Polly Plus
(1978)
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine May-Jun 1978
Randall Garrett

	It wasn't the first clue I had, but it was the incident of the parrot that first got me to really thinking about Willy.

	Everyone always asks me about Dawn Kelley as soon as they find out that I am the Janet Sadler mentioned in her best-selling autobiography. I can understand that; as her grade-school teacher, I am presumed to be an extraordinary woman myself because I helped to mold the childhood of a truly extraordinary woman.

	Dawn Kelley has won three Oscars for the only three pictures she has appeared in, and for two others she directed. She had earned doctorates in medicine, law, and physics; and has made widely-acclaimed contributions to all three fields. Her television program has been in the top ten of the ratings for the last seven years. Everyone who knows her loves her, and she still looks a beautiful twenty-five, although she is only fifteen years younger than I, and I am over seventy.

	Yes, Dawn Kelley is a remarkable woman, but everyone has read and heard about her for years. Instead of re-hashing old material, I would like to tell you about an even more remarkable person of whom you have never heard.

	As I said, it was the parrot that really got me to thinking, but there were clues before that. 

	I was in my mid-twenties at the time; I'd only had my teaching certificate three years, and I was still naïve enough to think that four years of college and a year of graduate work had taught me all I needed to know about teaching. I was shy, I know, and I covered that tendency with an over-precise pedantry and an avoidance of emotional involvement with my students. I conceived of myself as a lofty being who knew everything—at least, everything that a child needed to know—and whose job it was to pout as much of that knowledge into childish minds as those receptacles would hold. I was, I fear, a rather stuffy prig.

	It was Willy who gave me my first real comeuppance, but the fault was my own, not his. I had always disliked nicknames and diminutives—I still do, but I'm a great deal more tolerant now.	When, on Willy's first day in my fifth-grade class, I asked each child to stand and tell me his or her name, Willy stood and said: "Willy Taylor."

	"William Taylor," I said, by way of correction. Like a damn fool, I hadn't looked over the prepared roster yet. I had already corrected "Susie" to "Susan" and "Bobby" to "Robert" without repercussions, and expected none now.

	"No, ma'am," he said with precision. "Willy, Doubleyou, eye, ell, ell, wye. Willy."

	" 'Willy'," I replied with precision, "is a diminutive for 'William',"

	"Yes, ma'am, sometimes," he said agreeably, "but not this time. Willy's my real name. It's German. You've heard of Willy Brandt and Willy Ley."

	I had, of course. I was caught, and I knew it. I should have had sense enough to drop it right there, but my mouth was moving before I could stop it. "Are you German?"

	Now what difference would that make? I had a David who was not Hebrew, a Marguerite who was not French, and a Paula who was not Italian; I hadn't carped at those. Because of my shyness, I was suddenly on the defensive.

	"No, ma'am," Still polite. "But my name is."

	By then, I had control. "I see. Thank you, Willy. You may sit down."

	He did, and that was the end of it. But I remember it.

	I sensed from the beginning that Willy was an intelligent child. His intelligence quotient, according to the tests was 136; bright, but hardly brilliant. The transfer record from his previous school showed a nice B+ average. But almost from the very first I had the feeling that he was holding himself back, that he was trying to hide his real abilities. That sort of behavior is not as rare as you might think; the merely bright children show it in school and get themselves thoroughly hated by their duller classmates, while the truly brilliant child is wise enough not to be that offensive.

	But Willy did the same thing in sports, which was overdoing it. At softball, touch football, volleyball, and the various track sports that nine- and ten-year-olds can play, he never ranked higher than second best and never lower than fourth… He was trying to keep his B+ average.

	Now that, I thought, is ridiculous. A boy might want to keep his mind under cover—no one likes being called "teacher's pet" or "bigdome"—but why do so at sports, where excellence is approved of, lauded, and looked up to by faculty and students alike?

	I remember the basketball especially. You see, I lived right across the alley from the Taylors, and I could see the back yard of their house from my second-floor apartment window. His father had set up a basketball hoop on the garage wall, and the boy often went out there after school to practice.

	No. Not really to practice. To have fun.

	Do you remember how much fun it was to skip stones across a pond? Or to throw snowballs against the side of a house, just to watch them splash? You never missed the pond or the house, did you?

