The Doctor and the Rough Rider

by Mike Resnick

  “Certainly,” said Roosevelt, closing his book and pushing it aside.

  “They've been talking about War Bonnet all evening,” said Wiggins. “Problem is, they've been drinking all evening, and every time they describe him he gets bigger and more terrifying. What was he really like?”

  “Big and terrifying,” said Roosevelt with a smile. “I hardly saw him at all. For most of the time he had his back to me, and when he didn't, my men had me surrounded while I knelt on the ground, so I never got a good look at him. The man to talk to is Doc, who was as close to him, face-to-face, as I am to you.”

  “I've heard Doc. If this War Bonnet is half what Doc says and even a quarter of what the others say, why are you sitting here waiting for him? Why not go back to New York? He won't follow you across the Mississippi. From what I understand, all he wants is to stop you from making a deal with Geronimo.”

  “There are a lot of wrong assumptions in that statement, Henry,” said Roosevelt. “First, I came here from the Dakota Badlands, not New York. Second, there is no reason to believe that he either can't or won't follow me anywhere I go. And third, I'm here because there are some things worth risking my life for, and doubling the size of the United States—more than doubling it—is certainly one of them.”

  Wiggins stared down at his folded hands and made no reply.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Roosevelt after a moment.

  “I'm used to the fact that you make me feel totally unaccomplished,” replied Wiggins. “But this is the first time you've made me feel like a coward. Even Doc and Wyatt never managed that.”

  “I'd no intention of doing that,” said Roosevelt. “Nor do I think you're a coward. You've come out to a lawless land, and you've made a life for yourself. You walk among shootists without carrying a weapon. And I have no doubt that faced with a choice, there are half a dozen things you'd put your life on the line for. There's no reason why you should share my views about the expansion of the United States. But if your children were threatened, or even Tom and Ned, who befriended you and employed you, I think you'd find that you are far braver than you think you are.”

  Wiggins stared thoughtfully into space for a few seconds. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I would risk my life for my children. And for some other things.” He extended his hand across the table. “Thank you, Theodore. Thank you for giving my self-esteem a good hard kick in the pants.”

  Roosevelt grinned. “That's what politicians are for.”

  Suddenly a well-dressed man Roosevelt had never seen before entered the Oriental, a folded piece of paper in his hand. He looked around and then walked up to the table Holliday was seated at.

  “I've been looking all over for you, Doc,” he said.

  “I thought everyone knew where to find me after dark,” said Holliday, getting to his feet and facing the man. “John, this distinguished-looking young man at the next table is Theodore Roosevelt, about whom you've doubtless been hearing. Theodore, say hello to John Clum, editor of the Tombstone Epitaph.”

  Roosevelt got up, walked over, and shook Clum's hand. “I'm pleased to meet you. Doc has been praising you since I got here. I take it you write a splendid editorial.”

  “I also write obits,” answered Clum, “and if Doc stays in Tombstone there's every likelihood I'll be writing his in a few days.”

  “Can't be a parade of jealous husbands,” said Holliday with a smile. “I'm not the man I used to be.” He paused. “Probably I never was.”

  “I'm serious, Doc.” He pulled the paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, and held it up. “He's just a couple of days away, and he's killing his way to Tombstone.”

  “This is John Wesley Hardin you're speaking of?” asked Roosevelt.

  Clum nodded. “This mystical Indian everyone's talking about seems to have broken him out of jail on the condition that he kill Doc.”

  “First he's got to get here,” said Holliday. “Then he has to beat me in a gunfight. It's never been done yet.”

  “He's never lost yet either,” said Clum in frustrated tones. “Doc, you're a good man despite your reputation, and I consider you a friend, so please listen to me. You've survived the O.K. Corral, and the thing that used to be Johnny Ringo, and Billy the Kid, and a disease that would have killed most men a decade ago. Just how long do you think you can stay lucky?”

  “Another week ought to do it,” answered Holliday.

  “Bah!” Clum growled, stalking toward the swinging doors. “I did my best.”

