Now Then (v1.0) - John Brunner, page 2
And that was the other reason why he could not go to sleep again. He sat up in bed smoking and staring into darkness, listening to the rain beat on the windows, the soft rhythm of Diana’s breathing and the hammering of his own heart.
The more he thought about the tramp’s condition, the more he felt that the episode had been unreal. It was absurd to think that a man could reach his thirties or forties when suffering from the same disease that had stricken Jimmy before his birth.
The image of the tiny limp body of his son haunted him; he seemed to see it against the darkness, eyes open accusingly, the horrible greenish layer which filmed the whites magnified by imagination into a phosphorescent glow like the gleam of rotting fish.
Almost, he cried out, but stopped himself in time. The loss of Jimmy had preyed too badly on Diana’s mind for him to want to have to explain why it was he stayed wakeful.
It was only rather recently that the nature of such diseases as that which had killed Jimmy had been understood. The discovery had to wait for a clearer understanding of the metabolism of the body, and the exact interaction of the myriad chemical compounds on which it depended. These were absurd and paradoxical afflictions 18 in which wholesome food turned to poison because of some flaw in the chemistry of the digestive system—of the liver, kidneys or some other vital organ.
A child might be poisoned by its own mother’s milk, or by an innocuous vegetable like spinach, or by a vitamin, or even by one of the normal derivative compounds into which the digestive fluids converted food. Then followed cretinism, or paralysis, or simple, merciful death.
Some of these diseases had been given names before they were understood; puzzled doctors had coined descriptive terms and been compelled to leave it at that. Others had been named with greater precision, as comprehension of the underlying causes grew, and—like phenylketonuria, for instance—bore even in these labels an attempt to explain what they were.
The disease which had killed Jimmy was one of the latest to be identified. Max knew the man who had given it its name—had studied under him, in fact. He called it heterochylia, because the poison which jaundiced the skin, discolored the whites of the eyes and eventually so disturbed the nervous system that death resulted, was found in the chyle—the fluid which transfers ingested fats from the small intestine to the bloodstream. Jimmy’s chyle had been typical: thick, discolored, foul-smelling at the autopsy. A compound had appeared in it which made it biologically useless.
How such diseases occurred: that too was beginning to be known. They were among the statistically most likely consequences of radiation gene-damage; a mere nudge could disturb the delicate structure responsible for conveying the complex information about normal metabolism.
What to do about such diseases: little by little patient men were piecing facts together. There were some children who were growing up happy and healthy—provided they were never allowed to take milk or milk-products. Others were condemned never to touch particular fruits or vegetables, or even sugar. With lifelong watchfulness they could be given the chance to survive.
In herterochylia, a common variety of fat was turned rancid during digestion and became a substance which the body had no technique to handle. In trying to explain its effect to Diana, Max had compared it to pouring thick gum into a delicate machine; for a while the machine would run slower and slower, and at last it would be so 19
clogged that it stopped. It wasn’t exactly gum, but it clogged the body.
Jimmy had died before the particular fat was identified. On a diet which excluded all fats, whether in milk, or meat, or butter, or nuts—all fats—he might have survived. But he would probably have been mentally affected in any case. It was better this way.
But the incredible coincidence that the tramp had come out of the night and been seen by perhaps the only doctor in all London apart from specialists connected with the investigation of heterochylia who could recognize his affliction and warn the hospital staff against killing him with kindness … that made his mind reel.
That—and the finger-bone.
He reached out to the bedside table and found the grisly little relic. He turned it between his hands and went on wondering.
The tramp had eaten; his belly was full with a large and recent meal, and that meal had contained fats deadly to him. But to have lived so long he must have been instructed to avoid fats. Where had he been? In an institution of some kind? Even that didn’t offer an adequate explanation. Heterochylia was newly identified; it was absurdly improbable that even in a hospital somewhere he would have been given an absolutely fat-free diet.
