Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume Two (16 page)

“Lew, come with us. Don’t go to the children, today or ever. Let them live or die as God wills, don’t help them.”

The old man doesn’t look at her. He can’t tell her that she will never make it out of the city; her heart is bad, she has grown too fat, her blood pressure is too high.

“There are only seven of them, for heaven’s sake,” Monica says reasonably. “Even if they breed like guppies, we’ll all be dead long before they could be a threat to us.”

“Lew, please come with us,” Ruth pleads. “I’m afraid to go without you. What if Dore has an attack, or I do?”

“Look, Ruth, go home and stay inside for the next few days. All right? No one will tell them where any of us live, I promise you. This was a city of over a million people. And there are only seven of them, and three of them are very little.” He visualizes again the small girl’s intent face as she waited for the rat to stop jerking on the stick. “Very little,” he repeats. “They could never find us in such a big city.”

They finally leave him and Monica in his apartment. “Are you so sure they aren’t dangerous?” Monica asks. She is elegant in a long gown that she made out of a heavy blue brocade. She sews beautifully, always has new clothes. She does her hair up in intricate swirls; it is so white it looks false.

“They’re too few and too young,” he says impatiently. “Unless they’re full of disease germs, something like that. They could be.”

She clutches her throat. For many years no one in the city has had a cold, flu, sore throat. Nothing but age, he thinks. Boy is the youngest resident of the city, or was before today.

“I have to get back,” she says hastily. “I have to water my trees.”

The old man sits at his work table for a long time after Monica leaves him. He wonders for the first time why he is working on a concise edition of the Bible. For whose benefit? And isn’t it blasphemy? Supposing, of course, that one believed in God. He is puzzled by the repetitions in the Bible, the same story told over and over in different versions. With proper editing, he has reasoned, the Bible will be an eighth of its present length.

Boy has not come out of hiding by the time the old man leaves for the hospital. He knows it would be futile to try to find him. He walks under the golden sycamores with his usual long, unhurried stride. He tries not to think of the children yet. He thinks instead of the fear shown by Mary, by Monica, Ruth and Dore. The others will come to feel it also, he knows, just as he is feeling it.

The hospital is a rambling two-story building, ultramodern when built, with outside windows for every room, wide vinyl-floored corridors, flowered wall coverings, spacious, airy waiting rooms and lounges. It was designed as an emergency center for this section of the country, with room after room of subbasements stocked with freeze-dried food, blankets, clothing, medical supplies. No one has ever raided it. No one has distributed the food, the oil, the clothing, blankets. Years ago Boy discovered the cache, and the citizens of the city, one hundred twenty people or more then, took what they needed—most of them would never have to return for anything else—and they left the remaining stores undisturbed.

In those early years in the city, the old man used to play doctor. He dressed in a surgical gown, tied on a mask, and stalked the corridors in search of a patient. He read all the medical books, some of them many times, and handled the equipment until he was familiar with it. More recently, only five or six years ago, he found himself one night sitting at the side of a bed, garbed in white, with a stethoscope and a thermometer, talking earnestly to a nonexistent patient. Frightened, he left the hospital, and he hasn’t been back since. He finds that he is walking somewhat slower than before, and deliberately he lengthens his stride.

Eunice is waiting on the top step; she comes forward to meet him. She is stout and robust-looking, with a florid complexion and iron-grey hair in long braids down her back. Now she is pale and frightened. “Lew, they were awful! They really are savages. We caught one of them, but the others all ran away, and they threw stones at us. Sid is hurt.”

“Where are they?”

“In your examination room. They had to tie up the boy. He tried to bite Harry, and he kicked, and scratched like a devil. He’s more like a wildcat than a human being.”

The examination room is the former emergency room of the hospital. It has two padded tables, several desks, scales that no longer work, a cabinet of surgical implements, gauze. It is seldom used any longer; they all have first-aid kits in their homes, and the old man sees them there when they need him.

The boy is on one of the tables, strapped down at ankles and wrists, a band of elastic bandaging about his chest, another about his throat to keep his head down. The old man doesn’t approach him, after one glance to be certain he is all right.

Sid is on another table, conscious but pale from shock and loss of blood. A gauze pad is on his head, blood-soaked, and when the old man lifts it, he knows that Sid needs stitches. The cut is jagged and deep, from above his eyebrow across his temple to his ear.

