Kate Wilhelm in Orbit - Volume One (25 page)

Julia rolled over, with her hands clasped under her head, and stared at the ceiling. “I half remember it all. Wasn’t it almost a religious denunciation that took place? I don’t remember the scientific details. I wasn’t terribly interested in the background then, but I remember the hysteria.”

“It got loud and nasty before it ended. Smithers was treated badly. Denounced from the pulpit, from the Vatican, from every scientific magazine… It got nasty. He died after a year of it, and they let the whole business die too. As they should have done.”

“And his immortality serum will take its place along with the alchemist’s stone, the universal solvent, a pinch of something in water to run the cars…”

“’Fraid so. There’ll always be those who will think it was suppressed.” He turned to build up the fire that had died down completely.

“Martie, you know that room I told you about? The nursery? I would know it again if I saw it. How many nurseries do you suppose there are in the city?”

Martie stopped all motion, his back to her. “I don’t know.” His voice was too tight.

Julia laughed and tugged at his sweater. “Look at me, Martie. Do I look like a kook?”

He didn’t turn around. He broke a stick and laid the pieces across each other. He topped them with another stick, slightly larger, then another.

“Martie, don’t you think it’s strange that suddenly you got the idea to look up these statistics, and Hilary approached you with different questions about the same thing? And at the same time I had this… this experience. Doesn’t that strike you as too coincidental to dismiss? How many others do you suppose are asking questions too?”

“I had thought of it some, yes. But last night just seemed like a good time to get to things that have been bugging us. You know, for the first time in months no one was going anywhere in particular for hours.”

She shook her head. “You can always rationalize coincidences if you are determined to. I was alone for the first time at night since I was in the hospital. I know. I’ve been over all that, too. But still…” She traced a geometrical pattern at the edge of the carpet. “Did you have a dream last night? Do you remember it?” Martie nodded.

“Okay. Let’s test this coincidence that stretches on and on. I did too. Let’s both write down our dreams and compare them. For laughs,” she added hurriedly when he seemed to stiffen again. “Relax, Martie. So you think I’ve spun out. Don’t be frightened by it. I’m not. When I thought that was the case, six months ago, or whenever it was, I was petrified. Remember? This isn’t like that. This is kooky in a different way. I feel that a door that’s always been there has opened a crack. Before, I didn’t know it was there, or wouldn’t admit that it was anyway. And now it’s there, and open. I won’t let it close again.”

Martie laughed suddenly and stopped breaking sticks. He lighted the fire and then sat back with a notebook and pen. “Okay.”

Martie wrote his dream simply with few descriptions. Alone, searching for her in an immense building. A hospital? An endless series of corridors and rooms. He had forgotten much of it, he realized, trying to fill in blanks. Finally he looked up to see Julia watching him with a faint smile. She handed him her pad and he stared at the line drawings that could have been made to order to illustrate his dream. Neither said anything for a long time.

“Martie, I want another baby. Now.”

“God! Honey, are you sure? You’re so worked up right now. Let’s not decide…”

“But I have decided already. And it is in my hands, you know.”

“So why tell me at all? Why not just toss the bottle out the window and be done with it?”

“Oh, Martie. Not like that. I want us to be deliberate about it, to think during coitus that we are really making a baby, to love it then.…”

“Okay, honey. But why now? What made you say this now?”

“I don’t know. Just a feeling.”

“Dr. Wymann, is there anything I should do, or shouldn’t do? I mean… I feel fine, but I felt fine the other times, too.”

“Julia, you are in excellent health. There’s no reason in the world for you not to have a fine baby. I’ll make the reservation for you.…”

“Not… I don’t want to go back to that same hospital. Someplace else.”

“But, it’s…”

“I won’t!”

“I see. Well, I suppose I can understand that. Okay. There’s a very good, rather small hospital in Queens, fully equipped.…”

“Dr. Wymann, this seems to be the only hang-up I have. I have to see the hospital first, before you make a reservation. I can’t explain it…” Julia got up and walked to the window high over Fifth Avenue. “I blame the hospital, I guess. This time I want to pick it out myself. Can’t you give me a list of the ones that you use, let me see them before I decide?” She laughed and shook her head. “I’m amazed at myself. What could I tell by looking? But there it is.”

