The Sudden Star Page 2

  The helicopter landed on the roof of the medical center. Its three passengers got out and the pilot took off again.

  "I'd better hurry. I think I'm a little late. Goodbye." Yola hurried ahead of the two men. Mahoney took Simon's arm, digging his fingers into the flesh above the elbow. Simon stiffened.

  "You busy this Wednesday?"

  "No."

  "Good. Moira and I are having a couple of people over to meet Yola, and I thought you might like to come." Mahoney smiled. "You know, Simon, you're past the age where you should live in a single, and you could do worse than a bright girl like that. You could pull in a lot of money together."

  "I wish you'd stop trying to throw every unattached woman of your acquaintance at me." He was suddenly repelled by Mahoney's broad grin and familiar manner.

  Mahoney laughed. "I wouldn't want to deprive them of your charm, boy." He clapped Simon on the back as they walked toward the stairwell. Simon could hear the rapid clicking of Yola Kozlowski's heels two flights below.

  Simon, finished with his last appointment of the morning, sat at his desk, bored. Often the faces and bodies of the patients seemed to melt together in his mind; he had to consult his files to remember who they were. Few of them were interesting enough to recall without the files. He had to send the most interesting to the specialists, the doctors who had been able to afford the extra training that Simon's poverty had not allowed him to buy. He had to take the small fees and endure the snobbery of the specialists, who either patronized him or ignored him. He wouldn't have had to practice illegally if he had been a specialist; he would have been as respectable and rich as the others, those former spoiled brats who had it all handed to them. Well, he thought, he would be able to get out of it soon.

  Mahoney, Simon realized, might be right. The only way he could get a bigger cut was to go into partnership with at least one specialist, someone like Yola Kozlowski, a naive kid who might marry him.

  There was a knock at his door. He looked up as Linda Pura peered in at him from behind the open door. "Mind if I come in?"

  He motioned to her. The small woman entered, closed the door, and crossed the room quickly, settling herself on the worn beige sofa against the wall. "It's so quiet in here," she said, pulling her white coat down over her knees. "I just finished with a four-year-old. His mother brought him in for a check-up. 'Tell him it isn't going to hurt,' she said to me. Of course, the kid started screaming at that. I don't know why parents think that kind of comment is comforting."

  Simon nodded absently. Linda, a pediatrician, had an office down the hall. She had asked him once about a partnership, but he had put her off. Something about Linda disturbed him. She had dangerous thoughts—which she often mentioned to him, as if trying to draw him into a conspiracy. He ran enough risks without involving himself with her. Yet he had trouble avoiding the woman. She was almost the only person in the center who was friendly to him without apparently wanting anything in return.

  "How's Ramon?" Simon asked.

  "He's fine. He's pretty worn out most of the time." Linda lowered her voice. "I've been doing some research these past couple of weekends."

  "In the lab?"

  "In the library. Mura's Syndrome."

  Simon sat up, pulling his feet under his chair. "It's on the list now, Linda. Leave it alone. You can't do anything about it anyway. It can't be treated, and it's always fatal."

  "And you accept that? A disease which drives its victims insane, sometimes for months or years, before a fever burns them up and kills them? Don't you care?"

  "Of course I care." He tried to look concerned. "But there's nothing I can do."

  "You sound like my priest. He's quite well educated, and keeps up with intellectual trends. He says that Mura's Syndrome is God's way of demonstrating the indeterminacy of the universe on a biological level, that both it and Mura's Star are mysteries we can't question, signs of God's will. He says the victims will be purged by their suffering and achieve salvation." Linda's dark, almond-shaped eyes glittered. "I can't accept that. We should be doing research, finding out why it affects some and not others. We know it's a virus of some sort, that Mura's Star might have affected it and produced a new disease. A lot of people believe it might have started in a research lab, you know—that it might originally have been something perfectly harmless."

  Linda, Simon thought, was becoming obsessed with this problem. He would have to remain more distant in the future, avoid her before she landed in real trouble.

  Simon got up. "It's on the list, there's nothing you can do. Let's go to lunch." He moved toward the sofa.

