The Little Black Bag
The Little Black Bag
By C. M. KORNBLUTH
Dr. Full felt the winter in his bones as he limped
down the alley. It was the alley and the back door he had chosen rather than
the sidewalk and the front door because of the brown paper bag under his arm.
He knew perfectly well that the flat-faced, stringy-haired women of his street
and their gap-toothed, sour-smelling husbands did not notice if he brought a
bottle of cheap wine to his room. They all but lived on the stuff themselves,
varied with whiskey when pay checks were boosted by overtime. But Dr. Full,
unlike them, was ashamed. A complicated disaster occurred as he limped down the
littered alley. One of the neighborhood dogsa mean little black one he knew
and hated, with its teeth always bared and always snarling with menacehurled
at his legs through a hole in the board fence that lined his path. Dr. Full
flinched, then swung his leg in what was to have been a satisfying kick to the
animal's gaunt ribs. But the winter in his bones weighed down the leg. His foot
failed to clear a half-buried brick, and he sat down abruptly, cursing. When he
smelled unbottled wine and realized his brown paper package had slipped from
under his arm and smashed, his curses died on his lips. The snarling black dog
was circling him at a yard's distance, tensely stalking, but he ignored it in
the greater disaster.
With stiff fingers as he sat on the filth of the
alley, Dr. Full unfolded the brown paper bag's top, which had been crimped
over, grocer-wise. The early autumn dusk had come; he could not see plainly
what was left. He lifted out the jug-handled top of his half gallon, and some
fragments, and then the bottom of the bottle. Dr. Full was far too occupied to
exult as he noted that there was a good pint left. He had a problem, and
emotions could be deferred until the fitting time.
The dog closed in, its snarl rising in pitch. He set
down the bottom of the bottle and pelted the dog with the curved triangular
glass fragments of its top. One of them connected, and the dog ducked back
through the fence, howling. Dr. Full then placed a razor-like edge of the
half-gallon bottle's foundation to his lips and drank from it as though it were
a giant's cup. Twice he had to put it down to rest his arms, but in one minute
he had swallowed the pint of wine.
He thought of rising to his feet and walking through
the alley to his room, but a flood of well-being drowned the notion. It was,
after all, inexpressibly pleasant to sit there and feel the frost-hardened mud
of the alley turn soft, or seem to, and to feel the winter evaporating from his
bones under a warmth which spread from his stomach through his limbs.
A three-year-old girl in a cut-down winter coat
squeezed through the same hole in the board fence from which the black dog had
sprung its ambush. Gravely she toddled up to Dr. Full and inspected him with
her dirty forefinger in her mouth. Dr. Full's happiness had been providentially
made complete; he had been supplied with an audience.
"Ah, my dear," he said hoarsely. And then:
"Preposterous accusation. 'If that's what you call evidence,' I should
have told them, 'you better stick to your doctoring.' I should have told them:
'I was here before your County Medical Society. And the License Commissioner
never proved a thing on me. So gennulmen, doesn't it stand to reason? I appeal
to you as fellow members of a great profession?'
The little girl bored, moved away, picking up one of
the triangular pieces of glass to play with as she left. Dr. Full forgot her
immediately, and continued to himself earnestly: "But so help me, they couldn't
prove a thing. Hasn't a man got any rights?" He brooded over
the question, of whose answer he was so sure, but on which the Committee on
Ethics of the County Medical Society had been equally certain. The winter was
creeping into his bones again, and he had no money and no more wine.
Dr. Full pretended to himself that there was a bottle
of whiskey somewhere in the fearful litter of his room. It was an old and cruel
trick he played on himself when he simply had to be galvanized into getting up
and going home. He might freeze there in the alley. In his room he would be
bitten by bugs and would cough at the moldy reek from his sink, but he would
not freeze and be cheated of the hundreds of bottles of wine that he still might
drink, and the thousands of hours of glowing content he still might feel. He
thought about that bottle of whiskey was it back of a mounded heap of medical
journals? No; he had looked there last time. Was it under the sink, shoved well
to the rear, behind the rusty drain? The cruel trick began to play itself out
again. Yes, he told himself with mounting excitement, yes, it might be! Your
memory isn't so good nowadays, he told himself with rueful good-fellowship. You
know perfectly well you might have bought a bottle of whiskey and shoved it
behind the sink drain for a moment just like this.
The amber bottle, the crisp snap of the sealing as he
cut it, the pleasurable exertion of starting the screw cap on its threads, and
then the refreshing tangs in his throat, the wannth in his stomach, the dark,
dull happy oblivion of drunkennessthey became real to him. You could have,
you know! You could have! he told himself. With the blessed conviction
growing in his mindIt could have happened, you know! It could have!he
struggled to his right knee. As he did, he heard a yelp behind him, and
curiously craned his neck around while resting. It was the little girl, who had
cut her hand quite badly on her toy, the piece of glass. Dr. Full could see the
rilling bright blood down her coat, pooling at her feet.
He almost felt inclined to defer the image of the
amber bottle for her, but not seriously. He knew that it was there, shoved well
to the rear under the sink, behind the rusty drain where he had hidden it. He
would have a drink and then magnanimously return to help the child. Dr. Full
got to his other knee and then his feet, and proceeded at a rapid totter down
the littered alley toward his room, where he would hunt with calm optimism at
first for the bottle that was not there, then with anxiety, and then with
frantic violence. He would hurl books and dishes about before he was done
looking for the amber bottle of whiskey, and finally would beat his swollen
knuckles against the brick wall until old scars on them opened and his thick
old blood oozed over his hands. Last of all, he would sit down somewhere on the
floor, whimpering, and would plunge into the abyss of purgative nightmare that
was his sleep.
After twenty generations of shilly-shallying and
"we'll cross that bridge when we come to it," genus homo had bred
itself into an impasse. Dogged biometricians had pointed out with irrefutable
logic that mental subnormals were outbreeding mental normals and supemormals,
and that the process was occurring on an exponential curve. Every fact that
could be mustered in the argument proved the biometricians' case, and led
inevitably to the conclusion that genus homo was going to wind up in a
preposterous jam quite soon. If you think that had any effect on breeding
practices, you do not know genus homo.
There was, of course, a sort of masking effect
produced by that other exponential function, the accumulation of technological
devices. A moron trained to punch an adding machine seems to be a more skillful
computer than a medieval mathematician trained to count on his fingers. A moron
trained to operate the twenty-first century equivalent of a linotype seems to
be a better typographer than a Renaissance printer limited to a few fonts of
movable type. This is also true of medical practice.
It was a complicated affair of many factors. The supemormals
"improved the product" at greater speed than the subnormals degraded
it, but in smaller quantity because elaborate training of their children was
practiced on a custom-made basis. The fetish of higher education had some weird
avatars by the twentieth generation: "colleges" where not a member of
the student body could read words of three syllables; "universities"
where such degrees as "Bachelor of Typewriting," "Master of
Shorthand" and "Doctor of Philosophy (Card Filing)" were
conferred with the traditional pomp. The handful of supernormals used such
devices in order that the vast majority might keep some semblance of a social
order going.
