ROBBINS Harold - The Carpetbaggers

And when the poison had done its work, leaving her with nothing but the small, frightened, unshrivened soul of her beginnings, I turned away.

With the lack of mercy peculiar to my kind, I turned my back. I ran from her fears, from her need of comfort and reassurance, from her unspoken pleading for mercy and love and understanding. I fled the hot sun, back to the safety of my secret rock.

But now there was no longer comfort in its secret shade, for the light continued to seep through, and there was no longer comfort in the cool detached flowing of my blood. And the rock seemed to be growing smaller and smaller while the sun was growing larger and larger. I tried to make myself tinier, to find shelter beneath the rock's shrinking surface, but there was no escape. Soon there would be no secret rock for me. The sun was growing brighter and brighter. Brighter and brighter.

I opened my eyes.

There was a tiny pinpoint of light shining straight into them. I blinked and the penetrating pinpoint moved to one side. I could see beyond it now. I was lying on a table in a white room and beside me was a man in a white gown and a white skullcap. The light came from the reflection in a small, round mirror that he wore over his eye as he looked down at me. I could see on his face the tiny black hairs that the razor had missed. His lips were grim and tight.

"My God!" The voice came from behind him. "His face is a mess. There must be a hundred pieces of glass in it."

My eyes flickered up and saw the second man as the first turned toward him. "Shut up, you fool! Can't you see he's awake?"

I began to raise my head but a light, quick hand was on my shoulder, pressing me back, and then her face was there. Her face, looking down at me with a mercy and compassion that mine had never shown.

"Jennie!"

Her hand pressed against my shoulder. She looked up at someone over my head. "Call Dr. Rosa Strassmer at Los Angeles General or the Colton Sanitarium in Santa Monica. Tell her Jonas Cord has been in a bad accident and to come right away."

"Yes, Sister Thomas." It was a young girl's voice and it came from behind me. I heard footsteps moving away.

The pain was coming back into my side and leg again and I gritted my teeth. I could feel it forcing the tears into my eyes. I closed them for a moment, then opened them and looked up at her. "Jennie!" I whispered. "Jennie, I'm sorry!"

"It's all right, Jonas," she whispered back. Her hands went under the sheet that covered me. I felt a sharp sting in my arm. "Don't talk. Everything's all right now."

I smiled gratefully and went back to sleep, wondering vaguely why Jennie was wearing that funny white veil over her beautiful hair.

From outside my windows, from the streets, bright now with the morning sun, still came the sounds of celebration. Even this usually staid and quiet part of Hillcrest Drive skirting Mercy Hospital was filled with happy noises and throngs of people. From the Naval Station across the city of San Diego came the occasional triumphant blast of a ship's horn. It had been like this all through the night, starting early the evening before, when the news came. Japan had surrendered. The war was over.

I knew now what Otto Strassmer had been trying to tell me. I knew now of the miracle in the desert. From the newspapers and from the radio beside my bed. They had all told the story of the tiny container of atoms that had brought mankind to the gates of heaven. Or hell. I shifted in my bed to find another position of comfort, as the pulleys that suspended my leg in traction squeaked, adding their mouselike sound to the others.

I had been lucky, one of the nurses told me. Lucky. My right leg had been broken in three places, my right hip in another, and several ribs had been crushed. Yet I still looked out at the world, from behind the layer of thick bandages which covered all of my face, except the slits for my eyes, nose and mouth. But I'd been lucky. At least I was still alive.

Not like Amos, who still sat in the cabin of The Centurion as it rested on the edge of a shelf of sand, some four hundred odd feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Poor Amos. The three crewmen had been found unscathed and I was still alive, by the grace of God and the poor fishermen who found me floating in the water and brought me to shore, while Amos sat silent in his watery tomb, still at the controls of the plane he had built and would not let me fly alone.

I remembered the accountant's voice over the telephone from Los Angeles as he spoke consolingly. "Don't worry, Mr. Cord. We can write it all off against taxes on profits. When you apply the gross amount to the normal tax of forty per cent and the excess-profits tax of ninety per cent, the net loss to us comes to under two million- "

I had slammed down the phone, cutting him off. It was all well and good. But how do you charge off on a balance sheet the life of a man who was killed by your greed? Is there an allowable deduction for death on the income-tax returns? It was I who had killed Amos and no matter how many expenses I deducted from my own soul, I could not bring him back.

The door opened and I looked up. Rosa came into the room, followed by an intern and a nurse wheeling a small cart. She came over to the left side of my bed and stood there, smiling down at me. "Hello, Jonas."

"Hello, Rosa," I mumbled through the bandages. "Is it time to change them again? I didn't expect you until the day after tomorrow."

"The war is over."

"Yes," I said. "I know."

"And when I got up this morning, it was such a beautiful morning, I decided to fly down here and take off your bandages."

I peered up at her. "I see," I said. "I always wondered where doctors got their logic."

"That isn't doctor's logic, that's woman's logic. I have the advantage of having been a woman long before I became a doctor."

I laughed. "I’m grateful for the logic, whichever one of you it belongs to. It will be nice to have the bandages off, even for a little while."

She was still smiling, though her eyes were serious. "This time, they're coming off for good, Jonas."

I stared at her as she picked up a scissors from the cart. I reached up and stayed her hand. Suddenly, I was afraid to have her remove the bandages. I felt safe having them wrapped about my face like a cocoon, shielding me from the prying eyes of the world. "Is it soon enough? Will it be all right?"

She sensed my feeling. "Your face will be sore for a while yet," she said, snipping away at the cocoon. "It will be even sorer as the flesh and muscles take up their work again. But that will pass. We can't spend forever hiding behind a mask, can we?"

That was the doctor talking, not the woman. I looked up at her face as she snipped and unwound, snipped and uncovered, until all the bandage was gone and I felt as naked as a newborn baby, with a strange coolness on my cheeks. I tried to see myself reflected in her eyes but they were calm and expressionless, impersonal and professionally detached. I felt her fingers press against my cheek, the flesh under my chin, smooth the hair back from my temples. "Close your eyes."

I closed them. I felt her fingers touch the lids lightly. "Open."

I opened them. Her face was still quiet and unrevealing. "Smile," she said. "Like this." She made with a wide, humorless grin that was a slapstick parody of her usual warm smile.

I grinned. I grinned until the tiny pains that came to my cheeks began to burn like hell. And still I grinned.

"O.K.," she said, suddenly smiling now. Really smiling. "You can stop now."

I stopped and stared up at her. "How is it, Doc?" I tried to keep it light. "Pretty horrible?"

"It's not bad," she said noncommittally. "You were never a raving beauty, you know." She picked up a mirror from the cart. "Here. See for yourself."