by Eric Flint
'To-morrow at a quarter to ten. I always feel fittest then.'
'Think of the patient for a change. Suppose you stand-to at a few minutes to midnight tomorrow? I'll telephone you zero from here.'
Vaughan seemed a shade taken aback. 'Midnight? Oh, certainly,' he said. 'But I'll have to warn my anaesthetist.'
'And Ferrers 'll swear you've taken to drink or drugs,' said Ackerman. 'Besides, think of your poor matron and the nurse who's got to have her evening off? Much better let the woman conk out in Trades Union hours, Taffy.'
'Dry up, padrone,' said Loftie. 'No need to bring in Ferrers. I'll take his place—if you think I'm safe.'
Since this was as if Raeburn had volunteered to prime a canvas for Benjamin West, Vaughan accepted, and they sat down to eat.
When he and Loftie had refreshed their memories of One-two-Eight's construction and arrangements, they asked Harries why he had chosen that time for the operation. Harries said that by his reckonings it should fall nearer the woman's birthday. His guess at its actual date he wrote down and was passing it to Vaughan, when Vaughan's Nursing Home reported the arrival of the patient, not unduly fatigued and most anxious to thank 'Doctor' Vaughan for the amazing kindness which had rescued her from the open ward.
The table listened to Vaughan's reply, soothing and sustaining, and, by tone, assuming the happiest issue out of this annoying little set-back. When he hung up, he said: 'She—wants it the day after to-morrow, because that's her birthday. She thinks it'll be lucky.'
'Make it midnight, then, of the day after tomorrow, and look at the date I wrote down . . . . No! The Devil has nothing to do with it. By the way—if it won't cramp your style—could you set the table on——' Harries gave a compass bearing.
'Don't be shy,' said Ackerman. 'He'd stand her on her head to operate now, if the Bull told him. Are you off, Taffy? Frost 'll put all your towels and pots in a taxi. 'Sorry if I've hurt your feelings.'
Loftie's account of the operation did not interest Frost so much as the samples he brought back. It took both of them three or four days to plant them out properly. In return, Frost told Loftie that 'our end of the show,' with Major Harries at the sidereal clock, waiting 'till the sights came on,' and Captain Ackerman at the telephone, waiting to pass the range to Captain Vaughan in Sloane Street, was 'just like Jutland.'
'Now, this lady of ours,' he said after a busy silence. 'How would she lie in her bed?'
Loftie gave a bearing which he had heard Harries give Vaughan.
'I expect Major Harries knows, if anyone,' was Frost's placid comment. 'It's the same as ships' compasses varying according as their heads lay when they were building.'
'It's crazy mad. That's all!'
'Which was what the Admiralty said at first about steam in the Navy,' Frost grinned.
He put away a set of sealed cover-glasses and reverently returned some lenses to their velvet shrines.
'Not to talk of that lady of ours—' he straightened up as he spoke—'some of my mice aren't behaving as I could wish.'
'Which?' said Loftie. There were several types of experiments under way.
'One or two of some that recovered after inoculation—since discharged and promoted to pets. But it looks as if they'd had a relapse. They're highly restless—always trying to escape out—as if they were wild, not white. I don't like it.'
'Clean up, then,' Loftie answered, 'and we'll go down to the boiler-room.'
In one of the cages there, a doe with a plum-coloured saddle was squeaking, as she strove desperately to work through the wires with semitransparent hand-like forefeet. Frost set the cage on a table under an electric and handed her dossier to Loftie. This gave her birth, age, date and nature of inoculation, date also when her system seemed to have cleared itself of the dose; and, of course, the times and strengths of her 'tides.' It showed dead-ebb for her at that hour.
'What does she think she's doing?' Loftie whispered. 'It isn't her natural squeak, either.'
They watched. She laboured increasingly at the barrier; sat up as though most intently listening; leaped forward and tore into her task beneath the glare of the basement-bulb.
'Turn it out,' said Loftie. 'It's distressing her.'
Frost obeyed. In a few seconds the little noises changed to a flutter and ceased.
'I thought so! Now we'll look again,' said Loftie. 'Oh! Oh! God!'
'Too late,' Frost cried. 'She's broke her neck! Fair broken her pretty little neck between the wires! How did she do it?'
