Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester Read Free

fever and decided it was an alien ward. For spies only.
    St. Albans enlisted the help of the kitchen staff and checked the food trays. Twenty-four trays went into Ward T three times a day. Twenty-four came out. Sometimes the returning trays were emptied. Most times they were untouched.
    Public opinion started to run a fever and decided it was a racket. It was an informal club of goldbricks and staff grafters who caroused within. Cow dee on us eager tour indeed!
    For gossip, a hospital can put a small town sewing circle to shame with ease, but sick people are easily goaded into passion by trivia. It took just three months for idle speculation to turn into downright fury. In January, 2112, St. Albans was a sound, well-run hospital. By March, 2112, St. Albans was in a ferment, and the psychological unrest found its way into the official records. The percentage of recoveries fell off. Malingering set in. Petty infractions increased. Mutinies flared. There was a staff shake-up. It did no good. Ward T was inciting the patients to riot. There was another shake-up, and another, and still the unrest fumed.
    The news finally reached General Carpenter’s desk through official channels.
    “In our fight for the American Dream,” he said, “we must not ignore those who have already given of themselves. Send me a Hospital Administration expert.”
    The expert was delivered. He could do nothing to heal St. Albans. General Carpenter read the reports and fired him.
    “Pity,” said General Carpenter, “is the first ingredient of civilization. Send me a Surgeon General.”
    A Surgeon General was delivered. He could not break the fury of St. Albans, and General Carpenter broke him. But by this time Ward T was being mentioned in the dispatches.
    “Send me,” General Carpenter said, “the expert in charge of Ward T.”
    St. Albans sent a doctor, Captain Edsel Dimmock. He was a stout young man, already bald, only three years out of medical school, but with a fine record as an expert in psychotherapy. General Carpenter liked experts. He liked Dimmock. Dimmock adored the general as the spokesman for a culture which he had been too specially trained to seek up to now, but which he hoped to enjoy after the war was won.
    “Now look here, Dimmock,” General Carpenter began. “We’re all of us tools, today—hardened and sharpened to do a specific job. You know our motto: a job for everyone and everyone on the job. Somebody’s not on the job at Ward T and we’ve got to kick him out. Now, in the first place what the hell is Ward T?”
    Dimmock stuttered and fumbled. Finally he explained that it was a special ward set up for special combat cases. Shock cases.
    “Then you do have patients in the ward?”
    “Yes, sir. Ten women and fourteen men.”
    Carpenter brandished a sheaf of reports. “Says here the St. Albans patients claim nobody’s in Ward T.”
    Dimmock was shocked. That was untrue, he assured the general.
    “All right, Dimmock. So you’ve got your twenty-four crocks in there. Their job’s to get well. Your job’s to cure them. What the hell’s upsetting the hospital about that?”
    “W-well, sir. Perhaps it’s because we keep them locked up.”
    “You keep Ward T locked?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Why?”
    “To keep the patients in, General Carpenter.”
    “Keep ’em in? What d’you mean? Are they trying to get out? They violent, or something?”
    “No, sir. Not violent.”
    “Dimmock, I don’t like your attitude. You’re acting damned sneaky and evasive. And I’ll tell you something else I don’t like. That T classification. I checked with a Filing Expert from the Medical Corps and there is no T classification. What the hell are you up to at St. Albans?”
    “W-well, sir … We invented the T classification. It … They … They’re rather special cases, sir. We don’t know what to do about them or how to handle them. W-we’ve been trying to keep it quiet until we’ve worked out a modus operandi, but it’s