Part 1

BLESSED EVENT

By Charles F. Myers

He was the millionth quadrillionth baby to be born on Earth. Naturally the event had to be celebrated. And it was--in a devastating manner!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy February 1954 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

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!"