Ole Doc Methuselah Part 35

of legends she had seen a picture of a Soldier of Light.

Her eyes shot wide and then she came forward, falling on her knees and gripping Ole Doc by the hand.

"You come too late," she said brokenly. "Too late!

Poor, poor Will. He is dead. You have come too late but maybe you can save my people." She looked pleadingly up. "Say you will save my people?'

Ole Doc put her gently aside. He laid the girl down upon a nearby couch and approached the bed. He threw back the cover and gazed at Wilhelm Giotini.

Wilhelm Reiter Giotini, unblooded ruler of Fomalton, creator of empires and materializer of dreams, was far past any common succor. The fierce energy he had stored up in the streets of Earth as a gutter gammon had not served him at the last. The pride and fury of him had not staved off attack. The greatness of his mind, his benefi- cence to science, his bequests and scholars.h.i.+ps had not added one single instant to his life. Here he lay, a sodden lump of dead flesh, inheritor of man's allotted ground, six-by-two-by-six just the same.

Ole Doc turned to Madame Giotini and Lebel. "Leave me."

They looked at the body and then at Ole Doc and they backed to the door. Ole Doc fastened them out and returned to the bed and stood there gazing at Giotini.

"Hippocrates!" he barked.

But there was no Hippocrates there and Ole Doc had to write his list and slide it through the door to a messenger.

He went back to his thoughtful vigil by the dead.

When the girl stirred Ole Doc transferred his attention and approached the couch with a slight smile. She was, after all, a very pretty girl. He gave her a small white pill and a swallow from his flask and shortly she returned from the world of her nightmares and fixed him with pale wonder.

"It is all right," said Ole Doc. "I am a Soldier of Light."

She blinked, awed, and began to gather up her torn white satin. "But the disease. I caught the disease. I was dying!"

"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 n.o.body thought it would come here today. It was awful!" She shuddered and avert- ed 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 tune 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 compas- sion 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, connect- ed 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 ta.s.sels of an embroidered cus.h.i.+on. She heard a curious sawing sound, surmised what it was and twisted so hard that the ta.s.sel 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 min- utes. 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 blood- thirsty. 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?"