Authors: James Dixon
“That’s all right,” said the flustered Dr. Westley, trying to get the boy to stop wiping him. “I’ll take care of it myself.”
“Awright, man, no sweat,” said the boy, going off with his friends, laughing now with the rest of them.
“Inconsiderate little bastards,” Westley fumed furiously. “I’d like to put them away somewhere. Let’s go,” he said to Dr. Forrest.
Dr. Forrest, embarrassed, got up to join him. He looked down at Eugene, trying to get closer, to establish some rapport with him. “I understand your wife’s a very gifted musician.”
“Yes, she is,” answered Eugene.
“I play myself.” The doctor smiled. “I look forward to meeting her.”
“Doctor,” said Dr. Westley impatiently.
“Yes, Doctor,” said Dr. Forrest, joining his colleague.
Eugene watched the two of them leave the cafeteria. Dr. Westley was still dabbing angrily at his jacket with his own handkerchief.
Frank, as if sensing Eugene’s uneasiness, and trying to reassure him, explained, “They’re two of the best men in the business, really they are. They’ve given up their private practices to pursue this; become outlaws in the medical profession. They have a lot at stake,” he said. “They won’t let anything happen to your wife.”
“That little guy, Westley. He didn’t strike me as the type who’s interested in saving the world,” said Eugene.
“I’ve met a lot of these men in the last year or so,” said Frank, “and a lot of them are not what you would call kind, considerate men. But they all have one thing in common: they all are obsessed with what the world will be like in fifty, a hundred years from now.”
Eugene listened, playing with the salt shaker; he poured a few grains into his hand, feeling them on the tips of his fingers. “What are they going to do with the baby when they get hold of it?” he asked. “Experiment on it?”
“Teach it,” Frank said. “Train it. These babies were born at such an advanced state of development, God only knows what would have happened if they’d lived more than a few weeks. Their rate of mental and physical growth was tremendous.”
Two policemen had come into the cafeteria. Like others before them, they had picked up their trays and moved on to the serving line. Frank saw them. Even though in all likelihood they were there simply to eat, he became extremely nervous. “Let’s go,” he said to Eugene.
They made their way to the exit. “You see,” said Frank, talking very softly as he looked back at the policemen, making sure they were not following them, “we don’t regard them as being subhuman. They’re potentially superhuman. We think others realize that as well, and that’s what they’re really afraid of—the beginning of a race that will finally mean the eclipse of our own.”
“That doesn’t have a very pleasant ring to it,” said Eugene.
Outside, they stood on the sidewalk as Frank looked around; one last look into the cafeteria to make sure the policemen were staying put. Satisfied that it was safe, he turned to Eugene.
“What choice do we have? If this is the future, why fight it? From all indications, more and more of these babies are going to be born. What are we going to do, have these goon squads out all over the country killing babies, anybody’s baby?”
“So that’s why you started up this organization?” Eugene asked.
“That’s right,” replied Frank. “A lot of people out there, people with money, agree with us. Though they won’t admit it publicly, they’ve helped us out, given us some of their money. That’s how we were able to build our mobile unit.”
“Oh, yes, the mobile unit,” said Eugene. “When will I be able to see that?”
“With any luck, the mobile unit will be here tonight.” Frank smiled. “Then you’ll see how well organized and prepared we are.”
CHAPTER THREE
It was dusk, just the time when motorists are undecided whether they should switch on their headlights. Consequently, on the crowded San Bernardino Freeway heading east out of Los Angeles, some cars had their lights on, some didn’t, and every minute or so another set of lights popped on.
Among the bumper-to-bumper cars sat a huge mobile home, the kind that affluent families who don’t know what else to do with their money take to the mountains for the weekend.
Inside this particular mobile home, however, was not a family but a well-trained medical team of three. All three were nurses, one of them female. The driver, Steven King, besides being a male nurse, had a black belt in karate to his name; the girl, Barbara, exceptionally well put together, had been an all-American volleyball player in her college days at UCLA. The third member of the team, Billy Grant, was small, wiry, and no one to mess with.
The back of the mobile home had been stripped of the usual luxurious accouterments, and in their place was a mobile operating room. Everything!
