He sat down and began to type. His thoughts were fluent. His fingers could hardly keep up. He tore the second sheet out of the machine and read it.
“And so it is a baseball game and game and never the over of the now and the then and given. Tender and mathew and meatloaf the underside twisteth of the die and the perish now. All ye who enter can frenzied the window savior...”
The whole page was like that. Gibberish. Insanity. The stream of consciousness of an idiot who remembers words but has lost their meaning.
He tried again, writing more slowly. It was no good. He found a pencil in the table drawer. He took one of the copy sheets and tried to write. The pencil became too hot to hold. He examined blisters on his hand which faded even as he looked at them. The paper curled into flame, and he slapped it out. A moment later it was unscorched. He could no longer repress a primitive panic. He ran from the office and down the corridor, heart pumping, hands sweaty.
He did not quiet down until he was on the street. And suddenly he felt like an utter damn fool. Take a break and then go back and get it written. He walked to a small restaurant and sat at the counter and ordered coffee. The waitress was gray and surly with a prono hangover. A tiny radio yipped like a terrier. He listened with half his mind.
“... and late last night Darwin Branson, retired statesman and political philosopher was committed to Bronx Psychiatric Hos—” The waitress had flipped the dial as she walked by.
“Would you mind getting that station back, miss?”
“Yes, I’d mind. He already gave all the news.”
She stood braced, ready to blow up completely if he insisted. You couldn’t argue with a prono hangover. He paid for his coffee, left the cup untouched and spent ten minutes on the corner before he could find a cab willing to take the long trip.
He reached the hospital at noon. He was suspected of being a reporter and the desk tried to bar him. He produced the confidential credentials Darwin had given him. The desk reluctantly put him in contact with the resident doctor assigned to the case.
The doctor was young, unimaginative, and delighted with the case.
“Lorin you said? Worked for him, eh? Well, I suppose you can take a look. We’ve been checking him most of the morning. Come on.”
They had Branson in a private room. A nurse was in attendance. She stood up as they came in. “Respiration is ten now, Doctor. Heart forty-four. Temperature eight-six point six.”
“Damndest thing I ever saw,” the doctor said in a pleased tone. “Cops brought him in last night. Found him sitting in the middle of the sidewalk. Thought it was a pronie first. We checked him. He was apparently conscious. But no reaction to anything. Couldn’t make the pupil contract. Couldn’t find a single damn reflex.”
Dake stared at the silent waxy face on the pillow.
The doctor said, holding out a clipboard, “Just take a look at this chart. This is one that’s going to be written up. Pulse, respiration, temperature — every one heading down in a line so straight it could have been drawn by a ruler. This man is just like a machine running down.”
“Heart forty-two, Doctor,” the nurse said softly, releasing the slack wrist.
“Tried every stimulant in the books, Mr. Lorin. No dice.”
“What’s your prognosis?”
“He just doesn’t react to anything. Thought of encephaloma at first. Doesn’t check out. It looks like he’s just going to keep slowing down until he... stops. And there’s no key in the back to wind him up. Damn unprofessional opinion, I guess, but that’s the best I can do. Everybody in the place has seen him and suggested things. None of them work.”
“Do you mind if I stay with him?”
“How about family? We’ve been unable to locate any.”
“There isn’t any.”
“You can stay around if you want. I’ll send an orderly in with another chair. From the way it looks, I don’t think you’ll have a long wait.”
“You’ve never seen anything like it before, or heard of it?”
The young doctor frowned. “I’ve never seen one before. But I’ve heard rumors of others. Usually important people, come to think of it. They just seem to get... tired.”
The doctor went out. An orderly brought another chair. Dake sat on the other side of the high bed from the nurse. He was on Darwin Branson’s left side. He looked at the slack hand resting on the white sheet. Time now to forget the quarrel, and remember the better things — the good talks, the flexibility and dexterity of that wise brain.
“In my gullible years, Dake, back when I used to believe in statistics, I made a personal survey of the quality of major decisions and charted them. Of course, on the quality angle, I was being a Monday morning quarterback. I came up with a neat graph which alarmed me. Men of influence all over the world, men in high places, make wise decisions and the world improves. Then, all at once, their quality of judgment becomes impaired and the world suffers for it. They move in a vast confused flock, like sack-suited lemmings. Horrors, I was face to face with a cycle. Sun spots, addling the brains of men. Some alien virus in the air. Or God, perhaps, assuring his children of their suffering on earth.”
“Did you find an answer?”
“Only in myself, where perhaps each man must find his answers. I resolved to so codify my beliefs that should I ever find myself tempted to betray my own philosophy, I would merely have to refer to my mental outline and make the decision which I would have made were I not subject to the cycle. I decided to risk Emerson’s indictment of small minds.”
And yet, thought Dake, you turned your back on your own beliefs only yesterday. You destroyed the labor of a full year. Horrid timing. You became ill a day too late, Darwin.
No more of those long good talks, no more of the knowledge of working for the greatest good of mankind.
“Dake, we seem to supply ourselves with destructive dreams. Chief among these is the Space Dream. It goes like this: We have made such a mess of our world that it is of no use to attempt to bring order out of our chaos. So save our best efforts for the next green world. Tomorrow the moon, next week the planets, next year the galaxy. We’ll spread through the heavens, and our seed will be the bronzed, steel-eyed pioneers, and their fertile women, making green wonderlands for us in the sky. That dream, Dake, eases the conscience of those who are doing less than their best. Thus it saps our energies. ‘This is man’s world. We must live here. We will never reach the stars.’ I would like to see every man believe that. And then if, in a thousand years, we break free, it will be pure profit — and we will have something besides hate and conflict to take along with us on the gleaming ships.”
Dake thought how incredible it was that Darwin Branson should, on the last day of his life, make his first venture into opportunism.
He looked at the left hand, and then looked more closely, his breath catching in his throat. He remembered the scene just before he had left to meet Smith. Branson, being left-handed, had been trying awkwardly to snip off a hangnail on the middle finger of his left hand. Dake had volunteered help, which was gratefully received. The nail had been split a bit, and so he had pared it down carefully. That was the day before yesterday. Yet right now the nail was fully as long as the others. It could not possibly grow that fast. Dake knew he had not imagined the incident. It had been the left hand. He reached out and took the cool slack hand.