A Stranger in a Strange Land

by Robert Anson Heinlein

  "Huh? What did I miss?"

  "Calluses"

  "Calluses?"

  "Surely. A man's life history can be told from his calluses. I once did a monograph on them, published in The Witness Quarterly - like Sherlock Holmes' famous monograph on tobacco ash. This young man from Mars since he has never worn our sort of shoes and has lived in gravity about one third of ours, should display foot calluses consonant with his former environment. Even the time he recently spent in space should have left their traces. Very interesting."

  "Damn! Good Lord, Mr. Cavendish, why didn't you suggest it to me?"

  "Sir?" The old man drew himself up and his nostrils dilated. "It would not have been ethical. I am a Fair Witness, not a participant. My professional association would suspend me for much less. Surely you know that."

  "Sorry. I forgot myself." Caxton frowned. "Let's wheel this buggy around and go back. We'll take a look at his feet - or I'll bust the place down with Berquist's fat head!"

  "I'm afraid you will have to find another Witness� in view of my indiscretion in discussing it, even after the fact."

  "Uh, yes, there's that." Caxton frowned.

  "Better just calm down, Ben," advised Frisby. "You're in deep enough now. Personally, I'm convinced it was the Man from Mars. Occam's razor, least hypothesis, just plain horse sense."

  Caxton dropped them, then set the cab to cruise while he thought. Presently he punched the combination to take him back to Bethesda Medical Center.

  He was less than half way back to the Center when he realized that his trip was useless. What would happen? He would get as far as Berquist, no farther. He had been allowed in once - with a lawyer, with a Fair Witness. To demand to be allowed to see the Man from Mars a second time, all in one morning, was unreasonable and would be refused. Nor, since it was unreasonable, could he make anything effective out of it in his column.

  But he had not acquired a widely syndicated column through being balked. He intended to get in.

  How? Well, at least he now knew where the putative "Man from Mars" was being kept. Get in as an electrician? Or as a janitor? Too obvious; he would never get past the guard, not even as far as "Dr. Tanner."

  Was "Tanner" actually a doctor? It seemed unlikely. Medical men, even the worst of them, tended to shy away from hanky-panky contrary to their professional code. Take that ship's surgeon, Nelson - he had quit, washed his hands of the case simply because - wait a minute! Dr. Nelson was one man who could tell offhand whether that young fellow was the Man from Mars, without checking calluses, using trick questions, or anything. Caxton reached for buttons, ordered his cab to ascend to parking level and hover, and immediately tried to phone Dr. Nelson, relaying through his office for the purpose since he neither knew where Dr. Nelson was, nor had with him the means to find out. Nor did his assistant Osbert Kilgallen know where he was, either, but he did have at hand resources to find out; it was not even necessary to draw on Caxton's large account of uncollected favors in the Enclave, as the Post syndicate's file on Important Persons placed him at once in the New Mayflower. A few minutes later Caxton was talking with him.

  To no purpose - Dr. Nelson had not seen the broadcast. Yes, he had heard about it; no, he had no reason to think the broadcast had been faked. Did Dr. Nelson know that an attempt had been made to coerce Valentine Smith into surrendering his rights to Mars under the Larkin Decision? No, he did not know it, had no reason to believe so� and would not be interested if it were true; it was preposterous to talk about anyone "owning" Mars; Mars belonged to the Martians. So? Let's propose a hypothetical question, Doctor; if someone were trying to - but Dr. Nelson had switched off. When Caxton tried to reconnect, a recorded voice stated sweetly: "The subscriber has voluntarily suspended service temporarily. If you care to record-" Caxton switched off.

  Caxton made a foolish statement concerning Dr. Nelson's parentage. But what he did next was much more foolish; he phoned the Executive Palace, demanded to speak to the Secretary General.

  His action was more a reflex than a plan. In his years as a snooper, first as a reporter, then as a lippmann, he had learned that close-held secrets could often be cracked by going all the way to the top and there making himself unbearably unpleasant. He knew that such twisting of the tiger's tail was dangerous, for he understood the psychopathology of great power as thoroughly as Jill Boardman lacked knowledge of it - but he had habitually relied on his relative safety as a dealer in still another sort of power almost universally feared and appeased by the powerful.

