a label on it. The upshot is that he’s going to have trouble learning to speak, adjusting to human society. Kids raised in isolation by uncaring or handicapped parents often end up irreversible retardates. It’s entirely possible—”
“Where do you get all these words, Major Hollis?”
“Ma’am?”
“John-John’s mother wasn’t an uncaring parent. Except for her handicap—her muteness—she took beautiful care of this child.”
“She did, did she? Then why didn’t she try to expose him to people who didn’t share her handicap?”
“What do you think she finally did? She gave John-John to Pamela Blanchard, one of his father’s people. It wasn’t hard to see that the folks in Santa Clara enjoyed certain material advantages over her own circumstances. That was pretty damn brave, if you ask me, and Hugo and I would like to honor that bravery by . . . by adopting him.”
“Going into any family situation is going to be a big change for him,” Hollis appealed to Colonel Unger, who did not reply.
“He’s already made the transition,” Jeannette declared. “He doesn’t pee on the drapes or tear live chickens apart with his bare hands. As for learning to talk, he’ll make it. He’s not a year yet—you can tell by looking at him—but he’s already walking. Most kids his age aren’t even thinking about walking. Anna didn’t begin until she was a year.”
Nudged by the back of the coaster chair, the photograph of President Kennedy toppled to the rug. With the toes of his brand-new Buster Brown shoes overlapping the cheap gilt frame, John-John tried to prise the commander in chief off the carpet. Colonel Unger, mulling certain troublesome legalities, ignored his struggle.
“What do you suggest?” he asked Hollis.
“There’s no official alternative to yielding him to the Spanish authorities.”
“What would happen then?”
“Into a charitable institution of some kind, I’d imagine, probably a church-run orphanage.”
“With what chances for adoption?”
“As I said, the kid has a Willie Mays profile. Spanish girls date Negro enlisted men, but usually—if you want my opinion—in the hope of bagging American husbands and ending up in the Land of Levis and Lincoln Continentals. I don’t really see the denizens of Seville banging on the orphanage door for the right to take John-John home.”
“He belongs with his mother,” Colonel Unger observed.
“Who has completely disappeared, sir.”
“Why didn’t you arrest her when you knew where she lived and had her dead to rights on that black-marketeering business?”
“Miss Ocampo was really just small potatoes, sir. We wanted the people who were buying from her, then reselling the stuff at higher prices in other parts of the country.”
“Did you get them?”
“No, sir. Not yet, that is.” Hollis looked uneasy.
“Which brings us back to square one. Still, the boy’s at least partly one of ours and the Monegals want to give him a home.”
As if reporting a vivid daydream, Hugo said, “If we had a birth certificate showin’ that John-John was delivered at the clinic in San Pablo, why, it would be easy to take him stateside with us this November. Very easy.”
“That’s something we could do, a birth certificate,” said Hollis.
“Why don’t you do it, then?”
“We will,” Hollis said, gesturing abruptly at the Monegals with his sunglasses. “Of course, they’ll still appear to be toting someone else’s kid out of the country.”
“My hair is as curly as his,” said Hugo Monegal, “and my eyes are as black. A mestizo somewhere in the family past showin’ up in this niño. Who would challenge my fathership of John-John, my own wife’s baby?” He smiled shyly at Jeannette. “This is a virtuous woman, Major Hollis.”
“God,” murmured the virtuous woman.
Chapter Eight
Aubade
AFTER MY RUN-IN WITH THE MINID SENTRY, I walked back toward Lake Kiboko, venturing quite often into the savannah bordering the forest strip to the south. Other bands of habilines must be about, I told myself, as well as other specimens of A. robustus and surely a few of their ancestral cousins, A. africanus. It was impossible to know in what proportions to expect these three primate species to be co-inhabiting the landscape, and because I saw only gazelles, antelopes, zebras, and a distant pride of lions, I was not likely to solve this problem in a single afternoon.
My transcordion did not work, and in the event of its failure Kaprow had advised me to return to the omnibus and signal my well-being by commanding the Backstep Scaffold to retract. However, I could not command what I could not see, and although at the lakeside the sun was dropping toward the violet ramparts of the western