Wednesday's Child
William Tenn

When he first came to scrutinize Wednesday Gresham with his rimless spectacles and watery blue eyes,
Fabian Balik knew nothing of the biological contradictions that were so incredibly a part of her essential
body structure. He had not even no-ticed—as yet—that she was a remarkably pretty girl with eyes like
rain-sparkling violets. His original preoccupation with her was solely and specifically as a problem in
personnel administration.
      All of which was not too surprising, because Fabian Balik was a thoroughly intent, thoroughly
sincere young office manager, who had convinced his glands conclusively, in several bitter skirmishes,
that their interests didn't have a chance against the inter-ests of Slaughter, Stark & Slingsby: Advertising
& Public Relations.
      Wednesday was one of the best stenographers in the secretarial pool that was un-der his immediate
supervision. There were, however, small but highly unusual der-elictions in her employment history. They
consisted of peculiarities which a less dedicated and ambitious personnel man might have put aside as
mere trifles, but which Fabian, after a careful study of her six-year record with the firm, felt he could not,
in good conscience, ignore. On the other hand, they would obviously require an extended discussion and
he had strong views about cutting into an employee's working time.
      Thus, much to the astonishment of the office and the confusion of Wednesday herself, he came up to
her one day at noon, and informed her quite calmly that they were going to have lunch together.


"This is a nice place," he announced, when they had been shown to a table. "It's not too expensive,
but I've discovered it serves the best food in the city for the price. And it's a bit off the beaten track so
that it never gets too crowded. Only people who know what they want manage to come here."
      Wednesday glanced around, and nodded. "Yes," she said. "I like it too. I eat here a lot with the
girls."
      After a moment, Fabian picked up a menu. "I suppose you don't mind if I order for both of us?" he
inquired. "The chef is used to my tastes. He'll treat us right."
      The girl frowned. "I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Balik, but—"
      "Yes?" he said encouragingly, though he was more than surprised. He hadn't ex-pected anything but
compliance. After all, she was probably palpitating at being out with him.
      "I'd like to order for myself," she said. "I'm on a—a special diet."
      He raised his eyebrows and was pleased at the way she blushed. He nodded slowly, with dignity,
letting his displeasure come through in the way he pronounced his words. "Very well, as you please."
      A few moments later, though, curiosity got too strong and broke through the ice. "What kind of diet
is that? Fresh-fruit salad, a glass of tomato juice, raw cabbage, and a baked potato? You can't be trying
to lose weight if you eat potatoes."
      Wednesday smiled timidly. "I'm not trying to reduce, Mr. Balik. Those are all foods rich in Vitamin
C. I need a lot of Vitamin C."
      Fabian remembered her smile. There had been a few spots of more-than-natural whiteness in it.
"Bad teeth?" he inquired.
      "Bad teeth and—" Her tongue came out and paused for a thoughtful second be-tween her lips.
"Mostly bad teeth," she said. "This is a nice place. There's a restaurant almost like it near where I live. Of
course it's a lot cheaper—"
     "Do you live with your parents, Miss Gresham?"
     "No, I live alone. I'm an orphan."
     He waited until the waiter had deposited the first course, then speared a bit of the shrimp and
returned to the attack. "Since when?"
     She stared at him over her fresh-fruit salad. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Balik?"
     "Since when? How long have you been an orphan?"
     "Since I was a little baby. Someone left me on the doorstep of a foundling home."
     He noticed that while she was replying to his questions in an even tone of voice, she was staring at
her food with a good deal of concentration and her blush had be-come more pronounced. Was she
embarrassed at having to admit her probable lack of legitimacy? he wondered. Surely she had grown
accustomed to it in—how old was she?—twenty-four years. Nonsense, of course she had.
     "But on your original application form, Miss Gresham, you gave Thomas and Mary Gresham as the
names of your parents."
     Wednesday had stopped eating and was playing with her water glass. "They were an old couple
who adopted me," she said in a very low voice. "They died when I was fifteen. I have no living relatives."
     "That you know of," he pointed out, raising a cautionary finger.
      Much to Fabian's surprise she chuckled. It was a very odd chuckle and made him feel extremely
uncomfortable. "That's right, Mr. Balik. I have no living relatives—that I know of." She looked over his
shoulder and chuckled again. "That I know of," she repeated softly to herself.
      Fabian felt irritably that the interview was somehow getting away from him. He raised his voice
slightly. "Then who is Dr. Morris Lorington?"
      She was attentive again. In fact, wary was more like it. "Dr. Morris Lorington?"
      "Yes, the man you said should be notified in case of emergency. In case anything happened to you
while you were working for us."
      She looked very wary now. Her eves were narrowed, she was watching him very closely; her
breathing was a bit faster, too. "Dr. Lorington is an old friend. He—he was the doctor at the orphanage.
After the Greshams adopted me, I kept going to him whenever—" Her voice trailed off.
      "Whenever you needed medical attention?" Fabian suggested.
