Kampus

by James Gunn

  But Gavin already had retreated over the gate and did not hear the remainder of the fate that awaited him if he lingered. He moved around the dark building checking windows and delivery chutes, but they were all locked. He wondered what the patients were doing, why they were lying there in the dark.

  Eventually he came to the emergency door where he had brought Elaine the previous evening. The mechanized litter stood just outside the door on tracks that extended to the curb. Gavin looked around. He could see no one. He could hear nothing except the distant stridulation of a cricket.

  He slid himself onto the litter. Immediately it moved with him through a door that opened automatically. As Gavin entered the emergency room itself, the overhead lights came on.

  A brusque, competent voice said, “What is the nature of your condition?”

  Gavin looked around. On the wall toward which the litter was moving was a pair of flat binocular eyes, and below that a mass of black, waving tentacles like a deranged octopus. A plaque above the eyes read: DIAGNOSTICOM.

  Before he came within view of the eyes, before the eager sensors could wrap themselves around and insert themselves into his body, he had rolled off the litter and crouched under the diagnosticom.

  “Malfunction,” the diagnosticom said.

  The litter moved on its tracks through a hinged door marked: SERVICE. Another litter came through the doorway to wait patiently for an emergency. The lights went out in the emergency room.

  Gavin waited, too. Seated underneath the unblinking gaze of the diagnosticom, he listened to the chucklegurgle-click of the emergency room, and as his night vision returned, saw the shadowy, mysterious shapes of machinery waiting to serve torn flesh and adulterated blood with cold devotion. Gavin began to feel like part of the room, mechanical, senseless, waiting. He wondered what he was doing here, what drove him to seek out Elaine now in spite of difficulties.

  Half an hour later, as his legs reminded him that they were not machines, an ambulance pulled up outside, and a moment later the litter presented an unconscious body to the diagnosticom. The body was wearing a helmet and a black leatherlike suit that now was torn and bloody. Gavin watched the diagnosticom send its exploring tentacles over the body, measuring, testing, analyzing, and then, with an air of decision, stitching here, setting a broken bone there, and spraying with a quick-setting cast, injecting anesthetics and antibiotics. When the tentacles withdrew, Gavin started. For a moment he had thought of himself as part of the medical team.

  As soon as the sensors pulled away, the stretcher trundled off through a doorway marked: HOSPITAL. Gavin went with it, crouched low.

  Once into the corridors, Gavin moved with less care. The occasional stretcher or wheelchair had no eyes, though they moved with calm certainty on their twin tracks, swiveling without hesitation through a confusion of switches at the intersection of corridors; and he could avoid the infrequent monitors.

  As he moved along the white, antiseptic corridors, dimly lit by an occasional panel glowing in the ceiling, he looked for a signpost or a directory. He felt out-of-place at first, like a visitor to an alien world, and then gradually he was reassured. His hospital memories were more than a decade old. As a child he had languished for a week with rheumatic fever in an old-fashioned, unautomated facility. But gradually he became aware that the hospital incense was the same: the corridors smelled like antiseptic and anesthetic, like alcohol and ether and Novocain.

  He had to climb a flight of stairs before he discovered rooms with beds in them, and beds with patients in them, and signs painted on white walls:

  GERIATRICS, PEDIATRICS, HEMATOLOGY, UROLOGY, MATERNITY, GYNECOLOGY.... At gynecology he hesitated and then trotted down the corridor, sneaking glimpses through open doorways at people lying in beds. Most of them were asleep, and all of them looked as if they had sprouted.

  One elderly woman looked up as he looked in. She registered surprise and then alarm. A tube from her arm to the wall above her head jerked as she opened her mouth. Her alarm faded. Her eyes closed over enlarging pupils.

