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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30014 ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+                NATIVE SON
+
+                   _By
+                T. D. Hamm_
+
+
+     Tommy hated Earth, knowing his mother
+ might go home to Mars without him. Worse,
+ would a robot secretly take her place?...
+
+
+Tommy Benton, on his first visit to Earth, found the long-anticipated
+wonders of twenty-first-century New York thrilling the first week,
+boring and unhappy the second week, and at the end of the third he was
+definitely ready to go home.
+
+The never-ending racket of traffic was torture to his abnormally acute
+ears. Increased atmospheric pressure did funny things to his chest and
+stomach. And quick and sure-footed on Mars, he struggled constantly
+against the heavy gravity that made all his movements clumsy and
+uncoordinated.
+
+The endless canyons of towering buildings, with their connecting
+Skywalks, oppressed and smothered him. Remembering the endless vistas of
+_rabbara_ fields beside a canal that was like an inland sea,
+homesickness flooded over him.
+
+He hated the people who stared at him with either open or hidden
+amusement. His Aunt Bee, for instance, who looked him up and down with
+frank disapproval and said loudly, "For Heavens sake, Helen! Take him to
+a _good_ tailor and get those bones covered up!"
+
+Was it his fault he was six inches taller than Terran boys his age, and
+had long, thin arms and legs? Or that his chest was abnormally developed
+to compensate for an oxygen-thin atmosphere? I'd like to see _her_, he
+thought fiercely, out on the Flatlands; she'd be gasping like a
+canal-fish out of water.
+
+Even his parents, happily riding the social merry-go-round of Terra,
+after eleven years in the Martian flatlands, didn't seem to understand
+how he felt.
+
+"Don't you _like_ Earth, Tommy?" queried his mother anxiously.
+
+"Oh ... it's all right, I guess."
+
+"... 'A nice place to visit' ..." said his father sardonically.
+
+"... 'but I wouldn't live here if they gave me the place!' ..." said his
+mother, and they both burst out laughing for no reason that Tommy could
+see. Of course, they did that lots of times at home and Tommy laughed
+with them just for the warm, secure feeling of belonging. This time he
+didn't feel like laughing.
+
+"When _are_ we going home?" he repeated stubbornly.
+
+His father pulled Tommy over in the crook of his arm and said gently,
+"Well, not right away, son. As a matter of fact, how would you like to
+stay here and go to school?"
+
+Tommy pulled away and looked at him incredulously.
+
+"I've _been_ to school!"
+
+"Well, yes," admitted his father. "But only to the colony schools. You
+don't want to grow up and be an ignorant Martian sandfoot all your life,
+do you?"
+
+"Yes, I do! I _want_ to be a Martian sandfoot. And I want to go home
+where people don't _look_ at me and say, 'So this is your little
+Martian!'"
+
+Benton, Sr., put his arm around Tommy's stiffly resistant shoulders.
+"Look here, old man," he said persuasively. "I thought you wanted to be
+a space engineer. You can't do that without an education you know. And
+your Aunt Bee will take good care of you."
+
+Tommy faced him stubbornly. "I don't want to be any old spaceman. I want
+to be a sandfoot like old Pete. And I want to go home."
+
+Helen bit back a smile at the two earnest, stubborn faces so
+ridiculously alike, and hastened to avert the gathering storm.
+
+"Now look, fellows. Tommy's career doesn't have to be decided in the
+next five minutes ... after all, he's only ten. He can make up his mind
+later on if he wants to be an engineer or a _rabbara_ farmer. Right now,
+he's going to stay here and go to school ... _and_ I'm staying with
+him."
+
+Resolutely avoiding both crestfallen faces, Helen, having shepherded
+Tommy to bed, returned to the living room acutely conscious of Big Tom's
+bleak, hurt gaze at her back.
+
+"Helen, you're going to make a sissy out of the boy," he said at last.
+"There isn't any reason why he can't stay here at home with Bee."
+
+Helen turned to face him.
+
+"Earth _isn't_ home to Tommy. And your sister Bee told him he ought to
+be out playing football with the boys instead of hanging around the
+house."