      "Ye-es," she said, brightening, as if he had come up with an entirely novel reason for consulting a
physician. "I saw him whenever I needed medical attention."
      Fabian grunted. There was something very wrong but tantalizingly elusive about this whole business.
But she was answering his questions. He couldn't deny that: she was certainly answering.
      "Do you expect to see him next October?" he inquired.
      And now Wednesday was no longer wary. She was frightened. "Next October?" she quavered.
      Fabian finished the last of his shrimp and wiped his lips. But he didn't take his eyes off her. "Yes,
next October, Miss Gresham. You've applied for a month's leave of ab-sence, beginning October
fifteenth. Five years ago, after you had been working for Slaughter, Stark and Slingsby for thirteen
months, you also applied for a leave of absence in October."
      He was amazed at how scared she looked. He felt triumphantly that he had been right in looking into
this. The feeling he had about her had not been merely curios-ity; it had been an instinct of good
personnel management
      "But I'm not getting paid for the time off. I'm not asking to be paid for it, Mr. Balik. And I didn't get
paid the—the other time."
      She was clutching her napkin up near her face, and she gave the impression of being ready to bolt
through the back door of the restaurant. Her blushes had departed with such thoroughness as to leave
her skin absolutely white.
     "The fact that you're not going to be paid for the time off, Miss Gresham—" Fabian began, only to
be interrupted by the waiter with the entree. By the time the man had gone, he was annoyed to observe
that Wednesday had used the respite to recover some of her poise. While she was still pale, she had a
spot of red in each cheek and she was leaning back in her chair now instead of using the edge of it.
     "The fact that you're not going to be paid is of no consequence," he continued nonetheless. "It's
merely logical. After all, you have two weeks of vacation with pay every year. Which brings me to the
second point. You have every year made two un-usual requests. First, you've asked for an additional
week's leave of absence without pay, making three weeks in all. And then you've asked—"
     "To take it in the early Spring," she finished, her voice entirely under control. "Is there anything
wrong with that, Mr. Balik? That way I don't have any conflict with the other girls and the firm is sure of a
secretary being in the office all through the summer."
     "There's nothing wrong with that per se. By that I mean," he explained carefully, "that there is nothing
wrong with the arrangement as such. But it makes for loose ends, for organizational confusion. And
loose ends, Miss Gresham, loose ends and organizational confusion have no place in a well-regulated
office."
     He was pleased to note that she was looking uncomfortable again.
      "Does that mean—are you trying to tell me that—I might be laid off?"
      "It could happen," Fabian agreed, neglecting to add that it was, however, very un-likely to happen in
the case of a secretary who was as generally efficient on the one hand, and as innocuous on the other, as
Wednesday Gresham. He carefully cut a fork-sized portion of roast beef free of its accompanying strip of
orange fat before going on. "Look at it this way. How would it be if every girl in the office asked for an
additional week's leave of absence every year—even if it was without pay, as it would have to be? And
then, every few years, wanted an additional month's leave of absence on top of that? What kind of an
office would we have, Miss Gresham? Not a well-regulated one, certainly."
      As he chewed the roast beef with the requisite thoroughness he beamed at the thoughtful concern on
her face and was mentally grateful that he hadn't had to present that line of argument to anyone as sharp
as Arlette Stein, for example. He knew what the well-hipped thirtyish widow would have immediately
replied: "But every girl in the office doesn't ask for it, Mr. Balik." A heavy sneer at such sophistry would
mean little to Stein.
      Wednesday, he appreciated, was not the person to go in for such counterattacks. She was rolling
her lips distressedly against each other and trying to think of a polite, good-employee way out. There was
only one, and she would have to come to it in a moment.
      She did.
      "Would it help any," she began, and stopped. She took a deep breath. "Would it help any, if I told
you the reasons—for the leaves-of-absence?"
      "It would," he said heartily. "It would indeed, Miss Gresham. That way I, as office manager, can
operate from facts instead of mysteries. I can hear your reasons, weigh them for validity and measure
their importance—and your usefulness as a secre-tary—against the disorganization your absences create
in the day-to-day operation of Slaughter, Stark and Slingsby."
      "M-m-m." She looked troubled, uncertain. "I'd like to think a bit, if you don't mind."
      Fabian waved a cauliflower-filled fork magnanimously. "Take all the time in the world! Think it out
carefully. Don't tell me anything you aren't perfectly willing to tell me. Of course anything you do tell me
will be, I am sure I need hardly reassure you, completely confidential. I will treat it as official knowledge,
Miss Gresham—not personal. And while you're thinking, you might start eating your raw cabbage.
Before it gets cold," he added with a rich, executive-type chuckle.
      She nodded him a half-smile that ended in a sigh and began working at her plate in an
absent-minded, not-particularly-hungry fashion.
      "You see," she began abruptly as if she'd found a good point of departure, "some things happen to
me that don't happen to other people."
      "That, I would say, is fairly obvious."
