A Treasury of Doctor Stories

by Fabricant, Noah D. ; Werner, Heinz;

  But I cried out within myself, and I cry out to you now, Howard, that the man in the other room was not and is not the real I! But he was saying that he was! He was claiming to be! It was his will that had triumphed here, for he had willed the old woman’s death; while I, the conscious I, had fought against it.

  I cried out and I still cry out against the monstrous injustice that he should be able to make the conscious I feel guilty because of a thing that was his doing! Are all the years when I was consciously kind, in spite of my exasperation, to count for nothing—all the years in which I fought down my irritation, all the years in which Margaret had acted, as I told her, like an angel? We had had our ungenerous thoughts, our angers, our selfish impulses; but we had trampled them under our feet, and was that fight, that struggle, that victory, to be as if it had never been? Was not the better part of us, whose deeds were gentle and considerate, to be accepted as the real individual, the real ego? Were these cold and selfish usurpers to be able to pretend that they were we? Able to make us feel that, guiltily? Is the fight towards decency, after it has been won, after its victory has been sealed and signalized by deed and fact, to be lost again merely because of the sneering assertion of these creatures who come bursting up out of the unplumbed depths of life? Are the whispers and nods and looks of those cave men to impose on us and make us think that we are cave men again? I protested, and I protest, that this cannot be! It is not merely my own case that I have brought you, Howard; it is the case of all men, of all humanity.

  I turned angrily towards the man in the other room with this protest rising to my lips. But again I was stopped from speaking. He was gazing down on the big chair in his room. Aunt Emma was in it—over there in the other room, beyond the mist. Her eyes were open, and she was looking out at me. On her face was the same faintly satirical smile as on the faces of the other two people in that room.

  Margaret was bending over the big chair in our room, weeping. Aunt Emma, from the other room, gazed on Margaret’s attitude with something like ironic amusement.

  Doctor Vokes was silent for several minutes after Dr. Harvey Herbert paused in his narrative. Then he said, “No, the case is scarcely in my line.”

  “Nor in mine,” said Doctor Herbert. “When I have considered everything that comes within the province of the psychologist, the essence of it all escapes me—the thing behind the thing.”

  “Why should a sense of guilt cling to you?” said Doctor Vokes. “That sense should belong to the man in the other room. Can’t you make him take it and keep it, and dive down with it into whatever strange and shadowy hell he came up out of?”

  “He won’t stay down there,” said Doctor Herbert simply, and with a despairing gesture. “He keeps coming up again, asserting himself.”

  There was another silence; presently Doctor Vokes said, “And his assertion—” He hesitated; then murmured, “I suppose it turns upon the fact that, after all, he spoke and acted with a direct and vigorous candor.”

  Dr. Harvey Herbert repeated his gesture.

  “I have thought several times I was rid of him,” he said; “but he keeps coming back. To-day I knew certainly that I was not rid of him. I discovered it when I found myself arranging with my lawyer to turn over Aunt Emma’s fifteen thousand a year to a charity, a home for old ladies.”

  “You did that?”

  “Yes. For a few moments after the transfer was completed I felt a relief. And then there floated in front of me the face of the man who had been in the other room, with a quizzically sarcastic grin upon his lips. The expression said he knew just why I could never touch any of Aunt Emma’s money—he knew, that grin said.”

  The Last Equation

  ROGER BURLINGA

  NOW THAT he was sick there was no more responsibility. His job was only to lie there and they would take care of him impersonally, except Megs. The office, Spelman, the men standing at the tables in the drafting room, Miss Kraus, they would all have to get along without him; they were independent of him; now they must call up the hospital until a voice divorced from flesh and warmth answered, “Mr. Drake is resting quietly.” So, he was a negative unit in his own scheme: they were glad, in a way, for this interval in which he remained minus. Except Megs.

  Stephen closed his eyes and hoped that Megs would not come for a while.

  But God, these nurses! How can a human being face another human being so mechanistically? I am a man, they are women, isn’t it so? Or is it not so? Can they take that off with their street clothes? No, for Miss Thwing, sitting impassive over there by the window with only half of her showing in the light . . . Miss Thwing must once, twice, sometimes in this silence, reach out to that world beyond the hook she has hung herself on, to someone who does not call her Miss Thwing—a beat must then be skipped by the heart below her starched armor. Yes, occasionally Miss Thwing reaches out.

  Miss Thwing has a face, neck, shoulders, hands, feet, and probably lungs, heart, stomach, etc., inside. She must want, once in a while to stretch, belch or scratch herself in the middle of her back but she will not do these things lest I become aware that she is a poor weak human creature. I might even believe that she is a woman. The ultimate breakdown would come if she, in turn, knew then, that I was a man instead of a machine out of order. Still, she must know, secretly, from the frequent evidence I have given her.

  Thank God the pain was better.

  Stephen sighed and Miss Thwing got up.

  “Easier?” she said.

  “Yes, easier.”

  On the whole, it was good, this hanging yourself on a hook. Stephen hoped suddenly that he would never, never, see Miss Thwing with herself on. It would torture him to have her care whether he was worse or better and now he thought uncomfortably about Megs.

