Ole Doc Methuselah (9 page)

There
was silence and a chill amongst the guards. But a laugh came from behind the
curtains.

“And
if you are not interested in that,” said Ole Doc, “you might be interested to
learn that diseases are no respecters of rank and glory and that I scent yet
another in this very room.”

There
was silence.

Finally
the curtains moved a little. “What may it be?”

“It
is known as schizophrenia,” said Ole Doc. “Dementia praecox with delusions of
persecution. A very deadly thing, Your Majesty. It destroys both victim and
executioner.”

There
was silence again. The silence of ignorance.

“It
is a dreadful thing, born from psychic shock. I scent here a broken schizoid of
the persecution type, a paranoiac as dangerous to herself as to those about
her.” Ole Doc thought he spoke plainly and for the life of him, after what he
had witnessed below and seen outside, he could not have refrained from this.
But plain as he thought it was, only some annoyed glimmering was transmitted.

“I
think you mean to be insulting.” The curtains shifted.

“Far
from it,” said Ole Doc. “I only wish to help. I speak of a thing which I know.
Here, I will show you.”

He
faced a guard and then, as though he plucked it from the air, a small whirling
disc spun brightly in Ole Doc's hand. He held it under the soldier's nose and
spoke in a fierce, rapid voice.

There
had been a movement to stop him but the antics of the soldier an instant later
startled the guards and Sir Pudno into activity. The small disc had vanished,
seen by none except the soldier.

“Bowwow!
Woof!” and on all fours the soldier began to gallop around the room and sniff
at boots. Ole Doc turned to the dais. “You see, Your Majesty? The illness is
contagious. By merely shoving at him, the soldier becomes a dog.”

There
was fear and something more behind the curtains. “Remove the guard immediately!
Come, you doctor. Do others have this here? Tell me! Do others have this
here?”

With
something like disgust when he realized the mentalities with which he dealt,
Ole Doc faced Sir Pudno.

“I
see traces of it here.”

“No!”
bawled Sir Pudno, backing and stumbling.

But
the disc appeared and Ole Doc's voice was harsh if almost unheard even by Sir
Pudno.

“Woof!
Bowwow!” said Sir Pudno and instantly began to gallop around the room.

There
was fear in the place now. Ole Doc took two or three steps toward the guards
who had remained and then, suddenly, they bolted.

There
was a scream from behind the curtains and then terrified anger as she vainly
sought to order them back.

But
only the barking Sir Pudno, Ole Doc and Her Majesty remained in the room.

Ole
Doc was wary. He knew she must be armed. And he carefully halted ten paces from
the curtains.

“I
am sorry,” he said soothingly. “I am very sorry to have had to disclose this
to you. I know what you go through and what you have to face. Only an
intelligent man would truly understand that. It must be terrible to be
surrounded by such people and to know . . .” And the little disc was spinning
in his hand.

It
does not take many years for a powerful personality to acquire the trick. Ole
Doc, in a purely medical way, had been practicing it for the last seven
hundred. One gets a certain facility that way. And the little disc spun.

There
was a sigh behind the curtains. Ole Doc flung them back.

Had
he not known the things she had done, pity would have moved him now. For the
sight he saw was horrible. The bomb, six orbits ago, had left but little flesh
and had blackened that.

He
took a glass bomb from his kit and exploded it, carefully backing from the
smoke. The narcotic would do what the disc had begun.

She
must have spent all her hours behind that curtain for there was her bed, her
few clothes, a small dresser. And on the dresser, where the mirror should have
been, was a life-size painting of her as she had been in her youth.

Indeed
she had been a lovely woman.

Ole
Doc rummaged in his kit, sneezing a little as the narcotic fumes drifted his
way, and finally located the essentials he needed.

The
work did not take long for he had a catalyst. Sir Pudno was guarding the door
and growling from time to time, but admitting no one.

Ole
Doc ripped the finery from her and bared her back. His all-purpose knife in his
hands was more than a sculptor's entire rack of tools. He looked from time to
time at the life-size painting and then back to his task.

The
catalyst went in with every thrust of the knife and before he was finished with
the back, it had already begun to heal and would only slightly scar. The shiny
grease was the very life of cells and hurled them into an orgy of production.

