The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories and Other Stories

by Gene Wolfe

  He sat down again on the floor of the boxcar. Mr. Parker must not have been hurt too badly, because he could hear him moving around, as well as Nitty.

  “You kick it out, Mr. Parker?” Nitty said. “That was good.”

  “Must have been the boy. Nitty—”

  “Yes, Mr. Parker.”

  “We’re on a train … The railroad police threw a gas bomb to get us off. Is that correct?”

  “That’s true sure enough, Mr. Parker.”

  “I had the strangest dream. I was standing in the center corridor of the Grovehurst school, with my back leaning against the lockers. I could feel them.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was speaking to two new teachers—”

  “I know.” Little Tib could feel Nitty’s fingers on his face, and Nitty’s voice whispered, “You all right?”

  “—giving them the usual orientation talk. I heard something make a loud noise, like a rocket. I looked up then, and saw that one of the children had thrown a stink bomb—it was flying over my head. laying a trail of smoke. I went after it like I used to go after a ball when I was an outfielder in college, and I ran right into the wall.”

  “You sure did. Your face looks pretty bad, Mr. Parker.”

  “Hurts too. Look, there it is.”

  “Sure enough. Nobody kick it out after all.”

  “No. Here, feel it; it’s still warm. I suppose a chemical burns to generate the gas.”

  “You want to feel, George? Here, you can hold it.”

  Little Tib felt the warm metal cylinder pressed into his hands. There was a seam down the side, like a Coca-Cola can, and a funny-shaped thing on top.

  Nitty said, “I wonder what happened to all the gas.”

  “It blew out,” Mr. Parker told him.

  “It shouldn’t of done that. They threw it good—got it right back in the back of the car. It shouldn’t blow out that fast, and those things go on making gas for a long time.”

  “It must have been defective,” Mr. Parker said.

  “Must have been.” There was no expression in Nitty’s voice.

  Little Tib asked, “Did those ladies throw it?”

  “Sure did. Came down here and talked to us real nice first, then to get up on top of the car and do something like that.”

  “Nitty, I’m thirsty.”

  “Sure you are. Feel of him, Mr. Parker. He’s hot.”

  Mr. Parker’s hand was softer and smaller than Nitty’s. “Perhaps it was the gas.”

  “He was hot before.”

  “There’s no nurse’s office on this train, I’m afraid.”

  “There’s a doctor in Howard. I thought to get him to Howard …”

  “We haven’t anything in our accounts now.”

  Little Tib was tired. He lay down on the floor of the car, and heard the empty gas canister roll away, too tired to care.

  “ … a sick child …” Nitty said. The boxcar rocked under him, and the wheels made a rhythmic roar like the rushing of blood in the heart of a giantess.

  He was walking down a narrow dirt path. All the trees, on both sides of the path, had red leaves, and red grass grew around their roots. They had faces, too, in their trunks, and talked to one another as he passed. Apples and cherries hung from their boughs.

  The path twisted around little hills, all covered with the red trees. Cardinals hopped in the branches, and one fluttered to his shoulder. Little Tib was very happy; he told the cardinal, “I don’t want to go away—ever. I want to stay here, forever. Walking down this path.”

  “You will, my son,” the cardinal said. It made the sign of the cross with one wing.

  They went around a bend, and there was a tiny little house ahead, no bigger than the box a refrigerator comes in. It was painted with red and white stripes, and had a pointed roof. Little Tib did not like the look of it, but he took a step nearer.

  A full-sized man came out of the little house. He was made all of copper, so he was coppery-red all over, like a new pipe for the bathroom. His body was round, and his head was round too, and they were joined by a real piece of bathroom pipe. He had a big mustache stamped right into the copper, and he was polishing himself with a rag. “Who are you?” he said.

  Little Tib told him.

  “I don’t know you,” the copper man said. “Come closer so I can recognize you.”

