The Years of the City by Frederik Pohl

Author:Frederik Pohl
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-04-12T16:00:00+00:00

IV

The police report was stark and skimpy. Police Officer Lucille R. Sempler had been on regular patrol duty on South Water Street, checked in by radio at seventeen hundred thirty hours, was overdue for her eighteen hundred hours report. In the interim she had made no calls nor were any transmitted to her. On failure to report a search was instituted and Police Officers William Gutmacher and Alicia Mack found her suffering blunt-instrument wounds to the head and several lacerations, apparently the result of a struggle, in an entryway. No witnesses. No known motive. Police lab was investigating physical evidence. The investigation would continue.

The police themselves were not much more informative, not out of policy but because they knew nothing. “Lucy was always looking for something wrong,” said her precinct captain. “Probably it was somebody she busted. We’re checking everything—and she was one hell of a fine lady,” he added.

Bratislaw, too, thought Lucy was a fine lady. He knew that his wife felt more strongly than that; but he was not prepared for just how much Heidi cared.

Bratislaw knew about pregnant women; he had a sister sixteen years younger than himself, and he remembered the months before she had been born. Morning sickness he was ready for, and it came. A failing interest in making love he suspected, and that came, too. But his mother had not had a dear sister nearly murdered in her first month, and so there was nothing to prepare him for Heidi’s unending, dry-eyed sorrow. She had given up gaiety. When he came home late at night she was almost always already in bed—and almost never asleep, though she pretended to be. He tested her to be sure. After a week of it, he rolled over in bed, changed position a time or two and then let his breathing become slow and nasal. Sure enough. A few minutes later Heidi slipped out of bed and retreated silently to the living room, where he found her sitting unmoving and unoccupied by the window. When he spoke she didn’t answer.

Every day Heidi hurried from her work to the hospital to spend an hour at Lucy’s bedside. She didn’t ask Bratislaw to go with her, but worry made him volunteer. It was astonishing. In her sister’s presence Heidi was Heidi again, sparkles and smiles and gossip and plans for what they would all do when Lucy “got better.” And, of course, Lucy’s mummy-wrapped head did not respond. Could not respond. Could only gurgle past the tubes in her mouth, or twitch the restless fingers on the sheet. When they were outside, Bratislaw said, “Honey? It’s not much good making plans for when she gets better. She isn’t going to get better. She doesn’t even really hear you.”

Heidi did not either flare up or cry. The mask was on her face again. “They’re going to send her to a skinner,” she observed detachedly.

“That’s good,” said Bratislaw, meaning, That’s the same as being dead, anyway, isn’t it? A lot could

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