	Willy had fun throwing at the hoop, always on the move. Underhand, overhand, one-handed, two-handed, or over his head, facing away from the hoop, it didn't matter. He never missed. Never.

	Except when schoolmates came by to play, or when he was playing at school. Then be became merely very good. But not exceptional.

	We have a term for that sort of thing in the teaching profession: underachievement. I resolved to speak to his father about it.

	I never got around to it, of course. Mr. Taylor never came to PTA meetings and, somehow, I never found any excuse for asking him to see me. It's hard to do that when a boy is, actually and really, doing very well in school. If he'd ever got in a fight—

	I often daydreamed that Orville Goldman, a tease and semi-bully would go too far with Willy some day, but he never did.

	If Willy would only get caught smoking cigarette or drinking a beer or—

	But no.

	Damn it, if he would at least tease Paula, or react to the way she teased im. She discovered a series of rhymes which tickled her not-too-bright little mind, a chant that went "Silly Willy, full of chili, has a face like a water-lily!" He responded by helping her with her math lessons, and the chant was dead within three days. And Paula's arithmetic improved.

	We had a "nature study" program (call it "biology," and some clot-headed parent will think you're teaching sex) at Kilgore School. A part of that program consisted of teaching the children how to feed and care for small animals. Ann Simons, who was in charge of the program was an absolute genius at it.

	One thing that it is important for a human being to learn is that other people hurt. One of the best ways, in my opinion, is to teach them that all animals feel pain. Small children are solipsists at heart; they don't know that those people out there are pretty much like this person in here. Particularly, children are unaware that an adult can be hurt. A adult seems too big, too powerful, to suffer. It takes a child time to learn that an adult can be hurt, both physically and emotionally, by a child.

	Ann's theory—and I think it a good one—is to show this with animals.

	"A little rabbit may not be able to talk, and he can't learn the things you can learn; but he can feel pain just the way you do, so you must be very careful. It's easy to hurt him because he's so much smaller and you're so much stronger. And even though he's small, he can hurt you, too if you hurt him or tease him. If you're ever unlucky enough to have a rabbit sink his teeth in you, you'll know what I mean. I hope that never happens, because if it does it means you were hurting or teasing the rabbit."

	She had many kinds of birds and small beasts; rabbits, white rats, snakes, chickens, ducks, and the like. Plus a few exotics; a kinkajou, an ocelot, a boa constrictor, and a parrot.

	Named Jeremiah.

	Jeremiah was Ann's personal property and a personal friend, and she'd had him for years. She had originally named him Onan "because he spilled his seed upon the ground," but she changed his name when she brought the bird to school because some parent might catch on to the joke. (I later found that Ann had borrowed the gag from Dorothy Parker."

	One of the phrases the bird had learned was "Woe is me," so Ann renamed him Jeremiah.

	Part of Ann's program was to allow certain very carefully selected children to "borrow" an animal and take it home for a weekend. (Some were not borrowable; the kinkajou, for instance, You wouldn't believe what a kinkajou can do to your home!) It was something like borrowing a book from the library; the child was supposed to learn from it, and had damn well better bring it back in good condition. Mostly, they did.

	But, there again, one had to watch out for the parents.

	A white rat, bred for thousands of generations in the laboratory, is about as harmless as an animal can get. But there were mamas and papas who were horrified at the very word "rat"—to say nothing of having one in their home. Believe me, Ann Simons had to be a top-flight diplomat. She felt obliged to teach the parents as well as their children.

	Willy Taylor was very good with animals. Ann said that his father must have taught him how to handle them from the very beginning.

	"How about his mother?" I asked.

	"Didn't you know?" Ann looked a little sad. "Mrs. Taylor—well the way Willy puts it is that she 'went to a better world' right after he was born."

	At any rate, it was because of his way with animals that Ann made the decision she did.

	Willy, you see, was particularly fond of Jeremiah, and the bird seemed fond of him. A big green parrot can be dangerous; that beak could take off the end of child's finger if the bird put power in it. Jeremiah had no record of that sort of behavior, but Ann was reluctant to loan him out. She had never really put him on the "non-circulating" list, like the kinkajou or the ocelot, but she usually convinced a child that another animal would be more suitable. Somehow, she wasn't able to resist Willy; and one fie spring Friday afternoon, Willy, with his father's permission, took Jeremiah home for the weekend.

