Stranger in a Strange Land (9 page)

“Calm down, Ben,” advised Frisby. “You're in deep enough. Personally, I'm convinced it was the Man from Mars.”

Caxton dropped them, then set the cab to hover while he thought. He had been in once—with a lawyer, with a Fair Witness. To demand to see the Man from Mars a second time in one morning was unreasonable and would be refused.

But he had not acquired a syndicated column through being balked. He intended to get in.

How? Well, he knew where the putative “Man from Mars” was kept. Get in as an electrician? Too obvious; he would never get as far as “Dr. Tanner.”

Was “Tanner” a doctor? Medical men tended to shy away from hanky-panky contrary to their code. Take that ship's surgeon, Nelson—he had washed his hands of the case simply because—

Wait a minute! Dr. Nelson could tell whether that young fellow was the Man From Mars, without checking calluses or anything. Caxton tried to phone Dr. Nelson, relaying through his office since he did not know where Dr. Nelson was. Nor did Ben's assistant Osbert Kilgallen know, but the
Post
Syndicate's file on Important Persons placed him in the New Mayflower. A few minutes later Caxton was talking with him.

Dr. Nelson had not seen the broadcast. Yes, he had heard about it; no, he had no reason to think it had been faked. Did Dr. Nelson know that an attempt had been made to coerce Smith into surrendering his rights under the Larkin Decision? No, and he would not be interested if it were true; it was preposterous to talk about anyone “owning” Mars; Mars belonged to Martians. So? Let's propose a hypothetical question, Doctor; if someone were trying to—

Dr. Nelson switched off. When Caxton tried to reconnect, a recorded voice stated: “The subscriber has suspended service temporarily. If you care to record—”

Caxton made a foolish statement concerning Dr. Nelson's parentage. What he did next was much more foolish; he phoned the Executive Palace, demanded to speak to the Secretary General.

In his years as a snooper, Caxton had learned that secrets could often be cracked by going to the top and there making himself unbearably unpleasant. He knew that twisting the tiger's tail was dangerous; he understood the psychopathology of great power as thoroughly as Jill Boardman did not—but he relied on his position as a dealer in another sort of power almost universally appeased.

What he forgot was that, in phoning the Palace from a taxicab, he was not doing so publicly.

Caxton spoke with half a dozen underlings and became more aggressive with each one. He was so busy that he did not notice when his cab ceased to hover.

When he did notice, it was too late; the cab refused to obey orders. Caxton realized bitterly that he had let himself be trapped by a means no hoodlum would fall for; his call had been traced, his cab identified, its robot pilot placed under orders of an over-riding police frequency—and the cab was being used to fetch him in, privately and with no fuss.

He tried to call his lawyer.

He was still trying when the taxicab landed inside a courtyard and his signal was cut off by its walls. He tried to leave the cab, found that the door would not open—and was hardly surprised to discover that he was fast losing consciousness—

JILL TOLD herself that Ben had gone off on another scent and had forgotten to let her know. But she did not believe it. Ben owed his success to meticulous attention to human details. He remembered birthdays and would rather have welched on a poker debt than have omitted a bread-and-butter note. No matter where he had gone, nor how urgently, he could have—
would
have!—taken two minutes in the air to record a message to her.

He
must
have left word! She called his office at her lunch break and spoke with Ben's researcher and office chief, Osbert Kilgallen. He insisted that Ben had left no message for her, nor had any come in since she had called.

“Did he say when he would be back?”

“No. But we always have columns on the hook to fill in when one of these things comes up.”

“Well . . . where did he call you from? Or am I being snoopy?”

“Not at all, Miss Boardman. He did not call; it was a statprint, filed from Paoli Flat in Philadelphia.”

Jill had to be satisfied with that. She lunched in the nurses' dining room and picked at her food. It wasn't, she told herself, as if anything were wrong . . . or as if she were in love with the lunk . . .

“Hey! Boardman! Snap out of the fog!”

