[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Comet March 41.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The nurse at the desk of Floor 24, Ward 5, flexed a smooth, tan arm
and looked at the hall chronometer. She sighed inaudibly. 20:13:09,
said the dial. Two more hours on duty for Miss Markett Travenor,
F-2349464-23a-10-256W-26. Which was to say that her file was Female
number 2349464 in the Register of Persons, that she lived in apartment
23 on floor 10 in building 256 on the West side of parkzone 26.
Examination of her face and figure would have convinced you that one
as lovely as she could have existed by accident only in the Twentieth
Century. Happily, however, by the year 2046 (in which she was born),
scientific mating was no dream of a few forward-looking visionaries,
but a reality: she was the lovely offspring of a couple carefully
paired.
Markett looked down from her chronometer, her green eyes darkly
thoughtful. Dr. Ward Alfreed (M-2536478-13a-20-358E-22) was late. She
looked down the white-enameled corridor, then at the indicating finger
of an elevator. It had not moved. Easily she pressed a communicator
attached to a strap of her uniform. Immediately a voice spoke:
"Entrance hall speaking--Central Information Desk."
Markett snapped a button. "Lee?", she asked. "Is the hotter down there
yet?" "Hotter," in the year 2066, meant boy-friend.
"Dr. Alfreed," replied the voice, "is going up now with Patient--just a
moment--Patient sixty-six-twenty-five."
"Thanks," replied Markett, snapping off the contact. She picked a card
from the full-view files before her. Patient sixty-six-twenty-five,
Psycho Clinic. "Marked degeneration," read the card. "Cowardly
tendencies--fear of falling, fear of floating, fear of slipping, fear
of standing still. Three attempted suicides unsuccessful due to lack of
creative technique. Prognosis: doubtful. Use of Psychological Regulator
suggested. E. B." All that, and the date for the operation--today.
She rose and faced the elevator as sharp-tuned ears caught the
almost imperceptible hum of doors opening. Dr. Alfreed nodded
cheerfully to her, twitched his head for her benefit toward the man
whose arm he was grasping. Patient sixty-six-twenty-five, no doubt,
she thought, glancing again at his card. Name was Clark Stevens
(M-3972677-234a-150N-190), she saw. Tall, too, and well-built. But,
somehow, his posture and bearing were almost utterly lacking in
masculinity; at the moment he looked the role of a weak, vacillating
subject of a rehabilitation test, and he shocked Markett's sense of
what was right and decent with his overclad body. He wore a shirt
and trousers, seemingly improvised from a number of the one-piece,
short-sleeved suits worn by the world as fashion and comfort decreed.
Yet there was something about him--? She wrenched her eyes back to the
figure of the doctor, small, compact, and natty in leatheret bandolier.
Pity, she thought with professional coldness, must not interfere with
her operative functions. However, the sight of Stevens could not help
but make her think of pictures she had seen of nurses in the old days,
hideously overclad, their freedom of movement hampered. She, as all
nurses of this enlightened era, wore only a bandolier, to which was
attached a harness carrying the various items which must always be on
her person, regulation shorts, and shoes.
Dr. Alfreed took the patient's card from her and scribbled notations.
She turned to take the patient's arm, but, with a cry of fear, he
cowered from her.
"Now," she said soothingly. "Let's come along and not have--" she
was backing him into the arms of the doctor, of course. He pinioned
the patient, and winked at Markett. "Sorry," he said. "He's afraid
of women too. Forgot to tell you. Let's take him in." And the little
doctor lifted the big-boned patient easily to his shoulders, holding
him helplessly balanced, and trotted down the enameled corridor into
a high-walled, darkish room. He dumped the psychotic into one of
many deep, padded chairs, and Markett promptly slapped thick, strong
bands of a tough plastic across the man's knees and chest. Patient
sixty-six-twenty-five began to weep.