	Saturday afternoon, I was sitting at home, near the living room window, reading a book on child psychology. (I forget the title and the name of the author, but I remember being convince that the psychologist hadn't been anywhere near a living child for forty years.) I had opened the window to enjoy the cool westerly breeze and the fragrances it carried with it: the tangy smell of cut grass; the mouth-watering aroma of Mrs. Jackson's homemade bread.

	Once, as I glanced out, I notice Willy in his back yard playing with Jeremiah. Their voices came clearly.

	"Hello, Jeremiah, hello."

	"Hello. Hello. Yawwwk! Hello."

	The bird's wings had been clipped, and he had a leather collar around one leg, attached to a long least, so it was perfectly safe to let him wander around on the fenced-in lawn of the back yard.

	"Jeremiah! Yawwk! Silly bird! Silly bird! Yaawwk!

	Wishing I could go out and play on such an afternoon, I went back to my book.

	"Dad! How come Jeremiah can talk, but can't really talk?"

	I looked out the window and listened carefully. The father's answer to a question like that would tell me a great deal about the man.

	I couldn't see him; he was inside the house. But his low tenor voice carried well through the open window.

	"You mean he can't carry on a conversation?"

	"Yeah, that's right," Willy agreed.

	"Well, Jeremiah's brain is something like a tape recorder that's attached to a simple computer. A tape recorder can talk, but it can't think. Jeremiah can't think, either, not like you and I can, but his little computer can make certain responses to certain input signals and come out with recorded sounds."

	"Oh, I see. Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks, Dad."

	"Anytime."

	"Yaawwk! What time is it" Eight bells and all's well!"

	Remarkable! I found myself liking Mr. Taylor very much.

	But I went back to my book.

	It must have been well over an hour later that I heard the screaming.

	I want to say here I am fond of cats. I have always lived with at least one, and the sad part is that I have outlived so many of them. The one I had then—Tamantha, I believe it was—was curled up on my lap at the time. In general, cats are nice people.

	But there are exceptions.

	The big orange tom was one of them. Nobody knew who he belonged to; he'd hang around the neighborhood for a few days, then disappear for a while. He was feral, and he was mean. He only had three things on his mind, and the other two were food and fighting.

	When I heard the screaming, I think I knew it was Orange Tom before I looked up.

	I almost screamed, myself. All I saw was a flurry of fur and feathers.

	What happened took place in far less time than it takes to tell it. The cat had evidently come over the fence and decided that Jeremiah was good for at least two of the things on his mind.

	The screaming was from both of them. Jeremiah was fighting back, beak and claw. But he was no match for that big tom. Then Willy came slamming out of the back door, adding his scream to the others, and running straight toward the combat.

	He handled it beautifully. If he had tried to kick the two apart, or, worse, pull them apart with his hands, there might have been far worse damage done. He didn't' instead, he came down solidly on Orange Tom's tail with his right foot. It is difficult to step on a cat's tail if he's wary, but Orange Tom was preoccupied.

	Not for long. He let go of the bird and turned. As he was turning, Willy let up on the tail, drew back, and kicked.

	It was lovely. He didn't kick the way you'd kick a football, with the tow. Even under pressure like that, he did not want to hurt the cat. His instep caught Orange Tom right under the belly, lifting him in a high arc that took him clear over the fence. He landed neatly, as cats do, and vanished in an orange streak.

	But Jeremiah was an unmoving mop of green feathers.

	By that time, Mr. Taylor had come out, less than a second after the boy. Willy knelt down by Jeremiah, not touching him.

	"Dad! He's dead! That damn cat killed Jeremiah!"

	I had never heard Willy swear before. Under the circumstances, I didn't blame him.

	I didn't hear what Mr. Taylor said. His voice was too soft, too gentle to be intelligible at that distance.

	During those several seconds, I had stood frozen at the window, not even realizing that I had unceremoniously dumped Tamantha off my lap when I stood up. She had leaped to the window sill and was looking out to see what all the fuss was about.

	Then I realized something. I had an excuse to go over to the Taylor house! That fight wasn't exactly the one I had envisioned, but it was certainly school business, and I had been a witness.

