by Various
"Such was his ending, and so will you end--"
The calm brutality of that statement aroused Garin's anger. "Rather would I die that way than linger in this den," he cried hotly. "You, who owe your life to me, would send me to such a death without even telling me of what I am accused. Little is there to choose between you and Kepta, after all--except that he was an open enemy!"
Dandtan sprang to his feet, but Trar caught his arm.
"He speaks fairly. Ask him why he will not fulfill the summoning."
While Dandtan hesitated, Garin leaned across the table, flinging his words, weapon-like, straight into that cold face.
"I'll admit that I love Thrala--have loved her since that moment when I saw her on the steps of the morgel pit in the caves. Since when has it become a crime to love that which may not be yours--if you do not try to take it?"
Trar released Dandtan, his golden eyes gleaming.
"If you love her, claim her. It is your right."
"Do I not know," Garin turned to him, "that she is Dandtan's. Thran had no idea of Dandtan's survival when he laid his will upon her. Shall I stoop to holding her to an unwelcome bargain? Let her go to the one she loves...."
Dandtan's face was livid, and his hands, resting on the table, trembled. One by one the lords of the Folk slipped away, leaving the two face-to-face.
"And I thought to order you to your death." Dandtan's whisper was husky as it emerged between dry lips. "Garin, we thought you knew--and, knowing, had refused her."
"Knew what?"
* * * * *
"That I am Thran's son--and Thrala's brother."
The floor swung beneath Garin's unsteady feet. Dandtan's hands were warm on his shoulders.
"I am a fool," said the American slowly.
Dandtan smiled. "A very honorable fool! Now get you to Thrala, who deserves to hear the full of this tangle."
So it was that, with Dandtan by his side, Garin walked for the second time down that hallway, to pass the golden curtains and stand in the presence of the Daughter. She came straight from her cushions into his arms when she read what was in his face. They needed no words.
And in that hour began Garin's life in Tav.
* * *
Contents
AN OUNCE OF CURE
By Alan Nourse
The doctor's office was shiny and modern. Behind the desk the doctor smiled down at James Wheatley through thick glasses. "Now, then! What seems to be the trouble?"
Wheatley had been palpitating for five days straight at the prospect of coming here. "I know it's silly," he said. "But I've been having a pain in my toe."
"Indeed!" said the doctor. "Well, now! How long have you had this pain, my man?"
"About six months now, I'd say. Just now and then, you know. It's never really been bad. Until last week. You see--"
"I see," said the doctor. "Getting worse all the time, you say."
Wheatley wiggled the painful toe reflectively. "Well--you might say that. You see, when I first--"
"How old did you say you were, Mr. Wheatley?"
"Fifty-five."
"Fifty-five!" The doctor leafed through the medical record on his desk. "But this is incredible. You haven't had a checkup in almost ten years!"
"I guess I haven't," said Wheatley, apologetically. "I'd been feeling pretty well until--"
"Feeling well!" The doctor stared in horror. "But my dear fellow, no checkup since January 1963! We aren't in the Middle Ages, you know. This is 1972."
"Well, of course--"
"Of course you may be feeling well enough, but that doesn't mean everything is just the way it should be. And now, you see, you're having pains in your toes!"
"One toe," said Wheatley. "The little one on the right. It seemed to me--"
"One toe today, perhaps," said the doctor heavily. "But tomorrow--" He heaved a sigh. "How about your breathing lately? Been growing short of breath when you hurry upstairs?"
"Well--I have been bothered a little."
"I thought so! Heart pound when you run for the subway? Feel tired all day? Pains in your calves when you walk fast?"
"Uh--yes, occasionally, I--" Wheatley looked worried and rubbed his toe on the chair leg.
"You know that fifty-five is a dangerous age," said the doctor gravely. "Do you have a cough? Heartburn after dinner? Prop up on pillows at night? Just as I thought! And no checkup for ten years!" He sighed again.
"I suppose I should have seen to it," Wheatley admitted. "But you see, it's just that my toe--"
"My dear fellow! Your toe is part of you. It doesn't just exist down there all by itself. If your toe hurts, there must be a reason."