“I’ll have to sew it up, Sid,” the old man says, and Sid’s eyelids flutter. “Cover him up, keep him warm. I’ll get things going.” He washes his hands, cleans them again from a freshly opened bottle of alcohol, opens a sealed package of surgical gloves, another of needles and gut and bandages, and another of a local anesthetic that the directions say will remain potent for one hundred years. All the supplies have been labeled this way: date of packing, date of expiration of potency. In one of the pharmaceutical books the old man has found explicit directions for combining ingredients in order to make sedatives and tranquilizers. Previously compounded medicines, he assumes, have long since lost their potency. Those that he makes up are all very effective.

Eunice prepares Sid; she shaves his eyebrow, part of his beard, some of his hair. The old man is not as swift as he would like to be, but he is thorough, and when he finishes, he knows that a real doctor would not have done better with the wound. Sid is breathing shallowly; he is still in shock. Only after he is finished with Sid does the old man approach the other table.

The boy is filthy, his hair caked and matted, his fingernails jagged, packed with grime; he looks as if he has never had a bath. He is wearing a one-piece garment, a shiftlike thing made of coarse material, tied at the shoulders. It has been twisted about him and conceals little. His muscles show good development; his teeth, which remain bared from the time the old man nears him until he steps back, seem good.

“I don’t want to move Sid for a couple of hours, maybe not until tomorrow,” the old man says. “Let’s give this little beggar a bath and have a better look at him.”

The boy strains against his bonds, and a low moaning sound starts deep in his throat. Eunice brings a basin of water. There are tanks on the hospital roof, overflowing probably, since no one uses the water here. The water is cool, not cold enough to hurt the child, but he howls when the old man starts to scrub him, and doesn’t stop until the old man is through.

The boy is sun-browned, with pale skin where the garment has covered him. His hair is brown, with a slight wave; his eyes are grey. His legs are covered with old wounds, all well healed. The old man purses his lips, however, as he makes a closer examination. The testicles are atrophied. He kneads the boy’s stomach, listens to his heart, his lungs, and finally sits down and stares at the child.

“You finished with him?” Harry asks. He has been staring at the child and has said very little. Like most of the men, Harry is bearded, has rather long hair. There is a long red scratch on his hand. The boy has stopped screaming and howling. He is watching the old man.

“Yes, that’s all. Healthy as a boy ought to be. Eight, nine years old. Boy, what’s your name?”

The boy makes no sign that he understands.

“Okay, Lew, now it’s my turn,” Harry says. He has found a thick leather strap and has it wrapped around his hand, with a loose end of two and a half feet that he hits against his leg from time to time. “I aim to beat the hell out of the little bugger.”

The boy’s eyes close involuntarily and he swallows, and again strains to get loose.

The old man waves Harry back. “Not so fast, Harry. What happened when you found the kids?”

“We didn’t find them. We went down to the warehouse section and looked around and they were gone. Then we put the food and stuff down where they could find it and started back, and they jumped us.”

“They didn’t jump us,” Mary says. “We startled them. We scared them to death, coming on them suddenly like we did. They began to pick up anything they could find to throw at us, and they ran. This one fell over something and Sid grabbed him. That’s when someone hit him with the rock. He fell on top of this boy and held him down until Harry got to them.”

“What do you mean, you came on them suddenly?”

“We went down there out in the open, in the middle of the street, not trying to hide or anything. Then, I don’t know why, when we couldn’t find them, we sort of quieted down, and we weren’t making any noise at all on the way back, and we were in old Wharf Alley, you know how narrow it is, how dark. They were coming out of one of the warehouses, just as we approached it. I don’t know who was more scared, them or us.”

Eunice nods at Mary’s recital, and Harry hits his leg with the strap, watching the boy.

“So, as far as they know, you jumped them and then made off with one of them. Kidnapped him.” The old man is watching the boy, and he knows the boy has understood everything. “I’ll take him back,” the old man says suddenly.

“No! By God! Make him tell us a few things first.” Harry steps closer to the table.

“Harry, don’t be an ass,” Mary says. “We can’t hold this child. And you certainly are not going to beat him.”

Harry looks from one to the other of the women, then to the old man. Sullenly he moves back to the other table, where Sid is, and pays no more attention to the boy.

