Collected Stories

Or Give Me Death

“Give me liberty, or give me death!” was merely a quotation from a history book to Dr. Lambert until Patrick Henry walked into his office and complained of suffering from a chronic headache.

“I’m a very busy man,” said the editor.

“I know,” said his visitor. “I won’t take long.”

“You can’t,” said the editor. “I have too much to do. Sit down.”

“Thank you,” said the visitor, sitting down.

“Now,” said the editor. “What is it?”

“First,” said the visitor. “I’d better tell you who I am. Doctor Philip Lambert. Medical doctor. And I’ve been to three psychiatrists. They all said I was sane, that I haven’t been having hallucinations.”

“Okay,” said the editor. “What haven’t you been imagining?” He looked at his watch.

Lambert leaned forward, “Patrick Henry is dead.”

The editor stared at him. Finally: “This your idea of a joke?”

Lambert shook his head. “No. He died in my house at eight-seven last night.”

The editor waved his hand between Lambert and himself, palm out. “Wait a minute,” he said. “The only Patrick Henry I know lived during the Revolution.”

Lambert nodded. “That’s the one.”

The editor stood up. “Three psychiatrists said you weren’t nuts?”

“That’s right.”

“They were nuts.”

“They talked to Patrick.”

The editor stood behind his desk, staring at Lambert, and then walked over to the door, hung a home-made sign saying, ‘Go Away’ on it, closed it, and returned to his desk. He sat down. “Okay,” he said. “Tell me. I believe anything.” Lambert smiled thinly. “He came to me about four months ago.

Of course, I didn’t know then who he was. To me, he was just a bent old man, very thickly lined of face, who came to me for relief from a chronic headache. I couldn’t find any superficial reason for the headache, so I gave him a thorough examination.

What I found was astonishing, impossible. A bit of metal, probably a bullet, embedded in his brain. A faint scar, caused by a deep wound years before, on his heart. Other things. He should have been dead a dozen times. Besides, he was a lot older than anyone I’ve ever examined before. He should have long since been dead of old age, if nothing else.

After I’d examined him, I sat and looked at him for a while, trying to make some sense out of it. Things that would kill any human being hadn’t killed him. Why? After a while, I asked him, “When were you shot?”

He looked at me oddly. “Why?”

“It should have killed you.”

“Eighteen twenty three.”

He said it just like that, and it was a minute before I caught it. Eighteen twenty three!

“How old are you?” I asked him.

“Two hundred and seventeen,” he said.

I got to my feet, backed away from him. “What are you? What do you want from me?”

“The word to use is who, not what,” he said calmly. “I’m Patrick Henry, and I want you to do something about this headache.”

“Patrick Henry’s dead,” I said. He shrugged. “They buried him anyway. In 1799.”

“Do you mean you’re a spirit?”

“Hell, no,” he said. “I’m as alive as you are. Probably more.” I sat down again, feeling weak. “I don’t get it. How can you be Patrick Henry? How can you be alive at all, whoever you are?”

“I’ll tell you,” said Patrick. “Remember that speech I made, when I said, ‘Give me liberty or give me death’?”

I nodded.

“Somebody in the hereafter must have been feeling prankish. That’s the only way I can figure it out. They decided I wanted one or the other, that I was giving them the choice. They gave me liberty.”

“You mean they refused to give you death?”

“Right.”

“By golly,” I said. “That’s wonderful. Immortality!”

“Bah!” he snorted. “When a man’s outlived his time, he should stop living and quit cluttering up the world. Living gets to be a bore after a while. Why, when I first realized I couldn’t die, I was overjoyed. I soon got sick of it, though. So I tried to give the humorist a hint. I got myself buried. For a year and a half I lay six feet under, with no air and no food, but I didn’t die. I got so hungry I ate my clothes and the lining of the coffin, but I didn’t die.”

“How did you ever manage to get out?” I asked him.

“Some damfool young medical student dug me up to experiment on. Huh. He almost needed a coffin himself when I sat up and said hello.”

“I can imagine,” I said. And it was somehow funny. I could imagine the scene. Then I thought of something else. “How is it nobody knows about you?” I asked, him.

“A few people do,” he said. “But if I went before a whole crowd, they’d think I was a vaudeville act, or a television mimic, and if I wrote to a magazine or a newspaper, they’d put it in their letter column as the gag of the month. A couple of the people who knew me tried, but they either wound up in a padded cell, or were laughed out of town. Besides who cares about Patrick Henry any more?”

“You could get a government pension,” I said. “Live in a vine- covered cottage outside Richmond and write delicate little stories about the Revolution.”

