"Well!" Wilhart gasped. "Hear that, Joe? Orville Potts is talking this
morning!"
Joe turned up a red, grim face. "He'll talk a lot before I'm through
with him," he promised.
The sixteen patients from Ward J descended the stairs, were counted
through another door, and formed a ragged column of twos on the concrete
walk outside. With Joe leading and Wilhart guarding the rear, the little
formation moved across the great grassy quadrangle enclosed by the
buildings and connecting roofed corridors of the hospital.
Potts tried to close his ears to Wilhart's incessant urging of Danny
Harris. Harris would do little of his own volition, but Potts was tired
of acting as his escort.
The blue morning sky supported but a few brilliant clouds. Potts wished
he were up there, or anywhere except going to P. T. He hated P. T. It
terrified him. Potts closed his eyes.
* * * * *
Major Orville Potts stood in the soft grass and rested a gloved hand on
the upper wing of his flying machine.
"Sir," he said, "with my invention, the Confederacy will soon put the
Yankees to rout."
The general stroked his gray goatee and pursed his lips. Potts felt
pleased that every detail of the general's uniform stood out in bold
clarity. The slouch hat, gray coat, red sash, and black jackboots were
more real than life. Of course the surrounding landscape was a green
blur, but increased concentration would clear that.
The general said, "Ah'm doubtful, Majah. Balloons, Ah undahstand. Hot
aiah natuahlly rises, but this contraption seems too heavy to fly."
"No heavier, in proportion, than a kite, sir," Potts explained.
The crude mountaineer captain, standing slightly behind the general,
snickered.
"Hit won't work nohow," he predicted. "Jist like that there Williams
repeatin' cannon at Seven Pines. Ain't even got no steam engine fur as I
kin see."
Potts said, "This is a new type engine. It operates on a formula of my
own, which I have named gasoline. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me,
I shall proceed with the demonstration."
Potts climbed into the cockpit. A touch of the starter set the 1,000
h.p. radial engine roaring. He waved to the gaping officers and opened
the throttle. The bi-plane whisked down the field and rocketed into the
blue morning sky.
Too late, Potts saw the buzzard soaring dead ahead. He shoved the stick
forward, but the black bird rushed toward his face in frightening
magnification.
* * * * *
Potts opened his eyes. He had walked into a wall.
"What's the matter, Orville Potts?" Joe asked. "You sleep-walking? Get
in there! I'll wake you up."
Joe shoved Potts through the door marked PHYSICAL THERAPY and into the
dressing room. With sixteen patients in the process of disrobing, the
small room presented a scene of wild, indecent activity. Potts squirmed
through the thrashing tangle to a bench against the wall. He sat down
and removed a shoe.
Potts almost felt the currents surging through the neurons of his brain
and sensed a throbbing on the inside of his skull. Twice this morning,
he had tried to break through the physical barrier and had failed. Even
with a minimum of thought, the reasons for failure became obvious.
Lack of intimate detail seemed the principle cause. In his attempt to
reach the Crimean War and lead the Charge of the Light Brigade, he had
been hampered by his ignorance of correct uniforms and commands. He did
not know at what time of day the charge had taken place, the weather
conditions, the appearance of the terrain, or even the exact date. He
believed it was about 1855, but he wouldn't risk a dime bet on his
guess. Perhaps an attempt to return to the past was certain to fail.
Surely the past had happened, was settled, inviolate. Someone named Lord
Cardigan, not Orville, Lord Potts, had led the charge.
Inventing an airplane during the Civil War also had no chance of
success. No such thing actually happened, and, if it had, the plane
would have been more crude than the Wright brothers' machine.
Furthermore, Potts was no aviator. Success, if any, lay in the future.
The future was yet to come, and Potts could mold events to his liking.
Or perhaps he could move his body in space, instead of time. He could
think himself out of the hospital.
"Orville Potts, get those clothes off!" Wilhart ordered. Potts slowly
removed his faded garments. He took his place at the end of the line of
naked men leading to the needle shower.
Joe stood in all his glory at what Potts called the P. T. machine. The
apparatus was a marble box with rows of knobs and gauges and a pair of
rubber hoses on the top. Potts felt sure that Joe took a sadistic
delight in his work. As the line moved forward, he glanced at the
attendant's florid face, tight smiling lips and squinted eyes. Potts
shuddered.
No member of the hospital staff had ever condescended to explain to
Potts the exact purpose of the P. T. bath, other than that it would make
him feel good. It only frightened Potts. The correct procedure was that
the patient stepped between the pipes of the needle shower and washed
himself. Then the attendant turned off the shower and sluiced the
patient with powerful streams of water from the hoses.
The routine seemed senseless and innocent enough, but Potts had heard
whispered conversations in the night that filled him with horror. The P.
T. machine, rumor said, was actually an instrument of torture and death.
The water pressure could be increased to two thousand pounds, enough to
push out a man's eyes or break his bones. Instead of water, the hoses
could spit fire like a flamethrower. Acid could spray from the shower.
Potts had even heard that Joe had killed seven men in the P. T. bath.
How much of this was true, Potts did not know. When he saw bodies turn
suddenly red under a rain of hot water, or writhe and tremble as if
being whipped, he could believe all of it.
