The Potter of Firsk and Other Stories (71 page)

“Will you kindly get that beastly mob out of here?” asked Dr. Aguilar testily.

Rakowsky marched forward. “I’m placing you under arrest. If you attempt to escape, I’ll shoot you.”

“‘Escape’?” roared Hugh. “Stand aside!”

The doctors were disconcerted; the authority which served in hospital and laboratory had failed; they suddenly became ordinary men. They fought.

In the living room there was a sudden crackle, a roar and babble of voices. Hugh sidled against the wall, fended off Dr. Aguilar with one great hand. Jean met him at the door; he slapped her face, backward, forward; she staggered back.

Hugh stood a moment in the doorway. Cogswell, his face twisted by fear, lurched forward. “Go away, get out of here!”

Hugh looked contemptuously from Cogswell to the tank. Donald Berwick lay cold, impassive, dead. The dials showed no pulse. The temperature was 34°.

Jean stood with her back to the tank; Ivalee Trembath gripped a chair to one side; to the other Dr. James Cogswell stared at Hugh like a hypnotized frog.

“Get out of here, Hugh,” whispered Jean. “I’ll kill you…”

Hugh’s eyes blazed. “No one can stop me…I am the new Messiah!” He took a step forward. Cogswell, screaming hoarsely, charged. Hugh swung his long lank arm, slapped Cogswell’s red cheek. Cogswell thumped to the wall, slid down to the floor. Hugh stepped forward.

Jean ran around behind the tank. Ivalee swung the chair. Somebody behind Hugh fended it off.

Jean slid back the glass cover, seized the automatic from Don’s holster; the cold stung her hands. She aimed it, pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. Hugh laughed. He reached under the tank, heaved. The tank was bolted to the floor. Hugh grunted foolishly. Jean looked at the automatic, frantically fumbled, threw off the safety. She aimed. Hugh raised his foot, kicked. Glass tinkled. Hugh reached, seized Don’s cold arm.

Jean fired. The bullet struck Hugh’s shoulder; he flinched, but seemed to feel no pain. He tugged at Don. With a sliding rush the body slid out on the floor.

Jean took a step forward, aimed, fired. Hugh clutched his abdomen in surprise. Jean pulled the trigger, firing steadily. Hugh’s knees sagged. Blood suddenly spouted from a hole in his neck. His knees buckled; he toppled like a stricken mantis. Jean aimed her gun at the faces in the doorway, the shapes behind Hugh. They scuttled and ducked like beetles.

“Jean,” said Ivalee, “the house is on fire.”

“Fire!” came a cry from the hall. Ivalee went to Cogswell, tried to pull him to his feet. He lay limp, his breath coming in stertorous gulps. There was a shuffle in the hall, a curious lull. Then a sudden terrified sounding of feet, a scream, not so much of pain as terror.

Ivalee ran out into the hall; Jean saw the flicker on her face. For an instant the silver of her hair and ice of her face were alloys of gold. She turned back to Jean. “We can’t get out the front.”

Jean ran to the body of Donald Berwick. She knelt beside it, rubbed the cheeks. They were cold and damp from condensed moisture.

“Jean,” said Ivalee gently, “Don is past all that.”

“But Iva—we can do something—we’ve got to do something…The doctors—they could revive him…”

The flames poured into the room, bringing clouds of smoke. “We’ve got to get out of here,” said Ivalee.

Jean looked down aghast at Don’s body. “Can’t we—can’t we—” she began in a tired voice.

Ivalee lifted her to her feet. “We can’t help him now, Jean…”

“But—he’s really alive, Iva…The doctors can bring him back to life! It’s so horrible! I can’t abandon him!”

“He’s dead, Jean…The doctors could bring him back to life in the tank…With the right timing and their drugs…Don is dead, Jean. And so is poor little Cogswell.”

“Dr. Cogswell—
dead
?”

“Yes, dear. Come, we can’t stay any longer…”

By force she dragged Jean out into the hall. Sheets of flame blocked the way to the front door, and filled the rear hall.