Wheatley looked more worried than ever. "There must? I thought--perhaps you could just give me a little something--"
"To stop the pain?" The doctor looked shocked. "Well, of course I could do that, but that's not getting at the root of the trouble, is it? That's just treating symptoms. Medieval quackery. Medicine has advanced a long way since your last checkup, my friend. And even treatment has its dangers. Did you know that more people died last year of aspirin poisoning than of cyanide poisoning?"
Wheatley wiped his forehead. "I--dear me! I never realized--"
"We have to think about those things," said the doctor. "Now, the problem here is to find out why you have the pain in your toe. It could be inflammatory. Maybe a tumor. Perhaps it could be, uh, functional ... or maybe vascular!"
"Perhaps you could take my blood pressure, or something," Wheatley offered.
"Well, of course I could. But that isn't really my field, you know. It wouldn't really mean anything, if I did it. But there's nothing to worry about. We have a fine Hypertensive man at the Diagnostic Clinic." The doctor checked the appointment book on his desk. "Now, if we could see you there next Monday morning at nine--"
* * * * *
"Very interesting X rays," said the young doctor with the red hair. "Very interesting. See this shadow in the duodenal cap? See the prolonged emptying time? And I've never seen such beautiful pylorospasm!"
"This is my toe?" asked Wheatley, edging toward the doctors. It seemed he had been waiting for a very long time.
"Toe! Oh, no," said the red-headed doctor. "No, that's the Orthopedic Radiologist's job. I'm a Gastro-Intestinal man, myself. Upper. Dr. Schultz here is Lower." The red-headed doctor turned back to his consultation with Dr. Schultz. Mr. Wheatley rubbed his toe and waited.
Presently another doctor came by. He looked very grave as he sat down beside Wheatley. "Tell me, Mr. Wheatley, have you had an orthodiagram recently?"
"No."
"An EKG?"
"No."
"Fluoroaortogram?"
"I--don't think so."
The doctor looked even graver, and walked away, muttering to himself. In a few moments he came back with two more doctors. "--no question in my mind that it's cardiomegaly," he was saying, "but Haddonfield should know. He's the best Left Ventricle man in the city. Excellent paper in the AMA Journal last July: 'The Inadequacies of Modern Orthodiagramatic Techniques in Demonstrating Minimal Left Ventricular Hypertrophy.' A brilliant study, simply brilliant! Now this patient--" He glanced toward Wheatley, and his voice dropped to a mumble.
Presently two of the men nodded, and one walked over to Wheatley, cautiously, as though afraid he might suddenly vanish. "Now, there's nothing to be worried about, Mr. Wheatley," he said. "We're going to have you fixed up in just no time at all. Just a few more studies. Now, if you could see me in Valve Clinic tomorrow afternoon at three--"
Wheatley nodded. "Nothing serious, I hope?"
"Serious? Oh, no! Dear me, you mustn't worry. Everything is going to be all right," the doctor said.
"Well--I--that is, my toe is still bothering me some. It's not nearly as bad, but I wondered if maybe you--"
Dawn broke on the doctor's face. "Give you something for it? Well now, we aren't Therapeutic men, you understand. Always best to let the expert handle the problem in his own field." He
paused, stroking his chin for a moment. "Tell you what we'll do. Dr. Epstein is one of the finest Therapeutic men in the city. He could take care of you in a jiffy. We'll see if we can't arrange an appointment with him after you've seen me tomorrow."
Mr. Wheatley was late to Mitral Valve Clinic the next day because he had gone to Aortic Valve Clinic by mistake, but finally he found the right waiting room. A few hours later he was being thumped, photographed, and listened to. Substances were popped into his right arm, and withdrawn from his left arm as he marveled at the brilliance of modern medical techniques. Before they were finished he had been seen by both the Mitral men and the Aortic men, as well as the Great Arteries man and the Peripheral Capillary Bed man.
