The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF (18 page)

Shaky from the pressure of his emotion, Fara called Creel on the telestat. It took a little while for her to appear; and she was in her dressing robe. When she saw who it was she turned a dead white.

“Fara, oh, Fara, I thought—”

He cut her off grimly: “Creel, I’ve been to the weapon shop. I want you to do this: go straight to your mother. I’m here at my shop. I’m going to stay here day and night until it’s settled that I
stay
. . . . I shall go home later for some food and clothing, but I want you to be gone by then. Is that clear?”

Color was coming back into her lean, handsome face. She said: “Don’t you bother coming home, Fara. I’ll do everything neccessary. I’ll pack all that’s needed into the carplane, including a folding bed. We’ll sleep in the back room of the shop.”

Morning came palely, but it was ten o’clock before a shadow darkened the open door; and Constable Jor came in. He looked shamefaced.

“I’ve got an order here for your arrest,” he said.

“Tell those who sent you,” Fara replied deliberately, “that I resisted arrest – with a gun.”

The deed followed the words with such rapidity that Jor blinked. He stood like that for a moment, a big, sleepy-looking man, staring at that gleaming, magical revolver; then:

“I have a summons here ordering you to appear at the great court of Ferd this afternoon. Will you accept it?”

“Certainly.”

“Then you will be there?”

“I’ll send my lawyer,” said Fara. “Just drop the summons on the floor there. Tell them I took it.”

The weapons shop man had said, “Do not ridicule by word any legal measure of the Imperial authorities. Simply disobey them.”

Jor went out, and seemed relieved. It took an hour before Mayor Mel Dale came pompously through the door.

“See here, Fara Clark,” he bellowed from the doorway. “You can’t get away with this. This is defiance of the law.”

Fara was silent as His Honor waddled farther into the building. It was puzzling, almost amazing, that Mayor Dale would risk his plump, treasured body. Puzzlement ended as the mayor said in a low voice. “Good work, Fara; I knew you had it in you. There’s dozens of us in Glay behind you, so stick it out. I had to yell at you just now, because there’s a crowd outside. Yell back at me, will you? Let’s have a real name calling. But, first, a word of warning: the manager of the Automatic Repair Shop is on his way here with his bodyguards, two of them—”

Shakily, Fara watched the mayor go out. The crisis was at hand. He braced himself, thought:
Let them come, let them—

It was easier than he had thought – for the men who entered the shop turned pale when they saw the holstered revolver. There was a violence of blustering, nevertheless, that narrowed finally down to:

“Look here,” the man said, “we’ve got your note for twelve thousand one hundred credits. You’re not going to deny you owe that money.”

“I’ll buy it back,” said Fara in a stony voice, “for exactly half, not a cent more.”

The strong-jawed young man looked at him for a long time. “We’ll take it,” he said finally, curtly.

Fara said, “I’ve got the agreement here—”

His first customer was old man Miser Lan Harris. Fara stared at the long-faced oldster with a vast surmise, and his first, amazed comprehension came of how the weapons shop must have settled on Harris’ lot – by arrangement.

It was an hour after Harris had gone that Creel’s mother stamped into the shop. She closed the door.

“Well,” she said, “you did it, eh? Good work. I’m sorry if I seemed rough with you when you came to my place, but we weapon shop supporters can’t afford to take risks for those who are not on our side.

“But never mind that. I’ve come to take Creel home. The important thing is to return everything to normal as quickly as possible.”

It was over; incredibly it was over. Twice, as he walked home that night, Fara stopped in midstride, and wondered if it had not all been a dream. The air was like wine. The little world of Glay spread before him, green and gracious, a peaceful paradise where time had stood still.

T
he graveled walks between the sprawling, utilitarian structures of the National Atomic Products Co., Inc., were crowded with the usual five o’clock mass of young huskies just off work or going on the extra shift, and the company cafeteria was jammed to capacity and overflowing. But they made good-natured way for Doc Ferrel as he came out, not bothering to stop their horseplay as they would have done with any of the other half hundred officials of the company. He’d been just Doc to them too long for any need of formality.