  Then he was gone.

  “You know, Doc,” said Roosevelt, “I've got my Rough Riders now, and I'll have a weapon in two days. There's no reason for you to stick around.”

  “You think I should go back to Colorado?” asked Holliday.

  “Why not?”

  “He's already killed forty-two men before they locked him away, and five more since he broke out. Do you want him to follow me to Leadville shooting everyone and everything he sees there, starting with Kate Elder and the staff of the sanitarium?” snapped Holliday. “Damn it, Theodore, I'm going to have to face him sooner or later. No one else can stop him.”

  “You're right,” said Roosevelt. “I hadn't thought it through. I apologize.”

  Holliday turned back to his table and began dealing the cards, Roosevelt sat down and began reading his book again, and both of them tried to pretend that their minds weren't dwelling almost exclusively on their confrontations to come.

  ROOSEVELT SPENT THE NEXT TWO DAYS IN THE ORIENTAL. He ate his meals there, he slept there, he frequently cursed the fact that he couldn't bathe there, and he waited there, surrounded by his Rough Riders and other friends standing guard in rotation. Buntline had even sent over a reconditioned robotic prostitute, which was now his cook and housemaid, to patrol the outside of the building.

  “She can see in almost total darkness,” explained Buntline when he brought the robot to the Oriental, “she can hear sounds that are even beyond a dog's ability to hear, and since she has no emotions—I removed the more primitive ones that people paid for—I guarantee neither War Bonnet nor anything else the medicine men can produce is going to scare her.”

  Roosevelt was picking at some fried eggs when the robot entered the saloon. He looked up at her curiously.

  “He wants you,” said the robot.

  “He's finally got it built—whatever it is?” asked Roosevelt, getting to his feet.

  “All I know is that he has sent for you.”

  “I'm on my way,” said Roosevelt, grabbing his hat from where he'd hung it on the back of the chair and heading for the swinging doors with the robot following him.

  “Hey, honey, don't be in such a hurry to leave,” said Luke Sloan.

  “My duties have ended,” replied the robot. “There is no reason to remain.”

  “I could show you one or two,” said Sloan as Roosevelt walked out the door and hurried down the street. A moment later he heard a crash and turned to see Sloan hurled through the plate-glass window, landing past the raised sidewalk and into the dirt street with a thud.

  Roosevelt smiled but kept walking, and a few moments later came to Edison's house. The door was open, and he walked right up to it.

  “Is this thing working?” he called out, stopping a few feet short of it.

  “It's working just fine,” said Edison's voice through a crude metal speaker that was positioned above the door.

  “It's wide open.”

  “That's because it's been told to let you in. If you were anyone else, even Doc, it would have slammed in your face. Now, are you going to stand out there in the sun all day, or are you going to come in and see what we've got for you?”

  Roosevelt entered the house, saw that the living room was empty, and made his way to the office, where Edison and Buntline were waiting for him.

  “From what I saw over at the Oriental, all I really need is one of those metal harlots to protect me,” said Roosevelt. “She packs quite a wallop.”

  “They should have
left her alone,” said Buntline. “She's not programmed for that kind of thing anymore.” He paused. “I assume someone laid lecherous hands on her?”

  “All I saw was the aftermath,” replied Roosevelt. “A body flying through the window into the street. You wouldn't know she was that strong to look at her.”

  “She has that in common with a lot of women,” said Edison with a smile.

  “I need her to be that strong,” said Buntline. “She can lift an entire brass stagecoach if she has to.”

  “You make her sound like Kate Elder,” commented Roosevelt with a grin.

  “Doc's Kate?” replied Buntline. “If this one had Kate's temper, she'd probably have killed both sides by now—us and the Indians.”

  “Hard to imagine her as a prostitute.”

  “That is definitely not what she and the others were created for,” said Buntline heatedly. “Medical science is making progress, but the War between the States left us a nation of cripples. If you were shot in an arm or a leg, the odds were fifty-fifty that they were going to have to amputate that limb if you were to live.”

