Dr. Futurity (1960) (2 page)

And, in the light, Parsons got his first real look at the boy. And what he saw jarred him.

Dark hair, shiny and long. Coffee-colored skin. Flat, wide cheek bones. Almond eyes that glinted liquid in the reflected light. A prominent nose. Roman?

No, Parsons thought. Almost Hittite. And his black hair. . . .

The man was certainly multiracial. The cheek bones suggested Mongolian. The eyes were Mediterranean. The hair possibly Negroid. The skin color, perhaps, had an under-glint of reddish brown. Polynesian?

On the boy's shirt--he wore a dark red, two-piece robe, and slippers--an embroidered herald caught Parson's attention. A stylized eagle.

Eagle.
Egl.
And the others.
Dir
was deer.
Bar
was bear. The rest he couldn't guess. What did this animal nomenclature mean? He started to speak, but the youth cut him off.

"Whur venis a tardus?"
he demanded in his not entirely grown-up voice.

Parsons was floored. The language, although unfamiliar, was not alien. It had a bafflingly natural ring; something almost understood, but not quite.

"What?" he asked.

The youth qualified his question.
"Ye kleidis novae en sagis
novate. Whur iccidi hist?"

Now he began to get the drift. Like the boy's racial cast, the language was a polygot. Evidently based on Latin, and possibly an artificial language, a lingua franca; made up of the most familiar bits possible. Pondering the words, Parsons came to the conclusion that the boy wanted to know why he was out so late and why he dressed so strangely. And why he spoke as he did. But at the moment he did not feel inclined to give answers; he had questions of his own.

"I want to know," he said slowly and carefully, "why you tried to run me down."

Blinking, the boy said haltingly,
"Whur ik . . ."
His voice trailed off. Obviously, he did not understand Parson's words.

Or was it that the words were understood, but the question was incomprehensible? With a further chill, Parsons thought, maybe it's supposed to be self-evident. Taken for granted. Of course he tried to kill me. Doesn't everybody?

Feeling a profound resurgence of alarm, he settled down to get at the language barrier. I'm going to have to make myself understood, he realized. And right away.

To the boy, he said, "Keep talking."

"Sag?"
the boy repeated.
"Ik sag yer, ye meinst?"

Parsons nodded. "That's right," he said. Ahead of them, the city came closer and closer. "You've got it."
We're making
progress,
he thought grimly. And he stiffened himself to listen as carefully as possible as the boy, haltingly, prattled on. We're making progress, but I wonder if there's going to be enough time.

A broad span carried the car over a moat which surrounded the city, a purely ornamental moat, from the brief glimpse that Parsons caught of it. More and more cars became visible, moving quite slowly, and now people on foot. He made out the sight of crowds, great masses moving along ramps, entering and leaving the spires, pushing along side-walks. All the people that he saw seemed young. Like the boy beside him. And they, too, had the dark skin, the flat cheek bones, and the robes. He saw a variety of emblems. Animal, fish, and bird heralds.

Why?
Society organized by totem tribes? Or different races? Or was some festival in progress? But they were physically alike, and that made him discard the theory that each emblem represented a different race. An arbitrary division of the population?

Games?

All wore their hair long, braided and tied in back, both men and women. The men were considerably larger than the women. They had stern noses and chins. The women hurried along laughing and chattering, bright-eyed, lips luminous and striking, unusually full. But so young--almost children. Merry, laughing boys and girls. At an intersection a hanging light gave off the first full-spectrum white that he had seen in this world, so far; in its stark glare he saw that the lips of both men and women had a black color, not red at all. And it's not the light, he decided. Although it could be a dye. Mary used to show up with those fashionable hair dyes . . .

In this first genuinely revealing light, the boy beside him was staring at him with a new expression. He had halted the car.

"Agh," the boy gasped. And on his face the expression became obvious. Drawing back, he shrank against the far door of the car.
"Ye--"
He stammered for words, and at last burst out chokingly, and so loudly that several passers-by glanced up,
"Ye bist sick!"

