The Sudden Star

by Pamela Sargent

  He thought of the doctor at the old space center, wondering if he had run his tests after all, out of curiosity. The old woman there might find out her daughter had died only to save one person who was already dying. That thought struck him as funny in a way.

  Aisha said, "Things haven't been going so good for you, have they?" She got off the table, picked up her sandals, and put one foot on a chair, leaning over to buckle them.

  "What do you mean?"

  She finished with the sandals and sat down. "Come on. I live right across from you, I can tell. And Stan told me he only comes in mornings now. He may look for another job."

  "It's summer. Things are slower now. Some of my patients don't go anywhere during the day if they can help it, and then there's been that trouble with Miami trying to squeeze us on food prices again, so—"

  "It isn't just that." She looked accusingly at him with her large eyes. "You're sneaking around seeing Isabeau Rasselle again."

  He lowered his head and took a deep breath. Isabeau had ignored him for two weeks. He had hoped it was over while at the same time trying to think of a way to lure her to the office. He had begun to set up appointments only in the mornings, keeping the rest of the day free. He had lost a few patients, though he might have lost them anyway; they were mostly people who went from doctor to doctor with imaginary ailments. He was losing money. When Isabeau came to him again, he had told her about it, worried he would fall behind on his payments to Titus, and she had given him the money for that. She'd found it very amusing, giving her lover money to pay her future husband. She had laughed about it while Simon turned away, humiliated. It didn't matter. He still wanted her.

  "Please," he said, "that's not your concern."

  "She's with Ortega now, and Ortega knows. It's like handing her a gun and telling her to shoot you."

  "She's loyal to Isabeau, she's paid well, she won't make trouble for me. Isabeau hired her because she's loyal. Titus doesn't want Isabeau running around alone, and this way she doesn't have to try to outwit her father's guards or Titus's—"

  "I don't want to hear it, Simon. René trusted her too, and he's probably dead now, along with—" Her voice trailed off.

  He knew she was right. That was how things would have happened, Kathleen Ortega having the old man killed while all the time another group plotted to get rid of her as soon as she accomplished her task. He had been one of her pawns himself. It wouldn't happen again. He was on to her this time. She would use Isabeau to get close to Titus and his organization; that had to be her goal. Maybe she would get rid of Titus eventually. This time, Ortega would be his pawn. He and Isabeau would be together at the end of it all.

  "We could tell people who she is, everything about her," Aisha was saying. "Then no one here would trust her. She must know that."

  "But we're not going to do that," he answered. "We don't have to right now. She can't do anything to us at the moment."

  "She'll kill you!" Aisha cried. He thrust out a hand, motioning to her to be quiet. "She'll kill me," she said more softly.

  "No, she won't. If I stay close to her, I’ll know what to expect. If I didn't, it would be worse." It seemed like a good rationalization; he wondered if it was true. There was a tap on the door. He opened it and saw the lanky form of Stanley Ortiz.

  "What is it, Stan?"

  "Miss Rasselle's bodyguard's here."

  "I'll be right out. You can take the rest of the day off."

  Stan nodded glumly. "By the way, Doctor, I think I want my pay for the week tomorrow, if it's okay with you."

  Simon was irritated. "Why can't you wait until next week?"

  Stan stared at him passively with his heavy-lidded eyes. "I just want this week's pay, if it's okay with you. It's easier for me if I get it every week instead of twice a month. I got to live, you know."

  Simon waved him away. "All right, I don't care. Tell the bodyguard I'll be right out." Stan closed the door. Simon turned and saw Aisha huddling in the chair.

  She said, "I can't go out there."

  "Damn it—"

  "I can't."

  "Go into the bedroom then, and be quiet. I'll see what she wants." She looked at him gratefully as she got up and hurried from the room. He felt confused; Stan had implied that Ortega was alone. Isabeau herself had come here during regular hours only once, to establish herself as his patient and avert suspicion. He did not want to see Ortega alone.

  He opened the door and went out and walked down the short hallway to the waiting room. Stan stood behind the desk, putting away some papers. "Still want me to go now, Doctor?" he asked.