“To the second floor,” said Ivalee. “It’s our only chance.”

They ran up the stairs, pursued by hot smoke, stumbled into the front bedroom. Ivalee went to the window, while Jean leaned against the wall, numb with grief.

“The street is full of cars,” said Ivalee. “The firemen are bringing hoses in from the corner. Listen, the mob is still singing. They don’t know that Hugh is dead.”

From one end of the street to the other the voices quavered, swelled in a chant of triumph. Jean tottered to the window. “Can we jump?”

“It’s too far,” said Ivalee.

Searchlights played on the house. Firemen hauled hoses down the sidewalk, running, shouting, pushing people aside. The nozzles were dry; no water came. The firemen turned, looked back along the line in rage, dropped the nozzles, ran back along the hoses.

“The service stairs,” said Jean. “Maybe they’re still open.”

They ran to the rear of the house. Behind them a gust of flame roared up the main staircase. Jean opened a door on the service stairs, closed it quickly on the wave of flames and blast of smoke.

Ivalee went to the back window, a heavy old stained-glass piece, tried to open it, without success.

“We’re worse here than we were up front.” They turned, looked back down the hall. The main stair-well acted as a chimney; flames were consuming the upper bannisters.

Jean picked up a chair, threw it at the stained glass. It broke, but lead held the pieces together. The air was very hot, and rasped their throats. Smoke seemed to seep from her lungs into her blood, into her brain. Vision swam in Jean’s eyes, her knees began to sag.

Behind her she heard a sound, felt a blast of cool air; she felt a strong arm. She looked up. “Donald!” She could not hold on to her senses. Slowly she fainted; and when she awoke, it was four hours later, and she lay in the emergency hospital with Ivalee Trembath in the next room.

The nurse had no information to give her.

Three o’clock the next day she and Ivalee Trembath were discharged. They took a taxi to the old Marsile home across town. Two reporters were waiting. Ivalee sent them away; they were alone.

Jean stood, hollow-cheeked, dry-eyed. She said, “Iva—just before I passed out—I saw him. Donald. Alive.”

Ivalee nodded. “He carried us out.”

“But how? He was—dead.”

“I saw him too…” Ivalee sat down in a chair. “Let’s see if we can find him—or get news…” She covered her eyes with a scarf.

Newspapers throughout the United States ran an account of the fire at 26 Madrone Place. The headlines read:

LUCKY BERWICK
RUNS OUT OF LUCK
ENDS CAREER IN RELIGIOUS RIOT
a

Sometimes in the same story, sometimes in a different column the death of Fighting Hugh Bronny was reported:

XVIII

Donald Berwick lay down in the tank. He felt the weight of the camera on his chest, the mass of the automatic at his side. Overhead were the faces of Clark, Aguilar and Foley. He turned his eyes, glimpsed Jean through the glass. Then he felt the sting of the hypodermics, the clamp of the gauges. The motors whined below him; the air suddenly grew cold. He closed his eyes. When he tried to open them, he could not—already his muscles were numb.

He felt life leaving him, like the tide receding from a shallow shore. He felt chilled, then suddenly warm and numb; then for a last transparent interval, freezing cold, through and through. Feeling left him and he died.

He had no feeling of leaving, no sensation of drawing away from his old frame. That was far away, and everything pertaining to it. Another phase of Donald Berwick existed, and it seemed always to have been. Now it came into its own.

From a new and strange perspective, Donald Berwick looked around the room. There were other shapes present; after a moment he recognized them. They were diaphanous, and stood swaying like seaweed, their feet anchored in small man-shaped pellets. One small cold pellet lay near his own feet, quiet and detached: the old Donald Berwick.

The new Donald Berwick felt a pang of pity, then took stock of himself. He had memory; he recalled the whole of his life, including fragments and details forgotten alive. Suddenly he realized there had been a great oversight in his preparations. Building the archetype “Lucky Don Berwick” in the collective unconscious, he had ignored a prime source of power. Who could know Donald Berwick with greater intensity than Donald Berwick himself? He examined his form: the uniform, the gun, the camera. All there. Wrist watch on his wrist. He examined it. His own watch the brand of which had never been publicized. Here was a measure of the difference between the strength conferred upon him by others and the strength derived from himself. He compared watch and camera. The camera was harder, brighter, solider. Twice as hard, thought Berwick. Such was the measure.

