“Let’s get going,” I told Higgins. “I have work to do. There’s a story to be written.”
I could see the Old Man’s face when I walked into the office. I was already rehearsing in my mind exactly what I’d tell him. And he’d have to stand and listen, for I had the story. I was the only one who had that story and he would have to listen.
“Not trie office,” Joy said. “We find a doctor first.”
“Doctor!” I said. “I don’t need a doctor.”
I stood amazed, not so much at having said it (for there had been a time when a doctor had been needed), but at my calm acceptance of it, my casual recognition of something that had happened without my knowing of it, and my becoming aware of it so gradually that it caused no wonderment.
For I didn’t need a doctor. There was nothing wrong with me. There was no pain in my chest and no soreness in my belly and no wobble in my knees. I moved my arms to be sure about the chest and I was absolutely right. If there had ever been anything broken there, it was mended now.
It is amazing, the Dog had said, in that corny way of his, how many identical goals are accomplished by many different techniques.
“Thanks, pal,” I said, looking upward at the sky, just as corny as the Dog. “Thanks, pal. Don’t forget to send the bill.”
XXXVIII
Lightning threw the paper on my desk. It still was wet with ink. There were double lines of type across the top of it to bannerline my story.
I didn’t pick it up. I just sat and looked at it. Then without touching it, I got up and walked over to the window to look out. There, to the north, was the heaving mountain lighted by batteries of searchlights, well above the skyline now and growing all the time. Hours before all hope had been abandoned of rescuing the radio crew that had been trapped and buried atop the McCandless Building. All that anyone could do now was simply stand and watch.
Gavin came over to the window and stood beside me.
“Washington is talking,” he said, “of evacuating the city and dropping an H-bomb on them. It just came on the wires. Wait until the pile appears to stop its growing, then send a bomber over.”
“What’s the use of it?” I asked. “They’re no threat to us now. They were a threat only so long as we didn’t know about them.”
I walked away from the window, back toward my desk.
I looked at my wrist to see what time it was, forgetting that the watch was broken.
I looked at the big wall clock. It was five minutes after two.
The Old Man had been standing beside the city desk, but now he walked over to me and stuck out his hand. I took it and he hung onto it, his massive mitt twice as big as mine. “Good work, Parker,” he said. “I appreciate it.”
“Thanks, boss,” I said remembering that I’d told him none of the things I had meant to tell him. And, curiously, not feeling sorry that I hadn’t.
“I’ve got a bottle in my office.”
I shook my head.
He slapped me on the back and let go of my hand.
I walked down the aisle and stopped at Joy’s desk.
“Come on beautiful,” I said. “We’ve got unfinished business.”
She got up and stood waiting.
“I intend,” I said, “before the night is over to make that pass at you.”
I thought she might get sore, but she didn’t.
She reached up her arms and put them around my neck, in front of everyone.
You can live to be a million and still never figure women.
Clifford D. Simak, They Walked Like Men
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