"It's all right," V-Stephens murmured. "We're doctors from the City Hospital, all but Miss Cutter, who manages the files and records. Dr. LeMarr is a neurologist, Dr. Patterson is a cancer specialist, I'm a surgeon -- see my hand?" He traced the girl's forehead with his surgeon's hand. "And I'm a Venusian, like you. We'll take you to the hospital and keep you there for a while."
"Did you see them?" LeMarr sputtered. "Nobody lifted a finger to help her. They just stood there."
"They were afraid," Patterson said. "They want to avoid trouble."
"They can't," Evelyn Cutter said flatly. "Nobody can avoid this kind of trouble. They can't keep standing on the sidelines watching. This isn't a football game."
"What's going to happen?" the girl quavered.
"You better get off Earth," V-Stephens said gently. "No Venusian is safe here. Get back to your own planet and stay there until this thing dies down."
"Will it?" the girl gasped.
"Eventually." V-Stephens reached down and passed her Evelyn's cigarettes. "It can't go on like this. We have to be free."
"Take it easy," Evelyn said in a dangerous voice. Her eyes faded to hostile coals. "I thought you were above all this."
V-Stephens' dark green face flushed. "You think I can stand idly by while my people are killed and insulted, and our interests passed over, ignored so paste-faces like Gannet can get rich on blood squeezed from --"
"Paste-face," LeMarr echoed wonderingly. "What's that mean, Vachel?"
"That's their word for Earthmen," Patterson answered. "Can it, V-Stephens. As far as we're concerned it's not your people and our people. We're all the same race. Your ancestors were Earthmen who settled Venus back in the late twentieth century."
"The changes are only minor adaptive alterations," LeMarr assured V-Stephens. "We can still interbreed -- that proves we're the same race."
"We can," Evelyn Cutter said thinly. "But who wants to marry a webfoot or a crow?"
Nobody said anything for a while. The air in the car was tense with hostility as Patterson sped toward the hospital. The Venusian girl sat crouched, smoking silently, her terrified eyes on the vibrating floor.
Patterson slowed down at the check-point and showed his i.d. tab. The hospital guard signaled the car ahead and he picked up speed. As he put his tab away his fingers touched something clipped to the inside of his pocket. Sudden memory returned.
"Here's something to take your mind off your troubles," he said to V-Stephens. He tossed the sealed tube back to the webfoot. "Military fired it back this morning. Clerical error. When you're through with it hand it over to Evelyn. It's supposed to go to her, but I got interested."
V-Stephens slit open the tube and spilled out the contents. It was a routine application for admission to a Government hospital, stamped with the number of a war-veteran. Old sweat-grimed tapes, papers torn and mutilated throughout the years. Greasy bits of metal foil that had been folded and refolded, stuffed in a shirt pocket, carried next to some filthy, hair-matted chest. "Is this important?" V-Stephens asked impatiently. "Do we have to worry over clerical trifles?"
Patterson halted the car in the hospital parking lot and turned off the motor. "Look at the number of the application," he said, as he pushed open the car door. "When you have time to examine it you'll find something unusual. The applicant is carrying around an old veteran's i.d. card -- with a number that hasn't been issued yet."
LeMarr, hopelessly baffled, looked from Evelyn Cutter to V-Stephens, but got no explanation.
The old man's h-loop awoke him from a fitful slumber. "David Unger," the tinny female voice repeated. "You are wanted back at the hospital. It is requested that you return to the hospital immediately."
The old man grunted and pulled himself up with an effort. Grabbing his aluminum cane he hobbled away from his sweat-shiny bench, toward the escape ramp of the park. Just when he was getting to sleep, shutting out the too-bright sun and the shrill laughter of children and girls and young soldiers. . .
At the edge of the park two shapes crept furtively into the bushes. David Unger halted and stood in disbelief, as the shapes glided past him along the path.
His voice surprised him. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, shrieks of rage and revulsion that echoed through the park, among the quiet trees and lawns. "Webfoots!" he wailed. He began to run clumsily after them. "Webfoots and crows! Help! Somebody help!"