  “Better, Stephen? A little better, dear?”

  Her thin face would draw together and be thinner when she said that. Why was her face so thin, so damn thin! A thousand times she must have said that: “Better Stephen?” the last three days with her familiar thin face close to him. Why did she love him so? She was so sweet, so good, so worried, so utterly unselfish, yet when he looked at her his nerves were acutely conscious of a tooth sticking out further than the other, that her ears lay back too close to her head, that she squinted when she pronounced certain words, that there was one square fleck and one triangular fleck in her right eye.

  “I love you, Megs.”

  But, of course, he must love her; he loved something deep in her beneath these things. Beneath her “Really, Stephen?” when he had made a tremendous joke, beneath her lifting his highball glass from the polished table and wiping it off, beneath the slow, methodical way she picked his clothes off the floor and hung them. Beneath these things, there was something he loved. What?

  Well, he was married to Megs. Marriage was an event, ‘way back now in the past—a youth when events were important in themselves—events for events’ sake. Little china Megs, pale, golden, bric-a-brac Megs, too exquisite to believe and she loved him. Dainty, dainty Megs. A woman? He had quivered with surprise at someone using that word about Megs.

  She loved him so much that she submitted that porcelain body to the robustness of marriage. Stephen would never forget how she lay, waiting, that first time, as she might lie, waiting for an operation, heroic, smiling: Yes, kill me, it is for a cause, I love you enough for that. But, child, this is life, not death, love is not negation!

  And, always after, too, it was like that—the body ready for the sacrifice. Never, never: Stephen, I am tired tonight; never: Let’s sleep Stephen, I love you just the same. No tears.

  So a month after the event, Stephen knew it had been a capture. In the first year he learned that the porcelain shepherdess was reinforced by a thin, inflexible steel rod.

  Along came the children, dutifully. In her womb, by will, she made them after her pattern, diverted them from him. She made their pale hair, their flecked eyes, their transparent skins, their delicate indestructible hands. Not a toe or a knuckl
e of Steve’s and Margaret’s was his. But why?

  “Miss Thwing, I’d like some orange juice.”

  “We cannot start intestinal activity, Mr. Drake, before—”

  “Nonsense, Miss Thwing!”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Drake. Your intestines must be empty.”

  Yet it had seemed inevitable, ordered, chemical, this capture. Certainly Megs had no affinity for his body, but for his essence, perhaps. Well, then, why did his essence not respond? If you put sodium and hydro-chloric acid together there is immediate reaction, the sodium is as eager as the acid to form the salt. The atoms fly together to form the new molecules (or did when he went to school) and they fly with equal avidity whether they are sodium or chlorine. The hydrogen gets left out, three is a crowd, poor hydrogen, but it will find its oxygen soon and come down in sweet, warm rain.

  A magnet, however, does not move; the iron filings fly to it because it is larger and stronger than they. Some scientists say the magnet does move; they had to work hard to get that . . . Everything moves in an arc. . . .

  I love you, Megs.

  Well, the habit of marriage is strong. I have never, never been unfaithful to you—hardly, even, in thought. I have looked at other women passing by, been stirred by the sweet curves of their legs, enjoyed occasional, very occasional movies and burlesque shows. But I have not dwelt upon these things.

  “Miss Thwing.”

  “Yes.”

  Under the starch, Miss Thwing, you have a remarkable body. It is warm and satisfying.

  “Miss Thwing, please get me a newspaper.”

  “You’re not supposed to read, Mr. Drake.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re not supposed to get excited.”

  “I can read the paper without getting excited. I’ll get more excited if I don’t.”

  “No, no, Mr. Drake you must relax.”

  Relax! Does she know what thinking is? Trying to work it out? The more my body relaxes, the more my mind works. Hunger, tiredness from pain, make it run faster. I must think. No more about Megs except where Megs is chemistry. Perhaps I will die on the operating table: I must think first, think clean and sharp like a knife.

  “Miss Thwing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Miss Thwing, will you please go away?”

  Miss Thwing came to the side of the bed and stood looking down at Stephen.

  “No, I’m not feverish, Miss Thwing. Here, feel my forehead. You have fine hands. Now here it is, I can relax if I am quite alone. I believe I can sleep. Do you mind? Usually I like to have you there, I like you very much, Miss Thwing, but now . . .”

  She moved the pillows a little, then glided away. Stephen thought she moved purposefully not as if she were going away but as if she were going somewhere. God help me if she brings a doctor to see if I am delirious. The door closed slowly against its pneumatic stop.

  Now.

  The world is full of men and women like me and Megs. It is also full of birds, wolves, woodchucks, trees and grass. One scheme moves chemically, biologically according to a pattern: the other is disordered. Mind has come in there. Now God, we’ll say, orders the first scheme: the second he cannot cope with. So mind must be anti-God. That makes two conflicting forces, God and anti-God and the universe is a battle.

  Stephen slipped through the circumference of a sphere and now he was in larger, fresher space. It was like slipping through the film of a soap bubble without breaking it.

