“Three doors to the right.”
Harris went on. Asteroid Y-3 had only recently been garrisoned and staffed. It had become the primary check-point to halt and examine ships entering the system from outer space. The Garrison made sure that no dangerous bacteria, fungus, or what-not arrived to infect the system. A nice asteroid it was, warm, well-watered, with trees and lakes and lots of sunshine. And the most modern Garrison in the nine planets. He shook his head, coming to the third door. He stopped, raising his hand and knocking.
“Who’s there?” sounded through the door.
“I want to see Corporal Westerburg.”
The door opened. A bovine youth with horn-rimmed glasses looked out, a book in his hand. “Who are you?”
“Doctor Harris.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Corporal Westerburg is asleep.”
“Would he mind if I woke him up? I want very much to talk to him.” Harris peered inside. He could see a neat room, with a desk, a rug and lamp, and two bunks. On one of the bunks was Westerburg, lying face up, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes tightly closed.
“Sir,” the bovine youth said, “I’m afraid I can’t wake him up for you, much as I’d like to.”
“You can’t? Why not?”
“Sir, Corporal Westerburg won’t wake up, not after the sun sets. He just won’t. He can’t be awakened.”
“Cataleptic? Really?”
“But in the morning, as soon as the sun comes up, he leaps out of bed and goes outside. Stays the whole day.”
“I see,” the Doctor said. “Well, thanks anyhow.” He went back out into the hall and the door shut after him. “There’s more to this than I realized,” he murmured. He went on back the way he had come.
It was a warm sunny day. The sky was almost free of clouds and a gentle wind moved through the cedars along the bank of the stream. There was a path leading from the hospital building down the slope to the stream. At the stream a small bridge led over to the other side, and a few patients were standing on the bridge, wrapped in their bathrobes, looking aimlessly down at the water.
It took Harris several minutes to find Westerburg. The youth was not with the other patients, near or around the bridge. He had gone farther down, past the cedar trees and out onto a strip of bright meadow, where poppies and grass grew everywhere. He was sitting on the stream bank, on a flat gray stone, leaning back and staring up, his mouth open a little. He did not notice the Doctor until Harris was almost beside him.
“Hello,” Harris said softly.
Westerburg opened his eyes, looking up. He smiled and got slowly to his feet, a graceful, flowing motion that was rather surprising for a man of his size. “Hello, Doctor. What brings you out here?”
“Nothing. Thought I’d get some sun.”
“Here, you can share my rock,” Westerburg moved over and Harris sat down gingerly, being careful not to catch his trousers on the sharp edges of the rock. He lit a cigarette and gazed silently down at the water. Beside him, Westerburg had resumed his strange position, leaning back, resting on his hands, staring up with his eyes shut tight.
“Nice day,” the Doctor said.
“Yes.”
“Do you come here every day?”
“You like it better out here than inside.”
“I can’t stay inside,” Westerburg said.
“You can’t? How do you mean, ‘can’t’?”
“You would die without air, wouldn’t you?” the Corporal said.
“And you’d die without sunlight?”
Westerburg nodded.
“Corporal, may I ask you something? Do you plan to do this the rest of your life, sit out in the sun on a flat rock? Nothing else?”
Westerburg nodded.
“How about your job? You went to school for years to become a Patrolman. You wanted to enter the Patrol very badly. You were given a fine rating and a first-class position. How do you feel, giving all that up? You know, it won’t be easy to get back in again. Do you realize that?”
“I realize it.”
“And you’re really going to give it all up?”
“That’s right.”
Harris was silent for a while. At last he put his cigarette out and turned toward the youth. “All right, let’s say you give up your job and sit in the sun. Well, what happens, then? Someone else has to do the job instead of you. Isn’t that true? The job has to be done, your job has to be done. And if you don’t do it someone else has to.”
“I suppose so.”
“Westerburg, suppose everyone felt the way you do? Suppose everyone wanted to sit in the sun all day? What would happen? No one would check ships coming from outer space. Bacteria and toxic crystals would enter the system and cause mass death and suffering. Isn’t that right?”
“If everyone felt the way I do they wouldn’t be going into outer space.”
“But they have to. They have to trade, they have to get minerals and products and new plants.”
“Why?”
“To keep society going.”
“Why?”
“Well—” Harris gestured. “People couldn’t live without society.”
Westerburg said nothing to that. Harris watched him, but the youth did not answer.
“Isn’t that right?” Harris said.
“Perhaps. It’s a peculiar business, Doctor. You know, I struggled for years to get through Training. I had to work and pay my own way. Washed dishes, worked in kitchens. Studied at night, learned, crammed, worked on and on. And you know what I think, now?”
“What?”
“I wish I’d become a plant earlier.”
Doctor Harris stood up. “Westerburg, when you come inside, will you stop off at my office? I want to give you a few tests, if you don’t mind.”
“The shock box?” Westerburg smiled. “I knew that would be coming around. Sure, I don’t mind.”
Nettled, Harris left the rock, walking back up the bank a short distance. “About three, Corporal?”
The Corporal nodded.
Harris made his way up the hill, to the path, toward the hospital building. The whole thing was beginning to become more clear to him. A boy who had struggled all his life. Financial insecurity. Idealized goal, getting a Patrol assignment. Finally reached it, found the load too great. And on Asteroid Y-3 there was too much vegetation to look at all day. Primitive identification and projection on the flora of the asteroid. Concept of security involved in immobility and permanence. Unchanging forest.
He entered the building. A robot orderly stopped him almost at once. “Sir, Commander Cox wants you urgently, on the vidphone.”
“Thanks.” Harris strode to the office. He dialed Cox’s letter and the Commander’s face came presently into focus. “Cox? This is Harris. I’ve been out talking to the boy. I’m beginning to to get this lined up, now. I can see the pattern, too much load too long. Finally gets what he wants and the idealization shatters under the—”
“Harris!” Cox barked. “Shut up and listen. I just got a report from Y-3. They’re sending an express rocket here. It’s on the way.”
“An express rocket?”
“Five more cases like Westerburg. All say they’re plants! The Garrison Chief is worried as hell. Says we must find out what it is or the Garrison will fall apart, right away. Do you get me, Harris? Find out what it is!”
“Yes, sir,” Harris murmured. “Yes, sir.”
By the end of the week there were twenty cases, and all, of course, were from Asteroid Y-3.
Commander Cox and Harris stood together at the top of the hill, looking gloomily down at the stream below. Sixteen men and four women sat in the sun along the bank, none of them moving, none speaking. An hour had gone by since Cox and Harris appeared, and in all that time the twenty people below had not stirred.
“I don’t get it,” Cox said, shaking his head. “I just absolutely don’t get it. Harris, is this the beginning of the end? Is everything going to start cracking around us? It gives me a hell of a strange feeling to see those people down there basking away in the sun, just sitting and basking.”