“You know your business, huh?” said Her Majesty.
“People think so,” said Ole Doc. “Now take me to the patient. I have no time to waste.”
“You treat crazy people, too?” said Her Majesty.
“I have been known to do so,” said Ole Doc, looking fixedly at the curtain.
“You seem to be pretty young. Curly hair and pink cheeks. Would you know how to make somebody crazy, now?”
“Perhaps.”
“Build a machine or something to make people crazy?” she persisted.
“That is possible. Sometimes machines aren’t necessary.”
“Oh yes, they are. I’d pay you well if you did it.”
“What?”
“Made somebody crazy,” said Her Majesty behind the curtain.
“This is out of my line,” said Ole Doc.
“Well, show him to the patient anyway,” said Her Majesty.
It was a tortuous way Sir Pudno led them. Urging Ole Doc on ahead of him and followed by an escort of twenty guards, Sir Pudno finally brought them to a chamber some two hundred feet into the earth. It was barred and sealed and guarded in three separate depths but opened at last into a mean, damp cubicle which stank of unwashed flesh and rotting straw.
They thrust Ole Doc into the darkness with a shove against the stone which stunned him slightly and in that instant took away his kit and belt radio. The barriers clanged grimly behind him and left him ruefully rubbing his scalp in the fetid gloom.
Ole Doc pulled the tie string of his cloak and a small spotlight, which served ordinarily as a button, lighted and, when readjusted, spread a conical shaft into the mote-filled chamber. The circle lighted upon a young woman who clung to the far wall, fending the glare from the eyes of a small child in her arms. She was dressed in ragged finery, pale and soiled with long imprisonment, but humility she had not yet been taught. Chin up and nostrils flaring, she glared back at the light.
Turning, Ole Doc let the beam play over the remainder of this tiny cubicle and brought it to rest on the man.
He lay in dirty straw, face hidden by his arm. His fine frilled shirt was ripped, his scarlet sash was blackened with grime, his trousers and small boots were white, dusted and flecked with straw. Ole Doc moved a step toward him and found the woman interposed.
“You shan’t touch him!”
Gently, Ole Doc removed her hand from his cloak. “I am a physician. They have permitted me to come here, saying that he is ill.”
Half doubting, she let him come nearer. He took a second button from his cloak and set it on a stone ledge where it shed a bright light over the recumbent young man.
The bright, hectic spots in his cheeks, the rattle in his lungs, the odor of him and the wasted condition of his hands cried tuberculosis to Ole Doc—and in the last stages.
He had not seen an advanced case of the disease for more than two hundred years and it was with great shock that he plumbed the ignorance of these people.
“This is dangerous!” he said. “A child in here with this. No care, no understanding. My God, woman, how long have you been here?”
She was protecting her eyes from the light but she raised them now, proud of her endurance. “Six orbits. My child is three.”
“And they permitted . . . ” Ole Doc was angry. He had not seen brutality such as this for a long, long time. For these people were not criminals. The woman and the man both looked highborn.
“Who are you?” demanded Ole Doc.
“This is Rudolf, uncrowned king of Greater Algol. I am his queen, Ayilt.”
“Then,” said Ole Doc, a little amazed to find himself not proof against surprises, “who is that who reigns?”
“His mother, the wife of Conore, dead six orbits gone.”
Ole Doc glanced back at the doors. He was wondering how dangerous it might be to know too much about this. And then he decided, after one glance at the frightened child. “Start at the beginning.”
“You are a stranger to all these planets, that I see well,” said Ayilt, seating herself on the straw. “We know almost as little about the rest of space, for we are not rich nor brilliant and our planets are small, arid things, mostly stone with little land to till. And so I do not wonder that we are forgotten.
“We came from pirate stock—not the best to be sure. And the mainstay of our population had been the terrestrial Oriental who can live anywhere.
“Even so we had a happy government. There was not much. The last of the great revolutions was more than two hundred years ago and after that his family”—and she indicated the feverish, tossing boy on the straw—“stabilized the government. King Conore ruled justly and wisely and was much beloved by everyone. Since the beginning, because of our pirate origin, we discouraged traffic with space and it was well, for we had white and Scorpon stock and, outcast as it was, it often went bad. We had many prison colonies, but little crime. King Conore, like his forebears, was kind to prisoners. He gave them their chance in their own society and though he would not let them return to our worlds, they prospered in their way. But the terrible error was the sentencing of women to these colonies, for women, I am ashamed to say, often descend from criminal stock as criminals. And so it was that our prison settlement population was large.
“We considered prisoners hopeless. We took away any promising young. We hoped that these eugenics would serve us, and perhaps eventually wipe away all traces of our shameful origin. But now and then we erred.
“Yes, we erred. King Conore took a royal princess of the Olin line to wed, forgetting she had been born in a prison settlement, for she had been removed at the age of four and was a brilliant woman and beautiful.
“They reigned well and wisely until there came a day when new pirates arrived. No one knows from whence they came nor why, but they were not of this system. They are all dead now but it was said that the leader was terrestrial.
“Unsuspected, they raised revolt among our Mongolians and then struck the blow themselves. During a pageant given in honor of my husband and myself, to celebrate our marriage, the rebels threw a bomb into the royal car.
