I quieted a little. It made sense that I couldn’t wake Pat if they had him under drugs. Under Dr. Devereaux’s questions I managed to tell him more or less what had happened-not perfectly, because you can’t really tell someone else what goes on inside your head. “Uh, was the operation successful, Doctor?”
“The patient came through in good shape. We’ll talk about it later. Now turn over.”
“Huh?”
“Turn over. I want to take a look at your back.”
He looked at it, then called two of his staff to see it. Presently he touched me. “Does that hurt?”
“Ouch! Uh, yes, it’s pretty tender. What’s wrong with my back, Doctor?”
“Nothing, really. But you’ve got two perfect stigmata, just matching the incisions for Macdougal’s operation … which is the technique they used on your brother.”
“Uh, what does that mean?”
“It means that the human mind is complicated and we don’t know much about it. Now roll over and go to sleep. I’m going to keep you in bed a couple of days.”
I didn’t intend to go to sleep but I did. I was awakened by Pat calling me. “Hey, Tom! Where are you? Snap out of it.”
(“I’m right here. What’s the matter?”)
“Tom… I’ve got my legs back!”
I answered, (“Yeah, I know,”) and went back to sleep.
IX RELATIVES
Once Pat was over his paralysis I should have had the world by the tail, for I had everything I wanted. Somehow it did not work that way. Before he was hurt, I had known why I was down in the dumps: it was because he was going and I wasn’t. After he was hurt, I felt guilty because I was getting what I wanted through his misfortune. It didn’t seem right to be happy when he was crippled-especially when his crippled condition had got me what I wanted.
So I should have been happy once he was well again.
Were you ever at a party where you were supposed to be having fun and suddenly you realized that you weren’t? No reason, just no fun and the whole world gray and tasteless?
Some of the things that were putting me off my feed I could see. First there had been Dusty, but that had been cleared up. Then there had been the matter of other people, especially the electron pushers we stood watch with, calling us freaks and other names and acting as if we were. But the Captain had tromped on that, too, and when we got better acquainted people forgot about such things. One of the relativists, Janet Meers, was a lightning calculator, which made her a freak, too, but everybody took it for granted in her and after a while they took what we did for granted.
After we got out of radio range of Earth the Captain took us out from under Commander Frick and set us up as a department of our own, with “Uncle” Alfred McNeil as head of department and Rupert Hauptman as his assistant-which meant that Rupe kept the watch list while Uncle Alf was in charge of our mess table and sort of kept us in line. We liked old Unc too well to give him much trouble and if somebody did get out of line Unc would look sad and the rest of us would slap the culprit down. It worked.
I think Dr. Devereaux recommended it to the Captain. The fact was that Commander Frick resented us. He was an electrical engineer and had spent his whole life on better and better communication equipment … then we came along and did it better and faster with no equipment at all. I don’t blame him; I would have been sore, too. But we got along better with Uncle Alf.
I suppose that the Vasco da Gama was part of my trouble. The worst thing about space travel is that absolutely nothing happens. Consequently the biggest event in our day was the morning paper. All day long each mind reader on watch (when not busy with traffic, which wasn’t much) would copy news. We got the news services free and all the features and Dusty would dress it up by copying pictures sent by his twin Rusty. The communicator on the midwatch would edit it and the m-r and the communicator on the early morning watch would print it and have it in the mess room by breakfast.