A Shade of Difference

by Allen Drury

  “The first time?” Lafe said, trying hard to keep his expression pleasant, but again finding it difficult. “What has my government been doing all these decades, if it has not been giving proofs to the world? We have given thousands of proofs to the world!”

  “The new states are not aware of them, you see. It is only a very short time that they have been allowed to see the world beyond their borders. In that short time, many very well publicized events in America have shown them the other side of the coin. The mob that threw things at Terence Ajkaje symbolizes America to them. Or at least it did until now.”

  “And now, I suppose, all is harmony and they love us,” Lafe said, “and we shall defeat the Labaiya Amendment by an overwhelming majority.”

  He was conscious of a little change in the S.-G.’s eyes, a veiled expression for a second.

  “Won’t we?” he asked quickly. “After all, it takes two-thirds.”

  “It is not my position to intervene in these matters,” the S.-G. said, “unless requested.”

  “I’m requesting. What do you hear?”

  “I should beware a wild majority,” the S.-G. said cryptically. “I should also beware,” he said with a relieved smile that showed how little he wished to talk, even guardedly, in so public a place, “of newspapermen trying to ferret out embarrassing things.”

  And he gave a little bow and faded gracefully away as the London Evening Standard and his colleagues moved in upon them.

  “Good morning, Senator,” the Standard said crisply. “How does the situation look to you now?”

  “It looks as though I have an appointment across the street at U.S. headquarters,” Lafe said easily, though his mind was racing furiously as a result of the Secretary-General’s last remark.

  “Come on, Lafe,” the New York Times told him. “You can do better than that for us.”

  “Can I?” Lafe asked, a slightly acrid note coming into his voice. “How, pray tell?”

  “Oh, just tell us how confident you are,” the Chicago Tribune suggested. “How many hundreds of votes we have to spare in licking the Labaiya Amendment. And things like that.”

  “I’m not a vote-predicter, and I really do have to run along. Why don’t you see me tomorrow? I’ll know better what’s going to happen then.”

  “That’s no fun,” the London Daily Mail said. “We’ll all know then. We want to know now.”

  “Mmm-hmm. Well, excuse me, boys. Go see Terry and Felix down there. They’ll talk.”

  “All right,” the Standard said, suddenly annoyed. “We bloody well will.”

  “You bloody well do that,” Lafe said, turning away. “See you later.”

  “What’s going on here, anyway?” the New York Herald Tribune asked as they started purposefully down the Lounge toward the window where Felix and the M’Bulu were now holding forth to an admiring circle. “He didn’t sound very happy.”

  Nor was he, as he got his hat and coat and hurried down the Delegates’ Stairs to the Main Concourse and made his way out through the groups of students, the earnest ladies from Boston and Denver, the loudly talking tourists who crowded the low-ceilinged expanse awaiting their turn to tour the building. He was genuinely disturbed by the S.-G.’s obscure warning, for he thought he probably interpreted it rightly. He was also on his way to Harkness Pavilion to see his colleague. Neither item made him happy.

  He paused briefly at the circular information desk and borrowed a phone to put in a call to Washington, completed it, and then hurried out past Zeus and Sputnik and the slowly swinging steel ball of the Netherlands to catch a cab and proceed north through the cluttered traffic of the frigid metropolis.

  There had been an injection of procaine in the sternum. A few minutes after that, a needle had been inserted, suction had been applied, the needle had been handed to a nurse who carried it briskly away.

  “Is that all there is to it?” he asked blankly. “Is that all that this elaborate preparation led up to?”

  “That’s it,” the doctor said, smiling. The enormity of it struck him a heavy blow.

  “It doesn’t seem like much, for a death sentence,” he said with an ironic bitterness. The doctor at once looked grave.

  “It may not be that, but if it is—if it is—you will have to draw on all your resources—and I think you have them—to bear it. It will not be easy, but I think you can do it. That’s my impression, anyway, from what I’ve read of you.”

