The Year's Best Science Fiction 9

A SLIGHT CASE OF LIMBO Lloyd Biggie, Jr.

The wind’s shrill moaning sank suddenly to a muted whisper, and above the clatter of rain on the corrugated roof George Cramer thought he heard a scream. He opened the door and peered doubtfully into the rain-lashed night. At his feet the swollen river swished and gurgled around the pilings. The rowboat, swinging with the current, struck the side of the dock with loud, irregular thuds. Cramer aimed a flashlight at the distant shore, but the blackness casually swallowed up the beam. He could see nothing.

Suddenly the cry came again, a long, sobbing scream that hung convulsively over the river until a fresh surge of wind twisted it into silence. Cramer did not hesitate. He grabbed his oars and leaped into the boat, and seconds later he was headed out into the current, rowing frantically.

He shouted over his shoulder, but if there was an answering cry the wind wrenched it away from him. The chill, driving rain instantly drenched his head and clothing and left him shudderingly cold even as he panted and perspired at the oars. His erratic old heart filled his chest with its relentless pounding; his swollen arthritic hands brought gasps of pain to his clenched lips as he worked the oars. He shouted again as he turned the boat into the rampaging current, and paused to flash his light. An answering call came from far down the river. Cramer bent his exhausted body to the oars, and sent the boat rocking forward.

Long before he neared that struggling, helplessly bobbing figure in the water Cramer knew that he was dying, and that knowledge brought a half-smile to his taut face. It would be a good trade, he thought—his own feebleness and disease, his aged, worn-out life, for a young, healthy life with direction, and purpose and meaning. Instead of a wretched end in the sordid loneliness of his cramped cabin, this unexpected twitch of destiny offered an embattled death that he could welcome and embrace fully. His sobs of pain were fervent hosannas as he drove the boat forward, punishing himself, struggling to focus his last flickers of life into one memorable conflagration.

And he reached his objective. A hand clutched the side of the boat. Cramer turned to assist, and at that instant his heart exploded.

He opened his eyes to the bare rafters of his cabin. An elongated patch of sunlight lay against the far wall. Beyond his window birds sang, and a light breeze caressed the trees overhead. He tried to move his arms, to sit up.

A voice came from far off, deep, softly soothing, pleasingly musical. “Easy! Easy! You need rest. Sleep . ... sleep . . . sleep.”

Cramer slept.

When he awoke a man was bending over him. Cramer watched the round, placid face for a moment before he became aware of the dexterous fingers that applied a bandage to his chest.

“You’re a doctor?” Cramer whispered.

“No,” the voice sang. “No. I am not a doctor.”

“A nurse, then.” The idea seemed incongruous with this monstrous hulk of a man, but the fingers were infinitely gentle. “I was dying,” Cramer said. “I died, and you . . . was it you—”

“Quiet!” the voice sang. “It was you, friend Cramer, who saved my life. And you need sleep ... sleep ...”

The next time Cramer awoke he was alone. He edged himself cautiously into a sitting position. The room was just as he’d left it when he dashed out into the storm, and that was—at least a couple of days ago, he thought, fingering his beard. But he felt fine. He felt wonderful until he moved his legs and his arthritis reminded him painfully that he hadn’t been taking his medicine.

He hobbled over to the medicine cabinet for his pills, and then he decided to dress. His bandage-swathed chest puzzled him. The strips of pink cloth were soft as the softest gauze, yet they resisted his tugging. He left them in place, and pulled on his clothes. He eased himself into the chair outside his door, and leaned back to enjoy the bright sunshine.

“So you are up, friend Cramer!” the voice sang. “It is well. It is proper.”

Cramer’s nurse approached along a forest path, tremendous in height and bulk, walking with a rolling gait that made Cramer want to ask if he’d been a sailor. He stood looking down at Cramer, round face expressionless, eyes darkly solemn, a small tuft of hair ridiculously isolated on the top of his head.

But his voice was warmly musical. “How are you this morning, friend Cramer?”

“Oh, I feel fine. Just a little weak, yet. Thank you. May I ask who you are?”

“Who . . . you mean you would like my name. That is proper.” He seemed to ponder the question. “Perhaps you would prefer to call me Joe?”

