Waldo met them in the reception room, which he had left uncentrifuged. As soon as they came in he started his act. “My, I’m glad you’re here. Dr. Stevens—could you fly me down to Earth right away? Something’s come up.”
“Why—I suppose so.”
“Let’s go.”
“Wait a minute, Waldo. Jimmie’s not prepared to handle you the way you have to be handled.”
“I’ll have to chance it, Uncle Gus. This is urgent.”
“But—”
“No ‘buts.’ Let’s leave at once.”
They hustled Baldur into the ship and tied him down. Grimes saw to it that Waldo’s chair was tilted back in the best approximation of a deceleration rig. Waldo settled himself into it and closed his eyes to discourage questions. He sneaked a look and found Grimes grimly silent.
Stevens made very nearly a record trip, but set them down quite gently on the parking flat over Grimes’s home. Grimes touched Waldo’s arm. “How do you feel? I’ll get someone and we’ll get you inside. I want to get you to bed.”
“Can’t do that, Uncle Gus. Things to do. Give me your arm, will you?”
“Huh?” But Waldo reached for the support requested and drew himself up.
“I’ll be all right now, I guess.” He let go the physician’s arm and started for the door. “Will you untie Baldur?”
“Waldo!”
He turned around, grinning happily. “Yes, Uncle Gus, it’s true. I’m not weak any more. I can walk.”
Grimes took hold of the back of one of the seats and said shakily, “Waldo, I’m an old man. You ought not to do things like this to me.” He wiped at his eyes.
“Yes,” agreed Stevens, “it’s a damn dirty trick.”
Waldo looked blankly from one face to the other. “I’m sorry,” he said humbly. “I just wanted to surprise you.”
“It’s all right. Let’s go downside and have a drink. You can tell us about it then.”
“All right. Come on, Baldur.” The dog got up and followed after his master. He had a very curious gait; Waldo’s trainer gadget had taught him to pace instead of trot.
WALDO STAYED WITH GRIMES FOR days, gaining strength, gaining new reflex patterns, building up his flabby muscles. He had no setbacks; the myasthenia was gone. All he required was conditioning.
Grimes had forgiven him at once for his unnecessarily abrupt and spectacular revelation of his cure, but Grimes had insisted that he take it easy and become fully readjusted before he undertook to venture out unescorted. It was a wise precaution. Even simple things were hazards to him. Stairs, for example. He could walk on the level, but going downstairs had to be learned. Going up was not so difficult.
Stevens showed up one day, let himself in, and found Waldo alone in the living room, listening to a stereo show. “Hello, Mr. Jones.”
“Oh—hello, Dr. Stevens.” Waldo reached down hastily, fumbled for his shoes, zipped them on. “Uncle Gus says I should wear them all the time,” he explained. “Everybody does. But you caught me unawares.”
“Oh, that’s no matter. You don’t have to wear them in the house. Where’s Doc?”
“Gone for the day. Don’t you, really? Seems to me my nurses always wore shoes.”
“Oh yes, everybody does—but there’s no law to make you.”
“Then I’ll wear them. But I can’t say that I like them. They feel dead, like a pair of disconnected waldoes. But I want to learn how.”
“How to wear shoes?”
“How to act like people act. It’s really quite difficult,” he said seriously.
Stevens felt a sudden insight, a welling of sympathy for this man with no background and no friends. It must be odd and strange to him. He felt an impulse to confess something which had been on his mind with respect to Waldo. “You really are strong now, aren’t you?”
Waldo grinned happily. “Getting stronger every day. I gripped two hundred pounds this morning. And see how much fat I’ve worked off.”
“You’re looking fit, all right. Here’s a funny thing. Ever since I first met you I’ve wished to high heaven that you were as strong as an ordinary man.”
“You really did? Why?”
“Well…I think you will admit that you used some pretty poisonous language to me, one time and another. You had me riled up all the time. I wanted you to get strong so that I could just beat the hell out of you.”