'In convulsion,' Loftie stammered. 'Convulsion at the last. She pushed and pushed with her head in the wires and that acted as a wedge . . . and . . . what do you think?'
'I expect I'm thinking pretty much the same as you are, sir.' Frost replaced the cage under the leads and fuses which he had painted man-o'war fashion. 'It looks like two tides meeting,' he added. 'That always sets up a race, and a race is worst at ebb. She must have been caught on her ebb—an' knocked over! Pity! There ought to be some way of pulling 'em through it.'
'Let's see if there isn't,' said Loftie, and lifted out the tiny warm body with a needed droplet of blood on the end of the nose.
* * *
One-two-Eight (Mrs. Berners) made a good recovery, and since she seemed alone in the world, Vaughan said that, as payment, she must stay on in his home and complete it to his satisfaction. She was touchingly grateful. After a few months (her strength returning) she asked to do something for her benefactors. No one seemed to look after the linen at Mr. Vaughan's. Might she repair, count, store, and, even, give it out—for she had had experience in that line as a housekeeper. Her prayer was granted, and the work of getting at the things Vaughan had started the Home with; had bought, but had never entered; had raided from Ackerman, and thought—or worse, was quite sure—that he had sent back; or had lost by laundries and through servants, did her good. It also brought her over to Simson House to return things to Frost, where Harries and Ackerman complimented her on her appearance, and Loftie asked her to administer his chance-bought body-linen. She was delighted. She told them that, when she had nothing to do, she mostly felt in people's way, and as if she ought to go on elsewhere. Loftie asked her why. She answered that, when her troubles were on her, they kept her busy, if it was only at trying not to cry. But now that they had been removed and by such kind gentlemen—the busiest day was none too full for her. She had a trick of tossing her head sideways and upwards, sometimes in the midst of her overseeing, and would say: 'Well, well! I can't keep at this all the time. I must be off elsewhere where I'm wanted'—Loftie's Home or Simson House as the case might be.
They discussed her at long and at large, one evening, throughout a film which—Vaughan and Loftie collaborating—was based on her more recent productions.
Vaughan was well satisfied. 'You see! Nothing has struck back. I know that her strength—notice how the tides have steadied—and our new blankets weigh a bit, too—is above normal. She has covered seven months and twenty-three days, and—I tell you—her scar is simply beautiful.'
'We'll take your word,' said Harries. 'Now bring on your mouse-film, Loftie.'
And Loftie, while Frost slowed, speeded, or went back at command, spoke of mice that had recovered apparently from certain infections, but had fallen later into a characteristic unease, followed by nervous crises—as shown—culminating in what seemed to be attempts at suicide.
In every case where an attempt had succeeded, the vacuoles—the empty centres—which do not take stain—of the brain-cells over a minute area seemed to have blown out, apparently as('This'll interest you, I know. I hired it from the Dominion Weather Bureau last week.') as a house explodes through its own windows under the vacuum set up by a tornado. They then beheld a three-storey, clapboarded hotel vomiting itself outwards, while the black hook of a tornado's tip writhed and fished above it.
Sometimes, Loftie went on, an affected mouse would recover, after nervous upheavals very like those of tetanus—as they had seen—followed by collapse and amazingly sub-
normal temperatures, and then a swift resumption of normal life. They could draw their own conclusions.
Ackerman broke their stillness. 'Frost, go back, please, to that bit showing the movement of their heads when the attacks are coming on.' Frost began again.
'Who's that like?' Ackerman called out suddenly. 'Am I wrong?'
'No, sir,' Frost groaned out of the dark. Then they all saw.
'"Well, I can't stay here! I've got to move on elsewhere where I'm wanted,"' Ackerman quoted half-aloud. 'And her hands working! The forefeet—I mean her hands! Look! It's her!'
'That's exactly her listening attitude, too,' said Harries. 'I never noticed it before.'
'Why would you—with nothing to check it by?' said Loftie. 'What does it mean?'
'It means she's as likely as not to chuck herself under a lorry some day, between here and Sloane Street,' Frost interrupted, as though he had full knowledge and right.
'How do you know?' Vaughan began. 'She's absolutely normal.'
The flexes of the camera had not been disconnected, so they were still darkling.
'She's not! She's all astray. God knows where she's straying; but she's not here, more'n the dead.' Frost repacked the camera and went out. They gathered round Harries.
