BLESSED EVENT

Ginny stood anxiously in the kitchen doorway, wiping her hands on the hem of her apron.

"You shouldn't upset the boy by yelling at him, Lester," she said. "I know you're worried, but...."

"He upsets me, doesn't he?" Lester said defensively. He sat in the lounge chair by the window, and the light from the reading lamp, slanting across his face, sketched in the lines of consternation with dark shadows. "Just look at that class paper!" he exploded. "'Excellent,' it says. That's four 'excellents' already this month!"

"I know," Ginny said quietly. "I saw it when he brought it home this afternoon." Her blue eyes misted. "He was awfully proud."

"The worst comment he's ever had was a 'very good,'" Lester said heedlessly. "If only he'd get a 'poor' once in a while—or even a 'rotten.' But that's too much to hope for."

"Maybe it's not really as bad as it seems," Ginny said hopefully. "He said himself that he's weak in spelling."

"Not weak enough for comfort," Lester said. "That little head of his is just crammed with brains. Sometimes I look at it and all I can think of is a stuffed bell pepper!" Suddenly his grey eyes came alight with inspiration. "Maybe if we cut down on his food—They say in those ads that if a child is properly undernourished he begins to get sluggish and...."

"Lester!" Ginny said, thoroughly shocked. "Of all things!"

For a moment they were silent, not quite looking at each other.

"Where did he go?" Ginny asked finally.

"Into his room," Lester sighed. "To study, no doubt."

Ginny nodded and moved toward the entrance to the hall. "I'd better see if he's all right," she said. "You really shouldn't have yelled at him."

Lester watched broodingly as she left the room. For a moment his gaze remained darkly fixed, then moved back and down to the toes of his shoes. He sighed again, and the lines of worry, as though of sheer exhaustion, relaxed.

In repose, Lester's face, an average specimen in the galloping run of the world's faces, was not unpleasant. It was a face that had been come by honestly, if not spectacularly, in the thirty-one years of its existence. In total, Lester was a tolerable young man, though one had the feeling that if he played tennis and wore tennis shorts—neither of which he did—he would prove a bit knobby in the knee and bowed in the leg.

As for Ginny, she was the completely average companion piece to Lester's average man. Her hair was honey-colored, her features were regular and her figure, though a trifle fleshier than the dented-fender types photographed for the magazines, was highly desirable. Together, Lester and Ginny were, in all but one respect, very nearly indistinguishable from the millions of other like couples who predominately inhabit the nation. The single thing that set them apart from the mob was a marked tendency to shatter like a couple of dropped crystal goblets at the sight of an 'excellent' on their male child's class papers.

This oddness, this single curious distinction, however, was no indication of mere capriciousness. The root of the trouble was firmly set in reality, and if its subsequent fruit appeared somewhat eccentric it was probably because those forces which had dropped the original seed into the soil of Lester and Ginny's young lives had not made themselves and their motives clearly understood. It is not, after all, uncommon for the human animal to fear that which it cannot understand, and so it was with Lester and Ginny.

It all started on the night that young Freddie was born. Preparations for the little newcomer's arrival (though it was not known then whether it was to be Frederick or Frederica) had gone apace for several months, and the doctor and the hospital had been engaged well in advance. Ginny, according to custom, had been assiduously showered by her friends with every gadget and garment that any manufacturer, domestic or foreign, had ever rendered in pink and/or blue. The stage was set, swept and lighted. The curtain rose.

It was exactly one minute past three A.M. when Lester raced for the front door, fell over the overnight bag which had been placed strategically in the path, picked himself up and hurried outside to back the Chevy coupe out of the garage and up to the porch. Leaping out, he hurried back into the house to help Ginny to the car and nearly collided with her in the doorway.

"It's all right, Gin!" he said excitedly. "It's all going to be all right!"

"I know, dear," Ginny said uncertainly and, picking up the felled bag, carried it swiftly past him to the car. "Don't forget to lock the door."

"Now, don't worry, honey," Lester said as he climbed into the car beside her, "just don't think about it." He started the engine and began backing toward the street. "Just think how nice it's going to be to have a baby all our own."

Ginny put a hand to his sleeve. "I love you, Lester," she murmured, and let it go at that.

It was approximately at this point in the proceedings that certain celestial complications began to set in. As Lester and Ginny sped toward the hospital, their heads filled with the approaching disaster of parenthood, they were totally unaware of a distant moiling and broiling in the night-darkened heavens above them. Humanly earthbound as they were, their thinking was characteristically horizontal. It would never in a million years have occurred to them that their real trouble lay, not ahead of them, but above them.

High in those dim and timeless reaches of space without measure where the fate of mortal man is weighed and judged according to the individual, a storm of unique and dismaying design was at the moment of its inception. Like many another event of eventual magnitude it began with deceptive insignificance. It was merely that Mac, that kindly and somewhat addled angel, in tallying the lists on the tabulation sheets, had come on the knowledge that the very next baby, the one due for the four A.M. shipment, would be the million quadrillionth baby born on Earth since the beginning of the human race. It was a fact from which Mac seemed to derive a certain surprised pleasure. Brushing aside an intervening cloud vapor, he turned to Haywood Veere, his heavenly coworker, and grinned importantly.

"Right on the nose, Haywood!" he announced loudly. "The million quadrillionth baby. What do you think of that?" He twitched his wings happily. "Makes you feel kind of important, don't it?"

Haywood remained studiously bent over his dispatch sheets. "I fail to see why," he said with characteristic dryness. "We can hardly look on the event as any sort of personal accomplishment. It took all of humanity all this while to bring it about."

"But I'm the one that marked it down," Mac said. "And it's you who's makin' out the papers on him. Probably nobody knows about it except us."

"It's probably just as well," Haywood murmured.

"But it's kind of like an anniversary," Mac insisted. "Don't you see?" A grin of reminiscence came over his homely face. "Besides, I done my part, I guess, when I was a mortal. I had a couple of kids—even if they did both wind up in the pokey."

At this Haywood glanced up from the cloud bank upon which were spread the papers. He turned around slowly, holding his wings back with one hand so that they would not get smudged with ink. He regarded Mac reflectively.

"I suppose that's true," he said. "If you want to look at it that way we can all take a bit of the credit. Even I can."

Mac's eyes widened with surprise. "But you was never married," he said. "If you had kids then they was...."

"I didn't," Haywood put in quickly. "But it still works out. If you hadn't fathered your children and I hadn't—refrained, so to speak, this particular baby wouldn't be the million quadrillionth baby at all. It's curious the way it all works out."

"Sure it is!" Mac said triumphantly. "You see, it's like I said, a sort of millstone!"

"Mile stone," Haywood corrected absently. "I suppose you could regard the little chap as a sort of anniversary baby at that."

"You're darned right!" Mac nodded emphatically. "It's like we ought to do something about it—to kind of celebrate—like when a show house has fifty thousand customers and the fifty thousandth guy gets a free ticket or a smoke stand with a naked lady on top."

"But that's all in the line of advertising," Haywood said primly. "Crass commercialism."

"And what's wrong with advertising about babies?" Mac asked. "Babies are the best darned product in the world. It's about time something was done to stimulate trade, I guess."

"Well, I really doubt ..." Haywood began.

"You never was a father," Mac broke in elegantly. "It's a very broadening experience, even when your kids turn out to be brats."