“Certainly, Joe,” Cramer said.

“And now you are well. Now we shall remove the bandage.”

The long fingers quickly opened Cramer’s shirt, and expertly unwound the encircling strips of cloth. The fingers paused as the bandage fell away. Joe’s round face assumed a blank expression that Cramer could not interpret.

“You have not healed as quickly as I expected,” he announced.

Cramer stared at the open incision above his heart. “You had to operate?”

“Yes, operate. You would call it that.”

“Oh! You massaged my heart to get it going again.”

“No,” Joe said. “Your heart would not go again. It was a very bad heart.”

“I don’t understand,” Cramer faltered.

“I’ll show you. But first, the bandage.”

Joe quickly bound the bandage into place, and rocked away into the woods. Twenty minutes passed, a half hour, and he came rocking back. He held a transparent, flasklike object up to the light. “You see?” his voice sang. “A very bad heart.”

Cramer stared incredulously. The flask did, unquestionably, contain a human heart.

“Very bad,” Joe said again.

“You mean . . . my heart—”

“Yours. Certainly.”

Cramer started to laugh. This Joe, he thought, was all the character he looked to be. “What’s keeping me alive?” he asked, wiping his eyes. He pressed his hand to his chest, felt for his wrist, and stopped laughing. He had no heartbeat, no pulse.

Joe said seriously, “But I gave you another.”

“You said you weren’t a doctor,” Cramer said.

“But the heart is no problem for a doctor! It is more... I think you would call it an engineering problem.”

“I suppose,” Cramer said. “It’s just a pump.”

“That is correct. So I have given you another pump.”

“A better one, I hope,” Cramer said, feeling again for his pulse. He could not find it.

“Much better. This one does not wear out.”

“All right. Whatever you did, I thank you. If this is a gag, as it has to be, I still thank you. Out there on the water I didn’t much care if I lived or not, but sitting here with the sun shining I’d just as soon stick around for a while. So I thank you.”

“And I, friend Cramer, thank you. There is a bond between us, because we have saved each other’s lives. But I think my debt greater than yours. I’ll come again this evening.”

He rocked away, carrying the flask.

Cramer’s strength returned slowly. He knew that exercise would have helped him, but his arthritis seemed worse each day, and the few hobbling steps he took about his cabin were searing torment.

Joe appeared punctually in the fading light of evening, songfully inquired as to his health, and soberly examined his chest, where the incision was healing in a neat scar line.

“I’ll have to get into town,” Cramer told him one evening.

“But why not?” Joe sang. “You are almost well.”

Cramer lifted a swollen foot. “I can hardly walk. If I don’t get some medicine quickly, I won’t be able to walk at all.”

“Myself, I do not go into this town. But if I can help—”

“If you can get me as far as the Mortons’ farm, Ed or Ruth will take me into town.”

“Do you wish to go now?”

“Tomorrow,” Cramer said. “Tomorrow afternoon. The doctor isn’t in his office in the morning.”

“Tomorrow,” Joe agreed.

He carried Cramer in his arms, as easily as he might have carried a child, and deposited him on the Mortons’ front porch. Before Cramer had finished knocking he had disappeared. Ruth Morton drove Cramer to town, and helped him hobble up the steps to the doctor’s office.

Old Doc Franklin, who was some ten years younger than Cramer, looked at the swollen feet and ankles and scowled. “I thought we had this controlled.”

“So did I,” Cramer said:

“But you insist on living out there in that damp hole.”

“I ran out of pills,” Cramer said.

“Let’s see your hands. Is it bothering anywhere else?”

“My knees. My wrists, a little-, and—”

“Elbows and shoulders,” Dr. Franklin said. “In short, in just about every joint in your body. Going without your pills for a few days wouldn’t make it spread that quickly. Let’s see those knees.”

He took one look and tilted back to stare morosely at the ceiling. “I’ll give you something different,” he said. “We’ll see what happens. I’d just as soon leave the shots as a last resort, but the way this thing is progressing that last resort isn’t very far off. Now—will you move into town where someone can look after you?”