Jill looked up to find Molly Wheelwright, the wing's dietitian, looking at her. “Sorry.”

“I said, ‘Since when does your floor put charity patients in luxury suites?' ”

“We don't.”

“Isn't K-12 on your floor?”

“K-12? That's not charity; it's a rich old woman, so wealthy that she can pay to have a doctor watch her breathe.”

“Humph! She must have come into money awfully suddenly. She's been in the N.P. ward of the geriatrics sanctuary the past seventeen months.”

“Some mistake.”

“Not mine—I don't allow mistakes in my kitchen. That tray is tricky—fat-free diet and a long list of sensitivities, plus concealed medication. Believe me, dear, a diet order can be as individual as a fingerprint.” Miss Wheelwright stood up. “Gotta run, chicks.”

“What was Molly sounding off about?” a nurse asked.

“Nothing. She's mixed up.” It occurred to Jill that she might locate the Man from Mars by checking diet kitchens. She put the idea out of her mind; it would take days to visit them all. Bethesda Center had been a naval hospital back when wars were fought on oceans and enormous even then. It had been transferred to Health, Education, & Welfare and expanded; now it belonged to the Federation and was a small city.

But there was something odd about Mrs. Bankerson's case. The hospital accepted all classes of patients, private, charity, and government; Jill's floor usually had government patients and its suites were for Federation Senators or other high officials. It was unusual for a private patient to be on her floor.

Mrs. Bankerson could be overflow, if the part of the Center open to the fee-paying public had no suite available. Yes, probably that was it.

She was too rushed after lunch to think about it, being busy with admissions. Shortly she needed a powered bed. The routine would be to phone for one—but storage was in the basement a quarter of a mile away and Jill wanted it at once. She recalled having seen the powered bed which belonged to K-12 parked in the sitting room of that suite; she remembered telling those marines not to sit on it. Apparently it had been shoved there when the flotation bed had been installed.

Probably it was still there—if so, she could get it at once.

The sitting room door was locked and she found that her pass key would not open it. Making a note to tell maintenance, she went to the watch room of the suite, intending to find out about the bed from the doctor watching Mrs. Bankerson.

The physician was the one she had met before, Dr. Brush. He was not an interne nor a resident, but had been brought in for this patient, so he had said, by Dr. Garner. Brush looked up as she put her head in. “Miss Boardman! Just the person I need!”

“Why didn't you ring? How's your patient?”

“She's all right,” he answered, glancing at the Peeping Tom, “but I am
not.”

“Trouble?”

“About five minutes' worth. Nurse, could you spare me that much of your time? And keep your mouth shut?”

“I suppose so. Let me use your phone and I'll tell my assistant where I am.”

“No!” he said urgently. “Just lock that door after I leave and don't open it until you hear me rap ‘Shave and a Haircut', that's a good girl.”

“All right, sir,” Jill said dubiously. “Am I to do anything for your patient?”

“No, no, just sit and watch her in the screen. Don't disturb her.”

“Well, if anything happens, where will you be? In the doctors' lounge?”

“I'm going to the men's washroom down the corridor. Now shut up, please—this is
urgent.”

He left and Jill locked the door. Then she looked at the patient through the viewer and ran her eye over the dials. The woman was asleep and displays showed pulse strong and breathing even and normal; Jill wondered why a “death watch” was necessary?

Then she decided to see if the bed was in the far room. While it was not according to Dr. Brush's instructions, she would not disturb his patient—she knew how to walk through a room without waking a patient!—and she had decided years ago that what doctors did not know rarely hurt them. She opened the door quietly and went in.

A glance assured her that Mrs. Bankerson was in the typical sleep of the senile. Walking noiselessly she went to the sitting room. It was locked but her pass key let her in.

She saw that the powered bed was there. Then she saw that the room was occupied—sitting in a chair with a picture book in his lap was the Man from Mars.

Smith looked up and gave her the beaming smile of a delighted baby.