"But don't you think," Haywood mused, "that it's rather been taken care of—the stimulation part of it, I mean?"

"Not near enough," Mac said firmly, "not when there are guys like you who get left out."

An introspective look came into Haywood's intelligent eyes. "Perhaps you're right," he said quietly. "Working here in the dispatching office has given me pause to think from time to time." He tapped his slender fingers soundlessly on the cloud bank, producing a series of delicately swirled vapors. "But we haven't any free tickets or smoke stands with naked ladies to give away—and no way to give them, even if we had."

"Then we'll have to give something else," Mac said solemnly. "Something like it's not something you can touch and pick up, but something like maybe these people can just think about it and it will make them happy."

Haywood nodded. "You mean something more of a spiritual order."

"Yeah. I guess that's it."

For a moment the two of them were thoughtfully silent. Presently Haywood stopped drumming his fingers.

"How would it be," he said, "if we made their baby a very special baby in some way? All parents are fond of the notion that their first child is the most extraordinary child ever born. Suppose we find some way to make this anniversary baby really unusual?"

"Why sure!" Mac said jubilantly. "That's it! I always said you had brains, Haywood."

"Thank you, Mac," Haywood said uncertainly. "But what special quality shall we give this child? Can you think of anything?"

For a moment they stared at each other blankly. Mac twitched a wing.

"How about three hands?" he asked. "People are always saying how they wished they had three hands. It would make the kid a big help around the house."

"You've been away from Earth too long, Mac," Haywood said gently. "You know how unpleasant people can be to freaks."

"Oh, yeah," Mac said deflatedly. "I forgot."

"I don't think a physical difference is wise," Haywood went on. "I think something more from within would be better. Mortals are always wishing to be completely good and honest. At least they pray about it a good deal...."

Mac shook his head. "You can't be too good or too honest down there, Haywood. Sometimes it turns into a vice. Besides, people get suspicious and make things very hard for you. That's why the good ones never stay too long."

"You're quite right," Haywood conceded. "But we've got to think of something. I should be finishing up the dispatch right now. If I'm going to add anything to the orders I'd better do it."

"There must be something," Mac said anxiously. "What else do people always wish for?"

"Well ..." Haywood mused. Then, quite unexpectedly, he smiled one of his rare smiles. "I have it! How many times have you heard people wish that they had known at some previous point in their lives something that they have only managed to find out later?"

"Huh?" Mac said.

"You know the expression, 'if I had only known then what I know now.' People are constantly saying how much better things would be if they had only been born with the knowledge of a lifetime. How would it be if we arrange to have this child born knowing everything that he's destined to learn throughout all his earthly years?"

"You mean so he can see into the future?"

"No, no, nothing so trite as that. Just let him know at the outset all the things that he will eventually learn so that he may apply them to his life as he goes along."

Mac slapped his broad hands together with enthusiastic approval. "Hey, that's wonderful!" he said. "It sounds classy, too. We make this million quadrillionth baby the most wised-up kid any pair of parents ever had. Write that down, Haywood, just like you said it. Put it in the special specifications part."

"All right," Haywood said, rather pleased with himself, "then, that's what it'll be." He turned carefully back to the cloud bank, wriggled his knees into its fleecy confines and took up his pen. "I'll have to word it carefully so there won't be any oversight."

"Gosh!" Mac grinned rapturously, "just think how tickled those parents are going to be. It makes you feel good just thinking about it!"

Hair rumpled and necktie askew, Lester sat in the hospital waiting room and smoked endless cigarettes. Across from him sat another young man in a similar state of disheveled conflagration, but the two of them did not speak. The situation was understood and words would only make it worse. Time passed.

At last a door swung open and a nurse with a starched expression and a severe uniform stepped flat-footedly into the room. In unison Lester and his companion sat up and looked around like a pair of beagles alerted to the scent of the fox. There was an ominous pause while the nurse, indulging a sadistic sense of the dramatic, looked questioningly from one to the other.

"Mr. Holmes?" she asked crisply.

"Yes!" Lester said, leaping from his chair. "Yes, yes! That's me!"

The nurse regarded him slowly, as though finding only what she had expected, which wasn't much. "Your wife," she announced thinly, "has just given birth to a healthy six pound boy." She edged back toward the door, then stopped. "Congratulations," she added grudgingly.

"Holy smoke!" Lester said. "Can I see Ginny?"

The nurse eyed him levelly. "Ginny?" she enquired.

"My mother!" Lester said confusedly, making a Freudian slip. "I mean, my wife, the mother of my son. You know...." he ended lamely.

"Mrs. Holmes will be resting for the next couple of hours," the nurse said, "and she mustn't be disturbed. Meanwhile, if you'd care to see your son, he will appear shortly in the nursery, in the crib marked with your name. You may view him through the glass partition."

"Oh," Lester said. "Oh, sure. But, Ginny—Mrs. Holmes—how is she?"

"She came through the delivery splendidly," the nurse told him and left.

Grinning, Lester turned to the other young man who looked back at him numbly. "Well...." he said. "Golly!" He waited for a moment, then shrugged happily and started toward the door.

He paced back and forth in front of the plate glass window, nervously eyeing the first row of metal cribs which contained the one marked "Holmes." His crib, or rather the crib of his son, was exactly like all the others in the line, except that it had remained starkly unoccupied for some time now and for that reason seemed somehow larger and more ominous than the others. Absently, Lester was aware of other sleepy-eyed fathers along the window, and of the occasional presence, within the panelled confines of the nursery, of nurses, moving back and forth like the masked ladies of some frightfully pristine and hygenic India.

From time to time, these last would bring a baby forward to the viewing window for the inspection of the fathers who were already planning complications for the little newcomer's life. Lester watched as a sandy-haired young man with dark shadows under his eyes moved to the speaking tube at the side of the window and briefly requested an introduction to his new-born daughter. Within the nursery one of the nurses nodded to him and said a polite "yes, sir," which was communicated to the young man over a concealed speaker. Waiting until the young man had departed, Lester followed his example and edged up to the tube. There was another nurse conveniently at hand.

"Miss," he said mildly. "Nurse."

The young lady turned and regarded him from over her mask with a pair of large brown eyes. "Yes?" she asked. "Are you one of the fathers?"

"I—yes," Lester nodded. "Only my baby isn't in the nursery yet, and it's been quite a while now since they sent me here to see him."

A flicker of puzzlement showed in the nurse's eyes. "What is the name, please?" she asked.

"Holmes," Lester said. "Lester Holmes. It's a boy. Six pounds. If that helps you any."

The brown eyes changed expression swiftly and unexpectedly. They raked Lester's face hastily, as though passing over some object too loathsome for closer observation. It seemed to Lester that the exposed part of the nurse's complexion turned a ghastly white.

"Good grief!" the girl said over the speaker and hurried out of the room.

"Hey!" Lester said, bending closer to the tube. "Hey, nurse!"

He stood there for a moment, feeling vague stirrings of impending doom, then he moved back. Inside the nursery the door opened and two nurses, neither with large brown eyes, stepped inside, stared hauntedly in his direction for a moment, then disappeared again. Lester watched this denouement with utter bewilderment. He retreated to the far side of the room and sat down in a chair with iron legs and slippery red plastic cushions.