Waving his aluminum cane, he hobbled after the Martian and Venusian panting wildly. People appeared, blank-faced with astonishment. A crowd formed, as the old man hurried after the terrified pair. Exhausted, he stumbled against a drinking fountain and half-fell, his cane sliding from his fingers. His shrunken face was livid; the burn-scar stood out sick and ugly against the mottled skin. His good eye was red with hate and fury. From his wasted lips saliva drooled. He waved his skinny claw-like hands futilely, as the two altereds crept into the grove of cedars toward the far end of the park.
"Stop them!" David Unger slobbered. "Don't let them get away! What's the matter with you? You bunch of lily-white cowards. What kind of men are you?"
"Take it easy, Pop," a young soldier said good-naturedly. "They're not hurting anybody."
Unger retrieved his cane and whooshed it past the soldier's head. "You -- talker" he snapped. "What kind of a soldier are you?" A fit of coughing choked off his words; he bent double, struggling to breathe. "In my day," he managed to gasp, "we poured rocket fuel on them and strung them up. We mutilated them. We cut up the dirty webfoots and crows. We showed them."
A looming cop had stopped the pair of altereds. "Get going," he ordered ominously. "You things got no right here."
The two altereds scuttled past him. The cop leisurely raised his stick and cracked the Martian across the eyes. The brittle, thin-shelled head splintered, and the Martian careened on, blinded and in agony.
"That's more like it," David Unger gasped, in weak satisfaction.
"You evil dirty old man," a woman muttered at him, face white with horror. "It's people like you that make all this trouble."
"What are you?" Unger snapped. "A crow-lover?"
The crowd melted and broke. Unger, grasping his cane, stumbled toward the exit ramp, muttering curses and abuse, spitting violently into the bushes and shaking his head.
He arrived at the hospital grounds still trembling with rage and resentment. "What do you want?" he demanded, as he came up to the big receiving desk in the center of the main lobby. "I don't know what's going on around here. First you wake me out of the first real sleep I've had since I got here, and then what do I see but two webfoots walking around in broad daylight, sassy as --"
"Doctor Patterson wants you," the nurse said patiently. "Room 301." She nodded to a robot. "Take Mr. Unger down to 301."
The old man hobbled sullenly after the smoothly-gliding robot. "I thought all you tinmen were used up in the Europa battle of '88," he complained. "It don't make sense, all these lily-white boys in uniforms. Everybody wandering around having a good time, laughing and diddling girls with nothing better to do than lie around on the grass naked. Something's the matter. Something must be --"
"In here, sir," the robot said, and the door of 301 slid away.
Vachel Patterson rose slightly as the old man entered and stood fuming and gripping his aluminum cane in front of the work-desk. It was the first time he had seen David Unger face to face. Each of them sized the other up intently; the thin hawk-faced old soldier and the well-dressed young doctor, black thinning hair, horn-rimmed glasses and good-natured face. Beside his desk Evelyn Cutter stood watching and listening impassively, a cigarette between her red lips, blonde hair swept back.
"I'm Doctor Patterson, and this is Miss Cutter." Patterson toyed with the dog-eared, eroded tape strewn across his desk. "Sit down, Mr. Unger. I want to ask you a couple of questions. Some uncertainty has come up regarding one of your papers. A routine error, probably, but they've come back to me."
Unger seated himself warily. "Questions a
nd red tape. I've been here a week and every day it's something. Maybe I should have just laid there in the street and died."
"You've been here eight days, according to this."
"I suppose so. If it says so there, must be true." The old man's thin sarcasm boiled out viciously. "Couldn't put it down if it wasn't true."
"You were admitted as a war veteran. All costs of care and maintenance are covered by the Directorate."
Unger bristled. "What's wrong with that? I earned a little care." He leaned toward Patterson and jabbed a crabbed finger at him. "I was in the Service when I was sixteen. Fought and worked for Earth all my life. Would be there yet, if I hadn't been half killed by that dirty mop-up attack of theirs. Lucky to be alive at all." He self-consciously rubbed the livid ruin of his face. "Looks like you weren't even in it. Didn't know there was any place got by."
Patterson and Evelyn Cutter looked at each other. "How old are you?" Evelyn asked suddenly.
"Don't it say?" Unger muttered furiously. "Eighty-nine."
"And the year of your birth?"
"2154. Can't you figure that?"
Patterson made a faint notation on the metal foil reports. "And your unit?"
