The Man Who Fell to Earth (18 page)

The doctor was punctual as ever; the guard let him in at exactly eleven o’clock. He carried his bag and was accompanied by a nurse with a deliberately impassive face—the sort of face that seemed to say, “I don’t care what you die of, I intend to be efficient about my part of it.” She was a blonde, and by human standards, pretty. The doctor’s name was Martinez; he was a physiologist.

“Good morning, Doctor,” Newton said, “What can I do for you?”

The doctor smiled with practiced casualness. “Another test, Mr. Newton. Another small test.” He had a faint Spanish accent. Newton rather liked him; he was less formal than most of the people he had to deal with.

“I should think you’d know all you wish to about me by now,” Newton said. “You’ve X-rayed me, sampled my blood and lymph, recorded my brain waves, measured me, and taken direct samples from my bone, liver, and kidneys. I hardly think I’d have any more surprises for you.”

The doctor shook his head and granted Newton a perfunctory laugh. “God knows we’ve found you… interesting. You have a rather far-fetched set of organs.”

“I’m a freak, Doctor.”

The doctor laughed again; but his laugh was strained. “I don’t know what we’d do if you developed appendicitis or something. We’d hardly know where to look.”

Newton smiled at him. “You wouldn’t have to bother. I don’t have an appendix.” He leaned back in his chair. “But I imagine you’d operate anyway. You would probably be delighted to open me up and see what new curiosities you could find.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the doctor said. “As a matter of fact, one of the first things we learned about you—after counting your toes, that is—was that you have no vermiform appendix. In fact there are many things you don’t have. We’ve been using rather advanced equipment, you know.” Then, abruptly, he turned to the nurse. “Will you give Mr. Newton the Nembucaine, Miss Griggs?”

Newton winced. “Doctor,” he said, “I’ve told you before that anesthetics have no effect on my nervous system, except to give me a headache. If you are going to do something painful to me there is no point in making it more painful.”

The nurse, ignoring him completely, began preparing a hypodermic. Martinez gave the patronizing smile evidently reserved for patients’ fumbling efforts to understand the rites of medicine. “Maybe you’re unaware of how much these things would hurt if we didn’t use anesthetics.”

Newton was beginning to feel exasperated. His sense of being an intelligent human besieged by curious and pompous monkeys had become very acute during the past weeks. Except, of course, that it was he in the cage, while the monkeys came and went, examining him and attempting to appear wise. “Doctor,” he said, “haven’t you seen the results of the intelligence tests given me?”

The doctor had opened his briefcase on the desk and was removing some forms. Each sheet was clearly stamped, Top Secret. “Intelligence tests aren’t my bailiwick, Mr. Newton. And as you probably know, all of that information is highly confidential.”

“Yes. But you do know.”

The doctor cleared his throat. He was beginning to fill in one of the forms. Date; type of test. “Well, there have been some rumors.”

Newton was angry now. “I imagine there have been. I also imagine that you are aware that my intelligence is about twice yours. Can’t you credit me with knowing whether or not local anesthetic is effective for me?”

“We’ve studied the arrangement of your nervous system exhaustively. There seems to be no reason why Nembucaine wouldn’t work as well for you as for… as for anybody.”

“Maybe you don’t know as much about nervous systems as you think you do.”

“That may be.” The doctor had finished with the form, and set his pencil on it for a paperweight. An unnecessary paperweight, since there were no windows and no breeze. “That may be. But again, it’s not my bailiwick.”

Newton glanced at the nurse, who had the needle ready. She seemed to be making an effort to appear unaware of their conversation. He wondered, briefly, how they would go about keeping such people silent about their curious prisoner, keeping them away from reporters—or, for that matter, away from bridge games with friends. Maybe the government kept everyone who worked on him in isolation. But that would be difficult and awkward. Still, they were obviously taking great pains with him. He found it almost amusing that he must be the occasion of some wild speculation among the few people who knew of his peculiarities.

“What is your bailiwick, Doctor?” he said.

The doctor shrugged. “Bones and muscles, mostly.”

“That sounds pleasant.” The doctor took the needle from the nurse and Newton, resigning himself, began rolling up his shirtsleeve.

