The Mammoth Book of 20th Century SF II

by David G. Hartwell

  The doctors went back to their drugs and tried ancient, simple remedies – morphine and caffeine to counteract each other, and a rough massage to make him dream again, so that the telepath could pick it up.

  There was no further result that day, or the next.

  Meanwhile the Earth authorities were getting restless. They thought, quite rightly, that the hospital had done a good job of proving that the patient had not been on Earth until a few moments before the robots found him on the grass. How had he gotten on the grass?

  The airspace of Earth reported no intrusion at all, no vehicle marking a blazing arc of air incandescing against metal, no whisper of the great forces which drove a planoform ship through space2.

  (Crudelta, using faster-than-light ships, was creeping slow as a snail back toward Earth, racing his best to see if Rambo had gotten there first.)

  On the fifth day, there was the beginning of a breakthrough.

  Elizabeth had passed.

  This was found out only much later, by a careful check of the hospital records. The doctors only knew this much: Patients had been moved down the corridor, sheet-covered figures immobile on wheeled beds.

  Suddenly the beds stopped rolling.

  A nurse screamed.

  The heavy steel-and-plastic wall was bending inward. Some slow, silent force was pushing the wall into the corridor itself.

  The wall ripped.

  A human hand emerged.

  One of the quick-witted nurses screamed, “Push those beds! Push them out of the way.”

  The nurses and robots obeyed.

  The beds rocked like a group of boats crossing a wave when they came to the place where the floor, bonded to the wall, had bent upward to meet the wall as it tore inward. The peace-colored glow of the lights flicked. Robots appeared.

  A second human hand came through the wall. Pushing in opposite directions, the hands tore the wall as though it had been wet paper.

  The patient from the grass put his head through.

  He looked blindly up and down the corridor, his eyes not quite focusing, his skin glowing a strange red-brown from the burns of open space.

  “No,” he said. Just that one word.

  But that “No” was heard. Though the volume was not loud, it carried throughout the hospital. The internal telecommunications system relayed it. Every switch in the place went negative. Frantic nurses and robots, with even the doctors helping them, rushed to turn all the machines back on – the pumps, the ventilators, the artificial kidneys, the brain re-recorders, even the simple air engines which kept the atmosphere clean.

  Far overhead an aircraft spun giddily. Its “off” switch, surrounded by triple safeguards, had suddenly been thrown into the negative position. Fortunately the robot-pilot got it going again before crashing into Earth.

  The patient did not seem to know that his word had this effect.

  (Later the world knew that this was part of the “drunkboat effect.” The man himself had developed the capacity for using his neuro physical system as a machine control.)

  In the corridor, the machine robot who served as policeman arrived. He wore sterile, padded velvet gloves with a grip of sixty metric tons inside his hands. He approached the patient. The robot had been carefully trained to recognize all kinds of danger from delirious or psychotic humans; later he reported that he had an input of “danger, extreme” on every band of sensation. He had been expecting to seize the prisoner with irreversible firmness and to return him to his bed, but with this kind of danger sizzling in the air, the robot took no chances. His wrist itself contained a hypodermic pistol which operated on compressed argon.

  He reached out toward the unknown, naked man who stood in the big torn gap of the wall. The wrist-weapon hissed and a sizeable injection of condamine, the most powerful narcotic in the known universe, spat its way through the skin of Rambo’s neck. The patient collapsed.

  The robot picked him up gently and tenderly, lifted him through the torn wall, pushed the door open with a kick which broke the lock and put the patient back on his bed. The robot could hear doctors coming, so he used his enormous hands to pat the steel wall back into its proper shape. Work-robots or under-people could finish the job later, but meanwhile it looked better to have that part of the building set at right angles again.

  Doctor Vomact arrived, followed closely by Grosbeck.

  “What happened?” he yelled, shaken out of a lifelong calm. The robot pointed at the ripped wall.

  “He tore it open. I put it back,” said the robot.

