Talar grasped his arm: “Come back before they kill you.”
Numbly he retreated with her, stepping across the massive body of the bull-man, which lay pierced by twenty or more shafts.
Y
ou fold back the corner of a page and put the book down. The waiting room is cold and bare, and although sometimes the people hurrying through smile at you, you feel lonely. After a long time a big man with gray hair and a woman in a blue uniform want to talk to you.
The woman’s voice is friendly, but only the way teachers’ voices are sometimes. “I’ll bet you’re sleepy, Tackman. Can you talk to us a little still before you go to bed?”
“Yes.”
The gray-haired man says, “Do you know who gave your mother drugs?”
“I don’t know. Dr. Black was going to do something to her.”
He waves that aside. “Not that. You know, medicine. Your mother took a lot of medicine. Who gave it to her? Jason?”
“I don’t know.”
The woman says, “Your mother is going to be well, Tackman, but it will be a while—do you understand? For now you’re going to have to live for a while in a big house with some other boys.”
“All right.”
The man: “Amphetamines. Does that mean anything to you? Did you ever hear that word?”
You shake your head.
The woman: “Dr. Black was only trying to help your mother, Tackman. I know you don’t understand, but she used several medicines at once, mixed them, and that can be very bad.”
They go away and you pick up the book and riffle the pages, but you do not read. At your elbow Dr. Death says, “What’s the matter, Tackie?” He smells of scorched cloth and there is a streak of blood across his forehead, but he smiles and lights one of his cigarettes.
You hold up the book. “I don’t want it to end. You’ll be killed at the end.”
“And you don’t want to lose me? That’s touching.”
“You will, won’t you? You’ll burn up in the fire and Captain Ransom will go away and leave Talar.”
Dr. Death smiles. “But if you start the book again we’ll all be back. Even Golo and the bull-man.”
“Honest?”
“Certainly.” He stands up and tousles your hair. “It’s the same with you, Tackie. You’re too young to realize it yet, but it’s the same with you.”
AFTERWORD
This story got me the friendship of Isaac Asimov and fathered three sequels, two of which are in this book. It was, you see, my first ever Nebula nomination, so Rosemary and I journeyed to New York for the banquet. Isaac was announcing the winners, beginning with Best Short Story. And he named this story.
I rose to accept, and the committee swarmed on Isaac. He had been given a list, not just the winner but the second-, third-, fourth-, and fifth-place finishers. The winner had been No Award—which Isaac, understandably assuming that some story would have won, had skipped. He apologized profusely, then and afterward, and I explained repeatedly that he had honored me.
He’d also gotten me a great deal of sympathy in SFWA. Grinning, John Jakes said, “You know, Gene, if you’d just write ‘The Death of Doctor Island’ now, you’d win.”
THE TOY THEATER
E
ight hours before we were due to land on Sarg they dropped a pamphlet into the receiving tray of the two-by- four plastic closet that was my “stateroom” for the trip. The pamphlet said landing on Sarg would be like stepping into a new world. I threw it away.
Landing on Sarg was like stepping into a new world. You expect a different kind of sunlight and a fresh smell to the air, and usually you don’t get them. Sarg had them. The light ran to sienna and umber and ocher, so that everything looked older than it was and made you think of waxed oak and tarnished gold. The air was clear and clean. Sarg wasn’t an industrial world, and since it was one of the lucky ones with no life of its own to preserve, it had received a flora en masse from Earth. I saw Colorado spruce, and a lot of the old, hardy, half-wild roses like Sarah Van Fleet and Amelie Gravereaux.
Stromboli, the man I was coming to see, had sent a buggy and a driver for me (if you don’t want industry there are things you can’t have, lots of them) and I got a good view of the firs on the mountains and the roses spilling down the rocks as we rattled along. I suppose I dropped some remark about the colors, because my driver asked, “You are an artist?”
“Oh, no. A marionettist. But I carve and paint my own dolls—that’s an art, if you like. We try to make it one.”
“That is what I meant. It is mostly such artists who come here to see him, and the big box which I loaded for you was suggestive. That is your control you carry?”
“Yes.” I took it out of its leather case to show him.
He peered at the tiny dials and levers. “The signor has such a one. Not, you understand, identical, but similar. Perhaps you could . . . ?” He glanced back to where Charity reposed in her box. “It might help to pass the time.”
I made her throw open her lid and climb up to sit on the seat with us, where she sang to the driver in her clear voice. Charity is a head taller than I am, blond, long legged, and narrow waisted; a subtle exaggeration, or so I like to think, of a really pretty showgirl. After I had made her kiss him, dance ahead of the horse for a while, then climb
