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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

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!





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