	I changed clothes quickly; shorts and halter are not for a teacher who is visiting a parent.

	By the time I had gone down the block, around the end of Dillon Street, and back up to the Taylor House, ten minutes or so had passed. I went up the walk to the porch and pushed the doorbell button.

	The man who opened the door was tall, like his son, and had one of the strongest faces I have ever seen. He was not really handsome, but there was character there. Strength, compassion, and a touch of deep-seated sadness which even his smile did not erase.

	"Yes?"

	"I—I'm Janet Sadler. One of Willy's teachers." I suddenly felt very awkward and foolish. "I—uh—I live just across from your back yard. I saw—what happened."

	"I see." His smile faded a little, but did not vanish. "Will you come in, Miss Sadler?"

	By that time, Willy was at the door. He had a grin on his face of sheer happiness. I was momentarily shocked.

	"He's all right, Miz Sadler! Jeremiah's all right! Dad fixed him!" He looked up at his father. "Dad, will you teach me how to fix things like that?"

	"Certainly, Willy," Mr. Taylor said. He was still looking at me. "Jeremiah wasn't really hurt at all, Miss Sadler. He's fine. Mostly shock, I think. Not a scratch on him."

	"My God!" I said. "Really? It looked to me as though he'd been torn to bits."

	"Come see," he said. "He's lost few feathers and , for a while, his dignity, but he's in perfect health."

	He led me into a pleasant living room. Jeremiah was preening himself on the crossbar fo the wooden T-stand that was his perch. He looked great. I just stared.

	"Say something, Jeremiah," Mr. Taylor said.

	"Jeremiah! Yawwwk! Silly bird! Silly bird!"

	I got over my shock. "Well, he certainly seems all right. I'm very glad. Mrs. Simons would have had a fit if something had happened to Jeremiah. Are you shure we shouldn't take him to a veterinarian?"

	"We can if you want, but I don't think he'll find a thing wrong with the bird."

	And we did. There wasn't a thing the doctor could find wrong with Jeremiah.

	As we were driving back, I realize that Willy had said nothing for a long time. I thought I knew why.

	He was in the back seat with the parrot; I was in the front with his father. "Willy," I said without looking at him, "I don't think we need to say anything to Mrs. Simons about this. Jeremiah wasn't hurt, and it wasn't your fault. But if we tell Mrs. Simons, it will make her worry and she'll be unhappy. Of course, if she asks either of us, we'll have to tell the truth, but I don't see why she should, do you?"

	"No, ma'am. Thank you."

	"That's very good of you, Miss Sadler," his father said. "I wouldn't like the boy to lose his borrowing privileges. And next time, there'll be no leaving an animal in the back yard unguarded, will there, son?"

	"No, sir! I promise. Next time I need a drink of water, I'll bring whatever it is in with me."

	"That's fine." He gave me a quick glance and then looked back out the windshield. "He'll keep his word."

	"I know," I said.

	It wasn't until he drove me up to the front door of my apartment building that I hadn't said a word about Willy's underachievement. It was far too late then.

	Twelve days later, on a Thursday, Ann Simons came into my classroom after the children had been dismissed for the day. She looked worried.

	"Janet, are you particularly busy right now?"

	"No," I told her, "I was just getting ready to go home."

	"Have you got a few minutes? Jeremiah's behaving—well, peculiarly."

	I know that one's heart does not literally leap into one's throat at a time like that, but it certainly feels like it.

	I got up from my desk. "All the time in the world. What do you mean 'peculiarly' Is he sick?"

	"Nnnnno—not sick. Come along, I'd rather show you."

	She led me into the nature study section, and I followed, worried. If there was something wrong with the bird, I'd have to tell her what had happened nearly two weeks before—and that would be embarrassing.

	Jeremiah was sitting on his perch, looking jauntily around. He speared us with a bright eye.

	"Yawk! Good morning, Miz Simons!"

	Ann said, "What time is it?"

	"What time is it? Five of twelve. Yaawwwk! Lunchtime in five minutes. Be patient."

	"Where does the kinkajou come from?"

	"Where does the kinkajou come from? Does anybody know? Yawwwk. I think it comes from South America, Miz Simons."

