Ole Doc Methuselah (8 page)

Sir
Pudno was getting out of bed. He was a flabby, fat Mongolian of no definite
features. He rolled himself up in a food-spattered dressing gown, sat soddenly
in the chair and stared at Ole Doc.

“You
really a doctor, Mac?” said Sir Pudno.

“I
am. If you have someone to be treated, I shall be happy to oblige you. However,
there is a matter of a pile I need. I landed here—”

“Clam
it, Mac,” said Sir Pudno. “We'll go right up to Her Majesty.”

He
tucked his fat into a seam-strained uniform and then Ole Doc was thrust after
him into a chamber which was more like a
powder magazine
than
a throne room. It was huge and once it had been pretty. But all the murals and
mirrors had been removed and in their places were sheets of steel. No sunlight
entered here and the pale blue gleam of lamps thickened the gloom.

The
dais was thickly curtained and into the curtains had been set the kind of glass
which admits light and therefore sight only one way. Someone or something sat
behind on a throne.

Sir
Pudno saluted and bowed. “Your Majesty, by great good luck I've been able to
get a doctor up here.”

“At
how much cut of his fee?” said the person behind the curtain. The voice was
rasping. Her Majesty was in no good mood.

“There's
been no conversation of fee, Your Majesty,” said Ole Doc. “Nor has there been
any talk of services. I am a member of the Universal Medical Society and must
not be detained. If you have a patient, I will do what I can without fee other
than a pile for my ship. I repeat that I must not be delayed.”

“He
talks like he thinks he's somebody,” said the person behind the curtains.
“Well, show him the young fool. And remember this, you. Cure him but not too
well. What did you say you were a member of?”

“The
Universal Medical Society,” said Ole Doc. “We do not like governments which
detain our members.”

“You
know your business, huh?” said Her Majesty.

“People
think so,” said Ole Doc. “Now take me to the patient. I have no time to
waste.”

“You
treat crazy people, too?” said Her Majesty.

“I
have been known to do so,” said Ole Doc, looking fixedly at the curtain.

“You
seem to be pretty young. Curly hair and pink cheeks. Would you know how to make
somebody crazy, now?”

“Perhaps.”

“Build
a machine or something to make people crazy?” she persisted.

“That
is possible. Sometimes machines aren't necessary.”

“Oh
yes, they are. I'd pay you well if you did it.”

“What?”

“Made
somebody crazy,” said Her Majesty behind the curtain.

“This
is out of my line,” said Ole Doc.

“Well,
show him to the patient anyway,” said Her Majesty.

It
was a tortuous way Sir Pudno led them. Urging Ole Doc on ahead of him and
followed by an escort of twenty guards, Sir Pudno finally brought them to a
chamber some two hundred feet into the earth. It was barred and sealed and
guarded in three separate depths but opened at last into a mean, damp cubicle
which stank of unwashed flesh and rotting straw.

They
thrust Ole Doc into the darkness with a shove against the stone which stunned
him slightly and in that instant took away his kit and belt radio. The barriers
clanged grimly behind him and left him ruefully rubbing his scalp in the fetid
gloom.

Ole
Doc pulled the tie string of his cloak and a small spotlight, which served
ordinarily as a button, lighted and, when readjusted, spread a conical shaft
into the mote-filled chamber. The circle lighted upon a young woman who clung
to the far wall, fending the glare from the eyes of a small child in her arms.
She was dressed in ragged finery, pale and soiled with long imprisonment, but
humility she had not yet been taught. Chin up and nostrils flaring, she glared
back at the light.

Turning,
Ole Doc let the beam play over the remainder of this tiny cubicle and brought
it to rest on the man.

He
lay in dirty straw, face hidden by his arm. His fine frilled shirt was ripped,
his scarlet sash was blackened with grime, his trousers and small boots were
white, dusted and flecked with straw. Ole Doc moved a step toward him and found
the woman interposed.

“You
shan't touch him!”

Gently,
Ole Doc removed her hand from his cloak. “I am a physician. They have permitted
me to come here, saying that he is ill.”

Half
doubting, she let him come nearer. He took a second button from his cloak and
set it on a stone ledge where it shed a bright light over the recumbent young
man.

The
bright, hectic spots in his cheeks, the rattle in his lungs, the odor of him
and the wasted condition of his hands cried tuberculosis to Ole Doc—and in the
last stages.

He
had not seen an advanced case of the disease for more than two hundred years
and it was with great shock that he plumbed the ignorance of these people.

“This
is dangerous!” he said. “A child in here with this. No care, no understanding.
My God, woman, how long have you been here?”

She
was protecting her eyes from the light but she raised them now, proud of her
endurance. “Six orbits. My child is three.”

“And
they permitted . . . ” Ole Doc was angry. He had not seen brutality such as
this for a long, long time. For these people were not criminals. The woman and
the man both looked highborn.

“Who
are you?” demanded Ole Doc.

“This
is Rudolf, uncrowned king of Greater Algol. I am his queen, Ayilt.”

“Then,”
said Ole Doc, a little amazed to find himself not proof against surprises, “who
is that who reigns?”

“His
mother, the wife of Conore, dead six orbits gone.”

Ole
Doc glanced back at the doors. He was wondering how dangerous it might be to
know too much about this. And then he decided, after one glance at the
frightened child. “Start at the beginning.”

“You
are a stranger to all these planets, that I see well,” said Ayilt, seating
herself on the straw. “We know almost as little about the rest of space, for we
are not rich nor brilliant and our planets are small, arid things, mostly stone
with little land to till. And so I do not wonder that we are forgotten.

