The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Stuff, by Henry Slesar
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Title: The Stuff
Author: Henry Slesar
Release Date: March 27, 2016 [EBook #51574]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STUFF ***
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THE STUFF
By HENRY SLESAR
Illustrated by Ritter
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine August 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Would it work? Yes. How would
it work? Exactly like this.
"No more lies," Paula said. "For God's sake, Doctor, no more lies. I've
been living with lies for the past year and I'm tired of them."
Bernstein closed the white door before answering, mercifully obscuring
the sheeted, motionless mound on the hospital bed. He took the young
woman's elbow and walked with her down the tiled corridor.
"He's dying, of course," he said conversationally. "We've never lied to
you about that, Mrs. Hills; you know what we've told you all along. I
hoped that by now you'd feel more resigned."
"I was," she said bitterly. They had stopped in front of Bernstein's
small office and she drew her arm away. "But then you called me. About
this drug of yours--"
"We had to call you. Senopoline can't be administered without
permission of the patient, and since your husband has been in coma for
the last four days--"
He opened the door and nodded her inside. She hesitated, then walked
in. He took his place behind the cluttered desk, his grave face
distracted, and waited until she sat down in the facing chair. He
picked up his telephone receiver, replaced it, shuffled papers, and
then locked his hands on the desk blotter.
"Senopoline is a curious drug," he said. "I've had little experience
with it myself. You may have heard about the controversy surrounding
it."
"No," she whispered. "I don't know about it. I haven't cared about
anything since Andy's illness."
"At any rate, you're the only person in the world that can decide
whether your husband receives it. It's strange stuff, as I said, but in
the light of your husband's present condition, I can tell you this--it
can do him absolutely no harm."
"But it will do him good?"
"There," Bernstein sighed, "is the crux of the controversy, Mrs.
Hills."
* * * * *
Row, row, row your boat, he sang in his mind, feeling the lapping
tongues of the cool lake water against his fingers, drifting, drifting,
under obeisant willows. Paula's hands were resting gently on his eyes
and he lifted them away. Then he kissed the soft palms and pressed them
on his cheek. When he opened his eyes, he was surprised to find that
the boat was a bed, the water only pelting rain against the window, and
the willow trees long shadows on the walls. Only Paula's hands were
real, solid and real and comforting against his face.
He grinned at her. "Funniest damn thing," he said. "For a minute there,
I thought we were back at Finger Lake. Remember that night we sprang a
leak? I'll never forget the way you looked when you saw the hem of your
dress."
"Andy," she said quietly. "Andy, do you know what's happened?"
He scratched his head. "Seems to me Doc Bernstein was in here a while
ago. Or was he? Didn't they jab me again or something?"
"It was a drug, Andy. Don't you remember? They have this new miracle
drug, senopoline. Dr. Bernstein told you about it, said it was worth
the try...."
"Oh, sure, I remember."
He sat up in bed, casually, as if sitting up in bed were an everyday
occurrence. He took a cigarette from the table beside him and lit one.
He smoked reflectively for a moment, and then recalled that he hadn't
been anything but horizontal for almost eight months. Swiftly, he put
his hand on his rib cage and touched the firm flesh.
"The girdle," he said wonderingly. "Where the hell's the girdle?"
"They took it off," Paula said tearfully. "Oh, Andy, they took it off.
You don't need it any more. You're healed, completely healed. It's a
miracle!"
"A miracle...."
She threw her arms about him; they hadn't held each other since the
accident a year ago, the accident that had snapped his spine in several
places. He had been twenty-two when it happened.
* * * * *
They released him from the hospital three days later; after half a year
in the hushed white world, the city outside seemed wildly clamorous and
riotously colorful, like a town at the height of carnival. He had never
felt so well in his life; he was eager to put the strong springs of
his muscles back into play. Bernstein had made the usual speech about
rest, but a week after his discharge Andy and Paula were at the courts
in tennis clothes.
Andy had always been a dedicated player, but his stiff-armed forehand
and poor net game had always prevented him from being anything more
than a passable amateur. Now he was a demon on the court, no ball
escaping his swift-moving racket. He astounded himself with the
accuracy of his crashing serves, his incredible play at the net.
Paula, a junior champion during her college years, couldn't begin to
cope with him; laughingly, she gave up and watched him battle the club
professional. He took the first set 6-0, 6-0, 6-0, and Andy knew that
something more magical than medicinal had happened to him.
They talked it over, excited as schoolchildren, all the way home. Andy,
who had taken a job in a stock-brokerage house after college, and who
had been bored silly with the whole business until the accident, began
wondering if he could make a career on the tennis court.
To make sure his superb playing wasn't a fluke, they returned to the
club the next day. This time, Andy found a former Davis Cup challenger
to compete with. At the end of the afternoon, his heart pounding to
the beat of victory, he knew it was true.