  The doctors turned to look at the patient. He had crawled off his bed again and was on the floor, but his breathing was light and natural.

  “What did you give him?” cried Vomact to the robot.

  “Condamine,” said the robot, “according to rule 47-B. The drug is not to be mentioned outside the hospital.”

  “I know that,” said Vomact absentmindedly and a little crossly. “You can go along now. Thank you.”

  “It is not usual to thank robots,” said the robot, “but you can read a commendation into my record if you want to.”

  “Get the blazes out of here!” shouted Vomact at the officious robot.

  The robot blinked. “There are no blazes but I have the impression you mean me. I shall leave, with your permission.” He jumped with odd gracefulness around the two doctors, fingered the broken doorlock absentmindedly, as though be might have wished to repair it; and then, seeing Vomact glare at him, left the room completely.

  A moment later soft muted thuds began. Both doctors listened a moment and then gave up. The robot was out in the corridor, gently patting the steel floor back into shape. He was a tidy robot, probably animated by an amplified chicken-brain, and when he got tidy he became obstinate.

  “Two questions, Grosbeck,” said the sir and doctor Vomact.

  “Your service, sir!”

  “Where was the patient standing when he pushed the wall into the corridor, and how did he get the leverage to do it?”

  Grosbeck narrowed his eyes in puzzlement. “Now that you mention it, I have no idea of how he did it. In fact, he could not have done it. But he has. And the other question?”

  “What do you think of condamine?”

  “Dangerous, of course, as always. Addiction can – ”

  “Can you have addiction with no cortical activity?” interrupted Vomact.

  “Of course,” said Grosbeck promptly. “Tissue addiction.”

  “Look for it, then,” said Vomact.

  Grosbeck knelt beside the patient and felt with his fingertips for the muscle endings. He felt where they knotted themselves into the base of the skull, the tips of the shoulders, the striped area of the back.

  When he stood up there was a look of puzzlement on his face. “I never felt a human body like this one before. I am not even sure that it is human any longer.”

  Vomact said nothing. The two doctors confronted one another. Grosbeck fidgeted under the calm stare of the senior man. Finally he blurted out,

  “Sir and doctor, I know what we could do.”

  “And that,” said Vomact levelly, without the faintest hint of encouragement or of warning, “is what?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time that it’s been done in a hospital.”

  “What?” said Vomact, his eyes – those dreaded eyes! – making Grosbeck say what he did not want to say.

  Grosbeck flushed. He leaned toward Vomact so as to whisper, even though there was no one standing near them. His words, when they came, had the hasty indecency of a lover’s improper suggestion:

  “Kill the patient, sir and doctor. Kill him. We have plenty of records of him. We can get a cadaver out of the basement and make it into a good simulacrum. Who knows what we will turn loose among mankind if we let him get well?”

  “Who knows?” said Vomact without tone or quality to his voice. “But citizen and doctor, what is the twelfth duty of a physician?”

  “‘Not to take the law into his own ha
nds, keeping healing for the healers and giving to the state or the Instrumentality whatever properly belongs to the state or the Instrumentality.’” Grosbeck sighed as he retracted his own suggestion. “Sir and doctor, I take it back. It wasn’t medicine which I was talking about. It was government and politics which were really in my mind.”

  “And now . . . ?” asked Vomact.

  “Heal him, or let him be until he heals himself.”

  “And which would you do?”

  “I’d try to heal him.”

  “How?” said Vomact.

  “Sir and doctor,” cried Grosbeck, “do not ride my weaknesses in this case! I know that you like me because I am a bold, confident sort of man. Do not ask me to be myself when we do not even know where this body came from. If I were bold as usual, I would give him typhoid and condamine, stationing telepaths nearby. But this is something new in the history of man. We are people and perhaps he is not a person any more. Perhaps he represents the combination of people with some kind of a new force. How did he get here from the far side of nowhere? How many million times has he been enlarged or reduced? We do not know what he is or what has happened to him. How can we treat a man when we are treating the cold of space, the heat of suns, the frigidity of distance? We know what to do with flesh, but this is not quite flesh any more. Feel him yourself, sir and doctor! You will touch something which nobody has ever touched before.”