Lester was still sitting there, without benefit of spurs, when the doctor came in. He was a tall, pinkish sort of man, balding of head and jittery of manner. He leaned down to Lester as though preparing to say a very confidential and filthy word.

"Holmes?" he enquired.

"Yes!" Lester said, starting. "That's me."

"Would you just step out here in the hall for a moment?"

Lester got up and silently followed the doctor outside. The door to the waiting room sighed shut behind them, and for a moment they stood looking at each other.

"Mr. Holmes ..." the doctor said, then lapsed into undecided silence.

Lester made a small gesture with his hand. "Look, doctor," he said. "I know I'm not familiar with the way things are done around a hospital, but frankly I'm beginning to get a little worried."

"Of course you are," the doctor said emphatically.

"Huh?" Lester said.

"Expectant fathers are always worried," the doctor said and smiled stiffly.

"I'm not expectant any more," Lester said. "The nurse said everything was all right, that the baby was healthy and Ginny was doing fine."

The doctor looked at him, as though with sudden inspiration. "Would you like to see your wife, Mr. Holmes?" he asked quickly.

"Yes," Lester said. "I'd like to see someone ."

A look of momentary relief lighted the doctor's face. "Fine," he said, "fine. And when you've finished we'll have a little talk, eh? Now, just come along this way."

Ginny, in the tall, awkward hospital bed, looked kind of pinched and stringy, like she always did in the summer when she'd spent a day canning fruit. As Lester entered, she smiled in a slack-mouthed sort of way.

"Hello, dear," she said weakly.

"Hi," Lester said.

"Daddy," Ginny said dreamily. "You're a daddy now."

"And you're a mother," Lester said foolishly.

"Yes," Ginny murmured. "You are a daddy and I'm a mother. Both at the same time." She smiled again. "It's funny."

"Funny?" Lester said. He sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand. "How do you mean?"

"The anesthetic was funny," Ginny said, and suddenly she giggled.

Lester looked at her worriedly. "Did anything happen?" he asked. "Besides the baby, I mean?"

"Oh, just something I imagined," Ginny said. "But it was so clear it was like it was real." She looked at him from between half-closed lids and giggled again. "When the doctor spanked the baby—you know how they do—he said, 'Stop that, you big ape! Try swatting someone your own size!'"

"The doctor said that?"

"No, the baby," Ginny said. "Wasn't it funny the way I imagined all that?"

Lester forced a smile. "Yeah," he said, "sure."

Just then a nurse, eyeing Lester with uneasy speculation, edged quietly into the room. "You'll have to leave now, Mr. Holmes," she said. "The doctors are waiting for you."

"Doctors?" Lester said, then decided to let it go; the hospital had became a dark and mysterious place. He leaned down and kissed Ginny lightly on the lips. "Get some rest, dear," he murmured.

There were six doctors in the little office, an assorted half dozen of varying sizes and ages. The white-coated oath-taker with whom Lester had shared the cryptic conversation in the hall presided over the gathering from behind a desk at the far side of the room. The others sat in chairs that had been arranged against the walls. All of them eyed Lester with something like grave wonder as he moved forward and took his seat in front of the desk. Lester looked hopefully from one to the other, then cleared his throat. The small doctor to his left jumped.

"I realize," Lester said, "that I'm not acquainted with hospital routine. This is the first time...."

"Of course, Mr. Holmes," the pinkish doctor put in quickly, with a sort of reverent horror. "And I must confess that procedures have necessarily been a trifle irregular in this case...."

"Case?" Lester said. "What's wrong, doctor? Why won't you tell me?"

The doctor folded his pale, slender hands before him with intricate care. "Mr. Holmes," he said gently, "have you ever taken an I.Q. test?"

Lester stared at him blankly for a moment. He was conscious of a sinking sensation, much as though he were a cake in an oven and someone had slammed a door somewhere. "Yes, I have," he said cautiously. "I don't remember the score exactly. They said I was average. Is there something wrong with my son, doctor?"

Again the doctor avoided a direct reply. "How about your wife, has she ever had an intelligence test?"

"I don't know," Lester answered truthfully. "She's mentioned several times that she only graduated from school by the skin of her teeth. But what has that got to do with...."

"I wonder, Mr. Holmes, if you'd be willing to submit to an extensive examination and observation? It might take about a month or so, I'm afraid. You work for a bank, don't you?"

Lester nodded. "I'm a teller at the People's Trust. But...."

"Perhaps we could make arrangements with your employer for a leave of absence...."

The doctor broke off as the door suddenly burst open and a nurse charged into the room. She was an uncommonly homely woman whose face would have been attractive only coming down the stretch in the fifth at Pimlico. Her cap was askew and her red mane had gotten loose from its moorings. Breathing heavily, she pulled up abruptly in front of the desk and glared furiously at the doctor.

"I quit!" she bellowed, banging her fist down on the desk. "I will not be referred to as that splay-footed, cold-fingered old nag! Especially not by any mere infant!"

"Miss Klatt!" the doctor said sternly. "We're in conference with a patient!"

"I don't care if you're in Tucson with Marilyn Monroe!" the nurse yelled. "I'm quitting. In fact, I've quit. If it's a nurse for babies you want, then okay, but if you're looking for a verbal punching bag for a three-hour old comic, you can damn well look somewhere else!"

"Miss Klatt!"

"Phooey!" Miss Klatt responded hotly. "Just call me up sometime to come back to work and listen to my hollow laughter. And as for that new-layed egg you call a baby, you'll find him in his crib in the nursery!" And with that she turned on her heel and stalked from the room, slamming the door. There was a moment of horrified silence.

"Oh, dear!" one of the doctors said distractedly. "Oh, dear!"

The pinkish doctor leaped out of his chair. "Holy smoke!" he yelled. "Did she say she put him in the nursery?"

He raced for the door, and his five colleagues rose hastily and followed in his trail. Lester jumped up and followed after.

"Hey!" he hollered. "Hey, wait a minute!"

Lester arrived in the viewing room only a step behind the doctors. Already, it appeared, quite a crowd had assembled in the room, a random mixture of staff members and visitors. There was an excited murmuring, along with a general tendency to back away from the viewing panel. The doctors had stopped in their tracks just inside the door, in a collective attitude of stricken dismay. For a moment Lester was completely at a loss to discover the cause of all this, then a voice, a very small but distinct voice, echoed over the speaker.

"And you, too, fatso!" it said sharply. "Just what do you think you're staring at?"

Lester became aware of a large, dark-haired woman who suddenly gasped and backed away. Her lips worked feverishly over words that would not come.

"It's an invasion of privacy!" the voice continued furiously. "I stand on my rights! And I'll sit and lie down on them, too, if I have to! I demand a private room!"

During this pithy bit of dialogue, Lester edged cautiously through the ranks and peered into the brilliant inner reaches of the nursery. At first he saw nothing of particular note, then, slowly his gaze, moving along the first line of cribs, stopped at the one just left of center, where its infant occupant appeared to be sitting boldly upright, shaking its small pudgy fist at the window. The baby's face was quite red, and its tiny eyes glittered with a furious intelligence that was distinctly upsetting. If Lester's senses had not failed him, this was the originator of the angry voice.

