“You don’t understand, Your Honor.”
His Honor shook his head. “I am afraid I do. You have placed yourself above the law. You have chosen deliberately to flout the law and you must answer for it. Too much has been gained by our medical statutes to endanger their observance. No citizen can be allowed to set a precedent against them. The struggle to gain a sound and healthy people must be accorded the support of each and every one of us and I cannot countenance…”
The place of brilliance tilted and he was back in the dusk again.
He lay upon his back and stared up into the darkness, and although he could feel the pressure of the bed on which he lay, it was as if he were suspended in some sort of dusky limbo that had no beginning and no end, that was nowhere and led nowhere, and was, in itself, the terminal point of all and each existence.
From somewhere deep inside himself he heard the questioning once again—the flat, hard voice that had, somehow, the sound of metal in it:
Have you ever taken part in any body-building program?
When was the last time that you brushed your teeth?
Have you ever contributed either time or money to the little leagues?
How often would you say that you took a bath?
Did you at any time ever express a doubt that sports developed character?
One of the white faces floated out of the darkness to hang above him once again. It was, he saw, an old face—a woman’s face and kind.
A hand slid beneath his head and lifted it.
“Here,” the white face said, “drink this.”
He felt the spoon against his lips.
“It’s soup,” she said. “It’s hot. It will give you strength.”
He opened his mouth and the spoon slid in. The soup was hot and comforting.
The spoon retreated.
“Where…” he said.
“Where are you?”
“Yes,” he whispered, “where am I? I want to know.”
“This is Limbo,” the white face said.
Now the word had meaning.
Now he could recall what Limbo was.
And he could not stay in Limbo.
It was inconceivable that anyone should expect that he should stay in Limbo.
He rolled his head back and forth on the thin, hard pillow in a gesture of despair.
If he only had more strength. Just a little while ago he had had a lot of strength. Old and wiry and with a lot of strength left in him. Strong enough for almost anything at all.
But shiftless, they had said back in Willow Bend.
And there he had the name. He was glad to have it back. He hugged it close against him.
“Willow Bend,” he said, speaking to the darkness.
“You all right, old timer?”
He could not see the speaker, but he was not frightened. There was nothing to be frightened of. He had his name and he had Willow Bend and he had Limbo and in just a little while he’d have all the rest of it and then he’d be whole again and strong.
“I’m all right,” he said.
“Kitty gave you soup. You want some more of it?”
“No. All I want is to get out of here.”
“You been pretty sick. Temperature a hundred and one point seven.”
“Not now. I have no fever now.”
“No. But when you got here.”
“How come you know about my temperature? You aren’t any medic. I can tell by the voice of you that you aren’t any medic. In Limbo, there would be no medic.”
“No medic,” said the unseen speaker. “But I am a doctor.”
“You’re lying,” Alden told him. “There are no human doctors. There isn’t any such a thing as doctors any more. All we have is medics.”
“There are some of us in research.”
“But Limbo isn’t research.”
“At times,” the voice said, “you get rather tired of research. It’s too impersonal and sterile.”
Alden did not reply. He ran his hand, in a cautious rubbing movement, up and down the blanket that had been used to cover him. It was stiff and hard to the touch, but seemed fairly heavy.
He tried to sort out in his mind what the man had told him.
“There is no one here,” he said, “but violators. What did you violate? Forget to trim your toe-nails? Short yourself on sleep?”
“I’m not a violator.”
“A volunteer, perhaps.”
“Nor a volunteer. It would do no good to volunteer. They would not let you in. That’s the point to Limbo—that’s the dirty rotten joke. You ignore the medics, so now the medics ignore you. You go to a place where there aren’t any medics and see how well you like it.”
“You mean that you broke in?”
“You might call it that.”
“You’re crazy,” Alden Street declared.
For you didn’t break into Limbo. If you were smart at all, you did your level best to stay away from it. you brushed your teeth and bathed and used one of the several kinds of approved mouth washes and you took care that you had your regular check-ups and you saw to it that you had some sort of daily exercise and you watched your diet and you ran as fast as you could leg it to the nearest clinic the first moment you felt ill. Not that you were often ill. The way they kept you checked, the way they made you live, you were very seldom ill.
He heard that flat, metallic voice clanging in his brain again, the disgusted, shocked, accusatory voice of the medic disciplinary corps.
Alden Street, it said, you’re nothing but a dirty slob.
And that, of course, was the worst thing that he could be called. There was no other label that could possibly be worse. It was synonymous with traitor to the cause of the body beautiful and healthy.
“This place?” he asked. “It’s a hospital?”
“No,” the doctor said. “There’s no hospital here. There is nothing here. Just me and the little that I know and the herbs and other woods specifics that I’m able to command.”
“And this Limbo. What kind of Limbo is it?”
“A swamp,” the doctor said. “An ungodly place, believe me.”
“Death sentence?”
“That’s what it amounts to.”
“I can’t die,” said Alden.
“Some day,” the calm voice said. “All men must.”
“Not yet.”
“No, not yet. You’ll be all right in a few more hours.”
“What was the matter with me?”
“You had some sort of fever.”
“But no name for it.”
“Look, how would I know? I am not…”
“I know you’re not a medic. Humans can’t be medics—not practicing physicians, not surgeons, not anything at all that has to do with the human body. But a human can be a medical research man because that takes insight and imagination.”
“You’ve thought about this a lot,” the doctor said.
“Some,” Alden said. “Who has not?”
“Perhaps not as many as you think. But you are angry. You are bitter.”
“Who wouldn’t be? When you think about it.”
“I’m not,” the doctor said.
“But you…”
“Yes, I of all of us, should be the bitter one. But I’m not. Because we did it to ourselves. The robots didn’t ask for it. We handed it to them.”
And that was right, of course, thought Alden. It had started long ago when computers had been used for diagnosis and for drug dosage computation. And it had gone on from there. It had been fostered in the name of progress. And who was there to stand in the way of progress?