Ole Doc Methuselah (23 page)

“You
do not have a disease,” said Ole Doc. “There is none.”

This
was so entirely contrary to her terror that she could not digest it and looked
at him with eyes of a wondrous jade hue beseeching him to tell her what he
meant.

“There
is no disease, no poison,” said Ole Doc. “I have no further clue. But in the
absence of bacteria and drugs, it is necessary that you tell me what you can of
today's occurrence.”

“I
. . . I was bridesmaid at my sister's wedding. It . . . all of a sudden it
began to get terrible. Everybody began to scream. I ran outside and fell down
and there were dead people all over and I was afraid—” She caught herself back
from some of the horror. “That's all I know.”

Ole
Doc smiled gently. “You can tell me more than that. Was anyone sick from the
disease before today?”

“Oh,
yes. Over in the eastern quarter of the city. And on all the other planets. The
disease kept spreading. There isn't anything left on Gerrybome and that had
almost as many people as this world. But nobody thought it would come here
today. It was awful!” She shuddered and averted her face. “My sister, her
husband . . . my mother . . . is anyone left alive?”

“You
will have to face this bravely,” said Ole Doc. “I do not think there is. I
have not been here very long.”

“Is
it liable to strike again? Is that why you wear that helmet?”

Ole
Doc had been wondering why she didn't have as pretty a voice as she had a body.
He hurriedly unstrapped the helmet and laid it aside. She gazed at him
earnestly. “Could you save my family?”

“Not
very well,” said Ole Doc. “You were the only one alive in that entire area
that I could see. I even glanced in the church. I am sorry.” He fumbled in his
belt kit and came up with a cartridge for his hypo gun. He fitted it carefully.
She was beginning to shudder again at the nightmare she had just experienced
and paid no attention to what he was doing.

The
gun, held close against her side, jerked and sent a heavy charge of
neo-tetrascopolamine into her. She did not feel it but continued to cry for a
little while. Then, blankness overspreading her face, she looked at him and at
her surroundings.

“Who
are you? Where am I?”

Ole
Doc nodded with satisfaction. She had experienced amnesia for the past, reaching
back probably three or four days; she would not be able to recall any part of
the terrible experience she had undergone.

“There
was sickness,” said Ole Doc, “and I brought you here to help me.”

“You
. . . you're a Soldier of Light!” she said, sitting up in astonishment. “A
Soldier of Light! Here on Gasperand! I—” She saw her torn dress. “What—?”

“I
brought you so fast your dress got torn,” said Ole Doc.

“You
promise you'll get back in time for my sister's wedding?”

“We'll
do what we can,” said Ole Doc. “Now you don't mind dead people, do you?”

“Dead—?”
It ended in a gasp as she saw the body on the bed.

“That
is Wilhelm Giotini,” said Ole Doc. “You heard he had died?”

“Oh,
weeks ago! Weeks! But there he is—
ugh!
”

“Now,
now. No time for weak stomachs, my dear. Fix up your dress and we'll do what we
can for him.”

“Do
what— Why, bury him, of course!” She added hesitantly and a little afraid:
“You
are
going to bury him?”

“No,
my dear. I am afraid I am not.”

 

There
was a heavy creaking outside the door and a knock. Ole Doc unbarred it and let
six guardsmen stagger in with a load of equipment. It astonished Ole Doc. He
had never thought of that equipment as being heavy before, since Hippocrates
had always carried it so lightly. And when they returned with a second load and
stumbled with it, Ole Doc almost lost patience.

“Now
get out before you break something!” he snapped.

He
barred the door again and faced the unlovely thing on the bed. The girl's
golden hair almost rose up in horror. “You're not going to—”

With
a deep sigh which still had a great deal of compassion in it, Ole Doc showed
her over to a window seat and let her sit there out of sight of the bed.

He
opened the cases they had brought him and laid out a sparkling string of
instruments and arctrodes, unpacked a portable generator, hooked up numerous
wires, connected several condensers in series and plugged them to one end of a
metal box, placing the generator at the other. Then he hefted a scalpel and a
chisel and walked toward the head of the bed.

In
the window seat the girl shuddered at the sounds she heard and twisted hard at
the tassels of an embroidered cushion. She heard a curious sawing sound,
surmised what it was and twisted so hard that the tassel came off. She
nervously began to shred it, not daring to look over her shoulder. For a long
time she felt ill and then became aware of a complete silence which had lasted
many minutes. She was about to look when the generator took off with a snarling
whine so much akin to the anger of a black panther in the local zoo that she
nearly screamed with it in unison.

She
could not keep away then. It sounded too bloodthirsty. But when she looked, Ole
Doc was sitting on the edge of the bed looking interestedly at the metal box
and, outside of a deal of blood on the golden sheets, everything seemed
perfectly human.

Cautiously
she approached the Soldier. “Is . . . is he in there?”

Ole
Doc looked up with a start. “Just his brain, my dear.”

She
hastily went back to the window seat. The cushion's tassels suffered horribly
when the thought came to her that she might have been brought here as a part of
this experiment, that she was to be something of a human sacrifice to science.
And the more she thought about this possibility, the more she believed it. Wilhelm
Giotini was a great man; he had built up an entire civilization on five worlds
which had hitherto been given to outlaws and casual wanderers; his vast energy
had been sufficient to make cities grow in a matter of weeks and whole new
industries from mine to finished product in a month or two. Who was she,
Patricia Dore, to be weighed in the balance against an experiment involving
Giotini? This Soldier was certain, absolutely certain, to use her for his own
ends.