"And what are you nosing around for, stupid?" the baby asked hotly, darting a swift glance in his direction. "I suppose you have never seen a baby before? How would you like it if every time you looked up from your bed you were faced with a lot of dough-faced, low-grade morons gaping at you through a plate glass window? Talk about goldfish!"

For a moment Lester was too startled to move. Then, laggingly, his eyes moved to the name on the crib, and he stiffened sharply. The name, plain as a day in May, was Holmes !

"Wha—!" Lester said, unable to grasp the situation or any part of it. He whirled about to the doctors and found them in hasty retreat toward a doorway at the far end of the room.

"Hey!" Lester yelled and took out after them.

He raced along in their wake down a narrow hallway and through another door, into a small room full of electric sterilizers. Instantly upon arrival, the doctors went quickly to the business of donning masks.

"Now just look here!" Lester cried, but the doctors were already in retreat toward an inner door with a glass port-hole through which could be seen the nursery. Lester shoved after them, but was held back.

"You can't come in without a mask," one of the doctors told him, then slammed the door in his face.

"I'm getting sore!" Lester said. He swung about, found a discarded mask lying on a white porcelained table and slipped it on. Adjusting the strap, he hastened into the nursery.

He was greeted by a deafening din as he shoved through the door. Thirty odd babies, suddenly roused, had taken up the cry in shrill discord. Intermingled with this was the disgruntled rumblings of the doctors and the outraged mouthings of the truculent baby.

"Well, high time!" the infant yelled. "Get me out of this Bedlam before I lose my temper! How do you expect anyone to get any rest in a room full of howling brats!"

"Shut off that loudspeaker!" one of the doctors yelled, and a colleague rushed to a switch on the wall.

Lester wedged himself determinedly into the fast-closing knot around the crib. He shoved his face through an opening between two white-clad shoulders and looked up at the doctor across from him.

"How is he doing that?" he asked.

The infant in the crib looked up at him wearily. "Another one," he commented. "That makes seven. Seven come eleven and not a brain in the lot. What do I have to do to get a private room in this butcher shop? Clear out, you underlings, and send me the manager!"

"You're going to get a private room!" the doctor across from Lester said shortly. "You're going to get one if I have to build it myself." He scooped the infant up in his arms.

"Well," the baby said, falling back importantly into the crook of the doctor's arm, "that's more like it."

Again straggling after the doctors, Lester followed them from the nursery, through the outer room, down the hallway and into a room marked Private . There the baby was placed on an adult-sized bed, where it sat up majestically against the pillow and watched with a jaundiced eye the unmasking of those assembled.

"The human race," he commented, "is certainly not an attractive one. You jokers make up as ugly a crew as ever blotted the horizons of hell. Not to mention that nurse you sent me. What a horror that one was!"

"She quit the hospital, you'll be delighted to know," the doctor said, bristling.

"And thereby provided the medical profession its greatest single advance in years," the infant retorted blandly.

"You didn't have to insult her," the doctor said.

"Somebody had to," the baby said, the absolute soul of reason. "No one with a face like that could go without insult much longer."

The doctor opened his mouth to reply, then glanced around uneasily at the others. "It's ridiculous, arguing with a mere infant like this," he murmured. "I feel like a fool."

"Don't be alarmed," the baby said mildly. "You also look like a fool. And I think that clears up your status most conclusively."

"Is he really doing that?" Lester breathed incredulously. "Isn't it just some sort of a trick or something?"

The baby shot him a quick glance. "Who's that?" he asked.

"Your father," the doctor said bitterly. "Heaven help him."

"That!" the baby said, disbelievingly pointing a finger at Lester. "Good grief!" He eyed Lester more closely and with an evident lack of satisfaction. He shrugged fatalistically. "Well, as long as you're here, there's a little matter I want straightened out. I happen to know that you and your wife—my mother, I suppose—are planning to name me Frederick Lester Holmes. I've thought it over and decided I can't permit it. The name is entirely too commonplace. I wish to be called Anstruther Pierpont Holmes, which is more consistent with the position which I mean to attain in life." He subjected Lester to another lengthy and critical stare. "Since you are my father, you may refer to me as A.P., so as to achieve an absolute economy of time spent in communication between us."

Lester clutched blindly at the foot of the bed in an attempt to maintain his equilibrium; suddenly he felt as though his knees had been set on swivels. The room appeared to be leaping about with a will of its own.

"Grab him!" a voice yelled close by. "He's going into shock!"

Five days later, Lester sat in the corner of the hospital room, maintaining a morbid silence while the nurse finished packing Ginny's bag. Ginny dressed now and looking pretty, though somewhat drawn, sat in a wheel chair with the infant A.P. held gingerly, as one might hold a small A Bomb, in her lap. All of them watched tensely as the nurse snapped the catch on the bag and left the room. The instant she was gone, Lester was on his feet. He approached the wheel chair and levelled a warning finger under A.P.'s negligible nose.

"I don't know how the newspapers got wind of this," he said, "but I definitely suspect you. The hospital promised to keep it quiet. If any of those reporters get to you, just keep your big mouth shut. Maybe you want to be a side show attraction, but your mother and I don't!"

"Nuts," the baby said briefly.

Lester raised his glance to Ginny. "And if they ask you anything, just don't answer. And try not to cry."

"Oh, Lester!" Ginny said tearfully. "What will the neighbors think? They'll say we're not normal, and that he's a—"

"A monster," Lester supplied. "And they'll be right."

"You don't need to talk about me as though I weren't here," A.P. said evenly. "I can hear every word you're saying."

"Can't we just stay here in the hospital?" Ginny pleaded. "Just a few more days?"

"They won't have him," Lester said, casting A.P. an accusing glance. "He's tried to reorganize the entire hospital. Three nurses, two doctors and five internes have given up the profession, and six patients stole wheel chairs and left without notice. They've given us a deadline until noon to get him off the premises."

"Inefficiency," A.P. said tersely. "Everywhere you look, inefficiency. It's appalling."

"And so are you!" Letter snapped.

"My father!" the infant said, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. "What irony!"

At this moment the nurse returned and the unhappy trio fell into a forced silence.

"The reporters," the nurse said uneasily, "they've gotten into the hallway somehow." She followed Lester's apprehensive gaze to the baby. "They want an interview—with all three of you."

Lester sighed deeply. "Oh, well," he said, and taking hold of the wheel chair he shoved it forward.

The crush began at the door. A dozen reporters, at the first glimpse of the wheel chair, crowded toward it. A red-faced young man with a touseled crop of black hair stuck his face aggressively down next to A.P.'s.

"What do you think of the political situation, kid?" he yelled.

The little company froze, and there was an instantaneous hush. Lester exchanged a glance of speechless horror with Ginny as their infant son observed his inquisitor with a scathing stare and parted his cherubic lips.

"Goo," A.P. said with flat disgust. "Goo, goo, goo!"

The ensuing week passed torturously. It was unthinkable, of course, that there should be a nurse—or any outsider for that matter—in the house during Ginny's recuperation. Therefore, it was necessary for Lester to take a leave of absence from the bank and remain at home. As a substitute angel of mercy, however, Lester found himself singularly lacking in certain basic qualities; he was constantly beset with an alarming impulse to do violence to the weak and helpless. On the seventh day he cracked.

