Selections

by Theodore Sturgeon

  Belter raised his head. “That is what we were up against. What passed in that Jovian’s mind when we burst in on it, with our quarreling and our blasters and our death-dealing, I can only imagine. It made no move to harm us, though it was armed. I think that it may have been leaving us to the same inevitable end which overcame Gith. Apparently a Jovian is capable of thinking beyond immediate advantage.

  “I have one more thing to tell you. According to star photographs found in a huge file on the Invader, and the tests and examinations I mentioned, the Invader is slightly over fourteen million years old.

  “There is a defense against The Death. You can’t kill a dead man. Now, in more ways than one, I give you over to Hereford.”

  SOME OF YOUR BLOOD

  (a short horror novel)

  First published in March, 1961

  I

  ...but first, a word:

  You know the way. You have the key. And it is your privilege.

  Go to the home of Dr. Philip Outerbridge. Go on in--you have the key. Climb the stairs, walk to the end of the corridor, and turn left. This is Dr. Phil's study, and a very comfortable and well-appointed one it is. Books, couch, books, desk, lamp, books, books. Go to the desk--sit down; it's all right. Open the lower right drawer. It's one of those deep, double drawers. It's locked? But you have the key--go ahead.

  Pull it open--more than that. All the way. That's it. See all those file-folders, a solid mass of them? Notice how they are held in a sort of box frame? Well, lift it out. (Better get up; it's heavy.) There.

  Underneath, lying flat, are a half-dozen folders--just plain file folders. Perhaps they are there to level up the main box-frame; well, they certainly do that. Perhaps, too, they are there because they are hidden, concealed, secret. Both perhapses could be true. And perhaps they are there because they are valuable, now or later. Value is money, value is knowledge, value is entertainment... sentiment, nostalgia. Add that perhaps to the others. It does not destroy them. And bear in mind that of the six folders, any of six might be any or all of these things. You may look at one of them. The second one from the top. You will note that it, like the others, is marked with Dr. Outerbridge's name and, in large red capitals, PERSONAL--CONFIDENTIAL--PRIVATE. But go ahead. Go right ahead; take it out, replace the box-frame, close the drawer, light the lamp, make yourself comfortable. You may read through the papers in this folder.

  But first rest your hands on the smooth cream-yellow paperboard and close your eyes and think about this folder which is marked CONFIDENTIAL and which is hidden in a drawer which is locked. Think how it was filled some years ago, when Dr. Phil was a young staff psychologist in a large military neuropsychiatric hospital. It happened that he was then two months short of the required age for a commission, so he rated as a sergeant. Yet he had, since his freshman year in college, trained and interned in psychological diagnosis and treatment at a famous university clinic, where he had earned a graduate degree in clinical psychology.

  It was wartime, or something very like it. The hospital was swamped, staggered, flooded. The staff had to learn as many new tricks, cut as many unheard-of corners, work as unholy hours, as those in any other establishment that handled the goings and comings of war, be they shipbuilders or professors of Baltic languages. And some of the staff, like some builders and teachers everywhere, were burdened by too many hours, too little help, too few facilities, and too much tradition, yet found their greatest burden the constant, grinding, overriding necessity for quality. Some men in tank factories turned down each bolt really tight; some welders really cared about the joints they ran. Some doctors, then, belonged with these, and never stopped caring about what they did, whether it was dull, whether it was difficult, whether, even, the whole world suddenly turned enemy and fought back, said quit, said skip it, it doesn't matter.

  So perhaps the value of these folders, and their secrecy lies in their ability to remind. Open one, relive it. Say, here was a triumph. Say, here is a tragedy. Say, here is a terrible blunder for which atonement can never be made... but which, because it was made, will never be made again. Say, here is the case which killed me; though I have not died, yet when I do I shall die of it. Say, here was my great insight, my inspiration, one day my book and my immortality. Say, here is failure; I think it would be anyone's failure, I--I pray God I never discover that someone else could succeed with something, some little thing I should have done and did not. Say... there is something to be said for each of these folders, guarded once by a lock, again by concealment, and at last by the declaration of privacy.

  But open your eyes now and look at the folder before you. On the index tab at its edge is lettered

  "GEORGE SMITH"

  The quotation marks are heavily and carefully applied, almost like a 66 and a 99.

  Go ahead.

  Open it.

  You know the way. You have the key. And it is your privilege. Would you like to know why? It is because you are The Reader, and this is fiction. Oh yes it is, it's fiction. As for Dr. Philip Outerbridge, he is fiction too, and he won't mind. So go on--he won't say a thing to you. You're quite safe.

  It is, it is, it really is fiction...

  II

  Here is a typewritten letter written on paper showing signs of having been torn across the top with a straight-edge, as if to remove a letterhead. The letters O-R over the date are in ink, printed by hand, large and clear.

  Base Hospital HQ,

  Portland Ore. : otherwise known as--

  Office of the Understaff O-R

  Freudsville, Oregon. 12 Jan.

  Dear Phil:

  First and foremost notice the O-R notation above. That means off the record, and I mean altogether. If and when you see it in future you don't need explanations. Anything which can be gotten across by abbreviation and in code is a blessing to me, especially since they gave me this nut factory to administer without relieving me of that bedlam of yours. You'll excuse the layman's vulgarisins, dear doctor; believe me, they do me good.

