Drunkard's Walk

CHAPTER XIV

Locille sat next to her mother in the hospital's cafeteria, grateful that at last they had found a place to sit down. The hospital on the texas was unusually busy, worried visitors occupying every inch of space in the waiting-room, the halls outside the reception area, even the glassed-in sundeck that hung over the angry waves and was normally used for the comfort of the patients during the day. It was very late, and the cafeteria should have been closed; but the hospital had opened it for coffee and very little else. Her mother said something but Locille only nodded. She hadn't heard. It was not easy to hear, with the loud bull-roarer twangg of the suspended cables from the texas droning at them. And she had, besides, been thinking mostly of Cornut.

There had been no fresh news from the night proctor on the phone; Cornut had not returned.

'He ate so well,' her mother said suddenly. Locille patted her hand. The coffee was cold, but she drank it anyhow. The doctor knew where to find her, she thought, though of course he would be busy...

'He was the best of my babies,' said her mother.

Locille knew that it was very close to ending for her brother. The rash that baffled the medics, the fever that glazed his eyes - they were only the outward indicators of a terrible battle inside his motionless body; they were headlines on a newspaper a thousand miles away, saying 800 Marines Die Storming Iwo; they represented the fact of blood and pain and death, but they were not the fact itself. Roger was dying. The outward indicators had been controlled, but salve could only dry up the pustulant sores, pills could only ease his breathing, shots could only soothe the pain in his head.

'He ate so well,' said her mother, dreaming aloud, 'and he talked at eighteen months. He had a little elephant with a music box and he could wind it up.'

'Don't worry,' whispered Locille falsely.

'But we let him go swimming,' sighed her mother, looking around the crowded room. It was she, not Locille, who first saw the nurse coming towards them through the crowd, and she must have known as soon as Locille, from the look on the nurse's face, what the message was that she had for them.

'He was the tenth in my ward today,' whispered the nurse, looking for a private place to tell them and not finding it. 'He never regained consciousness.'

Cornut walked out of the residence, blinking. It was morning. 'Nice day,' he said politely to Jillson, beside him. Jillson nodded. He was pleased with Cornut. The kid wasn't going to give them any trouble.

As they walked Jillson 'shouted' in Cornut's mind. It was hard with these half-baked telepaths, he sighed; but it was part of his job. He was the executioner. He took Cornut's elbow - bodily contact helped a little, not much -and reminded him what he was supposed to do. You need to die. You'll kill yourself.

'Oh, yes,' said Cornut aloud. He was surprised. He'd promised, hadn't he? He bore no resentment for the beating. He understood that it had a purpose; the more dazed, the more exhausted he was, the surer their control of him. He had no objection at all to being under the control of four ancient immortals, since - he was.

You die, Cornut, but what difference does it make? Today, tomorrow, fifty years from now. It's all the same.

'That's right,' Cornut agreed politely. He was not very interested, the subject had been thoroughly covered, all night long. He noticed absently that there was a considerable crowd around the Med Centre. The whole campus seemed somehow uneasy.

They crossed under the shadow of the Administration Building and circled around it, towards Math Tower.

You will die, you know, 'shouted' Jillson. One day the world will wake up and no Cornut. Put a stethoscope to his poor chest, no heart beats. The sound of a beating heart that you have heard every day of your life will never be heard again. Cornut was embarrassed. These things were true; he did not mind being told them; but it was certainly rather immature of Jillson to take such evident pleasure in them. His thoughts came with a sort of smirk, like an adolescent gloating over a dirty picture.

The brain turns into jelly, chanted Jillson gleefully. The body turns into slime. He licked his lips, hot-eyed.

Cornut looked about him, anxious to change the subject. 'Oh, look,' he said. 'Isn't that Sergeant Rhame?'

Jillson pounded on: The hangnail on your thumb that hurts now will dissolve and rot and moulder. Not even the pain will ever be thought of by any living human again. Your bedgirl, is there anything you put off telling her? You put it off too long, Cornut.

'It is Sergeant Rhame. Sergeant!'

Damn, crashed a thought in Cornut's mind; but Jillson was smiling, smiling. 'Hello, Sergeant,' he said with his voice, his mind raging.

Cornut would have helped Jillson along if he had known how, but his half-dazed condition robbed him of enterprise. Too bad, he thought consolingly, hoping that Jillson would pick up the thought. I know St Cyr ordered you to stay with me until I was dead, but don't worry. I'll kill myself. I promise.

Sergeant Rhame was talking gruffly to Jillson about the mob at Med Centre. Cornut wished Rhame would go away. He understood that Rhame was a danger to the immortals; they could not be involved, with the same people, in too many violent deaths. Rhame had investigated the death of Master Carl at Jillson's hands; he could not now be allowed to investigate even the suicide of Master Cornut, when he had seen Jillson with him going to his death. Jillson would have to leave him now. Too bad. It was so right, Cornut thought, that he should die for the sake of preserving the safety of the immortals, as they were the future of humanity. He knew this; they had told him so themselves.