      "They're not bad things. I mean what, oh, the newspapers would call bad. And they're not
dangerous things, exactly. They're—they're more physical-like. They're things that could happen to my
body."
      Fabian finished his plate, sat back and crossed his arms. "Could you be just a little more specific?
Unless—" and he was struck by a horrifying thought—"unless they're what is known as, er, as female
difficulties. In that case, of course—"
      This time she didn't even blush. "Oh, no. Not at all. At least there's very little of that. It's—other
things. Like my appendix. Every year I have to have my appendix out."
      "Your appendix?" He turned that over in his mind. "Every year? But a human being only has one
appendix. And once it's removed, it doesn't grow back."
      "Mine does. On the tenth of April, every single year, I get appendicitis and have to have an
operation. That's why I take my vacation then. And my teeth. Every five years, I lose all my teeth. I start
losing them about this time, and I have some dental plates that were made when I was younger—I use
them until my teeth grow back. Then, about the middle of October, the last of them goes and new ones
start coming up. I can't use my dental plates while they're growing, so I look kind of funny for a while.
That's why I ask for a leave of absence. In the middle of November, the new teeth are almost full-grown,
and I come back to work."
      She took a deep breath and timidly lifted her eyes to his face. That was all she evi-dently had to say.
Or wished to.
      All through dessert, he thought about it. He was positive she was telling the truth. A girl like
Wednesday Gresham didn't lie. Not to such a fantastic extent. Not to her boss.
      "Well," he said at last. "It's certainly very unusual."
      "Yes," she agreed. "Very unusual."
      "Do you have anything else the matter with—I mean, are there any other pecu-liarities—Oh, darn!
Is there anything else?"
      Wednesday considered. "There are. But, if you don't mind, Mr. Balik, I'd rather not—"
      Fabian decided not to take that. "Now see here, Miss Gresham," he said firmly. "Let us not play
games. You didn't have to tell me anything, but you decided, for yourself, for your own good reasons, to
do so. Now I must insist on the whole story, and noth-ing but the whole story. What other physical
difficulties do you have?"
      It worked. She cringed a bit in her chair, straightened up again, but a little weakly, and began: "I'm
sorry, Mr. Balik, I wouldn't dream of—of playing games with you. There are lots of other things, but
none of them interfere with my work, really. Like I have some tiny hairs growing on my fingernails. See?"
      Fabian glanced at the hand held across the table. A few almost microscopic ten-drils on each
glittering hard surface of fingernail.
      "What else?"
      "Well, my tongue. I have a few hairs on the underside of my tongue. They don't bother me, though,
they don't bother me in anyway. And there's my—my—"
      "Yes?" he prompted. Who could believe that colorless little Wednesday Gresham...
      "My navel. I don't have any navel."
      "You don't have any—But that's impossible!" he exploded. He felt his glasses sliding down his nose.
"Everyone has a navel! Everyone alive—everyone who's ever been born."
      Wednesday nodded, her eyes unnaturally bright and large. "Maybe—" she began, and suddenly,
unexpectedly, broke into tears. She brought her hands up to her face and sobbed through them, great,
pounding, wracking sobs that pulled her shoulders up and down, up and down.
      Fabian's consternation made him completely helpless. He'd never, never in his life, been in a
crowded restaurant with a crying girl before.
      "Now, Miss Gresham—Wednesday," he managed to get out, and he was annoyed to hear a high,
skittery note in his own voice. "There's no call for this. Surely, there's no call for this? Uh—Wednesday?"
      "Maybe," she gasped again, between sobs, "m-maybe that's the answer."
      "What's the answer?" Fabian asked loudly, desperately hoping to distract her into some kind of
conversation.
      "About—about being born. Maybe—maybe I wasn't born. M-maybe I was m-m-made!"
      And then, as if she'd merely been warming up before this, she really went into hysterics. Fabian
Balik at last realized what he had to do. He paid the check, put his arm around the girl's waist and
half-carried her out of the restaurant.
      It worked. She got quieter the moment they hit the open air. She leaned against a building, not crying
now, and shook her shoulders in a steadily diminishing cre-scendo. Finally, she ulped once, twice, and
turned groggily to him, her face looking as if it had been rubbed determinedly in an artist's turpentine rag.
      "I'm s-sorry," she said. "I'm t-terribly s-sorry. I haven't done that for years. But—you see, Mr.
Balik—I haven't talked about myself for years."
      "There's a nice bar at the corner," he pointed out, tremendously relieved. She'd looked for a while as
if she'd intended to keep on crying all day! "Let's pop in, and I'll have a drink. You can use the ladies'
room to fix yourself up."
      He took her arm and steered her into the place. Then he climbed onto a bar stool and had himself a
double brandy.
       What an experience! And what a strange, strange girl!
       Of course, he shouldn't have pushed her quite so hard on a subject about which she was evidently
so sensitive. Was that his fault, though, that she was so sensitive?
       Fabian considered the matter carefully, judicially, and found in his favor. No, it definitely wasn't his
fault.