  What he forgot was, that in phoning the Palace from a taxicab, he was not doing so publicly.

  Caxton was not put through to the Secretary General, nor had he expected to be. Instead he spoke with half a dozen underlings and became more aggressive with each one. He was so busy that he did not notice it when his cab ceased to hover and left the parking level.

  When he did notice it, it was too late; the cab refused to obey the orders he at once punched into it. Caxton realized bitterly that he had let himself be trapped by a means no professional hoodlum would fall for: his call had been traced, his cab identified, its idiot robot pilot placed under orders of an over-riding police frequency - and the cab itself was being used to arrest him and fetch him in, all most privately and with no fuss,

  He wished keenly that he had kept Fair Witness Cavendish with him. But he wasted no time on this futility but cleared the useless call from the radio and tried at once to call his lawyer, Mark Frisby.

  He was still trying when the taxicab landed inside a courtyard landing fiat and his signal was cut off by its walls. He then tried to leave the cab, found that the door would not open - and was hardly surprised to discover that he was becoming very light-headed and was fast losing consciousness-

  VIII

  JILL TRIED TO TELL HERSELF that Ben had gone charging off on another Scent and simply had forgotten (or had not taken time) to let her know. But she did not believe it. Ben, incredibly busy as he was, owed much of his success, both professional and social, to meticulous attention to human details. He remembered birthdays and would rather have welched on a poker debt than have forgotten to write a bread-and-butter note. No matter where he had gone, nor how urgent the errand, he could have - and would have! - at least taken two minutes while in the air to record a reassuring message to her at her home or at the Center. It was an unvarying characteristic of Ben, she reminded herself, the thing that made him a lovable beast in spite of his many faults.

  He must have left word for her! She called his office again at her lunch break and spoke with Ben's researcher and office chief, Osbert Kilgallen. He assured her solemnly that Ben had left no message for her, nor had any come in since she had called earlier.

  She could see past his head in the screen that there were other people in the office; she decided it was a poor time to mention the Man from Mars. "Did he say where he was going? Or when he would be back?"

  "No. But that is not unusual. We always have a few spare columns on the hook to fill in when one of these things comes up."

  "Well� where did he call you from? Or am I being too snoopy?"

  "Not at all, Miss Boardman. He did not call; it was a statprint message, filed from Paoli Flat in Philadelphia as I recall."

  Jill had to be satisfied with that. She lunched in the nurses' dining room and tried to interest herself in food. It wasn't, she told herself, as if anything were really wrong� or as if she were in love with the lunk or anything silly like that.

  "Hey! Boardman! Snap out of the fog - I asked you a question."

  Jill looked up to find Molly Wheelwright, the wing's dietician, looking at her. "Sorry. I was thinking about something else."

  "I said, 'Since when does your floor put charity patients in luxury suites?'

  "Isn't K-12 on your floor? Or have they moved you?"

  "K-12? Certainly. But that's not a charity case; it's a rich old woman, wealthy that she can pay to have a doctor watch every breath she draws."

  "H
umph! If she's wealthy, she must have come into money awfully suddenly. She's been in the N.P. ward of the geriatrics sanctuary for the past seventeen months."

  "Must be some mistake."

  "Not mine - I don't let mistakes happen in my diet kitchen. That tray is a tricky one and I check it myself - fat-free diet (she's had her gall bladder out) and a long list of sensitivities, plus concealed medication. Believe me, dear, a diet order can be as individual as a fingerprint." Miss Wheelwright stood up. "Gotta run, chicks. I wish they would let me run this kitchen for a while. Hogwallow Cafeteria!"

  "What was Molly sounding off about?" one of the nurses asked.