  Little Tib came closer. Something was hammering, bam, bam, bam, in the hills behind the red and white house. He tried to see what it was, but there was a mist over them, as though it were early morning. “What is that noise?” he asked the copper man.

  “That is the giant,” the copper man said. “Can’t … you … see … her?”

  Little Tib said that he could not.

  “Then … wind … my … talking key … I’ll … tell … you …”

  The copper man turned around, and Little Tib saw that there were three keyholes in his back. The middle one had a neat copper label beside it printed with the words “TALKING ACTION.”

  “ … about … her.”

  There was a key with a beautiful handle hanging on a hook beside the hole. He took it and began to wind the copper man.

  “That’s better,” the copper man said. “My words—thanks to your fine winding—will blow away the mists, and you’ll be able to see her. I can stop her; but if I don’t you’ll be killed that senough.”

  As the copper man had said, the mists were lifting. Some, however, did not seem to blow away—they were not mists at all, but a mountain. The mountain moved, and was not a mountain at all, but a big woman wreathed in mist, twice as high as the hills around her. She was holding a broom, and while Little Tib watched, a rat as big as a railroad train ran out of a cave in one of the hills. Bam, the woman struck at it with her broom; but it ran into another cave. In a moment it ran out again. Bam! The woman was his mother, but he sensed that she would not know him—that she was cut off from him in some way by the mists, and the need to strike at the rat.

  “That’s my mother,” he told the copper man. “And that rat was in our kitchen in the new place. But she didn’t keep hitting at it and hitting at it like that.”

  “She is only hitting at it once,” the copper man said, “but that once is over and over again. That’s why she always misses it. But if you try to go any farther down this path, her broom will kill you and sweep you away. Unless I stop it.”

  “I could run between the swings,” Little Tib said. He could have, too.

  “The broom is bigger than you think,” the copper man told him. “And you can’t see it as well as you think you can.”

  “I want you to stop her,” Little Tib said. He was sure he could run between the blows of the broom, but he was sorry for his mother, who had to hit at the rat all the time, and never rest.

  “Then you must let me look at you.”

  “Go ahead,” Little Tib said.

  “You have to wind my motion key.”

  The lowest keyhole was labeled “MOVING ACTION.” It was the largest of all. There was a big key hanging beside it, and Little Tib used it to wind the moving action, hearing a heavy pawl clack inside the copper man each time he turned the key. “That’s enough,” the copper man said. Little Tib replaced the key, and the copper man turned around.

  “Now I must look into your eyes,” he said. His own eyes were stampings in the copper, but Little Tib knew that he could see out of them. He put his hands on Little Tib’s face, one on each side. They were harder even than Nitty’s, but smaller too, and very cold. Little Tib saw his eyes coming closer and closer.

  He saw his own eyes reflected in the copper man’s face as if they were in a mirror, and they had little flames in them like the flames of two candles in church; and the flames were going out. The copper man moved his face closer and closer to his own. It got darker and darker. Little Tib said, “Don’t you know me?”

  “You have to wind my thinking key,” the copper man said.

  Little Tib reached behind him, stretching
his arms as far as they would go around the copper body. His fingers found the smallest hole of all, and a little hook beside it; but there was no key.

  A baby was crying. There were medicine smells, and a strange woman’s voice said, “There, there.” Her hands touched his cheeks, the hard, cold hands of the copper man. Little Tib remembered that he could not really see at all, not any more.

  “He is sick, isn’t he,” the woman said. “He’s hot as fire. And screaming like that.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nitty said. “He’s sick sure enough.”

  A little girl’s voice said, “What’s wrong with him, Mamma?”

  “He’s running a fever, dear, and of course he’s blind.”

  Little Tib said, “I’m all right.”

  Mr. Parker’s voice told him, “You will be when the doctor sees you, George.”

  “I can stand up,” Little Tib said. He had discovered that he was sitting on Nitty’s lap, and it embarrassed him.

  “You awake now?” Nitty asked.