An operating table complete with stirrups to be used for the delivery of a baby; all the life-support systems, all the latest equipment, everything was there. In addition, over to the side in a special place was an incubator, unlike any other incubator. This one was ringed with steel bars! Clearly its purpose was to keep the baby alive; however, it was also clear that anything put in there had no possibility of escape.
Later that evening, upstairs in the Scotts’ home, a suitcase, much larger than one would take to a hospital to have a baby, lay open on the Scotts’ bed. Jody moved back and forth from her closets, packing.
Finally she decided aloud, to no one in particular, “That’s enough clothes,” and disappeared into the bathroom. She appeared again, carrying at least half a dozen bottles of vitamin pills.
“All these vitamins, health food supplements, my famous vegetarian diet, they’ll probably say that was what caused it,” she muttered to herself.
“What?” said Eugene, standing by the window, lost in thought.
“My diet,” she repeated, “they’ll probably say my diet caused it.”
“I’ve been thinking,” said Eugene, not really paying any attention to what his wife had said, “about the legal aspects of this case. About something Davis said about their taking into consideration the fact that I’m a lawyer. The government can’t possibly have any actual legal backup for what they’re doing. It must come under the heading of emergency measures. But if this were tested in the courts . . .”
“Now you’re starting to be yourself again,” cheered Jody gaily. “Now you’re thinking like a lawyer again.”
“It’d never hold up,” Eugene continued, “what they’re trying to do to us . . . conspiring to murder our child. Of course, it’s been going on for centuries . . . In India infanticide was a national policy. Strangling baby girls at birth, or spreading opium on the mother’s nipple before she nursed them.”
“Not a very good idea to be born female over there,” Jody said, tucking in an extra pair of slippers.
“Today they just starve the little girls to death,” said Eugene. “It’s easy to kill what you consider inferior.”
“Yes, well, over here they’d never get away with it, ’cause over here we run the country,” said Jody. “So bring me my robe from the closet, you hear!”
“Yes, boss,” said Eugene, affecting a shuffle.
Jody smiled as she watched her husband disappear into the walk-in closet. “The blue one,” she called after him as an afterthought.
“I know the one,” shouted Eugene, his voice muffled in the depths of the large closet.
Then, suddenly, a flash of pain surged across Jody’s lovely face. Her first stab of real pain! Instinctively she knew, contractions! She sat quickly on the bed, hoping against hope. Another one followed shortly.
“Oh, no,” she cried, “please, not yet.”
Eugene came out of the closet. The look on his face told Jody he had heard her.
“What is it?”
“It’s started,” she said.
Eugene rushed to her. “You can’t be sure.”
“I know,” Jody said simply. “That’s all there is to it. I know.”
Eugene looked at his watch. “Oh, Jesus!” he said. “It’s only half-past five. Why didn’t Davis give me a number where I could reach him?”
“It wasn’t due for another week,” said Jody, as if defending Frank Davis.
“I know,” said Eugene, kneeling down beside his wife. He felt her stomach, looking up at her tenderly. “You’re sure?” he asked.
Jody nodded, bringing her hand up to run it through her husband’s black hair. “Maybe it’s early labor,” she said. “Maybe we can wait a while. Maybe they’re almost here.”
“Okay, honey,” said Eugene, getting up. “Okay.”
He closed the suitcase and picked it up. Then, taking his wife by the arm, he led her toward the door. “We’ll wait downstairs,” he said. “We’ll wait as long as we can.”
“Thank you,” she said, leaning her head into the nape of his neck as they slowly crossed the room.
In the kitchen, the wall clock, a present from Jody’s mother, modern-looking, impossibly out of place in this beautiful home, chimed. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Jody looked at it. How can I tell my mother I hate that ugly clock? she thought. Then suddenly, another contraction!
She turned to Eugene sitting next to her at the kitchen table. “There’s another one,” she gasped. “Oh, Gene, they’re coming closer now!”
“Do you want me to call the doctor?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “They said the mobile unit would be here tonight.”
“Honey, tonight could mean midnight, or one o’clock in the morning. They told me they’d have to check it out before they could use it. There’s no telling what time it’ll be here.”