At that, Unger broke loose. "The Ba-3, if maybe you've heard of it. Although the way things are around here, I wonder if you know there was ever a war."
"The Ba-3," Patterson repeated. "And you served with them how long?"
"Fifty years. Then I retired. The first time, I mean. I was sixty-six years old. Usual age. Got my pension and bit of land."
"And they called you back?"
"Of course they called me back! Don't you remember how the Ba-3 went back into the line, all us old guys, and damn near stopped them, the last time? You must have been just a kid, but everybody knows what we did." Unger fumbled out his Crystal Disc first class and slammed it on the desk. "I got that. All us survivors did. All ten of us, out of thirty thousand." He gathered the medal up with shaking fingers. "I was hurt bad. You see my face. Burned, when Nathan West's battleship blew up. I was in the military hospital for a couple years. That was when they cracked Earth wide open." The ancient hands clenched into futile fists. "We had to sit there, watching them turn Earth into a smoking ruin. Nothing but slag and ash, miles of death. No towns, no cities. We sat there, while their C-missiles whizzed by. Finally they got finished -- and got us on Luna, too."
Evelyn Cutter tried to speak, but no words came. At his work-desk Patterson's face had turned chalk-white. "Continue," he managed to mutter. "Go on talking."
"We hung on there, subsurface, down under the Copernicus crater, while they slammed their C-missiles into us. We held out maybe five years. Then they started landing. Me and those still left took off in high-speed attack torpedoes, set up pirate bases among the outer planets." Unger twitched restlessly. "I hate to talk about that part. Defeat, the end of everything. Why do you ask me? I helped build 3-4-9-5, the best artibase of the lot. Between Uranus and Neptune. Then I retired again. Until the dirty rats slid in and leisurely blew it to bits. Fifty thousand men, women, kids. The whole colony."
"You escaped?" Evelyn Cutter whispered.
"Of course I escaped! I was on patrol. I got one of those webfoot ships. Shot it down and watched them die. It made me feel a little better. I moved over to 3-6-7-7 for a few years. Until it was attacked. That was early this month. I was fighting with my back to the wall." The dirty yellow teeth glinted in agony. "No place to escape to, that time. None that I knew of." The red-rimmed eye surveyed the luxurious office. "Didn't know about this. You people sure done a good job fixing up your artibase. Looks almost like I remember the real Earth. A little too fast and bright; not so peaceful as Earth really was. But you even got the smell of the air the same."
There was silence.
"Then you came here after -- that colony was destroyed?" Patterson asked hoarsely.
"I guess so." Unger shrugged wearily. "Last I remember was the bubble shattering and the air and heat and grav leaking out. Crow and webfoot ships landing everywhere. Men dying around me. I was knocked out by the concussion. The next thing I knew I was lying out in the street here, and some people were getting me to my feet. A tinman and one of your doctors took me here."
Patterson let out a deep shuddering breath. "I see." His fingers plucked aimlessly at the eroded, sweat-grimed i.d. papers. "Well, that explains this irregularity."
"Ain't it all there? Is something missing?"
"All your papers are here. Your tube was hanging around your wrist when they brought you in."
"Naturally." Unger's bird-like chest swelled with pride. "I learned that when I was sixteen. Even when you're dead you have to have that tube with you. Important to keep the records straight."
"The records are straight," Patterson admitted thickly. "You can go back to your room. Or the park. Anywhere." He waved and the robot calmly escorted the withered old man from the office and out into the hall.
As the door slid shut Evelyn Cutter began swearing slowly and monotonously. She crushed out her cigarette with her sharp heel and paced wildly back and forth. "Good God what have we got ourselves into?"
Patterson snatched up the intervid, dialed outside, and said to the supra-plan monitor, "Get me military headquarters. Right away."
"At Luna, sir?"
"That's right," Patterson said. "At the main base on Luna."
On the wall of the office, past the taut, pacing figure of Evelyn Cutter, the calendar read August 4, 2169. If David Unger was born in 2154 he would be a boy of fifteen. And he had been born in 2154. It said so on his battered, yellowed, sweat-stained cards. On the i.d. papers carried through a war that hadn't yet happened.
"He's a veteran, all right," Patterson said to V-Stephens. "Of a war that won't begin for another month. No wonder his application was turned back by the IBM machines."
