Stranger in a Strange Land

Jill’s own hysteria cut off as if she had thrown a switch. The change was an indoctrinated reflex: here was a patient who needed her; she had no time for her own emotions, no time even to worry or wonder about the two men who had disappeared. She dropped to her knees and examined Smith.

She could not detect respiration, nor could she find a pulse; she pressed an ear against his ribs. She thought at first that heart action had stopped completely, but, after a long time, she heard a lazy tub-dub, followed in four or five seconds by another.

The condition reminded her of schizoid withdrawal, but she had never seen a trance so deep, not even in class demonstrations of hypnoanesthesia. She had heard of such deathlike states among East Indian fakirs but she had never really believed the reports.

Ordinarily she would not have tried to rouse a patient in such a state but would have sent for a doctor at once. But these were not ordinary circumstances. Far from shaking her resolve, the events of the past few minutes had made her more determined than ever not to let Smith fall back into the hands of the authorities. But ten minutes of trying everything she knew convinced her that she could not rouse this patient with means at hand without injuring him—and perhaps not even then. Even the sensitive, exposed nerve in the elbow gave no response.

In Ben’s bedroom she found a battered flight case, almost too big to be considered hand luggage, too small to be a trunk. She opened it, found it packed with voicewriter, toilet kit, a complete outfit of male clothing, and everything else that a busy reporter might need if called out of town suddenly—even to a licensed audio link to permit him to patch into phone service wherever he might be. Jill reflected that the presence of this packed bag alone tended strongly to prove that Ben’s absence was not what Kilgallen thought it was, but she wasted no time thinking about it; she simply emptied the bag and dragged it into the living room.

Smith outweighed her, but muscles acquired handling patients twice her size enabled her to dump him into the big bag. Then she had to refold him somewhat to allow her to close it. His muscles resisted force, but under gentle pressure steadily applied he could be repositioned like putty. She padded the corners with some of Ben’s clothes before she closed him up. She tried to punch some air holes but the bag was a glass laminate, tough as an absentee landlord’s heart. She decided that he could not suffocate quickly with his respiration so minimal and his metabolic rate down as low as it must be.

She could barely lift the packed bag, straining as hard as she could with both hands, and she could not possibly carry it any distance. But the bag was equipped with “Red Cap” casters. They cut two ugly scars in Ben’s grass rug before she got it to the smooth parquet of the little entrance way.

She did not go to the lobby on the roof, since another air cab was the last thing she wanted to risk, but went out instead by the service door in the basement. There was no one there but a young man who was checking an incoming kitchen delivery. He moved slowly aside and let her roll the bag out onto the pavement. “Hi, sister. What you got in the kiester?”

“A body,” she snapped.

He shrugged. “Ask a jerky question, get a jerky answer. I should learn.”

PART TWO: HIS PREPOSTEROUS HERITAGE

IX

THE THIRD PLANET OUT from Sol was in its normal condition. It had on it 230,000 more human souls today than yesterday, but, among the five billion terrestrials such a minute increase was not noticeable. The Kingdom of South Africa, Federation associate member, had again been cited before the High Court for persecution of its white minority. The lords of women’s fashions, gathered in solemn conclave in Rio, had decreed that hem lines would go down and that navels would again be covered. The three Federation defense stations swung silently in the sky, promising instant death to any who disturbed the planet’s peace. Commercial space stations swung not so silently, disturbing the planet’s peace with endless clamor of the virtues of endless trademarked trade goods. Half a million more mobile homes had set down on the shores of Hudson Bay than had migrated by the same date last year, the Chinese rice belt had been declared an emergency malnutrition area by the Federation Assembly, and Cynthia Duchess, known as the Richest Girl in the World, had dismissed and paid off her sixth husband. All was normal.