“Maybe we could phone all the motels and locate Davis,” Jody said desperately. “Or those doctors, you remember their names. Dr. Westley, Dr. Forrest, you told me. Maybe we could find them.”
“Honey,” said Eugene reasonably, “there’s no time.”
Another wave of pain crossed her face.
“Oh, God,” she screamed.
“I’ve got to call him.”
“I know,” said Jody. “Oh, Gene,” she cried, reaching for him, holding him. “What’s going to happen to us, to our baby?”
Eugene just held her. He rocked her back and forth, answering her honestly. “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know.”
At Dr. Fairchild’s office, everyone was gone except the doctor and his nurse. They sat at Dr. Fairchild’s desk filling out forms.
Insurance forms, government forms. Dr. Fairchild hated these mountains of forms he had to fill out every month. He remembered the good old days. “That’ll be fifty bucks,” you would tell someone, and that was it.
No filling out the “patient’s prior medical history” section or “further treatment anticipated” section, nothing like that. Then again, the doctor thought, when you said “Fifty bucks” to a guy, sometimes you would wait a month for the money; sometimes two months, six months, even a year. Sometimes you’d never get it, period.
There’s one thing about the insurance companies and the government, thought Dr. Fairchild to himself, the corners of his mouth turning up in a tiny little avaricious grin: at least they pay. That was one thing about them, those insurance companies and the government, especially the government, they paid their bills. He smiled.
The phone on his desk rang.
The nurse picked it up. “Dr. Fairchild’s office,” she announced efficiently. “Yes,” she said after a pause as her face went cold, “just a minute.” Cupping her hand over the phone, she whispered, “It’s Mr. Scott.”
Dr. Fairchild went rigid. This was the call he had been dreading. For the past month it had been one thing after another. Those strange men coming in, checking his files and his medical procedures, telling him to deceive his patient, making his nurses irritable with their paranoid security precautions.
“He says she’s in labor,” the nurse continued, “that her contractions are coming regularly now.”
“Tell him to take her to the hospital immediately,” said the doctor. “Tell him I’ll meet him there.”
“Yes, Doctor,” she answered.
Dr. Fairchild listened as the nurse repeated his orders into the phone and then hung up.
“You have his number?” asked Dr. Fairchild. “That man, what’s his name?”
“Mallory,” the nurse said, sure of it.
“Yes, Mallory,” said the doctor, getting up wearily from the desk. “Call him and tell him we’re on our way.”
“Yes, Doctor,” said the nurse, already dialing the number she had carefully memorized, anticipating this moment.
At the Scott house, Eugene drove his car out of the garage. He jumped out quickly and ran up the walk to meet his wife as she appeared at the front door.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m okay,” she said, sneaking a look across the street. The same station wagon was parked there, somebody in it, crouched down behind the wheel.
“There he is,” said Jody.
“I know,” said her husband. “Just forget it, pay no attention.”
They reached the car door. Eugene helped his wife in; then, running around the car, he got in himself.
Forgetting his own advice, he stole a look over at the station wagon. A man, not Mallory, but much like him was picking up some sort of communications phone. Eugene had seen enough; he put the car in gear and soon they were off, going to the only place they could, without Davis, without his medical unit: the hospital.
In the station wagon, the man, Gentry, spoke rapidly into the phone. “They just got in their car. They’re leaving right now for the hospital.”
“I know; we just heard from Fairchild,” said a gruff voice. “Stay with them, make sure that’s exactly where they’re going. You understand?” the voice demanded.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Mallory,” answered Gentry. He started up after the Scotts’ car, just turning left at the corner.
In the same motel room at the Mirage Motor Inn, Frank Davis paced back and forth, smoking one cigarette after another. After each complete pace he stopped in front of the window and peered out. Business was slow tonight, the “Vacancy” sign still lighted. Only a few cars were parked in the small parking lot.
Finally, not able to stand it any longer, he went to the old-fashioned phone and picked it up.
Waiting, he said aloud, “Come on, come on.”
“Can I help you?” a voice said, the same whiskey-soaked voice as that of last night.
“Would you dial 462-0713?” asked Frank.