He shucked into his jacket and went into the living room. He stopped at the desk and opened the drawer. Reaching in, he lifted the lid of the box of leaf. He took a pinch and had it halfway to his mouth when the thought struck him suddenly and he stood for a moment frozen while all the gears came together, meshing, and the pieces fell into a pattern and he knew, without even asking, why he was the only genuine dishonest man left on the entire Earth.
I profetick and wach ahed for you!
He put the leaf into his mouth and felt the comfort of it.
Antidote, he thought, and knew that he was right.
But how could Pug have known—how could he have foreseen the long, twisting tangle of many circumstances which must inevitably crystallize into this very moment?
Leg. forst.?
He closed the lid of the box and shut the drawer and turned toward the door.
The only dishonest man in the world, he thought. Immune to the honesty factor in the yellow spores because of the resistance built up within him by his long use of the leaf.
He had set a trap tonight to victimize Pickering and tomorrow he’d go out and fox the government and there was no telling where he’d go from there. Hazlitt had said something about taking over the entire planet and the idea was not a bad one if he could only squeeze out the necessary time.
He chuckled at the thought of how all the honest suckers would stand innocently in line, unable to do a thing about it—all fair prey to the one dishonest man in the entire world. A wolf among the sheep!
He drew himself erect and pulled the white gloves on carefully. He flicked his walking stick. Then he thumped himself on the chest—just once—and let himself out into the hall. He did not bother to lock the door behind him.
In the lobby, as he stepped out of the lift, he saw the Widow Foshay coming in the door. She turned and called back cheerfully to friends who had brought her home.
He lifted his hat to her with an olden courtesy that he thought he had forgotten.
She threw up her hands in mock surprise. “Mr. Packer,” she cried, “what has come over you? Where do you think you’re going at this time of night, when all honest people are abed?”
“Minerva,” he told her gravely, “I was about to take a stroll. I wonder if you might come along with me?”
She hesitated for an instant, just long enough to give the desired small show of reluctance and indecision.
He whuffled out his mustache at her. “Besides,” he said, “I am not an honest person.”
He offered her his arm with distinguished gallantry.
Physician to the Universe
Originally published in the March 1963 issue of Fantastic Stories, “Physician to the Universe” displays a level of obsession and anger seldom seem in stories by Cliff Simak. In his other works, Cliff has described outer space as “the great uncaring,” but when he uses those words here, he’s talking about a swamp. The swamp, however, is not the enemy here; rather, the enemy is the human fear that leads to tyranny.
—dww
He awoke and was in a place he had never seen before. It was an unsubstantial place that flickered on and off and it was a place of dusk in which darker figures stood out faintly. There were two white faces that flickered with the place and there was a smell he had never known before—a dank, dark smell, like the smell of black, deep water that had stood too long without a current to stir it.
And then the place was gone and he was back again in that other place that was filled with brilliant light, with the marble eminence looming up before him and the head of the man who sat atop this eminence and behind it, so that one must look up, it seemed, from very far below to see him. As if the man were very high and one were very low, as if the man were great and one, himself, were humble.
The mouth in the middle of the face of the man who was high and great was moving and one strained to catch the sound of words, but there was only silence, a terrible, humming silence that shut one out from this brilliant place, that made one all alone and small and very unimportant—too poor and unimportant to hear the words that the great man might be saying. Although it seemed as if one knew the words, knowing there were no other words the great man might be allowed to say, that he had to say them because, despite his highness and his greatness, he was caught in the self-same trap as the little, humble being who stood staring up at him. The words were there, just beyond some sort of barrier one could not comprehend, and if one could pierce that barrier he’d know the words without having heard them said. And it was important that he know them, for they were of great concern to him—they were, in fact, about him and they would affect his life.
His mind went pawing out to find the barrier and to strip it from the words and even as he did, the place of brilliance tilted and he was back again in the dusk that flickered.
The white faces still were bent above him and one of the faces now came closer, as if it were floating down upon him—all alone, all by itself, a small white-faced balloon. For in the dark one could not see the body. If there were a body.
“You’ll be all right,” the white face said. “You are coming round.”
“Of course I’ll be all right,” said Alden Street, rather testily.
For he was angry at the words, angry that here he could hear the words, but back in that place of brilliance he could hear no words at all—words that were important, while these words he had heard were no more than drivel.
“Who said I wouldn’t be all right?” asked Alden Street.
And that was who he was, but not entirely who he was, for he was more than just a name. Every man, he thought, was more than just a name. He was many things.
He was Alden Street and he was a strange and lonely man who lived in a great, high, lonely house that stood above the village and looked out across a wilderness of swampland that stretched toward the south until it went out of sight—farther, much farther than the human eye could see, a swamp whose true proportions could be drawn only on a map.
The house was surrounded by a great front yard and a garden at the rear and at the garden’s edge grew a mighty tree that flamed golden in the autumn for a few brief hours, and the tree held something of magnificent importance and he, Alden Street, was tied in with that great importance.
He sought wildly for this great importance and in the dusk he could not find it. It had somehow slipped his grasp. He had had it, he had known it, he’d lived with it all his life, from the time of childhood, but he did not have it. It had left him somehow.
He went scrabbling after it, frantically, for it was something that he could not lose, plunging after it into the darkness of his brain. And as he scrambled after it, he knew the taste again, the bitter taste when he had drained the vial and dropped it to the floor.
