Fantastic Universe/Volume 08/Number 3/Daedalus Was Not a Myth
daedalus
was
not
a
myth
by . . . Ethel Lewis
- "Among us there are no dead—only those who have happily reached Completion. . ."
Sara Beals, head nurse in Surgery at Watkins General, told herself that she was being foolish. From the age of twenty-one she had assisted great surgeons, and the strain was beginning to tell. A woman of forty-one, she scolded, ought to know better. It was true that she saw Dr. Horton Smith bend over his patient for a matter of some ten seconds, apparently without doing anything, immediately after he had made the large incision.
But for goodness sake, old Dr. Ezra Yates had always cleared his throat like a fog horn before he shot out one of his hands for an instrument from her tray. And Dr. Otis Frank invariably shut his eyes for three seconds before he whispered, "Ready, Beals." Well, Dr. Smith had as much right as any of them to a personal idiosyncrasy.
With this final admonition to herself, Sara was able to put her troubling observations from her mind until the day that Dr. Horton Smith's patient got fully dressed and walked out of the hospital without waiting for his medical dismissal slip. And also without paying his bill!
Mr. Archer, the Administrator, tried to be patient with Alice Small, day Head in Surgical Ward. "Tell us just what took place. Miss Small."
"We couldn't stop him," Alice said. "Can you stop a tornado?"
"Has he had visitors?" asked Mr. Archer.
"His wife. The first three days. Then he asked could he have a No Visitors sign on his door? I thought it was funny but he said that company tired him. I can tell you his wife didn't like it either, but she left finally. Gracious! If he doesn't go home, what will we tell her?"
The patient did not return to his home. His wife brought a lawyer into it, and the hospital had a lawsuit on its hands. When Dr. Smith was informed of the disappearance of his patient, he appeared undisturbed.
"The man may have gone to the home of a relative. Surely, we know nothing of his private life. Possibly, he simply took this opportunity to escape a marriage in which he was not happy."
It was all mystifying and without precedent. The hospital turned the matter over to its own attorneys, and to all concerned the incident was closed. When, however, three times in three months, the same incident, once involving a woman patient, was repeated, the atmosphere at Watkins General became tense. And throughout the excitement and disorder caused, a few of the younger nurses leaving because they were frightened, only Sara Beals seemed to pinpoint the fact that all four had been patients of Dr. Smith's. She spoke of this to no one, since she was not given to gossip and had never mentioned her observation of Dr. Smith's peculiarity at the beginning of an operation. Having always read mystery tales with great enjoyment, Sara determined to do a little detecting herself. She listed the facts she had in her possession:
1. Dr. Horton Smith has done the surgery on all patients who have mysteriously left the hospital.
2. Dr. Smith bends over the patient immediately after the first incision is made.
3. Dr. Smith has made it a practice to pay a midnight call to his patients on the fourth night after surgery.
Sara had learned this third fact on her list from her good friend Theresa Chase who was on the night shift in Surgical. She had a great deal in common with Theresa since they were both past forty, and sensibly resigned to never marrying or having children. Working together at Watkins since their early twenties, they could relax with one another and discuss personalities without fear of being stigmatized by the name of gossip.
"Dr. Smith's a real considerate person," said Theresa. "Not like the others. They want me to pussyfoot around after them, you know, they have to act like the big mahoff! Not him. He stops and says good-evening and tells me to keep right on with my reports."
Listening, Sara wondered secretly whether there was significance in the fact that Dr. Smith specifically asked Theresa to stay where she was and not to follow him on his rounds. Well, there was ample room for speculation in the thought and Sara had some exciting inward moments. Still, nothing might have come of her suspicions, if she had been able to avoid showing her increased interest in Dr. Smith.
One morning, about ten o'clock, while Dr. Smith was washing after an appendectomy, he spoke to her as she stood by the instrument sterilizer.
"Miss Beals?" his pleasant voice said.
She turned and found him smiling gently at her. Sweetly, rather. There was a sweetness about his entire personality for that matter. His lanky figure and gaunt face went well together, and for one thing he never looked at you as if he were thinking about ten dozen other more important people or appointments he had to keep.