“You might as well take the shirt off.” the doctor said. “We’ll be working on your back, this time.”

He did not protest, but began unbuttoning the shirt. When he had it halfway off he heard the nurse catch her breath softly. He looked up at her. Obviously they hadn’t told her much, since what she was carefully trying not to stare at was his chest, bare of hair and nipples. They had, of course, found out his disguises early, and he wore them no longer. He wondered what the nurse’s reaction would be when she got close enough to him to notice the pupils of his eyes.

When he had the shirt off the nurse injected him in the muscles on each side of his spine. She attempted to be gentle, but the pain was, for him, considerable. After that part of it was over he said, “Now what are you going to do?”

The doctor noted the time of the injection on his form sheet. Then he said, “First, I’m going to wait twenty minutes while the Nembucaine… takes effect. Then I’m going to draw samples of the marrow of your spinal vertebrae.”

Newton looked at him a moment, silently. Then he said, “Haven’t you learned yet? There is no marrow in my bones. They are hollow.”

The doctor blinked. “Come now.” he said, “there must be bone marrow. The red corpuscles of the blood—”

Newton was not accustomed to interrupting people; but he interrupted this time. “I don’t know about the red corpuscles and the marrow. I probably know as much about physiology as you do. But there is no marrow in my bones. And I can’t say that I will enjoy submitting to some painful probing on your part so that you—or whoever your superiors may be—can satisfy yourselves as to my… peculiarities. I’ve told you a dozen times that I’m a mutant—a freak. Can’t you take my word for anything?”

“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. He looked as though he were sorry.

Newton stared past the doctor’s head for a moment, at a bad reproduction of Van Gogh’s
Woman of Aries
. What could the United States Government have to do with a woman of Aries? “Someday I’d like to meet your superiors,” he said. “And while we’re waiting for your ineffective Nembucaine to take effect, I’d like to try an anesthetic of my own.”

The doctor’s face was blank.

“Gin,” Newton said. “Gin and water. Would you like to join me?”

The doctor smiled automatically. All good doctors smile at the witticisms of their patients—even research physiologists of well-checked loyalty are supposed to smile. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m on duty now.”

Newton was surprised at his own exasperation. And he had thought he liked Dr. Martinez. “Come now, Doctor. I’m certain you’re a very expensive practitioner of your… of your bailiwick, with a mahogany-veneered bar in your office. And I can assure you, I wouldn’t give you enough alcohol to cause your hand to tremble while you’re probing my spine.”

“I don’t have an office,” the doctor said. “I work in a laboratory. We don’t normally drink on the job.”

Newton, for some unaccountable reason, stared at him. “No, I don’t suppose you do.” He looked at the nurse, but when she, now visibly rattled, opened her mouth to speak, he said, “No, I suppose not. Regulations.” Then he stood up and smiled down at them. “I’ll drink alone.” It was nice to be taller than they were. He walked to the bar in the corner and poured himself a tumbler full of gin. He decided to omit the water, since, while he had been talking, the nurse had been laying a set of instruments on a sheet that she had spread over the table. There were several needles, a small knife, and some kind of clamps, all made of stainless steel. They glittered prettily…

***

After the doctor and nurse had gone he lay face down on his bed for over an hour. He did not put his shirt on again, and his back, except for the bandages, was still bare. He felt faintly cold—an unusual sensation for him—but made no move to cover himself. The pain had been very intense for several minutes, and, although it was over now, he was exhausted by it and by the fear that had preceded it. He had always been frightened by the anticipation of pain, ever since his childhood.

It had occurred to him that they might know the pain they were causing him, that they might be torturing him in some ill-conceived form of brainwashing, in the hope of breaking his mind. The thought was especially frightening, for if that were so they would only just have begun. But it was very unlikely. Despite the excuse of the perpetual cold war, and despite the very real tyranny that was tolerated in a democracy at such times—it would be too difficult for them to get away with it. And the year was an election year. Already there had been campaign speeches alluding to the high-handedness of the party in power. In one such speech his name had been mentioned. The word “cover-up” was used several times.

