The Best of C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner by Henry Kuttner

Author:Henry Kuttner [Kuttner, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781626818989
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2015-12-03T21:00:00+00:00

Emma grew tired of the abacus and went in search of Scott. She couldn’t find him, even in his room, but once there the contents of the closet intrigued her. She discovered the box. It contained treasure-trove—a doll, which Scott had already noticed but discarded with a sneer. Squealing, Emma brought the doll downstairs, squatted in the middle of the floor and began to take it apart.

“Darling! What’s that?”

“Mr. Bear!”

Obviously it wasn’t Mr. Bear, who was blind, earless, but comforting in his soft fatness. But all dolls were named Mr. Bear to Emma.

Jane Paradine hesitated. “Did you take that from some other little girl?”

“I didn’t. She’s mine.”

Scott came out from his hiding place, thrusting the cube into his pocket. “Uh—that’s from Uncle Harry.”

“Did Uncle Harry give that to you, Emma?”

“He gave it to me for Emma,” Scott put in hastily, adding another stone to his foundation of deceit. “Last Sunday.”

“You’ll break it, dear.”

Emma brought the doll to her mother. “She comes apart. See?”

“Oh? It—ugh!” Jane sucked in her breath. Paradine looked up quickly.

“What’s up?”

She brought the doll over to him, hesitated and then went into the dining room, giving Paradine a significant glance. He followed, closing the door. Jane had already placed the doll on the cleared table.

“This isn’t very nice is it, Denny?”

“Hm-m-m.” It was rather unpleasant, at first glance. One might have expected an anatomical dummy in a medical school, but a child’s doll …

The thing came apart in sections—skin, muscles, organs—miniature but quite perfect, as far as Paradine could see. He was interested. “Dunno. Such things haven’t the same connotations to a kid.”

“Look at that liver. Is it a liver?”

“Sure. Say, I—this is funny.”

“What?”

“It isn’t anatomically perfect, after all.” Paradine pulled up a chair. “The digestive tract’s too short. No large intestine. No appendix, either.”

“Should Emma have a thing like this?”

“I wouldn’t mind having it myself,” Paradine said. “Where on earth did Harry pick it up? No, I don’t see any harm in it. Adults are conditioned to react unpleasantly to innards. Kids don’t. They figure they’re solid inside, like a potato. Emma can get a sound working knowledge of physiology from this doll.”

“But what are those? Nerves?”

“No, these are the nerves. Arteries here; veins here. Funny sort of aorta.” Paradine looked baffled. “That—what’s Latin for network, anyway, huh? Rita? Rata?”

“Rales,” Jane suggested at random.

“That’s a sort of breathing,” Paradine said crushingly. “I can’t figure out what this luminous network of stuff is. It goes all through the body, like nerves.”

“Blood.”

“Nope. Not circulatory, not neural. Funny! It seems to be hooked up with the lungs.”

They became engrossed, puzzling over the strange doll. It was made with remarkable perfection of detail, and that in itself was strange, in view of the physiological variation from the norm. “Wait’ll I get that Gould,” Paradine said, and presently was comparing the doll with anatomical charts. He learned little, except to increase his bafflement.

But it was more fun than a jigsaw puzzle.

Meanwhile, in the adjoining room, Emma was sliding the beads to and fro in the abacus.

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