'As I read it,' he laid down, after some preliminaries, 'she has been carried yes, tided—over the time that her trouble ought to have finished her. That is two or three months now, isn't it, Taffy? But, she wasn't saved by the knife. She was saved by the knife at the proper time of tide.'
'She has lasted seven months and twenty-three days. Most unusual, I grant, with that type of growth; but not conclusive,' was Vaughan's retort.
'Hear me out. Qua Death, as created. or evolved, on this planet (He needn't exist elsewhere, you know), and especially qua the instrument of decay that was to kill her, she's some odd weeks owing to the grave. But, qua the influence—tide, if you like—external to this swab of culture which we call our world, she has been started on a new tide of life. The gamble is that, after crises, something like those we've seen in the mice, that tide may carry her beyond the—er—the demand of the grave. It's beginning to be pull-devil, pull-baker between 'em now, I should imagine.'
'I see your line, Bull,' said Loftie. 'When ought her crises to be due? Because—it's all as insane as the rest—but there may be an off-chance of——'
'The suicidal tendency comes first,' said Ackerman. 'Why not have her watched when she goes out? Taffy's nurses can keep an eye on her indoors.'
'You've been reading my sleuth-tales,' Loftie smiled.
'Make it so, then. Any decent inquiry-agency would undertake it, I suppose,' said Harries.
'I'll leave the choice to Frost. I'll only take the commission. We're in for a wildish time. She's a woman—not a white mouse!' Ackerman said, and added thoughtfully: 'But the champion ass, as distinguished from mere professional fool, of us all, is Taffy!'
Vaughan had ordered her never to go afoot between Simson House and the Nursing Home, and, also, to take taxis to and from her little 'exercise walks' in the parks, where she so often picked up the nice elderly lady's-maid with the pom, the sales-lady from the Stores, and other well-spoken lady strangers near her own class (at ever so many shillings an hour). Of Mr. Frost she saw but little that summer, owing to the pressure of his duties and some return, they told her, of rheumatism contracted in the defence of his country. The worst that came to her was a slight attack of stiff neck, caught from sitting in a draught. As to her health, she admitted that sometimes she felt a bit flustered in the head, but otherwise could not be better.
She was recounting her mercies, a little fulsomely as usual, to Loftie one afternoon in the common-room of Simson House, where she had brought him some new shirts marked. Frost had taken them upstairs, and Loftie had hinted that he must get back to his work. She flicked her head sideways and said that she was busy, too. In the same breath, but in a whisper, she ran on 'I don't want to die, Mr. Loftie. But I've got to. I've reelly got to get out of this. I'm wanted elsewhere, but'—she shivered—'I don't like going.'
Then she raced, with lowered head, straight towards the wall. Loftie snatched at her dress, turned her, so that she struck the wall with her shoulder and fell—and Frost came down to find him grappling with her, not inexpertly.
She broke away and skimmed across the room. Frost ran and tripped her, and brought her down. She would have beaten her head on the floor, but he jerked it up, his palm beneath her chin, and dragged her to her feet. Then he closed.
She was silent, absorbed in this one business of driving to the nearest wall through whatever stood between. Small and fragile though she was, she flung the twelve-stone Frost clear of her again and again; and a side-pushing stroke of her open palm spun Loftie half across the hall. The struggle lasted without a break, but her breath had not quickened, when like a string she relaxed, repeating that she did not want to die. As she cried to Loftie to hold her, she slipped away between them, and they had to chase her round the furniture.
They backed her down on the couch at last, Loftie clinging to her knees, while Frost's full strength and weight forced the thin arms over her head. Again the body gave, and the low, casual whisper began: 'After what you said outside Barker's in the wet, you don't think I reelly want to die. Mr. Frost? I don't—not a mite. But I've got to. I've got to go where I'm wanted.'
Frost had to kneel on her right arm then, holding her left down with both hands. Loftie, braced against the sofa, mastered her feet, till the outbreak passed in shudders that shook all three. Her eyes were shut. Frost raised an eyelid with his thumb and peered closely.
'Lor'!' said she, and flushed to the temples. The two shocked men leapt clear at once. She lifted a hand to her disordered hair. 'Who's done this?' she said. 'Why've I come all over like this? I ought to be busy dying.' Loftie was ready to throw himself on her again, but Frost held up a hand.