Cramer shook his head. “Not now. Later—”

“If you wait much longer, you’ll be totally disabled, and you’ll have a choice between being moved or starving to death. If you don’t starve first, before anyone notices. For a supposedly intelligent man, and a retired college professor, you are the most pig-headed—”

Cramer listened with a grin. He’d heard this little sermon before—he heard it, in fact, every time he saw Doc.

“Stop smirking,” the doctor said. “So you love fussing around the water. How much fussing will you do when you can’t get out of bed?”

“I can still look at it.”

The doctor snorted.

On an impulse, Cramer said, “How about cheeking my heart?”

The doctor turned quickly. “Heart acting up, too? Darned if you aren’t just a walking corpse.”

He reached for his stethoscope.

“Never mind,” Cramer said hastily, pushing himself to his feet. “There’s nothing wrong with my heart.”

“There’s plenty wrong with your heart. Unbutton your shirt.”

“No. I never felt better in my life—except for this.” Cramer waved a swollen hand.

“Eighty per cent of the coronary victims say the same thing, just before they keel over. Unbutton your shirt.”

Cramer picked up the prescription form, and took two painful steps toward the door. “I’ll give these pills a try.”

“You,” Dr. Franklin said, “are stubborner than any jackass I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a lot of them. Talk about spoiled children! Sadie Brian is bringing that brat of hers in this afternoon for a polio shot, and after seeing you I can look forward to it. You don’t need pills, you need a good kick in the pants, and I have half a notion—”

Cramer closed the office door behind him and leaned against it, breathing heavily, shaken by the narrowness of his escape. A few more seconds in Doc’s chair, and he’d have found himself attempting to explain a scar on his chest that assuredly had not been there the last time Doc examined him—and a heart that did not beat

“Ready to go?” Ruth Morton asked.

“I certainly am,” Cramer said.

Ruth left him on a bench in the sunshine while she got his prescription filled and did his shopping for him. They drove back to the Morton farm, and Ed took charge of getting Cramer and his supplies down to his cabin.

It was evening, by then. Dusk pointed long-fingered shadows out across the water. Cramer sat tilted back in his chair by the dock, waiting for Joe.

He came swinging out of the forest, his large face white, almost luminous in the growing darkness, his voice songful as always.

“So you have returned, friend Cramer. I was concerned for you.”

Cramer nodded, wondering how to say what he had to say. He pointed at the sky, where one star winked timidly through the overcast. “You come from there, don’t you?”

Joe hesitated. “Not there,” he said finally, and pointed at the horizon. “That way. How did you know?”

“Lots of things. Your giving me a new heart. The fact that you have too many fingers, which I noticed several days ago, but didn’t want to believe. And then—”

Joe held up a seven-fingered hand. “I would have said that you have too few fingers!”

“Why are you here?”

“To study, to collect specimens—”

“To prepare for an invasion?”

“Friend Cramer! Why would my people want your distant world? There are so many closer worlds, unoccupied worlds. No, I come only to study and to collect, and when I leave it may be that none of my people will ever come here again.”

“I see. When you fixed my heart, did you do anything else?”

“But I did not fix it! It could not be fixed. I had to give you a new one, and other than that I added only a few things to your blood so the new pump could operate. Your blood was much too susceptible to what you call clotting. Now that will not happen.”

“But if my blood won’t clot, one small cut—”

“It will clot when that is necessary. It will do it better than before. But in the veins and arteries, and in the pump, it will not clot. Do you understand?”

“I hope so. You know so much, and yet you say you aren’t a doctor.”

“I am not a doctor! The blood—that is merely chemistry. Engineering and chemistry I understand. But not medicine.”

“It must be those things you added to my blood that have made my arthritis worse.”

“What is this arthritis?” Joe asked.

Cramer explained, exhibiting his swollen hands. “Maybe the new medicine will help,” he said.

Joe was preparing for his departure. He had been on this world for a long time, he told Cramer. For many years, the way Cramer measured time. His studies were completed, and his collecting, also, except for some suitable specimens of larger animals. He asked Cramer’s help, and Cramer talked with Ed Morton and gave him a wild tale about starting a new business. He began buying cattle, horses, sheep, hogs, goats, even a few stray dogs and cats. Joe furnished whatever money was needed. Cramer wondered where he’d gotten it, but thought it impolite to ask.