       But what a story! The foundling business, the appendix business, the teeth, the hair on the fingernails
and tongue...And that last killer about the navel!
       He'd have to think it out. And maybe he'd get some other opinions. But one thing he was sure of, as
sure as of his own managerial capacities: Wednesday Gresham hadn't been lying in any particular.
Wednesday Gresham was just not the sort of a girl who made up tall stories about herself.
       When she rejoined him, he urged her to have a drink. "Help you get a grip on yourself."
       She demurred, she didn't drink very much, she said. But he insisted, and she gave in. "Just a liqueur.
Anything. You order it, Mr. Balik."
       Fabian was secretly very pleased at her docility. No reprimanding, no back-biting, like most other
girls—Although what in the world could she reprimand him for?
       "You still look a little frayed," he told her. "When we get back, don't bother going to your desk. Go
right in to Mr. Osborne and finish taking dictation. No point in giving the other girls something to talk
about. I'll sign in for you."
       She inclined her head submissively and continued to sip from the tiny glass.
      "What was that last comment you made in the restaurant—I'm certain you don't mind discussing it,
now—about not being born, but being made? That was an odd thing to say."
      Wednesday sighed. "It isn't my own idea. It's Dr. Lorington's. Years ago, when he was examining
me, he said that I looked as if I'd been made—by an amateur. By some-one who didn't have all the
blueprints, or didn't understand them, or wasn't concen-trating hard enough."
      "Hm." He stared at her, absolutely intrigued. She looked normal enough. Better than normal, in fact.
And yet—
      Later that afternoon, he telephoned Jim Rudd and made an appointment for right after work. Jim
Rudd had been his roommate in college and was now a doctor: he would be able to tell him a little more
about this.
      But Jim Rudd wasn't able to help him very much. He listened patiently to Fabian's story about "a girl
I've just met" and, at the end of it, leaned back in the new uphol-stered swivel chair and pursed his lips at
his diploma, neatly framed and hung on the opposite wall.
      "You sure do go in for weirdies, Fabe. For a superficially well-adjusted, well-organized guy with a
real talent for the mundane things of life, you pick the damndest women I ever heard of. But that's your
business. Maybe it's your way of adding a necessary pinch of the exotic to the grim daily round. Or
maybe you're making up for the drabness of your father's grocery store."
      "This girl is not a weirdie," Fabian insisted angrily. "She's a very simple little sec-retary, prettier than
most, but that's about all."
      "Have it your own way. To me, she's a weirdie. To me, there's not a hell of a lot of difference—from
your description—between her and that crazy White Russian dame you were running around with back
in our junior year. You know the one I mean—what was her name?"
      "Sandra? Oh, Jim, what's the matter with you? Sandra was a bollixed-up box of dynamite who was
always blowing up in my face. This kid turns pale and dies if I so much as raise my voice. Besides, I had
a real puppy-love crush on Sandra; this other girl is somebody I just met, like I told you, and I don't feel
anything for her, one way or the other."
      The young doctor grinned. "So you come up to my office and have a consultation about her! Well,
it's your funeral. What do you want to know?"
      "What causes all these—these physical peculiarities?"
      Dr. Rudd got up and sat on the edge of his desk. "First," he said, "whether you want to recognize it
or not, she's a highly disturbed person. The hysterics in the restaurant point to it, and the fantastic
nonsense she told you about her body points to it. So right there, you have something. If only one percent
of what she told you is true—and even that I would say is pretty high—it makes sense in terms of
psychosomatic imbalance. Medicine doesn't yet know quite how it works, but one thing seems certain:
anyone badly mixed up mentally is going to be at least a little mixed up physically, too."
      Fabian thought about that for a while. "Jim, you don't know what it means to those little secretaries
in the pool to tell lies to the office manager! A fib or two about why they were absent the day before,
yes, but not stories like this, not to me"
      A shrug. "I don't know what you look like to them: I don't work for you, Fabe. But none of what
you say would hold true for a psycho. And a psycho is what I have to consider her. Look, some of that
stuff she told you is impossible, some of it has oc-curred in medical literature. There have been
well-authenticated cases of people, for example, who have grown several sets of teeth in their lifetime.
These are biological sports, one-in-a-million individuals. But the rest of it? And all the rest of it
happen-ing to one person? Please."
      "I saw some of it. I saw the hairs on her fingernails."
      "You saw something on her fingernails. It could be any one of a dozen different possibilities. I'm sure
of one thing; it wasn't hair. Right there she gave herself away as phony. Goddammit, man, hair and nails
are the same organs essentially. One doesn't grow on the other!"
     "And the navel? The missing navel?"
      Jim Rudd dropped to his feet and strode rapidly about the office. "I wish I knew why I'm wasting so
much time with you," he complained. "A human being without a navel, or any mammal without a navel, is
as possible as an insect with a body tem-perature of ninety-eight degrees. It just can't be. It does not
exist."
