by David Karp
“Doctor—we’re going to be successful with Burden. But not because Larsen and Kohn were successful with me. You see, they had all the time in the world. What was more, I was young and still impressionable. There was a certain elasticity of thinking involved. Burden will not be available to me for three years and his mind is rather rigid. He is not a child. He is an adult male of fairly good intellectual powers. The problem becomes immensely more difficult with these two added factors.”
“Perhaps impossible,” Wright said.
“That’s a hope, Doctor,” Lark smiled, “not an opinion.”
“It could be both.”
“Yes, except that I am even stronger than Larsen or Kohn. I am, in fact, a synthesis of those two men plus the heretic who was first brought here. Who can tell you more of the horrors of drink than an articulate ex-alcoholic? You see my point? I can succeed with Burden because once we might have been brothers—dearly beloved brothers. I know more of what goes on in the heretic’s mind because I, too, was once a heretic.”
“That statement reminds me faintly of the Inquisition’s opinion—certainly there were no more zealous inquisitors than the redeemed heretics who had renounced their heresy.”
“The difference between those inquisitors and myself is that I want heretics to come out into the light, to cast off the very things that set them apart from their fellow citizens, to live happy, useful lives.”
“It may interest you to know that there is still no difference.”
“But there is. I am not interested in creating more inquisitors—I am interested in creating happy men and women.”
“That is what they thought, too.”
“Ah, but they failed, and for a very good reason.”
“What reason?”
“They burned their failures at the stake publicly.”
“And your failures are buried out of sight?”
“My dear Doctor Wright—you know the ordinance against punishment. It no longer exists as a social concept.”
“I’ve wondered about that, sir. What does the State substitute?”
“Science, patience, benevolence.”
“When those fail?”
“They never fail, Doctor. The State is immortal. It never loses its patience or its benevolence.”
“Which probably means that you hound the poor devils for life.”
“For life? No, not at all. Only until their heresies are truly rooted out of them.”
“And those who won’t give up their heresies? Can’t give them up?”
“But there are no such persons. Burden is an example of a man hagridden with heresies—some of which he does not even know he holds. And yet, in two weeks or slightly less he will be free of them.”
“If heresy is so easily removed—then why wasn’t mine?”
“Because to erase your heresy it would be necessary to remove your independence of judgment, my good Doctor. It happens that the State has need of your heretical judgment. You may be unhappy being a heretic. In fact, I know you are. But for the good of the State you are expected to bear up under this unhappiness.”
“In other words, I’m a hero?”
“No, you’re not quite that,” Lark smiled indulgently, “but you are missing your fair portion of happiness. Happiness, my dear Doctor Wright, comes from conformity—comes from being exactly like your fellows. Your joys, your sorrows, your aims, your hopes, your dreams when shared and felt with others make for happiness. Man is a social animal and the State is helping him to the realization of the perfect society—a complete identity of common interest, where all feel a part, take a part, are a part.”
“It sounds like a prayer when you say it.”
“It is a prayer,” Lark said gently, smiling at Wright.
11
Burden slept fitfully until the late afternoon, his bones and muscles aching, a profound sense of exhaustion filling him. The day seemed to pass so quickly. He had slept after eating a lunch of soup and crackers and was awakened by the nurse taking his pulse.
“Please,” he said in a voice that felt hoarse, “I’d like to leave here. Couldn’t my clothes be brought in? I want to go home.”
“Oh, you’re too weak to get up right now. You’ve been sick.”
“No, it was just the aftereffects of the sedative the doctor gave me this morning.”
“Oh, now you know that isn’t true. No sedative could make you sick.”
“But it did. It made me weak and flushed. I must have caught a chill.”
“Now, now, don’t disturb yourself about that. You’ll be fine as can be tomorrow or the day after.”
“The day after? That’s Monday, isn’t it? I can’t be here Monday. My wife is expecting me home tomorrow night.”
“Well, you may be able to leave by tomorrow night. But that’s up to you, you know. If you stay in bed under the covers and behave yourself you might get that fever fully licked and you could be out of here. Now, won’t you help us to help you get home by tomorrow night?”
It was useless, Burden decided. They had made up their minds that he was sick and he would have to do as they asked. In God’s heaven, how they wore a man down. He rested against his pillows, holding the thermometer in his mouth. The nurse read it. But when he asked her what his temperature was, she smiled and said nothing and then took the temperature chart out of his room. Hopeless. Completely hopeless. To get enmeshed in the official red tape of a large organization was to be frustrated completely. There was no way out but the one they indicated. He would have to do as they asked until they were satisfied. He touched his forehead. It felt cool. But perhaps he was running a slight temperature—he could feel it in his bones. The doctor had probably given him something too drastic. The old fool. Well, it was no more incompetence than he could expect of the Department. Hadn’t Conger been an incompetent? And that Richard? Oh, he was learning a bitter lesson about the fallibility of governmental organizations. The benevolent State, unfortunately, was also the bungling State. Burden napped for an hour because it was the easiest thing to do, now that he had determined that he would stay until the following night.