Jill felt dizzy. Valentine Smith here? He couldn't be; he had been transferred; the log showed it.

Then ugly implications lined themselves up . . . the fake “Man from Mars” on stereo . . . the old woman, ready to die, but in the meantime covering the fact that there was another patient here . . . the door that would not open to her key—and a nightmare of the “meat wagon” wheeling out some night, with a sheet concealing that it carried not one cadaver, but two.

As this rushed through her mind, it carried fear, awareness of peril through having stumbled onto this secret.

Smith got clumsily up from his chair, held out both hands and said, “Water brother!”

“Hello. Uh . . . how are you?”

“I am well. I am happy.” He added something in a strange, choking speech, corrected himself and said carefully, “You are here, my brother. You were away. Now you are here. I drink deep of you.”

Jill felt herself helplessly split between emotions, one that melted her heart—and icy fear of being caught. Smith did not notice. Instead he said, “See? I walk! I grow strong.” He took a few steps, then stopped, triumphant, breathless, and smiling.

She forced herself to smile. “We are making progress, aren't we? You keep growing stronger, that's the spirit! But I must go—I just stopped to say hello.”

His expression changed to distress. “Do not go!”

“Oh, I must!”

He looked woebegone, then added with tragic certainty, “I have hurted you. I did not know.”

“Hurt me? Oh, no, not at all! But I must go—and quickly!”

His face was without expression. He stated rather than asked. “Take me with you, my brother.”

“What? Oh, I
can't
. And I
must
go, at once. Look, don't tell anyone I was here, please!”

“Not tell that my water brother was here?”

“Yes. Don't tell
anyone.
Uh . . . I'll come back. You be a good boy and wait and don't tell anyone.”

Smith digested this, looked serene. “I will wait. I will not tell.”

“Good!” Jill wondered how she could keep her promise. She realized now that the “broken” lock had not been broken and her eye went to the corridor door—and saw why she had not been able to get in. A hand bolt had been screwed to the door. As was always the case, bathroom doors and other doors that could be bolted were arranged to open also by pass key, so that patients could not lock themselves in. Here the lock kept Smith in and a bolt of the sort not permitted in hospitals kept out even those with pass keys.

Jill opened the bolt. “You wait. I'll come back.”

“I shall waiting.”

When she got back to the watch room she heard the
Tock!
Tock! Ti-tock, tock! . . . Tock, tock!
signal that Brush had said he would use; she hurried to let him in.

He burst in, saying savagely, “Where were you, Nurse? I knocked three times.” He glanced suspiciously at the inner door.

“I saw your patient turn over,” she lied quickly. “I was arranging her collar pillow.”

“Damn it, I told you simply to sit at my desk!”

Jill knew suddenly that the man was frightened; she counterattacked. “Doctor,” she said coldly, “your patient is not my responsibility. But since you entrusted her to me, I did what seemed necessary. Since you questioned it, let's get the wing superintendent.”

“Huh? No, no—forget it.”

“No, sir. A patient that old can smother in a water bed. Some nurses will take any blame from a doctor—but not me. Let's call the superintendent.”

“What? Look, Miss Boardman, I popped off without thinking. I apologize.”

“Very well, Doctor,” Jill answered stiffly. “Is there anything more?”

“Uh? No, thank you. Thanks for standing by for me. Just . . . well, be sure not to mention it, will you?”

“I won't mention it.” You bet your sweet life I won't! But what do I do now? Oh, I wish Ben were in town! She went to her desk and pretended to look over papers. Finally she remembered to phone for the powered bed she had been after. Then she sent her assistant on an errand and tried to think.

Where was Ben? If he were in touch, she would take ten minutes relief, call him, and shift the worry onto his broad shoulders. But Ben, damn him, was off skyoodling and letting her carry the ball.

Or was he? A fret that had been burrowing in her subconscious finally surfaced. Ben would not have left town without letting her know the outcome of his attempt to see the Man from Mars. As a fellow conspirator it was her right—and Ben
always
played fair.