"I don't care!" he cried, storming into Ginny's bedroom. "I don't care if he is my son! I'm darned if I'll take any more guff off of him!" He banged a half-empty feeding bottle down on the bureau. "Everything I do is wrong! I give him his formula and he gives me a dissertation on how to prepare lobsters Newberg! I can't stand any more of it!"

Ginny accepted this tirade from her bed with distressed uncertainty. "I know, dear," she said gently. "Last time I was up I went in to see him, and he told me I was wearing the wrong shades of lipstick, powder and rouge, and that I ought to comb my hair away from my face if I want to resemble anything human at all."

"And he wants to rebuild the house!" Lester fumed. "He says it's non-functional! It's like living with Hitler, I tell you!"

"Now, dear," Ginny said softly. "We wanted a son."

"A son, yes," Lester said, "but not a pea-sized Einstein." He held out a hand. "What are we going to do, Gin? We can't keep him hidden away forever. Mrs. Hilliard from next door was over again this morning. I've run out of excuses."

"Oh, don't let her in!" Ginny said. "With that wart on her nose I can't imagine what he'd say to her! And she'd blab it all over town. The newspaper people would be after us again. We'd be an object of curiosity all over the world!"

Lester sagged into the chair in the corner. "We'd never have another moment's privacy." He closed his eyes wearily. "I feel like passing out arsenic instead of cigars."

"We'll just have to keep him hidden as long as we can," Ginny said hopelessly. "If anyone sees him we'll have to explain that he learned to talk prematurely."

"We'll never get away with it," Lester said. "His language is too darned premature."

"I don't know why this had to happen to us," Ginny lamented. "It couldn't have come from my side of the family. We've none of us ever been very bright."

Lester looked around at her sharply. "Neither have we," he said.

"Then where did it come from?" Ginny asked.

"Not from heaven," Lester said firmly. "That's certain."

The second week passed, and Ginny recovered sufficiently to be up and about. With apprehension, she relieved Lester of his duties with A.P. Her worst fears, she learned, had not been unfounded.

"He wants the stock reports," she reported to Lester in the kitchen. "Did you give him that copy of Forever Amber?"

"I did," Lester said dully.

"But why, for heaven's sake?"

"To keep his mind off the house," Lester said. "He's got it all redesigned. Refinanced, too. In his head."

"He's got so many things in his head," Ginny said. "It's terrifying. I'll never get used to it."

"Don't worry about it," Lester said. "We won't be seeing much of him as soon as he learns to walk. He explained it all to me. He's going into some sort of business that will take him into higher circles. I think he's planning to be a financial shyster of some sort."

Ginny dropped into the chair opposite him and gazed at him dimly from across the table. "I thought it was going to be so nice to be a mother, to have something that depended on me and looked up to me."

"I know," Lester said. "We've just got to face it, though, A.P. is less a child than we are. He's a full grown adult and he doesn't intend to indulge us by pretending to be a baby. I know it's impossible, but...."

Both of them stiffened as a knock sounded sharply at the back door.

"Mrs. Hilliard!" Ginny hissed. "Don't answer!"

"Don't worry," Lester said.

The room filled with silence as both of them sat absolutely quiet. There was a second knock, more insistent this time. As it died out, the silence fell again. Then it shattered.

"Hey, you two!" A.P.'s penetrating voice yelled from the nursery. "Get on the ball with that reinforced feeding! I'll never grow up if you're going to starve me to death!"

"Oh, Lord!" Lester groaned. Instantly there was a third knock that fairly rattled the hinges. "You get rid of her. I'll take him the bottle."

"And make sure you have the formula I worked out!" the voice from the nursery commanded. "I don't want to waste any more time in this wicker cage than I have to!"

When Lester returned to the kitchen he found, with a thrill of horror, that Mrs. Hilliard, a steely glint in her eyes, had forced her way inside. She was a solid woman with a square figure, a square face and undoubtedly a square heart to match, which Lester was certain lay in her bosom like a small granite cornerstone. The wart on her nose was twitching with resolution. Ginny stood, cowed, beside the open door.

"Ginny Holmes," Mrs. Hilliard was saying, "we've been friends ever since you moved here. I was the first one inside your door to welcome you to the neighborhood, and I resent being treated like a stranger now. After all, I only want to help out."

"But, Mrs. Hilliard ..." Ginny tried to say.

"I know you don't want me to see the baby," Mrs. Hilliard went on. "You certainly made that plain enough. And although I don't know why, I can guess. Everyone in the neighborhood has guessed by now."

"Why what do you mean, Mrs. Hilliard?"

"It happened to a cousin of mine; the child was hopelessly malformed. But it's no reflection on you, dear. It's just one of nature's tragedies, and you have to learn to accept it gracefully."

"But, Mrs. Hilliard!" Ginny gasped, her eyes wide with astonishment, "it's nothing like that!"

"And you'll find that everyone in the block is just as sympathetic as I am. We've all wanted to tell you how sorry we are, but if you won't admit it, or even let us see the child...."

Lester drew himself up in the doorway. "Mrs. Hilliard," he said firmly, and the woman turned, giving him a square, hard look. "Mrs. Hilliard, please put your prying mind at rest. If you want to give the neighborhood a report on our baby, then all right!" His face was fast becoming a dangerous red. "Just step this way!"

"Lester!" Ginny cried.

But Lester was beyond caution. "We call the baby A.P.," he said, "but you may address him as Mr. Holmes." Mrs. Hilliard cast him a curious glance. "Come right along, Mrs. Hilliard!"

"Well ..." Mrs. Hilliard said, then selfrighteously started after him down the hall.

As they entered, A.P. was busy reading, the book propped up against the side of his crib. His bottle hung rakishly from the corner of his mouth, balanced across his shoulder. At the sight of the approaching trio, he looked around and frowned. Mrs. Hilliard stopped short as the baby pointed a chubby finger in her direction.

"Who," A.P. asked in measured tones, "is that? Or should I say 'what is that?'"

Mrs. Hilliard made a small wheezing sound and looked around uncertainly at Ginny.

"This is our neighbor," Lester said recklessly. "Mrs. Hilliard."

"Well, why come dragging her in here?" A.P. asked. "Surely it can't be milking time already." He regarded Mrs. Hilliard more closely. "She's certainly nothing to inflict on a mere infant."

"Well!" Mrs. Hilliard managed to wheeze.

"Quiet, wart nozzle," A.P. said imperiously. "You have one of those voices that grate on my nerves."

Mrs. Hilliard whirled on Lester. "Lester Holmes! Is this some sort of joke?"

"If it is," A.P. said, "it's entirely on you, madam. How any woman could get that bowlegged in a mere sixty years is quite beyond me."

"Sixty years!" Mrs. Hilliard cried. "Bowlegged! Ginny Holmes...."

"Oh, shut up," A.P. said disgustedly. "Get out of here and let me read. I'm just at the part where she locks him into her bedroom and slips the key down the front of her dress."

"Well!" Mrs. Hilliard snorted. "I certainly will get out of here! And I'll never set foot in this house again."

"That'll be a great relief to the foundations," A.P. observed affably and returned to his book and bottle.

Ginny cast Lester a glance of pure fury, then turned away. "Mrs. Hilliard!" she cried. But already that outraged lady was down the hall and making rapid time toward the back door. Ginny ran after her. "Mrs. Hilliard!"

"Let her go!" Lester called out, following along the hall. "Forget it."