  "Yeah, you can go." He watched the man leave, wishing he could have remained. Kathleen Ortega sat on the sofa under the window. Her scar was a white line on her tanned face. She smiled. Her yellowish eyes stared through him. "What is it?" he said dully.

  "Isabeau sent me to take you over to the house."

  His head jerked up. "She wouldn't do that. It's too dangerous."

  Ortega folded her hands behind her head. "It so happens she ain't feeling well, and her father's in Miami on business, and her mother went out with friends, and when somebody's sick there isn't anything funny about calling a doctor, is there." She smiled again.

  "What about the servants?"

  "She told them to keep away from her rooms so their noise wouldn't bother her." Ortega got up and came over to him. She grabbed his arm, twisting it painfully. "You better tighten your ass, Doctor, and start moving." He tried to pull away; she gripped him tightly. "If I wasn't working for Isabeau, I would have taken you out by now." She released him and pushed him with her other hand. He stumbled and almost fell. He saw himself getting his bag and reaching in it for a scalpel and aiming it at her throat. He'd be dead before he got it out of the bag. "I know all about you, you and that girl. I'm watching you all the time. You'll stay alive long as you're useful and keep out of my way, and don't forget it."

  He rubbed his arm. "I have to get my bag."

  "You do that."

  He went back to his bedroom, pulling off his wrinkled white coat. Aisha was sitting forlornly on the bed. He removed his stethoscope and put it in his bag. "I have to go," he said, putting on his jacket. "Wait till I’m gone, then leave. Make sure the door's locked." He picked up the bag. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it. He thought: If I told her what she has, she'd see nothing made any difference. He almost laughed, feeling oddly sorry for her at the same time.

  Isabeau sat up. Her white breasts brushed against his arm; he could see the blue veins through her almost transparent skin. Her pink nipples pointed at him. He reached toward her and she took his hand. She said, "You have to show me how to kill Titus."

  For a moment, he didn't understand what she was saying. Her voice was low and deep, almost a whisper. She leaned forward and her silvery hair brushed his chest. "It has to look like an illness, or a heart attack, something like that," she went on. She rubbed his chest. It didn't do any good; he was limp.

  "But you're going to marry him," he said. He pressed his back against the mattress. It sounded like a feeble objection.

  "That's right, I'm going to marry him at the end of the month. We have time. We'll plan it. Then we can be together, isn't that what you want?"

  "We can be together anyway, if we're careful. It's too risky."

  "We won't be together. It'll be a lot harder for me to see you when I'm married. You know that. We have to plan now, before then." She lay down next to him and pressed herself against him. He didn't want to look at her. He would be lost if he did.

  "I can't. There isn't any way."

  She drew away from him. "There must be."

  "I want to know why."

  She sat up again. He felt as though she would reach over and crush him, squeeze life from him. "I'll tell you why." Her voice was a monotone. "'He's signed over everything to me in case he dies, and I want it. I didn't want to marry him. My father's forcing me. It's my father's fault, he wouldn't let me do what I wan
ted. I begged him to make me his partner, to let me run our family's businesses, I'm as smart as he is. But he wouldn't hear of it, I'm only a daughter, I'm only good for making an alliance and making grandchildren. He'll pay, I'll run Titus's business and show I can do it, and I'll have our business too, and then he'll wish he let me have my way." She was silent for a moment. Simon lay still, almost afraid to move.

  "Do you know where my father is now?" she went on. He didn't answer. "He's in Miami, with Titus and some others. You know what they're doing there? Trying to settle this business with the food prices. They'll sit there, and try to bargain, and in the end they'll have big increases stuffed down their throats, because Miami has us over a barrel. Almost all our food comes through there and over the causeways. You know what I'd do?"

  He didn't want to hear.

