The Avram Davidson Treasury (6 page)

“You infernal scoundrel, you shot that man in cold blood!” Old Major Jack Moran dismounted from his horse and flourished the riding crop with which he had struck Bailiss on the wrist.

“I never—he cussed me—he reached for his pistol—I only defended myself!”

Worth’s wife looked up, tears streaking her heavy face.

“He had no pistol,” she said. “I made him leave it home.”

“You said, ‘I’ve come to get you,’ and you shot him point-blank!” The old Major’s voice trumpeted.

“He tried to shoot Miss Whitford too!” someone said. Other voices added that Captain Carter, the High Sheriff’s chief deputy, was coming. Bodies pressed against Bailiss, faces glared at him, fists were waved before him.

“It wasn’t like that at all!” he cried.

Deputy Carter came up on the gallop, flung the reins of his black mare to eager outthrust hands, jumped off, and walked over to Worth.

“How was it, then?” a scornful voice asked Bailiss.

“I rode up… I says, ‘I’ve come to settle with you’… He cussed at me, low and mean, and he reached for his hip pocket.”

In every face he saw disbelief.

“Major Jack’s an old man,” Bailiss faltered. “He heard it wrong. He—”

“Heard it good enough to hang you!”

Bailiss looked desperately around. Carter rose from his knees and the crowd parted. “Sam’s dead, ma’am,” he said. “I’m sorry.” Mrs. Worth’s only reply was a low moan. The crowd growled. Captain Carter turned and faced Bailiss, whose eyes looked at him for a brief second, then turned frantically away. And then Bailiss began to speak anxiously—so anxiously that his words came out a babble. His arms were pinioned and he could not point, but he thrust his head toward the forge where the blacksmith was still standing—standing silently.

“Micah,” Bailiss stuttered. “Ask Micah!”

Micah saw it
, he wanted to say—wanted to shout it.
Micah was next to Worth, Micah heard what I really said, he’s younger than the Major, his hearing is good, he saw Worth reach …

Captain Carter placed his hand on Bailiss and spoke, but Bailiss did not hear him. The whole night had suddenly fallen silent for him, except for his own voice, saying something (it seemed long ago) to young lawyer Wickerson.

“
It makes no difference what Micah saw! It makes no difference what Micah heard! Micah is property!… And property can’t testify
!”

They tied Bailiss’ hands and heaved him onto his horse.

“He is fettered fast by the most stern bonds our laws take note of…can
’
t inherit—can’t bequeath…can neither sue nor prosecute—”

Bailiss turned his head as they started to ride away. He looked at Micah and their eyes met. Micah knew.

“…it’s basic principle of the law that a slave can never testify in court except against another slave.”

Someone held the reins of old man Bailiss’ horse. From now on he moved only as others directed. The lights around the forge receded. Darkness surrounded him. The necessity of his condition was upon him.

I
NTRODUCTION BY
F. G
WYNPLAINE
M
AC
I
NTYRE

Where I come from in northern Australia, there’s a type of eucalyptus tree that’s called a
blue gum
. In Avram Davidson’s story “Help! I Am Dr. Morris Goldpepper,” you’ll meet some blue gums of a very different sort.

One of the hallmarks of a first-rate storyteller is that he or she (or it) can begin with the most outlandish premise—something utterly unbelievable—and upon this framework craft a narrative which is so thoroughly plausible that it
compels
our belief.

“Help! I Am Dr. Morris Goldpepper” offers a uniquely Avramesque premise: Namely, the planet Earth has been invaded by hostile aliens, and the only thing that can save mankind form this dread interstellar menace is the American Dental Association.

Clearly, this story takes place in an alternate universe, in which dentists are selfless dedicated artisans who have pledged themselves to the betterment of humanity. In
real
life, of course, dentists are a bunch of sadistic ghouls who enjoy torturing innocent people by shoving pneumatic drills into our bicuspids. Even after the drilling has stopped, and the screams turn to silence, dentists continue their reign of sadism by inflicting
psychological
torture upon us: They try to make us feel guilty for neglecting to floss.

Sorry, Avram, but if the ultimate battle between Good and Evil amounts to an Armageddon between the dentists and the blood-sucking extraterrestrial slime-monsters, I know which side I’m cheering for…and it isn’t the dentists.

Rinse, please.