V-Stephens licked his dark green lips. "This war will be between Earth and the two colony planets. And Earth will lose?"
"Unger fought through the whole war. He saw it from the start to finish -- to the total destruction of Earth." Patterson paced over to the window and gazed out. "Earth lost the war and the race of Earthmen was wiped out."
From the window of V-Stephens' office, Patterson could see the city spread out. Miles of buildings, white and gleaming in the late afternoon sun. Eleven million people. A gigantic center of commerce and industry, the economic hub of the system. And beyond it, a world of cities and farms and highways, three billion men and women. A thriving, healthy planet, the mother world from which the altereds had originally sprung, the ambitious settlers of Venus and Mars. Endless cargo carriers lumbered between Earth and the colonies, weighed down with minerals and ores and produce. And already, survey teams were poking around the outer planets, laying claim in the Directorate's name to new sources of raw-materials.
"He saw all this go up in radioactive dust," Patterson said. "He saw the final attack on Earth that broke our defenses. And then they wiped out the Lunar base."
"You say some brass hats are on their way here from Luna?"
"I gave them enough of the story to start them moving. It usually takes weeks to stir up those fellows."
"I'd like to see this Unger," V-Stephens said thoughtfully. "Is there some way I can --"
"You've seen him. You revived him, remember? When he was originally found and brought in."
"Oh," V-Stephens said softly. "That filthy old man?" His dark eyes flickered. "So that's Unger. . . the veteran of the war we're going to fight."
"The war you're going to win. The war Earth is going to lose." Patterson abruptly left the window. "Unger thinks this is an artificial satellite someplace between Uranus and Neptune. A reconstruction of a small part of New York -- a few thousand people and machines under a plastic dome. He has no conception of what's actually happened to him. Somehow, he must have been hurled back along his time-track."
"I suppose the release of energy. . . and maybe his frantic desire to escape. But even so, the whole
thing is fantastic. It has a sort of --" V-Stephens groped for the word. "-- a sort of mystic ring to it. What the hell is this, a visitation? A prophet from heaven?"
The door opened and V-Rafia slid in. "Oh," she said, as she saw Patterson. "I didn't know --"
"That's all right." V-Stephens nodded her inside his office. "You remember Patterson. He was with us in the car when we picked you up."
V-Rafia looked much better than she had a few hours before. Her face was no longer scratched, her hair was back in place, and she had changed to a crisp gray sweater and skirt. Her green skin sparkled as she moved over beside V-Stephens, still nervous and apprehensive. "I'm staying here," she said defensively to Patterson. "I can't go back out there, not for a while." She darted a quick glance of appeal at V-Stephens.
"She has no family on Earth," V-Stephens explained. "She came here as a Class-2 biochemist. She's been working over at a Westinghouse lab outside Chicago. She came to New York on a shopping trip, which was a mistake."
"Can't she join the V-colony at Denver?" Patterson asked.
V-Stephens flushed. "You don't want another webfoot around here?"
"What can she do? We're not an embattled fortress. There's no reason why we can't shoot her to Denver in a fast freight rocket. Nobody'll interfere with that."
"We can discuss it later," V-Stephens said irritably. "We've got more important things to talk about. You've made a check of Unger's papers? You're certain they're not forgeries? I suppose it's possible this is on the level, but we have to be certain."
"This has to be kept quiet," Patterson said urgently, with a glance at V-Rafia. "Nobody on the outside should be brought in."
"You mean me?" V-Rafia asked hesitantly. "I guess I better leave."
"Don't leave," V-Stephens said, grabbing hold of her arm roughly. "Patterson, you can't keep this quiet. Unger's probably told it to fifty people; he sits out there on his park bench all day, buttonholing everybody who passes."
"What is this?" V-Rafia asked curiously.
"Nothing important," Patterson said warningly.
"Nothing important?" V-Stephens echoed. "Just a little war. Programs for sale in advance." Across his face a spasm of emotion passed, excitement and yearning hunger pouring up from inside him. "Place your bets now. Don't take chances. Bet on a sure thing, sweetheart. After all, it's history. Isn't that right?" He turned toward Patterson, his expression demanding confirmation. "What do you say? I can't stop it -- you can't stop it. Right?"
Collected Stories 3 - The Father-Thing and Other Classic Stories Page 34