  "I'd pay the price and bring in less food." He peered at her. She sat with her arms around her knees, staring at the door, while he tried not to remember that Kathleen Ortega was out there guarding it. "Then I'd send in the police to clean out the beaches, get rid of everyone there, we don't need them stealing our food. Then I'd cancel all tent permits and throw those people out, or shoot them, it doesn't matter which, and then I'd raise the price of permanent residency so high only a few could afford it. After that, I'd work on organizing the fishermen and the boat captains who bring in food from the smaller farms, we'd buy more from them, and every time Miami tried to up prices, I'd say, fine, okay, and buy less so they'd be getting the same price anyway, and after a while, they'd get the point." Her pale cheeks were flushing, her violet eyes burned. He had spent many evenings wrestling with her in bed, trying to find her trigger, lucky if he induced a mild moan. Her lack of response had only made him want her more, as if he could somehow gain power over her by arousing her. Now she was more passionate than she had ever been. "We need leadership," she said more softly. "There isn't any now."

  He turned over on his side, away from her. He felt her hand on his back. His stomach tightened; a sour taste filled his mouth. "And we can be together, don't you want that? All you have to do is advise me, tell me a few things, get some things for me so I can get rid of Titus." He felt her warm breath on his ear. "You won't have to suck up to him anymore, you won't have to think about him or how much you owe him, you'll be safe. You can have anything you want." She rubbed his back, her fingers slid down to his buttocks. She did not have to entice him. He thought of Ortega standing outside the door and knew that if he did not agree he would not leave the house alive.

  Simon climbed out of the rickshaw and paid the puller. The man lifted his poles and padded away. He glanced at the parking lot, strewn with weeds and wildflowers. A few old cars, patched together and fueled by methane or hydrogen, sat there; they belonged to the wealthier physicians. He looked past the lot, to the jungle of palm trees and shrubbery beyond, where even from here he could hear the shrieks of wild birds and see darting dabs of bright colors among the green, and past that to Biscayne Bay. The traffic on the causeway to the south was light today, a few trucks, a bus, a car, some horse-drawn carts. Miami was blocking most of their food supplies, rejecting any compromise on prices. Eventually they would have to submit, though probably not before a few of the poor had been starved out; no food was going to trickle down to them. He would have to figure out a way to make more money; Stan Ortiz was muttering openly about quitting, Isabeau was barely keeping him afloat. Food prices here had already gone up; Titus and the other distributors would make fat profits on the available food until the issue was settled.

  It was not yet noon, and already the summer sun seemed to be burning through his light cotton jacket. He could still walk away from here, find a rickshaw and go back over to Collins Avenue and get on one of the overstuffed buses heading back to Bal Harbour. He toyed with this illusion of free will for a moment. Then he turned and went inside the hospital.

  The lobby, wide and cooler, was nearly empty. Two doctors in dirty white coats ran past him, nearly knocking him aside. He took a few steps and almost tripped on broken tiles. Several flies buzzed around a nearby potted plant. A young woman in white sat behind a desk. Her chair was tilted against the peeling yellow wall; her feet were on the desk. He approached her, noticing that the desk was cluttered with papers, files, and a register. A nameplate with scarred edges was etched with the name L. Weinstein-Novarro.

  Something about the hospital reminded him of the medical facilities at the space center. He had felt helpless and ignorant there among all the clean, shining equipment he didn't know how to use, seeing dimly what had once existed, how far they had all fallen. This hospital might once have been like that center. He thought of the old texts he had read, with their descriptions and analyses of forgotten techniques, the old yellowed journals with their studies of diseases and conditions only the older doctors would ever recognize if they saw them. It was all there; how had they lost it, what had they lost? Why couldn't they just reach out and find it again and become what they were?

  The woman behind the desk was staring at him. His mind was wandering, he wondered if it was the heat. "Miss Weinstein-Novarro," he began.

  "She isn't here now, she's out." The woman looked at him sullenly, her fat little mouth set in a pout. He could still walk away.

  "I don't want to see her anyway, I need to talk with whoever's in charge of medical supplies."

  The woman pulled her feet off the desk and smoothed back her frizzy black hair. "You're talking to her."

  "Oh."

  "But I might as well tell you, we're running short, and the hospital has priority. Let me see your papers."

  He pulled them from his jacket pocket. A female guard passed by, and he found himself slumping guiltily. He forced himself to straighten up. "What are you doing out here if you're in charge of supplies?" he asked, stalling for time.

