by James Gunn
But what would he do with the thing on his wrist? What of the governor? What would remain of his life if he showed up at the governor’s mansion without his daughter? And what of Marna? He discovered that the last concern overshadowed all the rest and silently cursed the emotions that were dooming him to a suicide mission.
“Ralph?” someone asked out of the darkness, and the decision was taken out of his hands.
“Yeth,” he lisped. “Where ith everybody?”
“Usual place—under the bank.”
Harry moved toward the voice, limping. “Can’t thee a thing.”
“Here’s a light.”
The trees lighted up, and a black form loomed in front of Harry. Harry blinked once, squinted, and hit the squire with the edge of his palm on the fourth cervical vertebra. As the man dropped, Harry picked the everlight out of the air, and caught the body. He eased the limp form into the grass and felt the neck. It was broken, but the squire was still breathing. He straightened the head so that there would be no pressure on nerve tissue, and looked up.
Light glimmered and flickered somewhere ahead. There was no movement, no sound; apparently no one had heard him. He flicked the light on, saw the path, and started through the young forest.
The campfire was built under a clay overhang so that it could not be seen from above. Roasting over it was a whole young deer being slowly turned on a spit by one of the squires. Harry found time to recognize the empty ache in his midriff for what it was: hunger.
The rest of the squires sat in a semicircle around the fire. Marna was seated on the far side, her hands bound behind her. Her head was raised; her eyes searched the darkness around the fire. What was she looking for? And then he answered his own question—she was looking for him. She knew by the bracelet on her wrist that he was near.
He wished that he could signal her, but that was impossible. He studied the squires: One was an albino, a second had artificial lungs attached to his back, a third had an external skeleton of stainless steel. The others may have had physical impairments that Harry could not see—all except one, who seemed older than the rest and leaned against the edge of the clay bank. He was blind, but inserted surgically into his eye sockets were electrically operated binoculars. He carried a power pack on his back with leads to the binoculars and to what must have been an antenna embedded in his coat.
Harry edged cautiously around the forest edge beyond the firelight toward where Marna was sitting.
“First the feast,” the albino gloated, “then the fun.”
The one who was turning the spit said, “I think we should have the fun first—then we’ll be good and hungry.”
They argued back and forth, good-naturedly for a moment and then, as others chimed in, with more intensity. Finally the albino turned to the one with the binoculars. “What do you say, Eyes?”
In a deep voice Eyes said, “Sell the girl. Young parts are worth top prices.”
“Ah,” said the albino slyly, “but you can’t see what a pretty little thing she is, Eyes. To you she’s only a pattern of white dots against a gray kinescope. To us she’s cream and pink and blue and—”
“One of these days,” Eyes said in a calm voice, “you’ll go too far.”
“Not with her, I won’t—”
A stick broke under Harry’s foot. Everyone stopped talking and listened. Harry eased his pistol out of its holster.
“Is that you, Ralph?” the albino said.
“Yeth,” Harry said, limping out into the edge of the firelight, but keeping his head in the darkness, his pistol concealed at his side.
“Can you imagine?” the albino said. “The girl says she’s the governor’s daughter.”
“I am,” Marna said clearly. “He will have you cut to pieces slowly for what you are going to do.”
“But I’m the governor, dearie,” said the albino in a falsetto, “and I don’t give a—”
Eyes interrupted. “That’s not Ralph. His leg’s all right.”
Harry cursed his luck. The binoculars were equipped to pick up X-ray reflections as well as radar. “Run!” he shouted in the silence that followed.
His first shot was for Eyes. The man was turning so that it struck his power pack. He began screaming and clawing at the binoculars that served him for eyes. But Harry wasn’t watching. He was releasing the entire magazine into the clay bank above the fire. Already loosened by the heat from the fire, the bank collapsed, smothering the fire and burying several of the squires sitting close to it.
