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THE DOCTOR

by Ted Thomas

When Gant first opened his eyes he thought for an instant he was back

in his home in Pennsylvania. He sat up suddenly and looked wildly around

in the dark of the cave, and then he remembered where he was. The noise

he made frightened his wife and his son, Dun, and they rolled to their feet,

crouched, ready to leap. Gant grunted reassuringly at them and climbed

off the moss-packed platform he had built for a bed. The barest

glimmerings of dawn filtered into the cave, and the remnants of the fire

glowed at the mouth. Gant went to the fire and poked it and put some

chips on it and blew on them. It had been a long time since he had had

such a vivid memory of his old life half a million years away. He looked at

the wall of the cave, at the place where he kept his calendar, painfully

scratched into the rock. It had been ten years ago today when he had

stepped into that molybdenum-steel cylinder in the Bancroft Building at

Pennsylvania State University. What was it he had said? "Sure, I'll try it.

You ought to have a medical doctor in it on the first trial run. You

physicists could not learn anything about the physiological effects of time

travel. Besides, this will make history, and I want to be in on it."

Gant stepped over the fire and listened carefully at the mouth of the

cave, near the log barrier. Outside he heard the sound of rustling brush

and heavy breathing, and he knew he could not leave now. He drank some

water from a gourd and ate some dried bison with his wife and son. They

all ate quietly.

Dawn came, and he stepped to the mouth of the cave and listened. The

great animal had left. He waved to his wife and Dun, dragged aside the

barrier, and went out.

He went along the face of the cliff, staying away from the heavy

underbrush at its foot. He would go into it when he returned, and he

would look for food.

In the marsh that lay beyond the underbrush was one of the many

monuments to his failures. In the rocks and tree stumps there, he had

tried to grow penicillium molds on the sweet juices of some of the berries

that abounded in the region. He had crushed the berries and placed the

juices in a hundred different kinds of receptacles. For three years he had

tried to raise the green mold, but all he ever produced was a slimy gray

mass that quickly rotted when the sun struck it.

He hefted the heavy stone ax in his right hand. As he approached the

cave he was looking for, he grunted loudly and then went in. The people

inside held their weapons in their hands, and he was glad he had called

ahead. He ignored them and went to a back corner to see the little girl.

She sat on the bare stone, leaning against the rock with her mouth

open, staring dully at him as he came up to her, her eyes black against the

thick blond hair that grew on her face. Gant whirled at the others and

snarled at them, and snatched a bearhide from the bed of the man and

carried it to the girl. He wrapped her in it and then felt the part of her

forehead where there was no hair. It was burning hot, must be about 105

degrees, possibly a little more. He put her down on the rock and thumped

her chest and heard the solid, hard sound of filled lungs. It was full-blown

pneumonia, no longer any doubt. She gasped for breath, and there was no

breath. Gant picked her up again and held her. He sat with her for over an

hour, changing her position frequently in his arms, trying to make her

comfortable as she gasped. He held a handful of wet leaves to her forehead

to try to cool her burning face, but it did not seem to help. She went into

convulsions at the end.

He laid the body on a rock ledge and pulled the mother over to see it.

The mother bent and touched the girl gently on the face and then

straightened and looked at Gant helplessly. He picked up the body and

walked out of the cave and down into the woods. It took several hours to

dig a hole deep enough with a stick.

He hunted on the way back to the caves, and he killed a short,

heavy-bodied animal that hung upside down from the lower branches of a

tree. It emitted a foul odor as he killed it, but it would make a good meal.

He found a large rock outcropping with a tiny spring coming out from

under it. A mass of newly sprouted shoots grew in the soggy ground. He

picked them all, and headed back to his cave. His wife and Dun were there

and their faces brightened when they saw what he brought. His wife

immediately laid out the animal and skinned it with a fragment of sharp,

shiny rock. Dun watched her intently, leaning over while it cooked to smell

the fragrant smoke. Gant looked at the short, thick, hairy woman tending

the cooking, and he looked at the boy. He could easily see himself in the

thin-limbed boy. Both his wife and his son had the heavy brows and the

jutting jaw of the cave people. But Dun's body was lean and his eyes were

blue and sparkling, and he often sat close to Gant and tried to go with him

when he went out of the cave. And once, when the lightning blazed and the

thunder roared, Gant had seen the boy standing at the mouth of the cave

staring at the sky in puzzlement, not fear, and Gant had put a hand on his

shoulder and tried to find the words that told of electrical discharges and

the roar of air rushing into a void, but there were no words.

The meat was done and the shoots were softened, and the three of them

squatted at the fire and reached for the food. Outside the cave they heard

the sound of movement in the gravel, and Gant leaped for his club while

his wife and Dun retreated to the rear of the cave. Two men appeared, one

supporting the other, both empty-handed. Gant waited until he could see

that one of them was injured; he could not place his right foot on the

ground. Then Gant came forward and helped the injured man to a sitting

position at the mouth of the cave. He leaned over to inspect the foot. The

region just above the ankle was discolored and badly swollen, and the foot

was at a slight angle to the rest of the leg. Both the fibula and the tibia

seemed to be broken, and Gant stood up and looked around for splints.