"Yes, Dr. Smith," she said.
"Would you come to my office this evening?" he asked. "When you go off duty. That would be about four o'clock?"
She nodded. "Yes, Doctor. I'll change into my street clothes first if you don't mind. I'll be there about four-thirty."
It did not occur to her to refuse. And why should she? Here was a man, a charming man at that, an important man who saw her as a woman. It was quite the most thrilling thing that had ever happened to her. She was not pretty and how well she knew it. In recent years she had to depend on small kicks like having a young interne tap her shoulder as he came up behind her in the corridor, and see his eyes pop when she turned.
"Pardon me, Miss Beals. Gee, from behind you look like a student nurse sporting her cap on her first day!"
Her excitement held throughout the day, three demanding operations and three martinet surgeons to plgase notwithstanding. She knew that Dr. Smith was not married, and her speculations about his strangeness only added to her anticipation. He had to be all right! she told herself. He had come well recommended from a small western hospital some six months ago.
When she knocked on Dr. Smith's office door exactly twenty minutes past four, his voice called, "Come in please."
He was wearing a navy blue suit and a light blue tie, the color reflected in his tired eyes.
"It was good of you to come," he said, coming toward her with both hands out. He held her hands for an instant and she felt a great weakness wash over her.
"Won't you sit down?" His voice was close as he placed a chair in the center of the room. He looked at her intently.
She sat down and looked about her. It was a simple square room with a desk and three leather chairs. There were books on wall shelves and on the floor lay a beautiful rug. As she came into the room, she now recalled, her feet had sunk into the thick, enveloping pile. For an instant she felt a peculiar fear as her eyes lighted on a small white sink in a far corner.
"Miss Beals," he was saying. He had sat down at his desk and now studied her across its mahogany expanse.
"Can I . . . can I do anything for you, Dr. Smith?" she asked hesitantly, finding it all at once utterly without reason that he had asked her to his office.
"You may answer a question," he said slowly. "Why are you giving me so much of your attention? Is there something about me which puzzles you?"
Struck dumb by embarrassment, she stared at him.
"Well, Sara?" he asked.
And that startled her. His calling her Sara made her wary.
"I don't mean to be rude. Doctor," she said, summoning all her courage, "but I believe you are just imagining things. Surgery is my chief interest in life. I can't help being interested in the surgeons too."
Slowly Dr. Smith shook his head, and pursed his lips.
"No," he said quietly.
Nervously she stood up, her gloved hands clutching her bag.
"I'm sorry. I'll have to go," she faltered.
"Sit down, Sara," he said.
His voice was not a command, but she resumed her seat. She found suddenly that she could not take her eyes from his.
"We must talk," he went on. There was a new gentleness in his tone, but paradoxically she became more frightened as his voice continued to soothe her. "Some people go through life without awareness. I believe you are one of those gifted with a great awareness."
For an instant, she closed her eyes, wanting the safety of darkness so that she need not look at him. She was in danger. What the nature of that danger was, she had no idea. One thing was certain. She ought not to have come. She could have pleaded an engagement. She ought not to have come. . . .
"Sara, how old are you?"
"Forty-one," she said automatically. Was he going to tell her she was getting too old for her work? Alarm made breathing difficult.
"Young enough," Dr. Smith said reflectively. He was silent for a moment, then turned to draw up a chair. There were no more than three or four feet separating them now and she could see the lines in his skin, carving, their mark around his eyes and mouth.
None of the hospital sounds penetrated to this room. She felt that the rest of the world had dropped away.
"Really, Dr. Smith," she began, still vaguely troubled.
He raised one of his pale, graceful hands. How well she knew their skill . . .
It was that moment, as the thought of his surgical skill crossed her mind, which brought her with a jar to a sudden realization. All at once she needed no evidence. Never could she dispute him as a surgeon, but as a man he was devious.
"I want to leave," she said decisively.
Strangely, she did not stand. Why didn't she simply get up and walk out? The question tormented her as he allowed the silence to go on.
"You may leave, Sara. If you wish," his warm voice said. And still she sat. I've got to find out, she told herself.
