«This region must have become pretty well depopulated in the time since I went to ‘sleep,’» he remarked.
«Why, nuw. It are raader heawily settled,» replied Chang. «Dere must be-a, oh, all of a million people witin a radyus of a tousand kilometers.»
«But—that’s less than—How many people are there in the country?»
«About tirty million in Nort America. Or on all Eart, abuwt haaf a billion. Of cuwrse, dere must be-a a good ten million on de oder planets of de Solsystem, and perhaps anoder haaf billion in Centaari and elsewhaar—but little are knu-wed abuwt dat.»
«But—in my time, there were over two billion people on Earth!»
Chang gave Hart a quizzical look. «Su I have heared,» he said slowly. «But times have cha-enged, Tov. It may taak du some while to reelayze huw much dey have cha-enged.»
They entered the clinic. A blond young woman who was apparently a nurse stood waiting for them. She wore a crisp white skirt, and nothing else, and she was gorgeous.
She and Chang gave their patient an examination which for thoroughness surpassed anything in his time. He didn’t pretend to understand the machines that buzzed and clicked and glowed around him, the serological tests and the curious symbolic notation. But he hadn’t expected to—naturally, medicine would be far advanced, and he hadn’t troubled himself to learn the details even of the past techniques.
«Very good,» said the doctor at last. «Satisfactry reactions tuw virus Beta, good Delta coefficient—yes, we skood suwn have du well, Tov Hart.»
«What’s the cure?» he asked idly. «In my time they were beginning to think there’d never be a specific for cancer.»
«Dere aren’t, but dere are specifics for de difrent kinds. Artficial diseases have bee-an developed which attack uwnly de disorganized cancer cells. Frinstance, for cancer of de liver we inject a disease of de liver, but one which healthy tissue can resist. De sick cells are eaten away sluwly enough so dat normal tissue grows back to replace dem as dey disappear. It are more complex dan dat, of cuwrse, but dat give du de genral idea-a.» He smiled. «A mont or su in hospital skood suffice for du, and we ran give du de oder tests in de mea-anwhile.»
«The… other—?» It sounded faintly ominous.
«Classficating and su on. Worry du not abuwt it no.»
«Come du,» said the nurse. «I will taak du to ruwm duurs.»
Hart followed her to an elevator. It went up with a pleasingly low acceleration, but his pulse went a little fast just the same. She was exciting!
«What’s your name, please?» he asked. He put on the smile which had usually worked in the past. «We’ll be seeing a lot of each other, I hope.»
The girl frowned, then seemed to make an allowance for him. «Mara Sorens Haalwor.»
«This is a pleasure… you’re not married?» Hart edged closer.
«Mayried? Oh, de uwld style. Nuw, but—» She backed away. Her face bore an expression of distaste, barely covered by politeness. «Please du, Tov Hart—»
«Oh. Sorry.» Hart moved from her, a little chapfallen. Oh, well.
He had a room to himself—he found out later that all hospital patients did—which delighted him. It was large and sunny, more like a living room than anything else. The furniture was curious, rather hard and low-legged—Asiatic influence during the Dark Ages?—but he could get used to that. There was a set of buttons on the wall which he learned how to use when he wanted to read. Central «libraries» had all the books and music in existence, no one owned volumes or records privately anymore. To read anything in existence, one simply called the nearest «library» and asked for it; automatically, the books—actually, record tapes—were flashed onto a screen, the speed being regulated by the reader. Likewise, any music was played directly into the citizen’s own room. There were enough copies of all record tapes to take care of any reasonable number of simultaneous requests, and if a local «library» didn’t happen to have a certain item, it would be relayed from one which did.
Curiously, there were no movie records, and no regular radio or television programs. Hart was too busy catching up with history and language at first to wonder why.
His synthetic disease and the physiological strain of growing new tissue left him a little weak. He stayed close to his room and only went out in the hospital gardens on orders of the staff. Nor did he have any visitors except the medical workers. After a while, he began to be lonely.
He was put through a series of psychological tests more exhaustive than the physical checkups. Here, too, he was baffled by the intricacy of a science evolved immensely beyond the older one which itself had puzzled him. Some of it was recognizable—word-association, elaborate questionnaires much of which seemed to be completely irrelevant, long informal talks with a psychiatrist. And the huge machines which studied him seemed remote descendants of the electroencephalographs he had known. But he went through completely bewildering processes—hypnotism, drugging, physical exercises.
«What’s the idea?» he demanded, a little indignantly. «You seem to want to know me better than I know myself. Why?»
«Psychoclassificating,» said the tester. «All citizens undergo it, with periodic rechecks.»
That sounded ominous. What kind of totalitarian state have I landed in? «What do you do with the results?»
«Counsel, advise, straighten uwt conflicts. And, of cuwrse, arra-enge introductions.» The psychiatrist looked troubled. He kept looking at the elaborate data sheets in his hand, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he saw. «Suwcial integrating of individual depend on what psychotype he are, Tov Hart. No, if du will excoose me, must study dese results—»
Hart went back to his reading. He was having trouble finding out what kind of world he lived in. There were plenty of histories, but they said little about the details of daily life, and they grew remarkably uneventful as they neared the present time. There were also plenty of sociological texts, but these were written in a technical language that left his head whirling—much of the material, indeed, was mathematical. He recognized the symbology as descended from the symbolic logic and calculus of statement of his own time, but since his acquaintance with those had been completely superficial, that didn’t help much.
But manners, customs, family relations, all the million little details which make up life—rather than the abstractions of life, such as history and sociology—were nowhere explicitly described. After all, why should a people concern itself with its own mores? Such things are learned in childhood, are absorbed unconsciously as the individual grows through life. Had any twentieth century anthropologist ever described the habits and customs and beliefs of New York as carefully and objectively as he did those of the upper Congo? Hart found himself in the curious position of having learned more about the social organization of the natives of Procyon IV than those of Sol III.
He went back to history. That he could learn objectively, and with such a background feel his way around contemporary Earth until he learned the social ropes.
But it was not part of the matrix which had produced him. The Church of the Second Coming, the Asiatic invasion of America, the mechaniolatry of the Australian Reformers, the invasion of Luna by the weirdly changed descendants of Earth’s old Martian colonists, the Scientific State, the Overthrow, the retirement of the Dissenters, the evolution of the family groups… Well, what was it? A story, a dream which had passed by while he slept, the thoughts and deeds and struggles of men unthought of in his own age.