Make Room! Make Room!

by Harry Harrison

  “It’s not really that bad. The Church is not really against the idea of birth control, just the way it is done. They have always approved of the rhythm technique….”

  “Not good enough. Neither is the Pill, not for everybody. When are they going to say okay to the Loop? This is the one that really works. And do you know how long it has been around and absolutely foolproof and safe and harmless and all the rest? Since 1964, when the bright boys at Johns Hopkins licked all the problems and side effects, that’s how long. For thirty-five years they’ve had this little piece of plastic that costs maybe a couple of cents. Once inserted it stays in for years, it doesn’t interfere with any of the body processes, it doesn’t fall out, in fact the woman doesn’t even know it is there—but as long as it is she is not going to get pregnant. Remove it and she can have kids again, nothing is changed. And the funny part is that no one is even sure how it works. It’s a mystery. Maybe it should be spelled with a capital M, Mystery, so your Church could accept it and say it’s God’s will whether the thing is going to work or not.”

  “Sol—you’re being blasphemous.”

  “Me? Never! But I got just as much right as the next guy to take a guess as to what God is thinking. Anyway, it really has nothing to do with Him. I’m just trying to find an excuse for the Catholic Church to accept the thing and give the suffering human race a break.”

  “They’re considering it now.”

  “That’s great. They’re only about thirty-five years too late. Still, it might work out, though I doubt it. It’s the old business of too little and too late. The world’s gone—not going—to hell in a hand basket, and it’s all of us who pushed it there.”

  Shirl stirred the soup and smiled at him. “Aren’t you exaggerating maybe a little bit? You can’t really blame all our troubles on overpopulation.”

  “I damned well can, if you’ll pardon the expression. The coal that was supposed to last for centuries has all been dug up because so many people wanted to keep warm. And the oil too, there’s so little left that they can’t afford to burn it, it’s got to be turned into chemicals and plastics and stuff. And the rivers—who polluted them? The water—who drank it? The topsoil—who wore it out? Everything has been gobbled up, used up, worn out. What we got left—our one natural resource? Old-car lots, that’s what. Everything else has been used up and all we got to show for it is a couple of billion old cars that are rusting away. One time we had the whole world in our hands, but we ate it and burned it and it’s gone now. One time the prairie was black with buffalo, that’s what my schoolbooks said when I was a kid, but I never saw them because they had all been turned into steaks and moth-eaten rugs by that time. Do you think that made any impression on the human race? Or the whales and passenger pigeons and whooping cranes, or any of the hundred other species that we wiped out? In a pig’s eye it did. In the fifties and the sixties there was a lot of talk about building atomic power plants to purify sea water so the desert would bloom and all that jazz. But it was just talk. Just because some people saw the handwriting on the wall didn’t mean they could get anyone else to read it too. It takes at least five years to build just one atomic plant, so the ones that should have supplied the water and electricity we need now should have been built then. They weren’t. Simple enough.”

  “You make it sound simple, Sol, but isn’t it too late to worry about what people should have done a hundred years ago?”

  “Forty, but who’s counting.”

  “What can we do today? Isn’t that what we should be thinking about?”

  “You think about it, honeybunch, I get gloomy when I do. Run full speed ahead just to stay even, and keep our fingers crossed, that’s what we can do today. Maybe I live in the past, and if I do I got good reasons. Things were a lot better then, and the trouble would always be coming tomorrow, so the hell with it. There was France, a great big modern country, home of culture, ready to lead the world in progress. Only they had a law that made birth control illegal, and it was a crime for even doctors to talk about contraception. Progress! The facts were clear enough if anybody had bothered to look. The conservationists kept telling us to change our ways or our resources would soon be gone. They’re gone. It was almost too late then, but something could have been done. Women in every country in the world were begging for birth control information so they could limit the size of their families to something reasonable. All they got was a lot of talk and damn little action. If there had been five thousand family-planning clinics for every one there was it still wouldn’t have been enough. Babies and love and sex are probably the most emotionally important and the most secret things known to mankind, so open discussion was almost impossible. There should have been free discussion, tons of money for fertility research, world-wide family planning, educational programs on the importance of population control—and most important of all, free speech for free opinion. But there never was, and now it is 1999 and the end of the century. Some century! Well, there’s a new century coming up in a couple of weeks, and maybe it really will be a new century for the knocked-out human race. I doubt it—and I don’t worry about it. I won’t be here to see it.”

  “Sol—you shouldn’t talk like that.”

  “Why not? I got an incurable disease. Old age.”

  He started coughing again, longer this time, and when he was through he just lay on the bed, exhausted. Shirl came over to straighten his blankets and tuck them back in, and her hand touched his. Her eyes opened wide and she gasped.

  “You’re warm—hot. Do you have a fever?”

  “Fever?” He started to chuckle but it turned to a fit of coughing that left him weaker than before. When he spoke again it was in a low voice. “Look, darling, I’m an old cocker. I’m flat on my back in bed all busted up and I can’t move and it’s cold enough to freeze a brass monkey in here. The least I should get is bedsores, but the chances are a lot better that I get pneumonia.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. You don’t get anywheres running away from the truth. If I got it, I got it. Now, be a good girl and eat the soup, I’m not hungry, and I’ll take a little nap.” He closed his eyes and settled his head into the pillow.

