Billy came home from the hospital a week later.

It had turned out that he did not need any special equipment to survive. As the doctors had finally concluded, he possessed just enough gray matter to insure the continuation of his vital functions.

Billy's mother was thus able to carry home her child, who was wrapped in a gay blue blanket, on her lap in the car, while her husband drove.

Once home, Billy was installed in the nursery his parents had prepared before his birth. It was a very nice and pleasant sunny room, with popular cartoon pictures on the wall.

Unfortunately, Billy could not appreciate these decorative touches. When he wasn't sleeping he lay motionless on his back, his dumb, passive, blank eyes--which, however, were a beautiful, startling green--fixed implacably on an unvarying point on the ceiling.

He stared at the point so long and hard that Billy's father began to imagine he could see the paint starting to blister and peel under his son's unfathomable eyes, slick and depthless as polished jade.

In addition to this fixity of vision and lack of interest in his surroundings, young Billy exhibited few of the gestures or reactions of a normal baby. He seldom moved his limbs, and had to be rotated manually to avoid bedsores. This chore his parents performed conscientiously and tenderly, on a regular schedule.

Also, Billy made no noises of any sort. He was utterly silent. No gurgles or whimpers, cries or primitive syllables, ever issued from his lips. Billy's parents knew he possessed a complete vocal apparatus, but assumed correctly that the neural controls need to operate it were missing.

They had been ready to put up with sleepless nights due to their baby's wailing. Instead, their house seemed somehow quieter than it had before Billy's birth.

Sometimes at night Billy's mother and father lay in bed, awake, tensed for a cry that never came.

Since it never came, after a while they stopped listening.

One instinct that Billy possessed to a sufficient degree was that of suckling.

Billy's mother had decided while still pregnant with Billy that she would breast-feed her infant. When she came home with Billy, she remained determined to follow this course. Several times a day, then Billy's mother would hold him to her tit and Billy would take her sweet milk eagerly, his tiny lips and throat working silently. After feeding, he never even burped. Neither did he exhibit colic.

Thus was Billy able to take the nourishment necessary for his survival and, indeed, his growth.

While nursing Billy, his mother would gaze down at her child with a complex mixture of emotions. She would note how the bony pink ridge of his cranial crater--below which grew a smattering of fine hair like a monk's tonsure--was hardening and changing color, from roseate to peachy. She refrained from looking inside.

The doctors had decided that no cosmetic repairs were possible for Billy's tragically grave prenatal malformation. They admonished his parents to keep the interior of Billy's partial skull free of foreign objects (the exposed backs of the eyes were particularly sensitive), and to wash the rim daily with a mild solution of hydrogen peroxide and water, being most careful not to allow any of the solution to come in contact with Billy's tiny, yet hard-working brain fragment. (Truth to tell, the doctors felt that Billy would not survive for long, so they were reluctant to expend much time and energy on him, when there were so many other more curable patients demanding their skill and attention.)

Billy was supposed to wear a protective surgical cap, but his mother felt that it would do Billy's skull good to receive fresh air, and so she soon abandoned this practice.

Indeed, Billy's appearance quickly came to seem so natural to his parents that they almost forgot his unique condition. After supper each night they would stand by Billy's crib, holding hands and gazing down on their silent, motionless son, speculating wordlessly about his future.

One night Billy's father said, "I imagine that we'll always have to care for Billy. He won't ever be normal, will he?"

"No," admitted Billy's mother, "he won't ever be special, as we had hoped. But I don't mind. Do you?"

"No. But we must never try to have another child."

"I agree."