He nodded back at them easily, pushed through, and went down the walk toward the Infirmary Building, taking his own time. When a man has turned fifty, with gray hairs and enlarged waistline to show for it, he begins to realize that comfort and relaxation are worth cultivating. Besides, Doc could see no good reason for filling his stomach with food and then rushing around in a flurry that gave him no chance to digest it. He let himself in the side entrance, palming his cigar out of long habit, and passed through the surgery to the door marked:

PRIVATE
ROGER T. FERREL
PHYSICIAN IN CHARGE

As always, the little room was heavy with the odor of stale smoke and littered with scraps of this and that. His assistant was already there, rummaging busily through the desk with the brass nerve that was typical of him; Ferrel had no objections to it, though, since Blake’s rock-steady hands and unruffled brain were always dependable in a pinch of any sort.

Blake looked up and grinned confidently. “Hi, Doc. Where the deuce do you keep your cigarettes, anyway? Never mind, got ’em. . . . Ah, that’s better! Good thing there’s one room in this darned building where the ‘No Smoking’ signs don’t count. You and the wife coming out this evening?”

“Not a chance, Blake.” Ferrel stuck the cigar back in his mouth and settled down into the old leather chair, shaking his head. “Palmer phoned down half an hour ago to ask me if I’d stick through the graveyard shift. Seems the plant’s got a rush order for some particular batch of dust that takes about twelve hours to cook, so they’ll be running No. 3 and 4 till midnight or later.”

“Hm-m-m. So you’re hooked again. I don’t see why any of us has to stick here – nothing serious ever pops up now. Look what I had today; three cases of athlete’s foot – better send a memo down to the showers for extra disinfection – a guy with dandruff, four running noses, and the office boy with a sliver in his thumb! They bring everything to us except their babies – and they’d have them here if they could – but nothing that couldn’t wait a week or a month. Anne’s been counting on you and the missus, Doc; she’ll be disappointed if you aren’t there to celebrate her sticking ten years with me. Why don’t you let the kid stick it out alone tonight?”

“I wish I could, but this happens to be my job. As a matter of fact, though, Jenkins worked up an acute case of duty and decided to stay on with me tonight.” Ferrel twitched his lips in a stiff smile, remembering back to the time when his waistline had been smaller than his chest and he’d gone through the same feeling that destiny had singled him out to save the world. “The kid had his first real case today, and he’s all puffed up. Handled it all by himself, so he’s now Dr. Jenkins, if you please.”

Blake had his own memories. “Yeah? Wonder when he’ll realize that everything he did by himself came from your hints? What was it, anyway?”

“Same old story – simple radiation burns. No matter how much we tell the men when they first come in, most of them can’t see why they should wear three ninety-five percent efficient shields when the main converter shield cuts off all but one-tenth percent of the radiation. Somehow, this fellow managed to leave off his two inner shields and pick up a year’s burn in six hours. Now he’s probably back on No. 1, still running through the hundred liturgies I gave him to say and hoping we won’t get him sacked.”

No. 1 was the first converter around which National Atomic had built its present monopoly in artificial radioactives, back in the days when shields were still inefficient to one part in a thousand and the materials handled were milder than the modern ones. They still used it for the gentle reactions, prices of converters being what they were; anyhow, if reasonable precautions were taken, there was no serious danger.

“A tenth percent will kill; five percent there of is one two-hundredth; five percent of that is one four-thousandth; and five percent again leaves one eighty-thousandth, safe for all but fools.” Blake sing-songed the liturgy solemnly, then chuckled. “You’re getting old, Doc; you used to give them a thousand times. Well, if you get the chance, you and Mrs. Ferrel drop out and say hello, even if it’s after midnight. Anne’s gonna be disappointed, but she ought to know how it goes. So long.”