This finger-bone … The top of a middle finger, with a slight curve in it like his own. That meant nothing. The fingers of very few people were quite straight. Still, this was another disturbance for his already confused mind, and it ran eerily over his consciousness, planting footprints of insanity.
He had been able to explain away many things from his evil dream; the cry of the child, the sense of being spoken to and ordered to suffer. But this bone now in his hand was so precisely like the one he had seen resting on the palm of the kneeling man that he was physically frightened.
He got up early and made his own breakfast, leaving Diana asleep. He put a note beside the bed where she would be sure to see it, and drove through streets only sparsely dotted with traffic. He was an hour ahead of his usual time when he reached the hospital, and moved through corridors loud with clinking breakfast dishes in search of Gordon Faulkner, who had been on night duty.
He found him writing up his report in the house office, and sipping a cup of tea. He was fortunately alone. Max closed the door behind him and nodded in answer to his surprised greeting.
“Couldn’t sleep after that tramp was found,” he said. “I thought I’d come down early and see what became of him.”
Faulkner pushed back his chair and took off his hornrimmed glasses to wipe them. He was a large-boned man with sandy hair, some years older than Max.
“The note you sent down with him shook me rigid,” he said. “I thought at first you’d slipped a cog somewhere. Then I took a look at him, and I saw you were absolutely right. How did it happen, anyway?”
“A policeman was passing the house and heard a noise; when he went to investigate, there was this tramp. My guess is he’d eaten a meal early in the evening, and it had gone bad on him.”
‘That’s right,” Faulkner nodded. “Directly I saw the green in his eyes and smelled his breath, I had his stomach pumped out. The contents were consistent with a large meal of fish and chips taken about four or five hours earlier. The fat they were fried in would be enough to knock him over.”
“Is he going to live?”
“For a while. The Prof is due in this morning at ten. I think we’d better wait for his verdict. He’s on glucose drip, by the way. And here’s something else odd. Apart from being three-quarters starved, it doesn’t look as though his condition has ever given him really bad trouble.”
“If it had, he’d be dead—or at least his brain would have been so seriously affected he wouldn’t even be able to cope with a tramp’s way of life.” Max repressed a shudder. “What do you make of him, Gordon?”
“A complete mystery,” Faulkner said. “If I hadn’t seen him myself, I wouldn’t believe in his existence.”
“Has he talked? Or have you found any clue to identity?”
“No. You’d hardly expect to find him carrying papers, would you?” Faulkner hesitated. “Or would you? I don’t know much about tramps. I suppose they have to carry some kind of documents. But apart from the coat and boots we took off him, there was nothing at all. As for talking-”
He broke off, frowning, Max leaned forward.
“Yes? Go on!”
“Well, it’s much too early to say, of course, because he’s very weak and shocked. But he regained consciousness after we emptied his stomach and got some glucose into his system, and he did say a few words to me. And they seemed to be in a foreign language. I couldn’t get any of it. We’ll try again when the Prof is here; I think he’d best be allowed to rest undisturbed until then. Or do you want to have a look at him?”
Max hesitated. Then he said, “No, I’ll wait for the Prof.”
“Just as you like.” Faulkner swallowed the last of his tea. “Oh, when I said there was nothing on him, I forgot— there was this.” He pulled open a drawer of the desk at which he sat, and took out a large envelope with a scribbled note on it. From the envelope he produced a big old rusty sheath-knife, the handle broken and a quarter-inch chipped off the tip of the blade.
“That was tucked in his right boot,” Faulkner finished.
Max turned the knife over and gave it back. There was nothing obviously unusual about it. He said, “There was also—uh—this.”
He felt in the side pocket of his jacket and found the bone. Giving it to Faulkner, he said, “What do you make of it?”
“Phalanx,” Faulkner said. ‘Top joint of a left middle finger, I’d say. Oh! Was this the one Jones mentioned, which they found clutched in his hand?”
“That’s right.”
