every country in the world were begging for birth control information so they could limit the size of their families to something reasonable. All they got was a lot of talk and damn little action. If there had been five thousand family- planning clinics for every one there was it still wouldn’t have been enough. Babies and love and sex are probably the most emotionally important and the most secret things known to mankind, so open discussion was almost impossible. There should have been free discussion, tons of money for fertility research, world-wide family planning, educational programs on the importance of population control — and most important of all, free speech for free opinion. But there never was, and now it is 1999 and the end of the century. Some century! Well, there’s a new century coming up in a couple of weeks, and maybe it really will be a new century for the knocked-out human race. I doubt it — and I don’t worry about it. I won’t be here to see it”
“Sol — you shouldn’t talk like that.”
“Why not? I got an incurable disease. Old age.”
He started coughing again, longer this time, and when he was through he just lay on the bed, exhausted. Shirl came over to straighten his blankets and tuck them back in, and her hand touched his. Her eyes opened wide and she gasped.
“You’re warm — hot. Do you have a fever?”
“Fever?” He started to chuckle but it turned to a fit of coughing that left him weaker than before. When he spoke again it was in a low voice. “Look, darling, I’m an old cocker. I’m flat on my back in bed all busted up and I can’t move and it’s cold enough to freeze a brass monkey in here. The least I should get is bedsores, but the chances are a lot better that I get pneumonia.”
“No!”
“Yes. You don’t get anywheres running away from the truth. If I got it, I got it. Now, be a good girl and eat the soup, I’m not hungry, and I’ll take a little nap.” He closed his eyes and settled his head into the pillow.
It was after seven that evening when Andy came home. Shirl recognized his footsteps in the hall and met him with her finger to her lips, then led him quietly toward the other room, pointing to Sol, who was still asleep and breathing rapidly.
“How is he feeling?” Andy asked, unbuttoning his sodden topcoat. “What a night out, rain mixed with sleet and snow.”
“He has a fever,” Shirl said, her fingers twisting together. “He says that it’s pneumonia. Can it be? What can we do?”
Andy stopped, halfway out of his coat. “Does he feel very warm? Has he been coughing?” he asked. Shirl nodded. Andy opened the door and listened to Sol’s breathing, then closed it again silently and put his coat back on.
“They warned me about this at the hospital,” he said. “There’s always a chance with old people who have to stay in bed. I have some antibiotic pills they gave me. We’ll give those to him, then I’ll go to Bellevue to see if I can get some more — and see if they won’t readmit him. He should be in an oxygen tent.”
Sol barely woke up when he swallowed the pills, and his skin felt burning hot to Shirl when she held up his head. He was still asleep when Andy returned, less than an hour later. Andy’s face was empty of expression, unreadable, what she always thought of as his professional face. It could mean only one thing.
“No more antibiotics,” he whispered. “Because of the flu epidemic. The same with the oxygen tents and the beds. None available, filled up. I never even saw any of the doctors, just the girl at the desk.”
“They can’t do that. He’s terribly sick. It’s like murder.”
“If you go into Bellevue it looks as though half the city is sick, people everywhere, even in the street outside. There just isn’t enough medicine to go around, Shirl. I think just the children are getting it, everyone else has to take their chances.”
“Take their chances!” She leaned her face against his wet coat and began to sob helplessly. “But there is no chance at all here. It’s murder. An old man like that, he needs some help, he just can’t be left to die.”
He held her to him. “We’re here and we can look after him. There are still four of the tablets left. We’ll do everything that we can. Now come inside and lie down. You’re going to get sick too if you don’t take better care of yourself.”
7
“No, Rusch, impossible. Can’t be done — and you should know better than to ask me.” Lieutenant Grassioli held his knuckle against the corner of his eye, but it did not stop the twitching.
“I’m sorry, lieutenant,” Andy said. “I’m not asking for myself. It’s a family problem. I’ve been on duty nine hours now and I’ll take double tours the rest of the week—”
“A police officer is on duty twenty-four hours a day.”
Andy held tight to his temper. “I know that, sir. I’m not trying to avoid anything.”
“No. Now that’s the end of it.”
“Then let me off for a half an hour. I just want to go to my place, then I’ll report right back to you. After that I can work through until the day-duty men come on. You’re going to be shorthanded here after midnight anyway, and if I stay around I can finish off those reports that Centre Street has been after all week.”
It would mean working twice around the clock without any rest, but this would be the only way to get any grudging aid out of Grassy. The lieutenant couldn’t order him to work hours like this — if it wasn’t an emergency — but he could use the help. Most of the detective staff had been turned out again on riot duty so that the routine work had fallen far behind. Headquarters on Centre Street did not think this a valid excuse.
“I never ask a man to do extra duty,” Grassioli said, grabbing the bait. “But I believe in fair play, give and take. You can take a half an hour now — but no more, understand — and make it up when you come back. If you want to stay around later, that’s your choice.”
“Yes, sir,” Andy said. Some choice. He was going to be here when the sun came up.
The rain that had been falling for the past three days had turned to snow, big, slow flakes that fell silently through the wide-spaced pools of light along Twenty-third Street. There were few other pedestrians, though there were still dark figures curled up in knots around the supporting pillars of the expressway. Their crowded numbers, along with the other citizens of the city, pressed out from the buildings with an almost tangible presence. Behind every wall were hundreds of people, seen now only as dark shapes in doorways or the sudden silhouette against a window. Andy lowered his head to keep the snow out of his face and walked faster, worry pushing him on until he had to slow down, panting to catch his breath.
Shirl hadn’t wanted him to leave that morning, but he had no other choice. Sol had been no better — or worse — than he had been for the past three days. Andy would have liked to have stayed with him, to help Shirl, but he had no choice. He had to leave, he was on duty. She had not understood this and they had almost fought over it, in whispers so that Sol wouldn’t hear. He had hoped to be back early, but the riot duty had taken care of that. At least he could look in for a few minutes, talk to them both, see if he could help in any way. He knew it wasn’t easy for Shirl to be alone with the sick old man — but what else was there to do?
Music and the canned laughter of television sounded from most of the doors along the hall, but his own apartment was silent; he felt a sudden cold premonition. He unlocked the door and opened it quietly. The room was dark.
“Shirl?” he whispered. “Sol?”
There was no answer, and something about the silence struck him at once. Where was the fast, rasping breathing that had filled the room? His flashlight whirred and the beam struck across the room and moved to the bed, to Sol’s still, pale face. He looked as though he were sleeping quietly, perhaps he was, yet Andy knew — even before his fingertips touched — that the skin would be cold and that Sol was dead.
Oh, God, he thought, she was alone with him here, in the dark, while he died.
He suddenly became aware of the almost soundless, heartbreaking sobbing from the other side of the partition.