  "Nothing. She's just mixed up." But Jill continued to think about it. It occurred to her that she might locate the Man from Mars by making inquiries around the diet kitchens. She put the idea out of her mind; it would take a full day to visit all the diet kitchens in the acres of ground covered by the sprawling buildings. Bethesda Center had been founded as a naval hospital back in the days when wars were fought on oceans; it had been enormous even then. It had been transferred later to Health, Education, amp; Welfare and had expanded; now it belonged to the Federation and was still larger, a small city.

  But there was something odd about Mrs. Bankerson's case. The hospital accepted all classes of patients, private, charity, and government; the floor Jill was working on usually had only government patients and its luxury suites were occupied by Federation Senators or other official guests able to command flossy service. It was unusual for a paying private patient to have a suite on her floor, or to be on her floor in any status.

  Of course Mrs. Bankerson could be overflow, if the part of the Center open to the fee-paying public had no such suite available. Yes, probably that was it.

  She was too rushed for a while after lunch to think about it, being busy with incoming patients. Shortly a situation came up in which she needed a powered bed. The routine action would be to phone for one to be sent up - but the storage room was in the basement a quarter of a mile away and Jill wanted the bed at once. She recalled that she had seen the powered bed which was normally in the bedroom of suite K-l2 parked in the sitting room of that suite; she remembered telling one of those marine guards not to sit on it. Apparently it had Simply been shoved in there to get it out of the way when the flotation bed had been installed for Smith.

  Possibly it was still sitting there, gathering dust and still charged out to the floor. Powered beds were always in short supply and cost six times as much as an ordinary bed. While, strictly speaking, it was the wing superintendent's worry, Jill saw no reason to let overhead charges for her floor run up unnecessarily - and besides, if it was still there, she could get it at once. She decided to find out.

  The sitting room door was still locked. She was startled to find that her pass key would not open it. Making a mental note to tell maintenance to repair the lock, she went on down the corridor to the watch room of the suite, intending to find out about the bed from the doctor watching over Mrs. Bankerson.

  The physician on watch was the same one she had met before, Dr. Brush. He was not an intern, nor a resident, but had been brought in for this patient, Jill had learned from him, by Dr. Garner. Brush looked up as she put her head in. "Miss Boardman! Just the person I want to see!"

  "Why didn't you ring? How's your patient?"

  "She's all right," he answered, glancing up at the Peeping Tom, "But I definitely am not."

  "Trouble?"

  "Some trouble. About five minutes' worth. And my relief is not in the building. Nurse, could you spare me about that many minutes of your valuable time? And then keep your mouth shut afterwards?"

  "I suppose so. I told my assistant floor supervisor I would be away for a few minutes. Let me use your phone and I'll tell her where to find me."

  "No!" he said urgently. "Just lock that door after I leave and don't let anybody in until you hear me rap 'Shave and a Haircut' on it, that's a good girl."

  "All right, sir," Jill said dubiously. "Am I to do anything for your patient?"

  "No, no, just sit there at the desk and watch her in the screen. You won't have to do anything. Don't disturb her."

  "Well, if anything does happen, where will you be? In the doctors' lounge?"

  "I'm not going that far - just to the men's washroom down the corridor. Now shut up, please, and let me go - this is urgent."

  He left and Jill obeyed his order to lock the door after him. Then she looked at the patient through the viewer and ran her eye over the dials. The elderly woman was again asleep and the displays showed her pulse strong and her breathing even and normal; Jill wondered why Dr. Garner considered a "death watch" necessary?

  Then she remembered why she had come in there in the first place and decided that she might as well find out if the bed was in the far room without bothering Dr. Brush about it. While it was not quite according to Dr. Brush's instructions, she would not be disturbing his patient - certainly she knew how to walk through a room without waking a sleeping patient! - and she had decided years ago that what doctors did not know rarely hurt them. She opened the door quietly and went in.

  A quick glance assured her that Mrs. Bankerson was in the typical sleep of the senile. Walking noiselessly she went past her to the door to the sitting room. It was locked but her pass key let her in.

  She was pleased to see that the powered bed was there. Then she saw that the room was occupied - sitting in an arm chair with a picture book in his lap was the Man from Mars.

