* * *
The Andersons were kind enough to give me a lift back to my house, though it meant a long drive. It was dark, and Mr. Anderson kept to the very middle of the road. I looked away as we passed the spot where Zeke had lost his battle for life.
Once I was back in my house I struck matches and held them over my gaslights. They lit the room with a phoomph! of pale flickerings. I made dinner: pasta and a red sauce one of the ladies bottled for me, and some stale bread. Tonight would be a good night to just go to bed early, I thought, instead of poring over my library of books, hoping to find old-fashioned ways to mimic modern medicine.
But instead someone thumped at the door.
I opened it to find David Yoder standing on my porch.
"What is it?" I asked. "Is it Esther?" Probably she was going into labor too soon. I turned, thinking about forceps, wondering how I could convince the old man to let me use them in his house.
"No," David said. "It isn't Esther. Rebecca collapsed . . ."
I stood there, dazed, until my mind caught up with the rest of me. I grabbed my bag in a daze and followed David out to his buggy.
"Creepers," I explained.
David nodded. He'd lost a horse or two to them as well.
* * *
Rebecca sat in her bed. Esther stood over her with a sponge. They thought she had a fever of some sort, but Rebecca looked like she had recovered already. She smiled when she saw me and apologized.
"I'm feeling much better now," she said. "I think it has passed."
"Well, let's make sure," I said. "Have you had any other dizzy spells?"
Rebecca chewed her lip.
She had.
"Are there any strange lumps on your body?"
The quizzical look in return sank me. I ran through the questions. And then under the watchful eye of her father I ran my hands over her pale white body, looking for the intrusions. She sucked in her breath slightly when I ran my fingers up the sides of her ribs.
"Your hands are cold," she said.
I didn't look at her face, but continued. It was bittersweet that the first time I touched her body was for medical reasons.
And that I found what I knew I had to find.
My lovely Rebecca had breast cancer. Maybe if she were more aware of her body, she would have been worried sooner. But even then, what could I have done on this world that permitted her the freedom to die in agony? It was advanced, metastasizing no doubt, spreading throughout her entire body.
When I stood up David Yoder caught my eye and nodded me out the door. We walked down through the kitchen to his porch.
"You know what's wrong," he said. It was not a question.
I nodded.
"Well?" he demanded.
"She has cancer."
I sat on the bench, leaned my head against the rough plank wall, and blinked. My eyes were a bit wet.
David didn't say anything after that. He stood near me on the porch for a while, then went into the house. Ben came out.
"Dad says to use one of our horses. I'll take you out to the barn."
I didn't reply. Ben sat next to me and clapped my shoulders.
"It'll be okay," he said. "God will protect her."
I looked the boy straight in the eye. Was he really that naive?
* * *
I woke up numb. The alarm clock rang until I slapped the switch down, my motions every bit as mechanical as the clock's.
The bed creaked as I sat on its edge. Two days' worth of half-open books lay all around me, some of them buried in my covers.
Candle wax dripped over the edges of a plate on my bed stand, the translucent stalactites almost reaching to the floor. I picked the nearest book up. The margin had a scribble in it: DY-99. Underneath it I had written a single question mark.
"Brother Hostetler?" came the strong shout of David Yoder from my front door. "Are you awake?
"Yes."
I stood up and pulled on my clothes, tying my rope belt off in a quick knot. A faceful of cold water dashed away my morning fuzziness. David's buggy waited outside, the horse looking as impatient as David was to get going.
Raisings were probably the most popular depiction of the culture among outsiders. Maybe it was just that it was a very attractive picture of community, and that was something they had in abundance. Many hands make light work, and there were many hands here at the edge of Yoder's property. Tables held food, lines of breads, preserves, and fruit juices. Soups simmered in iron pots. Women chatted and kids ran around, dodging around legs, tables, chairs, and whatever else served as a convenient obstacle course.
And the men gathered around the foundation of what would become Ben's home. We set to building his house together. It was more than just a community event, but a gift. When we were done Ben would have a home. A beginning.
We toiled together under the sun, hammering joints, then pulling walls up with ropes. Time passed quickly. The frame was up at lunch, and we broke to eat. Then we continued. At some point in mid-evening I stepped back, sweaty and out of breath, and looked up at a complete house.
They could have ordered a pre-fab, of course. It would have gone up faster and lasted longer. No law against it. But . . .
* * *
At the meal, when all the men sat in rows at the tables and ate, I walked over to David Yoder's house. Rebecca sat on the back stairs, looking out over the fields at the gathering. She had her skirt tucked neatly under her legs.
I sat next to her. We could just see the picnic tables over the rows of wheat shifting with the changing directions of little wind gusts.
"How are you feeling?" I asked.
"Much better," she said.
"Why aren't you out there, then?"
"Father told me to stay here, and rest myself."
I reached over and held her hand. She looked down at it.
"When you touched me . . ." she began. She caressed my hand. "I liked that." Suddenly she blushed and looked away.
We sat there silently for a long time, watching the stalks of wheat dance, running our fingers each over the other's.