Harry dived to the side. Several bullets went through the space he had just vacated. He scrambled for the forest and started running. He kept slamming into trees, but he picked himself up and ran again. In one of the collisions he lost his everlight. Behind, the pursuit thinned and died away.
He ran into something that yielded before him. It fell to the ground, something soft and warm. He tripped over it and toppled, his fist drawn back.
“Harry!” Marna said.
His fist turned into a hand that went out to her, pulled her tight. “Marna!” he whispered. “I didn’t know. I didn’t think I could do it. I thought you were—”
Their bracelets clinked together. Marna, who had been soft beneath him, suddenly stiffened, pushed him off. “Let’s not get slobbery about it,” she said angrily. “I know why you did it. Besides, they’ll hear us.”
Harry drew a quick, outraged breath and then let it come out in a sigh. What was the use? She’d never believe him—why should she? He wasn’t sure himself. Now that it was over and he had time to realize the risks he had taken, he began to shiver. He sat there in the dark forest, his eyes closed, and tried to control his shaking.
Marna put her hand out hesitantly and touched his arm. She started to say something, stopped, and the moment was past.
“B-b-brat-tt!” he said. “N-n-nasty—un-ungrate-ful b-b-brat!” And then the shakes were gone.
She started to move. “Sit still!” he whispered. “We’ve got to wait until they give up the search.”
At least he had eliminated the greatest danger: Eyes with his radar, X-ray, maybe infrared vision that was just as good by night as by day.
They sat in the darkness and waited, listened to the forest noises. An hour passed. Harry was going to say that perhaps it was safe to move, when he heard something rustling nearby. Animal, or human enemy? Marna, who had not touched him again or spoken, clutched his upper arm with a panic-strengthened hand. Harry doubled his fist and drew back his arm.
“Doctor Elliott?” Christopher whispered. “Marna?”
Relief surged over Harry like a warm, life-giving current. “You wonderful little imp! How did you find us?”
“Grampa helped me. He has a sense for that. I have a little, but he’s better. Come.”
Harry felt a small hand fit itself into his.
Christopher led them through the darkness. At first Harry was distrustful, and then, as the boy kept them out of bushes and trees, he moved more confidently. The hand became something he could trust. He knew how Pearce felt, and how bereft he must be now.
Christopher led them a long way before they reached another clearing. A bed of coals glowed dimly beneath a bower built from bent green branches and stuffed with leaves. Pearce sat near the fire, slowly turning a spit fashioned from another branch. It rested on two forked sticks. On the spit two skinned rabbits were golden brown and sizzling.
Pearce’s sightless face turned as they entered the clearing. “Welcome back,” he said.
Harry felt a warmth inside him that was like coming home. “Thanks,” he said. His voice was husky.
Marna fell to her knees in front of the fire, raising her hands to it to warm them. Rope dangled from them, frayed in the center where she had methodically picked it apart while she had waited by another fire. She must have been cold, Harry thought, and I let her shiver through the forest while I was warm in my jacket. But it was too late to say anything.
When Christopher removed the rabbits from
the spit, they almost fell apart. He wrapped four legs in damp green leaves and tucked them away in a cool hollow between two tree roots. “That’s for breakfast,” he said.
The four of them fell upon the remainder. Even without salt, it was the most delicious meal Harry had ever eaten. When it was finished, he licked his fingers, sighed, and leaned back on a pile of old leaves. He felt more contented than he could remember being since he was a child. He was a little thirsty, because he had refused to drink from the brook that ran through the woods close to their improvised camp, but he could stand that. A man couldn’t surrender all his principles. It would be ironic to die of typhoid so close to his chance at immortality. That the governor would confer immortality upon him—or at least put him into a position where he could earn it—he did not doubt. After all, he had saved the governor’s daughter. Marna was a pretty little thing. It was too bad she was still a child. An alliance with the governor’s family would not hurt his chances. Perhaps in a few years—He pushed the notion away. Marna hated him.
