They'd Rather Be Right (30 page)

Slowly, the amphitheater filled again with the renowned scientists of the world.

By six o’clock the public began to get bored, restive. Carney’s tired old body lay on the table under the glare of television lights, and its only movement was its rhythmic breathing, and occasional enigmatic twitch of the facial muscles, the tensing and relaxing of fingers and toes. There wasn’t much to see. The entertainment value of watching an oil man sleep is limited.

One by one the TV chains returned to more remuner-ative programs where the public would feel at home in the old familiar cliché situations and gags that had passed for entertainment from time immemorial. Each chain promised to devote a half hour here and there, and anyone who really wished to hang upon Carney’s every breath could do so by judiciously twirling his dial.

Steve Flynn’s staff did a magnificent job of interest buildup; bringing in all the old phony hackneyed situations guaranteed to make the public love Carney. His dead-end childhood around the wharves of the Embarcadero read like a chapter from Lincoln’s life. Carney became a tow-headed little tot who studied by the light of street lamps, and lectured his play-mates on the moral principles involved in stealing apples. His youthful years at juvenile delinquent institutions provided inspiration for a repetition of the sentimental prose of Dickens. The mature years developed into a search for comprehension, a misunder-stood man buffeted by society,
one
of nature’s noble martyrs.

The public had its biggest cry since Camille. They stared at their TV screens with the fascination of the crowd who gathers at the scene of a murder and just looks.

In the days that passed Steve’s office brought the public up to date on Carney’s later life. The friendship between old Mabel and old Carney became a great and noble thing, touched with humor and bathos, unenliv-ened by any hint of turgid passion. Mabel had simply rescued an old childhood friend and had given him back his self-respect—in view of the whitewashing job done it was not quite clear how he had lost it—by making him manager of her picturesque little pawnshop down on Third Street.

Within an hour the pawnshop was completely cleaned out of all its merchandise by souvenir hunters who would pay any price for a slightly used jimmy or the hubcap of an out-of-date automobile.

The world took skid row to her motherly bosom and the winos hovering in cold doorways became the bewildered recipients of much good advice and some help. The shortline became both proud and resentful of their new status. The professional do-gooders had been at it long enough to have at least a little understanding of why a man was on the shortline in the first place. These new uplifters made the men uncomfortable. But they endured it, in the passive way they had endured all the other outrageous demands of a society with which they had never been able to cope.

And they knew that within a week or two the good-will jag would pass, and be as faded and tired as a forgotten Christmas wreath on the tenth of January.

In fact, the camellia of compassion was already starting to turn brown around the edges, showing that first sign of decay.

“Why?” some of the more respectable members of society were beginning to ask. “Why is Bossy successful only with the most disreputable creatures that could be found? What kind of warped minds had rigged the machine so that it would give immortality only to the worst dregs of society?”

Accustomed to rigging everything from slot machines to semantics in favor of some particular group, they could not conceive of a machine which had not been rigged and slanted deliberately.

Deep beneath the roar of the crowd which was delighted by it all, the voices of the people who really mattered began to coalesce into an opinion which began to be heard around Washington.

It was on the eighth day that some changes in Carney began to be evident. Step by step, and this time for the awed eyes of the world, Carney duplicated the pattern of renewal followed by Mabel.

The plasma supply suddenly became a very important item.

“More plasma,” Bossy’s screen would announce. The TV commentator would murmur in his best bedside voice:

“More plasma.”

Then, after the requisite two-second pause, the announcer would add: “This plasma transfusion is by courtesy of Midvale Memorial Hospital, Oakland, fully equipped and staffed for your every need. Luxurious service, modest prices. Pay-as-you-go-plan.”

The figure on the operating table straightened its tired old bones, flaked off the outer epidermis of faded skin, shed the lank wisps of dirty gray hair. The figure of a vibrant young man began to emerge, strong and lithe and beautiful.

The tenth day passed. Now there was a renewed interest in watching the television screen. All the world knew that Mabel had emerged on the tenth day. But to repeated questions on when Doc Carney would emerge, Bossy simply answered:

“Progress satisfactory.”

Perhaps it was the basic differences between the masculine and the feminine psyche which lengthened the therapy; perhaps there were just more cells to be re-educated. Or perhaps it was the additional facts which Joe had fed into Bossy. Facts about psionics, which he hoped would be fed into the patient’s mind to condition him to the shock of unshielded normal minds.

Whatever the reason, it was the twelfth day before Bossy, without any buildup, fanfare, or pyrotechnics of any kind, made her announcement.

“Project completed.” Bossy lacked showmanship.

But Steve Flynn did not. The release of every electrode from Carney’s pulse points was played up as if it were world shaking. For that crucial moment necessary in catering to psychotically frustrated woman-hood, the view of the cameras was obscured by the doctors hovering around; and when the public saw him again, the towel which had been draped across Carney’s body had been replaced by a pair of conven-tional shorts.

The cameras were focused fully upon his face when he opened his eyes. There was no daze in them.

Their first expression was one of amusement, a glinting flicker of mischief. Aided by Billings he sat up and looked about him. His eyes found Joe.

“Hi, fella,” he said. They were his first words.

It was all close enough to stock plot number X672, Patient Regains Consciousness after Critical Illness, for the public to understand it. The public cried, it laughed, it shouted, it rang bells, blew whistles, got drunk, enjoyed itself in a national spontaneous Mardi Gras.

With a flourish Steve Flynn provided slacks, an open-throated sports shirt, socks and shoes. To take away the last vestige of an unkempt look, a barber began to cut Carney’s hair. The rust colored hair shaped into a bristling snappy style favored by the hot young bloods of the day.