The Therapeutic man happened to be in Atlantic City at a convention and the Rheumatologist was on vacation, so Wheatley was sent to Functional Clinic instead. "Always have to rule out these things," the doctors agreed. "Wouldn't do much good to give you medicine if your trouble isn't organic, now, would it?" The Psychoneuroticist studied his sex life, while the Psychosociologist examined his social milieu. Then they conferred for a long time.
Three days later he was waiting in the hallway downstairs again. Heads met in a huddle; words and phrases slipped out from time to time as the discussion grew heated.
"--no doubt in my mind that it's a--"
"But we can't ignore the endocrine implications, doctor--"
"You're perfectly right there, of course. Bittenbender at the University might be able to answer the question. No better Pituitary Osmoreceptorologist in the city--"
"--a Tubular Function man should look at those kidneys first. He's fifty-five, you know."
"--has anyone studied his filtration fraction?"
"--might be a peripheral vascular spasticity factor--"
After a while James Wheatley rose from the bench and slipped out the door, limping slightly as he went.
* * * * *
The room was small and dusky, with heavy Turkish drapes obscuring the dark hallway beyond. A suggestion of incense hung in the air.
In due course a gaunt, swarthy man in mustache and turban appeared through the curtains and bowed solemnly. "You come with a problem?" he asked, in a slight accent.
"As a matter of fact, yes," James Wheatley said hesitantly. "You see, I've been having a pain in my right little toe...."
* * *
Contents
BEAR TRAP
By Alan E. Nourse
The man's meteoric rise as a peacemaker in a nation tired by the long years of war made the truth even more shocking.
The huge troop transport plane eased down through the rainy drizzle enshrouding New York International Airport at about five o'clock in the evening. Tom Shandor glanced sourly through the port at the wet landing strip, saw the dim landing lights reflected in the steaming puddles. On an adjacent field he could see the rows and rows of jet fighters, wings up in the foggy rain, poised like ridiculous birds in the darkness. With a sigh he ripped the sheet of paper from the small, battered portable typewriter on his lap, and zipped the machine up in its slicker case.
Across the troop hold the soldiers were beginning to stir, yawning, shifting their packs, collecting their gear. Occasionally they stared at Shandor as if he were totally alien to their midst, and he shivered a little as he collected the sheets of paper scattered on the deck around him, checked the date, 27 September, 1982, and rolled them up to fit in the slim round mailing container. Ten minutes later he was shouldering his way through the crowd of khaki-clad men, scowling up at the sky, his nondescript fedora jammed down over his eyes to keep out the rain, slicker collar pulled up about his ears. At the gangway he stopped before a tired-looking lieutenant and flashed the small fluorescent card in his palm. "Public Information Board."
The officer nodded wearily and gave his coat and typewriter a cursory check, then motioned him on. He strode across the wet field, scowling at the fog, toward the dimmed-out waiting rooms.
He found a mailing chute, and popped the mailing tube down the slot as if he were glad to be rid of it. Into the speaker he said: "Special Delivery. PIB business. It goes to press tonight."
The female voice from the speaker said something, and the red "clear" signal blinked. Shandor slipped off his hat and shook it, then stopped at a coffee machine and extracted a cup of steaming stuff from the bottom after trying the coin three times. Finally he walked across the room to an empty video booth, and sank down into the chair with an exhausted sigh. Flipping a switch, he waited several minutes for an operator to appear. He gave her a number, and then said, "Let's scramble it, please."
"Official?"
He showed her the card, and settled back, his whole body tired. He was a tall man, rather slender, with flat, bland features punctuated only by blond caret-shaped eyebrows. His grey eyes were heavy-lidded now, his mouth an expressionless line as he waited, sunk back into his coat with a long-cultivated air of lifeless boredom. He watched the screen without interest as it bleeped a time or two, then shifted into the familiar scrambled-image pattern. After a moment he muttered the Public Information Board audio-code words, and saw the screen even out into the clear image of a large, heavyset man at a desk.
"Hart," said Shandor. "Story's on its way. I just dropped it from the Airport a minute ago, with a rush tag on it. You should have it for the morning editions."
