The Furious Future: Stories by Algis Budrys

Author:Algis Budrys [Budrys, Algis]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2016-02-01T16:00:00+00:00

CONTACT BETWEEN EQUALS

ALICIA came over to my daybed with a rustle of cotton and a whisper of silk, and bent over me with a breath of perfume. ‘Will? It’s time. Are you awake, Will?’

Awake? Because I’d been lying there motionless, it hadn’t occurred to her that I might be counting the chimes from the clock in its hand-rubbed wooden case on the mantel.

‘Dr. Champley’s here, Will.’

‘I know. I heard him drive up.’ I opened my eyes with a brush of lashes against the loosely-wound gauze that swathed my head, and let in the light.

The light was white. Alicia’d taught me during the past week—she’d played colored lights on the gauze, and taught me the names of the colors. We had also talked about perceptive, and about the perception of shape and texture from a distance; I’m sure Dr. Champley had outlined a program of education, to get me a little reorientated ahead of time.

Alicia had been surprised how easily it had gone. She ought not to have been. I’d listened to talking books all my life, and there was radio, of course. And forty years of hearing people in conversation around me. I was a graduate of Harvard Business School. I was a millionaire—five and six times the millionaire my father had been. That did not happen by accident. It could not have happened to a man who did not think intelligently, analytically, and systematically. I had an exact picture of the world, in one-to-one correspondence with the world perceived by the sighted. My reorientation would consist of no more than simple transposition from one system to the other.

Champley had gotten out of his car, parked on the gravel road fronting the cottage. He came up the flagstone steps to the porch, opened the screen door, crossed the porch, knocked briefly, opened the front door, and stepped briskly into the room. The screen door of the porch sighed shut on its air spring, and latched.

‘Hello, Doctor,’ Alicia said.

‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Schaeffer. Is Mr. Schaeffer awake?’

It was a long speech for him. I put it away in my mind, to flesh out what little I knew about him.

Up to now, he’d been little more than someone Alicia’d talked about a great deal; the famous, brilliant young surgeon who’d become interested in William Schaeffer’s case, and who thought he could do something about it. I’d taken considerable thought on all the factors involved. But Champley had been all business during the brief examination in his office—a few gentle touches around the face, a lifting of my lids, a click of the unseen flashlight, a thoughtful grunt or two, and one muttered word: ‘Maybe.’

No buttering up, no bedside manner. I’d liked that. All the other verdicts had come from men who went through elaborate lectures to hide their inability. And it was always definite: ’Yes’, or ‘no’. The second had at least been right. The first had been humbug.

Well, Champley’d brought it off, as far as we could tell at the moment. Alicia said it had only taken an hour’s operating time.

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