“Hm-m-m.” Faulkner stared at the improbable object. “You know, when Jones told me about it, the only rational explanation I could think of was that it must be the tramp’s own. But both his hands are intact.” He tossed the bone up in the air, caught it as it fell, and passed it back. “Or else maybe it’s one he took off somebody in a fight, and kept as a souvenir. This knife of his has blood on it, did you notice?”
“Has it?” Max started. He took the knife again and inspected it more closely. “Why, so it has,” he added, seeing that although the rusty blade had been wiped, there was a dark crust around the base of the handle.
“Most likely it’s not significant,” Faulkner shrugged. “He may have used it to gut a stolen chicken, or anything.
Anyway, I’m afraid there’s more to be done today than discuss one peculiar tramp.”
Max took the hint and rose. “I’ll go and see if Sister can let me have a cup of that tea,” he said. “When the Prof gets here, he can do the worrying.”
He wished achingly that he really could shrug off the mystery so easily.
III
“Looks as though you must be acquiring something of a reputation, Max!” boomed Professor Lensch. His voice was out of all proportion to his baby-doll face and short chubby figure.
Turning away from the bed in which the tramp lay with eyes wide like a startled rabbit’s, he added, “I’m only glad it wasn’t me he disturbed in the middle of the night.”
“What do you mean, Prof?” Max said.
Lensch nodded at the nurse to tidy the bed and put screens around it again, and walked a few paces down the ward. Max fell in beside him.
“Well, exactly what I say!” Lensch went on in a lower tone. “Fish and chips he had inside him, according to the report. The fat would have killed him if he’d been allowed to go on digesting it. And the odds are a thousand to one against any out-of-touch GP making the right diagnosis. It looks as if he was making for your place, doesn’t it? Heh-heh!”
“That’s not funny,” Max said.
Instantly Lensch was contrite. He put his hand on Max’s arm. “I’m so sorry, Max. Somehow I keep forgetting it was your boy it happened to.”
Max shrugged. The nurse came out from between the screens surrounding the tramp’s bed, and Lensch turned to her.
“Nurse! Has he said nothing at all, the whole morning -since he woke up?”
The nurse nodded. “Apart from murmuring a few words in his sleep at half past eight or so—that was just before he woke—he hasn’t said a thing. And there’s something distinctly odd about him even now he is awake.”
“Yes?”
“I think he must be a foreigner. We get Cypriots here 23
sometimes who don’t speak any English at all—mostly women. He doesn’t appear to understand any of what’s said to him, the same as the Cypriots. He hears it all right, but it’s just noise.”
“Yes.” Lensch compressed his pinkly-shining lips. “That may perhaps be an effect of the heterochylia on the brain, or again it may not. Thank you, nurse. Keep Dr. Harrow informed if there’s any change in the man’s condition, won’t you? Now, Max, I must have a short discussion with you.”
He took Max’s arm again and hurried him along the ward to the sister’s office. Once inside, with the door closed, he swung round to face his companion.
“Max, what have you found here? This man is totally impossible! Who, who has enabled him to keep alive? One glass of milk, one piece of bread and margarine, one rasher of bacon—he ought to have been dead from such a cause when he was two years old!”
“I know,” Max said. “I gave the dietician instructions, by the way—plain dry bread, porridge without milk, tea without milk, salad and a very little lean meat when he begins to improve. I think we can hold him now, don’t you?”
Lensch rubbed his chin. “I think so,” he agreed judiciously. “Be careful with the meat—check his reaction to not more than an ounce or two before permitting it regularly. We shall maintain the glucose drip today, of course. This is incredible, incredible!” He thumped his plump fist on a nearby table. “Max, I wish I could stay all day with you and examine him properly. As I cannot, I must tell you what I want you to do and rely on you to carry it out. Here, give me paper and I will make you a long list.”
It was a very long list, but somehow in the course of the day Max found time to organize all the necessary tests and additional examinations. Lensch’s opinion—also his own—was amply confirmed.