A word caught his attention: '—since the sickness began they've been mobbing every hospital,' said Sergeant Rhame to Jillson, waving at the mob before Med Centre.

'Sickness?' asked Cornut, diverted. He stared at the policeman. It was as though he had said, I've got to get some garlic, there are vampires loose tonight. Sickness was a relic of the dark ages. You had a headache or a queasy stomach, yes, but you went to the clinic and the diagnosticon did the rest.

Rhame grumbled, 'Where've you been, Master Cornut?

Nearly a thousand deaths in this area alone. Mobs seeking immunization. What they were calling Virus Gamma. It's really smallpox, they think.'

'Smallpox?' Even more fantastic! Cornut knew the word only as an archeological relic.

'Accidents all over the city,' said Rhame, and Cornut thought suddenly of the crash he had seen. 'Fever and rash and - oh, I don't know the symptoms. But it's fatal. The medics don't seem to have a cure.'

'Me disfella smellim,' said a voice from behind Rhame. 'Him spoilim fes distime. Plantim manyfella pox.' It was one of the aboriginals, quietly observing while Rhame's police erected barricades in front of their enclosure. 'Plantim mefella Mary,' he added sadly.

Rhame said: 'Understand any of it? It's English, if you listen close. Pidgin. He says they know about smallpox. I think he said his wife died of it.'

'Plantim mefella Mary,' agreed the aboriginal.

Rhame said, 'Unfortunately, I think he's right. Looks like your Field Expedition brought a lot of trouble back with it; the focus of infection seems to vector from these people. Look at their faces.' Cornut looked; the broad, dark cheeks were waffled with old pitted scars. 'So we're trying to keep the mob from making trouble here,' said Sergeant Rhame, 'by putting a fence around them.'

Cornut was even more incredulous than before. Mob violence?

It was not really his problem ... since he would have no more problems in the world. He nodded politely to Rhame, conspiratorially to Jillson, and moved on towards Math Tower. The aborigine yelled something after him - 'Waitimup mefella Masatura-san, he speak you!' - it sounded like. Cornut paid no attention.

Jillson 'yelled' after him too. Don't forget! You must die! Cornut turned and nodded. Of course he had to die. It was only right....

But it was difficult, all the same.

Fortunately Locille was not in the room. Cornut felt, and quelled a swift reeling sense of horror at the thought of losing her. It was only an emotion, and he was its master.

Probably the pithecanthropus had had similar emotions, he thought, casting about for a convenient way to die. It was not as easy as it looked.

He made sure his door was locked, thought for a moment, and decided to treat himself to a farewell drink. He found a bottle, poured, toasted the air and said aloud, 'To the next species.' Then he buckled down to work.

The idea of dying is never far from the mind of any mortal, but Cornut had never viewed it as anything up close in the foreground of his future. It was curiously alarming. Everybody did it, he reassured himself. (Well, almost everybody.) Babies did it. Old men fouled themselves, sighed and did it. Neurotics did it because of an imagined insult, or because of fear. Brave men did it in war. Virgins did it as the less undesirable alternative to a sultan's seraglio, so said the old stories. Why did it seem so hard?

As Cornut was a methodical man, he sat down at his desk and began to make a list, headed:

MEANS OF DEATH

1. Poison.

2. Slashed wrists.

3. Jumping from window. (Or bridge.)

4. Electrocution ...

He paused. Electrocution? It didn't sound so bad, especially considering that he had already tried most of the others, nearly. It would be nice to try something new. He poured himself another drink to think about it, and began to hum. He was feeling quite peaceful.

'It's only right that I should die,' he said comfortably. 'Naturally. Are you listening, Jillson?' He couldn't tell, of course. But probably they were.

And maybe they were worried. That was a saddening thought; he didn't want the immortals to worry about him. 'I understand perfectly,' he said loud. 'I hope you hear me.

I'm in your way.' He paused, not aware that he had raised a tectorial finger. 'It is,' he said, 'like this. Suppose I had terminal cancer. Suppose St Cyr and I were in a shipwreck, and there was only one lifebelt. He has a life ahead of him, I have at best a week of pain. Who gets the lifebelt?' He shook the finger. 'St Cyr does!' he thundered. 'And this is the same case. I have a mortal disease, humanity. And it's their lives or mine!'

He poured another drink and decided that the truths that had been whipped into him were too great to lose. The sheet of paper with suicide possibilities fell unheeded to the floor; humming, he wrote:

We are children and the immortals are fully grown. Like children, we need their knowledge. They lead us, they direct our universities and plan our affairs; they have the wisdom of centuries and without them we would be lost, random particles, statistical chaos. But we are dangerous children, so they must remain secret and those who guess must die...

