Gordon Dickson - Wolfling

“Yes, I’m alive,” Jim told him. “What hospital is this?”

The male nurse, as he seemed to be, made a noncommittal sound in his throat. Finished counting, he dropped Jim’s wrist back onto the bed and turned toward the door.

“Hold on!” said Jim, sitting up suddenly.

“Just lie there!” said the man in a deep, gruff voice. Hastily he opened the door and went out, slamming it slightly behind him.

Jim threw back the covers and jumped out of bed in the same quick motion. He took three steps to the door and grasped its handle. But his fingers slipped around the smooth, immovable metal as he tried to turn it. It was locked.

He shook the handle once and then stepped back. His first impulse—quenched almost as soon as it was born by the immediate caution of his now thoroughly awakened mind—was to pound on the door until someone came. Now, instead, he stood gazing at it thoughtfully.

This place was beginning to look less like a hospital and more like a place of care for the violently insane. He spun about quickly and went to the window. What he saw confirmed the growing suspicion in him of his surroundings. Invisible from his bed, a mesh of fine wire covered the window opening completely, some four inches beyond the window itself. The wire looked relatively thin, but it was undoubtedly strong enough to be escape-proof for anyone lacking tools.

Jim looked out the window and down, but what he saw gave him little information—merely a width of green lawn bordered on all sides by tall pine trees. The trees were tall enough to cut off the view of whatever lay beyond them.

Jim turned around and thoughtfully went back to sit down on the edge of his bed. After a moment he lay down and pulled the covers up over him again.

With the patience that was so much an innate part of him, he waited.

At least a couple of hours must have gone by before anything more happened. Then, without any advance notice, the door to his room opened and the male nurse came back in, followed by a slight man in his late forties or early fifties with a balding head and narrow face, wearing a white physician’s coat. They came up to the head of the bed together, and the slight man in the white physician’s coat met Jim’s eyes.

“Well, all right,” he said, turning his head slightly toward the male nurse. “I won’t need you.”

The male nurse went out, clicking the door shut behind him. The physician, for such he certainly must be, reached out for Jim’s wrist and took his pulse as the other man had done earlier.

“Yes,” he said, as if to himself, after a moment. He dropped the wrist, pulled back the covers, lifted the pajama coat, and examined Jim’s side—the one that had been wounded. His fingers probed here and there. Abruptly Jim stiffened.

“Sore?” the physician asked.

“Yes,” said Jim flatly.

“Well, that’s interesting,” said the doctor. “—if true.”

“Doctor,” said Jim quietly. “Is there something wrong with you? Or with me?”

“No, there’s nothing wrong with you,” said the physician, yanking Jim’s pajama top down and tossing the covers up on him again. “As for me—I don’t believe it. The only thing I believe is what I saw when you came in here—and that was a small perforation in your right side.”

“What is it you don’t believe, then?” asked Jim.

“I don’t believe that you had a burned area where that perforation was, a burned area at least two inches wide and six inches deep, six days ago,” said the physician. “Yes, I’ve seen the pictures of your ship on television, and I know what that tall girl told me, but I don’t believe it. In the first place, with that kind of damage done to you internally, you’d be dead long before you got here. Now, I can believe in a small perforation that heals without a visible scar. But I can’t swallow the larger story.”

“Is there any reason you should?” asked Jim gently.

“No, there isn’t,” said the physician. “So I’m not going to worry about it. As far as I’m concerned, you’re well and ready for anything—and I’ll so advise them.”

“Who’s them?” asked Jim.

The physician stared down at him.

“Doctor,” said Jim quietly, “for some reason you seem to have a bad opinion of me. That’s your privilege. But I don’t think it’s your privilege to keep a patient in the dark—not only about where he is, but about who it is who are evidently concerned with him. You mentioned a tall girl who told you about me. Is she outside right now?”

“No, she isn’t,” said the physician. “As for answering your question, the people who are concerned with you are officials of the world government. And I’ve been told that it’s my duty not to talk to you except as required in your treatment. You don’t require any more treatment, and so I’ve got no more excuse to talk to you.”

He turned and headed for the door. With his hand on the knob, he seemed to experience a twinge of conscience, for he paused and turned back to Jim.

“They’ll be sending someone in to see you shortly after I tell them you’re well,” he said. “You’ll be able to ask him all the questions you like.”

He turned away from Jim once more, tried the door, and found it locked. He pounded on it with his fist and shouted through it to someone who was evidently on the far side. After a moment the door was cautiously unlocked, and he was allowed to slip out through the least possible opening. The door slammed and clicked shut once more.

The wait was considerably shorter this time. It was no more than fifteen or twenty minutes before the door opened again—and immediately clicked shut once more—behind a man about ten years younger than the physician, with a brown, tanned face and a gray business suit. He came in, nodded unsmilingly at Jim, and briskly drew one of the chairs up to the bed. Jim sat up on the edge of the bed.

“I’m Daniel Wylcoxin,” the man said. “Call me Dan, if you like. There’s going to be a Government Committee Inquiry, and I’ve been assigned as your counsel.”

“What if I don’t want you?” asked Jim mildly.

“Then, of course, you don’t have to have me,” said Wylcoxin. “Actually, the Inquiry has nothing to do with a court trial. That’s to come later, if the Inquiry decides to take that course of action. Actually, you don’t legally need counsel, and if you don’t want me, I’m not going to be forced on you. On the other hand, it’s not likely the Committee would recognize someone else as counsel for you, since—as I say—counsel really isn’t supposed to be necessary for you.”

“I see,” said Jim. “I’d like to ask a few questions.”

“Fire away,” said Wylcoxin, leaning back in his chair and laying his arms flat on the armrests of it.

“Where am I?” asked Jim bluntly.

“That, I’m afraid, I can’t tell you,” said Wylcoxin. “This is a government hospital for special people and situations where secrecy is required. I was brought here in a closed car myself. I don’t know where we are, except that we’re no more than twenty minutes’ ride from Government Center, where my own office is.”

“Where’s my spaceship? And where are the woman and the man who came with me?”

“Your ship is at Government Center spaceport,” said Wylcoxin, “surrounded by security guards that keep everyone at a quarter-mile distance. Your two companions are still aboard the ship—for which you can thank the Governor of Alpha Centauri III. He’s here on Earth, and when government people wanted to move your two friends out and put their own men aboard the ship, the Governor evidently talked them out of it. It seems the woman you have with you is what they call a High-born, and the Governor is evidently scared silly of anyone in that classification. I suppose I can’t blame him—”