Expanded Universe Part 22

"I'm sure of that."

Presently Morgan added, "There's one thing this has taught me: You can't enslave a free man. Only person can do that to a man is himself. No, sir-you can't enslave a free man. The most you can do is kill him."

"That's a fact, Ed."

"It is. Got a cigarette, Doc?"

"It won't do you any good, Ed."

"It won't do me any harm, either-now, will it?"

"Well, not much." McCracken unregretfully gave him his last and watched him smoke it.

Later, Morgan said, "Dad's ready for you, Captain. So long."

"So long. Don't forget. Half a pill at a time. Drink all the water you want, but don't take your blankets off, no matter how hot you get."

"Half a pill it is. Good luck."

"I'll have Ted check on you tomorrow." Morgan shook his head. "That's too soon. Not for a couple of days at least."

McCracken smiled. "I'll decide that, Ed. You just keep yourself wrapped up. Good luck." He withdrew to where Carter waited for him. "You go ahead, Dad. I'll bring up the rear. Signal Art to start."

Carter hesitated. "Tell me straight, Doc. What kind of shape is he in?"

McCracken studied Carter's face, then said in a low voice, "I give him about two hours."

"I'll stay behind with him."

"No, Dad, you'll carry out your orders." Seeing the distress in the old man's eyes, he added, "Don't you worry about Morgan. A free man can take care of himself. Now get moving."

"Yes, sir."

FOREWORD.

This story was tailored in length (1500 words) for Colliers as a short-short. I then tried it on the American Legion magazine-and was scolded for suggesting that the treatment given our veterans was ever less than perfect. I then offered it to several SF editors-and was told that it was not a science fiction story. (Gee whiz and Gosh wollickers!-s.p.a.ce warps and FTL are science but therapy and psychology are not. I must be in the wrong church.) But this story does have a major sho rtcorning, one that usually is fatal. Try to spot it. I will put the answer just after the end.

NO BANDS PLAYING, NO.

FLAGS FLYING-.

"The bravest man lever saw in my life!" Jones said, being rather shrill about it.

We-Jones and Arkwright and I-were walking toward the parking lot at the close of visiting hours out at the veterans hospital. Wars come and wars go, but the wounded we have always with us-and d.a.m.ned little attention they get between wars. If you bother to look (few do), you can find some broken human remnants dating clear back to World War One in some of our wards.

So our post always sends out a visiting committee every Sunday, every holiday. I'm usually on it, have been for thirty years-if you can't pay a debt, you can at least try to meet the interest. And you do get so that you can stand it.

But Jones was a young fellow making his first visit. Quite upset, he was. Well, surely, I would have despised him if he hadn't been-this crop was fresh in from Southeast Asia. Jones had held it in, then burst out with that remark once we were outside.

"What do you mean by 'bravery'?" I asked him. (Not but what Jones had plenty to back up his opinion- this lad he was talking about was shy both legs and his eyesight, yet he was chin-up and merry.) "Well, what do you mean by 'bravery'? Jones de manded, then added, "sir." Respect for my white hair rather than my opinions, I think; there was an edge in his voice.

"Keep your s.h.i.+rt on, son," I answered. "What that lad back there has I'd call 'fort.i.tude,' the ability to endure adversity without losing your morale. I'm not disparaging it; it may be a higher virtue than bravery-but I define 'bravery' as the capacity to choose to face danger when you are frightened by it."

"Why do you say 'choose'?"

"Because nine men out often meet the test when it's forced on them. But it takes something extra to face up to danger when it scares the c.r.a.p out of you and there's an easy way to bug out." I glanced at my watch. "Give me three minutes and I'll tell you about the bravest man I've ever met."

I was a young fellow myself back between War One and War Two and had been in a hospital much like this one Arkwright and Jones and I had visited- picked up a spot on my lung in the Ca.n.a.l Zone and had been sent there for the cure. Mind you, this was years ago when lung therapy was primitive. No antibiotics, no specific drugs. The first thing they would try was a phrenectomy-cut the nerve that controls the diaphragm to immobilize the lung and let it get well. If that didn't work, they used artificial pneumothorax. If that failed, they did a "backdoor job"-chop out some ribs and fit you with a corset.

All these were just expedients to hold a lung still so it could get well. In artificial pneumothorax they shove a hollow needle between your ribs so that the end is between rib wall and lung wall, then pump the s.p.a.ce in between full of air; this compresses the lung like a squeezed sponge.

But the air would be absorbed after a while and you had to get pumped up again. Every Friday morning those of us on pneumo would gather in the ward surgeon's office for the needle. It wasn't grim-lungers are funny people; they are almost always cheerful. This was an officers' ward and we treated it like a club. Instead of queuing up outside the surgeon's office we would swarm in, loll in his chair, sit on his desk, smoke his cigarettes, and swap lies while he took care of us. Four of us that morning and I was the first.

