Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 11th Part 15

"The nights, George! How will I get through the long nights alone ... We are so young, George!" Her voice sank to a keening grief. "Our lives were all before us. So young! I'm thirty-two, George; a girl, a young girl. And you-thirty-four-your life had just begun...""Marge?" he said, hesitantly.

"Yes, Darling?"

"Are you sure I'm thirty-four?"

"I'm certain ... Oh, George..."

He gave a little snort of surprise. "That's funny," he said. "I always thought of myself as older."

"It's affected your mind, Darling. That too!"

"No." He considered the statement. "No. Not really. Just you know how it is. One day is like the next. A year goes by and you don't notice it. Then five..." He winced as his neck atrophied.

"It's all over, George. Our lives are finished, there's noth-ing left for us."

It took a time before her words penetrated; he s.h.i.+fted his gaze to meet hers. "That's not so, Marge. We can still talk."

"Yes," she said, in a sort of delirium. "We can still talk. That's right, George; we can still talk ... Talk to me, Dar-ling."

"I can't just talk," he said, in a tone of forbearing pa-tience. "First I have to have something to say."

She burst into a wild peal of laughter. "Yes, of course. But when you think of something, you'll talk to me, won't you, George? Promise me?"

She hovered over him, fluttering about, making ineffec-tual attempts to comfort and soothe him. "You mustn't worry, Darling," she said. "I'll always be beside you. When-ever you need me..." She waited for his reply.

"Swell," he said, at last.

"I'll stay by your side. Always. I'll never leave you for another. I'll refuse all invitations; I won't let myself be tempted."

"George! Look at me!"

He snuffled with faint bemus.e.m.e.nt. "Funny. I can't. My eyes are focussed straight ahead; atrophied, and I didn't even know it."

She seemed about to fly to new heights of frenzy but at the last moment controlled herself. "Well, it's almost over. Thank G.o.d for that..." She cut herself short. "But George, are you blind? Can you see?"

"Yes. I can see." A strange smile had settled on his face.

"Aren't you afraid, George?""No. No. I'm not afraid."

"GEORGE!" she cried. "That's not your normal voice. Not that too! George!

Talk to me! I'm frightened. Say some-thing. Some last thing! Don't leave me like this ... tell me what it's like. What do you feel? I've got to know, George."

His benign smile had set firmly on his features. "It's not so bad," he said, speaking slowly, his voice thickening with each syllable. "Not bad at all. I ... I..." And he had to summon every reserve of strength for his last words.

"I ... I sort of like it," he said.

______________________________.

It was pure chance that the alien with the wonderful gift for mankind should have come first to Dr. Kelly in quiet little Millville. Would the end result have been different if he'd gone first to a doctor in some other town?

SHOTGUN CURE.

by Clifford D. Simak

The clinics were set up and in the morning they'd start on Operation Kelly-and that was something, wasn't it, that they should call it Kelly!

He sat in the battered rocking chair on the sagging porch and said it once again and rolled it on his tonguer, but the taste of it was not so sharp nor sweet as it once had been, when the great London doctor had risen in the United Nations to suggest it could be called nothing else but Kelly.

Although, when one came to think of it, there was a deal of happenstance.

It needn't have been Kelly. It could have been just anyone at all with an M.D. to his name. It could as well have been Cohen or Johnson or Radzonovich or any other of them-any one of all the doctors in the world.

He rocked gently in the creaking chair while the floor boards of the porch groaned in sympathy, and in the gather-ing dusk were the sounds, as well, of children at the day's-end play, treasuring those last seconds before they had to go inside and soon thereafter to bed.

There was the scent of lilacs in the coolness of the air and at the corner of the garden he could faintly see the white flush of an early-blooming bridal wreath-the one that Martha Anderson had given him and Janet so many years ago, when they first had come to live in this very house.

A neighbor came tramping down the walk and he could not make him out in the deepening dusk, but the man called out to him. "Good evening, Doc,"

he said.

"Good evening, Hiram," said old Doc Kelly, knowing who it was by the voiceof him.

The neighbor went on, tramping down the walk.

Old Doc kept up his gentle rocking with his hands folded on his pudgy stomach and from inside the house he could hear the bustling in the kitchen as Janet cleared up after supper. In a little while, perhaps, she'd come out and sit with him and they'd talk together, low-voiced and casually, as befitted an old couple very much in love.

Although, by rights, he shouldn't stay out here on the porch. There was the medical journal waiting for him on the study desk and he should be reading it. There was so much new stuff these days that a man should keep up with-although, perhaps, the way things were turning out it wouldn't really matter if a man kept up or not.

Maybe in the years to come there'd be precious little a man would need to keep up with.

Of course, there'd always be need of doctors. There'd al-ways be d.a.m.n fools smas.h.i.+ng up their cars and shooting one another and getting fishhooks in their hands and falling out of trees. And there'd always be the babies.

