Damon Knight - Orbit 14

The children are under the overhang of the ambulance entrance. They are all filthy. The boy stands up and points to the injured child. A girl has a long sliver of metal strap sticking out of her leg. It is embedded deeply in her thigh and she is bleeding heavily. God, not an artery, the old man prays silently, and he kneels down close to the girl, who draws away, her hands curled up to strike like a cat’s. She is blanched-looking, from loss of blood or from fear, he cannot say. The old man stands up and takes a step back.

“I can help her,” he says slowly, carefully. “But you must bring her inside and put her on the table. Where the boy was.” The oldest girl, thirteen, possibly even fourteen, shakes her head hard. She points to the child imperiously. The old man crosses his arms and says nothing. The adolescent girl is their leader, he thinks. She is as dirty as the others, but she has the unmistakable bearing of an acknowledged leader. The older of the two boys is watching her closely for a sign. He is almost as tall as she, heavier, and he is holding one of the scalpels they have stolen. The old man doubts that he is very adept with it, but even a novice can do great damage with a scalpel. He continues to stand silently.

The girl makes a motion as if withdrawing the metal from the thigh of the injured child. She watches the old man.

“You’ll kill her if you remove it,” he says. “She’ll bleed to death.” The girl knows that, he thinks. That’s why they brought the child for him to treat. He wonders how much else she knows.

She is furious, and for an instant she hesitates, then turns toward the boy with the scalpel. He grasps it more firmly and takes a step toward the old man. The girl points again to the injured child.

“Inside,” the old man says quietly.

Suddenly the smaller boy says, “Look!” He points, and they all look at the park. Sid is coming toward them. He is alone. The little boy whispers to the girl. He motions, puts his hand on his head, closes his eyes, a dramatic enactment. The girl suddenly decides.

“Bring her in,” she says, and she walks around the building toward the entrance.

Sid is his assistant when he performs the operation. The metal must have been packaging material, the old man thinks. It is a strap, flexible still, but pitted with corrosion. Probably it came from a box that has long since rotted away under it. The warehouses near the river are full of such junk, easy enough to fall on in the dark there. He has to use an anesthetic, and the child’s unconsciousness alarms the other children. They huddle and whisper, and stop when the old man begins to speak softly. “She’ll sleep and then wake up again. I shall cut into her leg and take out the metal and then sew it up, and she will feel nothing. Then she will awaken.” Over and over he says this, as he goes about the operation. The child’s body is completely covered with sheets, she is motionless. She’d better awaken, he thinks. He is doing the best he can.

Afterward he lights a space heater, and now the children are regarding him with large, awed eyes. The room grows warm quickly. It is getting dark outside and tonight there will be a hard freeze.

The children sleep on the floor, wrapped in blankets, all except the boy with the scalpel, who sits watching the old man. He watches sharply, closely, with intelligence. He will remember what he sees. The old man asks Sid to bring up food, and together they prepare it and cook it over the space heater. There is no cooking stove in the hospital, except the giants in the kitchen that no one has used in sixty years. Sid makes a thick aromatic stew. The boy refuses to taste it. He has said nothing throughout the afternoon and night. But the children can talk, and they speak perfectly good English. Where did they come from? How have they survived? The old man eats his stew and ponders the sleeping children. Presently Sid climbs onto one of the examination tables to sleep, and the old man takes the other.

For three days the old man remains in the hospital and cares for the child. Either the leader girl or the older boy is always there. The others come and go. Sid leaves and returns once. The people are uneasy about the old man. They want him out of there, back in his own home. They are afraid he might be hurt by the children. And they need him.

“The children need me more than they do,” the old man says. “Tell them I’m all right. The kids are afraid of me, my powers.” He laughs as he says this, but there is a bitterness in his laugh. He doesn’t want them to fear him, but rather to trust him and like him, confide in him. So far they have said nothing.

After the leader girl smelled a plate with steak on it, then moved back, shaking her head, they have refused his offers of food. They won’t talk to him. They watch his every movement, the older boy especially. The old man watches them closely for signs of hunger, and finds none. The only one he knows is eating regularly is the injured little girl, and he feeds her.

On the fourth day Sid returns again, and this time Harry and Jake Pulaski are with him. “Come out here, Lew!” Harry calls from the hospital yard.

“What’s wrong?” the old man asks before he reaches them.

“Myra Olney is gone,” Jake says. “She’ll freeze in this weather. We have to find her.”

“Gone? What do you mean?” Myra wouldn’t run away.

“No one’s seen her for days,” Harry says. “Eunice went over to find out if she was hurt or something and she was gone. Just not there at all.”

Myra is soft and dependent, always looking for someone to help her do something—the last one who would try to manage alone. “If you find her and she’s hurt,” the old man says finally, “bring her over here. I’ll stay here and wait.” They never find her.

His small patient is recovering fast. He takes the stitches out and the wound looks good. She is a pretty little girl—large grey eyes, the same soft brown hair that her brother has, with slightly more wave in it than his. She is the first to smile at him. He sits by her and tells her stories, aware that the others are listening also. He tells her of the bad places to the east, places where they must never go. He tells her of the bad places to the south, where the mosquitoes bring sickness and the water is not good to drink. He tells her how people bathe and keep themselves clean in order to stay healthy and well, and to look pretty. The little girl watches him and listens intently to all that he says. Now when he asks if she is thirsty or hungry, she answers.

The next day the old man realizes the oldest girl is menstruating. She has swathed herself in a garment tied between her legs, and looks very awkward in it, very uncomfortable. Conversationally, not addressing her at all, he tells the small girl about women and babies and the monthly blood and says that he has things that women use at those times.

The adolescent stands up and says, “Show me those things.”

He takes her to one of the lounges and says, “First you must bathe, even your hair. Then I shall return with them.”

One day he brings wool shirts from the basement and cuts off the sleeves to make them fit the smaller children. He dresses his patient and leaves the other shirts where the children can help themselves. The smaller boy strips unhesitatingly and puts on a warm shirt. It covers him to mid-calf; the sleeves leave his hands free. Presently the others also dress in the shirts, all but the older boy, who doesn’t go near them all morning. Late in the afternoon he also pulls off his filthy garment, throws it down, and picks up one of the shirts. His body is muscular, much scarred, and now the old man sees that he never will impregnate a woman either. Both boys have atrophied testes. He feels his eyes burn and he hurries away, down the corridor, to weep alone in one of the patients’ rooms.