Dr. Wymann was watching her closely. “No, Julia. You’ll have to trust me. It would be too tiring for you to run all over town to inspect hospitals…”

“No! I… I’ll just have to get another doctor,” she said miserably. “I can’t go in blind this time. Don’t you understand?”

“Have you discussed this with your husband?”

“No. I didn’t even know that I felt this way until right now. But I do.”

Dr. Wymann studied her for a minute or two. He glanced at her report spread out before him, and finally he shrugged. “You’ll just wear yourself out for nothing. But, on the other hand, walking’s good for you. I’ll have my nurse give you the list.” He spoke into the intercom briefly, then smiled again at Julia. “Now sit down and relax. The only thing I want you to concentrate on is relaxing, throughout the nine months. Every pregnancy is totally unlike every other one.…”

She listened to him dreamily. So young-looking, smooth-faced, tanned, if overworked certainly not showing it at all. She nodded when he said to return in a month.

“And I hope you’ll have decided at that time about the hospital. We do have to make reservations far in advance, you know.”

Again she nodded. “I’ll know by then.”

“Are you working now?”

“Yes. In fact, I’m having a small showing in two weeks. Would you like to come?”

“Why don’t you give me the date and I’ll check with my wife and let you know?”

Julia walked from the building a few minutes later feeling as though she would burst if she didn’t find a private place where she could examine the list of hospitals the nurse had provided. She hailed a taxi and as soon as she was seated she looked over the names of hospitals she never had heard of before.

Over lunch with Martie she said, “I’ll be in town for the next few days, maybe we could come in together in the mornings and have lunch every day.”

“What are you up to now?”

“Things I need. I’m looking into the use of plastics. I have an idea.…”

He grinned at her and squeezed her hand. “Okay, honey. I’m glad you went back to Wymann. I knew you were all right, but I’m glad you know it too.”

She smiled back at him. If she found the nursery, or the nurse she had startled so, then she would tell him. Otherwise she wouldn’t. She felt guilty about the smiles they exchanged, and she wished momentarily that he wouldn’t make it so easy for her to lie to him.

“Where are you headed after lunch?” he asked.

“Oh, the library…” She ducked her head quickly and scraped her sherbet glass.

“Plastics?”

“Um.” She smiled again, even more brightly. “And what about you? Tonight’s show ready?”

“Yeah. This afternoon, in…”—he glanced at his watch,—“…exactly one hour and fifteen minutes I’m to sit in on a little talk between Senator George Kern and Hilary. Kern’s backing out of his weather control fight.”

“You keep hitting blank walls, don’t you?”

“Yes. Good and blank, and very solid. Well, we’d better finish up. I’ll drop you at the library.”

“Look at us,” she said over the dinner table. “Two dismaler people you couldn’t find. You first. And eat your hamburger. Awful, isn’t it?”

“It’s fine, honey.” He cut a piece, speared it with his fork, then put it down. “Kern is out. Hilary thinks he got the treatment last month. And his wife too. They were both hospitalized for pneumonia at the same time.”

“Do you know which hospital? In New York?”

“Hell, I don’t know. What difference does… What are you getting at?”

“I… Was it one of these?” She got the list from her purse and handed it to him. “I got them from Dr. Wymann’s nurse. I wouldn’t go back to that one where… I made them give me a list so I could look them over first.”

Martie reached for her hand and pressed it hard. “No plastics?”

She shook her head.

“Honey, it’s going to be all right this time. You can go anyplace you want to. I’ll look these over. You’ll just be wearing…”

“It’s all right, Martie. I already checked out three of them. Two in Manhattan, one in Yonkers. I… I’d rather do it myself. Did Senator Kern mention a hospital?”

“Someplace on Long Island. I don’t remember…”

“There’s a Brent Park Memorial Hospital on Long Island. Was that it?”

“Yes. No. Honey, I don’t remember. If he did mention it, it passed right over my head. I don’t know.” He put the list down and took her other hand and pulled her down to his lap. “Now you give. Why do you want to know? What did you see in those hospitals that you visited? Why did you go to the library?”

“I went to three hospitals, all small, all private, all run by terribly young people. Young doctors, young nurses, young everybody. I didn’t learn anything else about them. But, in the library I tried to borrow a book on obstetrics, and there aren’t any.”