“Young man,” said Patrick, rising to his feet and glowering, with the old oratorical fire in his eye, “do you realize that if you spell the Revolution with a small r you have something that one of your politicians just recently said always leads to tyranny? Do you realize that I, and all the others with me were a bunch of subversives? Men who refused to do their duty as citizens and pay taxes for the mutual security and national defense of the British empire, who stored up loads of munitions in hiding places, who plotted to overthrow the government? More than that, they did overthrow the government. Dammit man, those aren’t your forebears, I think all those men were sterile, and only the Tories, the loyal, conforming Tories, had any children. Bunch of mealy-mouthed welfare statists! Bah!”

I was a little taken aback by Patrick’s sudden blast, but I said, “You’re confused. It’s the welfare statists who are trying to overthrow the government.”

“What?” He actually got purple in the face. “Social security, public power, unemployment, insurance, free college education, all the rest of it, the stupid junk they’ve been cramming down the Tories’ gullible gullets, and you try to tell me it’s the welfare statists who are trying to overthrow the government? Hell, man, they are the government.”

“What’s wrong with Social Security and free college educations?” I asked. “They’re progressive.”

“Progressive! If I told you suicide was progressive, you’d run out and kill yourself. There’s nothing wrong with government insurance. But there’s everything wrong with compulsory government insurance. And giving everybody college educations. What are most of them going to do with all that pretty knowledge? All they’re going to do is be unhappy all their lives because they were prepared for a better job than the one they got. There aren’t enough jobs needing a college education for all these young boobs. Somebody’s going to have to dig the coal and make the undershirts.”

He clutched his stomach in unfond reminiscence. “Oh, the stomach ache I got when Social Security went through! I couldn’t eat anything but liquids for three weeks.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “What did Social Security have to do with your stomach?”

“Every time the United States loses some of its liberty, I get closer to death. They even off in me all the time. My health and the nation’s freedom. The Civil War conscription gave me a heart murmur. The First World War conscription gave me high blood pressure. This one gave me coronary thrombosis. Excise taxes laid me low for two months.

“Of course, there’ve been times when I was in worse shape than I’m in right now. When the Alien and Sedition Act was passed, I went stone deaf, blind in the right eye, and paralyzed from the waist down. During prohibition, it was my right arm that was paralyzed. Couldn’t bend my elbow to save myself.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you doing anything special, got any important engagements, anything like that?”

He shook his head. “No. Why?”

“How would you like to live at my house? I have plenty of room, and all the privacy you want. I’d like to examine you some more.”

He thought for a while. “All right,” he said at last. “As long as it’s examine, not investigate. I’ve had a beautiful set of ulcers since that word took on its new meaning.”

“By the way,” I said. “Your headache. How long have you had it?”

“About three weeks,” he said.

“You said your ills come from lost liberties. What liberty did we lose three weeks ago? I thought for a minute. “Around the first of the year. End of ’54, beginning of ’55. What liberty did we lose then?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes I get the ache before the thing becomes public. Whatever it is, we’ll know about it soon enough. And, whatever it is, the Tories all over the country will welcome it with open arms, as long as somebody tells them it’s progressive. Bah!”

“Don’t be bitter,” I told him. “You’d be murder in a political discussion.”

“I can back up my statements with diseases,” he said.

“I’ll close the office now,” I said, “and take you round to my house.”

I closed the office and brought him home.

There was a long pause. Then, the editor said, “Is that all?”

“Just about,” said Lambert. “I examined him some more, did what I could for the headache. He claimed it was getting worse. He first came to me three months ago. After a week, I went to see a psychiatrist. He suggested I go away somewhere for a nice long rest, so I brought him home to talk to Patrick. He went home dazed, but convinced that I was sane and Patrick was alive and, well, Patrick. I got a written statement from him and from two other psychiatrists.

Just in case I ever wanted to tell anyone about this without Patrick around, for proof.” Lambert reached into his breast pocket, withdrew a flat envelope. “Here they are,” he said.

The editor looked at the notes. He knew the names signed to the bottom of them. All three said that Doctor Philip Lambert was sane, that Patrick Henry lived, and that Lambert’s account of him was correct.

“Okay,” said the editor, dropping the notes on his desk. “Say I believe you. So what? Do you want some free publicity for Patrick, or what?”

Lambert shook his head. “I told you. Patrick died last night, at eight-seven.”

“Then what do you want?” asked the editor. “Just an obituary notice?”

“No, no, no,” said Lambert impatiently. “Didn’t I tell you that Patrick had received liberty instead of death, that until all liberty was gone from the United States, he could not die?”

“What are you trying to say?” asked the editor.

“That at eight-seven last night, we lost the last of our liberties. I don’t know what it was, what happened, anything about it. All I know is that this is no longer a free nation.”

“Now that’s enough,” said the editor. “There I can check you up. I run a paper here, and I put in it anything I want to put in it. I say whatever I feel like saying. If I couldn’t, then this wouldn’t be a free country. But I can, so your Patrick Henry story is a lot of—”

The door opened and two men walked in.

