They'd Rather Be Right

by Mark Clifton

  Actually, he was flooded with a sense of satisfaction. He would be of some use after all, Mabel’s life depended upon him. He, Carney, was as important to her as these Brains.

  He was cooperative. That is, he wanted to be.

  “But I don’t know where I could buy that stuff on short notice,” he blurted. “I had plenty of warning on the last and put out the word I could use it. In a few days the word came back that it was ready. You got to be careful on things like that. It’s different from tools and electrical stuff.”

  Billings, standing beside Joe, was visibly shaken.

  “We simply have to get more,” he insisted. “Our present supply will last less than four hours. Mabel can’t be cured without it. It’s dangerous to try.”

  Carney blanched. His fingers shook as he tried to light a cigarette.

  “If I had more time,” he muttered, “but four hours, and in broad daylight.”

  Joe glanced at his wristwatch.

  “It’s nine o’clock now. That means we must be back by noon, to give us margin. Where’s the nearest big hospital?”

  “There’s an emergency just a couple of blocks over,” Carney said.

  “An emergency hospital wouldn’t have enough,” Joe said. “I want a place that would have a big supply.”

  “I don’t know,” Carney said hesitantly. “There’s Memorial, I guess. Down off Protrero.”

  “I want a doctor’s whites,” Joe said crisply. “Where can I get them?”

  “I can do that,” Carney said with relief. “It’ll take me five minutes.” He turned and almost ran out of the room.

  He was back in less than five minutes. The uniform was complete, even to a little black bag.

  “The boys’ fingers do stick to everything, don’t they?” Joe smiled.

  Carney grinned.

  They were almost over to the interurban depot, where taxis were plentiful, before Carney asked any questions.

  “What’re you gonna do, Joe?” he asked between puffs of breath as they walked rapidly down the street.

  “Steel it,” Joe said tersely. “There are times when the ethics of esperance must be secondary.”

  Carney nodded, sagely, without any comprehension of the phrase.

  “In broad daylight!” he gulped. He sighed and squared his thin shoulders. “But I’ll try anything for Mabel,” he added, slipping easily into the improbable valence of a movie plot.

  When the cab pulled up in the broad circular driveway in front of the hospital, Joe paid the fare and gave the driver a tip.

  “If you’ll wait,” Joe said, “we’ll be going back in about ten minutes.” His words were casual, but he beamed a sense of high drama into the driver’s mind.

  “I’ll wait,” the cabbie promised, as if he were taking an oath.

  Joe took the steps, two at a time, with Carney panting behind him.

  In the lobby, Joe smiled at the young nurse behind the information window, and beamed a strong field of reassurance at her.

  “Where can I find the head nurse, please?” His eyes told her that, after having seen her, he was in no way interested in the old battle-axe of a head nurse.

  The girl returned his smile, while she automatically evaluated him for age, possible marital status, financial prospects. She was already confident of his susceptibility. It was the normal and expected thought process. Joe tied himself into it, and pushed it farther by gently projecting the image of a young intern backed by wealthy parents.

  The nurse’s eyes sparkled, and she inhaled to give Joe a better appraisal of the merchandise.

  “Do you mean our Day Supervisor?” she twinkled. “Shall I get her on the phone?” Her tones, and her thought-patterns, pleaded with him not to be in such a hurry to part company.

  To the image of the wealthy young intern, unmarried, Joe fed the picture of a shining blue convertible, upholstered in red leather, and followed that with a picture of bowing head waiters in a dining room with soft lights.

  “She’s so busy this time of day,” the nurse said doubtfully. “If I could help you—?”

  “Well, I’m really heading for the Blood Bank,” Joe said easily. “I’m borrowing a supply for St. Luke’s—” The picture crystallized into a long evening of dancing at the Venetian Room at the Fairmont, so much less touristy than the Top of the Mark.

  “Oh, that,” the now utterly vivacious young woman trilled. “I’ll be happy to show you the way, Dr.—?”

