The Golden Globe

For well over forty years he had been refining what he thought of as the Perfect Day. Thirty years ago he got it right, and he'd pretty much stuck to it since then.

Up at the crack of ten, dress and down to the saloon for breakfast, a double prairie oyster: two raw eggs in a double shot of bourbon. Thus fortified, he strolled three blocks to the barbershop for a hot towel and a shave. (Saturdays, a bath in the back room. Once a fortnight, a haircut.)

Noon would find him standing at the bar, drinking slowly, getting the right edge for siesta. When he woke up at five, lunch of pig's knuckles and pickled eggs. At around six it was poker lessons for the tourists. There was no fee for these and all guests of the disney could play, but tuition was steep. At nine or ten di

Of course, once a week or so, medical business would intrude.

Everyone in Texas knew Doc's office hours were noon to three, and he conducted what routine doctoring was necessary from his post at the bar. Prescriptions were handled by his nurse, Charity, who actually sat in the office from ten till siesta time. She was a bright-eyed, intelligent sixteen-year-old who had been firmly rebuffing Henry's advances since she came of age, three years earlier. She was clever with the stethoscope, with mortar and pestle, the scales, and the pill compressor. In fact, Dr. Wauk could and did leave ninety percent of the medical business to her. There was no call for alarm in this, since Henry was no kind of doctor, anyway. How much worse could the nurse be? She was, in fact, a lot better than Wauk in most things.

When he took the job Henry had made a halfhearted attempt to learn a few basics of first aid, which was all that could be dispensed in Texas, anyway. No sane person would have trusted him to handle much more than a hangnail; if you were sick, you went back to the real world for treatment. If you were injured, emergency services could be at your side in two minutes, tops. Only the mildly ill and the occasional dead ever came to Henry's office. Which was good, because Henry was a fumble-fingered pharmacist, a terrible diagnostician, and any really serious laceration made him queasy. Unfortunately, Charity passed out at the sight of blood, so Henry had to patch up all the scrapes and cuts. Most of the work he did was nothing more complicated than a little antiseptic and a bandage.

Naturally, when he became aware of the knocking, he at first assumed it was a goddam tourist who had lost his way. He snorted, shoved the hat down a little farther over his brow.

The knock came again, a little louder this time. Like a noisy goddam fly you kept brushing away. He already suspected he would have to get up, but he tried one more time to ignore it.

Knock, knock, knock.

Henry sat up, shoved his feet into his boots, and stomped toward the door. He drew the long-barreled Colt .45 pistol from its holster hanging by the door. The gun was loaded with blanks, but they were very loud blanks, and they shot real fire from the barrel. Aimed at someone's face from a range of one foot—which was Henry's intention—a first-degree burn was likely. A first-degree burn which the goddam pest could goddam well get treated out in the goddam real world, where he should have gone in the goddam first place.

"Hold your goddam horses," he said, and jerked the door open. He was about to squeeze the goddam trigger but something stopped him. His visitor was cloaked in a brown robe that reached all the way to the floor. The face was hidden in the shadows of the hood. Some kind of monk? Franciscan, he thought, but there were no monasteries in Texas, and that sort of garb would be frowned on by the Anachronism Committee. So he probably hadn't entered through a public entrance. And there was a darker, wet stain on the robe that might be blood. The figure pulled the hood back slightly, and Henry frowned. The face was bloody, and it looked familiar.

"Sparky?" he asked.

"How are you, Doc?"

"You've grown up."

"Would you mind putting the gun down? It makes me..."

Nervous, Henry was about to finish for him, but Sparky staggered and almost fell forward. Henry caught him and pulled him inside.

"Sorry. I'll be all right."

"What in hell are you doing here?"

Sparky had been a regular in Texas for a while, shortly after his father left for Neptune. He had paid for poker lessons, without complaint, but not for long. Soon he was good enough to be invited to sit with the regulars. But that had all been a long time ago. Sparky had not visited Texas for over a year.

"I need to hide out for a little bit, Doc," he said.

"You're hurt."

"That, too. Can you patch me up? Just temporarily."

"Temporarily is the only way I do things, son, you know that."

"It's nothing serious."

"Looks serious enough to me. Let me see that shoulder."

Sparky slipped the robe down, and Dr. Henry Wauk gasped. He had seldom seen so much blood. It had dried and cracked all over the boy's body, and oozed fresh from half a dozen slash wounds. The beige singlet he wore under the robe had been cut to ribbons. He looked like he'd been mauled by a wild animal.

"Lion-taming lessons," Sparky explained, and tried to smile.

"I know what you've been trying to tame, son, and he ain't civilizable. Now you sit right there and I'm going to call the police and we'll—"

Sparky grabbed Henry's wrist and held on strongly.

"Please, Doc. I'm asking you as a favor from an old poker buddy. Just patch me up, and I'll be on my way."

Henry Wauk looked into the boy's eyes. He seemed about fifteen or sixteen, though he knew his age was closer to thirty. That's what decided him. Wauk had never been much for sticking his nose into other folks' business. If the kid wasn't a minor child, well then, how he chose to live his life was his own business. He sighed.

"Let's get those clothes off. This is going to hurt. A lot."

He had boiled water in jars. He used this to clean the wounds, though he didn't know how sterile his cloths and bandages were. There weren't a lot of dangerous bugs on Luna, even in Texas, but they could not be eliminated entirely. If the wounds got infected, Sparky would have to seek out real help.

"Thank god I can't be sued for malpractice," he muttered.

There was Merthiolate and tincture of iodine. At least the wounds would be colorful. He swabbed with alcohol then wrapped them in the cleanest bandages he had.

Sparky had slashing wounds to his left cheek, his side, both legs, both arms. But the most serious was a deep puncture just below the clavicle. No major veins had been hit, but Henry couldn't stop the wound from seeping blood.

"These are going to leave some mighty fine scars," he said. Sparky continued to stare off into space, as he had since sitting down on the treatment table. He had not cried out, though it must be hurting him.

"I suppose you can have them removed later." He wiped at the nasty slash on the boy's face. It ran across the cheek and had split the bridge of his nose. Luckily, it did not run deep.

"Cat got your tongue, huh?"

"What's that?" Sparky's eyes focused, and he winced. Henry regretted talking; wherever the lad had been, it seemed to be away from the pain.