“But… doggone it, Doctor, I do like Pat!”
“Do you? Then you had better dig out of your mind the notion that he has been handing you the dirty end of the stick all these years. But I doubt if you do. You’re fond of him-we’re all fond of things we are used to, old shoes, old pipes, even the devil we know is better than a strange devil. You’re loyal to him. He’s necessary to you and you are necessary to him. But ‘like’ him? It seems most improbable. On the other hand, if you could get it through your head that there is no longer any need to ‘love’ him, nor even to like him, then you might possibly get to like him a little for what he is. You’ll certainly grow more tolerant of him, though I doubt if you will ever like him much. He’s a rather unlikeable cuss.”
“That’s not true! Pat’s always been very popular.”
“Not with me. Mmm … Tom, I cheated. I know your brother better than I let on. Neither one of you is very likeable, matter of fact, and you are very much alike. Don’t take offense. I can’t abide ‘nice’ people; ‘sweetness and light’ turns my stomach. I like ornery people with a good, hard core of self-interest-a lucky thing, in view of my profession. You and your brother are about equally selfish, only he is more successful at it. By the way, he likes you.”
“Huh?”
“Yes. The way he would a dog that always came when called. He feels protective toward you, when it doesn’t conflict with his own interests. But he’s rather contemptuous of you; he considers you a weakling-and, in his book, the meek are not entitled to inherit the earth; that’s for chaps like himself.”
I chewed that over and began to get angry. I did not doubt that Pat felt that way about me-patronizing and willing to see to it that I got a piece of cake … provided that he got a bigger one.
“The other thing that stands out,” Dr. Devereaux went on, “is that neither you nor your brother wanted to go on this trip.”
This was so manifestly untrue and unfair that I opened my mouth and left it open. Dr. Devereaux looked at me. “Yes? You were about to say?”
“Why, that’s the silliest thing I ever heard, Doctor! The only real trouble Pat and I ever had was because both of us wanted to go and only one of us could.”
He shook his head. “You’ve got it backwards. Both of you wanted to stay behind and only one of you could. Your brother won, as usual.”
“No, he didn’t… well, yes, he did, but the chance to go; not the other way around. And he would have, too, if it hadn’t been for that accident.”
“ ‘That accident.’ Mmm … yes.” Dr. Devereaux held still, with his head dropped forward and his hands folded across his belly, for so long that I thought again that he was asleep. “Tom, I’m going to tell you something that is none of your business, because I think you need to know. I suggest that you never discuss it with your twin … and if you do, I’ll make you out a liar, net. Because it would be bad for him. Understand me?”
“Then don’t tell me,” I said surlily.
“Shut up and listen.” He picked up a file folder. “Here is a report on your brother’s operation, written in the talk we doctors use to confuse patients. You wouldn’t understand it and, anyhow, it was sent sidewise, through the Santa Maria and in code. You want to know what they found when they opened your brother up?”
“Uh, not especially.”
“There was no damage to his spinal cord of any sort.”
“Huh? Are you trying to tell me that he was faking his legs being paralyzed? I don’t believe it!”
“Easy, now. He wasn’t faking. His legs were paralyzed. He could not possibly fake paralysis so well that a neurologist could not detect it. I examined him myself; your brother was paralyzed. But not from damage to his spinal cord-which I knew and the surgeons who operated on him knew.”