Clifford Simak - The Ghost of a Model T - And Other Stories

“A volunteer, perhaps.”

“Nor a volunteer. It would do no good to volunteer. They would not let you in. That’s the point to Limbo—that’s the dirty rotten joke. You ignore the medics, so now the medics ignore you. You go to a place where there aren’t any medics and see how well you like it.”

“You mean that you broke in?”

“You might call it that.”

“You’re crazy,” Alden Street declared.

For you didn’t break into Limbo. If you were smart at all, you did your level best to stay away from it. you brushed your teeth and bathed and used one of the several kinds of approved mouth washes and you took care that you had your regular check-ups and you saw to it that you had some sort of daily exercise and you watched your diet and you ran as fast as you could leg it to the nearest clinic the first moment you felt ill. Not that you were often ill. The way they kept you checked, the way they made you live, you were very seldom ill.

He heard that flat, metallic voice clanging in his brain again, the disgusted, shocked, accusatory voice of the medic disciplinary corps.

Alden Street, it said, you’re nothing but a dirty slob.

And that, of course, was the worst thing that he could be called. There was no other label that could possibly be worse. It was synonymous with traitor to the cause of the body beautiful and healthy.

“This place?” he asked. “It’s a hospital?”

“No,” the doctor said. “There’s no hospital here. There is nothing here. Just me and the little that I know and the herbs and other woods specifics that I’m able to command.”

“And this Limbo. What kind of Limbo is it?”

“A swamp,” the doctor said. “An ungodly place, believe me.”

“Death sentence?”

“That’s what it amounts to.”

“I can’t die,” said Alden.

“Some day,” the calm voice said. “All men must.”

“Not yet.”

“No, not yet. You’ll be all right in a few more hours.”

“What was the matter with me?”

“You had some sort of fever.”

“But no name for it.”

“Look, how would I know? I am not…”

“I know you’re not a medic. Humans can’t be medics—not practicing physicians, not surgeons, not anything at all that has to do with the human body. But a human can be a medical research man because that takes insight and imagination.”

“You’ve thought about this a lot,” the doctor said.

“Some,” Alden said. “Who has not?”

“Perhaps not as many as you think. But you are angry. You are bitter.”

“Who wouldn’t be? When you think about it.”

“I’m not,” the doctor said.

“But you…”

“Yes, I of all of us, should be the bitter one. But I’m not. Because we did it to ourselves. The robots didn’t ask for it. We handed it to them.”

And that was right, of course, thought Alden. It had started long ago when computers had been used for diagnosis and for drug dosage computation. And it had gone on from there. It had been fostered in the name of progress. And who was there to stand in the way of progress?

“Your name,” he said. “I’d like to know your name.”

“My name is Donald Parker.”

“An honest name,” said Alden Street. “A good, clean, honest name.”

“Now go to sleep,” said Parker. “You have talked too long.”

“What time is it?”

“It will soon be morning.”

The place was dark as ever. There was no light at all. There was no seeing and there was no sound and there was the smell of evil dankness. It was a pit, thought Alden—a pit for that small portion of humanity which rebelled against or ignored or didn’t, for one reason or another, go along with the evangelistic fervor of universal health. You were born into it and educated in it and you grew up and continued with it until the day you died. And it was wonderful, of course, but, God, how tired you got of it, how sick you got of it. Not of the program or the law, but of the unceasing vigilance, of the spirit of crusading against the tiny germ, of the everlasting tilting against the virus and the filth, of the almost religious ardor with which the medic corps kept its constant watch.

Until in pure resentment you longed to wallow in some filth; until it became a mark of bravado not to wash your hands.

For the statutes were quite clear—illness was a criminal offense and it was a misdemeanor to fail to carry out even the most minor precaution aimed at keeping healthy.

It started with the cradle and it extended to the grave and there was a joke, never spoken loudly (a most pathetic joke), that the only thing now left to kill a person was a compelling sense of boredom. In school the children had stars put against their names for the brushing of the teeth, for the washing of the hands, for regular toilet habits, for many other tasks. On the playground there was no longer anything so purposeless and foolish (and even criminal) as haphazard play, but instead meticulously worked out programs of calisthenics aimed at the building of the body. There were sports programs on every level, on the elementary and secondary school levels, on the college level, neighborhood and community levels, young folks, young marrieds, middle-aged and old folks levels—every kind of sports, for every taste and season. They were not spectator sports. If one knew what was good for him, he would not for a moment become anything so useless and so suspect as a sports spectator.

Tobacco was forbidden, as were all intoxicants (tobacco and intoxicants now being little more than names enacted in the laws), and only wholesome foods were allowed upon the market. There were no such things now as candy or soda pop or chewing gum. These, along with liquor and tobacco, finally were no more than words out of a distant past, something told about in bated breath by a garrulous oldster who had heard about them when he was very young, who might have experienced or heard about the last feeble struggle of defiance by the small fry mobs which had marked their final stamping out.

No longer were there candy-runners or pop bootleggers or the furtive sale in some dark alley of a pack of chewing gum.

Today the people were healthy and there was no disease—or almost no disease. Today a man at seventy was entering middle age and could look forward with some confidence to another forty years of full activity in his business or profession. Today you did not die at eighty, but barring accident, could expect to reach a century and a half.

And this was all to the good, of course, but the price you paid was high.

“Donald Parker,” said Alden.

“Yes,” said the voice from the darkness.

“I was wondering if you were still here.”

“I was about to leave. I thought you were asleep.”

“You got in,” said Alden. “All by yourself, I mean. The medics didn’t bring you.”

“All by myself,” said Parker.

“Then you know the way. Another man could follow.”

“You mean someone else could come in.”

“No. I mean someone could get out. They could backtrack you.”

“No one here,” said Parker. “I was in the peak of physical condition and I made it only by the smallest margin. Another five miles to go and I’d never made it.”

“But if one man…”

“One man in good health. There is no one here could make it. Not even myself.”

“If you could tell me the way.”

“It would be insane,” said Parker. “Shut up and go to sleep.”

Alden listened to the other moving, heading for the unseen door.

“I’ll make it,” Alden said, not talking to Parker, nor even to himself, but talking to the dark and the world the dark enveloped.

For he had to make it. He must get back to Willow Bend. There was something waiting for him there and he must get back.