Don't Look Now by Leonard Rubin (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📗

rolled up the sleeve of the hospital gown which led to a raised shoulder (she wouldn't look at the face) and hesitated—another needle was already stuck in the muscle, protruding just above the skin. She found the vein and pushed the plunger in, and withdrew her needle.

Dr. Brooks said, "Get that out of there."

She took tweezers from her bathrobe pocket and carefully removed an inch of broken hypodermic shaft. The blood spurted. She reached for cotton and alcohol.

Three bells rang in the corridor as the door slid open, and Miss Erwin came fluttering in.

"Don't look, Hilda!" warned Miss Knox.

"Calling the emergency rooms," said a piping voice. "Beware of patient William Barger who may attempt to escape. He may be armed...."

The mutape chattered.

"Here, take the cup," said Dr. Brooks. He picked up the bedside chair and placed it on the foot of the bed. Climbing onto the swaying surface like a trained ape, he reached up and loosened the screws which held the light globe in place on the ceiling, and threw it to shatter on the floor. Miss Erwin stepped backward. Then she tiptoed toward the light and steadied the chair, and stared at the patient's face in fascination. Dr. Brooks was tugging at an object resembling a camera, attached by a spring clamp between the bulbs of the ceiling fixture.

"Hilda!" Miss Knox said.

"Oh, look at his face now!"

"Subliminal picture slide," said Dr. Brooks, dropping the object to the floor with a crash. "There goes his sweet sleeping face—an illusion filling in for reality because there was nothing else for us to see."

Mr. Barger's face was blotched red and covered with shiny ooze. His throat was swollen as thick as his cheeks, with lumpy rolls of neck stretched taut like strands of pink beads above the bedsheet. His mouth was hidden beneath caked blood.

The mutape read, "You are running out of time."

Three bells in the corridor as the door slid open. "Calling Dr. Gesner," said a cool nurse's voice. "Emergency. Calling Dr. Feld. Emergency."

Five internes scurried in, surrounding the figure on the bed. Behind them strode rawboned Dr. Feld in a red hunting jacket. A motorchair rolled after him and stopped in the doorway, and an assistant administrator stood up and piped, "Hold him! He may be armed!"

With the mutape chattering and Dr. Brooks bent close over the recorder, Miss Knox stood up and prepared her needle with penicillin from the black satchel.

"Don't kill him," the administrator whined.

Three bells in the corridor. "All personnel," said the nurse's voice. "Day shift, please take notice. Beware of a patient, armed, seeking to escape from the emergency floor. All hospital personnel. Beware of a patient...."

Big Carl kicked the motorchair out of the doorway, stepped through and handed Dr. Brooks a blue serge suit on a hanger. After him came a nurse carrying a white uniform and a paper bag. The room was filled with an echo of voices spreading across the Mushroom.

"Step back," said Dr. Feld, stumbling over an interne.

Two student nurses came to the doorway and stood on either side, one with her hand in the photocell beam to keep the door from closing. The noise grew.

"Calling Dr. Gesner," said the cool nurse's voice.

A group of internes shuffled inside, faces averted, moving sideways in the crowd around the bed. Two attendants came striding up and stood on either side of the door, next to the student nurses.

A class of medical students filed in and moved along the wall, the taller ones standing on tiptoe to see the patient. A bearded professor in tweeds followed, whispering, "Here he comes, here he comes."

After a pause, Dr. Gesner waddled through the doorway between his nurses. Three internes came after with white coats flying open, the middle one a Hindu in a blue sash, and then a messenger boy calling, "Telegram for Dr. Gesner!" Three bells rang in the corridor, and the door slid shut.

A path cleared before Dr. Gesner as he made his way to the bed. Helped to a sitting position, he opened the telegram which had been passed from interne to interne.

"You don't mind," he said, turning to the patient's bloody face. He read the message and threw it away. "The police have been holding me for two days. Here my lawyers have a nice case against City Hall, just when this England business comes up—so you're the man who's dangerous and armed! I'm sure Hamilton isn't responsible for that story."

Dr. Gesner had removed some of the cake with Miss Knox's tweezers and was prodding the lipless inflammation.

"Wash this off as gently as you can," said Dr. Gesner, and Miss Knox stepped forward. "And the antiseptic ointment in my bag—it has a purple label."

"I had to give him morphine," said Dr. Brooks.

"Ah—and some antibiotic?"

"Penicillin," said Miss Knox.

"Ah. Now tell me, where is this other man who was put out of commission by these—these throat specialists? I'd like to examine him."

The mutape chattered suddenly and then stopped. Dr. Brooks bent and read out loud, "Get those two on motorskates! I know them. They appear blond with their projector fields turned on; otherwise they are both narrow-faced and dark."

Dr. Gesner smiled with just the middle of his face. "We caught them in the lobby on our way in. One of my lawyers is coming with us. His son plays right tackle—young lady!" He looked straight at Miss Knox. "I understand you've been talking about this business for days, along with our friend with the cut throat. You've been in danger—those two men were still in the building on your account, I'm sure. It's a very good thing you weren't alone, you or Dr. Brooks. I take it you were both on night duty."

Dr. Brooks said, "If any of the nurses or Dr. Gesner's students don't know what this is all about, I'm sure he'll make an announcement when we're all on the way to England. You must have some idea of what's happened. If anyone doesn't want to come, of course—"

"Treason and insubordination!" piped a hidden voice. "Under the circumstances, Dr. Hamilton will have you jailed when he finds out what you're up to, Dr. Brooks."