+
+"But she knows the doctor said he'd have to take it easy for a year till
+he was accustomed to the change in gravity and air-pressure," he
+answered incredulously.
+
+"Exactly. She also asked me," Helen went on grimly, "if I thought he'd
+be less of a freak as he got older."
+
+Tom Benton swore. "Bee always did have less sense than the average hen,"
+he gritted. "My son a freak! Hell's-bells!"
+
+Tommy, arriving at the hall door in time to hear the tail-end of the
+sentence, crept back to bed feeling numb and dazed. So even his father
+thought he was a freak.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The last few days before parting was one of strain for all of them. If
+Tommy was unnaturally subdued, no one noticed it; his parents were not
+feeling any great impulse toward gaiety either.
+
+They all went dutifully sight-seeing as before; they saw the Zoo, and
+went shopping on the Skywalks, and on the last day wound up at the great
+showrooms of "Androids, Inc."
+
+Tommy had hated them on sight; they were at once too human and too
+inhuman for comfort. The hotel was full of them, and most private homes
+had at least one. Now they saw the great incubating vats, and the
+processing and finally the showroom where one of the finished products
+was on display as a maid, sweeping and dusting.
+
+"There's one that's a dead-ringer for you, Helen. If you were a little
+better looking, that is." Tommy's dad pretended to compare them
+judicially. Helen laughed, but Tommy looked at him with a resentfulness.
+Comparing his mother to an Android....
+
+"They say for a little extra you can get an exact resemblance. Maybe I'd
+better have one fixed up like you to take back with me," Big Tom added
+teasingly. Then as Helen's face clouded over, "Oh, hon, you know I was
+only kidding. Let's get out of here; this place gives me the
+collywobbles. Besides, I've got to pick up my watch."
+
+But his mother's face was still unhappy and Tommy glowered sullenly at
+his father's back all the way to the watch-shop.
+
+It was a small shop, with an inconspicuous sign down in one corner of
+the window that said only, "KRUMBEIN--watches," and was probably the
+most famous shop of its kind in the world. Every spaceman landing on
+Terra left his watch to be checked by the dusty, little old man who was
+the genius of the place. Tommy ranged wide-eyed about the clock and
+chronometer crammed interior. He stopped fascinated before the last
+case. In it was a watch ... but, _what_ a watch! Besides the regulation
+Terran dial, it had a second smaller dial that registered the
+corresponding time on Mars. Tommy's whole heart went out to it in an
+ecstasy of longing. He thought wistfully that if you could know what
+time it was there, you could imagine what everyone was doing and it
+wouldn't seem so far away. Haltingly, he tried to explain.
+
+"Look, Mom," he said breathlessly. "It's almost five o'clock at home.
+Douwie will be coming up to the barn to be fed. Gosh, do you suppose old
+Pete will remember about her?"
+
+His mother smiled at him reassuringly. "Of course he will, silly. Don't
+forget he was the one who caught and tamed her for you."
+
+Tommy gulped as he thought of Douwie. Scarcely as tall as himself; the
+big, rounded, mouselike ears, and the flat, cloven pads that could carry
+her so swiftly over the sandy Martian flatlands. One of the last
+dwindling herds of native Martian douwies, burden-carriers of a vanished
+race, she had been Tommy's particular pride and joy for the last three
+years.
+
+Behind him, Tommy heard his mother murmur under her breath, "Tom ... the
+watch; _could_ we?"
+
+And his Dad regretfully, "It's a pretty expensive toy for a youngster,
+Helen. And even a _rabbara_ raiser's bank account has limits."
+
+"Of course, dear; it was silly of me." Helen smiled a little ruefully.
+"And if Mr. Krumbein has your watch ready, we _must_ go. Bee and some of
+her friends are coming over, and it's only a few hours 'till you ...
+leave."
+
+Big Tom squeezed her elbow gently, understandingly, as she blinked back
+quick tears. Trailing after them, Tommy saw the little by-play and his
+heart ached. The guilt-complex building up in him grew and deepened.