Joe put up a small corral for the animals, and he would take them, one or two at a time, away down the forest path. After Cramer watched the twentieth cow disappear in that direction, he remarked, “You must have a large ship.”

“Not very large,” the complacent Joe replied.

“Then how do you get them all into it?”

“That is only a small problem in packing,” Joe said. And left with the first of an entire flock of sheep.

The new pills did not help. The arthritis became an incessant torment that intensified daily. Cramer kept to his bed, moving his pain-wracked body as little as possible. Joe looked in frequently. His placid expression never changed, but his actions, his questions, betrayed a fumbling concern.

He opened cans and prepared Cramer’s meals, and as the arthritis became worse he also helped him to eat. While he worked about the corner of the cabin Cramer called his kitchen, they talked.

“This arthritis,” Joe said. “Such a thing does not occur among my people. I find no mention of it in my books.”

Cramer nodded dully, and concealed his disappointment. Somehow he had hoped—he had confidently expected— that Joe could do something for him. A man who could casually supply a substitute heart and change the chemical makeup of one’s blood should be able to handle a little thing like arthritis.

“I am sorry the things I added to your blood have done this to you,” Joe said. “But I cannot help. I just do not understand it.”

“Will it keep getting worse?”

“I do not know.”

Cramer nodded again. “With this new pump, and the new chemicals in my blood, how long can I expect to live?”

“Who can say? Life is a fragile flame that flickers in the winds of chance. My own life would have ended in your river had you not generously saved me.”

“Yes, yes,” Cramer said impatiently. “But without accidents, how long will I live?”

“But without accidents, you will not die! You will not die at all. This pump does not wear out or stop.”

Cramer lay staring silently at the ceiling contemplating eternal life with eternal pain.

“Could you remove those chemicals from my blood?” he asked.

“Perhaps. It would be difficult. And soon the new pump would not work. It would—”

“Clog up?” Cramer suggested.

“Yes.”

“I don’t suppose you could give me back my old heart.”

“But that one would not work at all!”

Cramer lifted a hand, now puffed to twice its normal size. “Soon,” he said, “perhaps as soon as tomorrow, and certainly within a week, the pain will be so bad that I won’t be able to move. I won’t be able to do a thing for myself. Perhaps I won’t even be able to sit up. I’ll have to go into a nursing home, and be waited on as long as I live. I haven’t enough money for that.”

“This money—I can give you as much money as you wish to have.”

“Even with enough money, can you imagine what kind of life that would be? Flat on my back, and in agony every time I move a finger. And it would go on, and on, and on. Very few accidents happen in nursing homes. But it seems that I have no choice.”

Joe said nothing.

“Only I do have a choice,” Cramer went on. “I can have you put my old heart back, so an autopsy wouldn’t stir up a fuss—they could think what they liked about the incision—and end things immediately, as should have happened that night on the river. Or I can take as much money as you can give me, and go into a nursing home where I would live indefinitely but helplessly in fairly comfortable torment. It isn’t much of a choice, but it is a choice.”

Joe still said nothing.

“And,” Cramer said, “I’ll have to decide before you leave. When will that be?”

“I had thought—tomorrow. Tomorrow night. But since you have such a difficult choice to make, I could wait another day. Or two.”

“If I can’t decide by tomorrow,” Cramer said dryly, “I won’t be able to decide at all.”

In the morning Joe carried him outside, and he sat cushioned by pillows and blankets and looked out at the river. Soon it would be summer, with the grating song of frogs at night, and leaping fish, and the sullen old turtle that always sunned itself on the big log a few yards upstream. He loved it all, and now, whatever he decided, it was lost to him.

But perhaps, if he entered a nursing home, medical science would eventually be able to do something for this synthetically intensified arthritis—or perhaps not. That would be a frightening gamble, because he would be doomed to endless pain if he lost. Lying helpless, closely watched in a nursing home, he would not even have the choice of taking his own life. And the first time he was examined there would be embarrassing questions about his heart. He would be a medical freak.

Even so, sitting there looking at the sun on the rippling water, life seemed good to him—until he attempted to move.

