by Damon Knight
“Where are they?”
“In your examination room. They had to tie up the boy. He tried to bite Harry, and he kicked, and scratched like a devil. He’s more like a wildcat than a human being.”
The examination room is the former emergency room of the hospital. It has two padded tables, several desks, scales that no longer work, a cabinet of surgical implements, gauze. It is seldom used any longer; they all have first-aid kits in their homes, and the old man sees them there when they need him.
The boy is on one of the tables, strapped down at ankles and wrists, a band of elastic bandaging about his chest, another about his throat to keep his head down. The old man doesn’t approach him, after one glance to be certain he is all right.
Sid is on another table, conscious but pale from shock and loss of blood. A gauze pad is on his head, blood-soaked, and when the old man lifts it, he knows that Sid needs stitches. The cut is jagged and deep, from above his eyebrow across his temple to his ear.
“I’ll have to sew it up, Sid,” the old man says, and Sid’s eyelids flutter. “Cover him up, keep him warm. I’ll get things going.” He washes his hands, cleans them again from a freshly opened bottle of alcohol, opens a sealed package of surgical gloves, another of needles and gut and bandages, and another of a local anesthetic that the directions say will remain potent for one hundred years. All the supplies have been labeled this way: date of packing, date of expiration of potency. In one of the pharmaceutical books the old man has found explicit directions for combining ingredients in order to make sedatives and tranquilizers. Previously compounded medicines, he assumes, have long since lost their potency. Those that he makes up are all very effective.
Eunice prepares Sid; she shaves his eyebrow, part of his beard, some of his hair. The old man is not as swift as he would like to be, but he is thorough, and when he finishes, he knows that a real doctor would not have done better with the wound. Sid is breathing shallowly; he is still in shock. Only after he is finished with Sid does the old man approach the other table.
The boy is filthy, his hair caked and matted, his fingernails jagged, packed with grime; he looks as if he has never had a bath. He is wearing a one-piece garment, a shiftlike thing made of coarse material, tied at the shoulders. It has been twisted about him and conceals little. His muscles show good development; his teeth, which remain bared from the time the old man nears him until he steps back, seem good.
“I don’t want to move Sid for a couple of hours, maybe not until tomorrow,” the old man says. “Let’s give this little beggar a bath and have a better look at him.”
The boy strains against his bonds, and a low moaning sound starts deep in his throat. Eunice brings a basin of water. There are tanks on the hospital roof, overflowing probably, since no one uses the water here. The water is cool, not cold enough to hurt the child, but he howls when the old man starts to scrub him, and doesn’t stop until the old man is through.
The boy is sun-browned, with pale skin where the garment has covered him. His hair is brown, with a slight wave; his eyes are grey. His legs are covered with old wounds, all well healed. The old man purses his lips, however, as he makes a closer examination. The testicles are atrophied. He kneads the boy’s stomach, listens to his heart, his lungs, and finally sits down and stares at the child.
“You finished with him?” Harry asks. He has been staring at the child and has said very little. Like most of the men, Harry is bearded, has rather long hair. There is a long red scratch on his hand. The boy has stopped screaming and howling. He is watching the old man.
“Yes, that’s all. Healthy as a boy ought to be. Eight, nine years old. Boy, what’s your name?”
The boy makes no sign that he understands.
“Okay, Lew, now it’s my turn,” Harry says. He has found a thick leather strap and has it wrapped around his hand, with a loose end of two and a half feet that he hits against his leg from time to time. “I aim to beat the hell out of the little bugger.”
The boy’s eyes close involuntarily and he swallows, and again strains to get loose.
The old man waves Harry back. “Not so fast, Harry. What happened when you found the kids?”
“We didn’t find them. We went down to the warehouse section and looked around and they were gone. Then we put the food and stuff down where they could find it and started back, and they jumped us.”
