Special Delivery

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  _Special Delivery_

  By DAMON KNIGHT

  Illustrated by ASHMAN

  _All Len had to hear was the old gag: "We've never lost a father yet." His child was not even born and it was thoroughly unbearable!_

  * * * * *

  Len and Moira Connington lived in a rented cottage with a small yard,a smaller garden, and too many fir trees. The lawn, which Len seldomhad time to mow, was full of weeds, and the garden was overgrown withblackberry brambles. The house itself was clean and smelled betterthan most city apartments, and Moira kept geraniums in the windows.

  However, it was dark on account of the firs. Approaching the door onelate spring afternoon, Len tripped on an unnoticed flagstone andscattered examination papers all the way to the porch.

  When he picked himself up, Moira was giggling in the doorway. "Thatwas funny."

  "The hell it was," said Len. "I banged my nose." He picked up hisChemistry B papers in a stiff silence. A red drop fell on the lastone. "_Damn_ it!"

  Moira held the screen door for him, looking contrite and faintlysurprised. She followed him into the bathroom. "Len, I didn't mean tolaugh. Does it hurt much?"

  "No," said Len, staring fiercely at his scraped nose in the mirror. Itwas throbbing like a gong.

  "That's good. It was the funniest thing--I mean funny-peculiar," sheclarified hastily.

  * * * * *

  Len stared at her; the whites of her eyes were showing: "Is thereanything the matter with you?" he demanded.

  "I don't know," she said on a rising note. "Nothing like that everhappened to me before. I didn't think it was funny at all. I wasworried about you, and I didn't know I was going to laugh--" Shelaughed again, a trifle nervously. "Maybe I'm cracking up."

  Moira was a dark-haired young woman with a placid, friendlydisposition. Len had met her in his senior year at Columbia,with--looking at it impartially, which Len seldom did--regrettableresults. At present, in her seventh month, she was shaped like arather bosomy kewpie doll.

  _Emotional upsets_, he remembered, _may occur frequently during thisperiod_. He leaned to get past her belly and kissed her forgivingly."You're probably tired. Go sit down and I'll get you some coffee."

  Except that Moira had never had any hysterics till now, or morningsickness, either--she burped instead--and anyhow, was there anythingin the literature about fits of giggling?

  After supper, he marked seventeen sets of papers desultorily in redpencil, then got up to look for the baby book. There were fourdog-eared paperbound volumes with smiling infants' faces on thecovers, but the one he wanted wasn't there. He looked behind thebookcase and on the wicker table beside it. "Moira!"

  "Hm?"

  "Where the devil is the other baby book?"

  "I've got it."

  Len went and looked over her shoulder. She was staring at a drawing ofa fetus lying in a sort of upside-down Yoga position inside across-sectioned woman's body.

  "That's what he looks like," she said. "_Mama._"

  The diagram was of a fetus at term.

  "What was that about your mother?" Len asked, puzzled.

  "Don't be silly," she said abstractedly.

  He waited, but she didn't look up or turn the page. After a while, hewent back to his work. He watched her.

  Eventually she leafed through to the back of the book, read a fewpages, and put it down. She lighted a cigarette and immediately put itout again. She fetched up a belch.

  "That was a good one," said Len admiringly.

  Moira sighed.

  Feeling tense, Len picked up his coffee cup and started toward thekitchen. He halted beside Moira's chair. On the side table was herafter-dinner cup, still full of coffee ... black, scummed with oildroplets, stone-cold.

  "Didn't you want your coffee?" he asked solicitously.

  She looked at the cup. "I did, but--" She paused and shook her head,looking perplexed.

  "Well, do you want another cup now?"

  "Yes, please. _No._"

  Len, who had begun a step, rocked back on his heels. "Which, damn it?"

  Her face got all swollen. "Oh, Len, I'm so mixed up," she said, andbegan to tremble.

  Len felt part of his irritation spilling over into protectiveness."What you need," he said firmly, "is a drink."

  * * * * *

  He climbed a stepladder to get at the top cabinet shelf which cachedtheir liquor when they had any. Small upstate towns and their schoolboards being what they were, this was one of many necessary financialprecautions.

  Inspecting the doleful few fingers of whisky in the bottle, Len sworeunder his breath. They couldn't afford a decent supply of booze or newclothes for Moira. The original idea had been for Len to teach for ayear while they saved enough money so that he could go back for hismaster's degree. More lately, this proving unlikely, they had merelybeen trying to put aside enough for summer school, and even that wasbeginning to look like the wildest optimism.

  High-school teachers without seniority weren't supposed to be married.

  Or graduate physics students, for that matter.

  He mixed two stiff highballs and carried them back into the livingroom. "Here you are. Skoal."

  "Ah," she said appreciatively. "That tastes--_Ugh_." She set the glassdown and stared at it with her mouth half open.

  "What's the matter now?"

  She turned her head carefully, as if she were afraid it would comeoff. "Len, I don't know. _Mama._"

  "That's the second time you've said that. What is this all--"

  "Said what?"

  "Mama. Look, kid, if you're--"

  "I didn't." She appeared a little feverish.

  "Sure you did," said Len reasonably. "Once when you were looking atthe baby book, and then again just now, after you said ugh to thehighball. Speaking of which--"

  "_Mama drink milk_," said Moira, speaking with exaggerated clarity.

  Moira hated milk.

  Len swallowed half his highball, turned and went silently into thekitchen.

  When he came back with the milk, Moira looked at it as if it containeda snake. "Len, I didn't say that."

  "Okay."

  "I didn't. I didn't say mama and I didn't say that about the milk."Her voice quavered. "And I didn't laugh at you when you fell down."

  Len tried to be patient. "It was somebody else."

  "It _was_." She looked down at her gingham-covered bulge. "You won'tbelieve me. Put your hand there. No, a little lower."

  Under the cloth, her flesh was warm and solid against his palm."Kicks?" he inquired.

  "Not yet. Now," she said in a strained voice, "you in there--if youwant your milk, kick three times."

  Len opened his mouth and shut it again. Under his hand there werethree explicit kicks, one after the other.

  Moira closed her eyes, held her breath and drank the milk down in onelong horrid gulp.

  * * * * *

  "Once in a great while," Moira read, "cell cleavage will not havefollowed the orderly pattern that produces a normal baby. In theserare cases some parts of the body will develop excessively, whileothers do not develop at all. This disorderly cell growth, which isstrikingly similar to the wild cell growth that we know as cancer--"Her shoulders moved convulsivel
y in a shudder. "_Bluh!_"

  "Why do you keep reading that stuff, if it makes you feel that way?"

  "I have to," she said absently. She picked up another book from thestack. "There's a page missing."

  Len attacked the last of his medium-boiled egg in a noncommittalmanner. "It's a wonder it's held together this long," he said, whichwas perfectly just.

  The book had had something spilled on it, partially dissolving theglue, and was in an advanced state of anarchy. However, the fact wasthat Len had torn out the page in question four nights ago, afterreading it carefully. The topic was "Psychoses in