Taking the air needle isn't bad-just a slight p.r.i.c.k as it goes in and you can even avoid that if you want to bother with skin anesthesia. It's over in a few minutes; you put your bathrobe back on and go back to bed. I hung around after I was through because the second patient, chap named Saunders, was telling a dirty story that was new to me.

He broke off in the middle of it to climb up on the table when I got off. Our number-one ward surgeon was on leave and his a.s.sistant was taking care of us- a young chap not long out of school. We all liked him and felt he had the makings of a great surgeon.

Getting pumped up is not dangerous in any reasonable sense of the word. You can break your neck falling off a step ladder, choke to death on a chicken bone. You can slip on a rainy day, knock yourself out, and drown in three inches of rain water. And there is just as unlikely a way to hit the jackpot in taking artificial pneumothorax. If the needle goes a little too far, penetrates the lung, and if an air bubble then happens to be forced into a blood vessel and manages to travel all the way back to the heart without being absorbed, it is possible though extremely unlikely to get a sort of vapor lock in the valves of your heart-air embolism, the doctors call it. Given all these improbable events, you can die.

We never heard the end of Saunders' dirty joke. He konked out on the table.

The young doc did everything possible for him and sent for help while he was doing it. They tried this and that, used all the tricks, but the upshot was that they brought in the meat basket and carted him off to the morgue.

Three of us were still standing there, not saying a word-me, reswallowing my breakfast and thanking my stars that I was through with it, an ex-field-clerk named Josephs who was next up, and Colonel Hostetter who was last in line. The surgeon turned and looked at us. He was sweating and looked bad-may have been the first patient he had ever lost; he was still a kid. Then he turned to Dr. Armand who had come in from the next ward. I don't know whether he was going to ask the older man to finish it for him or whether he was going to put it off for a day, but it was clear from his face that he did not intend to go ahead right then.

Whatever it was, he didn't get a chance to say it. Josephs stood up, threw off his bathrobe and climbed up on the table. He had just lighted a cigarette; he pa.s.sed it to a hospital orderly and said, "Hold this for me, Jack, while Doctor"-he named our own surgeon-"pumps me up." With that he peels up his pajama coat.

You know the old business about sending a student pilot right back up after his first crack up. That was the shape our young doctor was in-he had to get right back to it and prove to himself that it was just bad luck and not because he was a butcher. But he couldn't send himself back in; Josephs had to do it for him. Josephs could have ruined him professionally that moment, by backing out and giving him time to work up a real case of nerves-but instead Josephs forced his hand, made him do it.

Josephs died on the table.

The needle went in and everything seemed all right, then Josephs gave a little sigh and died. Dr.

Armand was on hand this time and took charge, but it did no good. It was like seeing the same horror movie twice. The same four men arrived to move the body over to the morgue-probably the same basket.

Our doctor now looked like a corpse himself. Dr. Armand took over. "You two get back to bed," he said to Colonel Hostetter and me. "Colonel, come over to my ward this afternoon; I'll take care of your treatment."

But Hostetter shook his head. "No, thank you," he said crisply, "My ward surgeon takes care of my needs." He took off his robe. The young fellow didn't move. The Colonel went up to him and shook his arm. "Come, now Doctor-you'll make us both late for lunch." With that he climbed up on the table and exposed his ribs.

A few moments later he climbed off again, the job done, and our ward surgeon was looking human again, although still covered with sweat.

I stopped to catch my breath. Jones nodded soberly and said, "I see what you mean. To do what Colonel Hostetter did takes a kind of cold courage way beyond the courage needed to fight."

"He doesn't mean anything of the sort," Arkwright objected. "He wasn't talking about Hostetter; he meant the intern. The doctor had to steady down and do a job-not once but twice. Hostetter just had to hold still and let him do it."

I felt tired and old. "Just a moment," I said. "You're both wrong. Remember I defined 'bravery' as requiring that a man had to have a choice . . . and chooses to be brave in spite of his own fear. The ward surgeon had the decisions forced on him, so he is not in the running. Colonel Hostetter was an old man and blooded in battle-and he had Josephs' example to live up to. So he doesn't get first prize."

"But that's silly," Jones protested. "Josephs was brave, sure-but, if it was hard for Josephs to offer himself, it was four times as hard for Hostetter. It would begin to look like a jinx-like a man didn't stand a chance of coming off that table alive."

"Yes, yes!" I agreed. "I know, that's the way I felt at the time. But you didn't let me finish. I know for certain that it took more bravery to do what Josephs did.

"The autopsy didn't show an aft embolism in Josephs, or anything else. Josephs died of fright."

The End

The Answer: I'll bury this in other words to keep your eye from picking it up at once; the shortcoming is that this is a true story. I was there. I have changed names, places, and dates but not the essential facts.