Brooks stretched his arm between two students and pulled a switch on the wall. The ceiling began to open, sweeping bright sunshine down the wall and making metal buttons twinkle on Dr. Feld's jacket. The ceiling slid back on rollers with a rumbling sound, until nothing was overheard but the black dots of aircraft rising toward the sun. Nearby, a whirlybird took off with a rackety-rackety-rackety-rack!

"I phoned the Director," Dr. Brooks told the crowd. "He's not interfering. In fact, I'm pretty sure Dr. Hamilton will come."

"Dr. Feld," said Dr. Gesner, "will you show the adman out?"

"I'm not—"

There was the sound of a blow and the assistant administrator appeared, scrabbling for his motorchair, which was buried among the students. His spindle limbs flailed from one side to the other until he was propelled from the room at a run, screaming, and the messenger boy vanished after him. Three bells rang in the corridor as the door closed.

Dr. Gesner raised his hand and voices were stilled, the shuffle of feet ended and the mutape chattered alone in the sunshine. He leaned over and read the tape, and as he straightened his back, even the recorder stopped still. He heaved himself to his feet with the help of two internes.

"He says—" puffed Dr. Gesner—"he says this is no time for sadism."

"Last ones up, girlie," said Dr. Brooks.

She sat on the bed and the mutape spoke to her noisily. Big Carl had hooked two cables in place, Dr. Brooks the other two, and the floor platform began to rise through the room toward the maw of the hovering whirlybird. She tucked the covers gently around her patient's distorted throat.

The chatter stopped. She read, "This is something the Royalty predicted for weeks ahead of time. I thought we could avoid it, but the Silvertongue people must have fed me the virus at our last luncheon meeting. Then when negotiations remained uncertain—thanks to Royalty sentiment on my board—they came visiting while I slept and injected me with a larger dose and planted the projectors. I woke up in awful pain. You were there, young lady—I screamed, silently, with my features. I was unable to raise my head. You wiped blood from my cheeks with your palm and cleaned it on a piece of cotton. You thought it was under water. Your eyes turned away before your hand left the projector field—or else you could not see what you could not expect. While I looked on, you treated me like a sleeping baby and asked Dr. Brooks about radio...." The perforated tape had stopped feeding from the machine.

"His tape!" she cried.

"Don't worry," Dr. Brooks said. "We're unplugged from the hospital system, but I reserved the only ambulance with its own computer circuit. It conveys limited ideas, but that's better than nothing."

Big Carl had erected the safety gates. "Look below," he said.

She stood up and pressed her forehead to the latticework of the nearest gate. At first there was only a diamond-shaped patch of sky, with the Silvertongue factory in the bottom corner. Then, as the platforms swung on its cables, she saw the curved edge of the Mushroom, and the Administration roof swarming with figures on motorskates. They circled among the squat mountain laurels, pointing upward. The ambulance walls settled around her suddenly blocking the view, and the belly of the vehicle rumbled shut. With a bump, the floor platform was deposited on its girders.

Dr. Brooks said, "We're away—I'll have the pilot phone the others!"

"Where's the socket?" Miss Knox asked. "Mr. Barger and I were talking."

Dr. Brooks plugged into an overhead beam and the mutape immediately began to chatter: "What is your first name, Miss Knox?"

"Delia," she said.

"Pete Brooks."

"Carl," the big man growled as he folded the gates.

"Call me Bill," said Mr. Barger's tape. Mr. Barger's square hand motioned her closer beside him. "Delia, do you know what we must do when we reach England? We must use the atom bomb first, before the admen have full control. Only then may we return to the America we know. The real America."

"Do the English know?" asked Miss Knox.

"Of course," she said. "They heard the broadcasts, and their scientists understood. They have supported our Royalty Party for years. I think I could increase the range of my device and reach America before they reached England—but there is no time for that. The world must unite against invasion. Even the Russians know that there is no limit to the scope or methods of greedy marketing specialists"—the machine punched out a pattern of giggles and chuckles—"and I doubt if the Russians could ever invent a radiocompressor."

"Are all the admen part of this?"

"Absolutely not, young lady! The very great majority has always followed a strict code of ethics that the very small minority has always subverted. Many ethical admen are in the birds now, on their way to England—knowing perfectly well that England is poor territory for emotional salesmanship."

"But why a Royalty Party in a democracy?" Miss Knox asked.

"Royalty—" The tape showed amusement. "Not aristocracy. Royalty, as in share of and control over. Motto of the Royalty Party: 'The inventor is worthy of his invention,' meaning the right to say how his discovery shall or shall not be used—or not be used at all, if it can only be destructive—as well as sharing in the proceeds. Unreasonable attitudes are not possible; we have an Appeals Board that can overrule a pig-headed patentee. Radiocompressors were intended for beautification of environment, not deception or thought control."

"Why England?" she persisted.

"Pretty generally, the Royalty code is and has been standard procedure there. Like their constitution, it hasn't had to be put in writing."

"Aren't there slums and unsightly monuments in England, too?"

"Of course. Why do you think they would like to have the invention? But it's safe there; it won't be subverted to thought control and sales engineering.... Tell me, Delia, is Dr. Gesner on this ambulance? I would like to meet him."

Dr. Brooks had come back from the control room. He sat beside her on the bed. "Dr. Gesner went ahead with Dr. Hamilton," he said, "because you're healthier than either one of them. But, Mr. Barger—Bill—doesn't light-wave interference need two overlapping projectors plus the subliminal image? We only found one."

The recorder chattered: "I am sure the other is also somewhere in the bed. It is harmless by itself, and I am glad we have it—it will help me instruct a team of British physicists and engineers. But who is in the other compartment? I hate to play chess with the same people over and over."

"I'm afraid he doesn't play," said Brooks. "I think it's old Boney, who had his throat cut because your friends thought he might get you some help too soon."

The recorder punched