That word was a remnant of Parson's language: it could not be mistaken. The tone itself, and the boy's expression, removed any doubt.

"Why sick?" Parsons answered, nettled and defensive. "I can tell you for a certainty--"

Interrupting him, the boy spat out a series of rapid-fire accusations. Some of the words--enough were understandable. Finally he was beginning to catch the pattern of speech. And this was what he got: realization that now, having seen him clearly for the first time, the boy was overcome with aversion and disgust. The accusations poured out at Parsons in an almost hysterical tirade, while he sat helpless. And outside the car, a group of people had gathered to listen.

The door on Parson's side of the car slid open; the boy had jabbed at a button on the control panel. I'm being ejected, Parsons realized. Protestingly, he tried to break into the tirade once more.

"Look here," he began. At that point he broke off. Standing on the pavement outside the car, the people who had caught sight of him had the same expression on their faces. The same horror and dismay. The same disgust as the boy. The people murmured, and he saw a woman raise her hand and indicate something to those behind who couldn't quite see. The woman indicated her own face.

My white skin!
Parsons realized.

"Are you going to drop me out there?" he said to the boy, and indicated the murmuring crowd.

The boy hesitated. Even if he did not quite grasp Parson's words he could follow his meaning. There was hostility in the crowd as it jostled for a better look at Parsons, and the boy saw that; both he and Parsons heard the angry tones and saw the movement of more definite purpose.

With a whirr, the door beside Parsons slid shut. It locked, with him still inside the car. Bending forward, the boy caught hold of the car's controls; the car at once moved rapidly forward.

"Thanks," Parsons said.

Without answering him, or even paying any attention to him, the boy made the car pick up speed. Now they had reached an ascending ramp; the car shot up it and leveled off at the top. Glancing out, the boy slowed the car almost to a halt. To their left Parsons made out a less brightly lighted avenue. The car moved in that direction and came to rest in half-shadows. The structures here seemed poorer, less ornate. And no people were in sight.

Again the door slid open.

Parsons said, "I appreciate it." Shakily, he stepped out.

The boy shut the door, and then the car shot off and out of sight. Parsons found himself standing alone, still trying to frame a statement or ask some question--he did not know which. Suddenly the car reappeared; without slowing it hurtled by him, once again breathing its hot exhaust breath at him, sending him spinning back to escape its gleaming lights. From the car something sailed out and crashed at Parson's feet.

His instrument case. He had left it in the car.

Seated in the shadows, he opened his instrument case and inspected the contents. Nothing appeared broken or damaged. Thank God for that.

Mercifully, the boy had let him off in a warehouse district. The buildings had a massive quality, with enormous double doors clearly not intended for human traffic but for some kind of oversized vehicles. And, on the pavement around him, he saw the dim outline of refuse.

He picked up a piece of written material. A political pamphlet, evidently. Denouncing someone or some party. He recognized words here and there--the syntax seemed easy enough; the language was inflected, along the lines of Spanish or Italian, not distributive, but with occasional English words. Seeing it written made the problem of understanding it much easier for him. He recalled the medical texts in Russian and Chinese that had been required reading, the twice-monthly journal with abstracts in six languages. Part of being a medical man. At the University of La Jolla he had had to read not only German, Russian, Chinese, but also French--a language of no real current importance, but forced on them by tradition. And his wife, as a cultural asset, had been learning classic Greek.

Anyhow, he realized, that's all solved now. They have their one synthetic language. And this is it.

What I need is a place to hide,
he decided.
While I orient
myself--a breathing-spell, where I'm less vulnerable
. The buildings, dark and silent around him, appeared deserted. At the end of the street, a variety of lights and the tiny, distant shapes of people indicated a commercial section, open in the night to do business.

A dim street light lit the way ahead of him as he walked cautiously among the discarded cartons heaped by a loading platform. Now he stumbled over a series of waste-cans, from which a muted churning became audible. The overflowing waste began to stir, and he discovered that by knocking against the cans he had started the mechanism back into operation. No doubt it was supposed to be automatic, consuming trash as fast as it was put in, but it hadn't been kept in good repair.

