Ole Doc Methuselah (26 page)

“—we've
developed a very highly specialized system of handling and marking. And
evidently
our
codes aren't identical with the codes at the intended
destination of these babies. There's an awful lot of paperwork comes off Earth
about this sort of thing and frankly I didn't even know they were shipping
babies by this system. I went back through all my reports but I must have
misfiled something because there isn't anything on it which I've received.
Well—”

“You
said you messaged the department,” said Ole Doc.

“Oh,
heck. You know government like it is these days. Earth has three billion
inhabitants and one and three-quarters billion are working for the government
and they still can't keep up with the administration of colonies and stations
in space.”

“One
billion,” corrected Ole Doc.

“Well,
one billion. And they still can't get our work out. So they just said that the
matter had been referred through the proper channels. Then I sent them a couple
urgents and they still said it was being referred to proper channels. Maybe
they forgot to dig those channels. Well, anyway, that isn't what I'm getting
at. By some means or other I may be able to devise ways of raising up these
infants. I've got three thousand Achnoids and I can always take a hunting rifle
and go grab a chief hostage until I get two or three thousand more. They train
quick. I haven't got any nurses and none in sight and I have no doctors and
what I know about infant maladies is zero. But six months ago I figured I could
pull through.”

“And
now you don't?” said Ole Doc.

“Now
I don't. Now this whole thing has got me. I may be indulging in mass murder or
something. Will they hang me if any of these kids die or something?”

“Well,
I expect that a small loss would be excusable,” said Ole Doc.

“Yes,
but you see I didn't pay any attention to these Achnoids. And now I think
there's the devil to pay. You see, all the fluids used and the strengths used
and all were for lions. And that has radically altered things. At least
something
has. I thought that just a couple had got here by mistake and I didn't know
how and I got them born all right. But three days ago when I sent that emerg
two things had happened. I found this whole shed full of babies and I found
that they were all set to be born. And they have gestated only three months!”

“Hmmm,”
said Ole Doc, getting faintly interested. “Well, I see what you're excited
about. A three months' gestation on lion fluid would be liable to upset anyone,
I suppose. So—”

“Wait!”
said the wild-eyed O'Hara. “That isn't the problem. I haven't showed you the
problem yet!”

“Not
yet!” Ole Doc blinked in astonishment.

 

O'Hara
led them rapidly out of the shed and into a big concrete compound. There was a
trapdoor in one concrete wall at the far end. O'Hara closed the gate behind
them and got them into an observer's box.

“This
is where I test the fighting qualities of lions,” he said. “I go get a
catbeast and turn him loose in here and I let a young lion in on him. It's a
control test on the batch. I pick a lion at random by number and let him in.
Mookah! Hey there. Mookah! Let go one catbeast!”

An
Achnoid pinwheeled into view, cast respectful eyes at the observer's box and
began to take the pins out of a door. There were eight pins and he removed them
all at once, one hand to a pin.

“Monstrosity,”
sniffed Hippocrates.

The
Achnoid went sailing to safety over the wall and the cage door crashed open
with a bang. Out of it stalked a beast with a purple hide and enormous,
sharp-fanged jaws. It bounded into the arena, reared up on its hind legs to
stand ten feet tall, waltzed furiously as it looked around for enemies and then
settled back with a vicious, tail-lashing snarl.

“Pleasant
character,” said Ole Doc.

“That's
a small one,” said O'Hara. “We couldn't capture any large ones if we tried.
Lost about fifty Achnoids to them already, I guess. Okay, Mookah! Let her go!”

Mookah
wasn't going to be down on the ground for this one. He had a wire attached to
the door release which led into a shed. He pulled the wire. And out sauntered a
cocky half-pint of a kid, about half the height of Hippocrates but of the
physiological structure of a ten-year-old. He was clad in a piece of hide which
was belted around his waist and he had a pair of furred buskins on his feet.
His hair was wild and long and his eyes were wild and intelligent. Pugnacity
was stamped upon him but there was a jauntiness as well. In his hand he carried
a sling and on his wrist, hung by a thong, a knife.

