Read Online To the Land of the Living by Robert Silverberg - Free Book Online

blood flowed. Gilgamesh hissed sharply but did not flinch.
    “
Ach mein lieber Freund
, I must hurt you again, but it is for your own good.
Verstehen Sie
?”
    The doctor’s fingers dug in more deeply. He was spreading the wound, swabbing it, cleansing it with some clear fluid that stung like a hot iron. The pain was so intense that there was almost a kind of pleasure in it: it was a purifying kind of pain, a purging of the soul.
    Prester John said, “How bad is it, Dr Schweitzer?”
    “Gott sei Dank
, it is deep but clean. He will heal without damage.”
    He continued to probe and cleanse, murmuring softly to Gilgamesh as he worked: “
Bitte. Bitte. Einen Augenblick, mein Freund
.” To Prester John he said, “This man is made of steel. No nerves at all, immense resistance to pain. We have one of the great heroes here,
nicht wahr
? You are Roland, are you? Achilles, perhaps?”
    “Gilgamesh is his name,” said Yeh-lu Ta-shih.
    The doctor’s eyes grew bright. “Gilgamesh! Gilgamesh of Sumer?
Wunderbar! Wunderbar
! The very man. The seeker after everlasting life.
Ach
, we must talk, my friend, you and I, when you are feeling better.” From his medical kit he now produced a frightful-looking hypodermic syringe. Gilgamesh watched as though from a vast distance, as though that throbbing swollen arm belonged to someone else. “
Ja, ja
, certainly we must talk, of life, of death, of philosophy,
mein Freund
, of
philosophy
! There is so very much for us to discuss!” He slipped the needle beneath Gilgamesh’s skin. “There.
Genug
. Sit. Rest. The healing now begins.”
    Robert Howard had never seen anything like it. It could have been something straight from the pages of one of his Conan stories. The big ox had taken an arrow right through the fat part of his arm, and he had simply yanked it out and gone right on fighting. Then, afterward, he had behaved as if the wound were nothing more than a scratch, all that time while they were driving hour after hour toward Prester John’s city andthen undergoing lengthy interrogation by the court officials and then standing through this whole endless ceremony at court – God almighty, what a display of endurance! True, Gilgamesh had finally gone a little wobbly and had actually seemed on the verge of passing out. But any ordinary mortal would have conked out long ago. Heroes really
were
different. They were another breed altogether. Look at him now, sitting there casually while that old German medic swabs him out and stitches him up in that slapdash cavalier way, and not a whimper out of him. Not a whimper!
    Suddenly Howard found himself wanting to go over there to Gilgamesh, to comfort him, to let him lean his head back against him while the doctor worked him over, to wipe the sweat from his brow –
    Yes, to comfort him in an open, rugged, manly way –
    No. No. No. No.
    There it was again, the horror, the unspeakable thing, the hideous crawling, the hell-born impulse rising out of the cesspools of his soul –
    Howard fought it back. Blotted it out, hid it from view. Denied that it had ever entered his mind.
    To Lovecraft he said, “That’s some doctor! Took his medical degree at the Chicago slaughterhouses, I reckon!”
    “Don’t you know who he is, Bob?”
    “Some old Dutchman who wandered in here during a sandstorm and never bothered to leave.”
    “Does the name of Dr Schweitzer mean nothing to you?”
    Howard gave Lovecraft a blank look. “Guess I never heard it much in Texas.”
    “Oh, Bob, Bob, why must you always pretend to be such a cowboy? Can you tell me you’ve never heard of Schweitzer?
Albert
Schweitzer? The great philosopher, theologian, musician – there never was a greater interpreter of Bach, and don’t tell me you don’t know Bach either –”
    “She-it, H.P. Philosopher? Musician? You talking about that old country doctor there?”
    “Who founded the leprosy clinic in Africa, at Lambarene, yes. Who devoted his life to helping the sick,