  Now he remembered sharply the drafting room at the office. All day the men stood at their boards in brilliant light making lines which would become houses that would stand up and bear weight on their floors, keep out wet and cold. All day, these men allied their minds with the natural laws : gravity, stress and strain, the mechanical principle of the lever. But at night when they left the drafting room, now close and smelling of their effort, they went home and bucked the natural laws all night. They went home to tight cliff dwellings, fought with their wives, begot undesired and undesirable children or thought miserably or drank.

  Joe Beers was a boy and had no wife but he had girls, a string of girls, who fatigued him. Soon there would be nothing left for Joe. Ham Willink found ’the pressure of his mind intolerable and got drunk to quiet or divert it. Carstairs made futuristic drawings which triumphantly denied his work of the day.

  Yet the work these men did kept a part of humanity going.

  Now God was the architect for the animals but man fought Him and considered His plans inadequate, uncomfortable and, probably, in bad taste. But all the same, man could not build except by God’s laws if, indeed, they were His. The scientists, to be sure, were constantly finding them wrong.

  Who is God? Why did he equip man with a vermiform appendix? To try and thwart His enemy, Mind? But Mind had licked the vermiform appendix—that is if you could say you beat a thing by removing it.

  Stephen passed into another sphere and observed the stars. Colossal but inanimate. Or, at least, unconscious. Yet here he was in a realm of great activity. The order and business of the animals was nothing to this high-powered organization. Light and energy in the ether, movement and relation motivated and held in check by suns, particles flying off without reducing the bulk of the matter, chemical combination on a large, electric, scale.

  Was this superior to mind? No, because mind was conscious of it and it was not conscious of mind. I—or rather Mr. Jeans, say—observe these things, reflect upon them, find their causes. You can weigh a star, Mr. Jeans, weighing so many million times as much as the earth as easily as you can weigh your baby—easier: the star does not squirm or rebel against being weighed.

  Could Mind destroy the stars? Will it survive them?

  Mind, yes; it created them. Not human mind but Mind. Ah, now we are getting somewhere! But what is human mind—a reflection? A particle that is shot off? There, now, I’ve got it . . . Ah!

  The door moved open, men with white coats and the head nurse came in.

  “Well, Mr. Drake!”

  It was so good just to lie and think.

  “Have I got to go now?”

  “It’s nothing, Mr. Drake. It’s very, very easy.”

  “It seems hard.”

  “We do twenty a day, Mr. Drake.”

  “Oh that . . .”

  He must be like a feather, they lifted him so easily. Queer to be rolling along feet first. Rubber tires. Balloon . . .

  “Ha!” Stephen laughed suddenly.

  “All right, Mr. Drake?”

  Megs hadn’t come! She’d missed it.

  When the cone was over his head he breathed deep as they told him; his ears hummed. One, two, three; one and two and three and; one, seven, eleven: symbolic—but always starting with One.

  Now he was off through the spheres, not slowly, with labor as before but easily and fast. He recognized them as he went: it was like going in a car over a road you had walked as a child. But he went beyond now, beyond the limits.

  So, stop, he was in a room. Men talked and laughed about a long table, moving about, sitting down, getting up, joking in unintelligible language.

  “Alpha?”

  “To the W minus one.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of epsilon.”

  “That’s diminished by regression.”

  Stephen sat at an end of the table. Beyond the other end and the men, stretched an unlimited blackboard. Now someone put his hand on Stephen’s shoulder and leaned over him. He saw a genial face, dark, smoothshaven, but with eyes almost luminous.

  “Now,” said this person, “what’s the trouble?”

  “You know, don’t you?”

  “I can explain it to you, I’m sure. It’s absurdly simple.”

  “You’re God, aren’t you?”

  “No indeed. I’m one of the teachers.”

  “You’re not Christ, that I’m sure.”

  “No, Stephen, Christ would not help you now. You’re not quite up to that. Your thought is very elementary. Chris
t helps the more advanced pupils like . . . well like your Grandfather Barnes.”

  “Grandpa could only just read and write.”

  The person turned away, put his hands in his trousers pockets and faced the blackboard. Now Stephen could see the whole of him: he was short and stocky—his hair was thick and in great disorder.

  “Can’t we have a higher vibration?” he said.

  The light in the room changed from yellow to blue to violet.

  “Now look,” said Stephen’s teacher. “Follow me carefully and don’t interrupt. Don’t ask me where I get my premises. It will all be clear to you when I’m through. Now: x + y = 0. Let me write it down.”

  He went to the blackboard. The men drew aside, the table seemed to disappear.

  “Let’s go on from there.”

  Stephen did not recognize the forms of the equations but he grasped their solutions. The teacher covered the whole blackboard with his symbols. Stephen’s excitement rose as he watched: he had never felt such excitement. He could hardly wait for the teacher to write for his eagerness to see these equations resolve. Now they were melting into each other, he could guess the solution before it was written.

  The spheres were all there: Megs, the animals, the architects, the stars.

  Now Stephen heard the men at the other end whispering and laugh-See this?”

  He pounded with his chalk on the board, the dust of the chalk was luminous.

  “Now take the kappa root of this.”

  Stephen cried out.

  “There is no kappa root! There’s no such thing!”

  “Oh, isn’t there?” shouted the teacher. “How about this?”