The big man in the screen blinked, and his heavy face lit up. "The story on the Rocket Project?"
Shandor nodded. "The whole scoop. I'm going home now." He started his hand for the cutoff switch.
"Wait a minute--" Hart picked up a pencil and fiddled with it for a moment. He glanced over his shoulder, and his voice dropped a little. "Is the line scrambled?"
Shandor nodded.
"What's the scoop, boy? How's the Rocket Project coming?"
Shandor grinned wryly. "Read the report, daddy. Everything's just ducky, of course--it's all ready for press. You've got the story, why should I repeat it?"
Hart scowled impatiently. "No, no-- I mean the scoop. The real stuff. How's the Project going?"
"Not so hot." Shandor's face was weary. "Material cutoff is holding them up something awful. Among other things. The sabotage has really fouled up the west coast trains, and shipments haven't been coming through on schedule. You know--they ask for one thing, and get the wrong weight, or their supplier is out of material, or something goes wrong. And there's personnel trouble, too--too much direction and too little work. It's beginning to look as if they'll never get going. And now it looks like there's going to be another administration shakeup, and you know what that means--"
Hart nodded thoughtfully. "They'd better get hopping," he muttered. "The conference in Berlin is on the skids--it could be hours now." He looked up. "But you got the story rigged all right?"
Shandor's face flattened in distaste. "Sure, sure. You know me, Hart. Anything to keep the people happy. Everything's running as smooth as satin, work going fine, expect a test run in a month, and we should be on the moon in half a year, more or less, maybe, we hope--the usual swill. I'll be in to work out the war stories in the morning. Right now I'm for bed."
He snapped off the video before Hart could interrupt, and started for the door. The rain hit him, as he stepped out, with a wave of cold wet depression, but a cab slid up to the curb before him and he stepped in. Sinking back he tried to relax, to get his stomach to stop complaining, but he couldn't fight the feeling of almost physical illness sweeping over him. He closed his eyes and sank back, trying to drive the ever-plaguing thoughts from his mind, trying to focus on something pleasant, almost hoping that his long-starved conscience might give a final gasp or two and die altogether. But deep in his mind he knew that his screaming conscience was almost the only thing that held him together.
Lies, he thought to himself bitterly. White lies, black lies, whoppers--you could take your choice. There should be a flaming neon sign flashing across the sky, telling all people: "Public Information Board, Fab
rication Corporation, fabricating of all lies neatly and expeditiously done." He squirmed, feeling the rebellion grow in his mind. Propaganda, they called it. A nice word, such a very handy word, covering a multitude of seething pots. PIB was the grand clearing house, the last censor of censors, and he, Tom Shandor, was the Chief Fabricator and Purveyor of Lies.
He shook his head, trying to get a breath of clean air in the damp cab. Sometimes he wondered where it was leading, where it would finally end up, what would happen if the people ever really learned, or ever listened to the clever ones who tried to sneak the truth into print somewhere. But people couldn't be told the truth, they had to be coddled, urged, pushed along. They had to be kept somehow happy, somehow hopeful, they had to be kept whipped up to fever pitch, because the long, long years of war and near war had exhausted them, wearied them beyond natural resiliency. No, they had to be spiked, urged and goaded--what would happen if they learned?
He sighed. No one, it seemed, could do it as well as he. No one could take a story of bitter diplomatic fighting in Berlin and simmer it down to a public-palatable "peaceful and progressive meeting;" no one could quite so skillfully reduce the bloody fighting in India to a mild "enemy losses topping American losses twenty to one, and our boys are fighting staunchly, bravely,"-- No one could write out the lies quite so neatly, so smoothly as Tom Shandor--
The cab swung in to his house, and he stepped out, tipped the driver, and walked up the walk, eager for the warm dry room. Coffee helped sometimes when he felt this way, but other things helped even more. He didn't even take his coat off before mixing and downing a stiff rye-and-ginger, and he was almost forgetting his unhappy conscience by the time the video began blinking.