HELP! I AM DR. MORRIS GOLDPEPPER

F
OUR OF THE MEN
, Weinroth, McAllister, Danbourge and Smith, sat at the table under the cold blue lighting tubes. One of them, Rorke, was in a corner speaking quietly into a telephone, and one, Fadderman, stood staring out the window at the lights of the city. One, Hansen, had yet to arrive.

Fadderman spoke without turning his head. He was the oldest of those present—the Big Seven, as they were often called.

“Lights,” he said. “So many lights. Down here.” He waved his hand toward the city. “Up there.” He gestured toward the sky. “Even with our much-vaunted knowledge, what,” he asked, “do we know?” He turned his head. “Perhaps this is too big for us. In the light of the problem, can we really hope to accomplish anything?”

Heavy-set Danbourge frowned grimly. “We have received the suffrage of our fellow-scientists, Doctor. We can but try.”

Lithe, handsome McAllister, the youngest officer of the Association, nodded. “The problem is certainly not worse than that which faced our late, great colleague, the immortal Morton.” He pointed to a picture on the panneled wall. “And we all know what
he
accomplished.”

Fadderman went over and took his hand. “Your words fill me with courage.”

McAllister flushed with pleasure.

“I am an old man,” Fadderman added falteringly. “Forgive my lack of spirit, Doctor.” He sat down, sighed, shook his head slowly. Weinroth, burly and red-haired, patted him gently on the back. Natty, silvery-haired little Smith smiled at him consolingly.

A buzzer sounded. Rorke hung up the telephone, flipped a switch on the wall intercom. “Headquarters here,” he said crisply.

“Dr. Carl T. Hansen has arrived,” a voice informed him.

“Bring him up at once,” he directed. “And, Nickerson—”

“Yes, Dr. Rorke?”

“Let no one else into the building.
No
one.”

They sat in silence. After a moment or two, they heard the approach of the elevator, heard the doors slide open, slide shut, heard the elevator descend. Heavy, steady footsteps approached; knuckles rapped on the opaque glass door.

Rorke went over to the door, said, “A conscientious and diligent scientist—”

“—must remain a continual student,” a deep voice finished the quotation.

Rorke unlocked the door, peered out into the corridor, admitted Hansen, locked the door.

“I would have been here sooner, but another emergency interposed,” Hansen said. “A certain political figure—ethics prevent my being more specific—suffered an oral hemorrhage following an altercation with a woman who shall be nameless, but, boy, did she pack a wallop! A so-called
Specialist,
gentlemen, with offices on Park Avenue, had been, as he called it, ‘applying pressure’ with a gauze pad. I merely used a little Gelfoam as a coagulant agent and the hemorrhage stopped almost at once. When will the public learn, eh, gentlemen?”

Faint smiles played upon the faces of the assembled scientists. Hansen took his seat. Rorke bent down and lifted two tape-recording devices to the table, set them both in motion. The faces of the men became serious, grim.

“This is an emergency session of the Steering Committee of the Executive Committee of the American Dental Association,” Rorke said, “called to discuss measures of dealing with the case of Dr. Morris Goldpepper. One tape will be deposited in the vaults of the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York; the other will be similarly secured in the vaults of the Wells Fargo and Union Trust Company Bank in San Francisco. Present at this session are Doctors Rorke, Weinroth and Smith—President, First and Second Vice-presidents, respectively—Fadderman, Past President, McAllister, Public Information, Danbourge, Legal, and Hansen, Policy.”

He looked around at the set, tense faces.

“Doctors,” he went on, “I think I may well say that humanity is, as of this moment, face to face with a great danger, and it is a bitter jest that it is not to the engineers or the astronomers, not to medicine nor yet to nuclear nor any other kind of physics, that humanity must now look for salvation—but to the members of the dental profession!”

His voice rose. “Yes—to the practitioners of what has become perhaps the least regarded of all the learned sciences! It is indeed ironical. We may at this juncture consider the comments of the now deceased Professor Earnest Hooton, the Harvard anthropologist, who observed with a sorrow which did him credit that his famed University, instead of assisting its Dental School as it ought, treated it—and I quote his exact words—‘Like a yellow dog.’” His voice trembled.

McAllister’s clean-cut face flushed an angry red. Weinroth growled. Danbourge’s fist hit the table and stayed there, clenched. Fadderman gave a soft, broken sigh.