A flight of cement steps led down to a doorway. He descended and tried the rusty handle of the door. Locked, of course. A storage area, probably.

Kneeling down in the semidarkness he opened his instrument case and got out the surgical packet. Its power supply was self-contained, and he clicked it on. The basic tools lit up; for emergency operations they cast enough light to work by. Expertly, he fitted a blade into the drive-gear socket and cinched it up. Whining faintly, the blade cut into the lock of the door. He stood close to it, muffling the sound.

The blade crunched loose; the lock had been cut away from the door. Hastily, he disassembled the surgical tools, stuffed them back into the instrument case. With both hands he gently tugged at the door.

The door opened, squeaking on its hinges.

Now, he thought. A place to hide. In his case he had a number of dermal preparations, for use in treating burns. Already he had selected in his mind the combination of aseptic sprays that would yield a darker color; he could lower his skin hue to one indistinguishable from that of . . .

In sudden bright light he stood blinking. Not a deserted storeroom at all. Warm air greeted him, smells of food. A man stood with a decanter in his hand, stopped in the act of pouring a woman's drink.

Seven or eight people faced him. Some sitting in chairs, a couple standing. They regarded him placidly, without surprise. They had obviously been aware of him while he cut away the lock; they had heard him outside, working.

The man resumed pouring the woman's drink. Now a low-pitched murmur of talk picked up. His presence--manner of entry--did not seem to perturb these people at all.

A woman, seated near him, was saying something to him. The musical flow of words repeated themselves several times, but he could not catch the meaning. The woman smiled up at him, without rancor, again speaking, but now more slowly. He caught one word, then another. She was telling him firmly but politely that it was up to him to replace the door lock.

" . . . and please shut it," she concluded. "The door."

Foolishly, he reached behind him and pulled the door shut.

A dapper-looking youth, leaning toward him, said, "We know who you are." At least, so Parsons interpreted his statement.

"Yes," another man said. Several of them nodded.

The woman near the door said, "You're the--" And a word followed that he could make no sense of. It had a totally artificial ring, jargon rather than language.

"That's right," another echoed. "That's what you are."

"But we don't care," a boy said.

They all agreed to that.

"Because," the boy continued, his white teeth sparkling, "we're not here."

A chorus of agreement. "No, not here at
all!
"

"This is a delusion," a slender woman said.

"Delusion," two men repeated.

Parsons said unsteadily, "Who am I, did you say?"

"So we're not afraid," one of them said, or at least so he understood that person to say.

"Afraid?" Parsons said. That caught his attention at once.

"You came to get us," a girl said.

"Yes," they all agreed, with evident delight, their heads nodding up and down. "But you can't."

He thought,
They think I'm somebody else.

"Touch me," the woman by the door said. She set down her drink and rose from her chair. "I'm not actually here."

"None of us are," several people agreed. "Touch her. Go on."

Unable to move, Parsons stood where he was.
I don't get it
, he thought.
I just don't.

"All right," the woman said. "I'll touch you. My hand will pass right through yours."

"Like air," a man said happily.

The woman reached out her slim, dark fingers, closer and closer to his arm. Smiling, her eyes alive with delight, she put her fingers on his arm.

Her fingers did not pass through. At once, her mouth fell open with shock. "Oh," she whispered.

The room became silent. They all stared at him.

Finally one of the men said faintly, "He's genuinely found us."

"He really is here," a woman murmured, her eyes wild with fear. "Here where we are. In the basement."

They gazed at Parsons numbly. He could do nothing but gaze back.

THREE

After a terrible silence, one of the women sank down in a chair and said, "We thought you were up on Fingal Street. We have a projection on Fingal Street."

"How did you find us?" a man said. Their rather adolescent voices mingled in a chorus.

Of the welter of talk he could make out a reasonable portion. A meeting. Secret, down here in the warehouse district. So sure of their seclusion that his coming hadn't registered.