Don't Look Now
BY LEONARD RUBIN
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine April 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Royalty Party wasn't what you would
imagine—it stood for a great deal, but
there was as much it wanted no part of!
"You're not allowed in the ambulance," Miss Knox said.
They were both typical advertising men, down to the motorskatesstrapped beneath their shoes. Their faces were so utterly undistinctiveas to seem fuzzy. Each carried a large flat briefcase with a coilantenna sticking out.
"Watch it!" the attendant growled, and they skated aside with a whir.
Big Carl came driving up the ramp, ducked his head to enter, andbrought the bed to a stop in the belly of the ambulance. Miss Knoxpressed the button and the door closed in the admen's faces.
When Mr. Barger was lowered from the hovering ambulance, his swollen,tearful eyes were sun-blind. Square hands clenched over and over withpain. Above the rotors' rackety-rackety-rack, Miss Knox shoutedsoothing things. She didn't wait for an answer. He was the worstcase of laryngitis she had ever known—the only case, really, in herprofessional experience. Abolished diseases always came back virulently.
She and the bed sank between white hospital walls and landed in theroom with a bump. The waiting attendant walked around the platform,folding the safety gates. He unhooked the four support cables, eachvanishing out of his grasp like spaghetti slurped from a plate.
Just as the ceiling closed overhead, cutting off sight and sound of thewhirlybird against the sun, Brooks, the radiologist, came in throughthe door, shepherding an entire class of medical students. Then twonurses seemed to clear an inoffensive path through the chemicallytainted air of the corridor—and after them came Dr. Gesner, thegreatest throat man in the country. Miss Knox knew him from hisportrait in the Mushroom.
Brooks winked her an "At ease!" with a shaggy eyebrow and followedthe fat man through the crowd. Dr. Gesner went to the bed and satdown. He was Barger's weight, with the same sort of elephantine bones,but he was almost two feet shorter. He stared at the nose and cheeksprotruding from the bedclothes, and opened a fat black bag.
A bell rang three times in the corridor. Five interns scurried into theroom and stopped still, watching Dr. Gesner as though he were a goldencalf. On each side of the doorway stood a student nurse at attention.
Mr. Barger stopped twitching and opened one eye wide. His chin lifted,and his other chins came out from under the sheet's folded edge.
One of Dr. Gesner's hands felt through the black bag. It emergeddragging a mutape by one wire. Brooks leaned forward and took out therest of the apparatus. Shaking the hair off his forehead, he pluggedinto the bedside computer relay and placed the rubber-rimmed cupagainst the patient's skull, just over the Broca convolution.
Mr. Barger remained staring at the doctor through a gray film. Themutape chattered rapidly. Miss Knox craned her neck, deciphering thepunched tape as it unrolled from the recorder in Brooks' hands. Sweatpopped out on Mr. Barger's forehead.
"