[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction
October 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the
U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: How does a person come to be scratched from the human race?
Psychiatry did not have the answer--perhaps Clocker's turf science did!]
When Clocker Locke came into the Blue Ribbon, on 49th Street west of
Broadway, he saw that nobody had told Doc Hawkins about his misfortune.
Doc, a pub-crawling, non-practicing general practitioner who wrote a
daily medical column for a local tabloid, was celebrating his release
from the alcoholic ward, but his guests at the rear table of the
restaurant weren't in any mood for celebration.
"What's the matter with you--have you suddenly become immune to liquor?"
Clocker heard Doc ask irritably, while Clocker was passing the gem
merchants, who, because they needed natural daylight to do business,
were traditionally accorded the tables nearest the windows. "I said the
drinks were on me, didn't I?" Doc insisted. "Now let us have some bright
laughter and sparkling wit, or must we wait until Clocker shows up
before there is levity in the house?"
Seeing the others glance toward the door, Doc turned and looked at
Clocker. His mouth fell open silently, for the first time in Clocker's
memory.
"Good Lord!" he said after a moment. "Clocker's become a _character_!"
Clocker felt embarrassed. He still wasn't used to wearing a business
suit of subdued gray, and black oxfords, instead of his usual brilliant
sports jacket, slacks and two-tone suede shoes; a tie with timid little
figures, whereas he had formerly been an authority on hand-painted
cravats; and a plain wristwatch in place of his spectacular chronograph.
By all Broadway standards, he knew, Doc was correct--he'd become strange
and eccentric, a character.
* * * * *
"It was Zelda's idea," Clocker explained somberly, sitting down and
shaking his head at the waiter who ambled over. "She wanted to make a
gentleman out of me."
"_Wanted to?_" Doc repeated, bewildered. "You two kids got married just
before they took my snakes away. Don't tell me you phhtt already!"
Clocker looked appealingly at the others. They became busy with drinks
and paper napkins.
Naturally, Doc Hawkins knew the background: That Clocker was a race
handicapper--publisher, if you could call it that, of a tiny tip
sheet--for Doc, in need of drinking money, had often consulted him
professionally. Also that Clocker had married Zelda, the noted 52nd
Street stripteuse, who had social aspirations. What remained to be told
had occurred during Doc's inevitably temporary cure.
"Isn't anybody going to tell me?" Doc demanded.
"It was right after you tried to take the warts off a fire hydrant and
they came and got you," said Clocker, "that Zelda started hearing
voices. It got real bad."
"How bad?"
"She's at Glendale Center in an upholstered room. I just came back from
visiting her."
Doc gulped his entire drink, a positive sign that he was upset, or
happy, or not feeling anything in particular. Now, however, he was
noticeably upset.
"Did the psychiatrists give you a diagnosis?" he asked.
"I got it memorized. Catatonia. Dementia praecox, what they used to
call, one of the brain vets told me, and he said it's hopeless."
"Rough," said Doc. "Very rough. The outlook is never good in such
cases."
"Maybe they can't help her," Clocker said harshly, "but I will."
"People are not horses," Doc reminded him.
"I've noticed that," said Handy Sam, the armless wonder at the flea
circus, drinking beer because he had an ingrown toenail and couldn't
hold a shot glass. Now that Clocker had told the grim story, he felt
free to talk, which he did enthusiastically. "Clocker's got a giant
brain, Doc. Who was it said Warlock'd turn into a dog in his third year?
Clocker, the only dopester in the racket. And that's just one--"
"Zelda was my best flesh act," interrupted Arnold Wilson Wyle, a
ten-percenter whom video had saved from alimony jail. "A solid boffola
in the bop basements. Nobody regrets her sad condition more than me,
Clocker, but it's a sure flop, what you got in mind. Think of your
public. For instance, what's good at Hialeah? My bar bill is about to be
foreclosed and I can use a long shot."
Clocker bounced his fist on the moist table. "Those couch artists don't
know what's wrong with Zelda. I do."
"You do?" Doc asked, startled.
"Well, almost. I'm so close, I can hear the finish-line camera
clicking."
Buttonhole grasped Doc's lapel and hung on with characteristic avidity;
he was perhaps Clocker's most pious subscriber. "Doping races is a
science. Clocker maybe never doped the human race, but I got nine to
five he can do it. Go on, tell him, Clocker."
* * * * *
Doc Hawkins ran together the rings he had been making with the wet
bottom of his tumbler. "I shall be most interested," he said with
tabloid irony, clearly feeling that immediate disillusionment was the
most humane thing for Clocker. "Perhaps we can collaborate on an article
for the psychiatric journals."
"All right, look." Clocker pulled out charts resembling those he worked
with when making turf selections. "Zelda's got catatonia, which is the
last heat in the schizophrenia parlay. She used to be a hoofer before
she started undressing for dough, and now she does time-steps all day."
Doc nodded into a fresh glass that the waiter had put before him.
"Stereotyped movements are typical of catatonia. They derive from
thwarted or repressed instinctual drive; in most instances, the residue
of childhood frustrations."
"She dance all day, huh, Clocker?" asked Oil Pocket, the Oklahoma
Cherokee who, with the income of several wells, was famed for angeling
bareback shows. He had a glass of tequila in one hand, the salted half
of a lemon in the other. "She dance good?"
"That's just it," Clocker said. "She does these time-steps, the first
thing you learn in hoofing, over and over, ten-fifteen hours a day. And
she keeps talking like she's giving lessons to some jerk kid who can't
get it straight. And she was the kid with the hot routines, remember."
"The hottest," agreed Arnold Wilson Wyle. "Zelda doing time-steps is
like Heifetz fiddling at weddings."
"I still like to put her in show," Oil Pocket grunted. "She stacked like
brick tepee. Don't have to dance good."
"You'll have a long wait," observed Doc sympathetically, "in spite of
what our young friend here says. Continue, young friend."
Clocker spread his charts. He needed the whole table. The others removed
their drinks, Handy Sam putting his on the floor so he could reach it
more easily.
"This is what I got out of checking all the screwball factories I could
reach personal and by mail," Clocker said. "I went around and talked to
the doctors and watched the patients in the places near here, and wrote
to the places I couldn't get to. Then I broke everything down like it
was a stud and track record."
Buttonhole tugged Doc's lapel. "That ain't scientific, I suppose," he
challenged.
"Duplication of effort," Doc replied, patiently allowing Buttonhole to
retain his grip. "It was all done in an organized fashion over a period
of more than half a century. But let us hear the rest."
* * * * *
"First," said Clocker, "there are more male bats than fillies."
"Females are inherently more stable, perhaps because they have a more
balanced chromosome arrangement."
"There are more nuts in the brain rackets than labor chumps."
"Intellectual activity increases the area of conflict."
"There are less in the sticks than in the cities, and practically none
among the savages. I mean real savages," Clocker told Handy Sam, "not
marks for con merchants."
"I was wondering," Handy Sam admitted.
"Complex civilization creates psychic insecurity," said Doc.
"When these catatonics pull out, they don't remember much or maybe
nothing," Clocker went on, referring to his charts.