  “I have,” Vomact declared, “already felt him. You are right. We will try typhoid and condamine for half a day. Twelve hours from now let us meet each other at this place. I will tell the nurses and the robots what to do in the interim.”

  They both gave the red-tanned spread-eagled figure on the floor a parting glance. Grosbeck looked at the body with something like distaste mingled with fear; Vomact was expressionless, save for a wry wan smile of pity.

  At the door the head nurse awaited them. Grosbeck was surprised at his chief’s orders.

  “Ma’am and nurse, do you have a weapon-proof vault in this hospital?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “We used to keep our records in it until we telemetered all our records into Computer Orbit. Now it is dirty and empty.”

  “Clean it out. Run a ventilator tube into it. Who is your military protector?”

  “My what?” she cried, in surprise.

  “Everyone on Earth has military protection. Where are the forces, the soldiers, who protect this hospital of yours?”

  “My sir and doctor!” she called out. “My sir and doctor! I’m an old woman and I have been allowed to work here for three hundred years, but I never thought of that idea before. Why would I need soldiers?”

  “Find who they are and ask them to stand by. They are specialists too, with a different kind of art from ours. Let them stand by. They may be needed before this day is out. Give my name as authority to their lieutenant or sergeant. Now here is the medication which I want you to apply to this patient.”

  Her eyes widened as he went on talking, but she was a disciplined woman and she nodded as she heard him out, point by point. Her eyes looked very sad and weary at the end but she was a trained expert herself and she had enormous respect for the skill and wisdom of the Sir and Doctor Vomact. She also had a warm, feminine pity for the motionless young male figure on the floor, swimming forever on the heavy floor, swimming between archipelagoes of which no man living had ever dreamed before.

  Crisis came that night.

  The patient had worn handprints into the inner wall of the vault, but he had not escaped.

  The soldiers, looking oddly alert with their weapons gleaming in the bright corridor of the hospital, were really very bored, as soldiers always become when they are on duty with no action.

  Their lieutenant was keyed up. The wirepoint in his hand buzzed like a dangerous insect. Sir and Doctor Vomact, who knew more about weapons than the soldiers thought he knew, saw that the wirepoint was set to HIGH, with a capacity of paralyzing people five stories up, five stories down or a kilometer sideways. He said nothing. He merely thanked the lieutenant and entered the vault, closely followed by Grosbeck and Timofeyev.

  The patient swam here too.

  He had changed to an arm-over-arm motion, kicking his legs against the floor. It was as though he had swum on the other floor with the sole purpose of staying afloat, and had now discovered some direction in which to go, albeit very slowly. His motions were deliberate, tense, rigid, and so reduced in time that it seemed as though he hardly moved at all. The ripped pajamas lay on the floor beside him.

  Vomact glanced around, wondering what forces the man could have used to make those handprints on the steel wall. He remembered Grosbeck’s warning that the patient should die, rather than subject all mankind to new and unthought risks, but though he shared the feeling, he could not condone the recommendation.

  Almost irritably, the great doctor thought to himself – where could the man be going?

  (To Elizabeth, the truth was, to Elizabeth, now only sixty meters away. Not till much later did people understand what Rambo had been trying to do – crossing sixty mere meters to reach his Elizabeth when he had already jumped an un-count of light-years to return to her. To his own, his dear, his well-beloved who needed him !)

  The condamine did not leave its characteristic mark of deep lassitude and glowing skin: perhaps the typhoid was successfully contradicting it. Rambo did seem more lively than before. The name had come through on the regular message system, but it still did not mean anything to the Sir and Doctor Vomact. It would. It would.

  Meanwhile the other two doctors, briefed ahead of time, got busy with the apparatus which the robots and the nurses had installed.