 

It
was a deep drop to the courtyard below and as she scouted her chances here she
was startled to see that a group of guardsmen were gathering alertly at the
gate below. But there were other windows and, without moving fast enough to
attract Ole Doc's attention, she made her way to the next. The drop was no
better nor was there a balcony and here were more guardsmen being posted. There
was something about the way they handled their weapons and looked at the house
which gave her to understand that they intended something against this room.

“My
dear,” said Ole Doc, beckoning.

She
looked wide-eyed at the guardsmen and then at Ole Doc in a between-two-fires
hysteria of mind. She held herself to calmness finally, the legendary repute of
the Soldier of Light winning, and came back to the bed.

“There
are guardsmen all around us,” she said, half as a promise of reprisal if
anything happened to her. Ole Doc paced to the window and looked out. He saw
the troop gathered at the gate and in a burst of indignation, so obvious was
their intent there, threw open the leaded pane and started to ask them what
they meant.

Instantly
a blaster carved a five-foot section off the upper window. A piece of melted
glass hit Ole Doc on the neck and he swore loud enough to melt the remaining
sash. But he didn't just stop swearing. His right hand was traveling and at
almost the instant that the burn struck, his blaster jolted and jolted hard.

Three
guardsmen went down, slammed back against the gate by the force of fire, the
last of them spinning around and around. Ole Doc never saw him fall. Ole Doc
was back and under cover just as five more battle sticks went to work on the
window. A big piece of ceiling scored up and curled brown to fall with a dusty
crash an instant later.

Giotini
evidently had known there would be moments like this. He had big rayproof
shutters on each window which closed from inside. Ole Doc got them shut and
barred and they grew hot to the touch as people below wasted ammunition on
them.

Patricia
Dore made nothing of this. It had occurred to her that perhaps these guards had
set out to rescue her, for she had been fed a great deal of circulating library
in her youth and she had an aberrated idea of just how much men would do for
one woman. Just as she was getting a dramatic notion about aiding outside to get
this Soldier who was obviously now no Soldier at all—for nobody ever fired on
the UMS—Ole Doc told her to get out of the way and sit down and she obeyed
meekly.

Ole
Doc looked at the metal case, noted the meter readings and then looked at the
girl. She thought he was surveying her for the kill but she flattered herself.
Ole Doc was simply trying to think and it is easier to think when one has a
pretty object on which to fasten the eyes.

His
own helmet, with its ship-connected radio, had been left in the generalissimo's
car. No other communication of orthodox type was at hand. He grabbed up a
bundle of sheets, revealing a rather gruesome sight, wadded them into a ball,
saturated them with alcohol from his gear, opened a shutter partly and looked
cautiously out. There was a summerhouse which the wad would just reach and he
launched it. He was so quick that he had drawn and fired into it and shut the
shield before he got fire back. A moment later, when he peered through the
slits, he saw that the blankets were on fire and busily igniting the
summerhouse. There were enough roses around there to make a very good smudge.
But whether Hippocrates would see it and if he saw it whether or not he would
know it for what it was, Ole Doc could not possibly guess.

He
went back to the cabinet. A small meter at the top was
tick-tick-ticking
in
a beg to be valved off.

He
threw the switches and the yowl of the dynamo stopped, making a sudden and oppressive
silence in the room which hurt the girl's ears. Ole Doc peered into the view
plate, looked grim and sat down on the naked bed with the cadaver.

He
began to scribble on the white porcelain top of the box, making all manner of
intricate mathematical combinations, thumbing them out and making them once
more. He had figured all this once on a particularly boring trip between Center
and Galaxy
¹²
and he had written it all down neatly and with full
shorthand explanation just where it should have been—on his cuff. And he had
torn off the cuff and given it to Hippocrates. And Hippocrates had up and
burned the whole lot of them. Ole Doc swore, forgetting the girl, who held her
ears and, hearing swearing, was sure now that this could be no real Soldier of
Light, Savior of Mankind and pale and mournful patter of suffering little
children.

 

A
thundering
had
begun now on the
outer door and Ole Doc had to get up and double bar that. Giotini had certainly
been justified in making this room strong. Unless they blew up the whole
palace, they weren't likely to get in.

He
figured harder, getting his thumb entirely black with smudges of erasures,
reworking the equations frantically.

Far
off, there began a mutter of heavy cannon and he jerked up his head listening
intently. The weaker rattle he knew for the
Morgue
's
battery.
Hippocrates must be holding a powwow with them in his favorite way—and this
made the chances of rescue from that quarter very, very slim.

“What's
got into them people?” demanded Ole Doc of the metal box.

He
erased once more and began again, making himself assume a very detached air.
There was a sonic equation, a simple, embracing equation which, when he got it
back again—

The
girl saw how hard he was working and decided she had an opportunity to slide
out the door on the side which, so far, did not seem to be attacked. She raised
the bar, touched the knob and instantly was engulfed in a swirl of guardsmen.

Ole
Doc came up, took three steps across the bed and fired. The flare and flash of
his blaster lit up the room like summer lightning and the screams which greeted
it were a whole lot louder than thunder. One guardsman went down, sawed in
half. Another tangled up with the first, stood in quivering shock and then
rolled out of the way to let the man behind him take one full in the face.

The
girl was curled up in terror just inside the door. One shot furrowed two inches
above her head and another turned the knob which she still touched so hot that
it burned her. Her dress began to smolder at the hem from a ricochet.

Ole
Doc was still coming, still firing. He nailed his fourth and fifth man,
liberally sprayed the hall, ducked a tongue of lightning and got the door shut
by the expedient of burning a body which blocked it in half. He fixed the bar.