Waldo had been walking up and down, getting used to his shoes. He stopped and faced Stevens. He seemed considerably startled. “You mean you wanted to fist-fight me?”
“Exactly. You used language to me that a man ought not to use unless he is prepared to back it up with his fists. If you had not been an invalid I would have pasted you one, oh, any number of times.”
Waldo seemed to be struggling with a new concept. “I think I see,” he said slowly. “Well—all right.” On the last word he delivered a roundhouse swipe with plenty of power behind it. Stevens was not in the least expecting it; it happened to catch him on the button. He went down, out cold.
When he came to he found himself in a chair. Waldo was shaking him. “Wasn’t that right?” he said anxiously.
“What did you hit me with?”
“My hand. Wasn’t that right? Wasn’t that what you wanted?”
“Wasn’t that what I—” He still had little bright lights floating in front of his eyes, but the situation began to tickle him. “Look here—is that your idea of the proper way to start a fight?”
“Isn’t it?”
Stevens tried to explain to him the etiquette of fisticuffs, contemporary American. Waldo seemed puzzled, but finally he nodded. “I get it. You have to give the other man warning. All right—get up, and we’ll do it over.”
“Easy, easy! Wait a minute. You never did give me a chance to finish what I was saying. I was sore at you, but I’m not any more. That is what I was trying to tell you. Oh, you were utterly poisonous; there is no doubt about that. But you couldn’t help being.”
“I don’t mean to be poisonous,” Waldo said seriously.
“I know you don’t, and you’re not. I rather like you now—now that you’re strong.”
“Do you really?”
“Yes, I do. But don’t practice any more of those punches on me.”
“I won’t. But I didn’t understand. But, do you know, Dr. Stevens, it’s—”
“Call me Jim.”
“Jim. It’s a very hard thing to know just what people do expect. There is so little pattern to it. Take belching; I didn’t know it was forbidden to burp when other people are around. It seems obviously necessary to me. But Uncle Gus says not.”
Stevens tried to clear up the matter for him—not too well, as he found that Waldo was almost totally lacking in any notion, even theoretical, of social conduct. Not even from fiction had he derived a concept of the intricacies of mores, as he had read almost no fiction. He had ceased reading stories in his early boyhood, because he lacked the background of experience necessary to appreciate fiction.
He was rich, powerful, and a mechanical genius, but he still needed to go to kindergarten.
Waldo had a proposition to make. “Jim, you’ve been very helpful. You explain these things better than Uncle Gus does. I’ll hire you to teach me.”
Stevens suppressed a slight feeling of pique. “Sorry. I’ve got a job that keeps me busy.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I’ll pay you better than they do. You can name your own salary. It’s a deal.”
Stevens took a deep breath and sighed. “You don’t understand. I’m an engineer and I don’t hire out for personal service. You can’t hire me. Oh, I’ll help you all I can, but I won’t take money for it.”
“What’s wrong with taking money?”
The question, Stevens thought, was stated wrongly. As it stood it could not be answered. He launched into a long, involved discussion of professional and business conduct. He was really not fitted for it; Waldo soon bogged down. “I’m afraid I don’t get it. But se
e here—could you teach me how to behave with girls? Uncle Gus says he doesn’t dare take me out in company.”
“Well, I’ll try. I’ll certainly try. But, Waldo, I came over to see you about some of the problems we’re running into at the plant. About this theory of the two spaces that you were telling me about—”
“It’s not theory; it’s fact.”
“All right. What I want to know is this: When do you expect to go back to Freehold and resume research? We need some help.”
“Go back to Freehold? I haven’t any idea. I don’t intend to resume research.”
“You don’t? But, my heavens, you haven’t finished half the investigations you outlined to me.”
“You fellows can do ’em. I’ll help out with suggestions, of course.”
“Well—maybe we could interest Gramps Schneider,” Stevens said doubtfully.
“I would not advise it,” Waldo answered. “Let me show you a letter he sent me.” He left and fetched it back. “Here.”