In the kitchen, Ginny turned on him, a nasty glint in her eyes. "There!" she said hysterically. "Now, you've done it! She'll tell everyone!"

"No one will believe her," Lester said defensively. "They'll just think she's gone off her nut."

"They'll come here!" Ginny cried. "The reporters and everyone! I don't want to be known as the mother of the most insulting baby in the world!"

"Neither do I!" Lester said distractedly. "I mean I don't want to be known as the father!"

" What! " Ginny gasped, her eyes growing wide. "You mean you're going to tell everyone you're not the father?"

"Now, I didn't say that!" Lester yelled. "I only meant that...."

"I wouldn't put it past you!" Ginny said furiously. "Put all the blame on me. I can certainly see where that child got his evil disposition! Your whole family has always been shifty! I should have known!"

"Shifty!" Lester flared. "My family, shifty! What about your brother, Delmar? Did you ever bake him a cake with a file in it, like he asked you to?"

"You leave my family out of this! You know it was an accident that Delmar got arrested!"

"Hah!" Lester said. "That's a hot one, that is! And you call my family shifty. At least they're not locked up."

"But that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be!" Ginny hollered. "That crazy father of yours!"

"Not to mention that witch you call 'mother!'"

"I guess she's got your number all right!"

"I'm warning you, Ginny, I can't stand much more. I'm under too much of a strain!"

" You're under a strain!" Ginny laughed wildly. "Just who had that baby, I'd like to know?"

"You did!" Lester shot back. "And there's your answer to what's wrong with him. I should have married Fanny Gantner. My father always said so, and he knew women!"

"I'll say he did! He knew all the women in town!" Suddenly Ginny began to cry. "So that's what you're always thinking when you look at me like that! Fanny Gantner! Well!" Suddenly she spun around and ran from the room.

Lester sank into the chair at the kitchen table and ran a trembling hand over his face. "It's too much," he muttered. "It's too much for human flesh and bone to stand." He put his arms down on the table and leaned forward, resting his head on the backs of his hands. There was a momentary stillness which was almost instantly broken by a series of racking sobs from the bedroom. Then there was the sound of A.P.'s shrill voice.

"Rot!" the infant howled. "Drivel!" There was the sound of a book dropping to the floor. "I'm sick of this paltry fiction. If you two cases of arrested development can bestir yourselves from your childish bickerings, one of you go out and get me the financial news!"

Lester, even with his eyes closed, suddenly saw a great searing flash. He jerked back in his chair, got up and marched rigidly to the back door. Outside, he walked down the drive to the garage, got into the car and slammed the door.

It was more than too much. Obviously his wife considered him shifty and unreliable, and his child thought of him only as a blithering ninny only to be ordered about. Well, in that case, he knew what to do about it. He started the car, backed down the drive and started down the street.

The Hickentrope Hotel was the sort of establishment where the management was not chary of guests without luggage. Lester sat in one of the Hickentrope's uninspiring rooms, stared at the puce colored walls and thought dark thoughts, until it was time to turn out the lights, stare at the darkened walls and think puce thoughts.

He blamed himself somewhat for having left Ginny alone when she'd only barely risen from her sick bed, but swift on the heels of this recrimination came the thought that if she wasn't able to manage properly, A.P. would be only too happy to tell her how. Besides, she could always telephone her mother, even though Mrs. Feeney had sworn, on the day of their wedding, never to enter her daughter's house. Finally, Lester began to speculate on the probable consequences should A.P. and Mrs. Feeney be brought together under the same roof and, with the picture of this happy disaster in mind, he eventually dozed off.

In the morning, after the first barber's shave he had ever experienced, Lester made his way to the bank. He was dreary-eyed and low in his mind, but he managed to withstand the ironical congratulations of his co-workers with a fixed and aching grin. When Mr. Painter, the bank manager, asked him bluffly about the new heir, he had half a notion to tell him just to see the silly smile wilt from his vapid face.

Lester retired soberly to his window, arranged his cash drawer and got down to business. It was nearly noon, in the midst of the deposits of a neighborhood bakery shop, that Miss Sward, Mr. Painter's secretary, appeared at his shoulder to tell him that his wife was on the telephone and wished to speak to him on a matter of urgency.

With a feeling of triumph that Ginny had capitulated so rapidly and so easily, he completed the bakery's deposits, closed his window and made his way back to the office and the telephone. Keeping his tone distant but nonetheless magnanimous, he said hello.

"Lester!" Ginny's voice came tartly over the wire, "Who are all those people?"

This was not precisely the approach Lester had anticipated. For a moment he was taken aback.

"What people?" he asked finally.

"You know very well what people! All those people at home. Who are they, Lester?"

Lester felt a chill crawl up his spine. "At home?" he said. "What home?"

"It's no use playing dumb," Ginny snapped. "At our home."

"But aren't you there?" Lester asked. "I don't understand."

"Of course I'm not!" Ginny said hotly. "You know I'm not. I left yesterday when you went out to get A.P. the financial news. Now, stop hedging and...."

"But I didn't get the financial news," Lester said. "I went to a hotel last night."

" What! "

"Where are you?"

"I'm at mother's! Lester, you mean you haven't been home all night?"

"No. Haven't you?"

"I told you. I'm at mother's! Oh, Lester! who are all those people?"

"What people? Ginny, tell me what you're talking about!"

"We've got to get over there right away!" Ginny said shrilly. "I called the house just a little while ago—mother insisted, because of the baby—and this woman with a terribly sexy voice answered. She wanted to know with whom I wished to speak, and I could hear a lot of people talking—all sorts of people! Oh, Lester!"

"Oh, Lord!" Lester said. "I'll get over there right away. It might be the police!"

"They'll arrest us for child neglect, and everyone will know about it! Come by mother's and pick me up, Lester! Hurry!"

"Do I have to face your mother at a time like this?"

"I'll wait for you outside—on the sidewalk! Hurry, Lester, please!"

"All right!" Lester said frantically and hung up.

True to her word, Ginny, her overnight case in her hand, was waiting on the sidewalk when Lester pulled up at the curb. But so was her mother. Mrs. Feeney was a thin-nosed woman with high cheek bones and a tongue as swift and venomous as an adder's. For the moment, her naturally sallow complexion had become quite ruddy. Lester, pulling up the brake, closed his eyes briefly to steel himself. Mrs. Feeney jutted her head through the window.

"Hello, Mrs. Feeney," Lester said, opening his eyes reluctantly.

"Lester Holmes!" Mrs. Feeney screeched. "You ought to be horse whipped! Only a no good skunk like you would even think of deserting his wife and child like this! Only a low-down rat...."

"Mother!" Ginny cried, shoving Mrs. Feeney desperately back and pulling the door open. "Please, mother! There isn't time to bawl Lester out—not now!"

"I'm going to have my say!" Mrs. Feeney snarled determinedly. "I don't care!"

"Write me a letter!" Lester said, taking Ginny's arm and drawing her into the seat. "Just keep it clean enough to go through the mails!"

"Why you...." Mrs. Feeney yelped, clawing at the door. "You—viper! Come back here!"

But Lester had already slammed the door and pressed down on the gas. The coupe shot ahead down the street.

"Oh, Lester!" Ginny wailed, putting her case down on the floor. "Who would all those people be ?"

