Ole Doc Methuselah Part 34

"Don't risk it!" said Lebel.

Ole Doc looked at the frantic effort of the girl, looked at her young beauty, at the agony in her eyes and then took Label's offer of a helmet. When he had it strapped on-an act which prompted both Lebel, his guards and driver to hastily do the same-he shot the bolt on the door and stepped to the pavement. He gazed at the girl in satin for a moment in deep thought.

Ole Doc advanced, fumbling for the speaker b.u.t.tons on the side of the helmet and finding with annoyance that the phones were squeaky in the upper frequencies. The screams came eerily through this filter. He turned down the volume in haste.

He helped her up and tried to speak to her but her eyes, after an instant of trying to focus, rolled out of concentration and screams tore up from her as though they would rip her throat to shreds. She beat at him and fought him and her gown tore down the side. Ole Doc, aware that Lebel was fearfully at his side and trying to get him away, let the girl slide back to the ground, moving her only so that she now lay upon the gra.s.s.

"Hippocrates!" said Ole Doc.

But there was no Hippocrates there and Ole Doc had to fumble into the kit himself. He laid out all the volumes of law in some amazement, holding the girl down with one hand and fishing in the case with the other, and was much wroth at all this weight. Finally he found his hypo gun and an instant later the generalissimo's aides were gripping his wrist.

"Let go!" stormed Ole Doc, too busy holding the girl to make much of a fight of it. But they continued the contest, wrenched his shoulder and made him give up what they thought was a weapon.

"n.o.body draws around the generalissimo!" said the big guard, his voice shrill and squeaky in the filter of the phones.

Ole Doc glared at them and turned to his patient. He felt her pulse and found that it was racing somewhere

around a hundred and forty. He took her temperature and found it only slightly above normal. Her skin was dry and pale, her blood laked in the depths of her body. Her palms were wet. Her pupils were dilated to their entire diameter.

Through the rents in the dress it could be seen that no blemish marked her lovely body.

Ole Doc stood up. "Lebel, give me that gun."

Lebel looked uncertainly. He had taken no part in the brief skirmish but it was plain that he was not sure exactly what the weapon was.

"Then do it yourself," said Ole Doc. "Point it at her side and pull the trigger."

"Oh!" said Lebel, seeing some parallel between this and the treatment he gave cavalry horses with wounds. He brightened and with something close to pleasure did as he was bidden.

The small hypo gun jumped, a small plume of spray-fog winding up from its muzzle. The girl quivered, stiffened and then sank back unconscious. Lebel looked in disap- pointment at the gun, gazed with contempt into its muzzle and threw it into the kit.

"I thought it was a weapon!" he said. "Ten-fifteen- twenty times people have tried to a.s.sa.s.sinate me. That I should fear a Soldier of Light is very foolish of me. Of course it was just a medication, eh? Well, well, let's get off this street. The sight of civilian dead worries me. On the battlefield it is another thing. But civilian dead I do not like. Come!"

Ole Doc was coming but he was also bringing the girl.

"What do you mean to do with that?" said Lebel.

"I want a case history of this thing," said Ole Doc.

"Case- No, no! Not in my car! I am sick of this helmet! Leave it there where it was I tell you! Smorg!

Dallison! Put the girl back-"

The two aides didn't wait for the full command. They surged up. But Ole Doc wasn't trying to hold a struggling girl. She quietly slid to the gra.s.s while Ole Doc's hands moved something faster.

He could have drawn and burned them to glory long before they could have reached him. He contented himself with flicking a dart from each sleeve. The action was very quick. The feathered ends of the darts fell back without their points. Smorg and Dallison stopped, reached for their weapons and froze there.

"Attention!" said Ole Doc. "You will obey only me.

You can never obey anyone else again. Get into the car!"

And two aides, like wound up clockwork, turned around and got into the car like obedient small boys.

"What have you done?" yelped Lebel.