He scrabbled in the darkness of his mind, searching for the thing he’d lost, not remembering what it was, with no inkling of what it might have been, but knowing he would recognize it once he came across it.
He scrabbled and he did not find it. For suddenly he was not in the darkness of his brain, but back once more in the place of brilliance. And angry at how he’d been thwarted in his search.
The high and mighty man had not started speaking, although Alden could see that he was about to speak, that at any moment now he would start to speak. And the strange thing of it was that he was certain he had seen this all before and had heard before what the high, great man was about to say. Although he could not, for the life of him, recall a word of it. He had been here before, he knew, not once, but twice before. This was a reel re-run, this was past happening.
“Alden Street,” said the man so high above him, “you will stand and face me.”
And that was silly, Alden thought, for he was already standing and already facing him.
“You have heard the evidence,” said the man, “that has been given here.”
“I heard it,” Alden said.
“What have you, then, to say in your self-defense?”
“Not a thing,” said Alden.
“You mean you don’t deny it?”
“I can’t deny it’s true. But there were extenuating circumstances.”
“I am sure there were, but they’re not admissible.”
“You mean that I can’t tell you…”
“Of course you can. But it will make no difference. The law admits no more than the commission of the crime. There can be no excuses.”
“I would suppose, then,” said Alden Street, “there is nothing I can say. Your Honor, I would not waste your time.”
“I am glad,” said the judge, “that you are so realistic. It makes the whole thing simpler and easier. And it expedites the business of this court.”
“But you must understand,” said Alden Street, “that I can’t be sent away. I have some most important work and I should be getting back to it.”
“You admit,” said the high, great man, “that you were ill for twenty-four full hours and failed most lamentably to report your illness.”
“Yes,” said Alden Street.
“You admit that even then you did not report for treatment, but rather that you were apprehended by a monitor.”
Alden did not answer. It was piling up and there was no use to answer. He could see, quite plainly, that it would do no good.
“And, further, you admit that it has been some eighteen months since you have reported for your physical.”
“I was far too busy.”
“Too busy when the law is most explicit that you must have a physical at six month intervals?”
“You don’t understand, Your Honor.”
His Honor shook his head. “I am afraid I do. You have placed yourself above the law. You have chosen deliberately to flout the law and you must answer for it. Too much has been gained by our medical statutes to endanger their observance. No citizen can be allowed to set a precedent against them. The struggle to gain a sound and healthy people must be accorded the support of each and every one of us and I cannot countenance…”
The place of brilliance tilted and he was back in the dusk again.
He lay upon his back and stared up into the darkness, and although he could feel the pressure of the bed on which he lay, it was as if he were suspended in some sort of dusky limbo that had no beginning and no end, that was nowhere and led nowhere, and was, in itself, the terminal point of all and each existence.
From somewhere deep inside himself he heard the questioning once again—the flat, hard voice that had, somehow, the sound of metal in it:
Have you ever taken part in any body-building program?
When was the last time that you brushed your teeth?
Have you ever contributed either time or money to the little leagues?
How often would you say that you took a bath?
Did you at any time ever express a doubt that sports developed character?
One of the white faces floated out of the darkness to hang above him once again. It was, he saw, an old face—a woman’s face and kind.
A hand slid beneath his head and lifted it.
“Here,” the white face said, “drink this.”
He felt the spoon against his lips.
“It’s soup,” she said. “It’s hot. It will give you strength.”
He opened his mouth and the spoon slid in. The soup was hot and comforting.
The spoon retreated.
“Where…” he said.
“Where are you?”
“Yes,” he whispered, “where am I? I want to know.”
“This is Limbo,” the white face said.
Now the word had meaning.
Now he could recall what Limbo was.
And he could not stay in Limbo.
It was inconceivable that anyone should expect that he should stay in Limbo.
He rolled his head back and forth on the thin, hard pillow in a gesture of despair.
If he only had more strength. Just a little while ago he had had a lot of strength. Old and wiry and with a lot of strength left in him. Strong enough for almost anything at all.
But shiftless, they had said back in Willow Bend.
And there he had the name. He was glad to have it back. He hugged it close against him.
“Willow Bend,” he said, speaking to the darkness.
“You all right, old timer?”
He could not see the speaker, but he was not frightened. There was nothing to be frightened of. He had his name and he had Willow Bend and he had Limbo and in just a little while he’d have all the rest of it and then he’d be whole again and strong.
“I’m all right,” he said.
“Kitty gave you soup. You want some more of it?”
“No. All I want is to get out of here.”
“You been pretty sick. Temperature a hundred and one point seven.”
“Not now. I have no fever now.”
“No. But when you got here.”
“How come you know about my temperature? You aren’t any medic. I can tell by the voice of you that you aren’t any medic. In Limbo, there would be no medic.”
“No medic,” said the unseen speaker. “But I am a doctor.”
“You’re lying,” Alden told him. “There are no human doctors. There isn’t any such a thing as doctors any more. All we have is medics.”
“There are some of us in research.”
“But Limbo isn’t research.”
“At times,” the voice said, “you get rather tired of research. It’s too impersonal and sterile.”
Alden did not reply. He ran his hand, in a cautious rubbing movement, up and down the blanket that had been used to cover him. It was stiff and hard to the touch, but seemed fairly heavy.
He tried to sort out in his mind what the man had told him.
“There is no one here,” he said, “but violators. What did you violate? Forget to trim your toe-nails? Short yourself on sleep?”
“I’m not a violator.”
“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.