Steven glanced through it. “—your generous offer of your share in the new power project I appreciate, but, truthfully, I have no interest in such things and would find the responsibility a burden. As for the news of your new strength I am happy, but not surprised. The power of the Other World is his who would claim it—” There was more to it. It was written in a precise Spencerian hand, a trifle shaky; the rhetoric showed none of the colloquialisms with which Schneider spoke.
“Hm-m-m—I think I see what you mean.”
“I believe,” Waldo said seriously, “that he regards our manipulations with gadgets as rather childish.”
“I suppose. Tell me, what do you intend to do with yourself?”
“Me? I don’t know exactly. But I can tell you this: I’m going to have fun. I’m going to have lots of fun. I’m just beginning to find out how much fun it is to be a man!”
HIS DRESSER TACKLED THE OTHER slipper. “To tell you just why I took up dancing would be a long story,” he continued.
“I want details.”
“Hospital calling,” someone in the dressing room said.
“Tell ’em I’ll be right there, fast. Suppose you come in tomorrow afternoon?” he added to the woman reporter. “Can you?”
“Right.”
A man was shouldering his way through a little knot around him. Waldo caught his eye. “Hello, Stanley. Glad to see you.”
“Hello, Waldo.” Gleason pulled some papers out from under his cape and dropped them in the dancer’s lap. “Brought these over myself as I wanted to see your act again.”
“Like it?”
“Swell!”
Waldo grinned and picked up the papers. “Where is the dotted line?”
“Better read them first,” Gleason cautioned him.
“Oh shucks, no. If it suits you, it suits me. Can I borrow your stylus?”
A worried little man worked his way up to them. “About that recording, Waldo—”
“We’ve discussed that,” Waldo said flatly. “I only perform before audiences.”
“We’ve combined it with the Warm Springs benefit.”
“That’s different. O.K.”
“While you’re about it, take a look at this layout.” It was a reduction, for a twenty-four sheet:
THE GREAT WALDO
AND HIS TROUPE
with the opening date and theater left blank, but with a picture of Waldo, as Harlequin, poised high in the air.
“Fine, Sam, fine!” Waldo nodded happily.
“Hospital calling again!”
“I’m ready now,” Waldo answered, and stood up. His dresser draped his street cape over his lean shoulders. Waldo whistled sharply. “Here, Baldur! Come along.” At the door he stopped an instant, and waved. “Good night, fellows!”
“Good night, Waldo.”
They were all such grand guys.
THE UNPLEASANT PROFESSION OF JONATHAN HOAG
—the end it is not well.
From too much love of living.
From hope and fear set free.
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever:
That dead men rise up never:
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
—Swinburne
“It is blood, doctor?” Jonathan Hoag moistened his lips with his tongue and leaned forward in the chair, trying to see what was written on the slip of paper the medico held.
Dr. Potbury brought the slip of paper closer to his vest and looked at Hoag over his spectacles. “Any particular reason,” he asked, “why you should find blood under your fingernails?”
“No. That is to say—Well, no—there isn’t. But it is blood—isn’t it?”
“No,” Potbury said heavily. “No, it isn’t blood.”
Hoag knew that he should have felt relieved. But he was not. He knew in that moment that he had clung to the notion that the brown grime under his fingernails was dry blood rather than let himself dwell on other, less tolerable, ideas.
He felt sick at his stomach. But he had to know—
“What is it, doctor? Tell me.”
Potbury looked him up and down. “You asked me a specific question. I’ve answered it. You did not ask me what the substance was; you asked me to find out whether or not it was blood. It is not.”
“But—You are playing with me. Show me the analysis.” Hoag half rose from his chair and reached for the slip of paper.
The doctor held it away from him, then tore it carefully in two. Placing the two pieces together he tore them again, and again.
“Why, you!”
“Take your practice elsewhere,” Potbury answered. “Never mind the fee. Get out. And don’t come back.”
Hoag found himself on the street, walking toward the elevated station. He was still much shaken by the doctor’s rudeness. He was afraid of rudeness as some persons are of snakes, or great heights, or small rooms. Bad manners, even when not directed at him personally but simply displayed to others in his presence, left him sick and helpless and overcome with shame.