"They are in a fine, deep trance," said Ole Doc. "I dislike being handled by anyone, Lebel. No Soldier of Light does. We are only seven hundred in the entire Uni- verse but I think you will find it pays to be very polite to us. Now do you sleep or co-operate?"

"I'll co-operate!" said Lebel.

"Put this girl in the car and continue to the place you have kept Wilhelm Giotini."

The gawping driver saw his pa.s.sengers and their cargo in place and then swiftly took Lebel's orders for the palace. The car rocketed through the death-paved streets, shot up the ramp of the ruling house and came to a halt in the throne room.

Lebel got out shakily. He kept licking his lips and looking around as though on the watch for guards. But he was at the same time half afraid to give any orders to guards.

Ole Doc looked at the furnishings, the golden throne, the alabaster pillars. "Nice place," he said. "Where's Gio- tini?"

"I'll take you up there," said Lebel. "But stay a mo- ment. You are not going on under the misapprehension that I am trying to block you in any way, are you? I am not! My aides are jumpy. They have orders. I am jumpy.

My entire system of planets is coming apart with a dis- ease. The ruler is dead and I have only some small notion of what he meant to do. You are the first Soldier of Light I ever saw. How do I know if you really are one? I have heard that they are all old men and you look like a boy."

Ole Doc looked at him appraisingly, planted his boots firmly on the great orange squares of the throne room and looked at the a.s.sembled guards. "Generalissimo, you are not the first to question the ident.i.ty of a Soldier. There- fore I shall be patient with you. Disease is our concern.

Medical research. Any medical weapon. We safeguard the health of mankind through the stars against plague and medical warfare. Several hundred years ago we organized the Universal Medical Society to combat misuse of germs and our scope is broader yet. Now if you require some proof of my ident.i.ty, attend me."

Lebel walked lumberingly after Ole Doc up to the line of guards who, drawn stiffly to attention, brilliant in their palace uniforms, looked at nothing and no one. Ole Doc reached out a finger at a sergeant.

"Step forth!" said Ole Doc.

The sergeant took a smart pace forward and saluted.

Ole Doc, with legerdemain which defied the eye, produced a brilliant b.u.t.ton which fixed his subject's eyes.

"Extend your hand!" said Ole Doc.

The sergeant automatically extended his hand. He was weaving a trifle on his feet, his eyelids fluttering rapidly.

"You cannot feel anything in your entire body!" said Ole Doc. Out came a lancet. Up went the sergeant's sleeve. Ole Doc gashed a five-inch wound into the forearm, picked up the beating artery like a rope, dropped it back and pressed the flesh to stop the bleeding. He reached into a cape pocket and extracted a small rod, a ray-rod of pharmacy with a Greek symbol on it. He pa.s.sed the rod over the wound. It closed. He reversed the rod and pa.s.sed it once more. The scar vanished. There was nothing but blood on the floor to mark what had happened.

Ole Doc snapped his fingers to awaken his subject and pushed him back into line.

"Do you require further proof?" said Ole Doc.

The line had forgotten to be military and was a little out of rank now with slack-jawed staring. Lebel backed up, blinking. The sergeant was looking curiously around and wondering why everybody was so startled, disappointed to find he had missed something.

"I never doubted you!" said Lebel. "Never! Come right away into the south hall where we left him. Anything you say, sir. Anything!"

Ole Doc went back to the car and shouldered the body of the young girl. He was beginning to miss Hippocrates.

Doing manual labor was a thing which Ole Doc did not particularly enjoy.

Wilhelm Giotini was lying on a tall bed, a scarlet sheet covering his face, his royal accoutrements neglected on the floor and his crown mixed up with the medicine bottles. Any physician who had attended him was gone now. Only a woman sat there, a dumpy, weeping little woman, tawdry in her velvet, unlovely in her sorrow.

"Madame Giotini," said Lebel.

She looked up. Somewhere, in some old forgotten book