"Some of us did refuse to work," Rush said softly. "I did, for one. Perhaps you think that we alone will bear the blame. You are wrong. Sooner or later the stigma will spread to all of the sciences—and to you, doctor. Too many now that you can't save; in a little while the hate will surround you also. When we are gone and they must find something new to hate they will blame you for every malformed baby and every death. You think that one of you will find a cure for this thing. Perhaps you would if you had a hundred years or a thousand years, but you haven't. They killed a man on the street in New York the other day because he was wearing a white laboratory smock. What do you wear in your office, doctor? Hate-blind eyes can't tell the difference: Physicist, chemist, doctor.... We all look the same to a fool. Even if there were a cancer cure that is only a part of the problem. There are the babies. Your science cannot cope with the cause—only mine can do that."
The doctor lowered his head and turned away toward the door.
There was another thing left to say: "If the plumbing went bad in your home, doctor, you would call a plumber, for he would be the one competent to fix it." Rush shook his head slowly. "But what happens when there are no plumbers left?"
The children were by the bed, their hands holding those of the mother. Gently John Rush tugged those hands away and led them toward their own bed. The small hands were cold in his own and he felt a tiny feeling of revulsion as they tightened. Then the feeling slipped away and was replaced—as if a current had crossed from their hands to his. It was a warm feeling—one that he had known before when they touched him, but for which he had never been able to find mental words to express the sensation.
Slowly he helped them undress. When they were in the single bed he covered them with the top sheet. Their milky eyes surveyed him, unseeing, somehow withdrawn.
"I have not known you well," he said. "I left that to her. I have sat and brooded and buried myself in the earth until it is too late for much else." He touched the small heads. "I wish you could hear me. I wish ..."
Outside on the road a truck roared past. Instinctively he set to hear it. The faces below him did not change.
He turned away quickly then and went back out on the porch. He filled his pipe and sat down in the old, creaky rocker. A tiny rain had begun to fall hesitantly—as if afraid of striking the sun-hardened ground.
Somewhere out there, somewhere hunted, but not found, the plumbers gathered. There had been a man—what was his name? Masser—that was it. He had been working on a way to inhibit radioactivity—speed up the half-life until they had taken the grant away. If a man can do whatever he thinks of—can he undo that which he has done?