Some day the supernormals would mercilessly cross the
bridge; at the twentieth generation they were standing irresolutely at its
approaches wondering what had hit them. And the ghosts of twenty generations of
biometricians chuckled malignantly.
It is a certain Doctor of Medicine of this twentieth
generation that we are concerned with. His name was HemingwayJohn Hemingway.
B.Sc., M.D. He was a general practitioner, and did not hold with running to
specialists with every trifling ailment. He often said as much, in
approximately these words: "Now, uh, what I mean is you got a good old
G.P. See what I mean? Well, uh, now a good old G.P. don't claim he knows all
about lungs and glands and them things, get me? But you got a G.P., you got,
uh, you got a, well, you got a all-around man! That's what you got when you got
a G.P.you got a all-around man."
But from this, do not imagine that Dr. Hemingway was a
poor doctor. He could remove tonsils or appendixes, assist at practically any
confinement and deliver a living, uninjured infant, correctly diagnose hundreds
of ailments, and prescribe and administer the correct medication or treatment
for each. There was, in fact, only one thing he could not do in the medical
line, and that was, violate the ancient canons of medical ethics. And Dr.
Hemingway knew better than to try.
Dr. Hemingway and a few friends were chatting one
evening when the event occurred that precipitates him into our story. He had
been through a hard day at the clinic, and he wished his physicist friend
Walter Gillis, B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D., would shut up so he could tell everybody
about it. But Gillis kept rambling on, in his stilted fashion: "You got to
hand to old Mike; he don't have what we call the scientific method, but you got
to hand it to him. There this poor little dope is, puttering around with some
glassware, and I come up and ask him, kidding of course, 'How's about a
time-travel machine, Mike?'
Dr. Gillis was not aware of it, but "Mike"
had an I.Q. six times his own and wasto be blunthis keeper. "Mike"
rode herd on the pseudo-physicists in the pseudo-laboratory, in the guise of a
bottle-washer. It was a social wastebut as has been mentioned before, the supernormals
were still standing at the approaches to a bridge. Their irresolution led to
many such preposterous situations. And it happens that "Mike," having
grown frantically bored with his task, was malevolent enough tobut let Dr.
Gillis tell it:
"So he gives me these here tube numbers and says,
'Series circuit. Now stop bothering me. Build your time machine, sit down at it
and turn on the switch. That's all I ask, Dr. Gillisthat's all I ask.'
"Say," marveled a brittle and lovely blond
guest, "you remember real good, don't you, doc?" She gave him a
melting smile.
"Heck," said Gillis modestly, "I always
remember good. It's what you call an inherent facility. And besides I told it
quick to my secretary, so she wrote it down. I don't read so good, but I sure
remember good, all right. Now, where was I?"
Everybody thought hard, and there were various
suggestions:
"Something about bottles, doc?"
"You was starting a fight. You said 'time
somebody was traveling.'
"Yeahyou called somebody a swish. Who did you
call a swish?"
"Not swishswitch!"
Dr. Gillis' noble brow grooved with thought, and he
declared: "Switch is right. It was about time travel. What we call travel
through time. So I took the tube numbers he gave me and I put them into the
circuit-builder; I set it for 'series' and there it ismy time-traveling
machine. It travels things through time real good." He displayed a box.
"What's in the box?" asked the lovely
blonde.
Dr. Hemingway told her: "Time travel. It travels
things through time."
"Look," said Gillis, the physicist. He took
Dr. Hemingway's little black bag and put it on the box. He turned on the switch
and the little black bag vanished.
"Say," said Dr. Hemingway, "that was,
uh, swell. Now bring it back."
"Huh?"
"Bring back my little black bag."
"Well," said Dr. Gillis, "they don't
come back. I guess maybe that dummy Mike gave me a bum steer."
There was wholesale condemnation of "Mike"
but Dr. Hemingway took no part in it. He was nagged by a vague feeling that
there was something he would have to do. He reasoned: "I am a doctor, and
a doctor has got to have a little black bag. I ain't got a little black bagso ain't
I a doctor no more?" He decided that this was absurd. He knew he
was a doctor. So it must be the bag's fault for not being there. It was no
good, and he would get another one tomorrow from that dummy Al, at the clinic.
Al could find things good, but he was a dummy never liked to talk sociable to
you.
So the next day Dr. Hemingway remembered to get
another little black bag from his keeperanother little black bag with which he
could perform tonsillectomies, appendectomies and the most difficult
confinements, and with which he could diagnose and cure his kind until the day
when the supernormals could bring themselves to cross that bridge. Al was kinda
nasty about the missing little black bag, but Dr. Hemingway didn't exactly
remember what had happened, so no tracer was sent out, so Old Dr. Full awoke
from the horrors of the night to the horrors of the day.
His gummy eyelashes pulled apart convulsively. He was
propped against the corner of his room, and something was making a little
drumming noise. He felt very cold and cramped. As his eyes focused on his lower
body, he croaked out a laugh. The drumming noise was being made by his left
heel, agitated by fine tremors against the bare floor. It was going to be the
D.T. 's again, he decided dispassionately. He wiped his mouth with his bloody
knuckles, and the fine tremor coarsened; the snaredrum beat became louder and
slower. He was getting a break this fine morning, he decided sardonically. You
didn't get the horrors until you had been tightened like a violin string, just
to the breaking point. He had a reprieve, if a reprieve into his old body with
the blazing, endless headache just back of the eyes and the screaming stillness
in the joints were anything to be thankful for.
There was something or other about a kid, he thought
vaguely. He was going to doctor some kid. His eyes rested on a little black bag
in the center of the room, and he forgot about the kid. "I could have
sworn," said Dr. Full, "I hocked that two years ago!" He hitched
over and reached the bag, and then realized it was some stranger's kit,
arriving here he did not know how. He tentatively touched the lock and it
snapped open and lay flat, rows and rows of instruments and medications tucked
into loops in its four walls. It seemed vastly larger open than closed. He
didn't see how it could possibly fold up into that compact size again, but
decided it was some stunt of the instrument makers. Since his timethat made it
worth more at the hock shop, he thought with satisfaction.
Just for old times' sake, he let his eyes and fingers
rove over the instruments before he snapped the bag shut and headed for
Uncle's. More than few were a little hard to recognizeexactly that is. You
could see the things with blades for cutting, the forceps for holding and
pulling, the retractors for holding fast, the needles and gut for suturing, the
hyposa fleeting thought crossed his mind that he could peddle the hypos
separately to drug addicts.
Let's go, he decided, and tried to fold up the case.
It didn't fold until he happened to touch the lock, and then it folded all at
once into a little black bag. Sure have forged ahead, he thought, almost able
to forget that what he was primarily interested in was its pawn value.
With a definite objective, it was not too hard for him
to get to his feet. He decided to go down the front steps, out the front door
and down the sidewalk. But first He snapped the bag open again on his kitchen
table, and pored through the medication tubes. "Anything to sock the
autonomic nervous system good and hard," he mumbled. The tubes were
numbered, and there was a plastic card which seemed to list them. The left
margin of the card was a run-down of the systems vascular, muscular, nervous.