Jean—he picked out the supple waving shape that was Jean. Her eyes were on him. This was Jean: composite of her own unconscious and that of all who knew her. Different in small ways from the Jean he knew, but not greatly…Ivalee Trembath: her ice and silver composure was less noticeable; her mouth was soft and wistful. And the others—but later, later. First a picture to test the dream-camera. He set the aperture, aimed, snapped the shutter. Now—we’ll quickly look over this after-life country—then back…How did time go? Fast or slow? He looked at his watch. The hands waggled, spun back and forth…Well, thought Don, evidently it’s whatever time I think it is…Now, I’ll step out into the street…

The walls went dim; he moved his feet, he stood in the street. It looked much as he recalled it; cars moved like phantoms, in and out of his vision unless he concentrated…The street was suddenly full of cars.

Don thought, now—up! If I am a thought, I travel like thought! And he passed through walls and floated in the dark sky. Below was the city; around him in all directions spread the carpet of lights…But this was not the city of reality; this was the composite of a myriad imaginations; the lights glowed softer, like crystal balls; the distance melted into nothingness.

If I’m a thought—then north! And mountains were below him, clad in dark pines, and ahead was a granite ridge, white and gray; and strangely it was early morning; Berwick stood on a peak and looked to all four directions.

China! He felt no movement; he was a thought; he was in China. This was not the China of reality, it was the composite China, the stereotype, or rather, the paradoxical set of stereotypes that made up the collective unconscious: the drabness of Communist China, the splendor of the old empire. He remembered his camera; he pulled the tab, looked at his first positive. Fair. Not bad. He tucked it into his pocket.

He set the aperture, photographed a pagoda, a comic-opera rickshaw. In the background were the hazy mountains and graceful willows of old Chinese paintings. Below he could see other faces and shapes.

He thought himself to the ground. This was the old Bund, in Shanghai. He willed himself to see it; suddenly it took form and full solidity. He stood on the street. A coolie in flapping blue denim trotting toward him, halted, stepped aside, looked back.

Hey, thought Don, I have materialized…It seems easy…I’ll return to Orange City and materialize at Madrone Place.

He thought: up. Drift slowly. Over the Pacific…He spied the moon. Should he dare? But of course, it was now his nature; he was Lucky Donald Berwick, who dared anything!

He thought: moon. And he was on the moon. Faster than light, as fast as thought. He stood on a silver and black plain; a scene from an imaginative painting.

He pulled the China photograph from the camera, aimed his camera at the moonscape. It occurred to him to wonder about his organic processes…Was he breathing? He felt pressure in his chest; then suddenly he materialized; he stood on the stony reality of the moon’s surface. His skin pulsed, his eyeballs bulged, cold struck up through the soles of his shoes. He had time for a brief thought: he was already dead; where would he go now when he died?

He let himself drift back into the unconscious. And the moon became the unconscious stereotype…Don scanned the sky. Mars!

Quick as thought, faster than light!

He stood on a dim red desert, the thin wind hissing past his ears. The sea-bottoms of ancient Barsoom? He turned his head; there in the distance was a ruined city—a tumble of white stone, a movement of the weird hordes of green warriors. He looked again; there seemed to be tall nodding vegetables behind, like dark dandelion fluffs…He took a picture, then thought of the canals…He stood beside a wide channel full of gray water. Ah! thought Don. It was proved! The canals of Mars did exist! He laughed at his own foolishness…All in the mind, all the collective unconscious. Was he on Mars at all, or was he merely a thought? He concentrated his attention; he stood on cold dry sands, under a black brilliant sky; and this was Mars indeed. How had he arrived? Were mind and universe one? Was the “real” world only another place of unreality, with mind and matter interacting and co-generating, like a man lifting himself by his boot-straps?