"Use as much energy as he does, you mean. What I'm getting at is, it can't be because he's getting more than the normal amount of oxygen, can it? I mean he's the prodigy, not me. He must be using it more efficiently. And if that's it, what will happen when he gets twice as much?" * * * * * They had prepared and disinfected her, along with other indignities, and now she could see herself in the reflector of the big delivery-table light--the image clear and bright, like everything else, but very haloed and swimmy, and looking like a bad statue of Sita. She had no idea how long she had been here--that was the dope, probably--but she was getting pretty tired. "Bear down," said the staff doctor kindly, and before she could answer, the pain came up like violins and she had to gulp at the tingly coldness of laughing gas. When the mask lifted, she said, "I _am_ bearing down," but the doctor had gone back to work and wasn't listening. Anyhow, she had Leo. _How are you feeling?_ His answer was muddled--because of the anesthetic?--but she didn't really need it. Her perception of him was clear: darkness and pressure, impatience, a slow Satanic anger ... and something else. Uncertainty? Dread? "Two or three more ought to do it. Bear down." Fear. Unmistakable now. And a desperate determination-- "Doctor, he doesn't want to be born!" "Seems that way sometimes, doesn't it? Now bear down good and hard." _Tell him stop blurrrr too dangerrrr stop I feel worrrr stop I tellrrrr stop_ "What, Leo? What?" "Bear down," the doctor said abstractedly. Faintly, like a voice under water, gasping before it drowns: _Hurry I hate you tell him sealed incubator tenth oxygen nine-tenths inert gases hurry hurry hurry_ "An incubator!" she panted. "He'll need an incubator ... to live ... won't he?" "Not this baby. A fine, normal, healthy one." _He's idiot lying stupid fool need incubator tenth oxygen tenth tenth hurry before it's_ The pressure abruptly ceased. Leo was born. The doctor was holding him up by the heels, red, wrinkled, puny. But the voice was still there, very small, very far away: _Too late same as death_ Then a hint of the old cold arrogance: _Now you'll never know who killed Cyrus._ The doctor slapped him smartly on the minuscule behind. The wizened, malevolent face writhed open, but it was only the angry squall of an ordinary infant that came out. Leo was gone, like a light turned off beneath the measureless ocean. Moira raised her head weakly. "Give him one for me," she said. --DAMON KNIGHT * * * * * End of Project Gutenberg's Special Delivery, by Damon Francis Knight