“King Conore was killed outright. His wife, Pauma, was seriously injured about the face and was blinded in one eye. Palace guards were prompt but not quick enough to prevent the bomb. She had them hanged, six hundred and more of them. She butchered the royal servants. She cast my husband and myself into this hole. She tried and tortured to death, in all, more than a million people on the six planets and then the stomachs of all decent folk turned and they tried to smash her.
“We had forgotten her origin. We had forgotten the bitterness of a beautiful woman turned ugly. We had forgotten the prison settlements.
“We were set upon by convicts—or rather the planets were, for my husband and I were imprisoned here. The army, all guards, all important dignitaries, were killed or disbanded by Pauma’s treachery and the convicts were set in their places.
“Unlettered, revengeful, wicked, the freed prisoners began to wreck the people and the land. And they could do this, for there was one convict for every three people on our planets.
“My husband and I owe our continued lives to the fear of Pauma that some other of our planets may revolt, for there is hope everywhere that my husband still may arise from this tomb and govern as did his father.”
“She keeps her own son here, then,” said Ole Doc.
“Why not, Doctor? He opposed her first measures, trying to point out that it was exterior influence which caused the tragedy. But she was always jealous of Rudolf, for after his birth his father made too much of him and often at Pauma’s expense.
“Royal line or not, Pauma was a gutter urchin. A prison settlement child. She told Rudolf that he meant to depose her and kill her. But she has to keep him here. While he lives no one dares raise a hand against Pauma, for she has often threatened to execute him if this is so and then would ensue nothing but night for all Algol.
“This is why you find us here, Doctor. Can you please
do something for my husband? He has some fever or other and has not talked for days, for when he talks he spits blood. See, the straw is spattered with it.”
“We’ll see what can be done,” said Ole Doc. And he called harshly for the guards and demanded that they return his kit.
Sir Pudno, outside the three barriers, argued about it. He conceived it to be full of weapons and like no doctor’s kit he had ever seen. But when Ole Doc finally threatened to do nothing, the kit was passed through.
From it, when he had increased the light on the ledge, Ole Doc took a small plate and placed it on the young man’s chest. By moving it about he was able to examine the lungs in their entirety, the plate only covering some two square inches at a time. He shook his head. There was little left of the fellow. He should have been dead days back. But nothing amazed Ole Doc more than the tenacity of the human body in its cling to life.
On his ship he could have done much better but he knew he could not ask that these be removed there. For Ole Doc was working for more than the health of this young king.
He took a vial of mutated bacteria mold and thrust it between the youth’s lips. There was no danger of choking him for the cheeks would absorb the entire dose.
Then Ole Doc gave his attention to the woman. He was amazed, when he passed the plate over her breast, to find her in such good health. Her heart was strong, her lungs perfect. The only thing she suffered was malnutrition and this on a small scale.
The child was somewhat like the mother but there was a spot upon its lungs. It cried when Ole Doc made it take another vial and the woman looked dangerous as it protested.
“Now,” said Ole Doc, “I would advise you to hold your nose. This does not smell good.” And he took a bomb the size of his thumb and exploded it against the floor. A dense white cloud, luminescent with ultraviolet light, sprang up and filled the chamber.
The guard without protested, opened up, rushed in and dragged Ole Doc out, thrusting blaster muzzles into his ribs. The door clanged and then the other two barriers shut. Ole Doc was hastened up the long passageway and pushed again into the throne room.
The curtains moved slightly. Now that he had some idea of what was behind them a chill came over the Soldier of Light. For it seemed that black rods of evil were thrusting out from it.
Sir Pudno saluted and bowed. “A treatment has been given, Your Majesty.”
“Will he recover?” said Pauma behind the curtains.
“No thanks to you,” said Ole Doc. “The boy was nearly dead from a terrible infectious disease. I would not be surprised to find that many suffer from it right here in the palace.”
There was silence and a chill amongst the guards. But a laugh came from behind the curtains.
“And if you are not interested in that,” said Ole Doc, “you might be interested to learn that diseases are no respecters of rank and glory and that I scent yet another in this very room.”
There was silence.
Finally the curtains moved a little. “What may it be?”
“It is known as schizophrenia,” said Ole Doc. “Dementia praecox with delusions of persecution. A very deadly thing, Your Majesty. It destroys both victim and executioner.”
There was silence again. The silence of ignorance.
“It is a dreadful thing, born from psychic shock. I scent here a broken schizoid of the persecution type, a paranoiac as dangerous to herself as to those about her.” Ole Doc thought he spoke plainly and for the life of him, after what he had witnessed below and seen outside, he could not have refrained from this. But plain as he thought it was, only some annoyed glimmering was transmitted.
“I think you mean to be insulting.” The curtains shifted.
“Far from it,” said Ole Doc. “I only wish to help. I speak of a thing which I know. Here, I will show you.”
He faced a guard and then, as though he plucked it from the air, a small whirling disc spun brightly in Ole Doc’s hand. He held it under the soldier’s nose and spoke in a fierce, rapid voice.