Christopher shoveled dirt over the fire with a large piece of bark. Harry sighed again and stretched luxuriously. Sleeping would be good tonight.
Marna had washed at the brook. Her face was clean and shining. “Will you sleep here beside me?” Harry asked her, touching the dry leaves. He held up his bracelet apologetically. “This thing keeps me awake when you’re very far away.”
She nodded coldly and sat down nearby—but far enough so that they did not touch. Harry said, “I can’t understand why we’ve run across so many teratisms. I can’t remember ever seeing one in my practice at the Medical Center.”
“You were in the clinics?” Pearce asked. And without waiting for an answer he went on, “Increasingly, the practice of medicine becomes the treatment of defectives, genetic monstrosities. In the city they would die; in the suburbs they are preserved to perpetuate themselves. Let me look at your arm.”
Harry started. Pearce had said it so naturally that for a moment he had forgotten that the old man couldn’t see. The old man’s gentle fingers untied the bandage and carefully pulled the matted grass away. “You won’t need this anymore.”
Harry put his hand wonderingly to the wound. It had not hurt for hours. Now it was only a scar. “Perhaps you really were a doctor. Why did you give up practice?”
Pearce whispered, “I grew tired of being a technician. Medicine had become so desperately complicated that the relationship between doctor and patient was not much different from that between mechanic and equipment.”
Harry objected. “A doctor has to preserve his distance. If he keeps caring, he won’t survive. He must become callous to suffering, inured to sorrow, or he couldn’t continue in a calling so intimately associated with them.”
“No one ever said,” Pearce whispered, “that it was an easy thing to be a doctor. If he stops caring, he loses not only his patient but his own humanity. But the complication of medicine had another effect. It restricted treatment to those who could afford it. Fewer and fewer people grew healthier and healthier. Weren’t the rest human, too?”
Harry frowned. “Certainly. But it was the wealthy contributors and the foundations that made it all possible. They had to be treated first so that medical research could continue.”
Pearce whispered, “And so society was warped all out of shape; everything was sacrificed to the god of medicine—all so that a few people could live a few years longer. Who paid the bill?
“And the odd outcome was that those who received care grew less healthy, as a class, than those who had to survive without it. Premies were saved to reproduce their weaknesses. Faults that would have proved fatal in childhood were repaired so that the patient reached maturity. Nonsurvival traits were passed along. Physiological inadequates multiplied, requiring greater care—”
Harry sat upright. “What kind of medical ethics are those? Medicine can’t count the cost or weigh the value. Its business is to treat the sick—”
“Those who can afford it. If medicine doesn’t make decisions about the rationing of care, then something else will: power or money or groups. One day I walked out on all that. I went among the citizens, where the future was, where I could help without discrimination. They took me in; they fed me when I was hungry, laughed with me when I was happy, cried with me when I was sad. They cared, and I helped them as I could.”
“How?” Harry asked. “Without a diagnostic machine, without drugs or antibiotics.”
“The human mind,” Pearce whispered, “is still the best diagnostic machine. And the best antibiotic. I touched them. I helped them to cure themselves. So I became a healer instead of a technician. Our bodies want to heal themselves, you know, but our minds give counter-orders and death instructions.”
“Witch doctor!” Harry said scornfully.
“Yes. Always there have been witch doctors. Healers. Only in my day have the healer and the doctor become two persons. In every other era the people with the healing touch were the doctors. They existed then; they exist now. Countless cures are testimony. Only today do we call it superstition. And yet we know that some doctors, no wiser or more expert than others, have patients with a far greater recovery rate. Some nurses—not always the best-looking ones—inspire in their patients a desire to get well.
“It takes you two hours to do a thorough examination; I can do it in two seconds. It may take you months or years to complete a treatment; I’ve never taken longer than five minutes.”