	I wish I had a hologram of my face at that moment. Or, rather, a flat photo; there were no pocket holo cameras in those days.

	Ann went over to the cage where Flower, the denatured skunk, was watching with evident interest. "Name this animal, Jeremiah."

	Jeremiah eyed it carefully, looked around the room, then looked back at Flower. "Skunk. Mephetis mephitis. A carnivorous mammal which lives mostly on other small animals, birds' eggs, and insects. Yawk."

	I think I was actually frightened. My mouth felt dry.

	Ann said, "Janet, you know the question everybody asks a parrot. Ask him."

	It took me a moment to find my voice. I looked at the bird and said: "Polly wanna cracker?"

	He looked at me speculatively. Momentarily the nictating lid filmed his eye. Then, distinctively: "Graham, fire, or Georgia?"

	I looked at Ann. Now I knew that I was frightened. "Ann can that damned bird think?"

	"Think?" said Jeremiah. "Think, children, think! Yawwwk!"

	"Let's go to the teacher's lounge," Ann said quietly. "There's still some coffee in the urn."

	Neither of us said another word until we were seated in a couple of soft chairs with mugs of hot, black coffee in our hands. Then I said, "Well, Does he think?"

	She frowned a little. "Well, yes. All animals do, to a limited degree. They have to reason, to make decisions. The chimpanzee experiment at the University of California at Santa Barbara showed that chimps can carry on a conversation—a real, if limited, conversation—even if they can't talk. They use plastic symbols instead of words, but they can communicate.

	"And that's the difference, Janet. Jeremiah can't communicate with us."

	"It certainly sounded like it to me," I said flatly.

	She shook her head. "I don't think so. A bird just doesn't have the brain for that sort of thing. A bird's brain isn't connected up that way. Oh, they can communicate with each other. The best examples are in the crow family—ravens, jays, jackdaws, magpies—that bunch. the parrots are halfwits in comparison."

	That little chit-chat we were just having with Jeremiah didn't sound halfwitted to me," I said.

	"Sound like it," Ann said. "That's the clue, you see. A parrot's brain can be compared to—"

	"To a tape recorder connected to a computer," I said.

	She tried to keep from looking surprised, and almost succeeded. "Yes, that's—that's very appropriate. Look; suppose you're an actor who wants to memorize a part in a play. You could read all the other parts into a tape recorder, leaving properly timed blanks for the part you were trying to memorize. Then you practice, and memorize your part. By the time you get through, it'll sound like you were having a conversation with your recorder.

	"Now, carry it one step further and connect in a computer that can recognize any of the lines you deliver, pick out the appropriate response from the tape, and play it back. Make up a sufficiently long list of statements and responses, and it will sound like a conversation, possibly a very sophisticated one."

	"And that's all Jeremiah's doing?"

	"I think so." She grinned oddly. "God, I hope so." She took a sip of her coffee. "So far, that's what it seems to be. Every one of the answers he gave was something he had heard in class—word for word."

	"Even that part about the crackers?" I asked.

	She chuckled. "No, I tried to teach him that one a year or so ago, but it didn't seem to take. He apparently dug it up out of his memory." She grew more serious.

	"What makes that sort of thing sound so much like a conversation is that most conversations you hear are just like that sort of thing. Somebody throws you a line, and you give them a stock answer without having to think.

	" 'Good morning, Ann'

	" ' Good morning, Janet'

	" 'How are you this morning?'

	" 'Just fine. How are you?'

	" 'Just fine. Lovely weather, isn't it?'

	" 'Absolutely marvelous'

	"Hell, Janet, you can program a computer for a lot more sophisticated dialogue than that. There's a program now that will do Rogerian psychotherapy, using just that sort of system. It's so spooky that it scares people. Of course, you have to communicate by typewriter, but it still seems as though the machine knows what it's talking about. The thing it can't do is ignore or comment on nonsense, the way a real psychotherapist would. If you type in, 'My head aches,' it will type back, 'Why do you think your head aches?' But if you type in, 'My frammis pilks,' it will say, 'Why do you think your frammis pilks?' instead of saying, 'Your what does what?' the way a real person would do."

	"Do you think Jeremiah could do that?" I asked.

	She shook her head. "I don't think his internal circuits are set up for it. But I'm going to test that out. I'm going to take that bird home again, and I'm going to set up a testing program before I let him hear another word.

