Damon Knight - Orbit 14

The hospital is a rambling two-story building, ultramodern when built, with outside windows for every room, wide vinyl-floored corridors, flowered wall coverings, spacious, airy waiting rooms and lounges. It was designed as an emergency center for this section of the country, with room after room of subbasements stocked with freeze-dried food, blankets, clothing, medical supplies. No one has ever raided it. No one has distributed the food, the oil, the clothing, blankets. Years ago Boy discovered the cache, and the citizens of the city, one hundred twenty people or more then, took what they needed—most of them would never have to return for anything else—and they left the remaining stores undisturbed.

In those early years in the city, the old man used to play doctor. He dressed in a surgical gown, tied on a mask, and stalked the corridors in search of a patient. He read all the medical books, some of them many times, and handled the equipment until he was familiar with it. More recently, only five or six years ago, he found himself one night sitting at the side of a bed, garbed in white, with a stethoscope and a thermometer, talking earnestly to a nonexistent patient. Frightened, he left the hospital, and he hasn’t been back since. He finds that he is walking somewhat slower than before, and deliberately he lengthens his stride.

Eunice is waiting on the top step; she comes forward to meet him. She is stout and robust-looking, with a florid complexion and iron-grey hair in long braids down her back. Now she is pale and frightened. “Lew, they were awful! They really are savages. We caught one of them, but the others all ran away, and they threw stones at us. Sid is hurt.”

“Where are they?”

“In your examination room. They had to tie up the boy. He tried to bite Harry, and he kicked, and scratched like a devil. He’s more like a wildcat than a human being.”

The examination room is the former emergency room of the hospital. It has two padded tables, several desks, scales that no longer work, a cabinet of surgical implements, gauze. It is seldom used any longer; they all have first-aid kits in their homes, and the old man sees them there when they need him.

The boy is on one of the tables, strapped down at ankles and wrists, a band of elastic bandaging about his chest, another about his throat to keep his head down. The old man doesn’t approach him, after one glance to be certain he is all right.

Sid is on another table, conscious but pale from shock and loss of blood. A gauze pad is on his head, blood-soaked, and when the old man lifts it, he knows that Sid needs stitches. The cut is jagged and deep, from above his eyebrow across his temple to his ear.

“I’ll have to sew it up, Sid,” the old man says, and Sid’s eyelids flutter. “Cover him up, keep him warm. I’ll get things going.” He washes his hands, cleans them again from a freshly opened bottle of alcohol, opens a sealed package of surgical gloves, another of needles and gut and bandages, and another of a local anesthetic that the directions say will remain potent for one hundred years. All the supplies have been labeled this way: date of packing, date of expiration of potency. In one of the pharmaceutical books the old man has found explicit directions for combining ingredients in order to make sedatives and tranquilizers. Previously compounded medicines, he assumes, have long since lost their potency. Those that he makes up are all very effective.

Eunice prepares Sid; she shaves his eyebrow, part of his beard, some of his hair. The old man is not as swift as he would like to be, but he is thorough, and when he finishes, he knows that a real doctor would not have done better with the wound. Sid is breathing shallowly; he is still in shock. Only after he is finished with Sid does the old man approach the other table.

The boy is filthy, his hair caked and matted, his fingernails jagged, packed with grime; he looks as if he has never had a bath. He is wearing a one-piece garment, a shiftlike thing made of coarse material, tied at the shoulders. It has been twisted about him and conceals little. His muscles show good development; his teeth, which remain bared from the time the old man nears him until he steps back, seem good.

“I don’t want to move Sid for a couple of hours, maybe not until tomorrow,” the old man says. “Let’s give this little beggar a bath and have a better look at him.”

The boy strains against his bonds, and a low moaning sound starts deep in his throat. Eunice brings a basin of water. There are tanks on the hospital roof, overflowing probably, since no one uses the water here. The water is cool, not cold enough to hurt the child, but he howls when the old man starts to scrub him, and doesn’t stop until the old man is through.

The boy is sun-browned, with pale skin where the garment has covered him. His hair is brown, with a slight wave; his eyes are grey. His legs are covered with old wounds, all well healed. The old man purses his lips, however, as he makes a closer examination. The testicles are atrophied. He kneads the boy’s stomach, listens to his heart, his lungs, and finally sits down and stares at the child.

“You finished with him?” Harry asks. He has been staring at the child and has said very little. Like most of the men, Harry is bearded, has rather long hair. There is a long red scratch on his hand. The boy has stopped screaming and howling. He is watching the old man.

“Yes, that’s all. Healthy as a boy ought to be. Eight, nine years old. Boy, what’s your name?”

The boy makes no sign that he understands.

“Okay, Lew, now it’s my turn,” Harry says. He has found a thick leather strap and has it wrapped around his hand, with a loose end of two and a half feet that he hits against his leg from time to time. “I aim to beat the hell out of the little bugger.”

The boy’s eyes close involuntarily and he swallows, and again strains to get loose.

The old man waves Harry back. “Not so fast, Harry. What happened when you found the kids?”

“We didn’t find them. We went down to the warehouse section and looked around and they were gone. Then we put the food and stuff down where they could find it and started back, and they jumped us.”

“They didn’t jump us,” Mary says. “We startled them. We scared them to death, coming on them suddenly like we did. They began to pick up anything they could find to throw at us, and they ran. This one fell over something and Sid grabbed him. That’s when someone hit him with the rock. He fell on top of this boy and held him down until Harry got to them.”

“What do you mean, you came on them suddenly?”

“We went down there out in the open, in the middle of the street, not trying to hide or anything. Then, I don’t know why, when we couldn’t find them, we sort of quieted down, and we weren’t making any noise at all on the way back, and we were in old Wharf Alley, you know how narrow it is, how dark. They were coming out of one of the warehouses, just as we approached it. I don’t know who was more scared, them or us.”

Eunice nods at Mary’s recital, and Harry hits his leg with the strap, watching the boy.

“So, as far as they know, you jumped them and then made off with one of them. Kidnapped him.” The old man is watching the boy, and he knows the boy has understood everything. “I’ll take him back,” the old man says suddenly.

“No! By God! Make him tell us a few things first.” Harry steps closer to the table.

“Harry, don’t be an ass,” Mary says. “We can’t hold this child. And you certainly are not going to beat him.”

Harry looks from one to the other of the women, then to the old man. Sullenly he moves back to the other table, where Sid is, and pays no more attention to the boy.