He followed the last entry across to the right. There were columns for
"stimulant," "depressant," and so on. Under "nervous
system" and "depressant" he found the number 17, and shakily
located the little glass tube which bore it. It was full of pretty blue pills
and he took one.
It was like being struck by a thunderbolt.
Dr. Full had so long lacked any sense of well-being
except the brief glow of alcohol that he had forgotten its very nature. He was
panic-stricken for a long moment at the sensation that spread through him
slowly, finally tingling in his fingertips. He straightened up, his pains gone
and his leg tremor stilled.
That was great, he thought. He'd be able to run to
the hock shop, pawn the little black bag and get some booze. He started down
the stairs. Not even the street, bright with mid-morning sun, into which he emerged
made him quail. The little black bag in his left hand had a satisfying
authoritative weight. He was walking erect, he noted, and not in the somewhat
furtive crouch that had grown on him in recent years. A little self-respect, he
told himself, that's what I need. Just because a man's down doesn't mean
"Docta, please-a come wit'!" somebody yelled at him, tugging his arm.
"Da-lift-la girl, she's-a burn' up!" It was one of the slum's
innumerable flat-faced, stringy-haired women, in a slovenly wrapper.
"Ah, I happen to be retired from practice"
he began hoarsely, but she would not be put off.
"In by here, Docta!" she urged, tugged him
to a doorway. "You come look-a da litt-la girl. I got two dolla, you come
look!" That put a different complexion on the matter. He allowed himself
to be towed through the doorway into a messy, cabbage-smelling flat. He knew
the woman now, or rather knew who she must bea new arrival who had moved in
the other night. These people moved at night, in motorcades of battered cars
supplied by friends and relatives, with furniture lashed to the tops, swearing
and drinking until the small hours. It explained why she had stopped him: she
did not yet know he was old Dr. Full, a drunken reprobate whom nobody would
trust. The little black bag had been his guarantee, outweighing his whiskey
face and stained black suit.
He was looking down on a three-year-old girl who had,
he rather suspected, just been placed in the mathematical center of a freshly
changed double bed. God knew what sour and dirty mattress she usually slept on.
He seemed to recognize her as he noted a crusted bandage on her right hand. Two
dollars, he thought. An ugly flush had spread up her pipe-stem arm. He poked a
finger into the socket of her elbow, and felt little spheres like marbles under
the skin and ligaments roll apart. The child began to squall thinly; beside
him, the woman gasped and began to weep herself.
"Out," he gestured briskly at her, and she
thudded away, still sobbing.
Two dollars, he thought. Give her some mumbo jumbo,
take the money and tell her to go to a clinic. Strep, I guess, from that
stinking alley. It's a wonder any of them grow up. He put down the little black
bag and forgetfully fumbled for his key, then remembered and touched the lock.
It flew open, and he selected a bandage shears, with a blunt wafer for the
lower jaw. He fitted the lower jaw under the bandage, trying not to hurt the
kid by its pressure on the infection, and began to cut. It was amazing how
easily and swiftly the shining shears snipped through the crusty rag around the
wound. He hardly seemed to be driving the shears with fingers at all. It almost
seemed as though the shears were driving his fingers instead as they scissored
a clean, light line through the bandage.
Certainly have forged ahead since my time, he
thoughtsharper than a microtome knife. He replaced the shears in their ioop on
the extraordinarily big board that the little black bag turned into when it
unfolded, and leaned over the wound. He whistled at the ugly gash, and the
violent infection which had taken immediate root in the sickly child's thin
body. Now what can he do with a thing like that? He pawed over the contents of
the little black bag, nervously. If he lanced it and let some of the pus out,
the old woman would think he'd done something for her and he'd get the two
dollars. But at the clinic they'd want to know who did it and if they got sore
enough they might send a cop around. Maybe there was something in the kit He
ran down the left edge of the card to "lymphatic" and read across to
the column under "infection." It didn't sound right at all to him; he
checked again, but it still said that. In the square to which the line and the
column led were the symbols: "IV-g-3cc." He couldn't find any bottles
marked with Roman numerals, and then noticed that that was how the hypodermic
needles were designated. He lifted number IV from its loop, noting that it was
fitted with a needle already and even seemed to be charged. What a way to carry
those things around! So three cc. of whatever was in hypo number IV ought to
do something or other about infections settled in the lymphatic systemwhich,
God knows, this one was. What did the lower-case "g" mean, though? He
studied the glass hypo and saw letters engraved on what looked like a rotating
disk at the top of the barrel. They ran from "a" to "i,"
and there was an index line engraved on the barrel on the opposite side from
the calibrations.
Shrugging, old Dr. Full turned the disk until
"g" coincided with the index line, and lifted the hypo to eye level.
As he pressed in the plunger he did not see the tiny thread of fluid squirt
from the tip of the needle. There was a sort of dark mist for a moment about
the tip. A closer inspection showed that the needle was not even pierced at the
tip. It had the usual slanting cut across the bias of the shaft, but the cut
did not expose an oval hole. Baffled, he tried pressing the plunger again. Again
something appeared around the tip and vanished. "We'll settle
this," said the doctor. He slipped the needle into the skin of his
forearm. He thought at first that he had missedthat the point had glided over
the top of his skin instead of catching and slipping under it. But he saw a
tiny blood-spot and realized that somehow he just hadn't felt the puncture.
Whatever was in the barrel, he decided, couldn't do him any harm if it lived up
to its billingand if it could ever come out through a needle that had no hole.
He gave himself three cc. and twitched the needle out. There was the
swellingpainless, but otherwise typical.
Dr. Full decided it was his eyes or something, and
gave three cc. of "g" from hypodermic IV to the feverish child. There
was no interruption to her wailing as the needle went in and the swelling rose.
But a long instant later, she gave a final gasp and was silent.
Well, he told himself, cold with horror, you did it
that time. You killed her with that stuff.
Then the child sat up and said: "Where's my
mommy?"
Incredulously, the doctor seized her arm and palpated
the elbow. The gland infection was zero, and the temperature seemed normal. The
blood-congested tissues surrounding the wound were subsiding as he watched. The
child's pulse. was stronger and no faster than a child's should be. In the
sudden silence of the room he could hear the little girl's mother sobbing in
her kitchen, outside. And he also heard a girl's insinuating voice:
"She gonna be OK, doc?"
He turned and saw a gaunt-faced, dirty-blond sloven of
perhaps eighteen leaning in the doorway and eyeing him with amused contempt.
She continued: "I heard about you, Doc-tor Full. So don't go try
and put the bite on the old lady. You couldn't doctor up a sick cat."
"Indeed?" he rumbled. This young person was
going to get a lesson she richly deserved. "Perhaps you would care to look
at my patient?"
"Where's my mommy?" insisted the little
girl, and the blond's jaw fell. She went to the bed and cautiously asked:
"You OK now, Teresa? You all fixed up?"
"Where's my mommy?" demanded Teresa. Then,
accusingly, she gestured with her wounded hand at the doctor. "You poke
me!" she complained, and giggled pointlessly.