His
surgery was not aseptic, for it did not have to be. Before he was through he
would guard against all that. Just now the tumbled bed, spattered with blood,
and a few rags of silk made up his temporary operating table and all he
required.

The
work was long, for the likeness must be good, and the scar tissue was stubborn.
And then there was the matter of cartilage which must be cut just so. And it
took a while for the follicles of the eyelashes to set. And it required much
care to restore activity to the eye nerves. But it was a masterful job. Ole
Doc, three hours later, stood back and told himself so.

He
gathered up the bloody sheets and thrust his patient into a sitting position on
the chair. And all the while he was talking. Her eyes, fixed on him now,
absorbing every syllable he uttered, began slowly to clear.

Ole
Doc had his eyes on the scars which soon ceased to be pink and then turned bone
white. Finally they sank out of sight and something like circulation began to
redden the cheeks.

It
was a good thing Hippocrates was not there. Hippocrates would have said a thing
or two about the unmedical quality of some of Ole Doc's statements and how Soldiers
of Light are not supposed to stray from medicine. He shut his patient up again,
still his, behind the curtains.

It
was time now to do other things.

Sir
Pudno barked his compliance and went out to order workmen up and soon a stream
of these, hampered by their chains until Ole Doc had them struck off, began to
restore the mirrors and paintings to the walls. Other furniture soon appeared,
a little frayed from years in storage but nevertheless very brightening. The
lighting was altered. New clothes were issued.

Every
time anyone came in and demanded authority for orders, such as the removal of
the hanging dead at the landing field, Ole Doc had only to shove a hand inside
the curtains and a signature came out. It was an opportunity which he did not
abuse—but he had ideas which would not remain unordered.

He
was enjoying himself. But even so, all this had to be very hurriedly done.

Soon
he was able to bring up the rightful king, his queen and prince, and they came,
blinking and dirty, to be seized without explanation and rushed away. But as
they were certain of death they were too stunned to protest. They were washed
and robed.

News
was spreading. More and more people came until Ole Doc saw the entrance doors
bulging. The corridors and courtyards were full. Rumors were flying from city
to town, from planet to planet through the system.

Then
Ole Doc stood the youth before him. Dressed, shaven, healthy, Rudolf bore
little resemblance to the dying man in the hole a few hours before.

Rudolf
would have had vast explanations.

But
Ole Doc was terse. “You are going to take that throne in about five minutes and
you are never going to mention a word of the last six orbits to your mother. I
must have your word on that.”

Dazed,
the boy could only stare at him.

“You
are going to retire her to a villa and keep her in luxury. Do I have your
word?”

“Yes.
Of course. But I—”

“You
see that he does keep it,” said Ole Doc to Ayilt.

“Never
fear. We'll do whatever you say. My God, to think that only a few short hours
ago Rudolf was dying . . . Truly, you must be an angel.”

“Others
think very differently, I fear,” said Ole Doc with a grin. “Charge it up to
the Soldiers of Light, the Universal Medical Society. And never breathe a word
of how I've taken a hand in politics here. Now, any questions?”

They
looked at him numbly but there was life and hope in them once more. “We have
inherited a terrible job, but we'll do it,” said Rudolf, pumping Ole Doc's
hand.

Ole
Doc had to restrain Ayilt from kneeling to him. Brusquely he placed the two of
them on the old restored thrones and led Pauma out from the curtains which were
now destroyed.

Pauma stood
looking obediently at Ole Doc until, after a few swift words, he broke the
spell.

It
was their show then. King and queen on their thrones nodded graciously to the
queen mother at her greeting, but before they could speak more than a few
words, the great doors burst inwards and the place was flooded with people,
commoners, burghers, soldiers, come to know where they stood, and their mouths
were full of fled garrisons and a populace burst from the bonds of slavery.

They
didn't notice Ole Doc. He glanced at the old queen. She, too, had been thrust
back but she was preening herself before a mirror, coquettishly turning her
head this way and that to admire herself.

Ole
Doc grinned. Sometimes he couldn't help but be proud of his handiwork.

