I Sing the Body Electric Read Online Free PDF Page B

quietly. "No, no, she's fine. It's the baby."
    "The baby's dead, then."
    "The baby's alive, too, but—drink the rest of that drink and come along after me. Something's happened."
    Yes, indeed, something had happened. The "something" that had happened had brought the entire hospital out into the corridors. People were going and coming from one room to another. As Peter Horn was led through a hallway where attendants in white uniforms were standing around peering into each other's faces and whispering, he became quite ill.
    "Hey, looky looky!" "The child of Peter Horn! Incredible!"
    They entered a small clean room. There was a crowd in the room, looking down at a low table. There was something on the table.
    A small blue pyramid.
    "Why've you brought me here?" said Horn, turning to the doctor.
    The small blue pyramid moved. It began to cry.
    Peter Horn pushed forward and looked down wildly. He was very white and he was breathing rapidly. "You don't mean that's it?"
    The doctor named Wolcott nodded.
    The blue pyramid had six blue snakelike appendages and three eyes that blinked from the tips of projecting structures.
    Horn didn't move.
    "It weighs seven pounds, eight ounces," someone said.
    Horn thought to himself, they're kidding me. This is some joke. Charlie Ruscoll is behind all this. He'll pop in a door any moment and cry "April Fool!" and everybody'll laugh. That's not my child. Oh, horrible! They're kidding me.
    Horn stood there, and the sweat rolled down his face.
    "Get me away from here." Horn turned and his hands were opening and closing without purpose, his eyes were flickering.
    Wolcott held his elbow, talking calmly. "This is your child. Understand that, Mr. Horn."
    "No. No, it's not." His mind wouldn't touch the thing. "It's a nightmare. Destroy it !"
    "You can't kill a human being."
    "Human?" Horn blinked tears. "That's not human! That's a crime against God!"
    The doctor went on, quickly. "We've examined this—child—and we've decided that it is not a mutant, a result of gene destruction or rearrangement. It's not a freak. Nor is it sick. Please listen to everything I say to you."
    Horn stared at the wall, his eyes wide and sick. He swayed. The doctor talked distantly, with assurance.
    "The child was somehow affected by the birth pressure. There was a dimensional distructure caused by the simultaneous short-circuitings and malfunctionings of the new birth and hypnosis machines. Well, anyway," the doctor ended lamely, "your baby was born into—another dimension."
    Horn did not even nod. He stood there, waiting.
    Dr. Wolcott made it emphatic. "Your child is alive, well, and happy. It is lying there, on the table. But because it was born into another dimension it has a shape alien to us. Our eyes, adjusted to a three-dimensional concept, cannot recognize it as a baby. But it is. Underneath that camouflage, the strange pyramidal shape and appendages, it is your child."
    Horn closed his mouth and shut his eyes. "Can. I have a drink?"
    "Certainly." A drink was thrust into Horn's hands.
    "Now, let me just sit down, sit down somewhere a moment." Horn sank wearily into a chair. It was coming clear. Everything shifted slowly into place. It was his child, no matter what. He shuddered. No matter how horrible it looked, it was his first child.
    At last he looked up and tried to see the doctor. "What'll we tell Polly?" His voice was hardly a whisper.
    "We'll work that out this morning, as soon as you feel up to it."
    "What happens after that? Is there any way to—change it back?"
    "We'll try. That is, if you give us permission to try. After all, it's your child. You can do anything with him you want to do."
    "Him?" Horn laughed ironically, shutting his eyes. "How do you know it's a him?" He sank down into darkness. His ears roared.
    Wolcott was visibly upset. "Why, we—that is—well, we don't know, for sure."
    Horn drank more of his drink. "What if you can't change him back?"
    "I realize what a shock it is to you, Mr.