"Well" said the blond girl, "I guess I
got to hand it to you, doc. These loud-mouth women around here said you didn't
know your . . . I mean, didn't know how to cure people. They said you ain't a
real doctor."
"I have retired from practice," he
said. "But I happened to be taking this case to a colleague as a favor,
your good mother noticed me, and" a deprecating smile. He touched the
lock of the case and it folded up into the little black bag again.
"You stole it," the girl said flatly.
He sputtered.
"Nobody'd trust you with a thing like that. It
must be worth plenty. You stole that case. I was going to stop you when I came
in and saw you working over Teresa, but it looked like you wasn't doing her any
harm. But when you give me that line about taking that case to a colleague I
know you stole it. You gimme a cut or I go to the cops. A thing like that must
be worth twenty-thirty dollars."
The mother came timidly in, her eyes red. But she let
out a whoop of joy when she saw the little girl sitting up and babbling to
herself, embraced her madly, fell on her knees for a quick prayer, hopped up to
kiss the doctor's hand, and then dragged him into the kitchen, all the while
rattling in her native language while the blond girl let her eyes go cold with
disgust. Dr. Full allowed himself to be towed into the kitchen, but flatly
declined a cup of coffee and a plate of anise cakes and St.-John's-bread.
"Try him on some wine, ma," said the girl
sardonically.
"Hyass! Hyass!" breathed the woman
delightedly. "You like-a wine, docta?" She had a carafe of purplish
liquid before him in an instant, and the blond girl snickered as the doctor's
hand twitched out at it. He drew his hand back, while there grew in his head
the old image of how it would smell and then taste and then warm his stomach
and limbs. He made the kind of calculation at which he was practiced; the
delighted woman would not notice as he downed two tumblers, and he could
overawe her through two tumblers more with his tale of Teresa's narrow brush
with the Destroying Angel, and thenwhy, then it would not matter. He would be
drunk.
But for the first time in years, there was a sort of
counter-image: a blend of the rage he felt at the blond girl to whom he was so
transparent, and of pride at the cure he had just effected. Much to his own
surprise, he drew back his hand from the carafe and said, luxuriating in the
words: "No, thank you. I don't believe I'd care for any so early in the
day." He covertly watched the blond girl's face, and was gratified at her
surprise. Then the mother was shyly handing him two bills and saying: "Is
no much-a-money, doctabut you come again, see Teresa?"
"I shall be glad to follow the case
through," he said. "But now excuse me I really must be running
along." He grasped the little black bag firmly and got up; he wanted very
much to get away from the wine and the older girl.
"Wait up, doc," said she. "I'm going
your way." She followed him out and down the street. He ignored her until
he felt her hand on the black bag. Then old Dr. Full stopped and tried to
reason with her:
"Look, my dear. Perhaps you're right. I might
have stolen it. To be perfectly frank, I don't remember how I got it. But
you're young and you can earn your own money"
"Fifty-fifty," she said, "or I go to
the cops. And if I get another word outta you, it's sixty-forty. And you know
who gets the short end, don't you, doc?"
Defeated, he marched to the pawnshop, her impudent
hand still on the handle with his, and her heels beating out a tattoo against
his stately tread.
In the pawnshop, they both got a shock.
"It ain't standard," said Uncle, unimpressed
by the ingenious lock. "I ain't nevva seen one like it. Some cheap Jap
stuff, maybe? Try down the street. This I nevva could sell."
Down the street they got an offer of one dollar. The
same complaint was made:
"I ain't a collecta, mistaI buy stuff that got
resale value. Who could I sell this to, a Chinaman who doesn't know medical
instruments? Every one of them looks funny. You sure you didn't make these
yourself?" They didn't take the one-dollar offer.
The girl was baffled and angry; the doctor was baffled
too, but triumphant. He had two dollars, and the girl had a half-interest in
something nobody wanted. But, he suddenly marveled, the thing had been all
right to cure the kid, hadn't it?
"Well," he asked her, "do you give up?
As you see, the kit is practically valueless."
She was thinking hard. "Don't fly off the handle,
doc. I don't get this but something's going on all right . . . would those guys
know good stuff if they saw it?"
"They would. They make a living from it. Wherever
this kit came from"
She seized on that, with a devilish faculty she seemed
to have of eliciting answers without asking questions. "I thought so. You
don't know either, huh? Well, maybe I can find out for you. C'mon in here. I ain't
letting go of that thing. There's money in itsome way, I don't know how,
there's money in it." He followed her into a cafeteria and to an almost
empty corner. She was oblivious to stares and snickers from the other customers
as she opened the little black bag it almost covered a cafeteria tableand
ferreted through it. She picked out a retractor from a loop, scrutinized it,
contemptuously threw it down, picked out a speculum, threw it down, picked out
the lower half of an 0. B. forceps, turned it over, close to her sharp young
eyesand saw what the doctor's dim old ones could not have seen.
All old Dr. Full knew was that she was peering at the
neck of the forceps and then turned white. Very carefully, she placed the half
of the forceps back in its loop of cloth and then replaced the retractor and
the speculum. "Well?" he asked. "What did you see?"
'Made in U.S.A.,' "she quoted hoarsely. " 'Patent Applied
for July 2450.'
He wanted to tell her she must have misread the
inscription, that it must be a practical joke, that But he knew she had read
correctly. Those bandage shears: they had driven his fingers, rather
than his fingers driving them. The hypo needle that had no hole. The pretty
blue pill that had struck him like a thunderbolt.
"You know what I'm going to do?" asked the
girl, with sudden animation. "I'm going to go to charm school. You'll like
that, won't ya, doc? Because we're sure going to be seeing a lot of each
other."
Old Dr. Full didn't answer. His hands had been playing
idly with that plastic card from the kit on which had been printed the rows and
columns that had guided him twice before. The card had a slight convexity; you
could snap the convexity back and forth from one side to the other. He noted,
in a daze, that with each snap a different text appeared on the cards. Snap.
"The knife with the blue dot in the handle is for tumors only.
Diagnose tumors with your Instrument Seven, the Swelling Tester. Place the
Swelling Tester" Snap. "An overdose of the pink pills in
Bottle 3 can be fixed with one pill from bottle" Snap. "Hold
the suture needle by the end without the hole in it. Touch it to one end of the
wound you want to close and let go. After it has made the knot, touch it"
Snap. "Place the top half of the O.B. Forceps near the opening. Let
go. After it has entered and conformed to the shape of" Snap.
The slot man saw "FLANNERY 1MEDICAL" in the
upper left corner of the hunk of copy. He automatically scribbled "trim to
.75" on it and skimmed it across the horseshoe-shaped copy desk to
Piper, who had been handling Edna Flannery's quack-exposé series. She was a
nice youngster, he thought, but like all youngsters she over-wrote. Hence, the
"trim."