FOREWORD.

You may not be old enough to remember the acute housing shortage following World War II (the subject of this story) but if you are over six but not yet old enough for the undertaker, you are aware of the current problem of getting in out of the rain. . . a problem especially acute for the young couple with one baby and for the retired old couple trying to get by on Social "Security" plus savings if any. (I am not suggesting that it is easy for those between youth and old age; the present price of mortgage money const.i.tutes rape with violence; the price tag on an honestly-constructed-if you can find one-two-bedroom house makes me feel faint.) In 1960 in Moscow Mrs. Heinlein and I had as Intourist courier a sweet child named Ludmilla-23, unmarried, living with her father, mother, brother and sisters. She told us that her ambition in life was for her family not to have to share a bathroom with another family.

The next aesthete who sneers at our American "plumbing culture" in my presence I intend to cut into small pieces and flush him down that W.C. he despises.

Any old pol will recognize the politics in this story as the Real McCoy. Should be. Autobiographical in many details. Which details? Show me a warrant and I'll take the Fifth.

A BATHROOM OF HER OWN.

Ever step on a top step that wasn't there?

That's the way I felt when I saw my honorable opponent for the office of city councilman, third district.

Tom Griffith had telephoned at the close of filing, to let me know my opponents. "Alfred McNye," he said, "and Francis X. Nelson."

"McNye we can forget," I mused. "He files just for the advertising. It's a three-way race-me, this Nelson party, and the present enc.u.mbrance, Judge Jorgens. Maybe we'll settle it in the primaries." Our fair city has the system laughingly called "non-partisan"; a man can be elected in the primary by getting a clear majority.

"Jorgens didn't file, Jack. The old thief isn't running for re-election."

I let this sink in. "Tom, we might as well tear up those photostats. Do you suppose Tully's boys are conceding our district?"

"The machine can't concede the third district, not this year. It must be Nelson."

"I suppose so . . . it can't be McNye. What d'you know about him?"

"Nothing."

"Nor I. Well, we'll look him over tonight." The Civic League had called a "meet-the-candidates"

meeting that night. I drove out to the trailer camp where I hang my hat-then a shower, a shave, put on my hurtin' shoes, and back to town. It gave me time to think.

It's not unusual for a machine to replace-temporarily-a man whose record smells too ripe with a citizen of no background to be sniped at. I could visualize Nelson-young, manly looking, probably a lawyer and certainly a veteran. He would be so politically naive that he would stand without hitching, or so ambitious that it would blind him to what he must do to keep the support of the machine. Either way the machine could use him.

I got there just in time to be introduced and take a seat on the platform. I couldn't spot Nelson but I did see Cliff Meyers, standing with some girl. Meyers is a handyman for Boss Tully-Nelson would be around close McNye accepted the call of the peepul in a few hundred well-worn words then the chairman introduced Nelson "-a veteran of this war and candidate for the same office"

The girl standing with Meyers walked up and took the stage They clapped and somebody in the balcony gave a wolf whistle Instead of getting fl.u.s.tered, she smiled up and said, "Thank you!"

They clapped again and whistled and stomped She started talking I'm not bright-I had trouble learning to wave bye-bye and never did master patty-cake. I expected her to apologize for Nelson's absence and identify herself as his wife or sister or something. She was into her fourth paragraph before I realized that she was Nelson. j Francis X. Nelson-Frances X. Nelson. I wondered what I had done to deserve this. Female candidates are poison to run against at best; you don't dare use the ordinary rough-and-tumble, while she is free to use anything from a blacksnake whip to mickeys in your coffee.

Add to that ladylike good looks, obvious intelli gence, platform poise-and a veteran. I couldn't have lived that wrong. I tried to catch Tohi Griffith's eye to share my misery, but he was looking at her and the lunk was lapping it up.

Nelson-Miss Nelson-was going to town on housing. "You promised him that when he got out of that foxhole nothing would be too good for him. And what did he get? A shack in shanty-town, the sofa in his inlaws' parlor, a garage with no plumbing. If I am elected I shall make it my first concern-"

You couldn't argue against it. Like good roads, good weather, and the American Home, everybody is for veterans' housing.

When the meeting broke up, I snagged Tom and we rounded up the leaders of the Third District a.s.sociation and adjourned to the home of one of the members. "Look, folks," I told them, "when we caucused and I agreed to run, our purpose was to take a bite out of the machine by kicking out Jorgens.

Well, the situation has changed. It's not too late for me to forfeit the filing fee. How about it?"

Mrs. Holmes-Mrs. Bixby Holmes, as fine an old warhorse as ever swung a gavel-looked amazed.

"What's gotten into you, Jack? Getting rid of Jorgens is only half of it. We have to put in men we can depend on. For this district, you're it."