John Brunner - The Whole Man

Singh was staring down at the top of his desk. He said, “Do I take it that you have in mind something you can do to help yourself?”

“I — I’m not sure.” Sweat was prickly on Howson’s face and hands now. “All I’ve decided so far is that I’m going away for a while. Alone. Not the way I used to go when I first came here, with someone to watch over me in case I cut myself or children mocked me, but alone. Maybe I can’t go rock-climbing in the Caucasus; maybe I can’t go surfing at Bondi Beach. But — damn it, Pan, I looked after myself, more or less, for twenty years before I was discovered and brought in. If I can re-learn to do that much, I may be on the track of an answer to my problems.”

“I see.” Singh turned a pen over between his short, capable fingers. “You’re not going to do anything as stupid as throwing away your prothrombin, I take it ?”

“Hardly! Independence has limits. But dependence has, too. I want to set some for myself, that’s all.”

“So what do you propose to do now ?”

“Send for a cab, go to the airport, and take a plane somewhere. I’ll be back in — oh — a couple of months, I guess. You’ll see I get money ?”

“Of course.”

“Well, then — Howson felt at a loss. “Well, that seems to be all, doesn’t it?”

“I imagine so.” Singh rose and came around the desk, holding out his hand. “Good luck, Gerry. I hope you find what you want for yourself.”

Abruptly he wasn’t looking at Howson any longer. He was facing an olive-skinned man with a square black beard, standing taller than himself, wearing a peculiar barbaric costume mostly of leather studded with tarnished brass. A huge sword dangled from his belt. He was muscular, good-looking; he radiated health and contentment.

The stranger changed; melted; shrank until he was barely five feet tall and beardless and slightly deformed — until he was, in fact, Gerald Howson.

“That’s what I want,” said Howson in a thin voice. “That’s not what will be any good to me, though. Good-bye, Pan. And thank you.”

At the airport he inquired about flights to the city where he had been born, and was almost shocked to recollect that it had once been his home.

Home! How long since he last thought of it as such? For years “home” had meant his apartment in the therapy centre, with everything tailored to his special needs — even the sanitary fittings in the adjacent bathroom — so that the chair he kept for visitors, of normal size, seemed intrusive.

Yet some part of him had never caught up with that shift of perspective. Maybe this trip was really intended to look for what he had left behind.

Would people remember and recognize him? He hadn’t changed much, but he was well dressed instead of shabby, well fed instead of pinched and scrawny — enough change maybe, to make people pucker their foreheads in search of a half-vanished memory.

A curious heady excitement began to take hold of him as his cab rolled through familiar streets towards the district where most of his childhood had been spent. On impulse, he told the hackie to stop and let him out. He had checked most of his bags at the airport, keeping only a light valise which he could easily handle, and he wanted to take this stage of the journey slowly, on foot, to let the impact of old associations seep into his mind.

The first major fact to register on him was that his old home had gone.

He stood on a street-corner and looked at the towering stack of low-priced apartments which had taken the place of the plaster-peeling rabbit-warren of a tenement he had known.

The same kind of street gangs chased past him; the same wheezing old cars rolled by; the same crowded buses clanged and burped down the street. But the building wasn’t there.

An unexpected pang of nostalgia touched him. He had never imagined he could regret the disappearance of a place which had brought him so little of pleasure to cherish. He changed hands on his valise and limped on. As he went, he found people staring at him; a small boy bravely threw a dirty word at him and dissolved into laughter. He knew, now, why such things were done, and felt no resentment.

A block or two north, he remembered, was a bar and grill where he had done odd jobs during his mother’s illness. The way to it would take him past the school he had attended. He turned northward, making mental comparisons as he went.

The atmosphere was different from what he recollected. He had a sense of something like tranquillity, contrasting with the frenzied modernity of Ulan Bator with its cosmopolitan influx of strangers. Maybe this was the ultimate effect of the crisis in whose shadow he had been born. The closest he could come to summing it up in a single word was “chastened’. But there was no regret apparent.

He found himself rather liking the sensation, and wishing he had been back earlier.

The bar and grill had changed in layout and décor, but it was still there. It seemed more prosperous than in the old days. There were high stools at the counter, but he went to a table, earning a grimace from the lounging counterhand; he found it much too difficult to perch on a stool.

“What’ll it be ?” the counterhand called.

He was hungry after his journey, Howson found. “Small portion of steak and French fries, and a can of beer,” he responded.

While he was waiting for the food to come from the kitchen, the counterhand eyed his visitor curiously. It was plain why, but Howson waited until he raised the question openly.

“Here y’are, shorty,” the young man said in a friendly enough manner, setting the plate and glass on Howson’s table.

“Hey — I think I seen you around here some place, a long time back. Didn’t I?”

He would have been about twelve when Howson left, probably; it was quite possible he remembered. “You might have,” Howson agreed cautiously. “Does Charlie Birberger still run this place?”

“Mm-hm. You a friend of his ?”

“I used to be,” Howson hesitated. “If he’s in, maybe he’d come and have a word with me.”

“I’ll ask,” said the counterhand obligingly.

There was an exchange of shouts; then Birberger himself, older, fatter, but otherwise unchanged, came blinking into the bar. He caught sight of Howson and stopped dead, his mind a kaleidoscope of astonishment.

He recovered quickly, and waddled across the floor with a jovial air. “By God! Sarah Howson’s boy! Well, I never expected to see you in this place again after all we heard about you! Making out pretty well, hey ?”

“Pretty well,” Howson said. “Won’t you sit down?”

“Uh? Oh, sure!” Birberger fumbled a chair away from the table and entrusted his bulk to it gingerly. He put both elbows on the table, leaning forward. “We see about you in the papers sometimes, y’know! Must be wonderful work you’re doing Must admit, I never expected you’d wind up where you are Uh — been a pretty long time since you were in here, hey ? Ten years!”

“Eleven,” said Howson quietly.

“Long as that? Well, well!” Birberger rambled on. There was a faint quaver in his rotund voice, and Howson was suddenly struck by a strange realization: damn it, the man’s scared !

“Uh — any special reason for coming back?” Birberger probed clumsily. “Or just looking up the old place?”

“Looking up old friends, more,” Howson corrected. He took a sip of his beer. “You’re the first I’ve met since I flew in an hour or two back.”

“Well, it’s good of you to count me as an old friend,” Birberger said, brightening. “Y’know, I often think of the days when I useta let you help out in here. I remember you had quite an appetite for a—” He might have been going to say “runt’, but caught himself and finished with a change of mental gears: “Uh — young fella !”