Piper dealt back a city hall story to the slot, pinned
down Flannery's feature with one hand and began to tap his pencil across it,
one tap to a word, at the same steady beat as a teletype carriage traveling
across the roller. He wasn't exactly reading it this first time. He was just
looking at the letters and words to find out whether, as letters and words,
they conformed to Herald style. The steady tap of his pencil ceased at
intervals as it drew a black line ending with a stylized letter "d"
through the word "breast" and scribbled in "chest" instead,
or knocked down the capital "E" in "East" to lower case
with a diagonal, or closed up a split wordin whose middle Flannery had bumped
the space bar of her typewriterwith two curved lines like parentheses rotated
through ninety degrees. The thick black pencil zipped a ring around the
"30" which, like all youngsters, she put at the end of her stories.
He turned back to the first page for the second reading. This time the pencil
drew lines with the stylized "d's" at the end of them through adjectives
and whole phrases, printed big "L's" to mark paragraphs, hooked some
of Flannery's own paragraphs together with swooping recurved lines.
At the bottom of "FLANNERY ADD 2MEDICAL"
the pencil slowed down and stopped. The slot man, sensitive to the rhythm of
his beloved copy desk, looked up almost at once. He saw Piper squinting at the
story, at a loss. Without wasting words, the copy reader skimmed it back across
the masonite horseshoe to the chief, caught a police story in return and
buckled down, his pencil tapping. The slot man read as far as the fourth add,
barked at Howard, on the rim: "Sit in for me," and stamped through
the clattering city room toward the alcove where the managing editor presided
over his own bedlam.
The copy chief waited his turn while the makeup
editor, the pressroom foreman and the chief photographer had words with the M .
E. When his turn came, he dropped Flanneiy's copy on his desk and said:
"She says this one isn't a quack."
The M.E. read:
"FLANNERY 1MEDICAL, by Edna Flannery, Herald Staff
Writer.
"The sordid tale of medical quackery which the Herald
has exposed in this series of articles undergoes a change of pace today
which the reporter found a welcome surprise. Her quest for the facts in the
case of today's subject started just the same way that her exposure of one
dozen shyster M.D.'s and faith-healing phonies did. But she can report for a
change that Dr. Bayard Full is, despite unorthodox practices which have drawn
the suspicion of the rightly hypersensitive medical associations, a true healer
living up to the highest ideals of his profession.
"Dr. Full's name was given to the Herald's reporter
by the ethical committee of a county medical association, which reported that
he had been expelled from the association, on July 18, 1941 for allegedly
'milking' several patients suffering from trivial complaints. According to
sworn statements in the committee's files, Dr. Full had told them they suffered
from cancer, and that he had a treatment which would prolong their lives. After
his expulsion from the association, Dr. Full dropped out of their sightuntil
he opened a midtown 'sanitarium' in a brownstone front which had for several
years served as a rooming house.
"The Herald's reporter went to that sanitarium,
on East 89th Street, with the full expectation of having numerous imaginary
ailments diagnosed and of being promised a sure cure for a flat sum of money.
She expected to find unkept quarters, dirty instruments and the mumbo-jumbo
paraphernalia of the shyster M.D. which she had seen a dozen times before.
"She was wrong.
"Dr. Full's sanitarium is spotlessly clean, from
its tastefully furnished entrance hail to its shining white treatment rooms.
The attractive, blond receptionist who greeted the reporter was soft-spoken and
correct, asking only the reporter's name, address and the general nature of her
complaint. This was given, as usual, as 'nagging backache.' The receptionist
asked the Herald's reporter to be seated, and a short while later
conducted her to a second-floor treatment room and introduced her to Dr. Full.
"Dr. Full's alleged past, as described by the
medical society spokesman, is hard to reconcile with his present appearance. He
is a clear-eyed, white-haired man in his sixties, to judge by his appearancea
little above middle height and apparently in good physical condition. His voice
was firm and friendly, untainted by the ingratiating whine of the shyster M.D.
which the reporter has come to know too well.
"The receptionist did not leave the room as he
began his examination after a few questions as to the nature and location of
the pain. As the reporter lay face down on a treatment table the doctor pressed
some instrument to the small of her back. In about one minute he made this
astounding statement: 'Young woman, there is no reason for you to have any pain
where you say you do. I understand they're saying nowadays that emotional
upsets cause pains like that. You'd better go to a psychologist or psychiatrist
if the pain keeps up. There is no physical cause for it, so I can do nothing
for you.'
"His frankness took the reporter's breath away.
Had he guessed she was, so to speak, a spy in his camp? She tried again: 'Well,
doctor, perhaps you'd give me a physical checkup, I feel rundown all the time,
besides the pains. Maybe I need a tonic.' This is a never-failing bait to
shyster M.D. 'san invitation for them to find all sorts of mysterious
conditions wrong with a patient, each of which 'requires' an expensive
treatment. As explained in the first article of this series, of course, the
reporter underwent a thorough physical checkup before she embarked on her
quack-hunt and was found to be in one hundred percent perfect condition, with
the exception of a 'scarred' area at the bottom tip of her left lung resulting
from a childhood attack of tuberculosis and a tendency toward
'hyperthyroidism' overactivity of the thyroid gland which makes it difficult
to put on weight and sometimes causes a slight shortness of breath.
"Dr. Full consented to perform the examination,
and took a number of shining, spotlessly clean instruments from loops in a
large board literally covered with instrumentsmost of them unfamiliar to the
reporter. The instrument with which he approached first was a tube with a
curved dial in its surface and two wires that ended on flat disks growing from
its ends. He placed one of the disks on the back of the reporter's right hand
and the other on the back of her left. 'Reading the meter,' he called out some
number which the attentive receptionist took down on a ruled form. The same
procedure was repeated several times, thoroughly covering the reporter's
anatomy and thoroughly convincing her that the doctor was a complete quack. The
reporter had never seen any such diagnostic procedure practiced during the
weeks she put in preparing for this series.
"The doctor then took the ruled sheet from the
receptionist, conferred with her in low tones and said: 'You have a slightly
overactive thyroid, young woman. And there's something wrong with your left
lungnot seriously, but I'd like a closer look.'
"He selected an instrument from the board which,
the reporter knew, is called a 'speculum'a scissorlike device which spreads
apart body openings such as the orifice of the ear, the nostril and so on, so
that a doctor can look in during an examination. The instrument was, however,
too large to be an aural or nasal speculum but too small to be anything else.
As the Herald's reporter was about to ask further questions, the
attending receptionist told her: 'It's customary for us to blindfold our
patients during lung examinationsdo you mind?' The reporter, bewildered,
allowed her to tie a spotlessly clean bandage over her eyes, and waited
nervously for what would come next.
"She still cannot say exactly what happened while
she was blindfoldedbut X rays confirm her suspicions. She felt a cold
sensation at her ribs on the left sidea cold that seemed to enter inside her
body. Then there was a snapping feeling, and the cold sensation was gone. She heard
Dr. Full say in a matter-offact voice: 'You have an old tubercular scar down
there. It isn't doing any particular harm, but an active person like you needs
all the oxygen she can get. Lie down and I'll fix it for you.'