The line advanced slowly, like a gang of criminals going to the gas
chamber. Potts grimly determined to think himself out of the hospital at
once, for who knew when fire instead of water would spout from the
hoses? If he recalled some place outside, in exact detail, Potts knew he
could become all mind and project himself there. He must recall
everything, scents, temperature, the ground beneath his feet, precise
colors. Potts concentrated.
He tried to remember the home he had not seen for three months. He
received a dim impression of a tiny crowded apartment and a wife growing
increasingly indifferent. He could not even remember the color of her
eyes, or whether the living room contained one easy chair or two. He
would have to project himself to another place, one that did not seem
like a vague dream.
Potts saw that his bath would come next. Danny Harris stood in the spray
and stared stupidly at the tile floor. Potts looked at Joe. A wide smile
that revealed two gold teeth creased the burly attendant's face. Hairy
hands turned off the needle shower, twisted two more knobs, and picked
up the twin hoses. Joe stood like the villain in a Western movie,
blazing away with two guns, and shot thin powerful streams of water
against Harris's spine. Harris shrieked, though he rarely uttered a
sound outside the P. T. bath. As the icy water raked him from head to
heels, he yelled and danced.
"Turn around," Joe commanded.
Harris pivoted and wailed, and Joe basted him on all sides with water.
Potts watched fascinated as the thin body turned alternately blue with
cold and red under the stinging water. He would not endure that again
this morning. He knew now one place he could sense and visualize in
complete detail.
"All right," said Joe, laying down his hoses. "Let's go, Orville Potts!"
Harris reeled, like a man rescued from drowning, into the dressing room,
and Potts took his place between the four vertical pipes of the needle
shower. From innumerable holes in the pipes, powerful jets of water
spouted against his body. He stood with his back turned to the machine
and made no attempt to wash. He never did--he saw no point in bathing
without soap.
Potts thought of the Ward J dayroom, the room in which he had spent much
of his time for the past three months. He visualized the maroon chairs
with metal arms and legs, the green cretonne curtains, the cream walls,
the black-and-red inlaid linoleum floor glinting with spots of old wax.
He sensed a stale odor of tobacco smoke, furniture polish, and
perspiration. He heard the talk of patients engaged in perpetual games
of rook. He felt his thighs, hips, and back pressing against one of the
chairs, and his feet on the smooth floor.
"Now, Orville Potts," Joe jeered, "let's hear you sing like Danny
Harris!"
But Potts wasn't there.
* * * * *
Potts opened his eyes. He had always wondered how it would feel, but he
had felt nothing. In the same instant, he stood tensed, waiting for the
water, and he sat in a chair in the Ward J dayroom. Directly in front of
him, a nurse played rook with three of the patients grouped around a
square table. Not many patients were in the room at this hour, and no
attendant stood guard. The nurse turned her head slightly. She gasped,
shoved back her chair and ran to the porch. Nasen, the ward attendant,
charged through the door she had used.
[Illustration]
"Orville Potts!" he cried. "Where's your clothes?"
Potts then noticed that he was completely naked and wet.
Nasen dragged Potts from the chair, applied a light hammerlock, and
marched his captive from the room. "Did you come over here from P. T.
like that?" he asked. "How'd you get out?"
Potts went along willingly enough, but without answering.
Nasen unlocked the door to the shower room and thrust Potts within.
"Stay right there," he said. As he was locked in, Potts heard the
attendant call, "Frank, go tell Dr. Bean that Orville Potts slipped out
of P. T. with no clothes on. I don't know how. He must have stolen a
key."
Potts took a towel from the shelf, sat on the bench, and rubbed his hair
with the towel. He hoped they all went batty trying to learn how he had
escaped. He thought most of the attendants should be patients anyhow.
Clutching a pile of clothing and a pair of slippers, Nasen returned.
"Put these on," he said. "Orville Potts, you're in trouble now. What did
you do with the key?"
Potts struggled into a tight blue shirt minus most of the buttons. "I
didn't have a key."
"You're _talking_?"
"I can talk when I want to," Potts admitted. "I just never want to."
Nasen said, "That's more words than I've heard from you all at one time.
Why did you come back stark naked like that?"
"I thought my way out," Potts explained, pulling on the trousers that
had evidently been tailored for a giant.
"Oh, you thought your way out. Put those slippers on."
Joe and Wilhart, flushed and panting, charged into the shower room.
"There he is! Grab him!" Joe yelled. He seized Potts' arms and pulled
them behind in a brutal double hammerlock.
"He's not giving any trouble," Nasen said. "What happened, Joe?"
"Damn if I know. He was in the shower, and I turned my head for a
second. Next thing I knew, he was gone. What'd you find on him--a key or
a lock-pick or something like that?"
Nasen grinned. "He didn't have even that much on when I first saw him.
He came into the day room and sat down, and Miss Davis like to threw a
fit."
Wilhart tossed a bundle on the floor. "There's nothing in his own
clothes but a pack of cigarettes."
"Where's the key, Orville Potts?" Joe grated, squeezing Potts's arms.
"You know what's going to happen to you? You'll get the pack room, or
maybe Ward D. How would you like Ward D, Orville Potts?"