 

Shortly
afterwards, in a commandeered sled, Ole Doc arrived at the supply sheds of the
hangars. The place was deserted. Two guards were dead and shackles were
scattered about, broken. But the supplies were all in order and Ole Doc
carefully selected a small two-billion-footthrust pile, pocketing it.

The
light seemed brighter as he walked back to the field. Then it was clear why,
for the dark star had been quarter covering the bright one on his arrival and
had now spun clear.

The
trees around the field were free of any burden but green leaves, and the old
Morgue
gleamed golden in the pleasant expanse. A moment after, Ole Doc stepped aboard.

Hippocrates
was waiting peevishly. The little creature threw down the tome on stellar
radiations he had been reading and began to shrilly berate his master for
having taken so long.

“One
would think piles were hard to get!” he complained.

“This
one,” said Ole Doc, “was.”

“Let's
see it,” said Hippocrates, not believing.

Ole
Doc showed him and the little fellow was all smiles. He bounced below to
install it, singing the ribald “Fiddler of Saphi” as he went.

Shortly
after, the
Morgue
was leaping out toward the Hub and all was peace
aboard her.

The
pile was working perfectly.

The Expensive Slaves

George
Jasper Arlington fancied himself as an empire builder. He had gone up to
Mizar
in
Ursa Major
when he was ten and simply by
dint of sheer survival had risen to grandeur on Dorab of that system. His huge
bulk defied Dorab's iciness and his inexhaustible energy overrode the
cold-paralyzed government. It might have been said that George Jasper Arlington
was
Dorab, for nothing moved there unless his shaggy head gave the jerk.

He
had overcome the chief obstacle of the place, which made for riches. In the
early days of the second millennium of space travel, when mankind was but
sparsely settling the habitable worlds, land was worth nothing—there was too
much of it. But it is an economic principle that when land is to be had for little,
then there are but few men to work it and wealth begins to consist not of vast
titlings of soil but numbers of men to work it. Inevitably, when man not earth
is the scarcity, capital invests itself in human beings; and slavery,
regardless of the number of laws which may be passed against it, is practiced
everywhere.

But
George Jasper Arlington, thunderous lord of Dorab, had evolved two answers and
so he had become rich.

The
first of these was the simple transportation plan whereby people in “less
advantageous” areas were given transport to and land on Dorab in return for
seven years' labor for George Jasper Arlington. He had created a space fleet of
some size and he could afford this. But sooner or later it was certain to be
discovered that the man who could live on Dorab seven years as a laborer had
not been born, and so there came a time
when recruits for his project answered not the lurid advertisements of George
Jasper Arlington. Indeed in some systems, they threw filth at the posters.

But
none of this was the business of the Universal Medical Society, for man, it
seemed, would be man, and big fleas ate smaller ones inevitably. It was the
second method which brought the Soldiers of Light down upon the magnificent
G
. J. Arlington, in the form of one of their renowned members,
Ole Doc Methuselah.

Located
here and there throughout space were worlds which held no converse with man.
Because of metabolism, atmosphere, gravity and such, many thousands of
“peoples” were utterly isolated and unapproachable. Further, they did not want
to be approached, for what possible society could they have formed with a
carbon, one-G being? Man now and then explored such worlds in highly insulated
ships and suits, beheld the weird beings, gaped at the hitherto unknown physiological
facts and then got out rapidly. For a two-foot “man,” for instance, who ate
pumice and weighed two tons—Earth—had about as much in common with a human
being as a robot with a cat. And so such worlds were always left alone. And
therein lay the genius of George Jasper Arlington, lordly in his empire on
Dorab.

He
had sent out expeditions to surrounding systems, had searched and sifted
evidence and had at last discovered the people of Sirius Sixty-eight. These he had
investigated, sampled, analyzed and finally fought and captured. He had brought
nine hundred of them to Dorab to labor in the wastes—and then the employees,
the overseers, of George Jasper Arlington had begun to sicken and die. He
reacted violently.

 

Ole
Doc Methuselah, outward bound in the
Morgue
on important affairs,
received the Medical Center flash.