"Then there was a repetition of the cold
sensation, lasting for a longer time. 'Another batch of alveoli and some more
vascular glue,' the Herald's reporter heard Dr. Full say, and the
receptionist's crisp response to the order. Then the strange sensation departed
and the eye-bandage was removed. The reporter saw no scar on her ribs, and yet
the doctor assured her: 'That did it. We took out the fibrosis and a good
fibrosis it was, too; it walled off the infection so you're still alive to tell
the tale. Then we planted a few clumps of alveolithey're the little gadgets
that get the oxygen from the air you breathe into your blood. I won't monkey
with your thyroxin supply. You've got used to being the kind of person you are,
and if you suddenly found yourself easy-going and all the rest of it, chances
are you'd only be upset. About the backache: just check with the county medical
society for the name of a good psychologist or psychiatrist. And look out for
quacks; the woods are full of them.'
"The doctor's self-assurance took the reporter's
breath away. She asked what the charge would be, and was told to pay the
receptionist fifty dollars. As usual, the reporter delayed paying until she got
a receipt signed by the doctor himself, detailing the services for which it
paid. Unlike most the doctor cheerfully wrote:
'For removal of fibrosis from left lung and
restoration of alveoli,' and signed it.
"The reporter's first move when she left the sanitarium
was to head for the chest specialist who had examined her in preparation for
this series. A comparison of X rays taken on the day of the 'operation' and
those taken previously would, the Herald's reporter thought, expose Dr.
Full as a prince of shyster M.D. 's and quacks.
"The chest specialist made time on his crowded
schedule for the reporter, in whose series he has shown a lively interest from
the planning stage on. He laughed uproariously in his staid Park Avenue
examining room as she described the weird procedure to which she had been
subjected. But he did not laugh when he took a chest X ray of the reporter,
developed it, dried it, and compared it with the ones he had taken earlier. The
chest specialist took six more X rays that afternoon, but finally admitted that
they all told the same story. The Herald's reporter has it on his
authority that the scar she had eighteen days ago from her tuberculosis is now
gone and has been replaced by healthy lung-tissue. He declares that this is a
happening unparalleled in medical history. He does not go along with the
reporter in her firm conviction that Dr. Full is responsible for the change.
"The Herald's reporter, however, sees no
two ways about it. She concludes that Dr. Bayard Fullwhatever his alleged past
may have beenis now an unorthodox but highly successful practitioner of
medicine, to whose hands the reporter would trust herself in any emergency.
"Not so is the case of 'Rev.' Annie Dimswortha
female harpy who, under the guise of 'faith,' preys on the ignorant and
suffering who come to her sordid 'healing parlor' for help and remain to feed
'Rev.' Annie's bank account, which now totals up to $53,238.64. Tomorrow's
article will show, with photostats of bank statements and sworn testimony,
that"
The managing editor turned down "FLANNERY LAST
ADDMEDICAL" and tapped his front teeth with a pencil, trying to think
straight. He finally told the copy chief: "Kill the story. Run the teaser
as a box." He tore off the last paragraphthe "teaser" about
"Rev." Annieand handed it to the desk man, who stumped back to his masonite
horseshoe.
The makeup editor was back, dancing with impatience as
he tried to catch the M.E.'s eye. The interphone buzzed with the red light
which indicated that the editor and publisher wanted to talk to him. The ME. thought
briefly of a special series on this Dr. Full, decided nobody would believe it
and that he probably was a phony anyway. He spiked the story on the
"dead" hook and answered his interphone.
Dr. Full had become almost fond of Angie. As his
practice had grown to engross the neighborhood illnesses, and then to a corner
suite in an uptown taxpayer building, and finally to the sanitarium, she seemed
to have grown with it. Oh, he thought, we have our little disputes The girl,
for instance, was too much interested in money. She had wanted to specialize in
cosmetic surgeryremoving wrinkles from wealthy old women and what-not. She
didn't realize, at first, that a thing like this was in their trust, that they
were the stewards and not the owners of the little black bag and its fabulous
contents.
He had tried, ever so cautiously, to analyze them, but
without success. All the instruments were slightly radioactive, for instance,
but not quite so. They would make a Geiger-Mueller counter indicate, but they
would not collapse the leaves of an electroscope. He didn't pretend to be up on
the latest developments, but as he understood it, that was just plain wrong.
Under the highest magnification there were lines on the instruments' superfinished
surfaces: incredibly fine lines, engraved in random hatchments which made no
particular sense. Their magnetic properties were preposterous. Sometimes the
instruments were strongly attracted to magnets, sometimes less so, and
sometimes not at all.
Dr. Full had taken X rays in fear and trembling lest
he disrupt whatever delicate machinery worked in them. He was sure they
were not solid, that the handles and perhaps the blades must be mere shells
filled with busy little watch-works but the X rays showed nothing of the sort.
Oh, yesand they were always sterile, and they wouldn't rust. Dust fell off
them if you shook them: now, that was something he understood. They ionized the
dust, or were ionized themselves, or something of the sort. At any rate he had
read of something similiar that had to do with phonograph records.
She wouldn't
know about that, he proudly thought. She kept the books well enough, and
perhaps she gave him a useful prod now and then when he was inclined to settle
down. The move from the neighborhood slum to the uptown quarters had been her
idea, and so had the sanitarium. Good, good, it enlarged his sphere of
usefulness. Let the child have her mink coats and her convertible, as they
seemed to be calling roadsters nowadays. He himself was too busy and too old.
He had so much to make up for.
Dr. Full thought happily of his Master Plan. She would
not like it much, but she would have to see the logic of it. This marvelous
thing that had happened to them must be handed on. She was herself no doctor;
even though the instruments practically ran themselves, there was more to
doctoring than skill. There were the ancient canons of the healing art. And so,
having seen the logic of it, Angie would yield; she would assent to his turning
over the little black bag to all humanity.
He would probably present it to the College of Surgeons, with
as little fuss as possiblewell, perhaps a small ceremony, and he would
like a souvenir of the occasion, a cup or a framed testimonial. It would be a
relief to have the thing out of his hands, in a way; let the giants of the
healing art decide who was to have its benefits. No, Angie would understand.
She was a good-hearted girl.
It was nice that she had been showing so much interest
in the surgical side latelyasking about the instruments, reading the
instruction card for hours, even practicing on guinea pigs. If something of his
love for humanity had been communicated to her, old Dr. Full sentimentally
thought, his life would not have been in vain. Surely she would realize that a
greater good would be served by surrendering the instruments to wiser hands
than theirs, and by throwing aside the cloak of secrecy necessary to work on
their small scale.
Dr. Full was in the treatment room that had been the
brownstone's front parlor; through the window he saw Angie's yellow convertible
roll to a stop before the stoop. He liked the way she looked as she climbed the
stairs; neat, not flashy, he thought. A sensible girl like her, she'd
understand. There was somebody with hera fat woman, puffing up the steps,
overdressed and petulant. Now, what could she want?
Angie let herself in and went into the treatment room,
followed by the fat woman. "Do€tor," said the blond girl gravely,
"may I present Mrs. Coleman?" Charm school had not taught her
everything, but Mrs. Coleman, evidently nouveau riche, thought the
doctor, did not notice the blunder.
"Miss Aquella told me so much about you,
doctor, and your remarkable system!" she gushed.