He crumpled the piece of paper angrily. He had nearly spoiled everything! His own vanity had almost revealed the secret he was about to die to protect. He scrambled on the floor for the list of possibilities, but stopped himself, bent over, staring at the floor.

The truth was that he didn't really like any of them.

He sat up and poured a drink sadly. He couldn't rely on himself to do a good job, he said to himself. Slashing his wrists, for example. Someone might come; and what could be more embarrassing than waking up on an operating table with sutures in his veins and the whole damned thing to do over again?

He noticed that his glass was empty again, but didn't bother to refill it. He was feeling quite sufficiently alcoholic already. If it weren't for his own confounded ineptitude he could be feeling pretty good, in fact, for it was nice to know that in a very short time he would be serving the best interests of the world by dying. Very nice ... He got up and wandered to the window, beaming. Outside the mobs were still swarming, trying to get immunization at the Med Centre; poor fools; he was so much better off than they! 'Strike the Twos and strike the Threes,' he sang. 'The Sieve of-Say!'

He had an idea. How fine it was, he thought gratefully, to have the wise helping hand of an elder friend in a time like this. He didn't have to worry about how to die, or whether he'd make a mess of it. He needed only to give St Cyr and the others a chance. Just relax ... let himself get drowsy ... even more drunk, perhaps. They would do the rest.

'The Sieve of Eratosthenes,' he sang cheerfully. 'When the multiples sublime, the numbers that are left, are prime!' He stumbled over to his bed and sprawled...

After a moment he got up, angrily. He wasn't being a bit fair. If it was difficult for him to find a convenient way of dying in his room, why should he impose that difficulty on his good liege, St Cyr?

He was extremely irritated with himself over that; but, picking up the bottle, marching out into the hall, singing as he looked for a conveniently fatal spot, he gradually began to feel very good again.

Sergeant Rhames tested the barricades in front of the aborigines' enclosure and let his men go back to trying to control the mobs at Med Centre. All the time his men were working, the aborigines had been trying to talk to them in their odd pidgin, but the police were too busy. The one who spoke English at all well, Masatura-san, was in his hut; the others were almost incomprehensible. Rhame glanced at his watch and decided that he had time for a quick cup of coffee before going over to help his men with the crowd. Although, he thought, it might be kinder to leave the crowd alone to crush half its members to death. At least it would be quick. And the private information of the police department surgeon was that the inoculations were not effective ... He turned, startled, as a girl's voice called him.

It was Locille, weeping. 'Please, can you help me? Cornut's gone, and my brother's dead, and - I found this.' She held out the sheet with Cornut's carefully lettered list of suicide possibilities.

The fact that Rhame had been taken from his computer studies to help hold a mob down was evidence enough that he really belonged there; but he hesitated and was lost. Individual misery was that much more persuasive than mass panic. He began with the essentials: 'Where is he? No idea at all? No note? Any witnesses who might have seen him go? ... You didn't ask? Why— 'But he had no time to ask why she had failed to question witnesses; he knew that every moment Cornut was off by himself was very possibly the moment in which he would die.

They found the student proctor, jumpy and distracted but still somewhere near his post. And he had seen Cornut!

'He was kind of crazy, I thought. I tried to tell him something - you know Egerd, used to be in his class?' (He knew perfectly well just how well Locille had known Egerd.) 'He died this morning. I thought Master Cornut would be interested, but he didn't even hear.'

Rhame observed the expression on Locille's face, but there was no time to worry about her feeling for a dead undergraduate. 'Which way? When?'

He had gone down the corridor more than half an hour before. They followed.

Locille said miserably, 'It's a miracle he's alive at all! But if he lasted this long... and I was just a few minutes late...'

'Shut up,' the policeman said harshly, and called out to another undergraduate.

Following him was easy; he had been conspicuous by his wild behaviour, even on that day. A few yards from the faculty refectory they heard raucous singing.

'It's Cornut!' cried Locille, and raced ahead. Rhame caught her at the door of the kitchens where she had worked so many months.

He was staggering about singing in a sloppy howl one of Master Carl's favourite tunes:

Add ray to modul, close th' set To adding, subtracting—

He stumbled against a cutting table and swore good-naturedly.

Produce a new system, an' this goddam thing ... Is gen'rally termed a (hic) ring!

In one hand he had a sharp knife, filched from the meat-cutter's drawer; he waved it, marking time.

'Come on, damn it!' he cried, laughing. 'Goose me along!'

'Save him!' cried Locille, and started to run to him; but Rhame caught her arm. 'Let go of me! He might cut his throat!'

He held her, staring hard. Cornut didn't even hear them; he was singing again. Rhame said at last, 'But he isn't doing it, you see. And he's had plenty of time, by the look of the place. Suicidal? Maybe I'm wrong, Locille, but it looks to me as if he's just blind drunk.'