Carney accepted it all, quietly and pliably. He was impassive except for a tiny crinkle of humor at the corners of his eyes.

In the days to follow twenty million young men would be diligently practicing before their mirrors to get that same spontaneous crinkle of good humor.

“Are you able to talk to us?” Steve Flynn asked Carney.

Again there was that questioning flicker of eyes toward Joe.

“Of course,” Carney answered after the briefest of hesitations.

He endured the process of milking the situation for all the ham drama there was in it which TV

considers so necessary to public enjoyment of its programs. Yes, he felt wonderful. Yes, he was very happy and grateful for his restored youth. No, it had not been unpleasant or painful. Yes, he remembered everything which had gone on. No, he didn’t realize it had been twelve days; it seemed to be over in an instant, and yet it had seemed to go on for all eternity. No, he had never doubted it would be a success.

Yes there were times when it had been difficult to comprehend Bossy, it was all so different from what he had believed; but he had been willing to listen. Yes, he would say the willingness to listen was
a
vital factor. Yes, of course he expected to resume his friendship with Mabel.

“No,” he answered to a more direct question. “There is no question of a romance between Mabel and me. Mabel has already found the one she loves, my best friend over there—Joe Carter.”

Like Bossy, he seemed to lack showmanship. It was said so quietly, almost tossed away, that even Steve failed to grasp the import of it all at once. Then, frantically, Steve waved the camera to focus on Joe. Here was news as important as Carney’s revival. Ma-bel was in love!

The cameras focused over where Joe sat. It was the first time that Joe Carter had come fully into the eye of the public.

Out of camera range for the moment, Carney allowed his lips to broaden into a delighted grin.

“Come on, Joe,” he flashed psionically. “Take it like a man. That’s what you told me to do, when I asked if I should answer those stupid questions.”

Joe’s face was controlled, but he flashed back an answer.

“Very well—Geoffery-Mortimonte.”

Carney burst into a soundless chuckle.

“You are good,” he conceded. “I thought the little secret of my fancy names was known only to Bossy and me.”

“I’ll make it Jeff,” Joe promised, while he continued to nod and smile into the impertinent cameras.

“And let’s keep Carney as a last name. You’re public property now, and there’s no use confusing people.”

The public, who had thought its cup was full, found the cup now running over. Here was stock situation Faithful Friend-Girl-Lover. Would there be a juicy triangle? Crime and tragedy of passion? Who knew what uncontrolled fires of tenor this rejuvenation would unleash?

The public licked its lips in anticipation.

The public’s cup was not the only vessel full and overflowing. For the first time, Joe had found both love and companionship. For the first time, in a lifetime of bottomless loneliness, there were those of his own species with whom he could communicate. Denied love before, because he could not reconcile himself to the normal mind, first he had been given Mabel.

But Mabel was wise. Even before she had gone into Bossy, she knew that no woman could fill all of a man’s life, that her relationship to him was compart-mentalized, that the woman who tries to monopolize both love and companionship usually winds up with neither. She did not pretend to fill more than a woman’s place in Joe’s life.

In the instant recognition when Carney came out of Bossy, an instantaneous bond of masculine companionship even while Jeff was still on the table attached to the lead controls into Bossy, the last ache of Joe’s chronic loneliness was eased and stilled.

Jeff, too, would need love, but not yet. In time there would be other women who could surrender their values to Bossy’s corrections. The three of them, Ma-bel and Jeff and Joe, knew with complete certainty that the public would be denied its anticipated scandal, and could somehow survive without it.

The days passed. The schedule of television appearances began to slacken. The three were allowed occasional moments to themselves. Mabel and Jeff were public property. Joe, whose place in the total scheme of Bossy was still known only to Billings and Hoskins, although suspected by Kennedy and Flynn, was a mi-nor bit of public property by virtue of his love affair with Mabel.

The psionic communion the three of them shared was completely beyond the level of news releases.

True, around the clinic, there was considerable wonder at the way Mabel and Jeff adopted Joe, some sly comment about the secret reasons for the inseparability of the three, some recalling of Mabel’s past life and criticism of Bossy that such things were not cured—but no comprehension.

There was a healthier concern, too, over the fact that the three of them began to slip away from the Clinic. Superintendent Jones admonished them with a shaking finger, and Steve Flynn portrayed the horrors of being mobbed by an admiring public; but to all questions and admonishments, Joe made a simple re-ply: “They need to get out and contact some of the world at first hand. We do not hold with the prevailing theory of psychology that the way to understand man is to shut oneself off from him in an ivory tower. We think the way to understand men is to look at them.”

It was more than that, of course. Bossy, with the material given her by Joe, had done an excellent job of preparing Carney against the shock of raw and unshielded human motivations. His reactions were amused and healthy.

But Mabel, unprepared because Joe had not realized what a shock sudden esperance would bring, still needed further therapy. Her background helped, of course. Her knowledge had been wide and deep.

But even in such a house, as under the questioning of the most skilled psychologist, mankind still conceals more than it reveals.

And there was still another reason for their occasional escape from the Clinic. It was a healing therapy for Joe, too, that he should now be able to walk the same streets in full companionship which he had walked in such complete loneliness, shut off from all others because there had been no others. A man likes and needs to take his new love and his new friend to see the places he has known, to see them again through fresh, delighted eyes, to show the beauty and to lessen the memory of ugliness.

They were young.

Most often they took the car which Kennedy had placed at Joe’s disposal, and went down from the hills into Berkeley. They had no difficulty in blurring their features for anyone who looked closely, and easily passed as three students from the adjoining campus of the University of California, they were regarded by the townspeople as just three more specimens of the ten thousand examples of learned brain
lessness
.