“And he told me how to — I can’t remember — something else about Schön…”
Suddenly it had become relevant to himself. “He” had to mean Brad. What had Brad told her about Schön? Ivo listened tensely, but she had drifted into silence. Her eyes were closed, tears on the lashes.
Brad’s girl…
Ivo let himself out, leaving because it hurt him to watch her. He grieved for Brad too, but it was not the same.
He made his way to the infirmary.
Six figures occupied the chairs. It was as though they never moved from them, for this was station night.
“Hello, Dr. Johnson,” he murmured as he passed. The patriarch stared past him. “Hello, Dr. Smith. Dr. Sung. Mr. Holt. Dr. Carpenter.”
The male nurse appeared, yawning. “What do you want?”
Ivo continued to watch Bradley Carpenter, mercifully asleep. Merciful for the observer, for his friend no longer had the intellect to care what had happened to him.
Why had Brad done it, knowing the penalty he would pay? It had been an act of suicide; he could have fended off the Senator’s demand, had he chosen to. A subpoena would have entailed substantial publicity, but would still have been a far smaller evil. This death was more horrible because it was partial. The mind was gone, lobotomized, while the flaccid body remained, a lifetime burden to society and torment to those who had known and loved Brad in his entirety.
“Oh — you were his Earthside friend,” the nurse said, recognizing him. “Too bad.”
Brad woke. The lax features quivered; the eyes fought into focus. The lips pursed loosely. Almost, some animation came into the face.
“Sh-sh-sh…” Brad said.
The nurse placed a reassuring hand upon his shoulder. “It’s all right, Dr. Carpenter. All right. Relax. Relax.” Aside, to Ivo: “It isn’t good to work them up. They may be capable of some regeneration of personality, if the condition isn’t aggravated. We just don’t know yet, and can’t take any chances. You understand. You’d better go.”
Brad’s eyes fixed with difficulty on Ivo. “Sh-sh—”
“Schön,” Ivo said.
The straining body relaxed.
The nurse’s brow wrinkled. “What did you say?”
“It’s German,” Ivo explained unhelpfully.
“He was trying to — that’s astonishing! It’s only been a few hours since—”
“It meant a lot to him.”
Brad was asleep again, his ultimate accomplished. “The others couldn’t even try for several days,” the nurse said. “He can’t have been hit as bad. Maybe he’ll recover!”
“Maybe.” Ivo walked away, sure that the hope was futile. Only a transcendent effort, perhaps the only one he would ever be capable of, had brought forth that word, or that attempt at the word. It was clear now, in awful retrospect: Brad had sacrificed himself in an effort to force the summoning of Schön. He had been that certain that only Schön could nullify the destroyer and handle the problem of the macroscope.
It had been for nothing. How could he introduce Schön to this tremendous source of knowledge and power — knowing how much worse the world would be, if Schön’s amoral omnipotence replaced the Senator’s ambition? He could not do it.
He met Groton in the hallway near the common room. “Ivo,” the man said, stopping him. “I know this is a bad time for you, but there is some information I need.”
“No worse than any other time.” The truth was that he was relieved for some pretext to take his mind off the present disaster. He knew now that Groton was not an obtuse engineer; the man had important feelings about important things, as the school-teaching narration had shown. It was always dangerous to be guided by prejudice, as he saw himself to have been guided at his first meeting with Groton. “What kind of information? I don’t know much.”
“I’ve been working on your horoscope — couldn’t sleep right now — and, well, it would help if you could describe certain crises in your life.”
So Groton, too, felt it. Every person had his own ways of reacting to stress. No doubt astrology was as good a diversion as any.
“Like this crisis? I’m not objective yet.” Did he really want to contribute further to this exercise? Still, what he had just reminded himself about prejudice should hold for this too. The fact that Ivo Archer found astrology unworthy of serious consideration did not mean that discourtesy was justified; Harold Groton obviously was sincere. There were stranger hobbies.
“I was thinking of your past experience. Perhaps during your childhood something happened that changed your life—”
“I thought your charts told you all that, from the birth date.” Or was that an unkind remark?
“Not exactly. It is better to obtain corroborative experience. Then we can understand the signals more precisely. Astrology is a highly confirmatory science. We apply the scientific method, really.”
“And some philosophy?” Ivo inquired, thinking of the Senator’s remarks in that connection.
“Of course. So if you—”
They entered Groton’s apartment. Ivo could smell breakfast cooking and knew that Beatryx was at work. It made him feel obscurely homesick; nobody ever took institutionalized food if they could help it, though that served in the station was exceptionally good.
“I had no childhood,” he said.
“You mean the project. A controlled situation, certainly, and perhaps undistinctive. But after you left—”
Ivo remembered the turning point. Perhaps it had begun, if it could be said to have had a beginning, the day he was twenty-three. February third, 1865. The day he admitted to himself that he had consumption.
Point Lookout, Maryland — as horrible a place as any he could imagine. Surely this was Hell, and Major Brady the devil. Twenty acres of barren land surrounded by palisades. The prisoners were Southern White; many of the guards were Black. The Negroes took pleasure insulting and torturing any people they chose, but the cold of winter was worse yet. There was not enough food, clothing or sanitation, and no medical facilities for the prisoners. The water was foul. The only shelter was the collection of A-tents and Bell-tents. They slept on the bare, damp ground, denied both planks and straw for bedding, and no wood was permitted inside the compound for any fire. Objection of any nature to these conditions brought infamous retaliatory measures and further reduction of the scant rations.
He shared a tent with a dozen men. While the crowding provided a certain blessed amount of bodily warmth, it also spread disease at a savage rate. Diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid fever, scurvy and the itch… fifteen to twenty men died every day. And now he could no longer deny the tubercular coughing and the wastage of his own body. He realized he was dying.
Had it been only four years ago that the great state of Georgia voted secession from the Union? He had not at first been a secessionist, but the vote had been held at Milledgeville, only two miles from where he eked out his living by tutoring. The sentiment, like disease, had been highly contagious; even the clergy were belligerently patriotic. The afflatus of war was breathed upon them all. Somehow he had become convinced of his ability to whip at least five Yankees, singlehanded; indeed, any stalwart Georgian could!
Now he looked about him at the human desolation of Point Lookout. “What fools we were!” he whispered. The conceit of an individual was ridiculous because it was powerless, but the conceit of a whole people was a terrible thing.