Stranger in a Strange Land

“Then why are you sucking your thumb? Let her in.” Harshaw sat back. “Start,” he said. “City montage dissolving into a medium two-shot, interior. A cop is seated in a straight chair, no cap, collar open, face covered with sweat. We see only the back of the other figure, which is depthed between us and the cop. The figure raises a hand, bringing it back and almost out of the tank. He slaps the cop with a heavy, meaty sound, dubbed.” Harshaw glanced up and said, “We’ll pick up from there.” A ground car was rolling up the hill toward the house.

Jill was driving the car; a young man was seated beside her. As the car stopped near Harshaw the man jumped out at once, as if happy to divorce himself from car and contents. “There she is, Jubal.”

“So I see. Good morning, little girl. Larry, where is this corpse?”

“In the back seat, Boss. Under a blanket.”

“But it’s not a corpse,” Jill protested. “It’s… Ben said that you… I mean—” She put her head down on the controls and started to cry.

“There, my dear,” Harshaw said gently. “Very few corpses are worth it. Dorcas—Miriam—take care of her. Give her a drink… and wash her face.”

He turned his attention to the back seat, started to lift the blanket. Jill shrugged off Miriam’s proffered arm and said shrilly, “You’ve got to listen! He’s not dead. At least I hope not. He’s… oh dear!” She started to cry again. “I’m so dirty… and so scared!”

“Seems to be a corpse,” Harshaw said meditatively. “Body temperature is down to air temperature, I should judge. The rigor is not typical. How long has he been dead?”

“But he’s not dead! Can’t we get him out of there? I had an awful time getting him in.”

“Surely. Larry, give me a hand. And quit looking so green, Larry. If you puke, you’ll clean it up.” Between them they got Valentine Michael Smith out of the back seat and laid him on the grass by the pool; his body remained stiff, still huddled together. Without being told Dorcas had gone in and fetched Dr. Harshaw’s stethoscope; she set it on the ground by Smith, switched it on and stepped up the gain.

Harshaw stuck the headpiece in his ears, started sounding for heart beat. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” he said gently to Jill. “This one is beyond my help. Who was he?”

Jill sighed. Her face was drained of expression and she answered in a fiat voice, “He was the Man from Mars. I tried so hard.”

“I’m sure you did—the Man from Mars?”

“Yes. Ben… Ben Caxton said you were the one to come to.”

“Ben Caxton, eh? I appreciate the confid—hush!” Harshaw emphasized the demand for silence with a hand upheld while he continued to frown and listen. He looked puzzled, then surprise burst over his face. “Heart action! I’ll be a babbling baboon. Dorcas—upstairs, the clinic—third drawer down in the locked part of the cooler; the code is ‘sweet dreams.’ Bring the whole drawer and pick up a 1cc. hypo from the sterilizer.”

“Right away!”

“Doctor, no stimulants!”

Harshaw turned to Jill. “Eh?”

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m just a nurse… but this case is different. I know.”

“Mmm… he’s my patient now, nurse. But about forty years ago I found out I wasn’t God, and about ten years thereafter I discovered I wasn’t even Aesculapius. What do you want to try?”

“I just want to try to wake him up. If you do anything to him, he just goes deeper into it.”

“Hmm… go ahead. Just as long as you don’t use an ax. Then we’ll try my methods.”

“Yes, sir.” Jill knelt beside him. Started gently trying to straighten out his limbs. Harshaw’s eyebrows went up when he saw that she had succeeded. Jill took Smith’s head in her lap and cradled it gently in her hands. “Please wake up,” she said softly. “This is Jill… your water brother.”

The body stirred. Very slowly the chest lifted. Then Smith let out a long bubbling sigh and his eyes opened. He looked up at Jill and smiled his baby smile. Jill smiled back. Then he looked around and the smile left him.

“It’s all right,” Jill said quickly. “These are all friends.”

“All friends?”

“That’s right. All of them are your friends. Don’t worry—and don’t go away again. Everything is all right.”

He did not answer but lay still with his eyes open, staring at everything and everyone around him. He seemed as content as a cat in a lap.

Twenty-five minutes later Harshaw had both of his patients in bed. Jill had managed to tell him, before the pill he gave her took hold, enough of the situation to let him know that he had a bear by the tail. Ben Caxton was missing—he’d have to try to figure out something to do about that—and young Smith was as hot as a dry bearing… although he had been able to guess that when he heard who he was. Oh, well, life might be amusing for a while; it would keep back that grey boredom that lay always just around the corner.

He looked at the little utility car that Jill had arrived in. Lettered across its sides was: READING RENTALS—Permapowered Ground Equipment of All Sorts—“Deal with the Dutchman!”

“Larry, is the fence hot?”