IF
CONVENIENT YOU MIGHT LOOK IN ON DORAB-MIZAR WHERE UNKNOWN DISEASE DECIMATES
PLANET. DR. HOLDEN WON INTERGALACTIC TAMERLANE CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP. MISS ROGERS
WOULD LIKE A FLASK OF MIZAR MUSK IF YOU STOP. BEST, FOLLINGSBY.

Ole
Doc altered course and went back to the dining salon to eat dinner. The only
controls he had there were the emergency turn, speed and stop buttons, but
recently the
Morgue
had been equipped with the Speary Automatic Navigator—Ole
Doc had not trusted the thing for the first hundred and twenty years it had
been out but had finally let them put one in—and she now responded to the
command “Dorab-Mizar, capital” and went on her own way.

Hippocrates,
his ageless slave, bounced happily about the salon, ducking into the galley for
new dishes, quoting
Boccaccio
,
a very ancient author, phonograph-recordwise. When he had served the main
course on a diamond-set platter of pure gold and when he saw that his beloved
Ole Doc was giving the wild goose all the attention it deserved, the weird
little creature began to chant yet another tale,
Rappaccini's Daughter
, wherein an aged medic, to revenge
himself upon a rival, fills up his own daughter on poison to which he immunizes
her and then sets her in the road of his rival's son, who, of course, is far
from proof against the virulence of the lovely lady.

Although
the yarn had lain quietly amongst his books—which library Hippocrates steadily
devoured—Ole Doc had not heard of it for two or three hundred years. He thought
now of all the advantages he had over that ancient Italian writer. Why, he knew
of a thousand ways, at least, to make a being sudden death to any other being.

Maybe,
he mused over dessert, it was just as well that people didn't dig into
literature anymore but contented themselves on sparadio thrillers and
washboard weepers
. From
all the vengeance, provincialism, wars and governments he had seen of late,
such devices could well depopulate the galaxies.

But
his thoughts paused at the speaker announcement.

“We
are safely landed at Dorab-Mizar, capital Nanty, main space field, conditions
good but subarctic cold.” That was the
Morgue
talking. Ole Doc could
not quite get used to his trusty old space can having a dulcet voice now.

Hippocrates
got him into a lead-fiber suit and put a helmet on his head and armed him with
kit and blasters and then stood back to admire him and, at the same time, check
him out. Hippocrates was small, four-armed and awful to behold, but where Ole
Doc was concerned, the little creature was life itself.

Ole
Doc stepped through the space port and stopped.

In
six hundred years of batting about space, Ole Doc had seldom seen a gloomier
vista.

The
world of Dorab had an irregular orbit caused by the proximity of two stars. It
went between them and as they moved in relation to each other, so it moved, now
one, now the other, taking it. A dangerous situation at best, it did things to
the climate. The temperatures varied between two hundred above and ninety-one
below zero and its seasons were impossible to predict with accuracy. The
vegetation had adapted itself through the eons and had a ropy, heavily
insulated quality which gave it a forbidding air. And every plant had developed
protection in the form of thorns or poisons. Inhibited by cold, every period of
warmth was attended by furious growing. The ice would turn into vast swamps,
the huge, almost sentient trees would grow new limbs and send them intertwining
until all the so-called temperate zone was a canopied mass.

But
now, with a winter almost done, the trees were thick black stumps standing on
an unlimited vista of blue ice. It was much too cold to snow. The sky was
blackish about Mizar's distant glare. No tomb was ever more bleak nor more
promising of death. For the trees seemed dead, the rivers were dead, the sky
was dead and all was killed with cold.

Ole
Doc boosted his heater up, wrapped his golden cloak about him and bowing his
head to a roaring blast, forged toward a small black hut which alone marked
this as a field.

He
assumed instantly that life lived below this surface and he was not wrong. He
passed from the field into a tunnel and it was very deep into this that he
encountered his first man.

The
wild-eyed youngster leaped up and said, all in a breath, “You are a Soldier of
Light. I have been posted here for five days awaiting your arrival. We are
dying. Dying, all of us! Come quickly!” And he sped away, impatiently pausing
at each bend to see that Ole Doc was certainly following.

They
came into the deserted thoroughfares where shop faces were closed with heavy
timbers and where only a few lights gleamed feebly. They passed body after body
lying in the gutters, unburied, rotting and spoiling the already foul air of
the town. They skirted empty warehouses and broken villas and came at last to a
high, wide castle chiseled from the native basalt.