"I don't know," Lester said worriedly. "Whoever they are, I'll bet Mrs. Hilliard had something to do with it. I only hope it's not the authorities!"

The street and the drive were filled with cars when they arrived, and they were forced to park around on the other side of the block. Lester helped Ginny out of the car and together they hurried back to the house.

The lawn was practically covered with sober-looking gentlemen who stood about in knots, conversing in subdued voices. A small line had formed at the front door. Lester led the way through the crowd and up the steps to the door. He found himself faced by a slick-haired young man who headed the line.

"Not so fast there, pal," the young man said. "You've got to wait your turn around here. I'm next."

Ginny looked at the young man incredulously. "Next for what?" she asked.

"I'm from the Wee-wheat Cereal Company," the young man said. "I got a tip on this wonder brat, and the boss sent me over to get an endorsement and a picture."

Lester cast him a swift, unfriendly glance and turned aggressively to the door. He grasped the knob and shoved it open, drawing Ginny inside after him. They were only a step inside the living room, however, before they were greeted by a dark, sleek woman in a tailored black suit and jeweled glasses. She observed them with cool grey eyes, and she was carrying a pad and pencil.

"Yes?" she enquired in a tone that brooked no nonsense.

"What are all these people doing here?" Lester demanded angrily. "Who are they?"

The woman's gaze moved unconcernedly to the opening in the door and the men standing outside on the lawn. "Some of them," she announced, "are financiers and corporation lawyers, I believe. Others are advertising men and reporters. There are some scientists, too, and one minister." She smiled noncommittally. "If you would like to place your name on the list I can fit you in three days from now. That will be Friday afternoon at precisely two twenty-three. If you'll just state your name and the nature of your business...."

"The nature of my business!" Lester said. "What's going on here?"

"Matters of considerable importance," the woman said with sudden severity. "Now, if you've something you wish to take up with A.P...."

"I certainly have!" Lester said. "I have a lot of things to take up with A.P. I'm his father!" He turned to Ginny. "Close the door."

"Yes," Ginny said. She closed the door quickly and turned back. "And I'm A.P.'s mother."

"Oh," the woman said. For a moment she seemed uncertain as to just which attitude in her repertoire to assume. She made a small motion with her hand. "If you'll just wait here, I'll see if I can get you in."

" You wait here!" Lester said with sudden heat. "I'll get myself in. You just bet your garters I will!"

"Yes!" Ginny said and followed after Lester as he turned toward the hallway.

Crossing the room, they passed a young girl in a starched white blouse, sitting at the dining table busily typing names and addresses on a large stack of envelopes. She glanced up at them with no change of expression and went on working.

"Lester," Ginny said, touching Lester's sleeve, "I just want you to know that I'm not mad any more. Not at you."

"Me either," Lester said hastily and forged ahead.

At the door to the hallway, they were forced to give way to a lush and shapely blonde with very red lips. The girl wore a tight nurse's uniform and carried a bottle in her hand. She bustled past them and disappeared into the kitchen. They turned toward the nursery from which was coming the sound of many voices, underscored with a curious clicking noise.

Arriving at the nursery they stopped short at the threshold. The room was fairly glutted with people, all talking and moving about at the same time. In the far corner was a ticker tape machine, which accounted for the frenetic clicking sound. In the center of all this activity, A.P. looked on from his crib with an expression of enormous satisfaction. Somewhere a telephone rang and, except for the clicking of the machine, the room fell magically silent. A young man with thick-rimmed spectacles produced the phone from the floor, answered it, then brought it forward to A.P.'s crib.

"For you, A.P.," he said briskly. "Brandish out on the Coast."

A.P. nodded sagely and gave his attention to the phone. He listened briefly, pursing his lips.

"Now, just a minute there, Hank," he broke in, "you should be the last one to question my judgment after this morning. Central Mines paid off, didn't they? You're darned right they did, and handsomely, too. Now, I'm telling you, and I'm not going to repeat myself—put your gains on Spartan Steel. And remember, I'm in for twenty per cent for the tip. That's right. Goodbye."

He nodded to the young man who promptly removed the phone from his ear and took it away. At the doorway, Lester stepped resolutely into the room.

"Now, just a second!" he said loudly. "What do all you people think you're doing in my house?"

All eyes swiveled in his direction. A.P. looked around and frowned slightly, as might an ancient warrior who had discovered that he had been riveted into his armor with a gnat.

"Oh, so you're back," he said mildly.

"How did all these people get in here?" Lester demanded.

"Well," A.P. said without rancor, "when I discovered I'd been abandoned, I began to yell and, one by one, they began to show up."

"But who are they?" Ginny asked weakly.

"My staff," A.P. said grandly. "Variously—there's no need for names—they are my private secretary, my social secretary, my publicist, my business manager, my biographer, my Washington representative, my personal news compiler and my lawyer. You no doubt ran into my receptionist, my typist, my clerk and my dietician on your way in."

"We missed your clerk," Lester said shortly. "Just what do you and your staff think you're up to?"

"It's not what we think we're up to," A.P. said smoothly, "it's what we are up to. Already, since just this morning, I have become the financial advisor to the top ten industrialists in the nation, and the President. By evening, I expect I will also be the world's foremost news analyst, financier and political manipulator. I am even considering an offer to appear in motion pictures, though I'm inclined to regard any venture in the entertainment field as a trifle facetious for someone who expects to take over the management of the nation—and perhaps even the world."

"A dictator!" Ginny cried thinly. "He's turned into a dictator!"

"Oh, not quite yet," A.P. said. "That takes a little time—a few weeks, anyway."

"No!" Lester gasped.

"No?" A.P. enquired. "What do you mean, no?"

"You can't do this," Lester said. "It isn't right. I won't be the father of a dictator."

A.P. sighed patiently. "I imagined you'd take some such prosaic attitude," he murmured. "However, you'll get used to it in time. Besides, I might point out that you're in no position to object. I can get you on a child abandonment charge any time I want to." He smiled significantly. "And now that you're here, it's just as well. I need a little ready security to balance out a deal I'm putting through. I'd be much obliged if you'd just sign over a deed to me for the house and the car. It won't come to much, I know, but it'll see me through."

"What!" Lester cried.

"Of course you'll have to sign them into the name of my business manager since I'm under age," A.P. explained, "but it will all be in good order."

"Now, look here, you!" Lester said. "Your mother and I have scrimped and saved for these things, and...."

"Oh, don't worry," A.P. broke in. "You'll get yours. In fact I mean to retire you and mother within the next few days with a very tidy little allowance. I'm picking up a farm in Connecticut on a foreclosure, and you and mother can move up there—rent free—where you won't worry so much. So you see...."

The young man with the glasses stepped forward, a legal document extended in his hand.

Lester backed away. "I won't do it!" he said. "I won't sign anything!"

A shocked silence fell over the room. It was as though a comrade had stepped up to Malenkov and politely explained that he refused to share his potato crop with the proletariat. A.P. narrowed his eyes thoughtfully.

"In that case," he said slowly, "I suppose I will have to report you to the authorities for child neglect. You realize, of course, there will be unprecedented publicity. By noon tomorrow I expect to have world-wide coverage. You will be social lepers wherever you go."

"Oh dear!" Ginny whimpered. "What'll we do, Lester?"