  At the eleventh room along the corridor, as Gavin was about to give up and try another specialty, he saw Elaine's blond head among the black spaghetti of sensors and delivery tubes, and he moved quickly to her bedside and pinched the tube that delivered medicine to her arm. He draped a towel over the watchful eye on the wall and stuffed a handful of tissues into the microphone below the eye. When he looked down, Elaine was looking up at him.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, and slipped a hairpin over the tube to her arm. Gavin released his hold gradually. The makeshift clamp worked. The tube jerked as it tried to deliver a dose of sedative.

  Elaine reached down beneath the sheet that covered her slender body and removed a sensor. It writhed like a black snake to regain its intimate location, but Elaine tied a knot in it, and after that it flopped aimlessly. “That feels better,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  Her visible bruises were beginning to fade under the cybernated care, but she still looked battered. Her left eye was black, and her right cheek was swollen. A wave of sympathy washed Gavin's stomach. She looked very small and helpless in the hospital bed.

  “I ... I wanted to see how you were,” he said. He moved a chair over beside the bed and sat down. Until then he hadn't realized how tired he was. It had been a busy day.

  “Why didn't you come during visiting hours?” Elaine asked. “They don't let anybody in here after dark.”

  “It wasn't so bad,” Gavin said. “I would have come earlier, but I was busy.”

  “You could have waited until tomorrow.”

  “I wanted to see you tonight.”

  “Why?”

  Gavin shrugged. He didn't know why. “How are you?”

  “I'm all right,” she said. “I'm sorry I hit you. Did I do any damage?”

  He touched the left side of his head. “Just a lump.”

  She smiled suddenly and then stopped at the reminder of her bruises. “I should have said, ‘One lump or two?'”

  He rejoiced at her smile. “It was my fault. I shouldn't have been so philosophical about your trouble.”

  “No,” she said, “I shouldn't have been so upset. After all, what did it really matter? If I hadn't struggled, maybe he wouldn't have beat me up.”

  “You had every right...” Gavin began.

  “But it was really unimp...” she said.

  They both stopped and looked at each other.

  “He really was a son-of-a-bitch,” Elaine said, “wasn't he?”

  “He was no brother,” Gavin agreed.

  “How did I get here? I don't remember anything until I woke up here this morning.”

  “I brought you in to the emergency room,” Gavin said.

  “You carried me? All that way?”

  “It was only a few miles.”

  “That's a long way to carry somebody.”

  “You don't weigh much,” Gavin said. He recalled the endless night staggering along the dark highway. By the time he reached Salina, he thought she weighed several hundred pounds.

  She gave him a look of appreciation. “What did you do today?”

  “There's a park down the street a bit, across from the City-County Building,” he said. “I slept there in the park under some old newspapers I found in a trash barrel, until the sun woke me. I cleaned up in the basement washroom of the City-County Building, and then I tried to report what had happened.”

  “You tried!” she exclaimed.

  “You don't understand how things are,” he said defensively.

  The City-County Building had been new and modern some twenty or thirty years before, but now the painted walls were blackened from the touch of hands and careless mops, the corridor tiles were worn and warped, the dust of neglect had accumulated in the corners.

  Gavin walked along the corridors with an odd reluctance, as if he had no reason to be there, but he attributed his unease to the natural feelings of a revolutionary for the environs
of government.

  He found what was left of an abandoned jail—the rusty bars on the window testified to its prior service—but the offices that led to the cells were vacant and dusty. He wandered the corridors, reading the names on signs jutting out above the doors: REGISTER OF DEEDS, CLERK, EXTENSION SERVICES, COMMISSIONERS, HEALTH, TREASURER, DATA PROCESSING, MENTAL HEALTH, COUNTY JUDGE, MAINTENANCE SUPERINTENDENT, COUNTY ZONING ADMINISTRATOR, PROBATE JUDGE, PUBLIC WORKS, FIRE DEPARTMENT, WATER DEPARTMENT, SANITATION, RECLAMATION, CITY ENGINEER, PARK AND RECREATION, BUILDING INSPECTOR...