Joe came to prepare his lunch, maintaining a sympathetic silence. He came again at dusk for the final time. A last meal, and then he would deliver Cramer to the Mortons, with enough money to last him an eternity of lifetimes; or he would replace his new heart with the worn-out one and leave his body in the cabin, to be found as chance might decide. Joe fed him—a simple meal, for a last meal— canned beans, canned hash, canned fruit, plenty of hot coffee. Cramer ate slowly savoring each mouthful.

“Well, friend Cramer?” Joe asked, when he had finished.

“If I could use my hands,” Cramer said, “I could flip a coin.”

“I admire your courage, friend Cramer.”

“I have no courage, Joe. Flipping a coin may be the only answer, because I haven’t decided.”

“If you’d like to wait another day—”

“That wouldn’t help. If it were a question of doing something, then I could decide, I think. I had no trouble deciding that night on the river. But to sit here calmly in a chair and make a choice between living, even though in agony, and dying, is something I cannot do. So I’m going to leave the choice to you.”

“To me?”

Cramer nodded.

For the first time Joe’s round face registered a discernible emotion. He was shocked. More than that—he was staggered. “Friend Cramer ... I cannot make that kind of decision for you! You have no right to ask.”

“Every right,” Cramer said calmly. “The whole business is your fault. If I hadn’t saved your life, and then if you hadn’t saved mine, there wouldn’t be a problem. So it’s up to you to decide. If you want to flip a coin, I won’t mind.”

Joe gazed down at him helplessly. A many-fingered gesture underscored his consternation. He attempted to speak, and sputtered inanely.

“I’m waiting,” Cramer said.

“Very well.” Joe’s voice was no longer songful. It rasped hideously. “Very well. I shall decide for you—now.”

He seized Cramer roughly, ignoring his gasps of pain, and rushed him away up the forest trail.

Professor Zukoquol, Chairman of Gwarz University’s Department of Exotic Zoology, watched in fascination as a foot-long statue of a sheep rode the conveyor through the Life Rehabilitator. A full-sized sheep staggered forth at the other end, baaing lustily. A twenty-inch cow followed, to emerge as a slobbering, foul-smelling horned monster.

Professor Zukoquol’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “An amazing collection!” he exclaimed. “Friend Joruloq, you have done a splendid piece of work. And you brought a full load?”

“Full to capacity,” Joruloq said modestly.

“Splendid. You are to be heartily complimented. Except for your encounter with the human, of course. That disturbs me.”

“It disturbs me, also,” Joruloq said.

“Did he truly ask you to decide his destiny for him?”

“He truly did,” Joruloq said.

“Horrifying, is it not, that a supposedly civilized creature should have no developed sense of ethics. I should not have blamed you if you had smashed him on the spot.”

“But that would have been deciding for him!” Joruloq protested.

“Or gone off and left him.”

“That likewise would have been deciding for him!”

“True. This is why we sternly advise our field workers to avoid contacts with intelligent beings. Their moralities are so unpredictable. All kinds of filthy dilemmas can result.”

“I agree,” Joruloq said. “But I had no choice, because I was indebted to him.”

“I’m almost inclined to believe it would have been best if he had not saved your life. But never mind. Once you allowed yourself to become involved, I must concede that you acted with commendable wisdom. Have you made inquiries at the medical school?”

“I did so at once.”

“What did they say?”

“They promise to solve the mystery of the human’s arthritis at the earliest opportunity. They do not anticipate any difficulties. Unfortunately, they have many important projects that must be completed first. It will be a thousand or two of his years before they can consider his problem.”

“Generous of them to place him so far up on their schedule, considering that the project would be of no importance whatsoever to anyone but him. What will you do with him in the meantime?”

“Nothing.”

“You do not intend to rehabilitate him?”

“Certainly not,” Joruloq said. From a fold in his cloak he took George Cramer—an eighteen-inch figure that stood in a half crouch with swollen hands upraised, a look of intense surprise on his face. “No, I would not force him to live in pain for a thousand or two of his years while waiting for the medical school to find time for his case. I won’t rehabilitate him until they are ready for him.”

“You might loan him to the museum.”

“I think not,” Joruloq said. “I’d much prefer to keep him near me. He did save my life, you know, and I feel both gratitude and fondness for him. Also, he makes an excellent paperweight.”