  It was after seven that evening when Andy came home. Shirl recognized his footsteps in the hall and met him with her finger to her lips, then led him quietly toward the other room, pointing to Sol, who was still asleep and breathing rapidly.

  “How is he feeling?” Andy asked, unbuttoning his sodden topcoat. “What a night out, rain mixed with sleet and snow.”

  “He has a fever,” Shirl said, her fingers twisting together. “He says that it’s pneumonia. Can it be? What can we do?”

  Andy stopped, halfway out of his coat. “Does he feel very warm? Has he been coughing?” he asked. Shirl nodded. Andy opened the door and listened to Sol’s breathing, then closed it again silently and put his coat back on.

  “They warned me about this at the hospital,” he said. “There’s always a chance with old people who have to stay in bed. I have some antibiotic pills they gave me. We’ll give those to him, then I’ll go to Bellevue to see if I can get some more—and see if they won’t readmit him. He should be in an oxygen tent.”

  Sol barely woke up when he swallowed the pills, and his skin felt burning hot to Shirl when she held up his head. He was still asleep when Andy returned, less than an hour later. Andy’s face was empty of expression, unreadable, what she always thought of as his professional face. It could mean only one thing.

  “No more antiobiotics,” he whispered. “Because of the flu epidemic. The same with the oxygen tents and the beds. None available, filled up. I never even saw any of the doctors, just the girl at the desk.”

  “They can’t do that. He’s terribly sick. It’s like murder.”

  “If you go into Bellevue it looks as though half the city is sick, people everywhere, even in the street outside. There isn’t enough medicine to go around, Shirl. I think just the children are getting it, everyone else has to ta
ke their chances.”

  “Take their chances!” She leaned her face against his wet coat and began began to sob helplessly. “But there is no chance at all here. It’s murder. An old man like that, he needs some help, he just can’t be left to die.”

  He held her to him. “We’re here and we can look after him. There are still four tablets left. We’ll do everything that we can. Now come inside and lie down. You’re going to get sick too if you don’t take better care of yourself.”

  7

  “No, Rusch, impossible. Can’t be done—and you should know better than to ask me.” Lieutenant Grassioli held his knuckle against the corner of his eye, but it did not stop the twitching.

  “I’m sorry, lieutenant,” Andy said. “I’m not asking for myself. It’s a family problem. I’ve been on duty nine hours now and I’ll take double tours the rest of the week—”

  “A police officer is on duty twenty-four hours a day.”

  Andy held tight to his temper. “I know that, sir. I’m not trying to avoid anything.”

  “No. Now that’s the end of it.”

  “Then let me off for a half an hour. I just want to go to my place, then I’ll report right back to you. After that I can work through until the day-duty men come on. You’re going to be shorthanded here after midnight anyway, and if I stay around I can finish off those reports that Centre Street has been after all week.”

  It would mean working twice around the clock without any rest, but this would be the only way to get any grudging aid out of Grassy. The lieutenant couldn’t order him to work hours like this—if it wasn’t an emergency—but he could use the help. Most of the detective staff had been turned out again on riot duty so that the routine work had fallen far behind. Headquarters on Centre Street did not think this a valid excuse.

  “I never ask a man to do extra duty,” Grassioli said, grabbing the bait. “But I believe in fair play, give and take. You can take a half an hour now—but no more, understand—and make it up when you come back. If you want to stay around later, that’s your choice.”

  “Yes, sir,” Andy said. Some choice. He was going to be here when the sun came up.

  The rain that had been falling for the past three days had turned to snow, big, slow flakes that fell silently through the wide-spaced pools of light along Twenty-third Street. There were few other pedestrians, though there were still dark figures curled up in knots around the supporting pillars of the expressway. Most of the other street sleepers were unseen, their crowded numbers, along with the other citizens of the city, pressed out from the buildings with an almost tangible presence. Behind every wall were hundreds of people, seen now only as dark shapes in doorways or the sudden silhouette against a window. Andy lowered his head to keep the snow out of his face and walked faster, worry pushing him on until he had to slow down, panting to catch his breath.

  Shirl hadn’t wanted him to leave that morning, but he had no other choice. Sol had been no better—or worse—than he had been for the past three days. Andy would have liked to have stayed with him, to help Shirl, but he had no choice. He had to leave, he was on duty. She had not understood this and they had almost fought over it, in whispers to that Sol wouldn’t hear. He had hoped to be back early, but the riot duty had taken care of that. At least he could look in for a few minutes, talk to them both, see if he could help in any way. He knew it wasn’t easy for Shirl to be alone with the sick old man—but what else was there to do?

  Music and the canned laughter of television sounded from most of the doors along the hall, but his own apartment was silent; he felt a sudden cold premonition. He unlocked the door and opened it quietly. The room was dark.

  “Shirl?” he whispered. “Sol?”