He rocked gently to and fro and thought of all the babies and how some of them had grown until they were men and women now and had babies of their own. And he thought of Martha Anderson, Janet's closest friend, and he thought of Con Gilbert, as ornery an old s.h.i.+kepoke as ever walked the earth, and tight with money, too. He chuckled a bit wryly, thinking of all the money Con Gilbert finally owed him, never having paid a bill in his entire life.

But that was the way it went. There were some who paid and others who made no pretense of paying, and that was why he and Janet lived in this old house and he drove a five-year-old car and Janet had worn the self-same dress to church the blessed winter long.

Although it made no difference, really, once one consid-ered it. For the important pay was not in cash.

There were those who paid and those who didn't pay. And there were those who lived and the other ones who died, no matter what you did. There was hope for some and the ones who had no hope-and some of these you told and there were others that you didn't.

But it was different now.

And it all had started right here in this little town of Millville-not much more than a year ago.

Sitting in the dark, with the lilac scent and the white blush of the bridal wreath and the muted sounds of chil-dren clasping to themselves the last minutes of their play, he remembered it.It was almost 8:30 and he could hear Martha Anderson in the outer office talking to Miss Lane and she, he knew, had been the last of them.

He took off his white jacket, folding it absent-mindedly, fogged with weariness, and laid it across the examination table.

Janet would be waiting supper, but she'd never say a word, for she never had. All these many years she had never said a word of reproach to him, although there had been at times a sense of disapproval at his easy-going ways, at his keeping on with patients who didn't even thank him, much less pay their bills. And a sense of disapproval, too, at the hours he kept, at his willingness to go out of nights when he could just as well have let a call go till his regular morning rounds.

She would be waiting supper and she would know that Martha had been in to see him and she'd ask him how she was, and what was he to tell her?

He heard Martha going out and the sharp click of Miss Lane's heels across the outer office. He moved slowly to the basin and turned on the tap, picking up the soap.

He heard the door creak open and did not turn his head.

"Doctor," said Miss Lane, "Martha thinks she's fine. She says you're helping her. Do you think..."

"What would you do?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said.

"Would you operate, knowing it was hopeless? Would you send her to a specialist, knowing that he couldn't help her, knowing she can't pay him and that she'll worry about not paying? Would you tell her that she has, perhaps, six months to live and take from her the little happiness and hope she still has left to her?"

"I am sorry, doctor."

"No need to be. I've faced it many times. No case is the same. Each one calls for a decision of its own. It's been a long, hard day..."

"Doctor, there's another one out there."

"Another patient?"

"A man. He just came in. His name is Harry Herman."

"Herman? I don't know any Hermans."

"He's a stranger," said Miss Lane. "Maybe he just moved into town."

"If he'd moved in," said Doc, "I'd have heard of it. I hear everything.""Maybe he's just pa.s.sing through. Maybe he got sick driving on the road."

"Well, send him in," said Doc, reaching for a towel. "I'll have a look at him."

The nurse turned to the door.

"And Miss Lane."

"Yes?"

"You may as well go home. There's no use sticking round. It's been a real bad day."

And it had been, at that, he thought. A fracture, a burn, a cut, a dropsy, a menopause, a pregnancy, two pelvics, a scattering of colds, a feeding schedule, two teethings, a sus-picious lung, a possible gallstone, a cirrhosis of the liver and Martha Anderson. And now, last of all, this man named Harry Herman-no name that he knew and when one came to think of it, a rather funny name.

And he was a funny man. Just a bit too tall and willowy to be quite believable, ears too tight against his skull, lips so thin they seemed no lips at all.

"Doctor?" he asked, standing in the doorway.

"Yes," said Doc, picking up his jacket and shrugging into it. "Yes, I am the doctor. Come on in. What can I do for you?"

"I am not ill," said the man.

"Not ill?"

"But I want to talk to you. You have time, perhaps?"

"Yes, certainly," said Doc, knowing that he had no time and resenting this intrusion. "Come on in. Sit down." He tried to place the accent, but was unable to. Central European, most likely.

"Technical," said the man. "Professional."

"What do you mean?" asked Doc, getting slightly nettled.

"I talk to you technical. I talk professional."

"You mean that you're a doctor?"

"Not exactly," said the man, "although perhaps you think so. I should tell you immediate that I am an alien."

"An alien," said Old Doc. "We've got lots of them around. Mostly refugees.""Not what I mean. Not that kind of alien. From some other planet. From some other star."

"But you said your name was Herman..."

"When in Rome," said the other one, "you must do as Romans."

"Huh?" asked Doc, and then: "Good G.o.d, do you mean that? That you are an alien. By an alien, do you mean..."

The other nodded happily. "From some other planet. From some other star.

Very many light-years."

"Well, I be d.a.m.ned," said Doc.

He stood there looking at the alien and the alien grinned back at him, but uncertainly. "You think, perhaps," the alien said, "but he is so human!"

"That," said Doc, "was going through my mind."

"So you would have a look, perhaps. You would know a human body."

"Perhaps," said Doc, grimly, not liking it at all. "But the human body can take some funny turns."

"But not a turn like this," said the stranger, showing him his hands.

"No," said the shocked Old Doc. "No such turn as that."