  He found a public telephone and checked the directory, but it listed no police or sheriff offices, and the front of the directory, which listed numbers to call in emergencies, offered fire and ambulance and ombudsman. The offices of the county judge were locked and empty. Finally Gavin entered the office of the fire department.

  In the outer office a middle-aged woman in a stylish brown wig looked up from some kind of console with little lights that shone steadily in blue or flickered in yellow or red. “Police?” she said. “You don't have a fire to report?” She glanced back at the telltales in front of her.

  “No,” Gavin said. “I want to report a ... a theft and ... personal attack.”

  The woman looked at Gavin as if he had spoken Hindustani.

  “I wish to report the commission of a crime,” Gavin tried again.

  The woman glanced back at her console. “I'm sorry,” she said, “but we only handle fires.”

  “Isn't there anybody in this building who cares if someone commits a crime?” Gavin asked plaintively.

  “Oh, we all care," the woman said sympathetically. “It's just that it's none of our business."

  “What would you do if someone raped you?” Gavin asked in desperation.

  “Are you threatening me, young man?” the woman asked sharply. “If you are, I must warn you that I am an adept in the latest form of personal defense, and you will be very sorry if you lay a hand on me.”

  “No,” Gavin said humbly, “all I'm asking is, who would you report it to.”

  She thought a moment. “To my husband, perhaps,” she said, “although he would only send me back to my personal-defense classes. I must say, young man, you do pose some difficult questions. Perhaps what you need is some personal assistance. If you've met with some misfortune and you need some help—food or clothing or funds to tide you over—there's a charity just down the street. They don't have much to do; it's really more a release for the charitable impulses of our citizens rather than an essential service. You go in there, young man, with your story of theft and rape, and they'll fall over you with excitement. They won't be able to do enough for you—new clothing, a shaver or depilatory, perhaps a little spending money. Of course, if you've been attacked—I didn't know men could be raped—did you meet up with a pervert who sodomized you? I mean, you shouldn't be reluctant to say so. The hospital is right down the street past the park if you need treatment. It's all free, of course.”

  “All I want,” Gavin complained, “is an office to report...”

  The woman looked back at her console. “Now, look what you've made me do,” she said, and pushed a button.

  Gavin turned toward the door. As he reached it, the woman at the console called after him, “There's always the ombudsman.”

  The ombudsman. The last recourse. Of course. Gavin realized that he should have thought of that himself.

  The door of the ombudsman's office was open. The ombudsman himself was seated with his back to the door, leaning back against his dark wooden desk, gazing out the window toward the little park where Gavin had spent the night. The walls of the small room had been painted a light tan. There was an old Persian rug on the floor, some Currier and Ives prints on the wall, and a large coffee urn on a table under one of the prints.

  Gavin hesitated outside the door, and then, shaking off his reluctance, stepped forward into the room. At the sound, the man at the desk turned slowly. His gray hair clung tightly to his head; his features were prominent and the skin tight over them, as if his hair had pulled it back.

  “How may I help you?” he asked. His voice was rich and resonant, and he sounded as if he really wanted to help.

  Gavin found it difficult to speak, and then the words all came out in a bunch. “Yesterday, just a few miles east of town, a young woman and I were attacked by a young hitcher we had picked up. I was bound at the point of a knife, and the girl was beaten and raped, and her car and credit card were stolen.”

  “I see,” the ombudsman said. “And what do you wish me to do with this information?”

  Gavin stopped and realized, inconsequentially, that he could smell the pleasant odor of hot coffee. “The hitcher should be apprehended and arrested,” he said.

  “You want him punished?”

  “No,” Gavin said. “I mean, yes, of course.”

  “You expect that this will deter him from committing similar crimes.”

  “Not exactly...” Gavin began.

  “You're thinking that this will repair the damage done to you and the girl.”

  “Well, no ... I mean, he won't do it to anybody else.”

  “The good of society is what you have in mind.”

  “Of course,” Gavin said gratefully. “As well as the recovery of the girl's car and credit card.”