The doctor busied himself with a little projector and screen that
constituted the equipment of the room. "What reel?" he called to
Markett.
She wrinkled her nose. "Are you going to do it in one shot or work him
up to it?" she asked.
"One shot. Might kill him, of course. But if it doesn't, we'll have
reclaimed a citizen--and from all accounts a good one. He used to be an
organizer for a coal-mine before this happened to him. Pathetic, isn't
it?"
"Yeah," agreed Markett, busy fastening meshes of pure copper about the
limbs and head of the now quiet patient. "But how about these--these
_swathings_ of his? Do the bus-bars have to contact his skin?"
"No," said the doctor. "We'll just turn the stuff on and see what
happens. It's as strong as they come--you wouldn't understand it; I've
studied ancient history, so it's a little clearer to me."
"Well," said Markett, uncertainly, as the doctor turned off the lights
and started the projector. She settled herself in a comfortable double
seat, and the doctor joined her, while Experimental Reel Seven, Full
Power, went clicking through the camera and onto the screen. But they,
being otherwise absorbed, paid little or no attention to it.
The patient--sixty-six-twenty-five--whimpered and tried to scrape off
the copper bus-bars that confined him. Then his eyes drifted to the
screen, and he beheld a marvelously real landscape, not frozen in paint
on canvas but quivering with life. A rabbit started, and the patient,
who had never seen a rabbit, recognized the little creature, and worked
his jaws. There was an unfamiliar taste in his mouth, as though he
were champing something tough-fibred, like a woven cloth or bit of soft
wood. He had never eaten meat, so to the still-dominant presence of his
ego there was no connotation.
As though he were slowly turning he saw the landscape move, and a
walled city came into view. What a walled city was he couldn't say,
but the words were in his brain; and quivering with rage, he wanted
to tear down the massive bastions with his own hands, and rend the
mailed men who were pacing the ramparts. He clenched his right fist,
and felt the hilt of Al Azaaf, his scimitar. Slowly Roald stood up from
the grass and settled his greaves about his thighs. "Rouse up, sons
of Yggdrasil," he hissed fiercely, and his men--his terrible Norse,
scourge of the coast--appeared from bushes and brakes, drawing axes
from belts and fitting pikes to shafts.
"Seventy-and-nine of us there be," growled Roald without preamble,
"and of them an hundred and eighty or more. Who complains?" There was
silence on the moor, save for the clank of metal as when dirk touched
against breastplate.
Roald grinned savagely and swept aside his long red beard to spit. "The
less men the more booty," he snarled. "Eh? And women--?" He laughed
tremendously. Then, whirling his sword he roared, "By the hammer of
Thor--_Come on_!" Roaring wildly Roald and his red-bearded band made
across the common at a dead run.
There were screams from the city, and much blowing of horns. Arrows
began to smack into the clayey soil about them, and Roald raised
his buckler. He saw the gates of the city swinging shut; yelling
inarticulately he tore a blazing torch from the fist of a companion and
hurled it into the knot of porters and marketmen that was struggling
with the heavy bar and hinges; they scattered in terror, only a second
before the red demons were within the gates, slashing and clubbing
with keen swords and murderous axes.
Roald was the spearhead of the attack, and as he and his men plowed
contemptuously through the rabble ... tradesmen and shopkeepers ...
he laughed wildly. "Guard ho!" he yelled. "Who will come to do battle
with the chosen of Odin. The curse of Cornwall and the damned, stinking
Isle of Britain? Guard ho!" Slash! through the shoulder of a boy with
a pike. He drove a mailed fist into the face of a gammer who was
struggling aside, unwilling to leave her heavy basket of turnips behind.
Roald grinned savagely in the eyes of an archer. "Draw," he shouted,
and as the Englishman reached he spitted him on the curve of Al Azaaf.