  Little Tib slid off his lap and felt around for his stick, but it was gone.

  “You been sleepin’ ever since we were on the train. Never did wake up more than halfway, even when we got off.”

  “Hello,” the little girl said. Bam. Bam. Bam.

  “Hello,” Little Tib said back to her.

  “Don’t let him touch your face, dear. His hands are dirty.”

  Little Tib could hear Mr. Parker talking to Nitty, but he did not pay any attention to them.

  “I have a baby,” the girl told him, “and a dog. His name is Muggly. My baby’s name is Virginia Jane.” Bam.

  “You walk funny,” Little Tib said.

  “I have to.”

  He bent down and touched her leg. Bending down made his head peculiar. There was a ringing sound he knew was not real, and it seemed to have fallen off him, and to be floating around in front of him somewhere. His fingers felt the edge of the little girl’s skirt, then her leg, warm and dry, then a rubber thing with metal under it, and metal strips like the copper man’s neck going down at the sides. He reached inside them and found her leg again, but it was smaller than his own arm.

  “Don’t let him hurt her,” the woman said.

  Nitty said, “Why, he won’t hurt her. What are you afraid of? A little boy like that.”

  He thought of his own legs walking down the path, walking through the spinning flowers toward the green city. The little girl’s leg was like them. It was bigger than he had thought, growing bigger under his fingers.

  “Come on,” the little girl said. “Mamma’s got Virginia Jane. Want to see her?” Bam. “Mamma, can I take my brace off?”

  “No, dear.”

  “I take it off at home.”

  “That’s when you’re going to lie down, dear, or have a bath.”

  “I don’t need it, Mamma. I really don’t. See?”

  The woman screamed. Little Tib covered his ears. When they had still lived in the old place and his mother and father had talked too loudly, he had covered his ears like that, and they had seen him and become more quiet. It did not work with the woman. She kept on screaming.

  A lady who worked for the doctor tried to quiet her, and at last the doctor herself came out and gave her something. Little Tib could not see what it was, but he heard her say over and over, “Take this, take this.” And finally the woman took it.

  Then they made the little girl and the woman go into the doctor’s office. There were more people waiting than Little Tib had known about, and they were all talking now. Nitty took him by the arm. “I don’t want to sit in your lap,” Little Tib said. “I don’t like sitting in laps.”

  “You can sit here,” Nitty said. He was almost whispering. “We’ll move Virginia Jane over.”

  Little Tib climbed up into a padded plastic seat. Nitty was on one side of him, and Mr. Parker on the other.

  “It’s too bad,” Nitty said, “you couldn’t see that little girl’s leg. I saw it. It was just a little matchstick-sized thing when we set down here. When they carried her in, it looked just like the other one.”

  “That’s nice,” Little Tib said.

  “We were wondering—did you have something to do with that?”

  Little Tib did not know, and so he sat silent.

  “Don’t push him, Nitty,” Mr. Parker said.

  “I’m not pushing him. I just asked. It’s important.”

  “Yes, it is,” Mr. Parker said. “You think about it, George, and if you have anything to tell us, let us know. We’ll listen.”

  Little Tib sat there for a long time, and at last the lady who worked for the doctor came and said, “Is it the boy?”

  “He has a fever,” Mr. Parker told her.

  “We have to get his pattern. Bring him over here.”

  Nitty said, “No use.” And Mr. Parker said, “You won’t be able to take his pattern—his retinas are gone.”

  The lady who worked for the doctor said nothing for a little while; then she said, “We’ll try anyway,” and took Little Tib’s hand and led him to where a bright light machine was. He knew it was a bright light machine from the feel and smell of it, and the way it fitted around his face. After a while she let him pull his eyes away from the machine.

  “He needs to see the doctor,” Nitty said. “I know without a pattern you can’t charge the government for it. But he is a sick child.”

  The lady said, “If I start a card on him, they’ll want to know who he is.”