  Vomact murmured to the others, “I think he’s better off. Looser all around. I’ll try shouting.”

  So busy were they that they just nodded.

  Vomact screamed at the patient, “Who are you? What are you? Where do you come from?”

  The sad blue eyes of the man on the floor glanced at him with a surprisingly quick glance, but there was no other real sign of communication. The limbs kept up their swim against the rough concrete floor of the vault. Two of the bandages which the hospital staff had put on him had worn off again. The right knee, scraped and bruised, deposited a sixty-centimeter trail of blood – some old and black and coagulated, some fresh, new and liquid – on the floor as it moved back and forth.

  Vomact stood up and spoke to Grosbeck and Timofeyev. “Now,” he said, “let us see what happens when we apply the pain.”

  The two stepped back without being told to do so.

  Timofeyev waved his hand at a small white-enameled orderly-robot who stood in the doorway.

  The pain net, a fragile cage of wires, dropped down from the ceiling.

  It was Vomact’s duty, as senior doctor, to take the greatest risk. The patient was wholly encased by the net of wires, but Vomact dropped to his hands and knees, lifted the net at one corner with his right hand, thrust his own head into it next to the head of the patient. Doctor Vomact’s robe trailed on the clean concrete, touching the black old stains of blood left from the patient’s swim throughout the night.

  Now Vomact’s mouth was centimeters from the patient’s ear.

  Said Vomact, “Oh.”

  The net hummed.

  The patient stopped his slow motion, arched his back, looked steadfastly at the doctor.

  Doctors Grosbeck and Timofeyev could see Vomact’s face go white with the impact of the pain machine, but Vomact kept his voice under control and said evenly and loudly to the patient, “Who – are – you?”

  The patient said flatly, “Elizabeth.”

  The answer was foolish but the tone was rational.

  Vomact pulled his head out from under the net, shouting again at the patient, “Who – are – you?”

  The naked man replied, speaking very clearly:

  “Chwinkle, chwinkle, little chweeble

  I am feeling very feeble!”

  Vomact frowned
and murmured to the robot, “More pain. Turn it up to pain ultimate.”

  The body threshed under the net, trying to resume its swim on the concrete. A loud wild braying cry came from the victim under the net. It sounded like a screamed distortion of the name Elizabeth, echoing out from endless remoteness.

  It did not make sense.

  Vomact screamed back, “Who – are – you?”

  With unexpected clarity and resonance, the voice came back to the three doctors from the twisting body under the net of pain:

  “I’m the shipped man, the ripped man, the gypped man, the dipped man, the hipped man, the tripped man, the tipped man, the slipped man, the flipped man, the nipped man, the ripped man, the clipped man – aah!” His voice choked off with a cry and he went back to swimming on the floor, despite the intensity of the pain net immediately above him.

  The doctor lifted his hand. The pain net stopped buzzing and lifted high into the air.

  He felt the patient’s pulse. It was quick. He lifted an eyelid. The reactions were much closer to normal.

  “Stand back,” he said to the others.

  “Pain on both of us,” he said to the robot.

  The net came down on the two of them.

  “Who are you?” shrieked Vomact, right into the patient’s ear, holding the man halfway off the floor and not quite knowing whether the body which tore steel walls might not, somehow, tear both of them apart as they stood.

  The man babbled back at him: “I’m the most man, the post man, the host man, the ghost man, the coast man, the boast man, the dosed man, the grossed man, the toast man, the roast man, no! no! no!”

  He struggled in Vomact’s arms. Grosbeck and Timofeyev stepped forward to rescue their chief when the patient added, very calmly and clearly:

  “Your procedure is all right, doctor, whoever you are. More fever, please. More pain, please. Some of that dope to fight the pain. You’re pulling me back. I know I am on Earth. Elizabeth is near. For the love of God, get me Elizabeth! But don’t rush me. I need days and days to get well.”

  The rationality was so startling that Grosbeck, without waiting for orders from Vomact, as chief doctor, ordered the pain net lifted.