He was awakened by the sound of the door opening and when he opened his eyes he saw the old doctor who had administered the sedative. He awoke so quickly and sharply, so intent on the doctor, that he barely noticed the tall, crane-thin man with curious light eyes and long pale face who came in behind him.
“Would you mind telling these people that I am not sick?” Burden demanded loudly. “They’ve kept me here in bed, taking my temperature, treating me as if I had undergone some kind of siege. You know as well as I there’s nothing wrong with me except that perhaps that sedative you gave me had a bad aftereffect.”
“My dear Professor Burden,” the doctor said calmly, “you were suffering with the onset of grippe while I was examining you. The sedative had nothing to do with your present condition. It neither brought it on nor aggravated it. As a point of fact, it should have helped to weaken it and that’s exactly what it did do. You are sick, although I can see you’re much better. Your eyes are clear. Do your bones and muscles ache?”
Burden hesitated. It was quite possible that the doctor was right. Damn it, but why should the grippe have followed so closely on the sedative? Surely he was well before he went to the examination room. Or was he? “Well,” Burden reluctantly admitted, “it is possible I had a touch of it. I do get it every winter. Although I don’t recall having a chill or anything like that.”
“You’ll feel better tomorrow. You’ll probably be out of bed by Monday.”
“Monday? But I want to go home tomorrow night! My wife’s expecting me.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that.” The doctor’s eyes narrowed dubiously. “Tomorrow night might be a touch too soon for you to get out of bed and do any traveling. These things tend to complicate if they aren’t nipped in the bud. Better to stay in bed an extra night than to take a chance.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll take that c
hance,” Burden said testily. It was getting out of hand now. Their medical caution could keep him in bed for a week. If he was going to be sick he might as well have Emma to take care of him. At least he’d be comfortable in his own home, away from these official bunglers and their eternal red tape. Burden looked again at the tall, slender young man with the silky black hair who stood slightly behind the doctor. The large, pale eyes seemed abstracted and yet they seemed to be staring directly at him. “Are you a doctor?” Burden asked the young man.
“Oh, no,” the slender young man said with a pleasant smile.
“Oh, excuse me, Professor Burden,” the doctor said, “you don’t know Lark.”
“Lark? Don’t you have a first name?” Burden asked, conscious of the fact that he was being rude. But then, if he was not a doctor he didn’t belong in his room.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Professor Burden,” Lark said, ignoring Burden’s question.
“I’m sorry if I snapped at you, Mr. Lark,” Burden said, deciding that it was unfair to be rude to someone he didn’t know. He might be a friend of the doctor’s accompanying him on his rounds. “The fact of the matter is that I’ve been treated abominably in here.” Burden fixed a cold and angry blue eye on the doctor. “Abominably,” he repeated.
“I’m sorry if you feel that way, Professor,” Lark said with a regretful look.
“You work for the Department, then?” Burden asked, wondering if he was on the staff. He wore a plain sack suit but he might be on the administrative staff.
“Yes, I’m Mr. Richard’s superior,” Lark said.
“There’s another fellow without a first name,” Burden said, his annoyance with Richard and Conger returning.
“Julian is his first name. Julian Richard,” Lark said politely. “The doctor tells me you’re well enough to talk, so may I stay awhile and chat with you?”
“Chat away,” Burden said grimly. “It’s been so overpoweringly dull in here I’d chat with the devil himself.”
“Thank you,” Lark said with a fleeting smile. The doctor nodded.
“You won’t tire the professor too much, I hope?”
“My word, Doctor,” Lark said, faintly suggesting a bow. The doctor nodded and patted Burden on the shoulder, a gesture from which Burden shrank on the grounds that it was an unnecessary condescension. Last night it hadn’t bothered him but now it did. It annoyed him far out of proportion to its importance.
“I hate people who pat others like stray dogs or children,” Burden said after the door had closed behind the doctor.
“Yes, it smacks a little of superiority, doesn’t it?” Lark said, sitting down on the chair beside the bed.
“It smacks of a great deal more than that. It smacks of a damned lot of familiarity,” Burden said, slightly surprised at his own swearing and vehemence. This place brought out of him things and expressions of emotion that were almost alien to him. Of course, there had been a great deal of provocation. Had been, and still was. But still, it was odd the way he had changed since coming to the Department—sharper, more irritable, quicker to anger, as though his nerves had been brought closer to the surface.