"You did something," she said slowly. "You did something to each of those patients who left the hospital on their own."
She had expected denial, gracious, unworried, but denial nevertheless. Instead Dr. Smith looked at her thoughtfully.
"You are everything I thought you were," he said with satisfaction. "Sara, there is not another human being in this hospital who connects me with those departures!"
She went cold. He was speaking something she knew but now there were implications. Should anything happen to her, he would not be suspected. And more than that, continued her frantic mind, he can get away whenever he wants.
"What did you do?" she asked. She knew she ought to leave. Now. She ought not wait for his answer. But she waited, and the instant lengthened. He would not have put out a hand to stop her, but she waited.
"I inserted a capsule in the large intestine," he told her with calm.
"A capsule," she gasped.
"Yes," he nodded, his mouth faintly smiling. "The capsule dissolves slowly so that the patient has four days for the healing of his incision."
Four, she repeated voicelessly. There was a key there. On the fourth night. Dr. Smith paid his patients a visit!
"What," she asked, forcing herself to go on, "is in the capsule?"
"The ingredients for change," he said. "You here in this world might call the process induced amnesia. The patient certainly is washed clean of his past because of its introduction into his bloodstream."
She had to take off her gloves, for her hands were so damp and sticky she could not bear the touch of the leather.
"You deliberately inoculate the patients with something that will wipe out memory?" she was appalled.
"I should like to word it differently. The ingredients create a new consciousness, eager and willing for change."
Her mind fumbled for something he had said a moment before.
"An inoculation," he said matter-of-factly, "would work faster but there would be the difficulty of hiding the instrument before and after. We have in our laboratories perfected the capsule as a wiser if slower means."
"You said . . . 'you here in this world' . . ." her voice dropped as the pounding blood threatened to burst her heart walls. "You here . . . you mean you come from another world!"
"Yes," his voice held a note of sadness. "We are visitors."
"We! There are others like you! Putting capsules into innocent people . . . making them . . ."
He held up both of his hands.
"We do not make people do anything! They wish to work with us."
And now she was standing, her panic a live thing pounding out horror in her ears, drying out her throat so she could not swallow.
"Who are you?"
"I am Director in this city," he said. He stood up but did not approach her. "When I visit the patient upon the fourth night, I transmit to him his key number and his base for orders."
She could not see. Blindly she moved toward the door, but when she was within a foot of it, he spoke.
"You can't go now. Knowing so much, surely you must know all."
She stood still, waiting for her panic to subside. What he said was true. She had to know everything about this man, about his plot, about his 'other world.' If she ran from the room now, and denounced him to Mr. Archer, would he believe her? Poor Sara, Mr. Archer would shake his head regretfully, she's getting too old for her job . . .
The next moment with startling suddenness she had her opportunity for escape and for unmasking Dr. Smith.
There was a knock and Mr. Archer's voice raised in the way one speaks when faced by a door.
"Oh, Dr. Smith? I'm just on my way to the meeting . . . ready?"
Shaking, she stood and watched Dr. Smith rise slowly. She saw that he was completely in command of himself.
"I'm just changing my clothes, Mr. Archer," Dr. Smith said in a slightly higher tone than usual.
"Let's say another ten minutes. I'll join you in your office."
"Right!" Mr. Archer's hearty voice answered.
Sara heard his receding footsteps. Why, she asked herself in torment, why didn't you rush and open the door and tell Mr. Archer?
"Well, Sara?" To her roaring ears, came Dr. Smith's soothing voice. "You see, you do not want to leave after all. Come here, my dear."
He moved around his desk and stood leaning back against its edge. He held out his hands and in a state of numbness she placed her own into his ready clasp.
"Why have you come here? What do you hope to gain? And," her voice had drained away to a whisper, "what do you want with me?"
"One question at a time," he said gently. He released her fingers. "Sit down, Sara."
Moving backward one step, then another hesitant stumbling step, she felt the chair hit the inside of her knees and she sat down abruptly before she fell. Her hands were damp with perspiration and involuntarily she rubbed the palms on her skirt.