  Under separate and highly official cover, and through channels, you'll find orders from me to you relative to a file AX544. I'm the colonel and you're the sergeant. I'm the administrator and you're just staff. Hence the orders. On the other hand we are old friends and you are senior to me in your specialty six times umpteen squared. The fact--not mentioned in the orders--is that we've pulled the kind of blooper you don't excuse by saying oops, sorry. This soldier was yanked out of a staging area overseas and shipped back here with a "psychosis, unclassified" label and a "dangerous, violent" stencil, by a meat-headed MedCorps major. It could only have been sheer vindictiveness, deriving from the fact that the GI punched him in the nose. Criminal he may be--according to the distinctions now current--but insane he is not. Seems to me he did the right thing; but to the major's dim appreciation it appeared insane to strike an officer and so he was sent to your laughing academy instead of to a stockade.

  What complicates things is that we lost this guy. What with understaffing and turnover and all-around snafu, this GI has been stuck in padded solitary for three months now without diagnosis or treatment, and if he didn't qualify as one of your charges when he got there, he sure as hell should now.

  However it happened, it comes out looking like the worst kind of carelessness, to say nothing of injustice. So what "diagnose and treat" means in the official order is, please, Phil, on bended knee, get that man out of there and out of the Army in such a way that there will be no kickbacks, lawsuits or headlines. And aside from the merits of the case itself, we have to slough off these trivial cases. We need the bed. I need the bed, or will soon if this kind of thing happens again.

  I trust you to sew it up tidily, Philip. Not only a sound diagnosis, but a sound-sounding one. And then a medical discharge. His remuneration, whether or not he ever appreciates it, can be that his fisticuffs on the person of that moo-minded major are on the house.

  your absentee landlord,Al

  P. S. : To enrich the jest, I just
got word that above-mentioned major, by name Manson, got himself deceased in line of duty, in a C-119 crash. This I learned in answer to my request for any additional files he may have on subject patient. There ain't any files.

  A. W.

  Here is the carbon copy of a letter.

  Field Hospital #2

  Smithton Township, Cal. : also called-- O-R

  Bedpan Bureau 14 Jan.

  Reik's Ranch, Cal.

  Dear Al:

  You diagnose right handily by mail. You must have been studying that technique where the quack sends you a ten-dollar Kleenex and you wipe it over your face and send it back and he tells you you've got housemaid's knee. I spent a half-hour with the guy today--honest to God, Al, all the time I could split off--and I found him up on the top floor all alone in a secure cell. Very polite, very quiet. Although he offers nothing, he responds well. I had no hesitation in holding out some hope to him--all he wants is out, and I handed him the idea that if he cooperates with me he ought to make it. He was pathetically eager to please. For once and probably the only time, I'm glad I'm not an officer. He doesn't like officers. And as you said, if we put in solitary every GI who feels that way we'd have to evacuate the entire state of California for housing.

  Not having anything with me on that first visit to do any tests--including time, damn you--I sent Gus for a composition book and some ball-points and told the patient to write the story of his life any way it came to him, suggesting that third person might help. That'll give him something to do until I can get back to him, which will be soon--even sooner if you'll okay a requisition for a thirty-hour day and a sleep-eliminator for me.

  yours wearily,Phil

  The third or fourth carbon of a typed transcription.

  George's Account:

  The first that anybody heard about George was at this big staging area outside Tokyo and they were so busy they threw a lot of work to people who usually didn't do it. Which is the usual Army thing, thousands of guys sitting around waiting and a few dozen knocking themselves out. One of the things was the mail. The mail had to be censored but for military stuff and in this particular war, only certain special military stuff. Anything else was nobody's business but whoever wrote the letter.

  All the same some lieutenant who should have known better, well, he did know better but he did it anyway, he got very puzzled at one of the letters he was supposed to censor. He took it to a friend of his who happened to be a major in the Medical Corps, but this major was not just a doctor, he was a psychiatrist. He looked at the letter and told the lieutenant he had no business worrying himself about, it, it was not military, which the lieutenant already knew. And that did not do any good because the major had the letter now and it bothered him just as much, so he sent for the soldier who wrote the letter.

  The next day the major cleared up his desk and went and opened the door to the little room outside where this soldier was waiting. The major had a file in his hand turned around back to back with a lot of papers. He said "Come in uh," and looked at the papers, "uh Smith."

  The soldier came in and the major closed the door. The soldier was at attention but he looked around when he heard the door close. The major did not look at him yet but walked past him looking at the papers and he said "It's all right, soldier. At ease." And he didn't seem to be so tough. He sat down and put the papers on the desk and squared them away and finally he leaned back in his shiny brown swivel chair and took a good look at the soldier.

  What he saw was a big fellow with yellow hair and a pink kind of skin and the shoulders and chest that make the shirt look like it grew on him, it was so snug. He had thick arms and thick legs and he kept his face closed.

  Up to now the major did not tell the soldier he had the letter. So the soldier did not know why he was there.