"Are you frightened?" I asked at last.
"I was mad," Rebecca said. "Now I'm scared. I've done everything right. I go to church. I respect my parents. I do my best to be kind to all. Why is God punishing me?" She squeezed my hand, and pulled it to her cheek. "I don't want to die."
DY-99, I thought.
"You don't have to."
Rebecca looked up at me, curious, hope in her eyes.
"You know a cure?"
"There are many cures, though I have never been permitted to apply them here," I answered. "If we leave, we can go to the spaceport. You heard the Englishers' ship land. They haven't left yet. They will study the area for a bit, look around to make sure the spaceport is okay, and then leave again. They can take us to a hospital. We can easily cure you there."
Rebecca grabbed my forearm.
"But would they take us up with them?"
"Yes." One of the reasons they kept the spaceport cleared, and a regular schedule, was for reasons like this. A small percentage of the inhabitants changed their mind and took the subtle offer.
Rebecca leaned against me. "My parents will not approve."
"They can't stop you," I said. "This is your life we're talking about." I kissed her hair. It smelled of fresh bread and pumpkin pie. "Come with me."
She stood up, letting go of my hand. "The hospital," she said. "Can they . . . really . . . ?"
"Yes. Don't pack anything," I told her. "Just be ready."
"Tonight?"
I looked back down the road we would have to take to get to DY-99. "Later tonight."
Rebecca walked back into the house. I saw her falter for a second, and she held on to the edge of a table for support. I winced.
* * *
I approached David. I felt wrong for deceiving him slightly as I asked him about a good deal for one of his horses.
He smiled and stroked his beard.
We walked to the stables, and David led my new horse out. He was a sturdy young fellow. I chose not to pay too much attention, though, as I would be leaving him behind soon enough.
"Herr Doctor," David said. "You still feel badly about young Suderman?"
"Yes," I said. "I could have saved him."
"All the good health in the world would be useless with an empty life, or in a community that had rotted away."
"If there is no one alive to appreciate the community," I said, "then it is all pointless."
"You believe this is all pointless, then."
"No." I leaned my head against the horse, smelling its musky sweat. It shifted. "No. But it is wasteful." I broke into the words of the Hippocratic oath: "Into whatsoever house I shall enter, it shall be for the good of the sick to the utmost of my power . . . and then to also believe in the community and follow our practices."
"Did you anticipate being torn like this? Before you came to New Pennsylvania?"
"No," I said. "I was wrong. I thought on a world with total freedom that a doctor would be free to cure the sick."
"But you do tend to the sick."
"With methods and cures that haven't changed in five hundred years," I said bitterly. "Out there"—I waved my hand at the stars—"they replace hearts and lungs as easily as you replace a torn shirt. Yet here . . ."
"You should have looked deeper into your heart before making the decision to come here."
"Then who would have tried to save Mark Suderman?" I said. "I lose far too many patients, patients I could save anywhere else—but I do save some."
"He was saved the day he made the decision to join the church," David Yoder said with a certainty that I wished I possessed. About anything.
"It's getting near dark," I said. "I will be going now."
"Gute nacht."
I pushed the horse to a run after I was out of sight.
* * *
I threw two suitcases of clothes together. In my desk I pulled out something I never thought I would need, but had kept anyway. It was a wallet, and inside were plastic cards that on any other world would link me to lines of credit and old friends. I hitched the new horse to my spare buggy and tossed the suitcases in the back.
A horse and buggy turned onto the gravel of my drive. I was sure it was David Yoder, but I was wrong. Two Elders, Zebediah Walshman and his brother, Paul, pulled aside the storm curtains.
"William Hostetler?"
I walked up to the buggy.
"Yes."
"We talked to Brother Yoder. He feels you are going through a crisis," Paul said.
Zebediah looked over at my buggy. "Are you leaving for a while, William?"
"Possibly," I said.
"You are going to the Englanders?"
I didn't reply.
"We can't deny you that choice," Paul said. "But you will not take Rebecca with you."
They turned the buggy back around and rattled off down the road. My heart pounded, my throat dried with nervousness. I walked back to my buggy and kicked at a wheel with my boot. The pain was briefly satisfying.
The air was chilly, and as I turned up the road toward the house I extinguished the buggy's road lamp. I stopped the horse a bit down from the usual post, tying him to a tree. I patted his neck and jumped the ditch onto David Yoder's farm.
It took me a few long minutes in the pitch black to find a ladder. The notion of it—a clandestine meeting with a ladder in the twenty-third century—struck me as ludicrous. But there was nothing ludicrous about the purpose of it. I walked it over to the point under Rebecca's window and leaned the ladder against the side of the house as gently as I could.
She was waiting. She opened the window, bunched up her skirts, and got onto the ladder. It creaked as she came down step by agonizing step.
I led her around the house toward the waiting buggy.
We didn't get far before David Yoder's gentle but firm voice came from the porch.
"Rebecca, come back inside the house," he said.
She froze.
"Come on," I said. "Keep walking. You're free to leave. He can't stop you."