  “Thank you,” Hal Fry said, and in spite of the curious state of suspended feeling in which he seemed to be, a shadow of his customary humor came into his voice. “You’re sure you can believe all you read in the papers?”

  The doctor gave a sudden smile, as if surprised and pleased by this show of spirit, and Hal realized how anxious they must all be for him to carry it off well. You needn’t worry, he reassured them in his mind. I’ve got promises to keep, and miles to go, before I sleep.

  “I’m not sure I always do,” the doctor said, “but from the little I’ve seen I’d say they were probably accurate about you. What’s going to happen over there at the UN on this anti-American amendment?”

  “It’s going to be defeated tomorrow or the next day if I have anything to say about it,” Hal Fry said. “And I will,” he added with a sudden defiant grimness, for the general sedation he had been under for the past twelve hours was beginning to wear off.

  “Tell me,” he said. “If this is—what we think it is—what’s the outlook?”

  “It depends on the type. If it’s the type preliminary tests seem to indicate, then the outcome will be”—the doctor hesitated—“relatively swift.”

  “How swift?”

  “Forgive me. Two to three weeks. A month.”

  “But not the next couple of days, then,” Hal said, feeling strangely relieved, as though the doctor had told him he had all the time in the world.

  “Oh, no,” the doctor said. “But—” he added, watching him closely, “you understand, Senator—swift.”

  “I understand. That doesn’t matter, as long as I’ll be all right for the next couple of days.”

  “You will,” the doctor said, taking the cue without surprise and proceeding to discuss it matter-of-factly. “There will be some deterioration even in that time, but probably not enough to be noticeable to others. Especially if we keep you under sedation.”

  “I don’t want to stay here,” Senator Fry said sharply. “I’ve got to get back.”

  “But—” the doctor began, and paused at his patient’s expression. “Very well. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t. When do you have to be there?”

  “The debate starts at 3 p.m. tomorrow afternoon, and I ought to be there right now.”

  “Stay in today so we can give you some radiation, and then if you’ll report back in tomorrow night and stay overnight so we can treat you some more, and check in each night as long as the debate goes on, well let you go in-between times. How’s that? Fair enough?”

  “I appreciate it,” Hal Fry said. An agonizing spasm struck his chest. “There’s just one thing—if there is some sedation that would stop some of these symptoms temporarily, could I have it?”

  “We can give you some muscle relaxants and tranquilizers, if you like, to stop this pain from the nervous system that’s giving you so much trouble. We don’t want to load you up with too much, though, if you want to be active in the debate. But that’s up to you. If you can stand it without too much sedation, it would be better for your reactions and general quickness. On the other hand, if it gets too intense—maybe you won’t want to pay that price.”

  “Why don’t you give them to me and let me be the judge? If I really have to use them, I will. But—I’ll try not to.”

  “You’re a brave man.”

  “I know. And what good has it ever done me?”

  But that, he knew, was an understandable human bitterness, and the doctor dismissed it as such. Of course it had done him infinite good, carrying him through his marriage and its tra
gic conclusion, through Jimmy—Jimmy! Would there be time to go to Oak Lawn once more, and what would be the point, except sentimentality, if he did?—and now his courage must come to his aid again. And already it had, he realized as the brisk young nurses came in and helped him into his wheelchair, though he was perfectly able to walk and only a tiny bandage showed the site of the fateful intrusion into his marrow. He was beginning to come back already, at least in terms of humor and fighting heart.

  That this pleased the doctor he made clear when he came in a little later to hand Hal a lab report and explain its notations of hemoglobin sharply down, white blood cells and lymphs sharply up, the presence of many mitotic immature cells.

  “That’s it?” Senator Fry asked, scanning it automatically as though it were a report on someone else. Somehow it seemed to be, so determined was his mind to raise a barrier of detachment that would see him through.

  “That’s it,” the doctor said gravely. “Acute myelogenous leukemia, if you want to know the formal name of what’s after you.”