“But where’s your control?” Harry demanded. “How can you prove you’ve helped them? If you can’t trace cause and effect, if no one else can duplicate your treatment, it isn’t science. It can’t be taught.”
“When a healer is successful, he knows,” Pearce whispered. “So does his patient. As for teaching—how do you teach a child to talk?”
Harry shrugged impatiently. Pearce had an answer for everything. There are people like that, so secure in their mania that they can never be convinced that the rest of the world is sane. Man had to depend on science—not on superstition, not on faith healers, not on miracle workers. Or else he was back in the Dark Ages.
He lay back in the bed of leaves, feeling Marna’s presence close to him. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but he didn’t.
Else there would be no law, no security, no immortality. . . .
* * *
The bracelet woke him. It tingled. Then it began to hurt. Harry put out his hand. The bed of leaves beside him was warm, but Marna was gone.
“Marna!” he whispered. He raised himself on one elbow. In the starlight that filtered through the trees above, he could just make out that the clearing was empty of everyone but himself. The places where Pearce and the boy had been sleeping were empty. “Where is everybody?” he said, more loudly.
He cursed under his breath. They had picked their time and escaped. But why, then, had Christopher found them in the forest and brought them here? And what did Marna hope to gain? Make it to the mansion alone?
He started up. Something crunched in the leaves. Harry froze in that position. A moment later he was blinded by a brilliant light.
“Don’t move!” said a high-pitched voice. “I will have to shoot you. And if you try to dodge, the Snooper will follow.” The voice was cool and precise. The hand that held the gun, Harry thought, would be as cool and accurate as the voice.
“I’m not moving,” Harry said. “Who are you?”
The voice ignored him. “There were four of you. Where are the other three?”
“They heard you coming. They’re hanging back, waiting to rush you.”
“You’re lying,” the voice said contemptuously.
“Listen to me!” Harry said urgently. “You don’t sound like a citizen. I’m a doctor—ask me a question about medicine, anything at all. I’m on an urgent mission. I’m taking a message to the governor.”
“What is the message?”
Harry swallowed hard. “The shipment was hijacked. There won’t be another re
ady for a week.”
“What shipment?”
“I don’t know. If you’re a squire, you’ve got to help me.”
“Sit down.”
Harry sat down.
“I have a message for you. Your message won’t be delivered.”
“But—” Harry started up.
From somewhere behind the light came a small explosion—little more than a sharply expelled breath. Something stung Harry in the chest. He looked down. A tiny dart clung there between the edges of his jacket. He tried to reach for it and couldn’t. His arm wouldn’t move. His head wouldn’t move, either. He toppled over onto his side, not feeling the impact. Only his eyes, his ears, and his lungs seemed unaffected. He lay there, paralyzed, his mind racing.
“Yes,” the voice said calmly, “I am a ghoul. Some of my friends are headhunters, but I hunt bodies and bring them in alive. The sport is greater. So is the profit. Heads are worth only twenty dollars; bodies are worth more than a hundred. Some with young organs like yours are worth much more.
“Go, Snooper. Find the others.”
The light went away. Something crackled in the brush and was gone. Slowly Harry made out a black shape that seemed to be sitting on the ground about ten feet away.
“You wonder what will happen to you,” the ghoul said. “As soon as I find your companions, I will paralyze them, too, and summon my stretcher. They will carry you to my helicopter. Then, since you came from Kansas City, I will take you to Topeka.”
A last hope died in Harry’s chest.
“That works best, I’ve found,” the high-pitched voice continued. “Avoids complications. The Topeka hospital I do business with will buy your bodies, no questions asked. You are permanently paralyzed, so you will never feel any pain, although you will not lose consciousness. That way the organs never deteriorate. If you’re a doctor, as you said, you know what I mean. You may know the technical name for the poison in the dart; all I know is that it was synthesized from the poison of the digger wasp. By use of intravenous feeding, these eminently portable organ banks have been kept alive for years until their time comes. . . .”