pinkly elastic lips.

The baby.

And then―sleep.

In the morning, the sun blazed. Alice smiled.

David Leiber dangled his watch over the crib. «See, baby? Something bright. Something pretty. Sure. Sure. Something bright. Something pretty.»

Alice smiled. She told him to go ahead, fly to Chicago, she'd be very brave, no need to worry. She'd take care of baby. Oh, yes, she'd take care of him, all right.

The airplane went east. There was a lot of sky, a lot of sun and clouds and Chicago running over the horizon. Dave was dropped into the rush of ordering, planning, banqueting, telephoning, arguing in conference. But he wrote letters each day and sent telegrams to Alice and the baby.

On the evening of his sixth day away from home he received the long-distance phone call. Los Angeles.

«Alice?»

«No, Dave. This is Jeffers speaking.»

«Doctor!»

«Hold onto yourself, son. Alice is sick. You'd better get the next plane home. It's pneumonia. I'll do everything I can, boy. If only it wasn't so soon after the baby. She needs strength.»

Leiber dropped the phone into its cradle. He got up, with no feet under him, and no hands and no body. The hotel room blurred and fell apart.

«Alice,» he said, blindly, starting for the door.

The propellers spun about, whirled, fluttered, stopped; time and space were put behind. Under his hand, David felt the doorknob turn; under his feet the floor assumed reality, around him flowed the walls of a bedroom, and in the late-afternoon sunlight Dr. Jeffers stood, turning from a window, as Alice lay waiting in her bed, something carved from a fall of winter snow. Then Dr. Jeffers was talking, talking continuously, gently, the sound rising and falling through the lamplight, a soft flutter, a white murmur of voice.

«Your wife's too good a mother, Dave. She worried more about the baby than herself….»

Somewhere in the paleness of Alice's face, there was a sudden constriction which smoothed itself out before it was realized. Then, slowly, half-smiling, she began to talk and she talked as a mother should about this, that and the other thing, the telling detail, the minute-by-minute and hour-by-hour report of a mother concerned with a dollhouse world and the miniature life of that world. But she could not stop; the spring was wound tight, and her voice rushed on to anger, fear and the faintest touch of revulsion, which did not change Dr. Jeffers' expression, but caused Dave's heart to match the rhythm of this talk that quickened and could not stop:

«The baby wouldn't sleep. I thought he was sick. He just lay, staring, in his crib, and late at night he'd cry. So loud, he'd cry, and he'd cry all night and all night. I couldn't quiet him, and I couldn't rest.»

Dr. Jeffers' head nodded slowly, slowly. «Tired herself right into pneumonia. But she's full of sulfa now and on the safe side of the whole damn thing.»

David felt ill. «The baby, what about the baby?»

«Fit as a fiddle; cock of the walk!»

«Thanks, Doctor.»

The doctor walked off away and down the stairs, opened the front door faintly, and was gone.

«David!»

He turned to her frightened whisper.