“Night.” Ferrel watched him leave, still smiling faintly. Some day his own son would be out of medical school, and Blake would make a good man for him to start under and begin the same old grind upward. First, like young Jenkins, he’d be filled with his mission to humanity, tense and uncertain, but somehow things would roll along through Blake’s stage and up, probably to Doc’s own level, where the same old problems were solved in the same old way, and life settled down into a comfortable, mellow dullness.

There were worse lives, certainly, even though it wasn’t like the mass of murders, kidnapings and applied miracles played up in the current movie series about Dr. Hoozis. Come to think of it, Hoozis was supposed to be working in an atomic products plant right now – but one where chrome-plated converters covered with pretty neon tubes were mysteriously blowing up every second day, and men were brought in with blue flames all over them to be cured instantly in time to utter the magic words so the hero could dash in and put out the atomic flame barehanded. Ferrel grunted and reached back for his old copy of the “Decameron.”

Then he heard Jenkins out in the surgery, puttering around with quick, nervous little sounds. Never do to let the boy find him loafing back here, when the possible fate of the world so obviously hung on his alertness. Young doctors had to be disillusioned slowly, or they became bitter and their work suffered. Yet, in spite of his amusement at Jenkins’ nervousness, he couldn’t help envying the thin-faced young man’s erect shoulders and flat stomach. Years crept by, it seemed.

Jenkins straightened out a wrinkle in his white jacket fussily and looked up. “I’ve been getting the surgery ready for instant use, Dr. Ferrel. Do you think it’s safe to keep only Miss Dodd and one male attendant here – shouldn’t we have more than the bare legally sanctioned staff?”

“Dodd’s a one-man staff,” Ferrel assured him. “Expecting accidents tonight?”

“No, sir, not exactly. But do you know what they’re running off?”

“No.” Ferrel hadn’t asked Palmer; he’d learned long before that he couldn’t keep up with the atomic engineering developments, and had stopped trying. “Some new type of atomic tank fuel for the army to use in its war games?”

“Worse than that, sir. They’re making their first commercial run of Natomic I-713 in both No. 3 and 4 converters at once.”

“So? Seems to me I did hear something about that. Had to do with killing off boll weevils, didn’t it?” Ferrel was vaguely familiar with the process of sowing radioactive dust in a circle outside the weevil area, to isolate the pest, then gradually moving inward from the border. Used with proper precautions, it had slowly killed off the weevil and driven it back into half the territory once occupied.

Jenkins managed to look disappointed, surprised and slightly superior without a visible change of expression. “There was an article on it in the
Natomic Weekly Ray
of last issue, Dr. Ferrel. You probably know that the trouble with Natomic I-344, which they’ve been using, was its half life of over four months; that made the land sowed useless for planting the next year, so they had to move very slowly. I-713 has a half life of less than a week and reached safe limits in about two months, so they’ll be able to isolate whole strips of hundreds of miles during the winter and still have the land usable by spring. Field tests have been highly successful, and we’ve just gotten a huge order from two States that want immediate delivery.”

“After their legislatures waited six months debating whether to use it or not,” Ferrel hazarded out of long experience. “Hm-m-m, sounds good if they can sow enough earthworms after them to keep the ground in good condition. But what’s the worry?”

Jenkins shook his head indignantly. “I’m not worried. I simply think we should take every possible precaution and be ready for any accident; after all, they’re working on something new, and a half life of a week is rather strong, don’t you think? Besides, I looked over some of the reaction charts in the article, and—What was that?”

From somewhere to the left of the infirmary, a muffled growl was being accompanied by ground tremors; then it gave place to a steady hissing, barely audible through the insulated walls of the building. Ferrel listened a moment and shrugged. “Nothing to worry about, Jenkins. You’ll hear it a dozen times a year. Ever since the Great War when he tried to commit hara-kiri over the treachery of his people, Hokusai’s been bugs about getting an atomic explosive bomb which will let us wipe out the rest of the world. Some day you’ll probably see the little guy brought in here minus his head, but so far he hasn’t found anything with short enough a half life that can be controlled until needed. What about the reaction charts on I-713?”