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He picked up his bag and started for the door.
"Anyone else, Doc?" Hart pleaded, in a conciliatory tone. "Anyone who'd know?"
"I doubt it," Doc snapped.
"You mean there's — no one- who can do a thing? Is that what you're trying to say?"
"Look, son. Human doctors treat human beings, period. Why should we be expected to do more? How often are we called upon to treat an alien? We're not — expected- to treat aliens. Oh, possibly, once in a while some specialist or researcher may dabble in alien medicine. But that is the correct name for it — just plain dabbling. It takes years of a man's life to learn barely enough to qualify as a human doctor. How many lifetimes do you think we should devote to curing aliens?"
"All right, Doc. All right."
"And how can you even be sure there" s. something wrong with it?"
"Why, it was crying and I quite naturally thought —»
"It might have been lonesome or frightened or grieving. It might have been lost."
Doc turned to the door again.
"Thanks, Doc," Hart said.
"Not at all." The old man hesitated at the door. "You don't happen to have a dollar, do you? Somehow, I ran a little short."
"Here," said Hart, giving him a bill.
"I'll return it tomorrow," Doc promised. He went clumping down the stairs.
Angela frowned. "You shouldn't have done that, Kemp. Now he'll get drunk and you'll be responsible."
"Not on a dollar," Hart said confidently. "That's all you know about it. The kind of stuff Doc drinks —»
"Let him get drunk then. He deserves a little fun."
"But — " Angela motioned to the thing upon the bed.
"You heard what Doc said. He can't do anything. No one can do anything. When it wakes up — if it wakes up
• it may be able to tell us what is wrong with it. But I'm not counting on that."
He walked over to the bed and stared down at the creature. It was repulsive and abhorrent and not in the least humanoid. But there was about it a pitiful loneliness and an incongruity that made a catch come to his
throat.
"Maybe I should have left it in the areaway," he said. "I started to walk on. But when it began to cry again I went back to it. Maybe I did wrong bothering with it at all. I haven't helped it any. If I'd left it there it might have turned out better. Some other aliens may be looking for it by now."
"You did right," said Angela. "Don't start in fighting with windmills."
She crossed the room and sat down in a chair. He went over to the window and stared somberly out across the city.
"What happened to you?" she asked. "Nothing."
"But your clothes. Just look at your clothes."
"I got thrown out of a dive. I tried to take some film."
"Without paying for it."
"I didn't have the money."
"I offered you a fifty."
"I know you did. But I couldn't take it. Don't you understand, Angela? — I simply couldn't take it. — "
She said softly, "You're bad off, Kemp."
He swung around, outraged. She hadn't needed to say that. She had no right to say it. She — He caught himself up before the words came tumbling out
She had a right. She'd offered him a fifty — but that had been only a part of it. She had the right to say it because she knew that she could say it. No one else in all the world could have felt the way she did, about him.
"I can't write," he said. "Angela, no matter how I try, I can't make it come out right. The machine is haywire and the tapes are threadbare and most of them are patched."
"What have you had to eat today?"
"I had the beers with you and I had some — bocca-."
"That isn't eating. You wash your face and change into some different clothes and we'll go downstairs and get you some food."
"I have eating money."
"I know you have. You told me about the advance from Irving."
"It wasn't an advance."
"I know it wasn't, Kemp."
"What about the alien?"
"It'll be all right — at least long enough for you to get a bite to eat. You can't help it by standing here. You don't know how to help it."
"I guess you're right."
"Of course I am. Now get going and wash your dirty face. And don't forget your ears."
Jasper Hansen was alone in the Bright Star bar. They went over to his table and sat down. Jasper was finishing a dish of sauerkraut and pig's knuckles and was drinking wine with it, which seemed a bit blasphemous.
"Where's everyone else?" asked Angela. "There's a party down the street," said Jasper. "Someone sold a book."
"Someone that we know?"
"Hell, no," Jasper said. "Just someone sold a book. You don't have to know a guy to go to his party when he sells a book."
"I didn't hear anything about it."
"Neither did the rest of the bunch. Someone looked in at the door and hollered about the party and everyone took off. Everyone but me. I can't monkey with no party. I've got work to do."
"Free food?" asked Angela.
"Yeah. Don't it beat you, though. Here we are, honorable and respected craftsmen, and every one of us will break a leg to grab himself a sandwich and a drink."
"Times are tough," said Hart.
"Not with me," said Jasper. "I keep working all the time."
"But work doesn't solve the main problem."
Jasper regarded him thoughtfully, tugging at his chin.
"What else is there?" he demanded. "Inspiration? Dedication? Genius? Go ahead and name it. We are rnechanics, man. We got machines and tapes. We went into top production two hundred years ago. We mechanized so we could go into top production so that people could turn out books and stories even if they had no talent at all. We got a job to do. We got to turn out tons of drivel for the whole damn galaxy. We got to keep them drooling over what is going to happen next to sloe-eyed A
He reached for an evening paper, opened it to a certain page and thumped his fist upon it.
"Did you see this?" he asked. "The Classic, they call it. Guaranteed to turn out nothing but a classic."
Hart snatched the paper from him and there it was, the wondrous yarner he had seen that morning, confronting him in all its glory from the center of a full-page
"Pretty soon," said Jasper, "all you'll need to write is have a lot of money. You can go out and buy a machine like that and say turn out a story and press a button or flip a switch or maybe simply kick it and it'll cough out a story complete to the final exclamation point.
"It used to be that you could buy an old beat-up machine for, say, a hundred dollars and you could turn out any quantity of stuff — not good, but salable. Today you got to have a high-priced machine and an expensive camera and a lot of special tape and film. Someday," he said, "the human race will outwit itself. Someday it will mechanize to the point where there won't be room for humans, but only for machines."
"You do all right," said Angela.
"That's because I keep dinging my machine up all the time. It don't give me no rest. That place of mine is half study and half machine shop and I know as much about electronics as I do about narration."
Blake came shuffling over.
"What'll it be?" he growled.
"I've eaten," Angela told him. "All I want is a glass of beer."
He turned to Hart. "How about you" he demanded.
"Give me some of that stuff Jasper has — without the wine.
"No cuff," said Blake.
"Damn it, who said anything about cuff? Do you expect me to pay you before you bring it?"
"No," said Blake. "But immediately, after I bring it."
He turned and shuffled off.
"Some day," said Jasper, "there has to be a limit to it. There must be a limit to it and we must be reaching it. You can only mechanize so far. You can assign only so many human activities and duties to intelligent machines. Who, two hundred years ago, would have said that the writing of fiction could have been reduced to a matter of mechanics?"