His father roared, “Get out of my house, you devil’s spawn! What kind of a man are you? Get out! I’ll call in another doctor! I won’t even let it be known that you attended my wife or had anything to do with this or was even in this bouse. I’ll rid this house of your evil odor.”
The doctor, swaying, threw his dirty instruments into the bag and snapped it shut.
“Very well. But you have delayed my passage through this miserable village of asses. I’m on my way to bigger and better things, my provincial friend. It was only out of the kindness of my heart that I took pity upon you because the quacks that serve this mudhole were out of town. I left the comforts of the tavern to come here and save an infant who would be better off dead, infinitely better. Which reminds me, though I don’t know why, that you must pay my fee.”
“I should throw you out of the house and pay you with nothing but curses!” Sam’s father said. “But a man has to pay his debts no matter what the circumstances. Here’s your thirty pieces of silver.”
“Looks more like paper to me,” the doctor said. “Well you can call in your dispenser of pills, folly and death, but just remember that it was Doctor Ecks that dragged your wife and baby from the jaws of death. Ecks, the unknown quantity, the eternal passer-through, the mysterious stranger, the devil dedicated to keeping other poor devils alive, also dedicated to the demon whiskey, since I can’t abide rum.”
“Out! Out!” Sam’s father shouted. “Out before I kill you!”
“There’s no gratitude in this world,” Doctor Ecks mumbled. “Out of nothing I come, through a world populated by asses I pass, and into nothing I go. Ecks equals nothing.”
Sweating, eyes open and rigid as those of a stone Apollo, Sam watched the drama. The scene and the actors were enclosed in a ball of pale yellow light through which veins of red shot like lightning and then faded out. The doctor turned his face once before he walked through the door of the house in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835. He took the cigar from his mouth and grinned mockingly, revealing long yellow teeth with two abnormally white, abnormally long canines.
As if the scene were a film being shut off, it blinked out Through the door which had been in Sam’s birthplace and now was the door of the bamboo hut, another figure entered. It was momentarily silhouetted by the bright starlight, then slid into the shadows. Sam closed his eyes and steeled himself for another frightening experience. He groaned and wished he had not taken the dreamgum. Yet he knew that under the terror was a thread of delight. He hated and enjoyed this. The birth-drama was a fantasy, created by him to explain why he was the kind of man he was. But what was this shadowy figure moving silently and intently as death? From what deep cavern in his mind came this creature?
A baritone voice spoke. “Sam Clemens! Do not be alarmed! I am not here to harm you! I come to help you!”
“And what do you want in repayment for your help?” Sam said.
The man chuckled and said, “You’re the kind of human being I like. I chose well.” “You mean I chose you to choose me,” Sam replied.
There was a pause of several seconds, and then the man said, “I see. You think I’m another fantasy inspired by the gum. I’m not. Touch me.”
“What for?” Sam said. “As a gum-inspired fantasy, you should know that you can be felt as well as seen and heard. State your business.”
“Entirely? That would take too long. And I don’t dare take much time with you. There are others in this area who might notice. That would be too bad for me, since they are very suspicious. They know there is a traitor among them, but they don’t have the slightest idea who it could be.” “Others? They?” Sam answered. “They—we Ethicals—are doing field work in this area
ow,” the figure said. “This is a unique situation, the first time that a completely unhomogenized assortment of humans has been thrown together. It presents a rare chance for study, and we are recording everything. I’m here as chief administrator, since I’m one of The Twelve.”