A new blade crossed his, and with dirk and sword he ranged up and down
the length of a square with his foe, a dark-eyed young man who fought
precisely and quietly. Behind him he felt the spearhead break into bits
and the body of the guard charged the Norse. The youth extended his
body in a strange thrust, and Roald cursed the queer, slim weapon he
used--a thing like a dart with a hilt. The Viking slashed once, and the
youth parried. Roald slashed again, and there was the shock known to
swordsmen as steel clashed steel. The youth was weaponless, and Roald
cut him down where he stood, kicked the body in the ribs, then spun to
defend himself against an assault from a clumsy pike.
The Viking grinned savagely, and swept aside his beard. "With this
draught," he roared to his men, "I name this city fief to the Vikings
and to Roald, and all its values, be they goods or women or children,
fief also to their conquerors." He glared about him from the eminence
in the walled city's central square, on the scene of desolation and
butchery. He stood among his Norse having left not one of the hundred
and eighty defenders. "_Skoal!_" he roared, and drank.
And Six-six-twenty-five, otherwise known as Clark Stevens
(M-3972677-234a-150N-190), shuddered violently, stared at the screen
that had just run blank. "What--?" he began, sitting erect. "Damn!"
said Stevens, finding himself strangely trammeled by webworks of pure
copper. He wrenched his hands free and tore the wires from his ankles
and head. "You!" he roared at a couple snuggled in an easy chair.
"Quite recovered?" smiled Dr. Alfreed, unfastening the plastic bands
that were restraining Stevens. "A little dizzy?"
Stevens glared at him, and the Doctor backed away. There was a blinding
flash about three inches away from the doctor's chin, and he went down
and out. The patient, rubbing his fist, squinted through the gloom
and perceived Miss Travenor. "Ah," he said gutturally. He stepped out
of his improvised shirt and trousers; Markett saw with relief that
he was wearing the conventional shorts and bandolier beneath. More
unconventional than his former attire, however, was the patient's new
behavior. He spurned the doctor's body with one foot and picked up the
nurse. "Excuse me--" she began plaintively.
"Shut up!" growled Stevens, slinging her over his shoulder.
And that was that.
Dr. Alfreed awoke to realize that he had committed a serious breach
of experimental technique. It had been a mistake not to observe the
screen during the process of rehabilitation, and it had been a grievous
mistake not to check on the patient's reactions. He cursed softly to
himself when he saw clearly enough to be sure that neither patient nor
nurse were anywhere in the room.
Alfreed was a thoughtful man; he realized that, in the old days,
someone would have gotten hell for a blunder of this nature and scope.
In the old days technical superiors would have fired the responsible
party for the incompetency when revealed, so Alfreed was thankful
that these were not the old days. But further than that he did not
think. Perhaps, therefore, he was the truly responsible party for what
was to happen to his snug little world of file numbers, ventilated
houses, air-conditioned clinics, amiable objectives and pneumatically
complacent nurses.
He wasn't spectacularly worried, having no technical superiors to whom
to answer. But he had failed in a social duty. Enough of his careful
conditioning had remained to remind him of that.
"Oh, Hell!" he swore softly, thinking of the consequences.
He reached over to his hyper-typer, banged out a full report of the
affair and shot it into a tube system, one of whose many mouths
gaped from a nearby wall. This, too, was routine. If anything worked
to correct his mistakes this would. Section headquarters all over
the city would be semi-automatically notified, bulletins flashed to
rural districts. Within half an hour millions of citizens would be
informed--_not_ alarmed--by the quick-changing public information
screens.
And with a sense of duty well done he retired to his quarters on the
same floor and stared for a while at a forbidden bottle of wine. Then
he got drunk.
Clark Stevens carried Markett Travenor as far as the elevator door.
Glancing back at the prostrate form of the man he had hit in the jaw
his eyes narrowed. Something of cold reason was coming back. Then,
suddenly, he became aware--but acutely--of the girl he was carrying in
his arms. "Ah," he said. Abruptly he shifted one of his hands a trifle;
the girl shivered and giggled.
