Free The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg Page B

Deveney was gaping idiotically at him. Neither one seemed in any hurry to look after the child-the child that this vast and incomprehensible mass of machinery had just ripped out of some unthinkably ancient era.
    Didn't these fool men care?
    Miss Fellowes went forward on her own authority, around an elbow-bend corridor that led to the room with the bed in it.
    The child was in there. A boy. A very small boy, very dirty, very scrawny, very strange-looking.
    He might have been three years old-certainly not very much more than that. He was naked. His small dirt-smeared chest was heaving raggedly. All around him lay an untidy sprawl of loose earth and pebbles and torn-off tufts of coarse grass, all of it strewn around the floor in a broad arc as though a bushel load of landfill had been casually upended in the room. The rich smell of soil rose up from it, and a touch of something fetid, besides. Miss Fellowes saw some large dark ants and what might have been a couple of furry little spiders moving around slowly near the boy's bare brown feet.
    Hoskins followed her horrified glance and said with a sharp thrust of annoyance in his voice, "You can't pluck a boy cleanly out of time, Miss Fellowes. We had to take some of the surroundings with him for safety's sake. Or would you have preferred to have him arrive here minus one of his legs or with only half a head?"
    "Please!" said Miss Fellowes, in an agony of revulsion. "Are we just going to stand here? The poor child is frightened. And it's filthy."
    Which was an understatement. She had never seen a child that was quite so disreputable-looking. Perhaps he hadn't been washed in weeks; perhaps not ever. He reeked. His entire body was smeared with a thick layer of encrusted grime and grease, and there was a long scratch on his thigh that looked red and sore, possibly infected.
    "Here, let me have a look at you-" Hoskins muttered, stepping forward in a gingerly way.
    The boy hunched low, pulling his elbows in against his sides and drawing his head down close against his shoulders in what seemed like an innate defensive stance, and backed away rapidly. His eyes were fiery with fear and defiance. When he reached the far side of the room and could go no farther, he lifted his upper lip and snarled in a hissing fashion, like a cat. It was a frightening sound- savage, bestial, ferocious.
    Miss Fellowes felt a cold shock wave sweeping through her nervous system. This was her new charge? This? This little-animal?
    It was as bad as she had feared.
    Worse. Worse. He hardly seemed human. He was hideous; he was a little monster.
    Hoskins reached out swiftly and seized both of the child's wrists, pulling his arms inward across his body and crossing them over his belly. In the same motion Hoskins lifted him, kicking and writhing and screaming, from the floor.
    Ghastly banshee howls came forth from the child. They erupted from the depths of his body with astonishing force. Miss Fellowes realized that she was trembling, and forced herself to be calm. It was a frightful noise, ear-splitting, repellent, sub-human. It was almost impossible to believe that a boy so small could make sounds so horrendous.
    Hoskins held him at arms' length in midair and looked around in obvious distress at Miss Fellowes.
    "Yes, hold him, now. Don't put him down. Watch out for his toenails when he kicks. Take him into the bathroom and let's clean him up. That's what he needs before anything else, a good warm bath."
    Hoskins nodded. Small as the child was, it didn't seem to be any easy matter to keep him pinioned that way. A grown man and a little child: but there was tremendous wild strength in the child, small as he was. And beyond any doubt he thought that he was fighting for his life.
    "Fill that tub, Miss Fellowes!" Hoskins yelled. "Fill it fast!"
    There were other people inside the Stasis area now. In the midst of the confusion Miss Fellowes recognized her three assistants and singled them out.
    "You, Elliott-get the water