+
+He knew he had only to say, "Look, I don't mind staying. Aunt Bee and I
+will get along swell," and everything would be all right again. Then the
+terror of this new and complex world--as it would be without a familiar
+face--swept over him and kept him silent.
+
+His overwrought feelings expressed themselves in a nervously rebelling
+stomach, culminating in a disgraceful moment over the nearest gutter.
+The rest of the afternoon he spent in bed recuperating.
+
+In the living room Aunt Bee spoke her mind in her usual, high-pitched
+voice.
+
+"It's disgraceful, Helen. A boy his age.... None of the _Bentons_ ever
+had nerves."
+
+His mother's reply was inaudible, but on the heels of his father's
+deeper tones, Aunt Bee's voice rose in rasping indignation.
+
+"_Well!_ I never! And from my own brother, too. From now on don't come
+to me for help with your spoiled brat. Good-_bye_!"
+
+The door slammed indignantly, his mother chuckled, and there was a
+spontaneous burst of laughter. Tommy relaxed and lay back happily.
+Anyway, that was the last of Aunt Bee!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next hour or two passed in a flurry of ringing phones, people coming
+and going, and last-minute words and reminders. Then suddenly it was
+time to leave. Dad burst in for a last quick hug and a promise to send
+him pictures of Douwie and her foal, due next month; Mother dropped a
+hasty kiss on his hair and promised to hurry back from the Spaceport.
+Then Tommy was alone, with a large, painful lump where his heart ought
+to be.
+
+The only activity was the almost noiseless buzzing as the hotel android
+ran the cleaner over the living room. Presently even that ceased, and
+Tommy lay relaxed and inert, sleepily watching the curtains blow in and
+out at the open window. Thirty stories above the street the noises were
+pleasantly muffled and remote, and his senses drifted aimlessly to and
+fro on the tides of half-sleep.
+
+Drowsily his mind wandered from the hotel's android servants ... to
+the strictly utilitarian mechanical monstrosity at home, known
+affectionately as "Old John" ... to the android showroom where they
+had seen the one that Dad said looked like Mother....
+
+He jolted suddenly, sickeningly awake. Suppose, his mind whispered
+treacherously, suppose that Dad _had_ ordered one to take Mom's
+place ... not on Mars, but _here_ while she returned to Mars with him.
+Suppose that instead of Mom he discovered one of those _Things_ ... or
+even worse, suppose he went on from day to day not even knowing....
+
+It was a bad five minutes; he was wet with perspiration when he lay back
+on his pillows, a shaky smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He
+had a secret defense against the Terror. He giggled a little at the
+thought of what Aunt Bee would say if she knew.
+
+And what had brought him back from the edge of hysteria was the
+triumphant knowledge that with the abnormally acute hearing bred in the
+thin atmosphere of Mars, no robot ever created could hide from him the
+infinitesimal ticking of the electronic relays that gave it life. Secure
+at last, his overstrung nerves relaxed and he slid gratefully over the
+edge of sleep.
+
+He woke abruptly, groping after some vaguely remembered sound. A soft
+clicking of heels down the hall.... Of course, his mother back from the
+Spaceport! Now she would be stopping at his door to see if he were
+asleep. He lay silently; through his eyelashes he could see her outlined
+in the soft light from the hall. She was coming in to see if he was
+tucked in. In a moment he would jump up and startle her with a hug, as
+she leaned over him. In a moment....
+
+Screaming desperately, he was out of bed, backing heedlessly across the
+room. He was still screaming as the low sill of the open window caught
+him behind the knees and toppled him thirty stories to the street.
+
+Alone in the silent room, Helen Benton stood dazed, staring blindly at
+the empty window.
+
+Tommy's parting gift from his father slid from her hand and lay on the
+carpet, still ticking gently.
+
+It was 9:23 on Mars.
+
+
+The End
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    This etext was produced from _Imagination Stories of Science and
+    Fantasy_ July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence
+    that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor
+    spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Native Son, by T. D. Hamm
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30014 ***