The old man starts to loosen the bands about the boy’s chest and throat. “Now, you listen to me, son. I’m taking you back to where your friends are. I’m going to keep your hands tied until we get there, and I’m going to hold the cord. You understand. No rock throwing, no biting. When we get there, I’ll turn you loose and I’ll leave. If you want us, you can come back here. Tell the others the same thing. We won’t come to find you again.”

The old man takes the boy out the front of the hospital, through the ruined city streets. He doesn’t want him to associate the park with any of the people in the city, just in case there are adults using the children as decoys. He talks as they go.

“We have plenty of food and warm clothes. There are a lot of empty buildings and oil to heat them. You and your friends, or brothers and sisters, whatever they are, can live here if you want to. No one will hurt you or bother you.”

The boy walks as far from the old man as the tether will permit. He looks at him from the corner of his eye and gives no sign of comprehension.

“I know damn well that you understand,” the old man says conversationally. “I don’t care if you ever answer me. I’m just telling you what to tell the others. The oldest one, the girl, you tell her what I said, you hear? And the big boy. They’ll know what to do. You tell them.”

Midway to the dock area the old man knows they are being followed. The boy knows it also. Now he is looking over his shoulder, past the old man, to the other side of the street. They won’t start throwing as long as the boy is so close to him, the old man hopes. He stops at the mouth of an alley and takes out his knife. The boy’s eyes widen with fear, and he is shaking when the old man cuts through the cord.

“Now scat,” the old man says, and steps into the dark alley. No rocks are thrown. He doesn’t wait to find out if the truce is to be a lasting one.

It is a time of waiting. The old man visits Sid often; his head is healing nicely, but he is nervous and demanding. Eunice is caring for him.

Most of the people are staying indoors now, waiting. A week has gone by since the children arrived, and no one has seen or heard them again. The old man visits all his friends during the week. Dore and Ruth are pretending that nothing at all has happened, nothing has changed. Ruth’s heart has developed a new palpitation that the old man does not understand, does not know how to treat.

Monica is in her palace creating her garden and refuses to see him. Boy is still in hiding. Every afternoon now, the old man walks to the hospital and remains there for an hour or two.

The hospital corridors have remained bright; the windows are unbroken except for a pane or two on the west side where the storm winds most often come. The old man’s sandals make little noise on the cushioned floors. He walks each corridor in turn, examines the surgery wing, pauses there to people the rooms and watch the skillful surgeons for a time, then walks some more. The children have been all through the hospital. They have found the food. There are open containers, contents strewn about; they don’t know about freeze-dried food, to them it is inedible. They have raided the blankets, however. At least they will be warmer. And they have taken a number of surgical instruments.

In his room the old man continues to work on his Bible project. It is a lifetime occupation, he knows, more than enough for one lifetime. Of those who now survive, only one or two do not have such preoccupations. Harry Gould has become a fine leather craftsman; they all wear his sandals and shoes. Dore has studied until he has made himself an expert in chess. He has written several books, reanalyzing championship games of the past. Myra is copying the library of music in India ink on skins, to preserve it forever. And so on. The empty ones were the first to go.

The old man glances over his most recent notes and presently is engrossed in them once more. The Biblical narrative from the Creation to the Ten Commandments is treated in his Bibles in the first eighty pages or so. By editing out the many begats, he thinks, that will come down to fifty pages. He has a theory that the begats are simply to show with some force that before the Flood man’s life-span was over eight hundred years, and that after it, his span gradually decreased to about one hundred years. He has written:
A drastic change in climate? An increase in the amount of ultraviolet light penetration of the atmosphere?
If the begats are included in order to establish a lineage, then the same thing could be done with a simple statement. The same is true of the census in Numbers. Then there is the question of the function of the Books of Moses—part of Exodus, almost all of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. They exist in order to detail the numerous laws of the Israelites. Since the laws, with the exception of the Decalogue, were so temporal, applying to such a small group of people in particular circumstances, he has decided to extract and summarize them in a companion volume. A modern counterpart of the Books of Moses, he thinks, would be a city’s books of ordinances, or a state’s laws, including everything from the legal definition of murder down to grade-school admission requirements. He has been puzzled by the various versions of the story of Abraham and his wife, Sarah, whom Abraham calls his sister. Which is the original? He stares at the fine print, tapping his fingers, and then swings around to find his notebook. Boy is standing at the door. The old man doesn’t know how long Boy has been in the room. He stands up and embraces Boy, makes him sit down in his usual chair.