  "The list!" She shook her head. Her long black hair swayed. "A woman brought in her baby a month ago. The child was underweight. It turned out that the baby has a metabolic disorder, methymalonic aciduria, which, in time, produces mental retardation. It's on the list, so I couldn't do a thing. All the baby needs is massive doses of vitamin B-12 and a low-protein diet. And if I tell the mother that, and help her at all, I risk the death penalty." Her brown eyes shifted slightly, and Simon knew Linda had given the mother help after all. But no one would ever prove it.

  "Let's go eat." For a moment, he wondered if he should be seen with Linda. But at least in the cafeteria she was not likely to discuss dangerous topics. He wondered how much the baby's mother had paid Linda. Maybe Linda hadn't even asked for a fee. He resented Linda’s thinking Simon was like her. She had been as poor as he was once, and she was still ready to risk everything.

  She stood up, looking weary. "Fine."

  Simon was finishing a cheese sandwich on stale bread, when a heavy hand pressed down on his shoulder, "Hi, Simon." Cliff Mahoney placed his tray next to Simon's and sat down. "Hi, Linda."

  "Hello, Cliff." Linda's mouth twisted slightly.

  "I heard you were pregnant again. Hell, don't you think that two's enough?" Mahoney laughed jovially. "Why don't you get an abortion? You, at least, don't have to go to a clinic."

  Linda got up. "I have to get back to the office. See you, Simon." She hurried off, leaving her unfinished salad on the tray.

  "Did you hear the news this morning?" Mahoney said quickly.

  "Didn't have time. I had a full slate."

  "There was quite a problem out at Kennedy, when one of the food-supply planes came in. About five hundred people tried to get to the plane. A lot of them got shot."

  Simon shrugged as he swallowed the last of his sandwich. "They've been having a lot of those problems lately," he said absently.

  "Not with the planes. You know how they're guarded. That sort of thing's suicide. Not that I wouldn't mind getting my hands on some of that stuff." Mahoney licked his thick lips, as if tasting the flown-in wines, cheeses, and delicacies only the very rich could afford.

  "People are desperate," Simon muttered. "They've cut the rations for the unemployed, they only get twelve hundred calories a day now. I'm afraid there might even be a raid on a medical center one of these days. Maybe not here, but at one of the ones the Service uses. Most people can't get so much as an aspirin there."

  "Frankly," Mahoney said, lowering his voice, "I think they ought to stop drafting doctors altogether and make everybody pay. Besides, everybody knows having free clinics is just a front for the army, so they can get their own care without having to pay much for it."

  "That's dangerous talk, Cliff."

  "Anyway, we've already started to get rid of genetically inherited defects with the list. Seems to me we could do with less of the street people. If they can't pay, they shouldn't get treatment."

  Something jarred Simon's thoughts. "Strange," he murmured, "that Mura's Syndrome's on the list, when it has nothing to do with genetic flaws."

  Mahoney leaned back, twisting his fat fingers around his fork. "Maybe somebody knows something we don't, and maybe you'd better just not worry about it." Cliff grinned suddenly. "Hey, there's Marvin." He stood up. "Hey, Steinman, over here!" He waved his arms, and the fat bulk that was Marvin Steinman proceeded toward Si
mon's table.

  Steinman sat down across from Simon. He made soft slurping sounds as he started on his soup. "Linda's pregnant again," Mahoney offered. "Those damn Filipino refugees think they can breed as much as they want."

  "Calm down, Cliff," Steinman said in his whispery voice. "Ramon Pura reenlisted in the medical service. They're not so bad."

  "He's crazy."

  "Maybe not," Steinman replied. "He'll have friends in the army."

  "Jeanne tells me you'll be busy next Tuesday," Simon said. Mahoney raised a heavy eyebrow disapprovingly.

  "Well, I trust you and Cliff won't talk. McKee and I are going to be giving some shots to a lot of the city officials. But we've got to keep it quiet. There were rumors about some cases of cholera in Brooklyn. And a couple of friends of mine in the Service clinics have seen a few polio cases over the last few months."