      He seemed to get more and more upset as he considered it. He kept shaking his head negatively as
he walked.
      Fabian suggested: "Suppose I brought her to your office. And suppose you exam-ined her and
found no navel. Now just consider that for a moment. What would you say then?"
      "I'd say plastic surgery," the doctor said instantly. "Mind you, I'm positive she'd never submit to such
an examination, but if she did, and there was no navel, plastic surgery would be the only answer."
      "Why would anyone want to do plastic surgery on a navel?"
      "I don't know. I haven't the vaguest idea. Maybe an accident. Maybe a disfiguring birthmark in that
place. But there will be scars, let me tell you. She had to be born with a navel"
      Rudd went back to his desk. He picked up a prescription pad. "Let me give you the name of a good
psychiatrist, Fabe. I've thought ever since that Sandra business that you've had some personal problems
that might get out of hand one day. This man is one of the finest—"
      Fabian left.


She was obviously in a flutter when he called to pick her up that night, so much more of a flutter than a
date-with-the-boss would account for, that Fabian was puzzled. But he waited and gave her an
ostentatious and expensive good time. Afterward, after dinner and after the theater, when they were
sitting in the corner of a small night club over their drinks, he asked her about it.
      "You don't date much, do you, Wednesday?"
      "No, I don't, Mr. Balik—I mean, Fabian," she said, smiling shyly as she remem-bered the first-name
privilege she had been accorded for the evening. "I usually just go out with girl friends, not with men. I
usually turn down dates."
      "Why? You're not going to find a husband that way. You want to get married, don't you?"
      Wednesday shook her head slowly. "I don't think so. I—I'm afraid to. Not of mar-riage. Of babies.
I don't think a person like me ought to have a baby."
      "Nonsense! Is there any scientific reason why you shouldn't? What are you afraid of—it'll be a
monster?"
      "I'm afraid it might be...anything. I think with my body being as—as funny as it is, I shouldn't take
chances with a child. Dr. Lorington thinks so too. Besides, there's the poem."
      Fabian put down his drink. "Poem? What poem?"
    "You know, the one about the days of the week. I learned it when I was a little girl, and it frightened
me even then. It goes:


                                     Monday's child is fair of face,
                                    Tuesday's child is full of grace,
                                   Wednesday's child is full of woe,
                                    Thursday's child has far to go,
                                  Friday's child is loving and giving—
     And so on. When I was a little girl in the orphanage, I used to say to myself, 'I'm Wednesday. I'm
different from all other little girls in all kinds of strange ways. And my child—"'
      "Who gave you that name?"
      "I was left at the foundling home just after New Year's Eve—Wednesday morning. So they didn't
know what else to call me, especially when they found I didn't have a navel. And then, like I told you,
after the Greshams adopted me, I took their last name."
      He reached for her hand and grasped it firmly with both of his. He noted with tri-umphant pleasure
that her fingernails were hairy. "You're a very pretty girl, Wednes-day Gresham."
      When she saw that he meant it, she blushed and looked down at the tablecloth.
      "And you really don't have a navel?"
      "No, I don't. Really."
      "What else about you is different?" Fabian asked. "I mean, besides the things you told me."
      "Well," she considered. "There's that business about my blood pressure."
      "Tell me about it," he urged. She told him.


Two dates later, she informed Fabian that Dr. Lorington wanted to see him. Alone.
      He went all the way uptown to the old-fashioned brownstone, chewing his knuck-les in excitement.
He had so many questions to ask!
      Dr. Lorington was a tall, aged man with pale skin and absolutely white hair. He moved very slowly
as he gestured his visitor to a chair, but his eyes rested intent and anxious on Fabian's face.
      "Wednesday tells me you've been seeing a good deal of her, Mr. Balik. May I ask why?"
      Fabian shrugged. "I like the girl. I'm interested in her."
      "Interested, how? Interested clinically—as in a specimen?"
      "What a way to put it, Doctor! She's a pretty girl, she's a nice girl, why should I be interested in her
as a specimen?"
      The doctor stroked an invisible beard on his chin, still watching Fabian very closely. "She's a pretty
girl," he agreed, "but there are many pretty girls. You're a young man obviously on his way up in the
world, and you're also obviously far out of Wednesday's class. From what she's told me—and mind you,
it's been all on the positive side—I've gotten a definite impression that you look on her as a specimen, but
a specimen, let us say, about which you feel a substantial collector's itch. Why you should feel this way, I
don't know enough about you to say. But no matter how she rhapsodizes about you, I continue to feel
strongly that you have no conventional, expected emotional interest in her. And now that I've seen you,
I'm positive that this is so."
      "Glad to hear she rhapsodizes about me." Fabian tried to squeeze out a bashful-type grin. "You have
nothing to worry about, Doctor."
      "I think there's quite a bit to worry about, quite a bit. Frankly, Mr. Balik, your appearance has
confirmed my previous impressions: I am quite certain I don't like you. Furthermore, I don't like you for
Wednesday."