If he himself were the butt of boorishness he had no defense save flight.
He set one foot on the bottom step of the stairs leading up to the elevated station and hesitated. A trip by elevated was a trying thing at best, what with the pushing and the jostling and the grimy dirt and the ever-present chance of uncouth behavior; he knew that he was not up to it at the moment. If he had to listen to the cars screaming around the curve as they turned north toward the Loop, he suspected that he would scream, too.
He turned away suddenly and was forced to check himself abruptly, for he was chest to chest with a man who himself was entering the stairway. He shied away. “Watch your step, buddy,” the man said, and brushed on past him.
“Sorry,” Hoag muttered, but the man was already on by.
The man’s tone had been brisk rather than unkind; the incident should not have troubled Hoag, but it did. The man’s dress and appearance, his very odor, upset Hoag. Hoag knew that there was no harm in well-worn dungarees and leather windbreaker, no lack of virtue in a face made a trifle greasy by sweat dried in place in the course of labor. Pinned to the bill of the man’s cap was an oval badge, with a serial number and some lettering. Hoag guessed that he was a truck driver, a mechanic, a rigger, any one of the competent, muscular crafts which keep the wheels turning over. Probably a family man as well, a fond father and a good provider, whose greatest lapse from virtue might be an extra glass of beer and a tendency to up it a nickel on two pairs.
It was sheer childishness for Hoag to permit himself to be put off by such appearance and to prefer a white shirt, a decent topcoat, and gloves. Yet if the man had smelled of shaving lotion rather than sweat the encounter would not have been distasteful.
He told himself so and told himself that he was silly and weak. Still—could such a coarse and brutal face really be the outward mark of warmth and sensit
ivity? The shapeless blob of nose, those piggish eyes?
Never mind, he would go home in a taxi, not looking at anyone. There was a stand just ahead, in front of the delicatessen.
“Where to?” The door of the cab was open; the hackman’s voice was impersonally insistent.
Hoag caught his eye, hesitated and changed his mind. That brutishness again—eyes with no depth to them and a skin marred by blackheads and enlarged pores.
“Unnh…excuse me. I forgot something.” He turned away quickly and stopped abruptly, as something caught him around the waist. It was a small boy on skates who had bumped into him. Hoag steadied himself and assumed the look of paternal kindliness which he used to deal with children. “Whoa, there, young fellow!” He took the boy by the shoulder and gently dislodged him.
“Maurice!” The voice screamed near his ear, shrill and senseless. It came from a large woman, smugly fat, who had projected herself out of the door of the delicatessen. She grabbed the boy’s other arm, jerking him away and aiming a swipe at his ear with her free hand as she did so. Hoag started to plead on the boy’s behalf when he saw that the woman was glaring at him. The youngster, seeing or sensing his mother’s attitude, kicked at Hoag.
The skate clipped him in the shin. It hurt. He hurried away with no other purpose than to get out of sight. He turned down the first side street, his shin causing him to limp a little, and his ears and the back of his neck burning quite as if he had indeed been caught mistreating the brat. The side street was not much better than the street he had left. It was not lined with shops nor dominated by the harsh steel tunnel of the elevated’s tracks, but it was solid with apartment houses, four stories high and crowded, little better than tenements.
Poets have sung of the beauty and innocence of childhood. But it could not have been this street, seen through Hoag’s eyes, that they had in mind. The small boys seemed rat-faced to him, sharp beyond their years, sharp and shallow and snide. The little girls were no better in his eyes. Those of eight or nine, the shapeless stringy age, seemed to him to have tattletale written in their pinched faces—mean souls, born for troublemaking and cruel gossip. Their slightly older sisters, gutter-wise too young, seemed entirely concerned with advertising their arrogant new sex—not for Hoag’s benefit, but for their pimply counterparts loafing around the drugstore.
The Fantasies of Robert A. Heinlein Page 27