“What do you mean, there aren’t any? None on open shelves? None in at the time?”

“None. They looked, and they’re all out, lost, not returned, gone. All of them. I tried midwifery, and the same thing. I had a young boy who was terribly embarrassed by it all searching for me, and he kept coming back with the same story. Nothing in. So I went to the branch library in Yonkers, since I wanted to see the hospital there anyway, and it was the same thing. They have open shelves there, and I did my own looking. Nothing.”

“What in God’s name did you plan to do with a book on obstetrics?”

“Isn’t that beside the point? Why aren’t there any?”

“It is directly to the point. What’s going through your mind, Julia? Exactly what are you thinking?”

“The baby is due the end of December. What if we have another blizzard? Or an ice storm? Do you know anything about delivering a baby? Oh, something, I grant you. Everyone knows something. But what about an emergency? Could you handle an emergency? I thought if we had a book…”

“I must have wandered into a nut ward. I’m surrounded by maniacs. Do you hear what you’re saying? Listen to me, sweetheart, and don’t say a word until I’m finished. When that baby is due, I’ll get you to a hospital. I don’t care which one you choose, or where it is. You’ll be there. If we have to take an apartment next door to it for three months to make certain, we’ll do it. You have to have some trust and faith in me, in the doctor, in yourself. And if it eases your mind, I’ll get you a book on obstetrics, but by God, I don’t plan to deliver a baby!”

Meekly she said, “You just get me a book and I’ll behave. I promise.” She got up and began to gather up their dishes. “Maybe later on we’ll want some scrambled eggs or something. Let’s have coffee now.”

They moved to the living room, where she sat on the floor with her cup on the low table. “Is Kern satisfied that no biological warfare agent got loose to start all this?”

Martie looked at her sharply. “You’re a witch, aren’t you? I never told you that’s what I was afraid of.”

She shrugged. “You must have.”

“Kern’s satisfied. I am too. It isn’t that. His committee decided to drop it, at his suggestion, because of the really dangerous condition of the world right now. It’s like a powder keg, just waiting for the real statistics to be released. That would blow it. Everyone suspects that the death rate has risen fantastically, but without official figures, it remains speculation, and the fuse just sits there. He’s right. If Hilary does go on, he’s taking a terrible risk.” He sighed. “It’s a mutated virus that changes faster than the vaccines that we come up with. It won’t be any better until it mutates into something that isn’t viable, then it will vanish. Only then will the governments start opening books again, and hospitals give out figures for admittances and deaths. We know that the medical profession has been hit probably harder than any other. Over-exposure. And the shortage of personnel makes everything that used to be minor very serious now.”

Julia nodded, but her gaze didn’t meet his. “Sooner or later,” she said, “you’ll have to turn that coin over to see what’s on the other side. Soon now, I think.”

Julia wore flowered pants and a short vest over a long-sleeved tailored blouse. With her pale hair about her shoulders, she looked like a very young girl, too young to be sipping champagne from the hollow-stemmed goblet that she held with both hands. Dwight Gregor was in the middle of the circle of stones, studying the effects from there. Gregor was the main critic, the one whose voice was heard if he whispered, although all others were shouting. Julia wished he’d come out of the circle and murmur something or other to her. She didn’t expect him to let her off the hook that evening, but at least he could move, or something. She probably wouldn’t know what his reactions had been until she read his column in the morning paper. She sipped again and turned despairingly to Martie.

“I think he fell asleep out there.”

“Honey, relax. He’s trying to puzzle it out. He knows that you’re cleverer than he is, and more talented, and that you worked with the dark materials of your unconscious. He feels it and can’t grasp the meaning…”

“Who are you quoting?”

“Boyle. He’s fascinated by the circle. He’ll be in and out of it all evening. Watch and see. Haven’t you caught him looking at you with awe all over his face?”

“Is that awe? I was going to suggest that you tell him I’m good and pregnant.”

Martie laughed with her, and they separated to speak with the guests. It was a good show, impressive. The yard looked great, the lighting effects effective, the waterfall behind the basket-weave fence just right, the pool at the bottom of the cascading water just dark and mysterious enough.… Martie wandered about his yard proudly.