The Year's Best Science Fiction 11

INVESTIGATING THE BIDWELL ENDEAVORS DAVID R. BUNCH

Actually, for two crazy people, I thought they had a pretty good service, when I first heard about it. Not that I set too much store by it, naturally, being the way I am, scientific and realistic, but I regarded it as pleasant, thoughtful of others, unselfish, very very unusual, harmless and probably something to be entirely avoided by any sane normal person wherever he might be. But my curiosity was such that I couldn’t leave it alone. I had to see, had to investigate. And now that I’m back from seeing, I’m not so sure that any of my first, hearsay impressions of this business were valid, or even accurate.

You see the Bidwell twins, sisters, were the ones operating this little service. And when I say twins, sisters, I know you surely are going to get right down to thinking of cute little twin sisters you’ve known, as alike probably as two little twin China dolls might be, waiting all dressed up for a party or tripping down morning-glory paths toward school buses. But don’t think of anything like that. Think of the Bidwell sisters, old, wrinkled, spinsterish, gray, faded, one short, one about a foot taller than any woman ever should be—that kind of twins. And while you’re thinking of that kind of twins, think of them standing side by side looking like some great gaunt bird and its shrunken hairy egg, dressed in starchy white, on the clean white porch of their clean white mansion in a clean little mid-America mid-twentieth-century town. (No, they’ll not be taking a break from their self-appointed professional duties. Not exactly. They’ll be waiting for the mail.) And while you’re about it, don’t forget to think of their eyes, clear blue, like the blue of a December sky looking down on snow. Real evangel eyes, you’ll think at first, but on second guess you won’t know what to guess, probably, so you’ll just stall for time and think of other matters.

Like a first floor room all littered with papers, you’ll think of that. And a postman toiling hard up the street, leading with both hands a big postal bag on a cart, bringing the Bidwell mail, more dailies than the rest of the town all put together takes. Then if you look around back, in the backyard, you’ll see the mountains and foothills of stacked newspapers and the neat, wired bundles of clippings, all waiting for the Boy Scouts to come and haul them away. After a while, just looking at these tall hillocks and big peaks of paper, you’ll begin to get a little of the feel of the enormity of the Bidwell undertaking.

Then from a vantage point in the backyard, on top of a Mt. McKinley of old news, maybe, you’ll look at the Bidwell house, really look at it, especially the roof. And you’ll see that the roof on top of that three-story house, a mansion by the standards of small-town turn-of-the-century America, bristles with metal crosses and wires and gray speaker cones. Then if you think of money and expense, you’ll wonder why-in-the-world-did-they-do-it. But ... remember the stories ... and how old Bidwell, the elder, did have money, much money, as well as two odd-size daughters ... and some eccentric dreams ...

Three stories down from a roof that clamors and talks you go up the white marble steps, up to a porch and a white door marked patients enter here, and you tell whoever answers the doorbell, lying as you go, that you have been sent by the state to investigate Bidwell Endeavors, just a routine check, naturally. And you flash a false badge and a name and you push on in to the first floor room that reminds you vaguely of operating rooms you have seen. It is hard to know just why it does that, exactly, except maybe for the neatness and the white, and the evidence of much cutting and severing. Many shiny shears and other cutting edges are prominently to be seen in that big room. But the newspapers spread on the operating tables throw the picture all out of perspective in your mind. But really now—just your being here—doesn’t that deny that you really hoped for anything to stay in normal perspective in your mind?

Suddenly you are aware of one salient fact: you are standing alone in a big white paper-littered room with Miss Angela Bidwell. And for all that you are over half a foot more than six feet tall, she in her flat-heel nursing shoes is looking straight into your eyes, on the level. Only it isn’t really a straight-in steady look; it’s all wrong to claim that it is. This is more like being hit in the eyes with pulsations of cold blue water, you somehow think, and yet her eyes seem very dry. You finally settle for thinking about blue pieces of ice flailing into your eyeballs, and you stand there afraid that you are going to shake. Why doesn’t she speak? You have given a name, stated your business, and you have shown her the false badge. And it looks authentic enough, doesn’t it?

When finally she does start to speak, you see her mouth open and close with the words, but the sounds have that eerie quality of coming from somewhere farther removed, down from some greater height, like maybe out of the ceiling. “Mr. Frine,” she says, dry, like a fingernail file on a bone, “the world is full of sickness, and we are all physicians. Or should be. As Father always said. Likewise, we are all patients, Mr. Frine. Or should be. As Father always said.—I hope you understand.” I nodded, and held my eyes against the smiting pieces of cold.

When she spoke again she seemed apologetic. “I am sorry you did not come in proper form to be admitted, Mr. Frine. You seek help. We all seek help. And some of us seek to help.—But perhaps you did not understand. You’ll have to get regular, Mr. Frine.”

“I came to investigate your hospital,” I shouted. “I’m from the state,” I lied. “It’s routine. I’m not sick!”