      Fabian thought for a moment, then shrugged. "That's too bad. But I don't think she'll listen to you.
She's gone without male companionship too long, and she's too flattered by my going after her."
      "I'm terribly afraid you're right. Listen to me, Mr. Balik. I'm very fond of Wednes-day and I know
how unguarded she is. I ask you, almost as a father, to leave her alone. I've taken care of her since she
arrived at the foundling home. I was responsible for keeping her case out of the medical journals so that
she might have some chance for a normal life. At the moment, I'm retired from practice. Wednesday
Gresham is my only regular patient. Couldn't you find it in your heart to be kind and have nothing more to
do with her?"
     "What's this about her being made, not born?" Fabian countered. "She says it was your idea."
     The old man sighed and shook his head over his desktop for a long moment. "It's the only
explanation that makes sense," he said at last, dispiritedly. "Considering the somatic inaccuracies and
ambivalences."
     Fabian clasped his hands and rubbed his elbows thoughtfully on the arms of his chair. "Did you ever
think there might be another explanation? She might be a mu-tant, a new kind of human evolution, or the
offspring of creatures from another world, say, who happened to be stranded on this planet."
     "Highly unlikely," Dr. Lorington said. "None of these physical modifications is especially useful in any
conceivable environment, with the possible exception of the constantly renewing teeth. Nor are the
modifications fatal. They tend to be just—inconvenient. As a physician who has examined many human
beings in my life, I would say that Wednesday is thoroughly, indisputably human. She is just a little—well,
the word is amateurish."
     The doctor sat up straight. "There is something else, Mr. Balik. I think it extremely inadvisable for
people like Wednesday to have children of their own."
     Fabian's eyes lit up in fascination. "Why? What would the children be like?"
     "They might be like anything imaginable—or unimaginable. With so much dis-arrangement of the
normal physical system, the modification in the reproductive functions must be enormous too. That's why
I ask you, Mr. Balik, not to go on seeing Wednesday, not to go on stimulating her to thoughts of
marriage. Because this is one girl that I am certain should not have babies!"
     "We'll see." Fabian rose and offered his hand. "Thank you very much for your time and trouble,
Doctor."
     Dr. Lorington cocked his head and stared up at him. Then, without shaking the hand, he said in a
quiet, even voice, "You are welcome. Goodbye, Mr. Balik."


Wednesday was naturally miserable over the antagonism between the two men. But there was very
little doubt where her loyalties would lie in a crisis. All those years of determined emotional starvation had
resulted in a frantic voracity. Once she allowed herself to think of Fabian romantically, she was done for.
She told him that she did her work at the office—from which their developing affair had so far been
success-fully screened—in a daze at the thought that he liked her.
       Fabian found her homage delicious. Most women he had known began to treat him with a gradually
sharpening edge of contempt as time went on. Wednesday be-came daily more admiring, more
agreeable, more compliant.
       True, she was by no means brilliant, but she was, he told himself, extremely pretty, and therefore
quite presentable. Just to be on the safe side, he found an opportunity to confer with Mr. Slaughter, the
senior partner of the firm, ostensibly on per-sonnel matters. He mentioned in passing that he was slightly
interested in one of the girls in the secretarial pool. Would there be any high-echelon objection to that?
       "Interested to the extent of perhaps marrying the girl?" Mr. Slaughter asked, study-ing him from
under a pair of enormously thick eyebrows.
       "Possibly. It might very well come to that, sir. If you have no ob—"
       "No objection at all, my boy, no objection at all. I don't like executives flim-flamming around with
their file-clerks as a general rule, but if it's handled quietly and ends in matrimony, it could be an excellent
thing for the office. I'd like to see you married, and steadied down. It might give the other single people in
the place some sensible ideas for a change. But mind you, Balik, no flim-flam. No hanky-panky,
especially on office time!"
      Satisfied, Fabian now devoted himself to separating Wednesday from Dr. Lorington. He pointed out
to her that the old man couldn't live much longer and she needed a regular doctor who was young enough
to be able to help her with the physical com-plexities she faced for the rest of her life. A young doctor
like Jim Rudd, for example.
      Wednesday wept, but was completely incapable of fighting him for long. In the end, she made only
one condition—that Dr. Rudd preserve the secrecy that Lorington had initiated. She didn't want to
become a medical journal freak or a newspaper sob story.
      The reasons why Fabian agreed had only a little to do with magnanimity. He wanted to have her
oddities for himself alone. Sandra he had worn on his breast, like a flashing jewel hung from a pendant.
Wednesday he would keep in a tiny chamois bag, exam-ining her from time to time in a self-satisfied,
miserly fashion.
      And, after a while, he might have another, smaller jewel...
      Jim Rudd accepted his conditions. And was astounded.
      "There is no navel at all!" he ejaculated when he had rejoined Fabian in his study, after the first
examination. "I've palpated the skin for scar tissue, but there's not the slightest hint of it. And that's not the
half of it! She has no discernible systole and diastole. Man, do you know what that means?"