That night, with Paula in his lap, he stroked her long auburn hair and
said: "No, Paula, it's all wrong. I'd like to keep it up, maybe enter
the Nationals, but that's no life for me. It's only a game, after all."
"Only a game?" she said mockingly. "That's a fine thing for the next
top-seeded man to say."
"No, I'm serious. Oh, I don't mean I intend to stay in Wall Street;
that's not my ambition either. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of
painting again."
"Painting? You haven't painted since your freshman year. You think you
can make a living at it?"
"I was always pretty good, you know that. I'd like to try doing some
commercial illustration; that's for the bread and potatoes. Then, when
we don't have to worry about creditors, I'd like to do some things on
my own."
"Don't pull a Gauguin on me, friend." She kissed his cheek lightly.
"Don't desert your wife and family for some Tahitian idyll...."
"What family?"
She pulled away from him and got up to stir the ashes in the fireplace.
When she returned, her face was glowing with the heat of the fire and
warmth of her news.
Andrew Hills, Junior, was born in September. Two years later, little
Denise took over the hand-me-down cradle. By that time, Andy Hills was
signing his name to the magazine covers of America's top-circulation
weeklies, and they were happy to feature it. His added fame as
America's top-ranked amateur tennis champion made the signature all the
more desirable.
* * * * *
When Andrew Junior was three, Andrew Senior made his most important
advance in the field of art--not on the cover of the _Saturday Evening
Post_, but in the halls of the Modern Museum of Art. His first exhibit
evoked such a torrent of superlatives that the _New York Times_ found
the reaction newsworthy enough for a box on the front page. There was
a celebration in the Hills household that night, attended by their
closest friends: copies of slick magazines were ceremoniously burned
and the ashes placed in a dime-store urn that Paula had bought for the
occasion.
A month later, they were signing the documents that entitled them to a
sprawling hilltop house in Westchester, with a north-light glassed-in
studio the size of their former apartment.
He was thirty-five when the urge struck him to rectify a sordid
political situation in their town. His fame as an artist and
tennis-champion (even at thirty-five, he was top-seeded in the
Nationals) gave him an easy entree into the political melee. At first,
the idea of vote-seeking appalled him; but he couldn't retreat once the
movement started. He won easily and was elected to the town council.
The office was a minor one, but he was enough of a celebrity to attract
country-wide attention. During the following year, he began to receive
visits from important men in party circles; in the next state election,
his name was on the ballot. By the time he was forty, Andrew Hills was
a U.S. Senator.
That spring, he and Paula spent a month in Acapulco, in an enchanting
home they had erected in the cool shadows of the steep mountains that
faced the bay. It was there that Andy talked about his future.
"I know what the party's planning," he told his wife, "but I know
they're wrong. I'm not Presidential timber, Paula."
But the decision wasn't necessary; by summer, the Asiatic Alliance had
tired of the incessant talks with the peacemakers and had launched
their attack on the Alaskan frontier. Andy was commissioned at once as
a major.
His gallantry in action, his brilliant recapture of Shaktolik, White
Mountain, and eventual triumphant march into Nome guaranteed him a
place in the High Command of the Allied Armies.
By the end of the first year of fighting, there were two silver stars
on his shoulder and he was given the most critical assignment of
all--to represent the Allies in the negotiations that were taking place
in Fox Island in the Aleutians. Later, he denied that he was solely
responsible for the successful culmination of the peace talks, but
the American populace thought him hero enough to sweep him into the
White House the following year in a landslide victory unparalleled in
political history.
He was fifty by the time he left Washington, but his greatest triumphs
were yet to come. In his second term, his interest in the World
Organization had given him a major role in world politics. As First
Secretary of the World Council, his ability to effect a working
compromise between the ideological factions was directly responsible
for the establishment of the World Government.
When he was sixty-four, Andrew Hills was elected World President, and
he held the office until his voluntary retirement at seventy-five.
Still active and vigorous, still capable of a commanding tennis game,
of a painting that set art circles gasping, he and Paula moved
permanently into the house in Acapulco.
He was ninety-six when the fatigue of living overtook him. Andrew
Junior, with his four grandchildren, and Denise, with her charming
twins, paid him one last visit before he took to his bed.
* * * * *
"But what _is_ the stuff?" Paula said. "Does it cure or what? I have a
right to know!"
Dr. Bernstein frowned. "It's rather hard to describe. It has no
curative powers. It's more in the nature of a hypnotic drug, but it has
a rather peculiar effect. It provokes a dream."
"A dream?"
"Yes. An incredibly long and detailed dream, in which the patient lives
an entire lifetime, and lives it just the way he would like it to be.
You might say it's an opiate, but the most humane one ever developed."
Paula looked down at the still figure on the bed. His hand was moving
slowly across the bed-sheet, the fingers groping toward her.
"Andy," she breathed. "Andy darling...."
His hand fell across hers, the touch feeble and aged.
"Paula," he whispered, "say good-by to the children for me."
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