“They didn’t jump us,” Mary says. “We startled them. We scared them to death, coming on them suddenly like we did. They began to pick up anything they could find to throw at us, and they ran. This one fell over something and Sid grabbed him. That’s when someone hit him with the rock. He fell on top of this boy and held him down until Harry got to them.”
“What do you mean, you came on them suddenly?”
“We went down there out in the open, in the middle of the street, not trying to hide or anything. Then, I don’t know why, when we couldn’t find them, we sort of quieted down, and we weren’t making any noise at all on the way back, and we were in old Wharf Alley, you know how narrow it is, how dark. They were coming out of one of the warehouses, just as we approached it. I don’t know who was more scared, them or us.”
Eunice nods at Mary’s recital, and Harry hits his leg with the strap, watching the boy.
“So, as far as they know, you jumped them and then made off with one of them. Kidnapped him.” The old man is watching the boy, and he knows the boy has understood everything. “I’ll take him back,” the old man says suddenly.
“No! By God! Make him tell us a few things first.” Harry steps closer to the table.
“Harry, don’t be an ass,” Mary says. “We can’t hold this child. And you certainly are not going to beat him.”
Harry looks from one to the other of the women, then to the old man. Sullenly he moves back to the other table, where Sid is, and pays no more attention to the boy.
The old man starts to loosen the bands about the boy’s chest and throat. “Now, you listen to me, son. I’m taking you back to where your friends are. I’m going to keep your hands tied until we get there, and I’m going to hold the cord. You understand. No rock throwing, no biting. When we get there, I’ll turn you loose and I’ll leave. If you want us, you can come back here. Tell the others the same thing. We won’t come to find you again.”
The old man takes the boy out the front of the hospital, through the ruined city streets. He doesn’t want him to associate the park with any of the people in the city, just in case there are adults using the children as decoys. He talks as they go.
“We have plenty of food and warm clothes. There are a lot of empty buildings and oil to heat them. You and your friends, or brothers and sisters, whatever they are, can live here if you want to. No one will hurt you or bother you.”
The boy walks as far from the old man as the tether will permit. He looks at him from the corner of his eye and gives no sign of comprehension.
“I know damn well that you understand,” the old man says conversationally. “I don’t care if you ever answer me. I’m just telling you what to tell the others. The oldest one, the girl, you tell her what I said, you hear? And the big boy. They’ll know what to do. You tell them.”
Midway to the dock area the old man knows they are being followed. The boy knows it also. Now he is looking over his shoulder, past the old man, to the other side of the street. They won’t start throwing as long as the boy is so close to him, the old man hopes. He stops at the mouth of an alley and takes out his knife. The boy’s eyes widen with fear, and he is shaking when the old man cuts through the cord.
“Now scat,” the old man says, and steps into the dark alley. No rocks are thrown. He doesn’t wait to find out if the truce is to be a lasting one.
It is a time of waiting. The old man visits Sid often; his head is healing nicely, but he is nervous and demanding. Eunice is caring for him.
Most of the people are staying indoors now, waiting. A week has gone by since the children arrived, and no o
ne has seen or heard them again. The old man visits all his friends during the week. Dore and Ruth are pretending that nothing at all has happened, nothing has changed. Ruth’s heart has developed a new palpitation that the old man does not understand, does not know how to treat.
Monica is in her palace creating her garden and refuses to see him. Boy is still in hiding. Every afternoon now, the old man walks to the hospital and remains there for an hour or two.
The hospital corridors have remained bright; the windows are unbroken except for a pane or two on the west side where the storm winds most often come. The old man’s sandals make little noise on the cushioned floors. He walks each corridor in turn, examines the surgery wing, pauses there to people the rooms and watch the skillful surgeons for a time, then walks some more. The children have been all through the hospital. They have found the food. There are open containers, contents strewn about; they don’t know about freeze-dried food, to them it is inedible. They have raided the blankets, however. At least they will be warmer. And they have taken a number of surgical instruments.