  The major said, "The company clerk tells me you're something of a loner, Smith. Don't run with a crowd much."

  The soldier just said, Yes sir. He always liked to let the other guy do the talking as much as he could.

  "What do you do for amusement?"

  "I like to walk around. At home I fish some. Hunt." The major did not say anything to this so the soldier had to say, "There isn't much of that here. Coons and chucks, I mean. Rabbits."

  The major looked down at his papers and said, "Miss that a lot?"

  "Well, yes sir, I reckon."

  "Got a girl at home, George?" The Major called him George this time.

  "Sure do, yes sir."

  "Go in town once in a while, do you?"

  George knew just what he meant and he just shook his head no.

  The major picked up a paper and looked to see if it had anything written on the other side, which it had not. It was blue paper and had two lines written on it. It was only then that George began staring at it. He stared at it as much as the major did for the rest of the time he was there but from farther off. The major seemed to be going to say something about the paper but he did not. He said, "What do you hunt for, George? I mean, just what do you get out of it?"

  He waited, looking down at the paper, and when he did not get an answer he looked up to the soldier's face. Then he said, real soft and long, "Hey-y-y..." and got on his feet. He went to the far corner of the room quickly but sort of sidling, watching the soldier's face the whole time, took down a glass, filled it from a cooler, came back and passed it to the soldier. The major said, "Here, you better drink this."

  The soldier's face was bone-white and little drops of sweat were all over it and he was shaking and his eyes were half-way closed and what they call glazed. He took the glass but he did not seem to know he was taking it. He did not drink out of it but just held it out in front of him. He was staring down at the paper. The major looked down there too and that was when there was the explosion.

  The glass, it seemed to explode but that was really because the soldier squeezed it. The next thing would be to jump the major and the major knew that because he turned just as white as the soldier. But what saved the major's life was the hand still out. First it was dripping water and then it was dripping blood. The blood dripping was what saved the major, because when George Smith saw it he like forgot there was anyone or anything else there. Slowly he brought his hand up to his face. The fingers opened and pieces of bloody glass fell out. He closed the fist and brought it close and began to smell it. He opened it and along the outside edge of the hand under the little finger, blood was pulsing where a little artery was cut. George put his mouth on that part.

  The major must have pushed a button under his desk or something because the door banged open without knocking and two MP's ran in and grabbed George. After a while the major had to come and help, and then two more MP's came and that did it. The major had a bloody nose and one of the MP's just lay there on the floor without moving. George got his hand back to his mouth and stood breathing like a bull through his nostrils and watching the blood on the major's face.

  "Wait a minute," the major said when the MP's started hustling the soldier out, and they stopped. He looked George Smith straight in the eye and spoke to him kindly. He was breathing hard and bleeding but he really was kindly. He said, "What was it, soldier? What did I say?"

  George looked at the file folder on the desk and then he looked at the major bleeding and he sucked at his bleeding hand, and he did not say anything. For three months he did not say anything because he figured he had said much too much already.

  They packed up the file folder and the soldier and sent both back Stateside.

  III

  This George Smith was twenty-three years old at the time. He came from Kentucky, back in the hills. It was hills with woods and bills with farms and every once in a while these little towns that grow like you know, hair; around something, crossroads or a hole in the ground like a mine.

  George came from a mine town. His mother and father came from the old country. They got married on this side. The father was working in Charleston, South Carolina when he met the mother. Probab
ly the only reason he married her was she was the only girl he knew who could talk to him. There sure was nothing else worthwhile between them. Lonely. People get lonesome by their selves and then get hooked up and go off and be lonesome together.

  When they went to Kentucky so he could work in the mines they were always set apart from everybody because they never did learn much English. Whatever it was he wanted, friends or someplace to belong or to be a big shot, he tried to find in a bottle. About the earliest thing George could remember was the father bellowing drunk and the mother screaming and sometimes George screaming too. This was not the kind of memory like a thing happens and you remember it. This was no special one time, but like a colored light or a smell that you live in all the time. And hungry. Practically all the time hungry. Hungry waiting for the father to come home and sometimes he didn't and sometimes he came late and one single word to him about it and he'd start slugging. You found out that when the mother yelled you didn't feel hungry any more.

  But all the same it was nice. Like the woods. You could walk in the woods and know where you were, first a little way away from the house, then more, finally, anywhere. The woods in the rain, in the snow, the woods even when you were hungry, they couldn't hurt you the way you might get hurt at home. You might die in the woods or get killed, but the woods did not drink, the woods did not punch your mother in the face. You're always all right if you can get away into the woods. The woods are smooth, you might say, towns are rough. You can lay up to the smooth woods and drink, but not towns, not people, all split halfway up and prickly. Also you know where you stand in the woods. Animals, now, they never stay mad. You go to club a rabbit and you miss, or hurt him and he gets away, he's not going to get sore about it. Maybe he's learned something and maybe he's more careful after that, more scared, but that's all. But if you hit out at a person you never know what's going to come of it, from nothing at all all the way down to a stretch in the Big House. Also if a squirrel should see you cut a squirrel, it makes no never mind. But if a person sees you cut a person, look out. Even years later.