“Whoa!”
said Ole Doc. “Wait a minute! You're not sacrificing that kid just for my
amusement.” And he had a blaster up so fast that only a lunge by O'Hara
deflected his aim at the catbeast.

The
kid looked curiously at the plowed hole the blaster had made and then glanced
disdainfully at the box. O'Hara, recovered from the lunge, hastily pushed a
button and got a bulletproof shield in place.

“All
right, all right,” said Ole Doc. “I'll stand here and watch murder.” But he
held the blaster ready just in case.

The
catbeast had scented the enemy. He got up now and began his waltz, going
rapidly forward, his teeth audibly gnashing, his tail kicking up a cloud of
dust. On he came. The kid stood where he was, only shifting his sling and
putting something into his pocket.

The
catbeast was hungry. It began to rave and its sides puffed like bellows. The
stench of decayed meat floated up from it as it exhaled its breath in a
thundering
aa-um.

Hippocrates
was decidedly interested. He glanced excitedly at Ole Doc and then back at the
kid. But that glance had cost Hippocrates the best part of the show.

The
kid let the sling spin and go. There was a sickening crunch of pierced and
battered bone and the top of the catbeast's head vanished in a fountain of
blood and leaping brains.

Down
went the catbeast.

The
kid walked forward, kicked the still-gnashing jaw, grabbed what was left of an
ear and hacked it off. He put the ear in his pocket, booted the convulsing
catbeast in his expiring guts and turned to face the observation platform.
Then, in a flash, he put a chunk of steel into his sling and whipped it at the
glass. The bulletproof shield crawled with cracks and a shower of chips went
forward from it.

The
kid gave his “pants” a hitch, turned on his heel and strode back into the
shed. The door fell. Mookah dropped into the arena and began to call for help
to get the catbeast en route to the cookshack.

 

“I
knew he'd shoot at us,” said O'Hara. “The shield was for
him,
not for
you, sir.”

Ole
Doc let out his breath with the realization that he must have been holding it
for some time. “Well!”

“Now
that's
my problem,” said O'Hara. “There are eighteen thousand of them
and they are all males. Sir, what in the name of all that's holy have I done
wrong?
”

“Took
a job with the United States Department of Agriculture,” said Ole Doc.

“First
I was very loving,” said O'Hara. “There were only two of them in the lion shed
and I thought they'd been overlooked somehow by these condemned Achnoids. I
didn't know what had happened. I was puzzled but not really upset. Strange
things occur out here on these far stations. So I took them into the house as
soon as they were “born” and had a female Achnoid feed them with good cow's
milk. And they lay and cooed and I figured out life was a fine thing. And then
I was gone on a month's trip to the next continent to see how my plant culture
was doing there—planted a million square miles in redwoods—and when I came back
I couldn't find the Achnoid nurse and the house was in shreds. So they been out
here ever since, confound them. For a while I thought they'd eaten the nurse
but she finally came whimpering back home, after two weeks lying in the bayonet
grass. So here they are. They evidently mature quick.”

“Evidently,”
said Ole Doc.

“Maybe
they won't be full grown for several years,” said O'Hara. “But every day they
get worse. That concrete blockhouse you see down there is just in case.”

Ole
Doc glanced down to where a dozen Achnoids were slaving in the harsh daylight,
building what seemed an impregnable fortress. “Prison?” said Ole Doc.

“Refuge!”
said O'Hara. “In six months or less this planet won't be safe for Achnoids,
catbeasts, scumsnakes, gargantelephants, pluseagles or
me!
”

Ole
Doc looked amusedly back at the Achnoids who were carting away the catbeast's
body. “Well, you've got one consolation—”

An
Achnoid had come up from another shed labeled “Horses”
and was giving
O'Hara an excited account of something. O'Hara looked pale and near a swoon.