The only logical reason for submitting him to the painful tests must be some form of bureaucratic curiosity. Probably the justification was their desire to prove conclusively that he was non-human, to prove that he was indeed what they must have suspected he was—suspected, but could not admit to, because of its absurdity. If that was the way their thinking went, and very likely it was, they were in very obvious error from the outset. For, no matter what non-human attributes they might find, it would always be more plausible that he was a human physical deviate, a mutation, sport, freak, than that he was from some other planet. Still, they did not seem to see this difficulty. What could they hope to find out in detail that they didn’t already know, in general? And what could they prove? And, finally, if proved beyond doubt, what then could they do?

But he did not care very much—did not care what they found out about him, did not even care very much what happened to that old, old plan, conceived twenty years before in another part of the solar system. He supposed, without thinking about it very much, that it was all over anyway, and he felt little more than relief. What he cared most about was that they would get their infernal experiments and tests and questions done with, and leave him alone. Being imprisoned as he was, was no problem for him—in many ways it was more native to his way of life, and more satisfying, than freedom.

7

The FBI was polite and gentle enough, but after two days of nonsensical questions, Bryce was profoundly weary, unable even to feel anger at the contempt he could sense behind their politeness. Had they not released him on the third day, he felt that he might have gone to pieces. Yet they hadn’t put him under any noticeable strain; in fact they hardly seemed to consider him important.

On the third morning the man came, as usual, to pick him up at the YMCA and to drive him the four blocks to the Federal Building in downtown Cincinnati. The YMCA had been a contributing factor to his weariness. Had he credited the FBI with enough imagination he would have blamed his stay at the Y upon a deliberate wish to depress him with the tattered cheeriness that filled the public rooms along with the grimy oak furniture and the countless unread Christian tracts.

The man took him to a new room in the Federal Building this time, a room like a dentist’s office where a technician put hypodermics in him, measured his heartbeat and blood pressure, and even took X-ray photographs of his skull. These things were done, as someone explained, for “routine identification procedure.” Bryce could not imagine what his heartbeat rate would have to do with identifying him; but he knew better than to ask. Then, abruptly, they finished, and the man who had brought him there told him that, as far as the FBI was concerned, he was free to go. Bryce looked at his watch. It was ten-thirty in the morning.

As he left the room and went down the corridor to the main entrance-way, he had another shock. Being led by a matron to the room he had just left, was Betty Jo. She smiled at him, but said nothing, and the matron hustled her past him and into the room.

He was astonished at his own reaction. Despite his weariness he felt a stomach-borne excitement, a kind of delight, at seeing her—even more so at seeing her frank-faced, chubby person in this absurd, ponderously severe corridor of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Outside the building he sat on the steps in the cold December sunlight and waited for her to come out. It was almost noon when she came and sat, heavily and shyly, beside him. With the cold air her perfume seemed warm—strong and sweet. A brisk young man with an attaché case came striding up the steps, and pretended not to see them sitting there. Bryce turned to Betty Jo and was surprised to see that her eyes were puffy, as though she had been recently crying. He glanced at her nervously. “Where’ve they been keeping you?”

“At the YWCA.” She shuddered. “I didn’t care for it much.”

It was logical that they would have had her there, but he hadn’t thought about it. “I’ve been at the other one,” he said. “At the YM. How did they treat you? The FBI, I mean.” It seemed foolish to use all of those initials—YMCA, FBI.

“All right, I guess.” She shook her head and then moistened her lips. Bryce liked the gesture; she had full lips, without lipstick, red now from the cold air. “But they sure asked a lot of questions. About Tommy.”

Somehow the reference to Newton embarrassed him. He did not want to talk about the Anthean just then.

She seemed to sense his embarrassment—or shared it. After a pause she said, “Do you want to go eat lunch?”

“That’s a good idea.” He stood up and pulled his overcoat around him. Then he leaned down and helped her to her feet, taking both her hands in his.

By luck they found a good, quiet restaurant and they both ate a large lunch. It was all natural food, with no synthetics, and there was even real coffee to drink afterward, although it was thirty-five cents a cup. But they both had plenty of money.