The Meddlers by Claire Rayner Page B

at the ten o’clock feed.”
    “Splendid!” Dr. Briant said. “Splendid! Look, Barbara. Really a most well-defined rooting reflex, isn’t it?” He touched the baby’s cheek with his forefinger, and Isobel could see even from her chair between the cameras that the baby’s lip curled at once toward it.
    “I’ve rerun the film twice,” Miss Hervey said. “It’s a little earlyto be sure, but there certainly seems to be a pattern to it. The time lag in the nocturnal response is quite marked—averages point nine plus of a second greater. Most interesting. And it seems undoubtedly to be more rapid when he’s put to the breast. You’ll see when we see today’s film run that this response won’t have been nearly as rapid as the one he’ll show when Miss Quinn takes him.”
    “Which suggests a considerable ability to modify a reflex with learned behavior,” Dr. Briant said. “It’s really very gratifying to have such early confirmation of one of our projections.” And they nodded at each other, for all the world, Isobel thought, like a pair of well-fed penguins. The idea pleased her suddenly. Comparing them with such stupid birds made them less alarming, somehow less powerful.
    “Well, come along, come along, Miss Quinn,” Dr. Briant said, using the bright rallying voice he always did when speaking to her, and obediently she picked up the baby and carried him to the scales. Miss Hervey took the reading and entered it, and Isobel settled herself in the chair, the baby on her lap, and unbuttoned her blouse.
    It was funny how quickly she had got used to it, sitting there with them watching her while she swabbed her nipple and lifted the baby close to her so that he could reach it. Even knowing the cameras were always working, filming every single thing she and the baby did, didn’t bother her any more. At first it had been like being spied on, but now she forgot them most of the time, except when she wanted to do something she shouldn’t.
    Like now, wanting to hold her breast and guide it to the baby’s mouth, but they wouldn’t let her. Dr. Briant had said, when they taught her how to handle him at the beginning, “He must never be coerced—coaxed—to do anything. Nor helped, particularly when he is feeding. We have to see exactly what he is doing by himself, and what he learns by himself—not what you teach him, do you understand?”
    Well, she didn’t really see what difference it could make, but she was obedient. It was too good a job to risk doing otherwise, and besides, the cameras were always there, so she had to.
    And he was already so bright, anyway. He turned his head,mouthing eagerly, and found the nipple so fast you’d think it was made of iron and he was a magnet.
    As he fed, and she sat looking down at his absorbed face and regularly pumping jaws, his eyes tight closed and his clenched fist resting lightly on her skin, she slid into the blissfully familiar peace of it, even enjoying the faint sense of shame that came with the pleasure. It was a good thing the cameras couldn’t take pictures of the way she felt, she thought, and smiled inside herself. That
would
be embarrassing!
    And when he’d finished and been weighed again and she’d changed his diaper and put it in the special container to go away for the chemical analysis—And a nasty old job that must be to do! Isobel thought—and he was back sleeping in his cot, it was gone twelve and time for the daily briefing. Then it would be her lunch-time, and probably another feed, and after that they’d send her for her afternoon rest, and then collect the specimens and the data from him for the next day’s test session. But Isobel didn’t want to think about that.
    The briefing was the same as it had been every day since he was born. They talked together about the tests (and Isobel thanked God she understood so little of it; it all sounded so complicated and unfriendly), and she watched the baby on the monitor screen high on the wall