The Men Inside by Barry N. Malzberg

Author:Barry N. Malzberg [Malzberg, Barry N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi & Fantasy
Publisher: Arrow Books
Published: 1976-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

11

Deep in that night, the second night of the operation, Blount awakens from a thick sleep by Yancey’s bed to a state of prenatural alertness. Nerves relay messages of terror; his breath comes unevenly; he feels entrapment: has the old man died in his bed and are these the warnings? He could not bear it if the old man has died for it would be the denial of his own intention—but then again, what would the difference be? The Institute has no culpability for such deaths; there would be a routine investigation and the exonerated Blount would have both the satisfaction of Yancey’s death and freedom from culpability. Nevertheless, why is he peering through the dark as if that dark were to gather into the shape of a hatchet and cleave down upon him? Why is his breathing like that of a trapped dog? Blount wills himself to calm and caution, meanwhile rapidly monitoring the gross physical signs of the sleeping Yancey.

Everything is in order. Systole/diastole continue, pulse is firm at an only slightly watery 97, electrocardiogram is negative, encephelogram shows no disturbance in brain functioning. Eighty-three-year-old Yancey pounds on, as heedless in his sleep of the eternal dark ns would be any athlete. He twitches, murmurs, reaches his hands toward the ceiling in an old man’s embrace and draws something invisible against him. “Oh my dear,“ the sleeping Yancey says, “oh my dear, dear” and the trembling Blount is given to understand, then, that Yancey is opening up some deeper, more sentimental part of himself; there is another Yancey inside this old man, one who must have dreams of love and clutching. Not untouched by sympathetic response, Blount watches with an almost clinical interest.

“Oh I tell you, my dear,” Yancey says gesticulating, “I tell you, this cannot go on much longer, I simply cannot take it” He seems to rise in the bed, pushing wires, tubing, the maze of equipment from him, his body convulsing as he reaches toward the ceiling. Blount feels panic: what will happen to him if the old man somehow wrecks the supportive systems? But that clinical detachment he has already exhibited still controls him; he rubs his hands, looks with anxiety toward the floor, but he does not lean toward Yancey nor make attempts to stop him. Let Yancey wreck the systems if he will, Blount finds himself thinking; let the old man perish in a glitter of glass, a rending of fluids, let the supervisors call an investigation and bring Blount before them for a true discussion of the events leading up to the disaster. Blount will have a few things to say to them as well; he does not have to put up with this kind of thing forever.

I do not have to put up with this kind of thing forever Blount murmurs and Yancey settles back, he subsides on the bed, clasping his hands in an attitude of prayer, therefore absolving his little observer of any crisis.

“Are you there son?” the old man asks quietly.

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