'You can suit yourself about that, Mrs. Berners,' he said. 'What I've been at you all this time to find out is, what you've done with our plated toast-rack, towels, etcetera.'
He shook her by the shoulders, and the rest of her pale hair descended.
'One plated toast-rack and two egg-cups, which went over to Mr. Vaughan's on indent last April twenty-eighth, together with four table-napkins and six sheets. I ask because I'm responsible for 'em at this end.'
'But I've got to die.'
'So we've all, Mrs. Berners. But before you do, I want to know what you did with . . . .' He repeated the list and the date. 'You know the routine between the houses as well as I do. I sent 'em by Mr. Ackerman's orders, on Mr. Vaughan's indent. When do you check your linen? Monthly or quarterly?'
'Quarterly. But I'm wanted elsewhere.'
'If you aren't a little more to the point, Mrs. Berners, I'll tell you where you will be wanted before long, and what for. I'm not going to lose my character on account of your carelessness—if no worse. An' here's Mr. Loftie . . . .'
'Don't drag me in,' Loftie whispered, with male horror.
'Leave us alone! I know me class, sir . . . . Mr. Loftie who has done everything for you.'
'It was Mr. Vaughan. He wouldn't let me die.' She tried to stand, fell back, and sat up on the couch.
'You won't get out of it that way. Cast back in your memory and see if you can clear yourself!' Frost began anew, scientifically as a female inquisitor; mingling details, inferences, dates, and innuendoes with reminders of housekeeping ritual: never overwhelming her, save when she tried to ride off on her one piteous side-issue, but never accepting an answer. Painfully, she drew out of her obsession, protesting, explaining, striving to pull her riven wits into service; but always hunted from one rambling defence to the next, till, with eyes like those of a stricken doe, she moaned: 'Oh, Fred! Fred! The only thing I've ever took—you said so outside Barker's—was your own 'ard 'eart.'
Frost's face worked, but his voice was the petty-officer's with the defaulter.
'No such names between us, Mrs. Be
rners, till this is settled.'
He crumpled his wet eyes, as though judging an immense range. Then observed deliberately
''Ask me—I'd say you're a common thief.'
She stared at him for as long as a shell might take to travel to an horizon. Then came the explosion of natural human wrath—she would not stoop to denial, she said—till, choking on words of abuse, she hit him weakly over the mouth, and dropped between his feet.
'She's come back!' said Frost, his face transfigured. 'What next?'
'My room. Tell Cook to put her to bed. Fill every hot-water bottle we've got, and warm the blankets. I'll telephone the Home. Then we'll risk the injections.'
Frost slung her, limp as a towel, over his shoulder, and, turning, asked: 'This—all these symptoms don't need to be logged, sir—do they? We—we know something like 'em?'
Loftie nodded assent.
* * *
She came up shuddering out of the seven days' chill of the cheated grave, and Vaughan's nurses told her what a dreadful thing was this 'suppressed influenza' which had knocked her out, but that she might report for duty in a few weeks. Ackerman, who loved Vaughan more than the others put together, testified on their next film-night that Taffy was almost worthy to be called a medical man for his handling of the case.
'Tacks,' said Vaughan kindly, 'you are as big a dam' fool about my job as I was about Frost. I injected what the Lofter gave me, at the times that Harries told me. The rest was old wives' practice.'
'She always looked like a wet hen,' said Harries. 'Now she goes about like a smiling sheep. I wish I'd seen her crises. Did you or Frost time 'em, Lofter?'
'It wasn't worth it,' was the light answer. 'Just hysteria. But she's covered her full year now. D'you suppose we've held her?'
'I should say yes. I don't know how you feel, but'—Vaughan beamed—'the more I see of her scar, the more pleased I am. Ah! That was a lovely bit of work, even if I am only a carpenter, Tacks!'
'But, speaking with some relation to ordinary life, what does all this lunacy of ours prove?' Ackerman demanded.
'Not a dam' thing, except that it may give us some data and inferences which may serve as some sort of basis for some detail of someone else's work in the future,' Harries pronounced. 'The main point, as I read it, is that it makes one—not so much think—Research is gummed up with thinking—as imagine a bit.'