      "I'm not interested right now," Fabian told him. "Later, maybe. Do you think you can help her with
these physical problems when they come up?"
      "Oh, sure. At least as well as that old fellow."
      "What about children? Can she have them?"
      Rudd spread his hands. "I don't see why not. For all her peculiarities, she's a re-markably healthy
young woman. And we have no reason to believe that this condi-tion—whatever you want to call it—is
hereditary. Of course, some part of it might be, in some strange way or other, but on the evidence.
      They were married, just before the start of Fabian's vacation, at City Hall. They came back to the
office after lunch and told everyone about it. Fabian had already hired a new secretary to replace his
wife.
      Two months later, Fabian had managed to get her pregnant.
      He was amazed at how upset she became, considering the meekness he had in-duced in her from
the beginning of their marriage. He tried to be stern and to tell her he would have none of this nonsense,
Dr. Rudd had said there was every reason to expect that she would have a normal baby, and that was
that. But it didn't work. He tried gentle humor, cajolery. He even took her in his arms and told her he
loved her too much not to want to have a little girl like her. But that didn't work either.
      "Fabian, darling," she moaned, "don't you understand? I'm not supposed to have a child. I'm not like
other women."
      He finally used something he had been saving as a last resort for this emergency. He took a book
from the shelf and flipped it open. "I understand," he said. "It's half Dr. Lorington and his
nineteenth-century superstitious twaddle, and half a silly little folk poem you read when you were a girl
and that made a terrifying impression on you. Well, I can't do anything about Dr. Lorington at this point in
your life, but I can do something about that poem. Here. Read this."
      She read:

                                     Birthdays, by B.L. Farjeon
                                    Monday's child is fair of face,
                                    Tuesday's child is full of grace,
                                 Wednesday's child is loving and giving,
                                Thursday's child works hard for a living,
                                       Friday's child is full of woe,
                                      Saturday's child has far to go,
                              But the child that is born on the Sabbath-day
                                 Is brave and bonny, and good and gay.

      Wednesday looked up and shook the tears from her eyes. "But I don't understand," she muttered in
confusion. "That's not like the one I read."
      He squatted beside her and explained patiently. "The one you read had two lines transposed, right?
Wednesday's and Thursday's child had the lines that Friday's and Saturday's child have in this version
and vice versa. Well, it's an old Devonshire poem originally, and no one knows for sure which version is
right. I looked it up, especially for you. I just wanted to show you how silly you were, basing your entire
attitude toward life on a couple of verses which could be read either way, not to mention the fact that
they were written several centuries before anyone thought of naming you Wednesday."
      She threw her arms around him and held on tightly.
      "Oh, Fabian, darling! Don't be angry with me. It's just that I'm so—frightened!"
      Jim Rudd was a little concerned, too. "Oh, I'm pretty sure it will be all right, but I wish you'd waited
until I had time to familiarize myself a bit more with the patient. The only thing, Fabe, I'll have to call in a
first-rate obstetrician. I'd never dream of handling this myself. I can make him keep it quiet, about
Wednesday and all that. But the moment she enters the delivery room, all bets are off. Too many odd
things about her—they're bound to be noticed by some nurse, at least."
      "Do the best you can," Fabian told him. "I don't want my wife involved in garish publicity, if it can be
helped. But if it can't be—well, it's about time Wednesday learned to live in the real world."
      The gestation period went along pretty well, with not much more than fairly usual complications. The
obstetrical specialist Jim Rudd had suggested was as intrigued as anyone else by Wednesday's oddities,
but he told them that the pregnancy was fol-lowing a monotonously normal course and that the fetus
seemed to be developing satisfactorily and completely on schedule.
      Wednesday became fairly cheerful again. Outside of her minor fears, Fabian reflected, she was an
eminently satisfactory and useful wife. She didn't exactly shine at the parties where they mingled with
other married couples from Slaughter, Stark and Slingsby, but she never committed a major faux pas
either. She was, in fact, rather well liked, and, as she obeyed him faithfully in every particular, he had no
cause at all for complaint.
      He spent his days at the office handling the dry, minuscule details of paper work and personnel
administration more efficiently than ever before, and his night and weekends with a person he had every
reason to believe was the most different woman on the face of the Earth. He was very well satisfied.
      Near the end of her term, Wednesday did beg for permission to visit Dr. Lorington just once.
Fabian had to refuse, regretfully but firmly.
      "It's not that I mind his not sending us a congratulatory telegram or wedding gift, Wednesday. I really
don't mind that at all. I'm not the kind of man to hold a grudge. But you're in good shape now. You're
over most of your silly fears. Lorington would just make them come alive again."
      And she continued to do what he said. Without argument, without complaint. She was really quite a
good wife. Fabian looked forward to the baby eagerly.
      One day, he received a telephone call at the office from the hospital. Wednesday had gone into
labor while visiting the obstetrician. She'd been rushed to the hospital and given birth shortly after arrival
to a baby girl. Both mother and child were doing well.