  “Luke, meet Senator Fry,” Hal said, leaning his head back on the pillow and looking into some far distance with an expression in which sadness and a tired philosophic humor were strangely combined. “Give me a couple of days, Luke,” he said softly, “and then we’ll go away somewhere together.”

  “You’ll have them,” the doctor promised, more moved than he wanted to show. “Harkness Pavilion’s gift to the country will be to keep you in shape for that debate.”

  “Thank you,” Hal Fry said, managing to smile a little. “I won’t let Harkness Pavilion down. Or anybody else, for that matter.”

  “We know you won’t,” the doctor said. “We know … Look,” he added gravely, “—you think this has hit you, but it hasn’t, yet. Not really. The full impact hasn’t come—it can’t, at first; the mind won’t let it. When it does, you call us immediately and we’ll give you enough sedation to put you out completely for a while. All right?”

  “And when I wake up, will you have taken it away?”

  The doctor shook his head in sad acknowledgment.

  “No. We won’t have taken it away.”

  “Okay, then, I think I’ll see it through without props … Anyway,” he added with a defiant attempt at jauntiness, “I’m going to be so busy in the next few days that I won’t have time to think about it.”

  “I hope so,” the doctor said, “but we’re here when you need us. Don’t forget that.”

  “I won’t, and I’m grateful … By the way, could you put out a statement, just to stop the gossip for a while? Just say I’m having a routine checkup and will be back at the UN tomorrow for the debate on the Labaiya proposals. I’d appreciate that.”

  “Right away,” the doctor said. He held out his hand. “Good luck.”

  “I’d like a little, for a change,” Hal Fry said, and then added at once when he saw the doctor’s expression, “I’m sorry. I mustn’t make it hard for everybody else, just to try to make it easier for me … I’ll manage. Don’t worry.”

  “All right,” the doctor said. “I’ll be in again later.”

  For a time after he left, the senior Senator from West Virginia lay staring up at the empty white ceiling, not moving, scarcely thinking, scarcely conscious of his body and the terrible invader to which it was playing host. He lay thus for perhaps fifteen minutes, drained of thought, emotion, energy, feeling; and then, just as there was beginning to approach the edge of his consciousness the first terrifying intimation of exactly where he was and what he was suffering from, there mercifully came a knock on the door, a hand reached around and tossed in a hat, and a second later he saw the amicable countenance, tired but reasonably cheerful, of his colleague from Iowa.

  “Hi, buddy,” Lafe said, recovering the hat, shucking it and his overcoat off onto the foot of the bed, and dropping into a chair. “How goes it?”

  “Pretty good,” Hal said, stuffing a couple of pillows behind his head so he could half-sit up, managing a smile. “Why the hat thrown in ahead of you? Have you done anything you shouldn’t?”

  “No. Except to phone Orrin and ask him to call and talk to us here.”

  “You didn’t tell him—” Senator Fry began in angry alarm, but Lafe shook his head.

  “He knows. You know Orrin. He doesn’t know exactly what it is, but he knows it’s damned serious. I expect he’s going to try to persuade you to resign and take a rest.”

  “Rest for what?” Hal Fry asked dryly. “I haven’t got anything to rest for. Except—more rest.”

  “Well, I thought that would be your position. You want to stay on the job, don’t you?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  Lafe smiled.

  “I’m on your side. I was already, but I just wanted to know how you felt about it, now that—now.”

  “I haven’t changed … You look tired. Have you had any sleep at all?”

  Lafe yawned.

  “Not much. I rode up on the plane with Terry, which was mildly interesting but not conducive to too much sleep. He’s very worried about that little riot back home.”

  “I should think he should be. Is he going back?”

  “I doubt if he will. He’s stubborn, like you. I got the idea he’s going to stick too, at least until the debate’s over.”

  Senator Fry’s eyes darkened and an expression of grave sadness crossed his face, but he was not, as his colleague thought he might be, concerned about himself.

  “I am so sorry about Seab,” he said softly. Lafe sighed and nodded.