Slowly awareness returned to Stevens. Then he let her drop to the
floor. She looked at him again, quizzically, like a trusting child.
This man, she thought, is masculine. But not with the familiar air of
equality to which I am accustomed--but overbearingly male. A sort of
aura covered his body--she sensed something brutish, irresponsible,
uncivilized. Everything he did confirmed this idea:
"What--?" said the girl. She scrambled to her feet, not taking her eyes
off Stevens.
The man shook his head dazedly. "I won't hurt you," he said. "I'm all
right." He hesitated. "I'm--different." Markett nodded. "What I did
back there in England--" he said slowly, and paused. "Do you know?" he
asked. "Could you see what I did?"
"No," said Markett. "I should have watched and checked, but the doctor
and I let it go."
"The doctor," said Stevens. "The man I hit?" She nodded, half smiling.
"And you'd better be getting out of here," said Markett. "He might wake
up angry." She pushed the button of the elevator, and the doors rolled
open. "Come on," she said, as the man stood silently. "You're not
afraid any more, are you?"
"Afraid?" Stevens laughed. "I was. It was something that happened in
the mine--" He drew a hand across his eyes; the elevator's doors rolled
shut, and they began their ascent to the roof.
"Explosion?" asked Markett. "They happen, I hear."
"Maybe. What the hell?" he said, grinning happily. "I'm here, you're
here, and I'm just after storming a castle in England with my Norsemen.
It was terrible, but somehow--I don't know. I shouldn't be proud of the
things I did." He shuddered a little. "Killing. Maiming. And I burned
the town when there was nothing left I could take from it."
The doors of the elevator rolled open, and a flood of sunlight poured
into the tiny cage. "There," said the man, pointing out a plane.
"That's the one we'll take."
"Did you fly here?" asked the girl. "I thought you were afraid."
"No," said Stevens, confidently opening the unlocked door of the plane.
"This doesn't belong to me."
Markett gasped, as her twenty-odd years of inculcated respect for
property came down on her head like a ton of bricks. "You can't!" she
cried. "It isn't yours--you said so." Her voice trailed off as she saw
the baffled stare in his eyes.
"Come in," he offered, making room for her beside the pilot's seat.
Limply she entered and closed the door. "Now," said Stevens, "what did
you say?"
"The plane isn't yours, Clark!" Oddly, she flushed as she called him by
his given name.
"Well," said Stevens, puzzlement written over his face, "it is now."
He started the motor with one kick at the pedal and the plane snapped
into the air, hovered for a moment, and shot diagonally up, through and
above low-hanging cumulus clouds that glittered in the afternoon sun.
"Why did you come here?" asked Markett. Somehow she felt safe.
"More beautiful," said Stevens. "And I have plans."
"Plans?" asked the girl. "For yourself?"
"For the world," said Stevens. He nodded his head over the control
board, and a shaft of light was caught in his hair; made it shine like
little curly brass wires. "I must ask you questions," said the man. "I
am different. Can you see it?"
"I can," said the girl. And at that moment she felt that it would be a
better thing for man if she were to seize the controls, send their ship
tearing down to smash into the ground.
Traffic control ship seven (for the district) swooped three times on
the hovering plane. Pilot Petersen scratched his head. "What's he
doing?" he asked Engineer Handel.
"I dunno. Hold it," said Handel, bending over his radio set.
"Report from hospital," said the radio. "Psychotic escaped in
plane. Give warnings. The plane will be identified later; its owner
is undergoing a serious operation and no records are immediately
available. Be advised."
"That must be it," said Handel practically. "He's out of all accepted
zones and he hasn't got any right to hover over a residential district.
Call him, Pete."
Petersen aimed his short beam radio antenna in the general direction of
the disputed plane. "Calling Monoplane of class ten," he said into the
mike. "You with the brown body and blue wings. Can y' hear me?"