  "That's ridiculous," Mahoney said. "The clinics can give anyone who wants one a vaccination or booster."

  "Come on, Cliff," Simon said. "How long do you think anyone will stand on those lines, waiting for a shot, if they've already been on the food lines?"

  "I wouldn't know," Mahoney replied. "I don't go into the streets, and it's been years since I was in the Service." He smiled slightly. Simon felt a flash of anger, then fear. Perhaps Mahoney knew about his ventures. Then he relaxed. Cliff couldn't know; he was only jibing at Simon's past. "They ought to quit treating anyone who can't pay," Mahoney went on.

  "Quite right," Steinman said. "Besides, who knows what genetic faults many of them might be carrying? We can't screen them, and not everything will turn up as a disease, so many traits are recessive. We can't afford to have the species as a whole weakened by these genetic traits."

  Simon thought of Jeanne. He stared at Steinman's spectacles. "I wonder what keeps myopia off the list," he said quietly.

  Mahoney laughed. "The ophthalmologists and oculists, of course. Can you imagine what would happen to the dentists if soft teeth or pyorrhea got put on it?" He chuckled and rose to his feet. "I've got to head back to my office. See you." Mahoney picked up his tray and left. Steinman turned back to Simon and grinned.

  "Jeanne was a bit upset when she got home last night," he said. "Really, Simon, if you're going to see her, don't get her so annoyed that she takes it out on me."

  Simon felt his muscles tighten. Don't you know she has Mura's Syndrome? he wanted to shout. But Marvin must know. It was probably why he didn't care what his wife did. He wondered if Steinman had a hold on him, if the fat man knew anything about his activities, about his illegal patients. Simon wished he had never started seeing Jeanne. He had lost control of her; he could not even prove she was a murderer, because he had helped destroy the evidence. He watched Marvin Steinman's spectacled, gray eyes and could read nothing in them.

  "She just doesn't seem happy with your relationship," Steinman was saying. "She hasn't been well. You know that, of course."

  Simon rose. "I understand," he replied, hating the fat man's complacency, disgusted with someone who would pander for his wife, yet realizing that he too was catering to Jeanne's needs in a deadlier fashion. "I'd better get back to work."

  Steinman smiled, and let him go.

  Late that afternoon, Simon went over to the heavily guarded bank where he kept his safety-deposit box. He picked up some of the money Sam Karenga had left, checked the small number of medical supplies he kept there, and replaced the bottle of Dilantin that Karenga had taken.

  When he left the bank, the spring breezes had grown cooler. The bridge linking the bank's building with the office complex next door swayed as he crossed; his feet clattered against the planks. He clutched the ropes at his sides and hurried as much as he could. Two young men in dark suits scampered easily over the bridge next to him. It was easy to tell, when you were on the bridges, who had grown up rich; such people moved over the bridges easily, while Simon crept along, trying not to look down. He would never get used to it.

  The office building and the medical center, fortunately, were connected by an enclosed bridge with glass windows. Simon hurried through it and noticed in passing that one of the windows was broken. The wind whistled through it. He crossed the roof of the center and stood, holding his bag, waiting for the helicopter that would take him home.

  He heard footsteps behind him and turned to face Yola Kozlowski. "You're going home late."

  She smiled. "When a patient's in the middle of handling an emotional crisis, I can't just leave." She glanced down at his hands. "You're taking your bag home."

  "Sometimes a patient calls after hours. General practitioners get almost as many off-duty calls as obstetricians."

  "It's nice of you to be so helpful to them."

  "Well, you specialists can make your money on duty. We have to make it when we can."

  She lowered her eyelids. He said, "How about helping me use up some rations tonight? I've got a couple of steaks, if you're not choosy about the cut. At least they're meat. I pick up more rations here tomorrow, so I don't need to keep them." He stopped. He had extended the invitation impulsively while staring at Yola Kozlowski's slim hips.

  She blushed. "Sure."