  “Ah!” said Roosevelt. “I'm starting to understand.”

  “The first few successful experiments weren't robots like you saw, Theodore,” said Edison. “We created them just to offset the costs, since the government was paying me to learn how the Indians worked their magic and to combat it, not to find out how to replace amputated limbs. Anyway, the first few were women with metal legs or arms. Some of them wound up working for Kate Elder, who offered us a very healthy fee if we could make one hundred percent robotic prostitutes for her brothel. Not only were they a unique attraction, but they never got sick, they never asked for more money, they were never bought away by rival establishments, they worked twenty-four hours each and every day, they never had periods, they—”

  “Stop, Tom,” interrupted Buntline. Edison turned to him questioningly. Buntline smiled. “You were getting too enthused.”

  Edison actually blushed. “Anyway,” he concluded, “it was quite a breakthrough. Once we're back East, I plan to present papers and demonstrations at the leading medical colleges—with Ned's assistance, of course.”

  “That's fascinating,” said Roosevelt. “It truly is.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But I have a more pressing problem,” he continued. “I believe you summoned me here to talk about it.”

  “More than talk, Theodore,” said Edison. “As I said two days ago, there is no sense going after War Bonnet's supernatural strengths, so we're going after his very human weaknesses.” He turned to Buntline. “Ned? The clip-ons?”

  “What's a clip-on?” asked Roosevelt.

  “You'll see,” said Edison, as Buntline reached into a pocket and pulled out a pair of dark, almost black lenses attached to a metal frame.

  Edison took them from him, held them up to the light, and tried to peer through them. “Good job,” he said approvingly, then turned to Roosevelt. “Theodore, the fact that you wear glasses may actually prove to be a benefit in your coming confrontation.”

  “That'll be a first,” said Roosevelt.

  “Trust me, it'll buy you a couple of seconds, and you just may need those seconds in a life-and-death battle with War Bonnet.”

  “I need every advantage I can get when I go up against him,” said Roosevelt with conviction. “As awesome as I made him sound, he's even more so in person.”

  Edison walked over, lenses in hand, and reached out for Roosevelt's glasses. Roosevelt instinctively pulled his head back.

  “It's all right, Theodore,” said Edison. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

  “I know that, Tom,” replied Roosevelt. “I just have this tendency to protect my eyes.” He reached up to remove his glasses. “Here, you can have them.”

  “No,” said Edison. “Leave them on—and believe me, I'm not about to poke your eye out.”

  Roosevelt held still while Edison reached out with the lenses, and clipped them onto the top of the glasses’ frame.

  “It works,” he said happily.

  “I told you it would,” said Buntline. “Now flip them down.”

  Edison lowered the darkened lenses on tiny hinges until they totally covered Roosevelt's own lenses.

  “Works perfectly,” announced Buntline.

  “I don't want to disillusion you,” said Roosevelt. “But I can't see a damned thing,”

  “Better now than later,” said Buntline.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” demanded Roosevelt.

  “I'll explain it in a moment,” said Edison. “Now, gently, so you don't break them or detach them, flick the dark lenses up so that you're looking at me through your regular glasses again.”

  Roosevelt did as he was told.

  “What do you think?” asked Edison.

  “Perfect,” said Buntline. “If they didn't work, we'd have had to put them in real frames, he couldn't have worn his own glasses, and who knows how blind he is without them?”

  “Follow me, Theodore,” said Edison, walking through his living room and out into his front yard with Roosevelt and Buntline falling into step behind him.

  “Just about high noon, wouldn't you say?” asked Edison.

  “Give or take ten minutes,” agreed Roosevelt.

  “Good. Look up into the sun.”

  “Really?” said Roosevelt, frowning. “Why?”

  “Just do it, please.”

  Roosevelt looked up. Within ten seconds his eyes were watering, and in another five he had to shut them and turn away.

  “Thank you, Theodore.”

  “What was that all about?” demanded Roosevelt.