  "I always watch Lana's post when she's out, and she watches mine." She scanned the papers quickly, then handed them back. Relieved that she hadn't noticed the one forged document, he put them back in his pocket. "So you came down from St. Francis."

  "Yeah." The forged paper, signed by him with the name of one of St. Francis's surgeons, had cost him a day of hanging around a nurse's desk there before he was able to swipe the form. He'd filled it in, giving himself permission to buy succinylcholine, a drug used during chest surgery. It was not used often now; it paralyzed the chest muscles, necessitating the use of equipment that would breathe for the patient. Most operations were more hit-or-miss than that; in some of the smaller hospitals, anesthesia consisted of a bottle of gin.

  "Why didn't Dr. Feld come down himself?"

  He was confused for a moment. He had almost forgotten the name he had written on the document. "You know him?" he said, praying she did not.

  "No." Her hazel eyes were wide and blank.

  "Well, he's very busy, and I was going to be down here anyway, so he asked me." He smiled, hoping she wouldn't decide to check. She stared back, not smiling, and he saw she was bored, a good sign.

  "What do you need?"

  "Succinylcholine."

  "I think you're in luck, then. There isn't much call for that stuff. He must be one of the old guys who knows what he's doing. You wouldn't catch me being cut up by one of those young guys, I'll tell you."

  She got up from behind the desk. "Follow me." He heard a buzzing near his ears and wondered if it was the flies. He shook his head. His ears still buzzed. Isabeau had liked the idea of using this drug. She would wait until Titus was asleep, preferably drunk, before injecting it. Even if an autopsy, a careful autopsy, was done, no traces of succinylcholine would be found, and it was unlikely anyone would notice a small puncture. Titus would smother, his chest muscles unable to move. He might even wake up and realize he was dying. Isabeau had liked that idea, too. Simon shuddered, realizing at last that he no longer wanted Isabeau; he wanted only to get as far from her as possible. But there was nowhere to go.

  He followed the woman. She was saying something to hi
m. The words seemed to come from far away, distorted by the buzzing. They went down the hall and turned a corner, passing stretchers, carts with sloppy piles of syringes and dirty bandages, stations with old notebooks and other relics of another time. He wouldn't have been a doctor then. He wondered what he would have been.

  Isabeau looked happy. She sat at the head table on the stage, dressed in a sleeveless violet gown, a gauzy lavender scarf draped over her hair. She sipped her wine, smiling first at her handsome father and scrawny mother, then at Titus, who sat next to her. Titus seemed pleased with himself; the food dispute was settled, he was married. He had married Isabeau that morning in his suite, attended only by his bodyguards, her parents, and a few friends. Now he reigned over the supper club, smiling down at the crowds seated at tables or milling around the room, all of them busy consuming the free food and wine.

  Simon stood in the back of the room near a door. He had eaten all he could, even stuffing some oranges and pears into his pockets for tomorrow. He had even forced himself to push through the crowds to congratulate Titus, knowing the man might find it odd if he did not. Isabeau had smiled at him while stroking Titus's arm. For a moment, Simon was about to speak: "Titus, your wife is going to kill you, I told her how." He had shaken his friend's hand and retreated. Titus would not believe him. No one would. He would get thrown out of the city, or worse; Titus would still die. It's not my fault, he told himself now. If he'd believe me, if it wouldn't hurt me, I'd tell him. He wondered when Isabeau would act, knowing she couldn't do it too soon, not before she had won the trust of at least some of his associates.

  Near the stage, a group of people cheered. The cheer spread through the room, echoing from the ornate walls. Simon blinked. At a nearby table, Aisha waved at him solemnly, signaling to him to join her and Takaishi. He shook his head. Disoriented suddenly by the crowd, the noise, the greasy smell of cooking food, he turned away. Something hit him in the leg; he looked down and saw gnawed chicken bones. He was nearly hit again by fruit rinds. The entire floor would be covered by broken wine glasses and the remains of dinner before the night ended. He stumbled from the room, needing air.