  "All right," he said. Yola stared at the rooftop under her feet, and then looked around nervously. Simon felt tired. He looked at Yola and felt unexcited by the pretty, awkward young woman. She stood with her shoulders hunched forward and her stomach thrust out; he imagined that she would be awkward in bed. It was still better than an evening with Jeanne Steinman.

  He heard the sound of the approaching helicopter and looked up. "Well, it's finally here," Yola said, looking relieved. He took her arm and they ran quickly toward the landing vehicle.

  Yola had decided to prepare the steaks herself. As she broiled them in Simon's small oven, she talked of her family in Chicago, her shyness dissipated by the gin Simon had served. He lay on his bed, head propped up by a pillow, listening with slight interest and trying to appear attentive while ignoring the loud voices of those passing in the hallway.

  Yola Kozlowski was the daughter of a member of Chicago's militia, who had trained in aeronautics only to see his dreams smashed with the demise of the space program. Her mother had become wealthy managing a successful beauty salon, located at the top of one of Chicago's tall buildings. "We even had a toilet that you could close off from the other rooms. At least we didn't have to avert our eyes every time someone took a piss, or share a bathroom with everyone on the whole floor." She giggled and turned around, her face flushed. She looked unsteady.

  "Nice to be rich," Simon muttered.

  "I don't know," Yola said, looking solemn. "I had a rough time when I was doing my two years of service, because I'd been so sheltered, and yet I felt as though I should have reenlisted anyway. So I rationalized by saying I wouldn't have had much of a chance to use my psychiatric training there. Oh, well, even poor people are better off in cities than in the country, I guess. I've heard it's pretty grim out there."

  Simon sipped his gin. "I've heard that too, but I don't know if I believe it. It's easy to get into New York, but you can't get out without a pass. Maybe they're hiding something."

  "I don't know. At least you can get ahead in a city."

  "I'm sure everyone on the food lines thinks so." Simon gestured toward the oven. "They're probably done." Yola removed the steaks, put them on two small plates, and handed one to Simon. She remained on her seat near the oven.

  "You know, Simon," she said, motioning with her glass of gin, "I've thought of setting up a practice among the poor, living with them, treating them, even if it is practically hopeless."

  He chuckled. "You wouldn't live an hour. My parents had six kids. I'm the only one still alive. They shot my father during a food riot."

  Yola grew pale. "How did you get into med school?"

  "I was lucky, I got through high school just before the city closed the public schools. And I had an uncle in the militia, who put the screws to a couple of men who owed him a favor. So I got
a scholarship to college and med school."

  "He must have been close to you. I guess it proves you can get ahead if people care about you and love you."

  Simon sighed, feeling he would have to explain the obvious. "You're wrong, Yola. He looked around at the family and decided to give his help to someone who had the brains to get ahead. What's the point of helping somebody who'll never get ahead and be able to pay you back? He helped me, I gave some money to my cousin, so she could get into food distribution, we both paid my uncle back, and all of us forgot about the rest."

  "The rest of who?"

  "The family."

  Yola was quiet. Simon looked at her and thought of a redheaded adolescent at a rooftop party. He remembered how he and Toby Montalvo had stood in a street staring upward, speculating about the lives of the people who flew among buildings as if they were gods. He had always supposed they were happy people.

  "Have another drink, Yola." She held out her glass.

  Yola Kozlowski had lost her shyness after her third drink, and she was not awkward in bed, although Simon sensed her skill was the product of an eagerness to please rather than experience. She continued to caress him after they had finished, until he impatiently brushed her hands away and turned on his side, facing her. She looked at him with her sad eyes, opened her mouth as if she was going to speak, closed it again, then turned over with her back to him.

  Simon lay there silently. He began to doze, feeling as though he were being pulled under the surface of water and then left to float, drifting near the surface, unable to sink and unable to rise. He remained dimly conscious of the woman at his side. Something about her—he could not be sure what it was—made him feel isolated and alone as he drifted. His arms twitched. Something heavy settled on his chest, but instead of pushing him under, into unconsciousness, it pushed him up, up—he was awake.

  A sound buzzed in his ear. Someone was calling him. He pushed the visual black-out button on his phone and picked up the receiver.