“I’m sure it has something to do with the sense of power that every doctor must feel,” Lark said.
“That’s an interesting thought,” Burden said, eyeing Lark. “It would suggest that the strong are gentle with the weak only because they know their own strength is so much greater.”
“I don’t see why the thought should be so startling, Professor.”
“Oh, but it is. You see, by extension it means that the powerful owe a great obligation to the weak because of their strength. And if by the powerful you substitute the Department, and if by the weak you substitute myself, then you see the Department owes me some consideration. For instance, it is obliged not to show its strength over me by keeping me here.”
“But you are not being kept here,” Lark said, faintly disturbed. He didn’t want Burden to feel restricted this early in the game. There might come a time when they would have to point out to him that he couldn’t leave, but this was far too early for the employment of such a tactic.
“But I am. Perhaps I am sick. But I’m not so sick that I couldn’t leave and recover at home. My wife is quite an accomplished nurse and I would feel happier there.”
“Oh, I see,” Lark felt somewhat relieved. Burden hadn’t yet sensed a pattern behind all that had happened to him.
“So, if you have any influence—and I suspect that you do—I wish you would see to it that I’m released tomorrow morning or afternoon so that I could get back to my family.”
“I wouldn’t like to use my influence and endanger your health, Professor.”
“My health is my business, Mr. Lark. I’ll risk it as I choose.”
“Professor Burden, aside from the fact that that is a foolish thing to say, it is a heretical thing to say.”
“What?” Burden’s eyes opened wide with surprise.
“Why, yes, of course. I’m surprised you didn’t recognize it. The health of every citizen of the country is the concern of the State since the health of the citizens affects the production of the State. We would not think of allowing garbage to accumulate in the streets, nor would we allow people to live under unsafe or unsanitary conditions. Your health is of primary importance to us. In brief, it is our business and quite properly so. When you deny that you’re uttering a heretical statement.”
“I suppose in the largest sense you’re probably right. I didn’t think of it just that way.”
“Not only in the largest sense but in the particular sense. You’re a teacher, whose occupation is important to the welfare of the State. If you should sicken and die, the State would prematurely lose your skills which are so sorely needed. I would be endangering your life if I arranged for you to leave before you were fully recovered.”
“I doubt that I am in any condition remotely as dangerous as you suggest, Mr. Lark.”
“My dear Professor, I don’t presume to be a judge of your condition. I am not a doctor. I have heard the doctor say that it is risky for you to leave before your illness is completely cured. Do you presume to know more than the doctor?”
Burden paused, looking at the thin young man. There was something sharp and yet insinuating in his speech and in his reasoning. He was not crudely baiting him the way Conger had done, nor was he stickily insinuating after the manner of Julian Richard. He was quite a different personality, and Burden decided it would be best to be cautious with him. “Well, we always like to feel that we know more than our own doctors, Mr. Lark, don’t we?”
“You know, Professor Burden, it is always a little surprising to me, the way in which you consistently fall back on the vanity principle. One should understand this, that, or the other thing, but one doesn’t because one prefers to trust his own vanity. Is vanity a bad thing, Professor?”
“Rampant vanity, of course, is always bad. It brings out the worst in men. It makes them unreasonable, selfish, silly, and quite vulnerable.”
“Controlled vanity, then, is the desideratum?”
“Yes,” Burden said, watching Lark carefully.
“Of course, my own feeling is that control in everything is desirable. What was the old saying about moderation in everything, denial of nothing—something, something, something. I’m very poor at quotes.”
“Mr. Lark, would you mind telling me just why you’re here?”
“Why?”
“Does it have something to do with my hearing? I mean, I thought Mr. Richard covered all the routine questions.”
“I suppose he did.”
“Well, if he did—what do you want?”
“I don’t know, Professor. I really don’t know what I want from you. Perhaps all I want to do is to see you face to face. I’ve heard and read so much about you the past twenty-four hours I grew curious to see what you were really like.”
“I didn’t know people in the Department had the time to satisfy their
idle curiosity.”
“Oh, but that’s exactly how I do occupy my time, Professor,” Lark smiled.
“Well, if you’ve satisfied your curiosity, Mr. Lark,” Burden said coldly, settling back against his pillow, “I wish you’d leave. As you pointed out, I’m a sick man.”
“Good, I’m glad you recognize that,” Lark said, showing no intention of rising from his chair. “However, you’re far sicker than you think, Professor.”
Burden looked at Lark questioningly, an uneasy sense of danger beginning to crawl across his mind.
“Yes,” Lark went on, “you see, Professor, we have every reason to believe that you’re a heretic. A very determined heretic, in fact.”