  “Feel his head. He’s burning up.”

  “They’ll think he might be in the country illegally. Once an investigation like that starts, you can never stop it.”

  Mr. Parker asked, “Can we talk to the doctor?”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling you. You can’t see the doctor.”

  “What about me. I’m ill.”

  “I thought it was the boy.”

  “I’m ill too. Here.” Mr. Parker’s hands on his shoulders guided Little Tib out of the chair in front of the bright light machine, so that Mr. Parker could sit down himself instead. Mr. Parker leaned forward, and the machine hummed. “Of course,” Mr. Parker said, “I’ll have to take him in with me. He’s too small to leave alone in the waiting room.”

  “This man could watch him.”

  “He has to go.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Nitty said, “I sure do. I shouldn’t have stayed around this long, except this was all so interesting.”

  Little Tib took Mr. Parker’s hand, and they went through narrow, twisty corridors into a little room to see the doctor.

  “There’s no complaint on this,” the doctor said. “What’s the trouble with you?”

  Mr. Parker told her about Little Tib, and said that she could put down anything on his own card that she wanted.

  “This is irregular,” the doctor said. “I shouldn’t be doing this. What’s wrong with his eyes?”

  “I don’t know. Apparently he has no retinas.”

  “There are such things as retinal transplants. They aren’t always effective.”

  “Would they permit him to be identified? The seeing’s not really that important.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Could you get him into a hospital?”

  “No.”

  “Not without a pattern, you mean.”

  “That’s right. I’d like to tell you otherwise, but it wouldn’t be the truth. They’d never take him.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ve got a lot of patients to see. I’m putting you down for influenza. Give him these, they ought to reduce his fever. If he’s not better tomorrow, come again.”

  Later, when things were cooling off, and the day-birds were all quiet, and the night-birds had not begun yet, and Nitty had made a fire and was cooking something, he said, “I don’t understand why she wouldn’t help the child.”

  “She gave him something for his fever.”

  “More than that. She should have done more than that.”<
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  “There are so many people—”

  “I know that. I’ve heard all that. Not really that many at all. More in China and some other places. You think that medicine is helping him?”

  Mr. Parker put his hand on Little Tib’s head. “I think so.”

  “We goin’ to stay here so we can take him, or keep on goin’ back to Martinsburg?”

  “We’ll see how he is in the morning.”

  “You know, the way you are now, Mr. Parker, I think you might do it.”

  “I’m a good programmer, Nitty. I really am.”

  “I know you are. You work that program right, and that machine will find out they need a man running it again. Need a maintenance man too. Why does a man feel so bad if he don’t have real payin’ work to do—tell me that. Did I let them put something in my head like you?”

  “You know as well as I,” Mr. Parker said.

  Little Tib was no longer listening to them. He was thinking about the little girl and her leg. I dreamed it, he thought. Nobody can do that. I dreamed that I only had to touch her, and it was all right. That means what is real is the other one, the copper man and the big woman with the broom.

  An owl called, and he remembered the little buzzy clock that stood beside his mother’s bed in the new place. Early in the morning the clock would ring, and then his father had to get up. When they had lived in the old place, and his father had a lot of work to do, he had not needed a clock. Owls must be the real clocks; they made their noise so he would wake up to the real place.

  He slept. Then he was awake again, but he could not see. “You best eat something,” Nitty said. “You didn’t eat nothing last night. You went to sleep, and I didn’t want to rouse you.” He gave Little Tib a scrap of cornbread, pressing it into his hands. “It’s just leftovers now,” he said, “but it’s good.”

  “Are we going to get on another train?”

  “Train doesn’t go to Martinsburg. Now, we don’t have a plate, so I’m putting this on a piece of newspaper for you. You get your lap smoothed out so it doesn’t fall off.”

  Little Tib straightened his legs. He was hungry, and he decided it was the first time he had been hungry in a long while. He asked, “Will we walk?”