Before he could answer, Angie smoothly interposed:
"Would you excuse us for just a moment, Mrs. Coleman?"
She took the doctor's arm and led him into the
reception hall. "Listen," she said swiftly, "I know this goes
against your grain, but I couldn't pass it up. I met this old thing in the
exercise class at Elizabeth Barton's. Nobody else'll talk to her there. She's a
widow. I guess her husband was a black marketeer or something, and she has a
pile of dough. I gave her a line about how you had a system of massaging
wrinkles out. My idea is, you blindfold her, cut her neck open with the Cutaneous
Series knife, shoot some Firmol into the muscles, spoon out some of the blubber
with an Adipose Series curette and spray it all with Skintite. When you take
the blindfold off she's got rid of a wrinkle and doesn't know what happened.
She'll pay five hundred dollars. Now, don't say 'no,' doc. Just this once,
let's do it my way, can't you? I've been working on this deal all along too,
haven't I?"
"Oh," said the doctor, "very
well." He was going to have to tell her about the Master Plan before long
anyway. He would let her have it her way this time.
Back in the treatment room, Mrs. Coleman had been
thinking things over. She told the doctor sternly as he entered: "Of
course, your system is permanent, isn't it?''
"It is, madam," he said shortly. "Would
you please lie down there? Miss Aquella get a sterile three-inch bandage for
Mrs. Coleman's eyes." He turned his back on the fat woman to avoid
conversation and pretended to be adjusting the lights. Angie blindfolded the
woman and the doctor selected the instruments he would need. He handed the
blond girl a pair of retractors, and told her: "Just slip the corners of
the blades in as I cut" She gave him an alarmed look, and gestured at the
reclining woman. He lowered his voice: "Very well. Slip in the corners and
rock them along the incision. I'll tell you when to pull them out."
Dr. Full held the Cutaneous Series knife to his eyes
as he adjusted the little slide for three centimeters' depth. He sighed a
little as he recalled that its last use had been in the extirpation of an
"inoperable" tumor of the throat.
"Very well," he said, bending over the
woman. He tried a tentative pass through her tissues. The blade dipped in and
flowed through them, like a finger through quicksilver, with no wound left in
the wake. Only the retractors could hold the edges of the incision apart.
Mrs. Coleman stirred and jabbered: "Doctor, that
felt so peculiar! Are you sure you're rubbing the right way?"
"Quite sure, madam," said the doctor
wearily. "Would you please try not to talk during the massage?"
He nodded at Angie, who stood ready with the
retractors. The blade sank in to its three centimeters, miraculously .cutting
only the dead horny tissues of the epidermis and the live tissue of the dermis,
pushing aside mysteriously all major and minor blood vessels and muscular
tissue, declining to affect any system or organ except the one it wastuned to,
could you say? The doctor didn't know the answer, but he felt tired and bitter
at this prostitution. Angie slipped in the retractor blades and rocked them as
he withdrew the knife, then pulled to separate the lips of the incision. It
bloodlessly exposed an unhealthy string of muscle, sagging in a dead-looking
loop from blue-gray ligaments. The doctor took a hypo, Number IX, preset to
"g," and raised it to his eye level. The mist came and went; there
probably was no possibility of an embolus with one of these gadgets, but why
take chances? He shot one cc. of "g"identified as "Firmol"
by the cardinto the muscle. He and Angie watched as it tightened up against
the phaiynx.
He took the Adipose Series curette, a small one, and
spooned out yellowish tissue, dropping it into the incinerator box, and then
nodded to Angie. She eased out the retractors and the gaping incision slipped
together into unbroken skin, sagging now. The doctor had the atomizerdialed to
"Skintite' 'ready. He sprayed, and the skin shrank up into the new firm
throat line.
As he replaced the instruments, Angie removed Mrs.
Coleman's bandage and gaily announced: "We're finished! And there's a
mirror in the reception hall"
Mrs. Coleman didn't need to be invited twice. With
incredulous fingers she felt her chin, and then dashed for the hall. The doctor
grimaced as he heard her yelp of delight, and Angie turned to him with a tight
smile. "I'll get the money and get her out," she said. "You
won't have to be bothered with her anymore."
He was grateful for that much.
She followed Mrs. Coleman into the reception hall, and
the doctor dreamed over the case of instruments. A ceremony, certainlyhe was entitled
to one. Not everybody, he thought, would turn such a sure source of money
over to the good of humanity. But you reached an age when money mattered less,
and when you thought of these things you had done that might be open to
misunderstanding if, just if, there chanced to be any of that, well, that
judgment business. The doctor wasn't a religious man, but you certainly found
yourself thinking hard about some things when your time drew near Angie was
back, with a bit of paper in her hands. "Five hundred dollars," she
said matter-of-factly. "And you realize, don't you, that we could go over
her an inch at a timeat five hundred dollars an inch?"
"I've been meaning to talk to you about
that," he said.
There was bright fear in her eyes, he thoughtbut why?
"Angie, you've been a good girl and an
understanding girl, but we can't keep this up forever, you know."
"Let's talk about it some other time," she
said flatly. "I'm tired now."
"No-I really feel we've gone far enough on our
own. The instruments"
"Don't say it, doc!" she hissed. "Don't
say it, or you'll be sorry!" In her face there was a look that reminded
him of the hollow-eyed, gaunt-faced, dirty-blond creature she had been. From
under the charm-school finish there burned the guttersnipe whose infancy had
been spent on a sour and filthy mattress, whose childhood had been play in the
littered alley and whose adolescence had been the sweatshops and the aimless
gatherings at night under the glaring street lamps.
He shook his head to dispel the puzzling notion.
"It's this way," he patiently began. "I told you about the
family that invented the O.B. forceps and kept them a secret for so many
generations, how they could have given them to the world but didn't?"
"They knew what they were doing," said the
guttersnipe flatly.
"Well, that's neither here nor there," said
the doctor, irritated. "My mind is made up about it. I'm going to turn the
instruments over to the College of Surgeons. We have enough money to be
comfortable. You can even have the house. I've been thinking of going to a
warmer climate, myself." He felt peeved with her for making the unpleasant
scene. He was unprepared for what happened next.
Angie snatched the little black bag and dashed for the
door, with panic in her eyes. He scrambled after her, catching her arm,
twisting it in a sudden rage. She clawed at his face with her free hand,
babbling curses. Somehow, somebody's finger touched the little black bag, and
it opened grotesquely into the enormous board, covered with shining
instruments, large and small. Half a dozen of them joggled loose and fell to
the floor.
"Now see
what you've done!" roared the doctor, unreasonably. Her hand was still viselike
on the handle, but she was standing still, trembling with choked-up rage. The
doctor bent stiffly to pick up the fallen instruments. Unreasonable girl! he
thought bitterly. Making a scene Pain drove in between his shoulderblades and
he fell face down. The light ebbed. "Unreasonable girl!" he tried to
croak. And then: "They'll know I tried, anyway"
Angie looked down on his prone body, with the handle
of the Number Six Cautery Series knife protruding from it. "will cut
through all tissues. Use for amputations before you spread on the Re-Gro.