In his room the old man continues to work on his Bible project. It is a lifetime occupation, he knows, more than enough for one lifetime. Of those who now survive, only one or two do not have such preoccupations. Harry Gould has become a fine leather craftsman; they all wear his sandals and shoes. Dore has studied until he has made himself an expert in chess. He has written several -books, reanalyzing championship games of the past. Myra is copying the library of music in India ink on skins, to preserve it forever. And so on. The empty ones were the first to go.
The old man glances over his most recent notes and presently is engrossed in them once more. The Biblical narrative from the Creation to the Ten Commandments is treated in his Bibles in the first eighty pages or so. By editing out the many begats, he thinks, that will come down to fifty pages. He has a theory that the begats are simply to show with some force that before the Flood man’s lifespan was over eight hundred years, and that after it, his span gradually decreased to about one hundred years. He has written: A drastic change in climate? An increase in the amount of ultraviolet light penetration of the atmosphere? If the begats are included in order to establish a lineage, then the same thing could be done with a simple statement. The same is true of the census in Numbers. Then there is the question of the function of the Books of Moses— part of Exodus, almost all of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. They exist in order to detail the numerous laws of the Israelites. Since the laws, with the exception of the Decalogue, were so temporal, applying to such a small group of people in particular circumstances, he has decided to extract and summarize them in a companion volume. A modern counterpart of the Books of Moses, he thinks, would be a city’s books of ordinances, or a state’s laws, including everything from the legal definition of murder down to grade-school admission requirements. He has been puzzled by the various versions of the story of Abraham and his wife, Sarah, whom Abraham calls his sister. Which is the original? He stares at the fine print, tapping his fingers, and then swings around to find his notebook. Boy is standing at the door. The old man doesn’t know how long Boy has been in the room. He stands up and embraces Boy, makes him sit down in his usual chair.
“Have you eaten? Are you all right?”
Boy is fine, he has eaten. He keeps glancing toward the window, but now his terror is contained.
The old man doesn’t return to his work. He sits opposite Boy and says quietly, “Do you remember when I found you? You were very small, no more than seven or eight. Remember?” Boy nods. “And you were hurt. Someone had hurt you badly, left you for dead. You would have died if I hadn’t found you, Boy. You know that, don’t you?” Again Boy nods.
“Those children will probably die, Boy, if we don’t help them.”
Boy jumps up and starts for the door again, his face quivering. Boy has never learned to read or write. He makes things, finds things; that is his preoccupation. What he is thinking, what he feels, is locked inside him. The outer signs, the quivering of his face, the tears in his eyes, the trembling of his hands, how much of the whirlwind of his mind do they convey? The old man stops him at the door and draws him back inside.
“They won’t hurt you, Boy. They are children. I’ll keep you safe.” Boy is still pulling away. The old man says, “Boy, I need you,” and Boy yields. The old man is ashamed of himself, but he is afraid that Boy will run away, and winter is coming.
“Can you find them for me, Boy? Don’t let them see you. Just find out where they are, if they are still nearby.”
Boy nods and indicates with a lowering of his hand and a wave at the sky that he will wait until night. The old man is satisfied. “Go rest now, Boy. I’ll be here. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
Boy has found the children. His hands fly as he describes their activities of the past three days. They hunt rats, birds, dig up grubs and worms to eat. They huddle about a fire, wrapped in blankets at night. They avoid the buildings, staying in the open, under trees, or in the ruins where they are not threatened by walls. Now they are gathered at the hospital, apparently waiting for someone from the city to come to them. Belatedly Boy indicates that one of them is hurt.
“I’ll go,” the old man says. “Boy, take a note to Sid for me. I’ll want him. They should see that he is not dead, that I cured him.” He scribbles the note and leaves, feeling Boy’s anxious gaze on his back as he starts across the park. He walks fast.