There had been a movement to stop him but the antics of the soldier an instant later startled the guards and Sir Pudno into activity. The small disc had vanished, seen by none except the soldier.
“Bowwow! Woof!” and on all fours the soldier began to gallop around the room and sniff at boots. Ole Doc turned to the dais. “You see, Your Majesty? The illness is contagious. By merely shoving at him, the soldier becomes a dog.”
There was fear and something more behind the curtains. “Remove the guard immediately! Come, you doctor. Do others have this here? Tell me! Do others have this here?”
With something like disgust when he realized the mentalities with which he dealt, Ole Doc faced Sir Pudno.
“I see traces of it here.”
“No!” bawled Sir Pudno, backing and stumbling.
But the disc appeared and Ole Doc’s voice was harsh if almost unheard even by Sir Pudno.
“Woof! Bowwow!” said Sir Pudno and instantly began to gallop around the room.
There was fear in the place now. Ole Doc took two or three steps toward the guards who had remained and then, suddenly, they bolted.
There was a scream from behind the curtains and then terrified anger as she vainly sought to order them back.
But only the barking Sir Pudno, Ole Doc and Her Majesty remained in the room.
Ole Doc was wary. He knew she must be armed. And he carefully halted ten paces from the curtains.
“I am sorry,” he said soothingly. “I am very sorry to have had to disclose this to you. I know what you go through and what you have to face. Only an intelligent man would truly understand that. It must be terrible to be surrounded by such people and to know . . .” And the little disc was spinning in his hand.
It does not take many years for a powerful personality to acquire the trick. Ole Doc, in a purely medical way, had been practicing it for the last seven hundred. One gets a certain facility that way. And the little disc spun.
There was a sigh behind the curtains. Ole Doc flung them back.
Had he not known the things she had done, pity would have moved him now. For the sight he saw was horrible. The bomb, six orbits ago, had left but little flesh and had blackened that.
He took a glass bomb from his kit and exploded it, carefully backing from the smoke. The narcotic would do what the disc had begun.
She must have spent all her hours behind that curtain for there was her bed, her few clothes, a small dresser. And on the dresser, where the mirror should have been, was a life-size painting of her as she had been in her youth.
Indeed she had been a lovely woman.
Ole Doc rummaged in his kit, sneezing a little as the narcotic fumes drifted his way, and finally located the essentials he needed.
The work did not take long for he had a catalyst. Sir Pudno was guarding the door and growling from time to time, but admitting no one.
Ole Doc ripped the finery from her and bared her back. His all-purpose knife in his hands was more than a sculptor’s entire rack of tools. He looked from time to time at the life-size painting and then back to his task.
The catalyst went in with every thrust of the knife and before he was finished with the back, it had already begun to heal and would only slightly scar. The shiny grease was the very life of cells and hurled them into an orgy of production.
His surgery was not aseptic, for it did not have to be. Before he was through he would guard against all that. Just now the tumbled bed, spattered with blood, and a few rags of silk made up his temporary operating table and all he required.
The work was long, for the likeness must be good, and the scar tissue was stubborn. And then there was the matter of cartilage which must be cut just so. And it took a while for the follicles of the eyelashes to set. And it required much care to restore activity to the eye nerves. But it was a masterful job. Ole Doc, three hours later, stood back and told himself so.
He gathered up the bloody sheets and thrust his patient into a sitting
position on the chair. And all the while he was talking. Her eyes, fixed on him now, absorbing every syllable he uttered, began slowly to clear.
Ole Doc had his eyes on the scars which soon ceased to be pink and then turned bone white. Finally they sank out of sight and something like circulation began to redden the cheeks.
It was a good thing Hippocrates was not there. Hippocrates would have said a thing or two about the unmedical quality of some of Ole Doc’s statements and how Soldiers of Light are not supposed to stray from medicine. He shut his patient up again, still his, behind the curtains.
It was time now to do other things.
Sir Pudno barked his compliance and went out to order workmen up and soon a stream of these, hampered by their chains until Ole Doc had them struck off, began to restore the mirrors and paintings to the walls. Other furniture soon appeared, a little frayed from years in storage but nevertheless very brightening. The lighting was altered. New clothes were issued.
Every time anyone came in and demanded authority for orders, such as the removal of the hanging dead at the landing field, Ole Doc had only to shove a hand inside the curtains and a signature came out. It was an opportunity which he did not abuse—but he had ideas which would not remain unordered.
He was enjoying himself. But even so, all this had to be very hurriedly done.
Soon he was able to bring up the rightful king, his queen and prince, and they came, blinking and dirty, to be seized without explanation and rushed away. But as they were certain of death they were too stunned to protest. They were washed and robed.
News was spreading. More and more people came until Ole Doc saw the entrance doors bulging. The corridors and courtyards were full. Rumors were flying from city to town, from planet to planet through the system.
Then Ole Doc stood the youth before him. Dressed, shaven, healthy, Rudolf bore little resemblance to the dying man in the hole a few hours before.
Rudolf would have had vast explanations.
But Ole Doc was terse. “You are going to take that throne in about five minutes and you are never going to mention a word of the last six orbits to your mother. I must have your word on that.”