	"I don't think he is any more a reasoning being than he was before. He sin't some strange super-parrot; he's got no more abilities than any other parrot. But he can certainly use thema damn sight more efficiently." She grinned at me suddenly. "I'm going to get the best tape recorder and the best movie camera, all the best equipment I can afford. If I don't get a doctorate out of this, I'll eat that bird."

	I didn't tell her anything about what had happened to Jeremiah twelve days before, and I'm glad I didn't. She would have thought shock had something to do with it, and only God knows how many parrots would have had nervous breakdowns before she decided that line was a dead end.

	Ann went to work on her project as though there were nothing in the world but her and that parrot. She didn’t actually neglect the children, but they didn't get the extra attention she had given them before. She worked twice as hard, and I've never seen a tireder, happier woman.

	It was late May when the final incident occurred.

	Little Paula ran across the street during recess to get a rolling ball. She ran between two parked cars, and the oncoming driver didn't see her until too late. It was almost a textbook case of that kind of accident. If the driver had been exceeding the twenty-five mile speed limit, Paula would have been killed instantly.

	I didn't see it, thank Heaven; I was inside, grading papers. I heard the ambulance, but I didn't pay much attention; it was a block away, on the other side of the school grounds. The first I heard about it was when Willy came bursting into the room. There were tears in his eyes.

	"Miz Sadler! Miz Sadler! Polly's hurt!"

	"Paula," I corrected him automatically. "Calm down. What happened?"

	He didn't calm down. "She got hit by a car! Her head's all smashed in and some of her bones are broken and she's bleeding and they won't let me fix her! They wouldn't let me anywhere near her! I can do it, 'cause my dad showed me how, but they wouldn't let me near her! Now they're taking her to the hospital and I asked could I come and see her and they said no I couldn't because I'm too little!" He stopped for breath.

	"That's right," I said, "they don't let children into the emergency ward." I was more shaken than I let on, but I thought that by remaining calm myself, I could calm the boy down.

	It was a mistake.

	"You don't care either! You don't understand! Those doctors can't help you! Polly's gonna die if I don't fix her! you hear me? She's gonna die!"

	"Willy! Calm down!"

	"Please Miz Sadler! Please take me to the hospital! If I'm with a grown up, they'll let me in!"

	I shook my head. "No, they won't, Willy. They wouldn't even let me in. Even her parents couldn't see her until she's out of Emergency."

	"Then the next time they see her, it'll be to identify her body." His voice and manner had changed startlingly. He was suddenly very coldly angry. "She'll go from Emergency to the morge. I'm glad my education on the snijjort planet is nearly done." (That's as close as I can come to spelling the word he used.) "We're going to see Mother pretty soon."

	I just gawped.

	"Wait!" He felt in his pocket and came out with a small wad of dollar bills. "Yeah. I can make it." And he was gone.

	I just sat there, not thinking. I didn't want to think. It's taken me nearly half a century to really think about it.

	I think he took a taxi. I'm sure he got into the Emergency Room somehow, although nobody saw him. I'm sure because a miracle happened. Paula was back in school three days later.

	A nurse who was a friend of mine said that the doctors reported that there was nothing wrong with Paula but shock, and they only kept her in the hospital for observation. But it was the doctors who were shocked. One minute, Paula was a smashed and dying thing. Then—something—happened.

	The next minute, she was perfectly well.

	They couldn't explain it, so they pretended, even to each other, that it hadn't happened. I can't explain it, either, but I think I know a great deal more about what happened than they did.

	Mr. Taylor took Willy out of school the next day. The boy was having nervous trouble, emotional shock brought on by seeing the accident, he said.

	They moved out the day before Polly came back to school.

	I never saw them again.

	Ann Simmons finally got her doctorate, but it was for another study. Jeremiah was unique, you see, and the experiment, as well documented as it was, was not reproducible. He was a better parrot, the best parrot he could be.

	After all, when you fix something that's broken, you fix it so that it will operate at optimum, don't you?

	I don't know why Paula Kelley changed her name to Dawn, but there are times when I wish it had been I, rather than she, who had been hit by the car. And there are other times when I wonder if Willy loved me enough to break his cover.

The End