  “He wouldn’t give up, either. The world,” he added with a rather wan attempt at humor, “is full of a lot of stubborn people. But it was a great tragedy, for the Senate and for the country. Though some of the country may not realize it yet.”

  “And Cullee. I sometimes think race is going to tear this nation apart.”

  “Not unless we let it. Not unless we all give up and stop trying to be fair and kind to one another.”

  “That’s part of the reason why I feel I have to keep going,” Senator Fry said. “It’s a contribution, I hope … Although I expect,” he said with a half-smile as the phone rang, “that I’ll be told differently.”

  “You’ll be surprised, I think. He isn’t worried about that. He’s worried about you, personally. Orrin’s very generous, underneath the prickly exterior.”

  Hal nodded and picked up the phone.

  “I know … Hello? Yes, Orrin, how are you?”

  “How are you?” the Secretary asked. “That’s what I want to know. Is Lafe with you?”

  “Yes, he is. And I’m fine.”

  ‘That’s a lie,” Orrin Knox said flatly, “and I wish you’d stop telling it to me. What have they found?”

  “Nothing that will prevent me from completing the job here.”

  “Damn it, don’t play games with me. We can’t afford it, in days like these.”

  “You can’t afford not to let me keep going, in days like these.”

  “It’s cancer, isn’t it?” the Secretary demanded. “Is it terminal?”

  “Orrin,” Senator Fry said, “I’m not going to tell you, and I don’t think the doctors will, and I don’t think Lafe will. Now, you’ve just got to trust me. I won’t push my strength past what it can bear. You have my word on that. Isn’t my word good enough for you?”

  “Of course I can remove you from the delegation,” the Secretary remarked thoughtfully. “Or Harley can, rather.”

  “Sure,” Senator Fry said with a sudden harsh bitterness, “and kill me right now. That would be great … Look,” he said, waving off Lafe as he started to reach for the receiver, “the President Pro Tem of the Senate is dead and a very fine young Congressman has been beaten up as a result of all this. And you want me to run away. What the hell do you think I am?”

  “I think you’re a very brave man and a very fine public servant, but I don’t want you to do anything foolish with your health.”

  “I said I won’t. Orrin, I must s
ee this job through up here. It means—well, perhaps you know, perhaps you don’t. It may be”—his voice broke a little, but he hurried on—“the last thing I do for the country, and you’ve got to let me do it. Now, please, Orrin. Lafe will tell you.” And this time he did relinquish the phone to his colleague, who came on the line in a no-nonsense fashion.

  “See here, Orrin, suppose you just let this situation rest up here, okay? We’re both keeping an eye on it, it’s all right, and we won’t do anything to endanger either the country or Hal. Now, lay off! Okay?”

  “The President and I have got to know what the situation is,” Orrin said stubbornly. “That makes sense, doesn’t it? It isn’t so unreasonable, is it? Go ahead, tell me it is.”

  “Of course it isn’t. But you’ve got to understand the—the feeling up here, too. All sorts of things are involved, past, present—future. I give you my considered judgment it would be fatal to insist, Orrin. But you go ahead if you want to. We can’t stop you.”

  “Well,” the Secretary said, and paused. “How long?” he asked after a moment.

  “Not very,” Lafe said. “That’s why—”

  “All right. Put him back on.”

  Lafe nodded to Hal and handed back the receiver.

  “Hal,” the Secretary said, “I think you’re an idealistic, wide-eyed, romantic damned fool, but—I guess that’s how a lot of things get done in this world, by people like that. So—you go ahead. But I’m trusting you to watch your own health.”

  “I will. And, Orrin—”

  “Yes?”

  “I thank you very much.”

  “Who said I had any choice?” the Secretary asked with a return of humor. “I seemed to be facing an outright rebellion in the delegation. Hell of a thing to have happen at a time like this. How does it look up there right now?”

  “Not bad,” Hal Fry said, responding gratefully in kind to his businesslike tone. “We’re in pretty good shape now that Congress has acted.”

  “Well, keep me advised, step by step, will you? When will you be back over there?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”