Clifford Simak - Grotto of the Dancing Deer - And Other Stories

Someone other than himself, he knew, should look into the situation. But to look into it would take staff and money. Perhaps it was time that he got in touch with Abbott, not waiting for Abbott to get back to him. Then he realized he did not know how to get in touch with Abbott. The writer had left no address or phone number, probably because he had expected to be traveling and for a time would have no permanent base of operation.

The best approach, Benton decided, was to phone Abbott’s publisher. Someone at the publishing house undoubtedly would know how to go about reaching him. But it was Saturday and publishing houses, he suspected, would be closed. He would do it the first thing Monday morning, recognizing even as he thought, that his urgency was motivated by his wish to shift the problem of the exhaustion syndrome off his back. He had done the thinking and had gone as far as he could go; now it was time for someone other than himself to take over.

Maybe research would prove that his deductions were wrong. Right or wrong, however, some effort, he was convinced, should be made to find the truth.

He phoned first thing Monday morning.

He identified himself and said, “I was hoping someone on your staff could tell me how to get in touch with Robert Abbott. He came to see me several months ago and it’s rather important that I speak with him.”

The woman who had answered hesitated for a moment; when she spoke, she sounded slightly flustered. “Just a moment, sir,” she said.

A man came on the line. “You were asking about Abbott.”

“Yes. It’s important that I reach him.”

“Doctor,” the man asked, “don’t you ever see a paper?”

“I’m ordinarily too busy,” said Benton. “I simply glance at headlines. At times not even that.”

“Then you don’t know that Abbott’s dead.”

“Dead!”

“Yes, a couple of weeks ago. A highway crash somewhere in Colorado.”

Benton said nothing.

“It was a shock to all of us,” said the man in New York. “You say you knew him.”

“I didn’t really know him. He visited me a few months ago. We talked an hour or so. I assume you know what he was working on.”

“No, we don’t. We’ve often wondered. We knew he was onto something, but he was closemouthed about it. You may know a great deal more than we do.”

“Not a great deal,” Benton said. “Thank you very much. I hope I did not disturb you.”

“Not at all. Thanks for calling. I’m sorry I had such bad news for you.”

Benton hung up and stared blankly at the office wall, not seeing the fly-specked diploma that had hung there so long. What do I do now? he asked himself. Just what in hell do I do now?

The first hard frost had come the night before and there was a sharp chill in the air the day Lem Jackson came into the office. Jackson was one of the hill people, a tall, gangling man who appeared to be forty years or so of age. Benton knew who he was, but could not recall that he had ever been a patient.

Jackson sat down in a chair opposite the desk and dropped his shapeless, battered hat upon the carpeting.

“Maybe, Doc,” he said, “I’ve done wrong in coming and taking up your time. But I feel all dragged out. I ain’t worth a hoot. I am not myself. Seems like I’m tired all the time, and my muscles are sore. Most days I’m so ornery and feel so mean that I’m ashamed of myself, the way I treat the wife and kids.”

“How about your appetite?” Benton asked. “You been eating well?”

“All the time. Can’t seem to get filled up. I’m hungry all the time.”

There it went, Benton thought—all the carefully worked out deductions, the elaborately constructed theory of the exhaustion syndrome. For Jackson was a hill man, and under Benton’s theory the people of the hills had to be immune.

“What the trouble, Doc?” Jackson asked. “Did I say something I shouldn’t?”

Benton shook himself mentally. “Not at all. I was just wondering. What have you been doing, Lem?”

“To tell the truth,” said Jackson, “not much of anything. A little farming, that’s all. An odd job now and then. I feel so beat out I’m not up to a day of honest work. I guess I’d have to say I don’t do much of nothing.”

Then he went on, “Some while ago I had a good job down in West Virginia, but I lost the job. If I could’ve stayed on, I’d be sitting pretty now. Short hours, work not too hard, and the pay was good. But they up and fired me. The foreman had it in for me. I tell you, Doc, there simply ain’t no justice. I was as good on the job as any of the other men.”

“What kind of work?” Benton asked, not really caring what kind of job it was, but just making conversation.

“Well, I suppose that even if I hadn’t been fired the job wouldn’t have lasted. They closed down after I left. It was a small chemical plant. They were making DDT, and I hear they banned the stuff.”

Benton felt himself go limp as relief flowed through him. His theory still stood up, he thought triumphantly. Lem Jackson was the exception to the rule his theory had set up that helped to cinch that theory. But even as he felt elated at this evidence that his deductions had been right, he told himself that his reaction was wrong. He should have been glad, it seemed to him, when he first had thought Jackson’s symptoms shot his theory down—for, come to think of it, this business of DDT and the human body was a ghastly thing. But, in a perverse way, he had become fond of his theory. After all the work and thought he had put into it, no one, not even the most humane person in the world, would have wanted to be proved wrong.

“Lem,” he said, “I’m sorry, but there’s not a thing I can do for you. Not yet. There are others like you. Perhaps there are a lot of others like you. It’s a condition that has just come to be noticed and there is work being done on it. In time, there may be a cure. I am sorry I have to be this honest with you, but I think you’re the kind of man who would want that kind of honesty.”

“You mean,” Jackson said, “that I’m going to die?”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean I can’t make you feel any better. You probably won’t get any worse. There’ll be a time, I’m sure, when there’ll be drugs or medicine.”

And all that would be needed, he told himself rather bitterly, was a pill or a capsule with a requisite dosage of DDT incorporated with carrier ingredients.

Jackson picked up his battered hat and got slowly to his feet. “Doc, all the people in the hills say you’re a square shooter. ‘He don’t feed you no crap,’ they told me. ‘He is a doctor it’s safe to go to.’ You say probably I won’t get any worse.”

“Probably not,” said Benton.

“And maybe someday there’ll be a medicine that’ll do some good.”

“I am hopeful.”

Watching Jackson leave, he wondered why he had told him what he had. Why the brutal honesty? Why the giving of some hope? “There is work being done on it,” he had said; but that had been a lie. Or had it? There was one person working on it and that one person, he grimly told himself, had better buckle down to business.

That evening he drafted a careful letter, setting forth in precise detail what he suspected. Then, as he found the time, working in the evening after office hours were over, he typed the letters and mailed them out. Then he sat back and waited.

The first reply came, in two weeks’ time, from JAMA . His letter, it said, could not be considered for publication since it lacked research evidence. JAMA was kind enough, but final. It did not even suggest he institute further research. But that was only fair, he admitted to himself, since there had been no research to start with.