At the Post Read online

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  AT THE POST

  By H. L. GOLD

  Illustrated by VIDMER

  [Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science FictionOctober 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that theU.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

  [Sidenote: How does a person come to be scratched from the human race?Psychiatry did not have the answer--perhaps Clocker's turf science did!]

  When Clocker Locke came into the Blue Ribbon, on 49th Street west ofBroadway, he saw that nobody had told Doc Hawkins about his misfortune.Doc, a pub-crawling, non-practicing general practitioner who wrote adaily medical column for a local tabloid, was celebrating his releasefrom the alcoholic ward, but his guests at the rear table of therestaurant weren't in any mood for celebration.

  "What's the matter with you--have you suddenly become immune to liquor?"Clocker heard Doc ask irritably, while Clocker was passing the gemmerchants, who, because they needed natural daylight to do business,were traditionally accorded the tables nearest the windows. "I said thedrinks were on me, didn't I?" Doc insisted. "Now let us have some brightlaughter and sparkling wit, or must we wait until Clocker shows upbefore there is levity in the house?"

  Seeing the others glance toward the door, Doc turned and looked atClocker. His mouth fell open silently, for the first time in Clocker'smemory.

  "Good Lord!" he said after a moment. "Clocker's become a _character_!"

  Clocker felt embarrassed. He still wasn't used to wearing a businesssuit of subdued gray, and black oxfords, instead of his usual brilliantsports jacket, slacks and two-tone suede shoes; a tie with timid littlefigures, whereas he had formerly been an authority on hand-paintedcravats; and a plain wristwatch in place of his spectacular chronograph.

  By all Broadway standards, he knew, Doc was correct--he'd become strangeand eccentric, a character.

  * * * * *

  "It was Zelda's idea," Clocker explained somberly, sitting down andshaking his head at the waiter who ambled over. "She wanted to make agentleman out of me."

  "_Wanted to?_" Doc repeated, bewildered. "You two kids got married justbefore they took my snakes away. Don't tell me you phhtt already!"

  Clocker looked appealingly at the others. They became busy with drinksand paper napkins.

  Naturally, Doc Hawkins knew the background: That Clocker was a racehandicapper--publisher, if you could call it that, of a tiny tipsheet--for Doc, in need of drinking money, had often consulted himprofessionally. Also that Clocker had married Zelda, the noted 52ndStreet stripteuse, who had social aspirations. What remained to be toldhad occurred during Doc's inevitably temporary cure.

  "Isn't anybody going to tell me?" Doc demanded.

  "It was right after you tried to take the warts off a fire hydrant andthey came and got you," said Clocker, "that Zelda started hearingvoices. It got real bad."

  "How bad?"

  "She's at Glendale Center in an upholstered room. I just came back fromvisiting her."

  Doc gulped his entire drink, a positive sign that he was upset, orhappy, or not feeling anything in particular. Now, however, he wasnoticeably upset.

  "Did the psychiatrists give you a diagnosis?" he asked.

  "I got it memorized. Catatonia. Dementia praecox, what they used tocall, one of the brain vets told me, and he said it's hopeless."

  "Rough," said Doc. "Very rough. The outlook is never good in suchcases."

  "Maybe they can't help her," Clocker said harshly, "but I will."

  "People are not horses," Doc reminded him.

  "I've noticed that," said Handy Sam, the armless wonder at the fleacircus, drinking beer because he had an ingrown toenail and couldn'thold a shot glass. Now that Clocker had told the grim story, he feltfree to talk, which he did enthusiastically. "Clocker's got a giantbrain, Doc. Who was it said Warlock'd turn into a dog in his third year?Clocker, the only dopester in the racket. And that's just one--"

  "Zelda was my best flesh act," interrupted Arnold Wilson Wyle, aten-percenter whom video had saved from alimony jail. "A solid boffolain the bop basements. Nobody regrets her sad condition more than me,Clocker, but it's a sure flop, what you got in mind. Think of yourpublic. For instance, what's good at Hialeah? My bar bill is about to beforeclosed and I can use a long shot."

  Clocker bounced his fist on the moist table. "Those couch artists don'tknow what's wrong with Zelda. I do."

  "You do?" Doc asked, startled.

  "Well, almost. I'm so close, I can hear the finish-line cameraclicking."

  Buttonhole grasped Doc's lapel and hung on with characteristic avidity;he was perhaps Clocker's most pious subscriber. "Doping races is ascience. Clocker maybe never doped the human race, but I got nine tofive he can do it. Go on, tell him, Clocker."

  * * * * *

  Doc Hawkins ran together the rings he had been making with the wetbottom of his tumbler. "I shall be most interested," he said withtabloid irony, clearly feeling that immediate disillusionment was themost humane thing for Clocker. "Perhaps we can collaborate on an articlefor the psychiatric journals."

  "All right, look." Clocker pulled out charts resembling those he workedwith when making turf selections. "Zelda's got catatonia, which is thelast heat in the schizophrenia parlay. She used to be a hoofer beforeshe started undressing for dough, and now she does time-steps all day."

  Doc nodded into a fresh glass that the waiter had put before him."Stereotyped movements are typical of catatonia. They derive fromthwarted or repressed instinctual drive; in most instances, the residueof childhood frustrations."

  "She dance all day, huh, Clocker?" asked Oil Pocket, the OklahomaCherokee who, with the income of several wells, was famed for angelingbareback shows. He had a glass of tequila in one hand, the salted halfof a lemon in the other. "She dance good?"

  "That's just it," Clocker said. "She does these time-steps, the firstthing you learn in hoofing, over and over, ten-fifteen hours a day. Andshe keeps talking like she's giving lessons to some jerk kid who can'tget it straight. And she was the kid with the hot routines, remember."

  "The hottest," agreed Arnold Wilson Wyle. "Zelda doing time-steps islike Heifetz fiddling at weddings."

  "I still like to put her in show," Oil Pocket grunted. "She stacked likebrick tepee. Don't have to dance good."

  "You'll have a long wait," observed Doc sympathetically, "in spite ofwhat our young friend here says. Continue, young friend."

  Clocker spread his charts. He needed the whole table. The others removedtheir drinks, Handy Sam putting his on the floor so he could reach itmore easily.

  "This is what I got out of checking all the screwball factories I couldreach personal and by mail," Clocker said. "I went around and talked tothe doctors and watched the patients in the places near here, and wroteto the places I couldn't get to. Then I broke everything down like itwas a stud and track record."

  Buttonhole tugged Doc's lapel. "That ain't scientific, I suppose," hechallenged.

  "Duplication of effort," Doc replied, patiently allowing Buttonhole toretain his grip. "It was all done in an organized fashion over a periodof more than half a century. But let us hear the rest."

  * * * * *

  "First," said Clocker, "there are more male bats than fillies."

  "Females are inherently more stable, perhaps because they have a morebalanced chromosome arrangement."

  "There are more nuts in the brain rackets than labor chumps."

  "Intellectual activity increases the area of conflict."

  "There are less in the sticks than in the cities, and practically noneamong the savages. I me
an real savages," Clocker told Handy Sam, "notmarks for con merchants."

  "I was wondering," Handy Sam admitted.

  "Complex civilization creates psychic insecurity," said Doc.

  "When these catatonics pull out, they don't remember much or maybenothing," Clocker went on, referring to his charts.

  Doc nodded his shaggy white head. "Protective amnesia."

  "I seen hundreds of these mental gimps. They work harder and longer atwhat they're doing, even just laying down and doing