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he was empty. Not real. The 'Nobody-
there' feeling was as acute as ever to all the small, keen, perceptive minds
that saw him as he was.
Chapter 3. Sated Eater
LATER, at bedtime, only Charles wanted to talk about the matter. It seemed to
Jane that Beatrice had grown up a little since the early afternoon. Bobby was
reading 'The Jungle Book,' or pretending to, with much pleased admiration of
the pictures showing Shere Khan, the tiger. Emily had turned her face to the
wall and was pretending to be asleep.
'Aunt Bessie called me,' Jane told her, sensing a faint reproach.
'I tried as soon as I could to get away from her. She wanted to try that
collar thing on me.'
'Oh.' The apology was accepted. But Beatrice still refused to talk. Jane went
over to Emily's bed and put her arm around the little girl.
'Mad at me, Emily?'
'No.'
'You are, though. I couldn't help it, honey.'
'It was all right,' Emily said, 'I didn't care.'
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'All bright and shiny,' Charles said sleepily. 'Like a Christmas tree.'
Beatrice whirled on him. 'Shut up!' she cried 'Shut up, Charles! Shut up, shut
up, shut up \'
Aunt Bessie put her head into the room.
'What's the matter, children?' she asked.
'Nothing, Auntie,' Beatrice said. 'We were just playing.'
Fed, temporarily satiated, it lay torpid in its curious nest. The house was
silent, the occupants asleep. Even the Wrong Uncle slept, for Ruggedo was a
good mimic.
The Wrong Uncle was not a phantasm, not a mere projection of Ruggedo. As an
amoeba extends a pseudopod toward food, so Ruggedo had extended and created
the Wrong Uncle. But there the parallel stopped. For die Wrong Uncle was not
an elastic extension diat could be witiidrawn at will.
Rather, he-it-was a permanent limb, as a man's arm is. From the brain through
the neural system die message goes, and the arm stretches out, the fingers
constrict-and there is food in the hand's grip.
But Ruggedo's extension was less limited. It was not permanently bound bv
rieid natural laws of rr>c,ttpr. An arm may be painted black. And the Wrong
Uncle looked and acted human, except to clear immature eyes.
There were rules to be followed, even by Ruggedo. The natural laws of a world
could bind it to a certain extent. There were cycles. The life-span of a
moth-caterpillar is run by cycles, and before it can spin its cocoon and
metamorphose, it must eat- eat-eat. Not until the time of change had come can
it evade its current incarnation. Nor could Ruggedo change, now, until die end
of its cycle had come. Then there would be another metamorphosis, as there had
already, in the unthinkable eternity of its past, been a million curious
mutations.
But, at present, it was bound by the rules of its current cycle. The extension
could not be witiidrawn. And the Wrong Uncle was a part of it, and it was a
part of the Wrong Uncle.
The Scoodler's body and the Scoodler's head. Through the dark house beat the
unceasing, drowsy waves of satiety-slowly, imperceptibly quickening toward
that nervous pulse of avidity that always came after the processes of
indigestion and digestion had been completed.
Aunt Bessie rolled over and began to snore. In another room, the Wrong Uncle,
without waking, turned on his Back and also snored.
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The talent of protective mimicry was well developed. ...
It was afternoon again, though by only half an hour, and the pulse in the
house had changed subtly in tempo and mood.
'If we're going up to Santa Barbara,' Grandmother Keaton had said, 'I'm going
to take the children down to the dentist today. Their teedi want cleaning, and
it's hard enough to get an appointment with Dr. Hover for one youngster, not
to mention four. Jane, your mother wrote me you'd been to the dentist a month
ago, so you needn't go.'
After that the trouble hung unspoken over die children. But no one mentioned
it. Only, as
Grandmother Keaton herded the kids out on the porch, Beatrice waited till
last. Jane was in the doorway, watching. Beatrice reached behind her without
looking, fumbled, found Jane's hand, and squeezed it hard. That was all.
But the responsibility had been passed on. No words had been needed. Beatrice
had said plainly that it was Jane's job now. It was her responsibility.
She dared not delay too long. She was too vividly aware of the rising tide of
depression affecting the adults. Ruggedo was getting hungry again.
She watched her cousins till they vanished beneath the pepper-trees, and the
distant rumble of the trolley put a period to any hope of their return. After
that, Jane walked to the butcher shop, and bought two pounds of meat. She
drank a soda. Then she came back to the house.
She felt the pulse beating out faster.
She got a tin pan from the kitchen and put the meat on it, and slipped up to
die bathroom. It was hard to reach the attic with her burden and widiout help,
but she did it. In the warm stillness beneath the roof she stood waiting,
half-hoping to hear Aunt Bessie call again and relieve her of this duty. But
no voice came.
The simple mechanics of what she had to do were sufficiently prosaic to keep
fear at a little distance. Besides, she was scarcely nine. And it was not dark
in the attic.
She walked along the rafter, balancing, till she came to the plank bridge. She
felt its resilient vibration underfoot.
'One, two, buckle my shoe, Three, four, knock at the door, Five, six, pick up
sticks, Seven, eight-
-'
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