"You have exactly thirty seconds to make up your mind," A.P. said. "I have to get on with business."

At this tense moment, the uniformed blonde entered the room with a fresh bottle in her hand. She proceeded to the crib and leaned down to A.P.

"Your new formula, sir," she said throatily.

Up to this point, Ginny had been a mere observer, looking on with dazed bewilderment. Now, however, at the sight of the sultry blonde, a glint that looked like militant and usurped maternalism flared in her eyes; something deep and primitive came swiftly to the surface. With a small, angry cry she strode forward and snatched the bottle from the blonde's hand.

"At least I can feed my own baby!" she cried, "even if he is a monster!" Leaning down to the crib, she picked A.P. up and settled him into the crook of her arm. "This is a lot of nonsense! All of it!"

"Put me down!" A.P. commanded with displaced dignity. "Let go of me!"

The blonde bristled with professional outrage. "Give me that child!" she snapped. She took hold of A.P.'s arm. "I'm being paid a thousand dollars a month to administer his feedings, and I'm going to earn my money!"

"You're overpaid!" Ginny said hotly, hugging A.P. to herself. "A thousand dollars to feed a baby!"

"Put me down!" A.P. wheezed as the nurse made another grab for him. "Both of you!"

The telephone rang sharply, and the young man ran to it.

"You be quiet!" Ginny told A.P. sternly. "Don't talk back to your mother!"

"That's right!" Lester said, striding forward. "Or your father, either!"

"I'll report you!" A.P. yelled. "I'll tell the authorities!"

The nurse pulled at A.P. violently. "Give him to me!" she cried.

"Put me down this instant!" A.P. insisted. "I demand it!"

Lester shook a finger under the nurse's nose. "You let go of him!" he thundered. He took hold of A.P.'s chubby leg. "He's ours!"

The young man darted forward frantically with the phone. "It's Evans of Tantamount Publications!" he yelled above the uproar. He grasped A.P.'s head and jammed it next to the receiver. "He's ready to close the deal!"

"Put me down!" A.P. shrilled into the phone. "Let go of me, all of you!"

"Give him back!" Ginny hissed at the nurse. "You get out of my house!"

"He's my responsibility, I guess," the nurse shot back, pulling harder. "I'm getting paid for this!"

"Not to rip my leg off, you're not!" A.P. screamed.

"Evans wants an answer, A.P.!" The young man hollered. "Say something!"

While this murky atmosphere seethed and thickened inside the nursery, the sun shone brightly outside, and the distant heavens were blue. They were blue, that is, except to a single and very remote blemish. In the timeless and vapored regions of Heaven's own dispatching department there lay a distinct cloudiness that emanated mainly from the dismayed faces of those two enterprising and well-intentioned angels, Mac and Haywood.

"Good grief, Haywood!" Mac gasped, gazing down hauntedly through the mists of time, "they're yankin' the little bugger apart! It's disgraceful!"

"Yes, I know," Haywood said worriedly. "The whole affair is disgraceful. I shudder to think what will happen to us when it comes to light in the higher echelons."

"We only wanted to do something nice," Mac said sadly. "How was we to know the kid was going to be a stinkin' genius?"

"The unknown element," Haywood sighed heavily. "The Higher Source. Even angels can be wrong when they take authority into their own hands."

"Who'd have thought a little baby could turn out to be such a rat?"

"He's not a rat," Haywood said. "It's just that too much knowledge was given to him all at once and he didn't know how to use it properly. It only proves again that humans can only learn through experience. We've made a tragic mistake, Mac."

"And it's getting tragic-er by the minute," Mac said hollowly. "If that kid gets hold of the world.... What'll they do to us, Haywood?"

"I hesitate to even put it into words," Haywood murmured.

"The way that kid's organized," Mac said, "he's a cinch to be a world-wide scandal by sunset. Ain't there nothing we can do to stop it?"

"I've been trying to think of something," Haywood said.

Mac looked at him hopefully. "Give it everything you've got, Haywood," he said. "You've got the brains."

Slowly, Haywood began to drum his fingers on a nearby cloud bank....

At the focal point of this heavenly concern, A.P. finally managed to raise his voice above the angry din that raged about him. His small voice piped like a penny whistle.

"Stop clutching at me!" he shrieked. "My diaper is coming loose!"

The clutching however, did not stop, nor did the yanking, hauling, and pulling. Slowly, the diaper slithered loose from A.P.'s pudgy mid-section and dropped to the floor. The future dictator of the world blushed furiously.

"Stop!" he yelled. "For heaven's sake!"

After a moment, the fact that they had literally snatched the poor infant naked finally penetrated the minds of the struggling group. There was a sudden shame-faced silence.

"Well!" A.P. said indignantly, "the least you could do is turn me over. Now, unhand me, the lot of you, before I really lose my temper!"

Under this threat, all concerned acted almost as though under a hypnotic command. Simultaneously, everyone withdrew their support. All hands, so to speak, returned from active combat. The obvious, though unforeseen, result followed swiftly and shockingly; A.P. dropped to the floor, meeting its polished surface with the back of his head and a dull, ominous thud.

There was a sudden communal gasp, then horrified silence. Ginny was the first to recover her voice.

"He's dropped!" she said in a ghastly whisper. "On his head!"

"He told us to let go of him," the nurse said.

"He didn't mean all of us," a distinguished grey-haired gentleman said. "I should have realized it."

"It was as though my hand was taken away," Lester said wonderingly.

Ginny stooped down and took A.P. gently in her arms. As she straightened, the small form stirred and opened his eyes.

"He's all right, isn't he?" a voice asked hopefully.

Slowly, A.P.'s head lolled heavily to the side. In his eyes there was a totally new expression, or, rather, a new lack of expression. The young man with the glasses held the telephone forward.

"Evans is still waiting for an answer, A.P.," he said.

A.P.'s gaze seemed to penetrate the telephone and go beyond it. His lips parted with a slack toothlessness that had not before been apparent. Suddenly he began to cry, and his voice raised in a thin, distinctly babyish howl.

"Oh, no!" the young man whispered, and the telephone slowly slipped from his hand.

Six years later, in another house and another suburb, where there was no Mrs. Hilliard next door and their child was known merely as 'little Freddie Holmes,' Lester and Ginny lived in quiet obscurity. If there were those in the world who remembered the formidable A.P. they never mentioned it publicly, presumably loathe to admit that they had ever placed themselves at the command of a mere infant. Now, shifting uneasily in his chair, Lester looked up worriedly as Ginny returned from the hallway. He watched as she moved toward him and placed a hand gently on his shoulder.

"It's all right," Ginny said. "He's only listening to the music on the radio."

"That's good," Lester sighed. "He can't learn much from that."

"We're both far too edgy about Freddie, dear," Ginny said. "After all, he really hasn't shown any signs of dominating—not really since the beginning."

"I know," Lester said, "but what about this?" He held up the offending class paper. "I still think this tendency to get 'excellents' is dangerous."

"I know, dear," Ginny said, "but the doctors all said he was perfectly normal for a child of his intelligence." She patted his shoulder consolingly. "He's just bright, that's all, and we mustn't worry about it so much."

Lester nodded wearily. "I suppose not," he said. With a sigh, he dropped the paper to the floor.

Outside, in the dark and distant heavens, ever so faintly, the sigh was echoed in duplicate.