Tilting the Balance

“Who isn’t, these days? ” Dr. Sharp said. “Government’s just about the last thing left that’s working-and it isn’t working what you’d call well. God only knows how we’re supposed to hold an election for President next year, what with the Lizards holding down half the country and beating the tar out of the half. ”

“I hadn’t thought of that, ” Jens admitted. It was an interesting problem from a theoretical point of view: as a theoretical physicist, he could appreciate that. The only even remotely similar election would have been the one of 1864, and by then North had pretty much won the Civil War; it wasn’t invaded itself. “Maybe FDR has volunteered for the duration. ”

“Maybe he has, ” Sharp said. “Damned if I know who’d run against him anyhow, or how he’d campaign if he did. ”

“Yeah, ” Jens said. “Look, Doc, if you don’t have any medication that’ll help me, what am I supposed to do about what I’ve got? ”

Dr Sharp sighed. “Live with it as best you can. I don’t know what else to tell you. The drugs we’ve been getting the past few years, they’ve let us take a real bite out of germs for the first time ever. I felt like I was really doing something worthwhile. And now I’m just an herb-and-root man again, same as my grandpa back before the turn of the century. Oh, maybe a better surgeon than Gramps was, and, I know about asepsis and he didn’t, but that’s about it. I’m sorry, son, I don’t have anything special to give you. ”

“I’m sorry, too, ” Larssen said. “Do you think I’m likely to find any other doctors who have the drugs you were talking about? ” Even if the acriflavine treatment sounded worse than the disease it was supposed to help, at least it would be over pretty soon. You got gonorrhea for keeps.

“Nobody else here in Ogden, that’s for damn sure, ” Dr Sharp answered. “We share what we have, not that it’s much. Your best bet would be some fellow in a little town who hasn’t used up all his supplies and doesn’t mind sharing them with strangers passing through. A lot of that kind, though, won’t treat anybody but the people they live with. It’s like we’re going back to tribes instead of being one country any more. ”

Jens nodded. “I’ve seen that, too. I don’t much like it, but I don’t know what to do about it, either. ” Before the Lizards came, he’d taken for granted the notion of a country stretching from sea to shining sea. Now he saw it was an artificial construct, built on the unspoken agreement of citizens and on long freedom from internal strife. He wondered how many other things he’d taken for granted weren’t as self-evident as they seemed to be.

Like Barbara always loving you, for instance, he thought.

Dr. Sharp stuck out a hand. “Sorry I couldn’t help you more, son. No charge, not when I didn’t do anything. Good luck to you. ”

“Thanks a bunch, Doc. ” Larssen picked up the rifle he propped in a corner of the office, slung it over his should and left without shaking hands. Sharp stared after him, but you didn’t want to get huffy with somebody packing a gun.

Jens had chained his bicycle to a telephone pole outside the doctor’s office. It was still there when he went out to get it. Looking up and down Washington Boulevard (which US 89 turned into when it ran through Ogden), he saw quite a few bikes parked with no chains at all. The Mormons were still trusting people. His mouth twisted. He’d been trusting, too, and look where it had got him.

“In Ogden goddamn Utah, on my way to a job nobody else wants, ” he muttered. A fellow, in overalls driving a horse-drawn wagon down the street gave him a reproachful stare. He glared back so fiercely that Mr. Overalls went back to minding his own business, which was a pretty good idea any way you looked at it.

A puff of breeze from the west brought the smell of the Great Salt Lake to his nostrils. Ogden lay in a narrow stretch of ground between the lake and the forest-covered Wasatch Mountains. Larssen had grown used to the tang of the sea his grad school days out in Berkeley, but the Great Salt Lake odor was a lot stronger, almost unpleasant.

He’d heard you floated there, that you couldn’t sink even if wanted to. Wish I could throw Yeager in, and find out by experiment, he thought. And that waitress, too. I’d hold ’em under if they didn’t drown on their own.

He stowed the chain, swung up onto his bike, and started pedaling north up Washington. He rolled past City Hall Park the three-story brick pile of the Broom Hotel, with its eighteen odd, bulging windows: Another three-story building, at the corner of Twenty-fourth Street, had the wooden statue of a horse atop it, complete with a tail that streamed in the breeze.

He had to stop there to let a convoy of wagons head west down Twenty-fourth. While he waited, he turned to a fellow on horseback and asked, “You live here? ” When the man nodded, went on, “What’s the story of the horse? ” He pointed to the statue.

“Oh, Nigger Boy? ” the man said. “He was a local racehorse, he’d beat critters you couldn’t believe if you didn’t see it. Now he’s the best weather forecaster in town. ”

“Oh, yeah? ” Jens said. “How’s that? ”