      Fabian broke out the box of cigars he'd been saving for this occasion. He passed them around the
office and received the felicitations of everybody up to and includ-ing Mr. Slaughter, Mr. Stark and both
Mr. Slingsbys. Then he took off for the hospital.
     From the moment he arrived in the Maternity Pavilion, he knew that something was wrong. It was
the way people looked at him, then looked quickly away. He heard a nurse saying behind him: "That
must be the father." His lips went tight and dry.
     They took him in to see his wife. Wednesday lay on her side, her knees drawn up against her
abdomen. She was breathing hard, but seemed to be unconscious. Some-thing about her position made
him feel acutely uncomfortable, but he couldn't de-cide exactly what it was.
     "I thought this was going to be the natural childbirth method," he said. "She told me she didn't think
you'd have to use anesthesia."
     "We didn't use anesthesia," the obstetrician told him. "Now let's go to your child, Mr. Balik."
     He let them fit a mask across his face and lead him to the glass-enclosed room where the new-born
infants lay in their tiny beds. He moved slowly, unwillingly, a shrieking song of incomprehensible disaster
building up slowly in his head.
     A nurse picked a baby out of a bed that was off in a corner away from the others. As Fabian
stumbled closer, he observed with a mad surge of relief that the child looked normal. There was no
visible blemish or deformity. Wednesday's daughter would not be a freak.
     But the infant stretched its arms out to him. "Oh, Fabian, darling," it lisped through toothless gums in
a voice that was all too terrifyingly familiar. "Oh, Fabian, darling, the strangest, most unbelievable thing
has happened!"


                                                 Afterword


"Child's Play" was written in 1946, and for a long time was almost too popular. In the Sam and Bella
Spewack play Boy Meets Girl, there's a movie producer who keeps asking a songwriter to write him
another "Night and Day." The writer comes up with song after song, and of each one the producer says,
"It's good, but it's not another 'Night and Day' " Finally, the songwriter plays a song that knocks the
producer out. "What do you call that one?" he asks excitedly. "Night and Day," says the songwriter.
      That's how I came to feel about "Child's Play": for years after I wrote it, editors would look at any
new story by me and say, "It's good, but you know, it's not another 'Child's Play.' " At last, in
desperation, I sat down to write another "Child's Play." I called it "Wednesday's Child."
      All right. That's not quite true. At least it's not the whole truth.
      First, Sturgeon warned me not to write a sequel. Especially not a sequel to "Child's Play." He felt
that one of the worst stories he had ever written was "Butyl and the Breather," a sequel to his first
science-fiction story, "Ether Breather," and something John Campbell of Astounding had urged him to
do. "Sequels," Ted said, "are pulling on an emptied teat."
      But, I told him, I didn't want to write a sequel; I just wanted to pick up a provocative little character
from "Child's Play" and examine what could have happened to her.
      Ted shook his head ominously. "It's a sequel," he said. "And there'll be no real milk there."
      That's first. Then, second, I had long been fascinated by Bartolomeo Vanzetti's last speech to the
court that sentenced him to be executed. He spoke of a future in which our time would be "but a dim
rememoring [sic] of a cursed past in which man was wolf to the man."
      I wanted to examine—in a story—such a wolf, particularly something I had seen much of, a man
who was wolf to a woman.
      Then there's third. I have always had an almost irrational hatred of people in Person-nel. I will not go
into the whys of it here. I'm not sure the reasons are at all valid. But I do hate them.
     And there's a fourth and possibly a fifth. But I finally wrote the story. And it was bounced. My God,
how it was bounced!
     John Campbell, who had been begging me for something for Astounding, handed it back with the
comment, "I don't think I've ever disliked—plain disliked—a story more than this one."
     Horace Gold of Galaxy, for whom I'd been doing most of my work recently, said with a grimace,
"No, Phil, not at all. You've finally achieved it: Not just downbeat, but down-beat squared."
     And the next editor sent it back with a note that simply said, "Ptooey." I had never got-ten a
rejection note like that before. I thought to myself: "I'm on to something really big here!"
     It was finally purchased by Leo Margulies for Fantastic Universe at one-half cent a word, payable
on publication. His editor, Frank Belknap Long, told me he felt the purchase was a mistake. "But Leo
wanted your name in the book," he said.
     And that might be all that could be said of a story of which I am quite fond, but for one more thing.
     A boyish-looking fellow came up to me at a party, someone I had never seen before. "Hey, Phil," he
said, "I understand you've just sold a piece to Fantastic Universe."
     "I have," I told him, "but I've not yet been paid for it."
     "That's neither here nor there," he said. "The point is, I've just sold my first professional story to the
same magazine. So—let's fight it out on the pages of Fantastic Universe, and may the best man win."
     "Who the hell are you?" I asked.
     "I'm Harlan Ellison," he said.


Written 1952 / Published 1955