He was sitting in the ward office at four that afternoon, looking at the report of a urinalysis across which the lab technician had scrawled, “That’s heterochylia all right!” when the phone rang and he picked it up.
“B Ward,” he said absently. “Sister’s not here, I’m afraid.”
“Dr. Harrow?” the switchboard girl said. “I have an outside call for you. It’s the police.”
“Police?” Max came blankly back to the present. “Oh, very well.”
A moment’s silence; then a man’s voice came on the line.
“Sorry to trouble you, Dr. Harrow. Sergeant Cloudby here, from Rampion Road police station. You may perhaps be able to help us.”
“I’ll try.”
“It’s about the tramp that one of our constables found early this morning, in your car-port—isn’t that right? I believe he was brought to the hospital where you yourself work.”
“Correct,” Max said. He fumbled out a cigarette and put it between his lips. “In fact, he’s right here in this ward.”
“Did he by any chance have a knife on him?”
Max paused in the act of bringing his lighter up to the cigarette. After a moment he said in a changed voice, “Yes, as a matter of fact he did. Why?”
“We’ve had a report from—uh-” Papers rustled at the other end of the line. “Ah yes. From Dr. Scoreman, just a couple of roads away from where you live. His Alsatian dog, which he lets out last thing before going to bed, didn’t come in as usual last night. And his wife found it this morning hidden among some bushes with its throat cut”
Max didn’t say anything for a moment. Scoreman, as it happened, was his and Diana’s GP.
“Are you there, sir?”
“Yes, I’m still here. I know Dr. Scoreman, and his dog. This is a very nasty thing to have happened, but why do you connect it with the tramp who was found at my place?”
“Just a guess, sir,” Sergeant Cloudby said apologetically. “You see, it occurred to me that perhaps this tramp was ill, and looking for a doctor to help him, and he didn’t dare to go in at Dr. Scoreman’s after the dog incident.” The voice briskened. “You say he did have a knife. Any blood on it?”
“Yes—some at the base of the handle, quite dry by the time I saw it, of course.”
“Thank you.” A pen scratched. “Any on his clothes?”
“Frankly, Sergeant, the coat which was all he had on 25
was so filthy it wouldn’t show without close inspection.” Max bit his lip; there was something about what Cloudby had said which itched at his mind. Abruptly, he realized what it was. If he hadn’t lost so much sleep last night, he would have spotted it immediately.
“Sergeant, you may have come to the right conclusion, but for the wrong reason, you know.”
“How’s that, sir?”
“There’s nothing outside my house to show I’m a doctor. I’m not in general practice, you see. And it was much too dark for anyone in the roadway to see the sticker on my car’s windscreen, which your constable noticed.”
“I see. That is odd.” Cloudby hesitated. “Would it be convenient if I sent someone around to the hospital, sir? You have the knife, I take it?”
“Well, it’s probably in the ward here—we keep patients’ belongings sealed up for them to claim on recovery. Apart from having the blood tested to see if it matched the dog’s, though, I don’t imagine it’ll help very much to send anyone around.”
“Is the man unconscious, then?”
“No—he’s been awake all day. He’s weak, but getting better. But the point is, he doesn’t appear to speak English.” Max hadn’t meant to phrase it that way; his tiredness was definitely catching up on him. “I mean, he doesn’t understand what’s said to him. It’s probably a side-effect of the rather rare complaint he’s suffering from.”
Rather rare, he glossed wryly, was a classic understatement.
“None the less, sir, if you’ll allow me I’d like to send a man around. He’ll be in plain clothes, of course. And even if it’s against regulations to part with the knife, he can take some scrapings of the blood from it, at least.”
“Oh—very well.” Max made his decision in the same moment that he realized he had a request in turn to make of Cloudby. He was surprised Lensch hadn’t included it in his list. “By the way, Sergeant, you might be able to do me a favor. This tramp has a very rare disease, as I mentioned—not a notifiable one, not contagious at all. But we should like to know where he came from, and he can’t tell us himself. Will you be making inquiries in the neighborhood?”