"How many of you are in this country?" she jerked out the question as his long look of appraisal continued.
"About two thousand of us. But we also have three thousand recruits doing our work," he made a graceful gesture. "Such as the four patients with whom I," he cleared his throat delicately, "was able to make contact recently through surgery."
The thunder of her heart had to crack her body wide open, she thought.
"What are you?" she cried. "You're not human!"
His smile was still gentle. "We are human plus, Sara. Our forms are human. Our ways of nourishment and reproduction are human, but we have added abilities. For instance we can contract our bodies so as to enter a crack in a wall no more than a hairs-breadth. Also we have the means within us of exuding through our pores a protective glaze against die sun when in our flight to and from the home planet we feel the sun's fire."
She dropped her face into her hands. "You're not human," she moaned.
She lifted her head and looked into his steady eyes.
"You use planes?" she said in a whisper. "Where do you hide them? Do you come into our own airports?"
His smile was tolerant. "Machinery has no place in our lives, Sara. Each of us can fly. Excepting those of course who choose never to leave home. These are not fitted with the Daedalus equipment."
"Daedalus!" the name burst from her, her mind rioting. "He was a myth! You are a myth. You don't exist . . . or I do not."
"Daedalus was not a myth, my dear. He was far ahead of his own civilization but we, upon our planet, existed long before his time. When the news reached us that Daedalus had succeeded with his wings, we honored him by naming our process after him."
"You're a fiend," she sobbed. "A devil. You go around trying to make people go out of their minds! Let me go!"
"I shall not restrain you," he said quietly. "But, Sara, your life can never be resumed as it was before you entered this room. If you leave and do not speak of what I have told you, you will slowly go mad. Not knowing everything about us, you will never find rest or peace or sleep."
She dropped her hands and met his gaze. There was no demon in his eyes, no cruelty.
"Tell me," she pleaded.
"I shall begin with the Daedalus processing since that is our mode of transportation. By free choice we are measured and fitted with magnetic plates in our shoulders and heels to which our wings attach when needed. These fold so minutely that we may carry them easily in our pockets."
"You can't!" she cried suddenly, her mind a turmoil of facts hazily recalled, garnered from some volume she once searched or possibly simply a fact picked up. "If you come from a far off planet, out where the sun is . . . there isn't any air and wings won't carry you!"
"Remember Sara, I said we use wings when needed. When we take off we use only our characteristic of controlled gravitational pull. Later, when we have reached the atmosphere, we attach our wings for a smooth landing."
"But . . ." she could only whisper, "you came to us recommended. With credentials. How . . ."
"Our laboratories are equipped for every contingency," he said calmly. "I served my apprenticeship here on Earth at a small hospital in Idaho. A rugged part of Idaho . . . they don't ask questions in such places where the need of a doctor is great. It was simple of course to obtain written credentials from them . . . Sara, we have little time. I am expected downstairs."
He took a step toward her and she pressed back against the chair.
"Are there . . ." she could barely form the words, "other surgeons here in this hospital . . . like you?"
"No one else in this particular hospital," he shook his head. "But we have doctors placed all through your country. Two in each major city."
In her throat the screams of hysteria were beginning to form. None of this could be happening to her. She was Sara Beals, Assistant in Surgery, forty-one years old, spinster. And everybody knows nothing ever happens to spinsters! She was on her feet with the thought. If she began to Walk out he would not stop her. She took a tentative step and his voice followed her.
"At home, we walk on grass everywhere. Your cement hurts our feet through our shoes no matter how thick the soles."
Involuntarily she stopped and looked down. That explained the thickness of his rug. That explained why his movements were full of grace . . . he had always walked on soft, green grass.
She found herself turning to look at him. For the last time, she told herself. I'm going now but I want to see him once more . . .
"Are you leaving, Sara?" he seemed amused, and yet there was no mockery in his voice. Just as there was no smugness in his lie to Mr. Archer a few moments ago.
"It will interest you to know, Sara, that I had the privilege of developing the capsule we are using so successfully here in your land."
"I can't understand," she said painfully, every breath she drew stabbing her chest, "I can't understand what your purpose is. What do we have here that you want?"
