I Sing the Body Electric

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Book: Read I Sing the Body Electric for Free Online
Authors: Ray Bradbury
checkup. Here's his formula. We're working on several solutions now, Mrs. Horn. We should have some results for you by the end of the year. I don't want to say anything definite, but I have reason to believe we'll pull that boy right out of the fourth dimension, like a rabbit out of a hat."
    The doctor was mildly surprised and pleased when Polly Horn kissed him, then and there.
    Pete Horn took the copter home over the smooth rolling greens of Griffith. From time to time he looked at the pyramid lying in Polly's arms. She was making cooing noises at it, it was replying in approximately the same way.
    "I wonder," said Polly.
    "What?"
    "How do we look to it?" asked his wife.
    "I asked Wolcott about that. He said we probably look funny to him, also. He's in one dimension, we're in another."
    "You mean we don't look like men and women to him?"
    "If we could see ourselves, no. But remember, the baby knows nothing of men or women. To the baby whatever shape we're in, we are natural. It's accustomed to seeing us shaped like cubes or squares or pyramids, as it sees us from its separate dimension. The baby's had no other experience, no other norm with which to compare what it sees. We are its norm. On the other hand, the baby seems weird to us because we compare it to our accustomed shapes and sizes."
    "Yes, I see. I see."
    Baby was conscious of movement. One White Cube held him in warm appendages. Another White Cube sat further over, within an oblong of purple. The oblong moved in the air over a vast bright plain of pyramids, hexagons, oblongs, pillars, bubbles, and multi-colored cubes.
    One White Cube made a whistling noise. The other White Cube replied with a whistling. The White Cube that held him shifted about. Baby watched die two White Cubes, and watched the fleeing world outside the traveling bubble.
    Baby felt—sleepy. Baby closed his eyes, settled his pyramidal youngness upon the lap of the White Cube, and made faint little noises … 
    "He's asleep," said Polly Horn.
    Summer came, Peter Horn himself was busy with his export-import business. But he made certain he was home every night. Polly was all right during the day, but, at night, when she had to be alone with the child, she got to smoking too much, and one night he found her passed out on the davenport, an empty sherry bottle on the table beside her. From then on, he took care of the child himself nights. When it cried it made a weird whistling noise, like some jungle animal lost and wailing. It wasn't the sound of a child.
    Peter Horn had the nursery soundproofed.
    "So your wife won't hear your baby crying?" asked the workman.
    "Yes," said Peter Horn. "So she won't hear."
    They had few visitors. They were afraid that someone might stumble on Py, dear sweet pyramid little Py.
    "What's that noise?" asked a visitor one evening, over his cocktail. "Sounds like some sort of bird. You didn't tell me you had an aviary. Peter?"
    "Oh, yes," said Horn, closing the nursery door. "Have another drink. Let's drink, everyone."
    It was like having a dog or a cat in the house. At least that's how Polly looked upon it. Peter Horn watched her and observed exactly how she talked and petted the small Py. It was Py this and Py that, but somehow with some reserve, and sometimes she would look around the room and touch herself, and her hands would clench, and she would look lost and afraid, as if she were waiting for someone to arrive.
    In September, Polly reported to her husband: "He can say Father. Yes he can. Come on, Py. Say, Father!"
    She held the blue warm pyramid up.
    "Wheelly," whistled the tittle warm blue pyramid.
    "Again," repeated Polly.
    "Wheelly!" whistled the pyramid.
    "For God's sake, stop!" said Pete Horn. He took the child from her and put it in the nursery where it whistled over and over that name, that name, that name. Horn came out and poured himself a stiff drink. Polly was laughing quietly.
    "Isn't that terrific?" she said. "Even his voice is in the fourth dimension.

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