“But enough of this. We are not jealous, nor are we vindictive,” President Rorke went on. “We are confident that History, ‘with its long tomorrow,’ will show how, at this danger-fraught point, the humble and little thought-of followers of dental science recognized and sized up the situation and stood shoulder to shoulder on the ramparts!”

He wiped his brow with a paper tissue. “And now I will call upon our beloved Past President, Dr. Samuel I. Fadderman, to begin our review of the incredible circumstances which have brought us here tonight. Dr. Fadderman? If you please …”

The well-known Elder Statesman of the A.D.A. nodded his head slowly. He made a little cage of his fingers and pursed and then unpursed his lips. At length he spoke in a soft and gentle voice.

“My first comment, brethren, is that I ask for compassion.
Morris Goldpepper is not to blame!

“Let me tell you a few words about him. Goldpepper the Scientist needs no introduction. Who has not read, for instance, his ‘The Bilateral Vertical Stroke and Its Influence on the Pattern of Occlusion’ or his ‘Treatment, Planning, Assemblage and Cementation of a 14-Unit Fixed Bridge’—to name only two? But I shall speak about Goldpepper the Man. He is forty-six years of age and served with honor in the United States Navy Dental Corps during the Second World War. He has been a widower since shortly after the conclusion of that conflict. Rae—the late Mrs. Goldpepper, may she rest in peace—often used to say, ‘Morry, if I go first, promise me you’ll marry again,’ but he passed it off with a joke; and, as you know, he never did.

“They had one child, a daughter, Suzanne, a very sweet girl, now married to a Dr. Sheldon Fingerhut, D.D.S. I need not tell you, brethren, how proud our colleague was when his only child married this very fine young member of our profession. The Fingerhuts are now located on Unbalupi, one of the Micronesian islands forming part of the United States Trust Territory, where Dr. Sheldon is teaching dental hygiene, sanitation and prosthesis to the natives thereof.”

Dr. Hansen asked, “Are they aware of—”

“The son-in-law knows something of the matter,” the older man said. “He has not seen fit to inform his wife, who is in a delicate condition and expects shortly to be confined. At his suggestion, I have been writing—or, rather, typing—letters purporting to come from her father, on his stationery, with the excuse that he badly singed his fingers on a Bunsen burner whilst annealing a new-type hinge for dentures and consequently cannot hold his pen.” He sipped from a glass of water.

“Despite his great scientific accomplishments,” Dr. Fadderman went on, “Morry had an impractical streak in him. Often I used to call on him at his bachelor apartment in the Hotel Davenport on West End Avenue, where he moved following his daughter’s marriage, and I would find him immersed in reading matter of an escapist kind—tales of crocodile hunters on the Malayan Peninsula, or magazines dealing with interplanetary warfare, or collections of short stories about vampires and werewolves and similar superstitious creations.

“‘Morry,’ I said reproachfully, ‘what a way to spend your off-hours. Is it worth it? Is it healthy? You would do much better, believe me, to frequent the pool or the handball court at the Y. Or,’ I pointed out to him, ‘if you want to read, why ignore the rich treasures of literature: Shakespeare, Ruskin, Elbert Hubbard, Edna Ferber, and so on? Why retreat to these immature-type fantasies? ’ At first he only smiled and quoted the saying, ‘Each to his or her own taste.’”

The silence which followed was broken by young Dr. McAllister. “You say,” he said, “‘at first.’”

Old Dr. Fadderman snapped out of his revery. “Yes, yes. But eventually he confessed the truth to me. He withheld nothing.”

The assembled dental scientists then learned that the same Dr. Morris Goldpepper, who had been awarded not once but three successive times the unique honor of the Dr. Alexander Peabody Medal for New Achievements in Dental Prosthesis, was obsessed with the idea that
there was sentient life on other worlds—that it would shortly be possible to reach these other worlds—and that he himself desired to be among those who went.

“‘Do you realize, Sam?’ he asked me,” reported Fadderman. “‘Do you realize that, in a very short time, it will no longer be a question of fuel or even of metallurgy? That submarines capable of cruising for weeks and months without surfacing foretell the possibility of traveling through airless space? The chief problem has now come down to finding how to build a take-off platform capable of withstanding a thrust of several million pounds.’ And his eyes glowed.”