"We do not plan conquest," he said, faintly reproachful.
"Go away," she said feverishly, her voice dropping to conspiratorial deptli. "Go away now and I won't say a word to anyone. Go back to your own planet and leave us alone!"
"I can't," he said quietly. "We are here to prevent an invasion of our planet. Our agents are placed in key spots in your government to learn of future plans for invasion. We learn about your satellites and your rockets and your space stations." His face saddened. "You see, Sara, we do not want our way of life disturbed. Your people would bring war and hate and disease. And machinery. Machinery is all powerful in your concepts here on Earth. In our civilization the individual is everything. His right to live in peace and fruitfulness is the basis of our way of life. We want no interference."
"But how," she managed to ask in a hoarse whisper, "how can you prevent our government's future plans from being carried out? There will be space travel one day. Why don't you face it . . . instead of . . . instead of . . ."
His eyes seemed lit from within and suddenly his gaze was more than she could bear. The beating of her heart was repeated throughout her whole body with great painful thumps.
"You can help us, Sara," he said, disregarding what she had said. "In our land each man chooses his own field of endeavor and is equipped for top efficiency in that field. In our laboratories our astronomers and chemists and doctors are provided with eyesight perpetual, piercing and infallible. Our farmers and tenders of the grass are equipped with backs and hand which will never tire, being made of the strongest metal ever forged."
Her throat had closed.
"Come to us, Sara," he was coaxing. "You would be invaluable in spreading dissension, suspicion and doubt among your planners. We would find a key spot for you right in the Pentagon! After you have been trained by us, you could do the work of your famous Mata Hari!"
Her legs would not move. She tried to move the toes of her feet and found herself powerless.
"Let me go," she said in a wooden voice. And as she spoke the words, she felt the pull toward him, the magnetism and the force.
"You do not want to go, Sara. You could do vital work . . . set back the plans of your government by possibly a hundred years! Or," he cocked his head on one side and studied her. "Possibly you should prefer being equipped for a journey to the home planet. On Euphoria, there is no aging process, Sara, On Euphoria, we have no unhappy, childless women . . ."
"Stop . . ." she choked out the word, looking down with an impersonal detachment as she wrung her hands.
"At birth," he continued, "each infant is inoculated for one hundred years of fruitful living. Change in our physical appearance stops at the age of twenty-five," he rubbed his chin. "I have been on Earth for eight years and the toll is great. I am but thirty-four but I appear to have passed half a century. How vastly different it is at home. Think of a life without fatigue or pain. At the end of one hundred years, each individual is found in his bed, at peace and without consciousness. Only then when his breathing has stopped is there outward change. Since his encasement of vigor and firm flesh is no longer of use, the sheath shrivels and creases as befits one who is Completed, Among us, Sara, there are no dead. Only those who have happily reached Completion."
There was a mist before her eyes. He knew that she had always feared old age and loneliness and the special loneliness of dying in the knowledge there was no one to shed tears on her passing away . . .
"Why do I stay here and listen to you?" she cried.
"You are perceptive," he said. "You know that I may have a message of importance for you. We do not wish a great exodus of our people to do this prevention work for us. The purpose of recruiting is to make possible our retaining of our population on Euphoria. Many are fearful of leaving the home land, you see. You might take on the task of disspelling fear of Earth. Should our needs grow greater, and the difficulties of recruiting increase, possibly you can persuade a number of Euphorians to migrate. Oh, there would be much for you to do, Sara. And if you choose to remain here as a recruit, you would be excellent as a floating agent."
"A floating agent," she repeated tonelessly. It was as if all intelligence had been drained from her mind. She was a thing for his designs.
"Our floating agents follow up on the work of our soda fountain clerks," he said softly.
She put both hands against her mouth to stop the trembling of her lips.
"You see we have four hundred recruited soda fountain clerks working currently. You can readily see that dropping a capsule into a drinking glass is a simple matter. Of course in the case of our fountain clerks there can be no follow ups as in the cases of doctors who can visit their patients without detection."
Theresa, moaned Sara voicelessly as her body rocked, oh, Theresa you didn't know he was a fiend . . .