"I can't stop you," David agreed. "But think about what you are leaving. Rebecca, you are already saved, no matter what you do here. But when you leave, you will no longer be able to come back. You will be healthy, but unable to ever see us or speak to us again. Do you think there will be a family out there, with the Englanders, for you? What sort of lives do they lead? Good lives, or will they be confused, and spiritually cluttered, caught up with worldly goods." He paused. "Remember," he concluded, "if you leave, you can never come back. Your children can never come back."
Rebecca's tears trickled down her cheeks and collected along her jaw. "I can't do this!" she told me. "I can't!"
"Then you'll die," I said. "Probably within a couple of months. And in terrible pain that I am not permitted to alleviate on this world." I took off my hat, trying to do something useful with my hands.
"I know," she said. She brushed the side of my face with her hand and kissed me lightly on the lips. "I'm sorry, but I cannot be other than what I am. Better to die as what I am than to live as what I am not."
I watched her go back up into the house.
David and I stood there watching each other.
"She's free to go," I said.
"She was never free to go," said David. "There are certain laws that are unwritten, and these are the most powerful laws of all."
"You've signed her death warrant," I said bitterly.
"Do you think I want her to die?" he demanded, and the light of the four moons reflected off the tears running down his cheeks. "This is God's will, not mine. Never mine!"
And I suddenly realized that he was caught in the same web that had ensnared Rebecca and me. I had thought, just a moment ago, that I hated David Yoder. Now I knew that I could never hate him; I could only pity him, as I pitied us all.
"What will you do now, Dr. Hostetler?" he asked.
"I don't know."
I turned and began walking across his yard.
* * *
I rode the horse hard. My hat blew away, and the cold wind played with my hair. The horse started to lather by the time I saw my house, and I slowed us down, struck by remorse. There was no reason to take my anger out on the poor beast.
I hadn't cried in a long time, but I cried that night.
And along with crying, I examined my life and my options. DY-99 was only a few miles away. It would be so easy to get on it, to go out into the galaxy where I could use all my skills.
And if I did, who would take care of Rebecca? Who would deliver Esther's child, and help make sure it grew into a healthy adult? Who would even try to save all the Mark Sudermans after I left?
I turned the buggy around. With a snap of the reins I sent us both trotting back toward the Yoders. In the coming days and weeks I was going to preside at two more miracles, the miracle of death and the miracle of birth. I was going to do it under adverse conditions, like a racehorse carrying extra weight, but Rebecca had not asked to die and Esther's child has not asked to be born, so in a way we were all running handicapped.
In a moment of clarity, I realized that it just meant that we had to try harder. If we were already saved, then it was only right that God wanted a little extra effort in return, whether it was dying with grace or struggling to save people who placed so very many restrictions on their savior.
Somewhere along the drive back, I took the wallet from my pocket and threw it into the dark forest along the road.
A Reception at the Anarchist Embassy
by Brad Linaweaver
"He's the most conservative man you'll ever meet."
The speaker was an attractive woman, although Special Agent Palmer didn't approve of
her surgically implanted third eye that regarded him from an otherwise placid brow. He couldn't get used to these modern fashions, preferring instead an old-fashioned girl with a wedding ring in her navel.
Giving one of her breasts a friendly squeeze (and grateful that there were only two of them) he turned his attention to the gentleman in question. The man certainly stood out in the crowd.
"I had a professor like him once," said Palmer. "He probably thinks the world went to hell in the twenty-third century."
She laughed. "You're almost right but try the twenty-first."
He was surprised. "So tell me, Bretygne, why do I need to converse with this genuine eccentric?"
"Because," she breathed into his ear while returning his friendly squeeze at a lower altitude, "he will provide invaluable assistance when we exchange pleasantries with the ambassador. You see, your crazy Mr. Konski is actually a fan of that old man's books."
In all the miserable time he'd spent on the self-styled anarchist planet Lysander, Palmer had not learned that Konski read any contemporaries. He pulled his forelock, the usual method of expressing thanks to a comrade. The Lady Bretygne Lamarr always did her homework.
"You'll put in a good word for me in your report?" she teased him.
"Why bother? They never read mine but settle for the oral briefing. Now you, my dear, they actually read."
"Flattery has always been your strongest suit." With that, she kicked off on her disc and scooted in the direction of the Amazing Conservative Man.
Palmer wasn't lazy enough to use a disc in low gravity. With a hop and a jump he was right next to her. Admittedly that sort of calisthenics was discouraged but he was good at it and hadn't knocked anyone over yet.
Professor Bernard Astaroth greeted them with a broad smile. "My darling girl," he said to Bretygne, squeezing her other breast (which fine point was noted by Palmer's acute skills at espionage).
"Allow me to introduce Diplomat First Class Palmer, attached to the United States of Earth." She got that out in one breath.
"No first name?" quizzed the professor.
"I'm not partial to them."
Bretygne laughed for him and the professor kept the conversation going with, "I understand that we both enjoy Lady Lamarr's way with words."
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