  There was no answer, and something about the silence struck him at once. Where was the fast, rasping breathing that had filled the room? His flashlight whirred and the beam struck across the room and moved to the bed, to Sol’s still, pale face. He looked as though he were sleeping quietly, perhaps he was, yet Andy knew—even before his fingertips touched—that the skin would be cold and that Sol was dead.

  Oh, God, he thought, she was alone with him here, in the dark, while he died.

  He suddenly became aware of the almost soundless, heartbreaking sobbing from the other side of the partition.

  8

  “I don’t want to hear about it any more!” Billy shouted, but Peter kept talking just as if Billy hadn’t been there, lying right next to him, and hadn’t said a word.

  “ ‘… and I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea,’ that is the way it is written in Revelation, the truth is there if we look for it. A revelation to us, a glimpse of tomorrow …”

  “SHUT UP!”

  It had no effect, and the monotonous voice went on steadily, against the background of the wind that swept around the old car and keened in through the cracks and holes. Billy pulled a corner of the dusty cover over his head to deaden the sound, but it didn’t help much and he could hardly breathe. He slipped it below his chin and stared up at the gray darkness inside the car, trying to ignore the man beside him. With the seats removed the sedan made a single, not too spacious room. They slept side by side on the floor, seeking what warmth they could from the tattered mound of firewall insulation, cushion stuffing and rumpled plastic seat covering that made up their bedding. There was the sudden reek of iodine and smoke as the wind blew down the exhaust-pipe chimney and stirred the ashes in the trunk, which they used for a stove. The last chunk of seacoal had been burned a week before.

  Billy had slept, he didn’t know how long, until Peter’s droning voice had wakened him. He was sure now that the man was out of his head, talking to himself most of the time. Billy felt stifled by the walls and the dust, the closeness and the meaningless words that battered at him and filled the car. Getting to his knees, he turned the crank, lowered the rear window an inch and put his mouth to the opening, breathing in the cold freshness of the air. Something brushed against his lips, wetting them. He bent his head to look out through the opening and could see the white shapes of snowflakes drifting down.

  “I’m going out,” he said as he closed the window, but Peter gave no sign that he had heard him. “I’m going out. It stinks in here.” He picked up the poncho made from the plastic covering that had been stripped from the front seat of the Buick, put his head through the opening in the center and wrapped it around him. When he unlocked the rear door and pushed it open a swirl of snow came in. “It stinks in here, and you stink—and I think you’re nuts.” Billy climbed out and slammed the door behind him.

  When the snow touched the ground it melted, but it was piling up on the rounded humps of the automobiles. Billy scraped a handful from the hood of their car and put it in his mouth. Nothing moved in the darkness and, except for the muffled whisper of the falling snow, the night was silent. Picking his way through the white-shrouded cars he went to Canal Street and turned west toward the Hudson River. The street was strangely empty, it must be very late, and the occasional pedicab that passed could be heard a long way off by the hissing of its tires. He stopped at the Bowery and watched in a doorway as a convoy of five tugtrucks went past, guards walked on both sides and the tugmen were bent double as they dragged at the loads. Must be something valuable, Billy thought, food probably. His empty stomach grumbled painfully at this reminder and he kneaded it with his fingers. It was going on two whole days since he had last eaten. There was more snow here, clumped on an iron fence, and as he passed he scraped it off and wadded it into a ball that he put into his mouth. When he came to Elizabeth Street he crossed over and peered up at the spring-powered clock mounted on the front of the Chinese Community Center building, and he could just make out the hands. It was a little after three o’clock. That meant there were at least three or four more hours before it got light, plenty of time to get uptown and back.

  As long as he was walking he felt warm enough, though th
e snow melted and ran down inside his clothes. But it was a long way up to Twenty-third Street and he was very tired; he had not eaten much the last few weeks. Twice he halted to rest, but the cold bit through him as soon as he stopped moving, and after only a few minutes he struggled to his feet and went on. The farther north he walked, the larger the fear became.

  Why shouldn’t I come up here? he asked himself, looking around unhappily at the darkness. The cops have forgotten all about me by now. It was too long ago, it was—he counted off on his fingers—months ago, going on five now in December. Cops never followed a case more than a couple of weeks, not unless somebody shot the mayor or stole a million D’s or something. As long as no one saw him he was safe as houses. Twice before he had come north, but as soon as he had got near the old neighborhood he had stopped. It wasn’t raining hard enough or there were too many people around or something. But tonight was different, the snow was like a wall around him—it seemed to be coming down heavier—and he wouldn’t be seen. He would get to the Columbia Victory and go down to the apartment and wake them up. They were his family, they would be glad to see him, no matter what he had done, and he could explain that it was all a frameup, he wasn’t guilty. And food! He spat into the darkness. They had rations for four and his mother always hoarded some of it. He would eat his fill. Oatmeal, slabs of it, maybe even fresh cooked and hot. Clothes too, his mother must still have all of his clothes. He would put on some warm things and get the pair of heavy shoes that had been his father’s. There was no risk, no one would know he had been there. Just stay a few minutes, a half an hour at the most, then get out. It would be worth it.