“I
said,” said Ole Doc, “that you at least have the consolation that it's one
generation only. With no females—”

“That's
just it,” said O'Hara, tottering toward the horse incubation shed.

They
went in and found a cluster of Achnoids standing around the first vat. O'Hara
thrust them aside and looked and grew even paler. He barked a question and was
answered.

“Well?”

“Twenty
thousand vats,” said O'Hara. “In the third week.”

“Babies?”
said Ole Doc.

“Females,”
said O'Hara, and then more faintly, “females.”

Ole
Doc looked around and found Hippocrates. “Saw a couple lakes coming in. With
all the other fauna you have on this planet, fishing ought to be interesting.”

O'Hara
straightened as though he had had an electric shock. “Fishing!”

“Fishing,”
said Ole Doc. “
You
are the man who is in charge here. I'm just an
innocent bystander.”

“Now
look!” said O'Hara in horror. “You've
got
to help me.” He tried to
clutch Ole Doc's cape as the Soldier of Light moved away. “You've got to answer
some riddles for me! Why is the gestation period three months? Why do they
develop in six months to raging beasts? Why are they so antisocial? What have I
done wrong in these vats and what can I do to correct it? You've got to help
me!”

“I,”
said Ole Doc, “am going fishing. No doubt to a bacteriologist, a biochemist or
a mutologist your problem would be fascinating. But after all, it's just a
problem. I am afraid it is not going to upset the Universe. Good day.”

O'Hara
stood in trembling disbelief. Here was a Soldier of Light, the very cream of
the medical profession, a man who, although he looked thirty, was probably near
a thousand years old in medical practice of all kinds. Here was a member of the
famous Seven Hundred, the Universal Medical Society, who had taken the new and
dangerous developments out of political hands centuries ago and had made the
Universe safe for man's dwelling and who patrolled it now. Here he was, right
here in O'Hara's sight. Here was succor. Here was the lighthouse, the panacea,
the miracle he needed.

He
ran beside Ole Doc's rapid striding toward the compound gate. “But sir! It's
thirty-eight thousand human beings! It's my professional reputation. I can't
kill them. I don't dare turn them loose on this planet! I'll have to desert
this station!”

“Desert
it then,” said Ole Doc. “Open the gate, Hippocrates.”

And
they left the distracted O'Hara weeping in the dust. “Get my fishing gear,”
said Ole Doc.

 

Hippocrates
lingered. It was not like him to linger when no emergency was in the wind. His
antennae felt around in the air and he hefted the 110-mm with three hands while
he scratched his head with the fourth.

“Well?”
barked Ole Doc.

Hippocrates
looked straight at him. He was somewhat of a space lawyer, Hippocrates.
“Article 726 of Code 2, paragraph 80, third from the top of page 607 of the Law
Regulating the Behavior of Members of the Universal Medical Society, to wit:
‘It shall also be unlawful for the Soldier of Light to desert a medical task of
which he has been apprised when it threatens the majority of the human
population of any planet.”'

Ole
Doc looked at his little slave in some annoyance. “Are you going to get my
fishing gear?”

“Well?”
said Hippocrates.

Ole
Doc glared. “Did I invent the Department of Agriculture? Am I accountable for
their mistakes? And are they so poor they can't send their own man relief?”

“Well—”
said Hippocrates. “No.”

“Then
you still expect me to spend a year here nursing babies?”

Hippocrates
spun his antennae around thoughtfully and then brightened up. He put down the
110-mm and there was a blur and a big divot in the mud where he had been. Ole
Doc kept walking toward the lake he had seen at the far end of the savannah and
exactly three minutes and eight seconds later by his chronograph, Hippocrates
was back beside him with about a thousand pounds of rods, tackle and lunch
carried in two hands and a force umbrella and the 110-mm carried in another.
With his fourth hand he held a book on lures and precautions for strange
planets and from this he was busily absorbing whole pages at a glance.