  “Dr. Carter…soon, anyway… I hope,” said Joe, with a wink.

  The nurse turned to the non-uniformed girl at the typewriter behind her.

  “I’ll be right back, darling,” she cooed. “If anyone asks where I am—”

  “I know,” the girl said with a bored tone. “You’re powdering your nose.” These nurses with their airs!

  None of them paid any attention at all to Carney. Obviously, in the hierarchy of the hospital caste, a system which puts India’s to shame, he was an Untouchable, lower, probably, than even an Orderly. As Joe and the nurse walked down the corridor, her heels clicking smartly, Joe knew that Carney, following behind, was staring at his back with an awe bordering on reverence.

  During the course of the short trip to the second floor, rear, Joe dutifully went through the protocol of finding out the young nurse’s name, hours on and off duty, the telephone number at the adjoining nurse’s residence.

  When they reached the Blood Storage Room, the nurse spoke crisply, and fraternally, to the intern in charge.

  “This is Dr. Carter, from St. Luke’s—”

  The intern, obviously not backed by wealthy parents or a blue convertible, regarded Joe enviously.

  “I wish I could make St. Luke’s,” he said. “How long have you got?”

  “Two more months,” replied Joe, with a sidelong glance at the nurse. “Sometime come over and get acquainted. Glad to introduce you around.”

  “Well, thanks! I’d sure like to!” The intern offered his hand. “Harry Vedder,” he said, “Cal—”

  “Harvard Medical,” murmured Joe. The intern blinked with respect, and thawed even more. His guess had been right. This was one of those wealthy boys; probably been money in the family so long that he didn’t even think about it; all this equality was the real thing, not an affectation. A real guy! The nurse was all but ready to take off and fly.

  “A couple dozen bottles will be enough,” Joe said, bringing their thoughts back down to his errand.

  “Surgery ran short. Called your administrator. Guess you got the release. We’re returning it in the morning.”

  His words were innocuous enough, but his face showed them what he thought of a hospital administration who could let surgery run short of a vital supply. The nurse and intern picked up the expression, and suppressed smiles. As with any subordinate under a hard taskmaster, they were delighted to see their bosses slip.

  “No, the order didn’t come through,” the intern said.

  Joe grinned knowingly. Everybody, all along the line, was slipping.

  “Maybe you’d better call the front office and get confirmation,” he said easily. He heard a subdued gasp behind him from Carney.

  “Not me,” the intern said instantly. “Maybe over at St. Luke’s—but here at Memorial we don’t remind our heads that they’ve slipped. Just take along what you need, and I’ll check it out when the order does come through.”

  They all grinned then, the nurse turning hers into a charming, provocative smile.

  In another two minutes, Carney was staggering down the corridor under the load of heavy cartons. To the astonishment of the intern and the nurse, Joe, himself, hoisted the last remaining box on his own shoulder. The astonishment gave way to satisfaction. This was a real guy, indeed, thoughtful enough not to make the old man take two trips, secure enough in his position that he didn’t have to make a show of it.

  With his free hand, Joe again shook hands with the intern. The nurse twinkled along beside him down the corridor, as if he were her spe
cial property. She escorted him to the front door, to save him the trouble of being stopped and questioned should any official notice the two men carrying out cartons of plasma.

  “Don’t forget,” she whispered as she held open the heavy door for him.

  Joe laughed, a laugh which promised a great deal.

  The taxi driver came halfway up the steps and relieved Carney of part of the load. By the time he had driven ten blocks he had convinced himself this was a very important mission; and by the time he helped them unload their boxes in front of the emergency hospital, he was certain he had been an important part of high drama. When they refused his help in carrying the cartons into the emergency hospital, he knew beyond all doubt that secrecy on his part was of highest importance. He drove away, his long dormant scout’s honor keeping him from even looking back through his rear-view mirror.

  “Kid,” Carney puffed, as they let themselves in through the door to their own basement quarters, “if you can stay out of jail, you’ll con a million.” He was filled with admiration, almost ready to forgive Joe for being a Brain.