  “You'll see in a moment. Now fold those black lenses down over your glasses.”

  “All right,” said Roosevelt.

  “Can you see me?”

  Roosevelt shook his head.

  “And of course you couldn't see me in the house.”

  “That's right.”

  “Good. Now look up at the sun.”

  Roosevelt looked straight overhead.

  “Can you see it?” asked Edison.

  “Just barely,” said Roosevelt. “As if it's three times as far away as usual on a very foggy day.”

  “Keep looking,” said Edison, staring at his watch.

  “What's this all about, Tom?”

  “Soon. Just keep looking.”

  Roosevelt stood motionless, his head tilted back.

  “Okay,” said Edison. “You're done. Take 'em off and let's go back into the house.”

  Roosevelt followed Edison and Buntline back inside. This time they didn't go into the office but seated themselves in the living room, and he followed suit.

  “What do you think?” asked Edison.

  “I think he'll be all right.”

  “Well, that's the first half of it.”

  “Would one of you mind telling me what you're talking about, and what the purpose of my staring into the sun through those things was?”

  “You want to get it, Ned?”

  Buntline got up. “I'll be right back,” he said, heading off to the enclosed passageway between the two houses.

  “As I said, Theodore, there was no sense trying to find something that could pierce War Bonnet's skin, or even give him some massive electric shock. You say he's invulnerable, Geronimo says so, and based on my observations of Indian magic, I have no trouble believing it. But based on everything you and Doc have told me from your separate encounters with him, he can see.”

  Roosevelt frowned. “Of course he can.”

  “The eye is a very complex organ, but it functions pretty much the same in all living things—men, horses, fish, dogs, birds, you name it.”

  “All right,” said Roosevelt. “Eyes operate the same.”

  “Then believe me when I tell you that no living thing can stare into the sun for much longer than you did a few moments ago, at least not without the kind of protection we created for your glasses.”


  “You're not suggesting that you've found a way to make him stare into the sun,” said Roosevelt.

  “Almost,” said Edison with a smile as Buntline returned to the room, carrying a device that was cylindrical, perhaps two feet long and six inches in diameter. There was a trigger mechanism beneath it, and a cord emanating from the back.

  “Looks heavy,” remarked Roosevelt.

  “It has to be, for what it's got to do,” said Buntline. “And it's got an even heavier battery. I hope you're in good shape, Theodore.”

  Roosevelt took the weapon from Buntline, hefted it, spun around once with it. “I can handle it,” he announced.

  “Can you handle it with thirty or forty pounds strapped to your back?” asked Buntline.

  “I suppose I'll have to.”

  “Try holding it up, aimed right at me, with one hand.”

  Roosevelt did so. “Now perhaps you'll tell me why I'll have to, which is to say, what does this weapon do?”

  “Theodore,” explained Edison, “this mechanism produces a light that will affect the eyes the way staring into the sun effected yours, and it'll do it within two seconds. If War Bonnet saw you, and of course he did, if he avoided things that were in his way, if he saw the rock that Doc says he lifted, then we have to assume his eyes will react to light like anyone else's—and that means the three or four seconds after you start firing this, he'll be blind, and stay blind for quite some time. You don't fire time and again like a six-gun; you depress the trigger and hold it down. But not,” concluded Edison, “before you flip those black lenses down over your glasses. Even from a position behind the gun, the world around you will get so bright so fast that you will literally go blind in seconds, and since you're not a supernatural creature whose eyes can be remade by your creators, you'll stay blind. So you must remember to flip those lenses down before you fire. The world will become so bright in your immediate vicinity that you'll have no difficulty seeing through them. It really won't look like a foggy night to you.”

  Roosevelt handed the weapon back to Buntline.

  “You look less than enthused,” noted Edison.

  “Maybe you know something I don't know,” said Roosevelt, “but I agree with your statement that he'll only be temporarily blind, and that Dull Knife and the others can fit him out with a new pair of eyes easier and faster than you and Ned could fit a wound victim out with a new arm or leg.”