Nancy Kress - The Mountain to Mohammed

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Science Fiction Magazine, April 1992. For the personal use of those who have purchased

the ESF 1993 Award anthology only.

THE MOUNTAIN TO MOHAMMED

Nancy Kress

"A person gives money to the physician.

Maybe he will be healed.

Maybe he will not be healed."

—The Talmud

When the security buzzer sounded, Dr. Jesse Randall was playing go against his

computer. Haruo Kaneko, his roommate at Downstate Medical, had taught him the

game. So far nineteen shiny black and white stones lay on the grid under the scanner

field. Jesse frowned; the computer had a clear shot at surrounding an empty space

in two moves, and he couldn't see how to stop it. The buzzer made him jump.

Anne? But she was on duty at the hospital until one. Or maybe he remembered

her rotation wrong...

Eagerly he crossed the small living room to the security screen. It wasn't Anne.

Three stories below a man stood on the street, staring into the monitor. He was

slight and fair, dressed in jeans and frayed jacket with a knit cap pulled low on his

head. The bottoms of his ears were red with cold.

"Yes?" Jesse said.

"Dr. Randall?" The voice was low and rough.

"Yes."

"Could you come down here a minute to talk to me?"

"About what?"

"Something that needs talkin' about. It's personal. Mike sent me."

A thrill ran through Jesse. This was it, then. He kept his voice neutral. "I'll be

right down."

He turned off the monitor system, removed the memory disk, and carried it into

the bedroom, where he passed it several times over a magnet. In a gym bag he

packed his medical equipment: antiseptics, antibiotics, sutures, clamps, syringes,

electromed scanner, as much equipment as would fit. Once, shoving it all in, he

laughed. He dressed in a warm pea coat bought second-hand at the Army-Navy

store and put the gun, also bought second-hand, in the coat pocket. Although of

course the other man would be carrying. But Jesse liked the feel of it, a slightly

heavy drag on his right side. He replaced the disk in the security system and locked

the door. The computer was still pretending to consider its move for go, although

of course it had near-instantaneous decision capacity.

"Where to?"

The slight man didn't answer. He strode purposefully away from the building,

and Jesse realized he shouldn't have said anything. He followed the man down the

street, carrying the gym bag in his left hand.

Fog had drifted in from the harbor. Boston smelled wet and grey, of rotting

piers and dead fish and garbage. Even here, in the Morningside Security Enclave,

where that part of the apartment maintenance fees left over from security went to

keep the streets clean. Yellow lights gleamed through the gloom, stacked twelve

stories high but crammed close together; even insurables couldn't afford to heat

much space.

Where they were going there wouldn't be any heat at all.

Jesse followed the slight man down the subway steps. The guy paid for both of

them, a piece of quixotic dignity that made Jesse smile. Under the lights he got a

better look: The man was older than he'd thought, with webbed lines around the eyes

and long, thin lips over very bad teeth. Probably hadn't ever had dental coverage in

his life. What had been in his genescan? God, what a system.

"What do I call you?" he said as they waited on the platform. He kept his voice

low, just in case.

"Kenny."

"All right, Kenny," Jesse said, and smiled. Kenny didn't smile back. Jesse told

himself it was ridiculous to feel hurt; this wasn't a social visit. He stared at the tracks

until the subway came.

At this hour the only other riders were three hard-looking men, two black and

one white, and an even harder-looking Hispanic girl in a low-cut red dress. After a

minute Jesse realized she was under the control of one of the black men sitting at the

other end of the car. Jesse was careful not to look at her again. He couldn't help

being curious, though. She looked healthy. All four of them looked healthy, as did

Kenny, except for his teeth. Maybe none of them were uninsurable; maybe they just

couldn't find a job. Or didn't want one. It wasn't his place to judge.

That was the whole point of doing this, wasn't it?

# # #

The other two times had gone as easy as Mike said they would. A deltoid suture

on a young girl wounded in a knife fight, and burn treatment for a baby scalded by a

pot of boiling water knocked off a stove. Both times the families had been so

grateful, so respectful. They knew the risk Jesse was taking. After he'd treated the

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