  Joe stopped the old man in their living room, unwilling to let him go on into the workroom, to see what was happening to Mabel.

  “This will be enough to last us a couple of days, anyway,” Joe said. “But you’d better send out the word for more plasma through your usual channels.”

  “Sure takes a lot,” Carney answered curiously.

  “Always does,” Joe shrugged, as if it had all been perfectly normal. “Think you can get more?”

  “Sure,” Carney answered easily, “now that I’ve got time.”

  Carney went away satisfied, comfortable in his mind for the first time in more than week. He had something to do, he was important again.

  Inside the workroom, Billings and Hoskins were still standing near Mabel, watching her. Somehow, probably in an absent-minded daze, Hoskins had brewed their morning coffee, and, equally absently, they were drinking it.

  A quick probe of Billings’ stream of rationalizing satisfied Joe that the first astonishment had lessened and was being replaced by a new evaluation of the tenets of psychosomatic therapy. Billings was trying to talk this out to Hoskins, to verbalize his thoughts into coherency.

  “This is all quite understandable,” he was saying slowly, carefully, “if we draw an analogy between the cell and a bullet shot from a gun. At first there is a given momentum of like force, strong enough to rise in an ordered projectory. The cells renew themselves with healthy vigor. Like the amoeba, barring accident, they are immortal—that is, they have the potential of immortality through continued self renewal.”

  “But air resistance, or the resistance of heavier materials, and the pull of gravity gradually overcomes the bullet, drags on its momentum, so that the bullet reaches a balance, then gradually sinks to earth, inert,” Hoskins said.

  “Exactly,” Billings agreed, “as do the cells. They renew and multiply through the growth of the child to its maturity. But gradually the accumulation of mistakes, repressions, frustrations, disappointments, tensions of all kinds, overcome the momentum of the initial life force. The cells cannot keep up their renewal production as against all these depressants. They slow down, more and more, until finally some organ—or complex of organs—is too weakened to function. We call it disease, old age, death.”

  “Would gravity, itself, have any effect, doctor?” Joe asked, as he stepped up to them and poured himself some coffee. “It seems to me that the constant pull of gravity against the cells would tend to slow them down, just as it does the bullet. If cells have a form of memory, as you contend, then the memory of weariness would be passed from the old cell to the new one, and be added to in the experience of the new cell. The accrued memories of weariness, alone, might be sufficient to account for old age.”

  Billings looked up at him.

  “It could be,” he agreed.

  “Let’s ask Bossy,” Hoskins said, instantly.

  He flipped open the communications key, and Billings put the question.

  “Is gravity a factor in cell renewal?” he asked.

  “Yes,” the machine answered instantly. “The most basic. All living cells, whatever the organism, accumulate such memory of weight as to destroy their potential for renewal.”

  “Did you eliminate such cellular memory in the patient?” Joe asked.

  “Naturally,” Bossy answered. “My instructions, regarding therapy, were to find all tensions of any nature and remove them.”

  Billings and Hoskins settled back in their chairs.

  “And the result is that the organism is allowed to continue on at the rate of its peak,” Billings said.

  “Let’s face it, doctor,” Hoskins said harshly. “The result, in effect at least, is—immortality!”

  “Well now,” Billings said hesitantly. “New repressions, new weariness memories, new suppressants can accumulate—”

  “And again be wiped out by treatment,” Hoskins said, pounding his fist into the palm of the other hand. “Immortality—it brings up some powerful ethical questions, doctor.”

  “More than you know,” Joe answered with a smile. “You’ve both overlooked one thing. Mabel was willing. Who else would be?”

  “Anybody! Everybody!” Hoskins said at once. “Everybody wants to be immortal.”

  “Duh… I wanna be immortal!” Joe parodied a famous comic, who parodies a vast portion of mankind. “You haven’t yet considered the price, Professor Hoskins.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean, Joe,” Billings asked curiously.