Ole
Doc followed the youth up the ebon steps and into a scattered guardroom.
Beyond, offices were abandoned and papers lay like snow. Outside a door marked
George
Jasper Arlington
the youth stopped, afraid to go any farther. Ole Doc went by him and found his
man.

He
had eyes like a caged lion and his hair massed over his eyes. He was a huge
brute of a man, with strength and decision in every inch of him. It had taken such
a man to create all that Dorab had become.

“I
am Arlington,” he said, leaping up from his bed where, a moment before, he had
been asleep. “I see you are a Soldier of Light. I will pay any fee. This is
disaster! And after all I have done! Thank God you people got my wire. Now, get
to work.”

“Just
a moment,” smiled Ole Doc. “I am a Soldier of Light, yes. But we take no fees.
I make no promises about ridding you of any plague which might be on you. I am
here to investigate, as a matter of medical interest, any condition you might
have.”

“Nonsense!
Every man owes a debt to humanity. You see here the entire human population of
Dorab dying. You have to do something. I will make it well worth your while.
And I am not to be deluded that there lives a man without a price.

“Dorab,
Doctor, is worth some fifteen trillion dollars. Of that I own the better part.
We raise all the insulating fiber used anywhere for spaceships. That very suit
you wear is made of it. Don't you think that is worth saving?”

“I
didn't say I wouldn't try,” said Ole Doc. “I only said I couldn't promise. Now
where did this epidemic start and when?”

“About
three months ago. I am certain it was brought here from the Sirius planet where
we procured our slaves. It broke out on a spaceship and killed half the crew
and then it started to work its way through the entire planet here. By God . .
.”

“Is
there another doctor here?”

“No.
There were only two. Not Soldiers of Light, naturally. Just doctors. They died
in the first part of the epidemic. You have to do something!”

“Will
you show me around?”

A
look of pallor came over Arlington's big face. For all his courage in other
fields, it was gone in this. “I must stay here to be near Central. The slave
guards have withdrawn and there may be an uprising.”

“Ah.
Of slaves? What slaves?”

“The
people we brought from Sirius Sixty-eight. And good slaves they've been. I
wouldn't trade one for thirty immigrants. They're cheap. They cost us nothing
except their transportation.”

“And
their food.”

“No,”
said Arlington, looking sly. “That's the best part of it. They eat nothing that
we can discover. No food expense at all. We can't have them running away—not
that they'd get far in this weather. They make excellent loggers. They never
tire. And whatever the disease our people got on Sirius Sixty-eight—”

“Have
any slaves died?”

“None.”

“Ah,”
said Ole Doc. “Do these slaves have their own leader?”

“No.
That is, not a leader. They have something they call a
cithw,
a sort of
medicine man who says their prayers for them.”

“You've
talked this over with him, of course.”

“Me?
Why should I talk to a filthy native?”

“Sometimes
they can help quite a bit,” said Ole Doc.

“Rot!”
said Arlington. “We are superior to
them in culture and weapons and that makes them inferior to us. Fair game! And
we need them here. What good were they doing anyone on Sirius Sixty-eight?”

“One
never knows, does one,” said Ole Doc. He was beginning to dislike George
Jasper Arlington, for all the fact that one, when he has lived several hundred
years, is likely to develop an enormous amount of tolerance.

“I
think I had better look around,” said Ole Doc. “I'll let you know.”

But
as he touched the handle of the door a red light flashed on Arlington's Central
and a hysterical voice said, “Chief! They've beat it!”

“Stop
them!”

“I
can't. I haven't got a guard that will stand up to them. They're scared. They
say these goo-goos are carrying the plague. Everybody has skipped. In another
twenty minutes the whole gang of them will be in the capital!”

“I
withdraw my nonslaying order. You can shoot them if you wish. But damn it to
hell, stop them!”

 

Ole
Doc eased himself out of the door. He stood for a little while, the cold blasts
seeping down through the air shafts and stirring the abandoned papers. The gold
glass of his helmet frosted a trifle and he absently adjusted his heat.