Ballroom of the Skies by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

forty-two, Doctor,” the nurse said softly, releasing the slack wrist.
    “Tried every stimulant in the books, Mr. Lorin. No dice.”
    “What’s your prognosis?”
    “He just doesn’t react to anything. Thought of encephaloma at first. Doesn’t check out. It looks like he’s just going to keep slowing down until he … stops. And there’s no key in the back to wind him up. Damn unprofessional opinion, I guess, but that’s the best I can do. Everybody in the place has seen him and suggested things. None of them work.”
    “Do you mind if I stay with him?”
    “How about family? We’ve been unable to locate any.”
    “There isn’t any.”
    “You can stay around if you want. I’ll send an orderly in with another chair. From the way it looks, I don’t think you’ll have a long wait.”
    “You’ve never seen anything like it before, or heard of it?”
    The young doctor frowned. “I’ve never seen one before. But I’ve heard rumors of others. Usually important people, come to think of it. They just seem to get … tired.”
    The doctor went out. An orderly brought another chair. Dake sat on the other side of the high bed from the nurse. He was on Darwin Branson’s left side. He looked at the slack hand resting on the white sheet. Time now to forget the quarrel, and remember the better things—the good talks, the flexibility and dexterity of that wise brain.
    “In my gullible years, Dake, back when I used to believe in statistics, I made a personal survey of the quality of major decisions and charted them. Of course, on the quality angle, I was being a Monday morning quarterback. I came up with a neat graph which alarmed me. Men of influence all over the world, men in high places, make wise decisions and the world improves. Then, all at once, their quality of judgment becomes impaired and the world suffers for it. They move in a vast confused flock, like sack-suited lemmings. Horrors, I was face to face with a cycle. Sun spots, addling the brains of men. Some alien virus in the air. Or God, perhaps, assuring his children of their suffering on earth.”
    “Did you find an answer?”
    “Only in myself, where perhaps each man must find his answers. I resolved to so codify my beliefs that should I ever find myself tempted to betray my own philosophy, I would merely have to refer to my mental outline and make the decision which I would have made were I not subject to the cycle. I decided to risk Emerson’s indictment of small minds.”
    And yet, thought Dake, you turned your back on your own beliefs only yesterday. You destroyed the labor of afull year. Horrid timing. You became ill a day too late, Darwin.
    No more of those long good talks, no more of the knowledge of working for the greatest good of mankind.
    “Dake, we seem to supply ourselves with destructive dreams. Chief among these is the Space Dream. It goes like this: We have made such a mess of our world that it is of no use to attempt to bring order out of our chaos. So save our best efforts for the next green world. Tomorrow the moon, next week the planets, next year the galaxy. We’ll spread through the heavens, and our seed will be the bronzed, steel-eyed pioneers, and their fertile women, making green wonderlands for us in the sky. That dream, Dake, eases the conscience of those who are doing less than their best. Thus it saps our energies. ‘This is man’s world. We must live here. We will never reach the stars.’ I would like to see every man believe that. And then if, in a thousand years, we break free, it will be pure profit—and we will have something besides hate and conflict to take along with us on the gleaming ships.”
    Dake thought how incredible it was that Darwin Branson should, on the last day of his life, make his first venture into opportunism.
    He looked at the left hand, and then looked more closely, his breath catching in his throat. He remembered the scene just before he had left to meet Smith. Branson, being