  “The patient must be willing to be relieved of all tensions,” Joe said.

  “Yes,” Billings agreed.

  “A firm belief in anything acts as a tension, in that it disallows the opposite of that belief. The admission ticket to immortality is the willingness to divorce oneself from all frameworks of preconception and prejudice.”

  “Would that be so difficult?” Hoskins asked, with a challenge in his voice.

  “I think so,” Joe said quietly. “I think, gentlemen, you will find that they’d rather be right—and die.”

  CHAPTER IX

  For two more days the three men watched the progress of Mabel. They hardly slept at all, and ate only in snatched mouthfuls. The fascination was beyond anything they had ever experienced.

  It was like watching the minute hand of a small watch. No, it was more like the unfolding of some fabulous blossom. Staring intently, the eye could not quite catch any change from microsecond to microsecond. Yet if one looked away and looked back again, the development was apparent. And over the two-day period, the change was incredible.

  There had been some alarm about her hair. It had come out in matted gray masses on the pad which supported her head; and for a while they feared she would be completely bald. Then a fine mist of hair began to show, and now her head was covered in a helmet of gold mahogany ringlets. Her face, smoothed to clean and classic form, took on the simplicity of a child, the serenity of a sage.

  During the early stages of therapy, Hoskins had attempted to keep her body covered with a sheet. Typical of man, he reasoned that this was a concession to Joe’s youth and inexperience. Actually, he was obeying the compulsions of his own tensions. Billings had finally, and rather irritably, reminded him that theirs should be a clinical attitude. Joe, concealing his amusement, reminded him that when one, from earliest childhood, could see directly into the thought streams of others, clothes lost their utility as a modesty mechanism for individuals.

  Hoskins, a little angry at himself for feeling foolish, dispensed with the sheet; and had resolutely maintained a clinical attitude.

  Mabel lay in a position faintly suggestive of the fetal curl; or like a dancer of perfect body relaxed and fallen asleep on a casual couch. She breathed slowly and deeply, and only now and then showed a flicker of expression on her face as Bossy touched some deeply buried memory of pain, some formula of prejudice which had no basis in fact, and erased them.
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  It was still impossible for Joe to get through to her mind. For the first time in his life, he found himself blanked out of another’s thoughts, emotions, motives. For the first time, he got a taste of what it must be like to have a normal mind.

  He had always pitied others because they were psionically blind; now he marveled at them. How had man managed to live with man at all, unable to see one another truly? No wonder they fumbled awkwardly in their dealings, and made incredible mistakes of misunderstanding!

  The human race was like a universe of material bodies, each with its own eccentric orbit, blindly crashing into one another, caroming off, senselessly changing direction as a consequence of random contact. The miracle was that even rudiments of order, on a few occasions of history, had somehow been achieved.

  For the first time, he gained a little respect for cane tapping.

  He had likened them to blind people, feeling their way along, tapping their canes ahead of them in total darkness. Their science was a tabulation of how many cane taps it took to get from here to there. Their lore was the measurement of exteriors. He had understood, abstractly, why it was they so often substituted measurement for meaning. But it had taken this inability to get through to Mabel to give him a real appreciation of their problem.

  Suddenly Joe felt the need to get out and walk. The two days had left him feeling cramped and stifled. He was restless with his inability to get through to Mabel, his inability to find out if Bossy, in clearing away all the debris of prejudice screens, had opened a window through which she might see—psionically.

  His question to Billings on whether there was anything he could do received a negative answer. His question to Bossy on whether any complications were anticipated drew an equal negative. Hoskins murmured that he, himself, was going to catch some sleep and would relieve Billings who watched at Mabel’s side. Joe gladly escaped the confines of the room.

  Outside, on the street, the dark and fog enveloped him as he headed away from Third and Howard toward Mark Street. It was a night for walking. And it was a city which calls to stranger and old resident alike for exploration. Years may pass but one never becomes quite accustomed to the magic mystery of San Francisco at night.