The Appointment

He was just another madman in a world full of madmen. Luckily he had enough sense to see a good psychiatrist. (P.S. The psychiatrist is now looking for a good psychiatrist.)

He was a thin man with a gray look about him. He had been shuffling aimlessly along the crowded street; now he paused to look at a window display of pots and pans.

He was the only person looking at the display. He concentrated for a moment, and imagined the contents of the window completely out of existence.

The pots and pans vanished. The thin man squared his shoulders.

I am God, he thought; and looked around to see if anyone realized the fact besides himself.

Apparently no one did, for the stream of passers-by did not shift course, nor did they disperse to render him homage. He felt a little let-down.

Godship without homage was a tasteless thing.

He looked without favor at a pot-bellied man in a gray suit. He did not like pot-bellied men with gray suits.

He imagined him out of existence, then surveyed the spot he had occupied with satisfaction.

A hand tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned, half-startled by the interruption.

“You’ll have to move on, buddy,” a blue-coated figure told him. “Can’t have you hanging around my beat. I’m sorry for you bums, but—” He let the words hang in the air while he waited for the thin man to move.

Because the words had been touched with a certain impartial kindness, the thin man did not imagine him out of existence. He moved on. He was glad the day was warm enough; otherwise, he would have had to imagine a new sun into existence. He laughed at the thought.

He shuffled along, content for the moment to study the objects about him, and the people. The bump on his head still ached. He surmised that it was responsible for his lack of memory faculties. He did not know how he had gotten it, or when.

The thin man remembered nothing about himself except his identity. He was God.

Beyond this there was a heavy haze of forgetfulness. He tried to think about it, but the effort was too much. He gave up and concentrated on being God. It was fun!

A stray dog snapped at him. He imagined it into nothingness. He stumbled against a fire hydrant; suddenly there was no hydrant. He saw an orange and yellow bus leaving the corner. He suddenly decided he would ride.

The bus was yards away, in low gear. He imagined it back at the corner and boarded it.

The driver wanted money, so he imagined a handful of coins in his pocket, and handed them over. He sat down beside a fattish woman who hitched herself away disapprovingly.

I know who I am, but I know nothing else. Could I be insane? The thought was intriguing and he kept it with him while the bus made several stops.

Finally the driver looked back and said, “End of the line, Mac. You want off?” He got off, looked around. This section of town was drab in look and outlook. It could be only a portion of the slums.

He kept thinking about being crazy. If he were crazy, then maybe he wasn’t God at all — He dismissed the idea as an absurdity. He was God. Why quibble?

He grew hungry and entered a small restaurant where the flies cavorted merrily over uncovered slabs of pie.

He ordered, ate, and left, after paying the man with what was left of the money he had imagined into his pocket previously. He felt better, but he could not rid himself of the idea of insanity.

To reassure himself, he carefully imagined a large alley cat into limbo. The cat disappeared.

But maybe, the thought came, maybe the cat just ran away fast. Cats do run fast, you know.

A doctor.

Yes. Why not a doctor?

He imagined that the torn, discarded object lying beside him on the tenement steps where he rested was a telephone book.

He pored over the pages, found a psychiatrist’s office listed a few blocks away, and began walking again. The sun was going behind the clouds and he imagined the disappearance of the clouds. They obliged. He walked on cheerfully.

People were staring at him oddly, he noticed, but he paid them little attention. He knew his apparel was dirty and frayed. But he was God and such things did not matter. He could have vengefully imagined them all out of existence, but decided to show mercy until he talked to the psychiatrist. Then…

The psychiatrist had his office in a dingy building whose lower floor housed a flower shop, grocery, and liquor store respectively. The office was on the second floor.

There was no receptionist in the waiting room. There were some chairs, and soon there was the psychiatrist himself, who smiled pleasurably when he saw his visitor.

“Come in,” he invited. His smile showed large white teeth that almost overshadowed all other features of his face. He was a dark man. He looked the way a psychiatrist ought to look.

The thin man entered uneasily. Now that he was here he wasn’t sure he wanted any part of it. Suppose he was insane? It would be the asylum. There was a trembling within him, which the psychiatrist noticed professionally.

He led the way to a comfortable couch. “Just lie down and relax,” he said. “Then we’ll get down to what ails you.” He smiled reassuringly, but the thin man could see a sharp look of inquiry right behind the big-toothed smile.

He lay down wearily. He was tired — tired and puzzled. The only thing he knew for certain was that he was God. The rest was a blank.

The psychiatrist was all business. He pulled over a chair and sat down to talk, shrewd eyes collecting facts about the thin man before he said a word.

“My fee is $25,” he stated, with a longer look at the man’s attire. “I thought it best to mention it.”

“Yes,” agreed the man on the couch; and immediately imagined this sum of money into existence. He reached into a pocket, pulled out a billfold and extracted the money, which he handed to the psychiatrist.

