Альфред Бестер - Star of Stars [Anthology]

I said soothingly, "Oh yes, I know, I know. And this, you say, was in 1537?"

"Maybe 1536, I don't remember exactly. As I was saying, I woke up, and I saw the doctor, and he was talking to some other doctor that I couldn't see; and all around men were shouting their heads off—asking their friends to cut their throats and put them out of their misery ... asking for priests ... I thought I was in hell. My head was split wide open, and I could feel a sort of draft playing through my brains, and everything was going bump-bump, bumpety-bump, bump-bump-bump. But although I couldn't move or speak I could see and hear what was going on. The doctor looked at me and said ..."

Corporal Cuckoo paused. "He said?" I asked, gently.

"Well," said Corporal Cuckoo, with scorn, "you don't even know the meaning of what you were reading in your little book— Pipeur ou hasardeur de dez, and all that—even when it's put down in cold print. I'll put it so that you'll understand. The doctor said something like this: `Come here and look, sir, come and see! This fellow's brains were bursting out of his head. If I had applied Theriac, he would be buried and forgotten by now. Instead, having no Theriac, for want of something better, I applied my Digestive. And see what has happened. His eyes have opened! Observe, also that the bones are creeping together and over this beating brain a sort of skin is forming. My treatment must be right, because God is healing him!' Then the one I couldn't see said something like: `Don't be a fool, Ambroise. You're wasting your time and your medicine on a corpse.' Well, the doctor looked down at me, and touched my eyes with the ends of his fingers—like this—and I blinked. But the one I couldn't see said: `Must you waste time and medicine on the dead?'

"After I blinked my eyes, I couldn't open them again. I couldn't see. But I could still hear, and when I heard that, I was as scared as hell they were going to bury me alive. And I couldn't move. But the doctor I'd seen said: `After five days this poor soldier's flesh is still sweet, and, weary as I am, I have my wits about me, and I swear to you that I saw his eyes open.' Then he called out: 'Jehan! Bring the Digestive! . . . By your leave, sir, I will keep this man until he comes back to life, or begins to stink.

And into this wound I am going to pour some more of my Digestive.'

"Then I felt something running into my head. It hurt like hell. It was like ice water dripped into your brains. I thought This is it! —and then I went numb all over, and then I went dead again, until I woke up later in another place. The young doctor was there, without his armor this time, but he had a sort of soft hat on. This time I could move and talk, and I asked for something to drink. When he heard me talk, the doctor opened his mouth to let out a shout, but stopped himself, and gave me some wine out of a cup. But his hands were shaking so that I got more wine in my beard than in my mouth. I used to wear a beard in those days, just like you—only a bigger one, all over my face. I heard somebody come running from the other end of the room. I saw a boy—maybe fifteen or sixteen years old. This kid opened his mouth and started to say something, but the doctor got him by the throat and said . . . put it like this: `For your life, Jehan, be quiet!'

"The kid said: `Master! You have brought him back from the dead!'

"Then the doctor said: `Silence, for your life, or do you want to smell burning faggots?'

"Then I went to sleep again, and when I woke up I was in a little room with all the windows shut and a big fire burning so that it was hotter than hell. The doctor was there, and his name was Ambroise Pare. Maybe you have read about Ambroise Pare?"

"Do you mean the Ambroise Pare who became an army surgeon under Anne de Montmorency in the army of Francis the First?"

Corporal Cuckoo said, "That's what I was saying, wasn't it? Francois Premier, Francis the First. De Mont­morency was our Lieutenant-General, when we got mixed up with Charles V. The whole thing started between France and Italy, and that's how I came to get my head cracked when we went down the hill near Turin. I told you, didn't I?"

"Corporal Cuckoo," I said, "you have told me that you are four hundred and thirty-eight years old. You were born in 1507, and left Yvetot to join the army after your wife made a fool of you with a linen merchant named Nicolas. Your name was Lecoq, and the children called you Lecocu. You fought at the Battle of Turin, and were wounded in the Pass of Suze about 1537. Your head was cut open with a halberd, or poleax, and some of your brains came out. A surgeon named Ambroise Pare poured into the wound in your head what you called a Digestive. So you came back to life—more than four hundred years ago! Is this right?"

"You've got it," said Corporal Cuckoo, nodding. "I knew you'd get it."

I was stupefied by the preposterousness of it all, and could only say, with what must have been a silly giggle, "Well, my venerable friend; by all accounts, after four hundred and thirty-odd years of life you ought to be tremendously wise—as full of wisdom, learning, and ex­perience as the British Museum Library."

"Why?" asked Corporal Cuckoo.

"Why? Well," I said, "it's an old story. A philosopher, let us say, or a scientist, doesn't really begin to learn anything until his life is almost ended. What wouldn't he give for five hundred extra years of life? For five hundred years of life he'd sell his soul, because given that much time, knowledge being power, he could be master of the whole world."

Corporal Cuckoo said, "Baloney! What you say might go for philosophers, and all that. They'd just go on doing what they were interested in, and they might—well—learn how to turn iron into gold, or something. But what about a baseball player, for instance, or a boxer? What would they do with five hundred years? What they were fit to do —swing bats or throw leather! What would you do?"

"Why, of course, you're right, Corporal Cuckoo," I said. "I'd just go on and on banging a typewriter and chucking my money down the drain, so that in five hundred years from now I'd be no wiser and no richer than I am at this moment."

"No, wait a minute," he said, tapping my arm with a finger that felt like a rod of iron, and leering at me shrewdly. "You'd go on writing books and things. You're paid on a percentage basis, so in five hundred years you'd have more than you could spend. But how about me? All I'm fit for is to be in the army. I don't give a damn for philosophy, and all that stuff. It don't mean a thing to me. I'm no wiser now than I was when I was thirty. I never did go in for reading, and all that stuff, and I never will. My ambition is to get me a place like Jack Dempsey's on Broadway."

"I thought you said you wanted to grow roses, and chickens, and bees, and turpentine trees and whatnot," I said.

"Yeahp, that's right."

"How do you reconcile the two? . . . I mean, how does a restaurant on Broadway fit in with the bees and roses et cetera?"

"Well, it's like this ..." said Corporal Cuckoo.

“... I told you about how Doctor Pare healed up my head when it was split open so that my brains were coming out. Well, after I could walk about a bit he let me stay in his house, and I can tell you, he fed me on the fat of the land, though he didn't live any too damn well himself. Yeahp, he looked after me like a son—a hell of lot better than my old man ever looked after me: chickens, eggs in wine, anything I wanted. If I said, `I guess I'd like a pie made with skylarks for dinner,' I had it. If I said, `Doc, this wine is kind of sour,' up came a bottle of Alicante or something. Inside two or three weeks, I was fitter and stronger than I'd ever been before. So then I got kind of restless and said I wanted to go. Well, Doctor Pare said he wanted me to stay. I said to him, `I'm an active man, Doc, and I've got my living to get; and before I got this little crack on the head I heard that there was money to be made in one army or another right now.'