“We
came from pirate stock—not the best to be sure. And the mainstay of our
population had been the terrestrial Oriental who can live anywhere.

“Even
so we had a happy government. There was not much. The last of the great
revolutions was more than two hundred years ago and after that his family”—and
she indicated the feverish, tossing boy on the straw—“stabilized the
government. King Conore ruled justly and wisely and was much beloved by
everyone. Since the beginning, because of our pirate origin, we discouraged
traffic with space and it was well, for we had white and Scorpon stock and,
outcast as it was, it often went bad. We had many prison colonies, but little
crime. King Conore, like his forebears, was kind to prisoners. He gave them
their chance in their own society and though he would not let them return to
our worlds, they prospered in their way. But the terrible error was the
sentencing of women to these colonies, for women, I am ashamed to say, often
descend from criminal stock as criminals. And so it was that our prison
settlement population was large.

“We
considered prisoners hopeless. We took away any promising young. We hoped that
these eugenics would serve us, and perhaps eventually wipe away all traces of
our shameful origin. But now and then we erred.

“Yes,
we erred. King Conore took a royal princess of the Olin line to wed, forgetting
she had been born in a prison settlement, for she had been removed at the age
of four and was a brilliant woman and beautiful.

“They
reigned well and wisely until there came a day when new pirates arrived. No one
knows from whence they came nor why, but they were not of this system. They are
all dead now but it was said that the leader was terrestrial.

“Unsuspected,
they raised revolt among our Mongolians and then struck the blow themselves.
During a pageant given in honor of my husband and myself, to celebrate our
marriage, the rebels threw a bomb into the royal car.

“King
Conore was killed outright. His wife, Pauma, was seriously injured about the
face and was blinded in one eye. Palace guards were prompt but not quick enough
to prevent the bomb. She had them hanged, six hundred and more of them. She
butchered the royal servants. She cast my husband and myself into this hole.
She tried and tortured to death, in all, more than a million people on the six
planets and then the stomachs of all decent folk turned and they tried to smash
her.

“We
had forgotten her origin. We had forgotten the bitterness of a beautiful woman
turned ugly. We had forgotten the prison settlements.

“We
were set upon by convicts—or rather the planets were, for my husband and I were
imprisoned here. The army, all guards, all important dignitaries, were killed
or disbanded by Pauma's treachery and the convicts were set in their places.

“Unlettered,
revengeful, wicked, the freed prisoners began to wreck the people and the land.
And they could do this, for there was one convict for every three people on our
planets.

“My
husband and I owe our continued lives to the fear of Pauma that some other of
our planets may revolt, for there is hope everywhere that my husband still may
arise from this tomb and govern as did his father.”

“She
keeps her own son here, then,” said Ole Doc.

“Why
not, Doctor? He opposed her first measures, trying to point out that it was
exterior influence which caused the tragedy. But she was always jealous of
Rudolf, for after his birth his father made too much of him and often at
Pauma's expense.

“Royal
line or not, Pauma was a gutter urchin. A prison settlement child. She told
Rudolf that he meant to depose her and kill her. But she has to keep him here.
While he lives no one dares raise a hand against Pauma, for she has often
threatened to execute him if this is so and then would ensue nothing but night
for all Algol.

“This
is why you find us here, Doctor. Can you please do something for my husband? He
has some fever or other and has not talked for days, for when he talks he spits
blood. See, the straw is spattered with it.”

“We'll
see what can be done,” said Ole Doc. And he called harshly for the guards and
demanded that they return his kit.

Sir
Pudno, outside the three barriers, argued about it. He conceived it to be full
of weapons and like no doctor's kit he had ever seen. But when Ole Doc finally
threatened to do nothing, the kit was passed through.

From
it, when he had increased the light on the ledge, Ole Doc took a small plate
and placed it on the young man's chest. By moving it about he was able to
examine the lungs in their entirety, the plate only covering some two square
inches at a time. He shook his head. There was little left of the fellow. He
should have been dead days back. But nothing amazed Ole Doc more than the
tenacity of the human body in its cling to life.

On
his ship he could have done much better but he knew he could not ask that these
be removed there. For Ole Doc was working for more than the health of this
young king.

He
took a vial of mutated bacteria mold and thrust it between the youth's lips.
There was no danger of choking him for the cheeks would absorb the entire dose.

Then
Ole Doc gave his attention to the woman. He was amazed, when he passed the
plate over her breast, to find her in such good health. Her heart was strong,
her lungs perfect. The only thing she suffered was malnutrition and this on a
small scale.

The
child was somewhat like the mother but there was a spot upon its lungs. It
cried when Ole Doc made it take another vial and the woman looked dangerous as
it protested.

“Now,”
said Ole Doc, “I would advise you to hold your nose. This does not smell
good.” And he took a bomb the size of his thumb and exploded it against the
floor. A dense white cloud, luminescent with ultraviolet light, sprang up and
filled the chamber.

The
guard without protested, opened up, rushed in and dragged Ole Doc out,
thrusting blaster muzzles into his ribs. The door clanged and then the other
two barriers shut. Ole Doc was hastened up the long passageway and pushed again
into the throne room.

The
curtains moved slightly. Now that he had some idea of what was behind them a
chill came over the Soldier of Light. For it seemed that black rods of evil
were thrusting out from it.

Sir
Pudno saluted and bowed. “A treatment has been given, Your Majesty.”

“Will
he recover?” said Pauma behind the curtains.

“No
thanks to you,” said Ole Doc. “The boy was nearly dead from a terrible
infectious disease. I would not be surprised to find that many suffer from it
right here in the palace.”