  Smith looked up and gave her the beaming smile of a delighted baby.

  Jill felt dizzy, as if she had been jerked out of sleep. Jumbled ideas raced through her mind. Valentine Smith here? But he couldn't be; he had been transferred somewhere else; the log showed it. But he was here.

  Then all the ugly implications and possibilities seemed to line themselves up - the fake "Man from Mars" on stereo� the old woman out there, ready to die, but in the meantime covering the fact that there was another patient in here� the door that would not open to her pass-key - and, lastly, a horrid vision of the "meat wagon" wheeling out of here some night, with a sheet concealing the fact that it carried not one cadaver, but two.

  When this last nightmare rushed through her mind, it carried in its train a cold wind of fear, the realization that she herself was in peril through having stumbled onto this top-secret fact.

  Smith got clumsily up from his chair, held out both hands while still smiling and said, "Water brother!"

  "Hello. Uh� how are you?"

  "I am well. I am happy." He added something in a strange, choking speech, then corrected himself and said carefully, "You are here, my brother. You were away. Now you are here. I drink deep of you."

  Jill felt herself helplessly split between two emotions, one that crushed and melted her heart - and an icy fear of being caught here. Smith did not seem to notice. Instead he said, "See? I walk! I grow strong." He demonstrated by taking a few steps back and forth, then stopped, triumphant, breathless, and smiling in front of her.

  She forced herself to smile. "We are making progress, aren't we? You keep growing stronger, that's the spirit! But I must go now - I just stopped in to say hello."

  His expression changed instantly to distress. "Do not go!"

  "Oh, but I must!"

  He continued to look woebegone, then added with tragic certainty, "I have hurted you. I did not know."

  "Hurt me? Oh, no, not at all! But I must go - and quickly!"

  His face was without expression. He stated rather than asked, "Take me with you, my brother."

  "What? Oh, I can't. And I must go, at once. Look, don't tell anyone that I was in here, please!"

  "Not tell that my water brother was here?"

  "Yes. Don't tell anyone. Uh, I'll try to come back, I really will. You be a good boy and wait and don't tell anyone."

  Smith digested this, looked serene. "I will wait. I will not tell."

  "Good!" Jill wondered how the devil she possibly cou
ld get back in to see him - she certainly couldn't depend on Dr. Brush having another convenient case of trots. She realized now that the "broken" lock had not been broken and her eye swept around to the corridor door - and she saw why she had not been able to get in. A hand bolt had been screwed to the surface of the door, making a pass key useless. As was always the case with hospitals, bathroom doors and other doors that could be bolted were so arranged as to open also by pass key, so that patients irresponsible or unruly could not lock themselves away from the nurses. But here the locked door kept Smith in, and the addition of a simple hand bolt of the sort not permitted in hospitals served to keep out even those with pass keys.

  Jill walked over and opened the bolt. "You wait. I'll come back."

  "I shall waiting."

  When she got back to the watch room she heard already knocking the Tock! Tock!Tock tock!� Tock, tock! signal that Brush had said he would use; she hurried to let him in.

  He burst in, saying savagely, "Where the hell were you, nurse? I knocked three times." He glanced suspiciously at the inner door.

  "I saw your patient turn over in her sleep," she lied quickly. "I was in arranging her collar pillow."

  "Damn it, I told you simply to sit at my desk!"

  Jill knew suddenly that the man was even more frightened than she was - and with more reason. She counter-attacked. "Doctor, I did you a favor," she said coldly. "Your patient is not properly the responsibility of the floor supervisor in the first place. But since you entrusted her to me, I had to do what seemed necessary in your absence. Since you have questioned what I have done, let's get the wing superintendent and settle the matter."

  "Huh? No, no - forget it."

  "No, sir. I don't like to have my professional actions questioned without cause. As you know very well, a patient that old can smother in a water bed; I did what was necessary. Some nurses will take any blame from a doctor, but I am not one of them. So let's call the superintendent."