My shout brought the short sister pounding up from the basement, and after a silence a strange clamor had started in new, upstairs. I noticed as she came bouncing up that she had a box of electrical fuses in one hand. She smote me with dry blue eyes, cold, very much like her sister’s, and she spoke as though my being there was the most natural-normal thing in the world. “Right in the middle of alleviation for Mr. Bent and all the rest, it goes,” she panted. “The electric goes off. I’m scared. I’m thinking ho, no! Not those expensive installation men again. I fly down to the basement. Luckily it is just a fuse. I replace it. And now Mr. Bent and all his fellow sufferers can just go ahead and be alleviated. I’m so happy for Mr. Bent and all his fellow sufferers in the ward. In the ward and in the world!” Then she looked at me as if seeing me for the real first time. Her mouth opened and closed twice without sound and finally she said to her tall icily staring sister, “Why, what in the world!? He can’t be admitted into this room in this form. What would dear dead sainted Father say? Why has he come here?—Oh, we do wish to help, but—”

“I’m not a patient,” I yelled. “I’m not sick. I’m an investigator. From the state.”

“Oh, but we’re all patients,” the tall icily staring sister cut in, “all ill. That’s what makes it so worthwhile—and wonderful—that we’re all with the power of physician. All sick and all physicians. What a wonderful Power ... to have planned it so. As Father always said.” And her eyes became glittering points for a little instant.

A sound outside, on the porch, of some ponderous bundle going into a box startled both of the sisters to life and made their eyes dance away from me and shine with cold lights. “The new patients are arriving,” Miss Angela said. And Miss Angia said, “Oh, yes! such a big bundle of them this morning. How lucky they are to be here. How lucky we are to be here to help them. What a wonderful Power—” Then both sisters rushed outside to heave and pull at the patients until they had them all inside the white room that was—and I hadn’t been wrong here—the operating room. I watched Miss Angela and Miss Angia select with a show of pleasure the sharpest blades and the shiniest shears, and when they became absorbed with the searching out of the patients, I slipped away.

I went upstairs to the second floor, toward where a clamor was, where, I supposed, Mr. Bent and the rest were having their alleviations. I was prepared for something eccentric, but thinking of it in bars now, or in my room late at night when the lumps in the bed are big and gnaw at me and I cannot sleep, or when the rains all day rain down on the blue-Sunday windows, I cannot tell myself that I was really prepared. Is one ever really fully prepared for anything, though? Aren’t we always in the state of preparing? Or, as Miss Angela said, “All are patients.”

There had one time been six huge rooms upstairs on the second floor of the Bidwell mansion. But now the partitions were down and what had once been six was now one, one mammoth room of white beds, rows of them arranged as in a hospital. By each hospital-sheeted bed was an apparatus of wires and speaker cones and a tape recorder playing—softly, soothingly, playing the Bidwell prayers to what looked to me like empty beds. My mind groped for something tangible out of the soothing sounds of the prayers and all this eerie scene, and I thought of Mr. Bent. Look for Mr. Bent, that was the thing to do! Miss Angia had as good as said he was up here—Mr. Bent.

So I, a fake state investigator, motivated by more curiosity than ever has been good for me, went up and down the white rows of the beds, looking among the beds and the wires and the prayers for a Mr. Bent. When I found him, or I mean found his bed, he wasn’t there! The Bidwell prayers were spewing their soft urgency at an empty bed, or so it seemed to me. I looked at the fever chart on the end of the bed. It indicated that Mr. Bent was still in need of much much help. Oh, he was in a bad shape according to his chart. “Mr. Bent,” I cried and there wasn’t any answer, though the prayers went on undiminished. “Mr. Bent, in your shape you shouldn’t be out of bed, Mr. Bent.” In desperation I flung the covers back. And there was Mr. Bent! Taped to his bed! He was smiling. A man of about forty, he had killed his wife and his kids, all six of the little Bents. And then he had run away with his beauteous luscious mistress. Or so some news-hawk had said.—Oh no, Mr. Bent. No! No! Mr. Bent.

And upon closer looking, I saw that the other beds were not empty either. Not by a handful of paper. Terrible humanity was in them. Some had pictures, and all had descriptions, descriptions of foul deeds in them. Oh, Mr. Bent! No! And all the Mr. Bents! No!

As I fled down the stairs, with the soft urgent Bidwell prayers still hammering through my head and gnawing at my mind, I hoped I might sneak out unnoticed past the surgeons still busily, almost joyfully, it seemed, cutting the patients. But it was not to be. Two pairs of stark blue eyes flared up from their work and held me. “Oh no, Mr. Frine,” Angela said. “You’ll have to come in the right way and be admitted properly, Mr. Frine. Then we’ll be happy to help you. You’ll just have to be regular, Mr. Frine.”

Somehow, I don’t know how, I unhooked from those four blue eyes and fled. But once out in the sun and running I couldn’t resist looking back again and again at the house of the Bidwell Endeavors, especially at the roof of that house where all the metal crosses and wires and cones were and the Bidwell prayers going out worldwideward toward heaven and the objects of their help. And on my way home from that town I couldn’t keep from wondering how in the world would be the best way for me to enter that special and specialized upstairs of prayer. Should I go kill my wife and four kids or just hurry and hold up a bank? Or maybe to cheat on taxes would get me a front-page portrayal!