“Ah…” said the psychiatrist, beaming. He leaned forward and spoke in a confidential tone.

“Now — what is wrong with you, or what do you imagine to be wrong with you?”

“I am God,” said the thin man.

The psychiatrist pursed his lips and tapped a pencil reflectively against his large teeth.

“Interesting. Very interesting,” he murmured. “And what makes you believe you are God?”

The man on the couch stirred uncomfortably. “God can do anything. He is all-powerful. I can do anything. I am all-powerful. Therefore, as you can surely see, I am God.” There was some impatience in the words, which the psychiatrist hastened to assuage.

“Of course, of course. That is plausible.” He hesitated, then asked, “But what do you mean you can do anything?”

“I can move buildings,” came the quiet voice of the thin man. “I can cause mountains to crumble. I can kill people merely by wishing them dead. I could even destroy the world, if I wished.”

“Have you ever done any of these things?” The psychiatrist’s voice still maintained its interest, but a trace of boredom was setting in.

“Yes.” The man who called himself God explained what things he had done.

“Then you remember nothing of your background. Nothing at all? Only these incidents?”

The thin man shook his head, and waited.

A few other questions; then the psychiatrist leaned back. “Your ailment is a simple one,” he said impressively. “You are — as far as I can determine from your first visit — suffering from schizophrenia, or what we call split personality. In your case, I should diagnose from your head injury that you have had a fall or received a blow that brought into existence your lesser “personality” that believes itself to be God.” The psychiatrist paused and studied his patient.

“Of course, you are not God. That is purely in the realms of your imagination. All it will take to start you back on the right path is to realize that you cannot… uh… be God. The instances of apparent miracles you related to me all sound like the imaginings of a mind that is ins—, that is tired. You will need more treatments.”

He stood and motioned the thin man to do the same. He laid a hand on the man’s bony shoulder confidently.

“But you are wrong,” the patient insisted. “I do perform miracles.”

“Nonsense,” the doctor told him quietly. “You must find a way to disbelieve that.” He considered. “Why not put your ‘miracles’ to the acid test? What would be hardest of all things for you to do?”

“Destroy the world, I think.”

“Then — destroy the world,” the psychiatrist advised, with a faint smile behind the words. “The failure to do so will convince you that you are not God.”

“But I wouldn’t want to do that. I made the world.”

The psychiatrist was losing his patience a little. “You can’t do that,” he insisted. “It’s all in your head. Try it, fail; and you’ll improve a thousand per cent. Here—” he scribbled some dates on a slip of paper — “I’ve made you these appointments. They end July 16th. We’ll get you straightened out. I promise you that.”

The thin man said hesitantly, “You mean that I can’t really destroy the world. That my brain is merely twisted, and you will cure me?” He glanced down at the slip of paper on which there were dates.

“Precisely that.”

The thin man needed more reassurance. “It would be right for me to destroy the world? Right now?” He was confused and showed it.

The psychiatrist’s voice was as thin as paper. “Yes. Go right ahead, my friend. Destroy it.”

The thin man drew himself up and revealed a certain dignity of manner as he folded his arms across his chest. “It will take a while,” he said.

For a minute he remained in that position, eyes half closed, body intent.

The psychiatrist waited, patiently and disdainfully. Finally the thin man turned to him and said, “There, it’s all done.”

A loud snort burst from between the big teeth of the psychiatrist. It was unprofessional; it was without dignity; he couldn’t help it.

“You say the world’s destroyed? Then—” he pointed a finger at the man before him — “what are we doing here — alive?”

He ran to the window. “Here, I’ll show you. Look out.” He himself did so, and his face took on a dough-like hue. His hands began trembling, not in a quick spasm of motion, but slowly and methodically. He turned back to the thin man. It was a while before he could speak. When he could, he said in a peculiar voice:

“But it’s all gray out there. All clouds. Nothing but clouds and haze. No buildings, no people…” He stared at his patient while the rush of words stuck in his throat.

“Yes. It would be that way.”

“But — it can’t be. I’m seeing things. You’re—” An animal cunning suddenly lit his eyes and his breathing reverted almost to normal.

“The world is not destroyed. I don’t know what’s happened, but I know that much. I could be hypnotized…”

He paused, and there was savage triumph in his next words.

“If the world has been destroyed, then what are we doing here? Tell me that! Why are we left?” He waited, almost defiantly, while the thin man looked at him oddly.

“Why,” said the thin man, “you should really know that.”

“I should? I know nothing about it.”

“It is so simple.” The thin man smiled. “The world has been destroyed. We remain to keep the appointments we made.” He pointed to the list of dates in his hand.

The psychiatrist walked slowly to the window. He stared out, then came back.

He started to say something, but only a scream managed to find its way past his lips.

“They end July 16th,” said the thin man.