"To continue," his voice was cool and kindly. "Because there can be no follow up by the clerk, there is a color additive in the capsule he administers. This tints the skin of the prospective recruit a faint blue discernible to our floating agents. Such as you would be, Sara. It is not a demanding task to simply walk about and look at people. Really that is all there is to it, my dear. You would have received excellent training before you begin.
"Yes, we leave nothing to chance. Simply, your specific work would be to move about without haste, on the alert for persons with tinted skin, and of course after a passage between the agent and the prospect, contact is made."
Her head was whirling now and almost without volition she ran to the window that fronted a busy, center city street. Looking down she saw streams of people going in all directions. Who now could she trust? Would she recognize a floating agent? Would she ever be able again to sit down at a drug store soda fountain? And that nice, well-mannered Jimmy at the corner candy store! Could she ever be certain that he was not a recruit?
She spun around to find Dr. Smith very close behind her.
"There is no fear in my land," he said softly.
"Don't touch me," she pleaded, shrinking against the wall.
"No," he said and turned away.
A hundred questions sent rockets bursting in her brain.
"What happens to these . . . tinted people?" she asked, her voice harsh in the quiet room. "What sort of lives do they lead until you contact them? If the capsule wipes out memory, how do they find their own homes and families?"
"Remember," he said soothingly, "that the process is gradual. Actually the whole thing is simple. On the fourth day after swallowing the capsule the prospect will not go home from his job. Or a woman, possibly marketing or returning from an afternoon with friends, will not return home to cook dinner. The prospect, his consciousness eager for change will drift until spotted by one of us. The floating agent is efficient, and alert. The prospect taken under the wing of the agent . . ." he paused in realization of the connotation his phrase now had for her.
She winced and looked away, trying to focus on an object in the room, an ordinary object like a chair or the books across the room. Her gaze returned to him.
"The agent will provide security by giving the prospect his key number and his base. These," once more he paused and smiled faintly, "are the amnesia victims about whom you often read in your newspapers." He seemed highly amused but continued presently.
"A group of us work close to your police stations. Oftimes when one such prospect is picked up by a policeman one of us claims to be a relative."
She had a sense of suffocation, as in deep sleep when, covered too tightly by blankets one struggles to get free.
"Some of our agents," he was saying conversationally, "are domestic help. You have heard of young mothers leaving their families without known cause. These are the result of our agents in the position of domestic help."
Her handbag fell to the floor with a clatter as the frame struck the baseboard.
"Teachers?" she gasped. "Have you infiltrated the schools?"
"No, we take no children," he said. "Our eugenics program is perfected and we want no children since they are disease carriers."
"I'm dreaming all this!" she cried out suddenly. "Tell me. I'm having nightmares!"
"You are awake," his voice came to her faintly. "I am your friend, Sara. Stop struggling and your panic will fade as if it had never been."
He went to the sink and washed his hands. She wanted to move but did not. He looked at her over his shoulder and smiled reassuringly and the roar in her ears became lessened.
She closed her eyes for an instant.
"I am Sara Beals," she said aloud, but the words had the ring of untruth.
He was coming toward her when she looked up.
"Sara," he said. She saw that he carried a glass of water.
"You will be a fine recruit, Sara. And later we can discuss whether you will do your best work here on Earth or on the home planet. You might, if you wish, remain on in the hospital, put in a request for ward duty and assist me directly. You and I would make a fine team I believe."
Did an aura of light surround him or was her vision blurred by the bright lamp he suddenly switched on. To work with him daily? She began to tremble once again.
He opened his hand and held it out toward her and on his palm there lay a white capsule.
"Place this upon your tongue, my dear," he said.
She sighed and took the capsule from his hand. She accepted the glass of water and sipped at its edge and all at once the coolness of the liquid was delicious to her parched throat. She tilted her head and dropped the capsule on her tongue.
"Yes," she said, although he had not asked a question.
He watched her drain the glass of water, his eyes clear, his lips gently smiling. Idly she wondered how long it would be before the capsule would dissolve so that its contents could enter her blood stream.
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