Extreme caution should be used in the vicinity of vital organs and major blood
vessels or nerve trunks"
"I didn't mean to do that," said Angie,
dully, cold with horror. Now the detective would come, the implacable detective
who would reconstruct the crime from the dust in the room. She would run and
turn and twist, but the detective would find her out and she would be tried in
a courtroom before a judge and jury; the lawyer would make speeches, but the
jury would convict her anyway, and the headlines would scream: "BLOND
KILLER GUILTY!" and she'd maybe get the chair, walking down a plain
corridor where a beam of sunlight struck through the dusty air, with an iron
door at the end of it. Her mink, her convertible, her dresses, the handsome man
she was going to meet and marry The mist of cinematic clichés cleared, and she
knew what she would do next.
Quite steadily, she picked the incinerator box from
its loop in the boarda metal cube with a different-textured spot on one side.
"to dispose of fibroses or other unwanted matter, simply touch the
disk" You dropped something in and touched the disk. There was a sort of
soundless whistle, very powerful and unpleasant if you were too close, and a
sort of lightless flash. When you opened the box again, the contents were gone.
Angie took another of the Cautery Series knives and went grimly to work. Good
thing there wasn't any blood to speak ofShe finished the awful task in three
hours.
She slept heavily that night, totally exhausted by the
wringing emotional demands of the slaying and the subsequent horror. But in the
morning, it was as though the doctor had never been there. She ate breakfast,
dressed with unusual care and then undid the unusual care. Nothing out of the
ordinary, she told herself. Don't do one thing different from the way you would
have done it before. After a day or two, you can phone the cops. Say he walked
out spoiling for a drunk, and you're worried. But don't rush it, babydon't rush
it.
Mrs. Coleman was due at ten A.M. Angie had counted on
being able to talk the doctor into at least one more five-hundred-dollar
session. She'd have to do it herself nowbut she'd have to start sooner or
later.
The woman arrived early. Angie explained smoothly:
"The doctor asked me to take care of the massage today. Now that he has
the tissue-firming process beginning, it only requires somebody trained in his
methods" As she spoke, her eyes swiveled to the instrument caseopen! She
cursed herself for the single flaw as the woman followed her gaze and recoiled.
"What are those things!" she demanded.
"Are you going to cut me with them? I thought there was something
fishy"
"Please, Mrs. Coleman," said Angie,
"please, dear Mrs. Colemanyou don't understand about the . . . the
massage instruments!"
"Massage instruments, my foot!" squabbled
the woman shrilly. "The doctor operated on me. Why, he might have
killed me!"
Angie wordlessly took one of the smaller Cutaneous
Series knives and passed it through her forearm. The blade flowed like a finger
through quicksilver, leaving no wound in its wake. That should convince
the old cow!
It didn't convince her, but it did startle her.
"What did you do with it? The blade folds up into the handlethat's
it!"
"Now look closely, Mrs. Coleman," said
Angie, thinking desperately of the five hundred dollars. "Look very
closely and you'll see that the, uh, the sub-skin massager simply slips beneath
the tissues without doing any harm, tightening and firming the muscles
themselves instead of having to work through layers of skin and adipose tissue.
It's the secret of the doctor's method. Now, how can outside massage have the
effect that we got last night?"
Mrs. Coleman was beginning to calm down. "It did
work, all right," she admitted, stroking the new line of her neck.
"But your arm's one thing and my neck's another! Let me see you do that
with your neck!"
Angie smiled Al returned to the clinic after an
excellent lunch that had almost reconciled him
to three more months he would have to spend on duty.
And then, he thought, and then a blessed year at the blessedly super-normal
South Pole working on his specialtywhich happened to be telekinesis exercises
for ages three to six. Meanwhile, of course, the world had to go on and of
course he had to shoulder his share in the running of it.
Before settling down to desk work he gave a routine
glance at the bag board. What he saw made him stiffen with shocked surprise. A
red light was on next to one of the numbersthe first since he couldn't think
when. He read off the number and murmured "OK, 674101. That fixes you."
He put the number on a card sorter and in a moment the record was in his
hand. Oh, yesHemingway's bag. The big dummy didn't remember how or where he
had lost it; none of them ever did. There were hundreds of them floating
around.
Al's policy in such cases was to leave the bag turned
on. The things practically ran themselves, it was practically impossible to do
harm with them, so whoever found a lost one might as well be allowed to use it.
You turn it off, you have a social lossyou leave it on, it may do some good.
As he understood it, and not very well at that, the stuff wasn't "used
up." A temporalist had tried to explain it to him with little success that
the prototypes in the transmitter had been transduced through a series
of point-events of transfinite cardinality. Al had innocently asked whether
that meant prototypes had been stretched, so to speak, through all time, and
the temporalist had thought he was joking and left in a huff.
"Like to see him do this," thought Al
darkly, as he telekinized himself to the combox, after a cautious look to see
that there were no medics around. To the box he said: "Police chief,"
and then to the police chief: "There's been a homicide committed with
Medical Instrument Kit 674101. It was lost some months ago by one of my people,
Dr. John Hemingway. He didn't have a clear account of the circumstances."
The police chief groaned and said: "I'll call him
in and question him." He was to be astonished by the answers, and was to
learn that the homicide was well out of his jurisdiction.
Al stood for a moment at the bag board by the glowing
red light that had been sparked into life by a departing vital force giving, as
its last act, the warning that Kit 674101 was in homicidal hands. With a sigh,
Al pulled the plug and the light went out.
"Yah, "jeered the woman. "You'd fool
around with my neck, but you wouldn't risk your own with that thing!"
Angie smiled with serene confidence a smile that was
to shock hardened morgue attendants. She set the Cutaneous Series knife to three
centimeters before drawing it across her neck. Smiling, knowing the blade would
cut only the dead horny tissue of the epidermis and the live tissue of the
dermis, mysteriously push aside all major and minor blood vessels and muscular
tissue Smiling, the knife plunging in and its microtomesharp metal shearing
through major and minor blood vessels and muscular tissue and pharynx, Angie~
cut her throat.
In the few minutes it took the police, summoned by the
shrieking Mrs. Coleman, to arrive, the instruments had become crusted with
rust, and the flasks which had held vascular glue and clumps of pink, rubbery
alveoli and spare gray cells and coils of receptor nerves held only black
slime, and from them when opened gushed the foul gases of decomposition.
Wyszukiwarka
Podobne podstrony:
Kornbluth, CM The Altar at Midnight v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Altar at Midnight v1 5Kornbluth, CM The Altar at Midnight v1 5Kornbluth, CM The Rocket of 1955 v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Cosmic Charge Account v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Best of C M Kornbluth v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Marching Morons v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Syndic v1 1Kornbluth, CM The Mindworm v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Adventurer v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Goodly Creatures v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Silly Season v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Slave v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Remorseful v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Syndic v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Reversible Revolutions v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Meddlers v1 0Kornbluth, CM The Advent on Channel Twelve v1 0Kornbluth, CM The City in the Sofa v1 0więcej podobnych podstron