  “By now,” the ombudsman said calmly, “the hitcher could be anywhere.”

  “That's true, but—”

  “The first thing he would have done, if he managed to circumvent the identification, is clean out the girl's credit.”

  “At least there'd be a record of where and when...” Gavin pointed out.

  “And perhaps he has arrived at wherever he was going and has abandoned the car.”

  “He said he was going to Dallas.”

  “Of course he would have told you where he was really going.”

  “Maybe not, but surely you can at least take the man's description, and the description of the car, and try to track him down so that he won't continue to steal and rape.”

  “For the good of society.”

  “Yes, of course.” Gavin was becoming irritated at all the pointless questions.

  The aquiline face of the ombudsman registered only an inner tranquillity. He put his hands carefully together, fingertip against fingertip. “I am concerned not with the good of society but with the good of the individual My function is to protect the individual against social injustice.”

  “Well?” Gavin asked.

  “But not against individual injustice. By the nature of my responsibility, you see, I must place myself on the side of the hitcher, who is in the most danger from society.”

  “But who is to protect the individual against him?” Gavin complained.

  “No one. Except perhaps the individual You see, even if I took the information you wish to give me, I would have no one to accept it from me. We have no police, no one to track down the individual criminal, no one to try the accused, no one to incarcerate the guilty, no one to rehabilitate the prisoner, no one to commute the sentence or parole the convict. We have done away with all that.”

  “Then anyone can commit an act of violence or of theft against someone else and get away with it!” Gavin protested.

  “Why should anyone want to?”

  “Profit. Need.”

  “There are easier ways to get money. No one is in need.”

  Gavin thought about Chester's clear enjoyment of what he was doing. “Well, passion, then.”

  “Crimes of passion are impossible to prevent and seldom repeated.”

  “A criminal personality,” Gavin ventured.

  “Criminal personalities are infrequent, difficult to identify, and even more difficult to convict.”

  “This particular criminal personality was pretty easy to identify,” Gavin said grimly.

  “Perhaps,” the ombudsman conceded. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “No!” Gavin said, and then, recalling the st
ate of his stomach, said, “All right. Thank you.”

  The ombudsman rose athletically, gracefully, and poured two cups. As he handed one to Gavin, he said, “The problem that we faced a few years ago was the nature of society. We had solved most of the problems that led to criminal activity—”

  “Come, now,” Gavin protested.

  The ombudsman raised one hand. “Hear me out. No one was hungry. All social services were free, financed out of the growing abundance of plentiful energy and cybernation. Anybody who wanted more than a minimum annual income could get a job.”

  “There aren't that many jobs,” Gavin said.

  “As an employment service of last resort,” the ombudsman said, “I never have been unable to find some kind of suitable employment for anyone who wanted it: there always is need of labor to restore the land and the waters to the condition of cleanliness and vitality in which we found them. We have, of course, our voluntary poor—our freaks and our indolent—but we cannot force them to labor, even if we wished to.”

  “What does all this have to do with criminal activity?”

  “I'm getting to that,” the ombudsman said. “We also have made education universally available, as well as liberating the underprivileged child from his poverty-stricken environment through creches and environmental enrichment. No longer is there any excuse for people to grow up deprived, maladjusted, perverted.”

  “Except,” Gavin said, “for the fundamental injustice of a society which is based on unnecessary labor, which discriminates between the able and the unable, between the talented and the untalented, the motivated and the unmotivated, the deserving and the undeserving...”

  “We have tackled,” the ombudsman said, “what Gerard Piel called in 1961 ‘the nation's principal economic problem—that of certifying its citizens as consumers of the abundance available to sustain them in tasks worthy of their time.’ I could point out that this is the most ‘just’ society man has ever known. But that isn't the point; nothing ever will seem just to the young. They have forgotten history and feel no gratitude to the past. What I am trying to demonstrate, however, is that the cybernated abundance which made possible our economic and social equality might have demanded payment from us. We might have had to pay for it with our personal freedom.”