The man would probably die; there was no one to take care of him during

the weeks needed for his leg to heal, no one to hunt for him and give him

food and put up with his almost complete inactivity.

Gant found two chips from logs and two short branches and some strips

from a cured hide. He knelt in front of the man and carefully held his

hands near the swollen leg so the man could see he was going to touch it.

The man's great muscles were knotted in pain and his face was gray

beneath the hair. Gant waved the second man around to one side where he

could keep an eye on him, and then he took the broken leg and began to

apply tension. The injured man stood it for a moment and then roared in

pain and instinctively lashed out with his good leg. Gant ducked the kick,

but he could not duck the blow from the second man. It hit him on the

side of the head and knocked him out of the mouth of the cave. He rolled

to his feet and came back in. The second man stood protectively in front of

the injured man, but Gant pushed him aside and knelt down again. The

foot was straight, so Gant placed the chips and branches on the leg and

bound them in place with the leather thongs. Weak and helpless, the

injured man did not resist. Gant stood up and showed the second man

how to carry the injured man. He helped them on their way.

When they left, Gant returned to his food. It was cold, but he was

content. For the first time they had come to him. They were learning. He

hurt his teeth on the hard meat and he gagged on the spongy shoots, but

he squatted in his cave and he smiled. There had been a time long ago

when he had thought that these people would be grateful to him for his

work, that he would become known by some such name as The Healer. Yet

here he was, years later, happy that at last one of them had come to him

with an injury. Yet Gant knew them too well by now to be misled. These

people did not have even the concept of medical treatment, and the day

would probably come when one of them would kill him as he worked.

He sighed, picked up his club and went out of the cave. A mile away was

a man with a long gash in the calf of his left leg. Gant had cleaned it and

packed it with moss and tied it tight with a hide strip. It was time to

check the wound, so he walked the mile carefully, on the lookout for the

large creatures that roamed the forests. The man was chipping rock in

front of his cave, and he nodded his head and waved and showed his teeth

in a friendly gesture when he saw Gant. Gant showed his teeth in turn and

looked at the leg. He saw that the man had removed the moss and

bandage, and had rubbed the great wound with dung. Gant bent to

inspect the wound and immediately smelled the foul smell of corruption.

Near the top of the wound, just beneath the knee, was a mass of black, wet

tissues. Gangrene. Gant straightened and looked around at some of the

others near the cave. He went to them and tried to make them understand

what he wanted to do, but they did not pay much attention. Gant returned

and looked down at the wounded man, noting that his movements were

still quick and coordinated, and that he was as powerfully built as the rest

of them. Gant shook his head; he could not perform the amputation

unaided, and there was no help to be had. He tried again to show them

that the man would die unless they helped him, but it was no use. He left.

He walked along the foot of the cliffs, looking in on the caves. In one he

found a woman with a swollen jaw, in pain. She let him look in her mouth,

and he saw a rotted molar. He sat down with her and with gestures tried

to explain that it would be painful at first if he removed the tooth, but that

it would soon be better. The woman seemed to understand. Gant took up a

fresh branch and scraped a rounded point on one end. He picked up a

rock twice the size of his fist, and placed the woman in a sitting position

with her head resting on his thigh. He placed the end of the stick low on

the gum to make sure he got the root. Carefully he raised the rock,

knowing he would have but one try. He smashed the rock and felt the

tooth give way and saw blood spout from her mouth. She screamed and

leaped to her feet and turned on Gant, but he jumped away. Then

something struck him from behind and he found himself pinned to the

ground with two men sitting on him. They growled at him and one picked

up a rock and the stick and smashed a front tooth from Gant's mouth.

Then they threw him out of the cave. He rolled down through the gravel

and came up short against a bush. He leaped to his feet and charged back

into the cave. One of the men swung a club at him, but he ducked and

slammed the rock against the side of the man's head. The other ran. Gant

went over to the woman, picking as he went a half handful of moss from

the wall of the cave. He stood in front of her and packed some of the moss

in the wound in his front jaw, and leaned over to show her the bleeding

had stopped. He held out the moss to her, and she quickly took some and

put it in the proper place in her jaw, She nodded to him and patted his

arm and rubbed the blood out of the hair on her chin. He left the cave,

without looking at the unconscious man.

Some day they would kill him. His jaw throbbed as he walked along the

gravel shelf and headed for home. There would be no more stops today,

and so he threaded his way along the foot of the cliff. He heard sounds of

activity in several of the caves, and in one of the largest of them he heard

excited voices yelling. He stopped, but his jaw hurt too much to go in. The

noise increased and Gant thought they might be carving up a large kill. He

was always on the lookout for meat, so he changed his mind and went in.

Inside was a boy about the age of Dun, lying on his back, gasping for air.

His face had a bluish tinge, and at each intake of air his muscles tensed

and his back arched with the effort to breathe. Gant pushed to his side

and forced his mouth open. The throat and uvula were greatly swollen, the

air passage almost shut. He quickly examined the boy, but there was no

sign of injury or disease. Gant was puzzled, but then he concluded the boy

must have chewed or eaten a substance to which he was sensitive. He

looked at the throat again. The swelling was continuing. The boy's jutting

jaws made mouth-to-mouth resuscitation impossible. A tracheotomy was

Ted Thomas - The Doctor.pdf

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