The children are under the overhang of the ambulance entrance. They are all filthy. The boy stands up and points to the injured child. A girl has a long sliver of metal strap sticking out of her leg. It is embedded deeply in her thigh and she is bleeding heavily. God, not an artery, the old man prays silently, and he kneels down close to the girl, who draws away, her hands curled up to strike like a cat’s. She is blanched-looking, from loss of blood or from fear, he cannot say. The old man stands up and takes a step back.
“I can help her,” he says slowly, carefully. “But you must bring her inside and put her on the table. Where the boy was.” The oldest girl, thirteen, possibly even fourteen, shakes her head hard. She points to the child imperiously. The old man crosses his arms and says nothing. The adolescent girl is their leader, he thinks. She is as dirty as the others, but she has the unmistakable bearing of an acknowledged leader. The older of the two boys is watching her closely for a sign. He is almost as tall as she, heavier, and he is holding one of the scalpels they have stolen. The old man doubts that he is very adept with it, but even a novice can do great damage with a scalpel. He continues to stand silently.
The girl makes a motion as if withdrawing the metal from the thigh of the injured child. She watches the old man.
“You’ll kill her if you remove it,” he says. “She’ll bleed to death.” The girl knows that, he thinks. That’s why they brought the child for him to treat. He wonders how much else she knows.
She is furious, and for an instant she hesitates, then turns toward the boy with the scalpel. He grasps it more firmly and takes a step toward the old man. The girl points again to the injured child.
“Inside,” the old man says quietly.
Suddenly the smaller boy says, “Look!” He points, and they all look at the park. Sid is coming toward them. He is alone. The little boy whispers to the girl. He motions, puts his hand on his head, closes his eyes, a dramatic enactment. The girl suddenly decides.
“Bring her in,” she says, and she walks around the building toward the entrance.
Sid is his assistant when he performs the operation. The metal must have been packaging material, the old man thinks. It is a strap, flexible still, but pitted with corrosion. Probably it came from a box that has long since rotted away under it. The warehouses near the river are full of such junk, easy enough to fall on in the dark there. He has to use an anesthetic, and the child’s unconsciousness alarms the other children. They huddle and whisper, and stop when the old man begins to speak softly. “She’ll sleep and then wake up agai
n. I shall cut into her leg and take out the metal and then sew it up, and she will feel nothing. Then she will awaken.” Over and over he says this, as he goes about the operation. The child’s body is completely covered with sheets, she is motionless. She’d better awaken, he thinks. He is doing the best he can.
Afterward he lights a space heater, and now the children are regarding him with large, awed eyes. The room grows warm quickly. It is getting dark outside and tonight there will be a hard freeze.
The children sleep on the floor, wrapped in blankets, all except the boy with the scalpel, who sits watching the old man. He watches sharply, closely, with intelligence. He will remember what he sees.
The old man asks Sid to bring up food, and together they prepare it and cook it over the space heater. There is no cooking stove in the hospital, except the giants in the kitchen that no one has used in sixty years. Sid makes a thick aromatic stew. The boy refuses to taste it. He has said nothing throughout the afternoon and night. But the children can talk, and they speak perfectly good English. Where did they come from? How have they survived? The old man eats his stew and ponders the sleeping children. Presently Sid climbs onto one of the examination tables to sleep, and the old man takes the other.
For three days the old man remains in the hospital and cares for the child. Either the leader girl or the older boy is always there. The others come and go. Sid leaves and returns once. The people are uneasy about the old man. They want him out of there, back in his own home. They are afraid he might be hurt by the children. And they need him.
“The children need me more than they do,” the old man says. “Tell them I’m all right. The kids are afraid of me, my powers.” He laughs as he says this, but there is a bitterness in his laugh. He doesn’t want them to fear him, but rather to trust him and like him, confide in him. So far they have said nothing.
After the leader girl smelled a plate with steak on it, then moved back, shaking her head, they have refused his offers of food. They won’t talk to him. They watch his every movement, the older boy especially. The old man watches them closely for signs of hunger, and finds none. The only one he knows is eating regularly is the injured little girl, and he feeds her.