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Please come back with me."
"You want company?" Mildred asked.
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"No," J.B. replied, his tone sharp.
"Whoa! Excuse me for asking!"
The Armorer's tone softened. "I mean, no. I'd rather do it myself."
Mildred looked at her lover with an odd expression. "I'll wait out here, then."
"This shouldn't take long," Clarke told her. "Usually what eats up the time is the
trial and error of matching the right lenses to his eyes. I don't have the luxury of
writing him a prescription and sending him on his way. We have to go through the
boxes, hoping to find frames and lenses in the same package that fit."
The examining room was lined with cabinets on three sides, a salmon pink series
of upper cabinets and lower cabinets. A black countertop ran along the tops of the
lower. The fourth wall was cabinetless, and dotted with various eye charts and
diagrams of the interior of the eye.
Some gear J.B. didn't recognize was on wheels in a corner. Four three-legged
stools were lined up along one of the cluttered counters.
"You do a lot of business? With glasses, I mean," he asked.
"Sure. No matter what, you've got people with failing vision. I do some work with
contact lenses, too, but those are much more troublesome to match up to an
individual and finding proper cleaning fluid's a bitch," Clarke replied as he peered
intently at J.B.'s open eyes. His attention was drawn to the white slashes of the
various adhesive bandages on J.B.'s frowning visage.
"What happened to your face, if you don't mind my asking?"
"Cut myself shaving."
"On your forehead?"
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J.B. gave the optician a scathing look. "That's why I need glasses."
"Very well," Clarke said, letting the matter drop. "But I warn you now, you're
going to have to talk to me if you want my help. I have no use for a man who
grunts and speaks in monosyllables. If I'm to treat you, I must have your
cooperation."
"Okay. I'm used to keeping my own counsel."
"You don't have to with me, not in here. Did you know that before predark, half
the population of the United States wore some kind of glasses or corrective
lenses?"
"Half?" J.B. said dubiously. "Don't see that many people running around with
specs anymore."
"I know. In those days, increased life expectancy was the cause for the added
eyestrain. See, around, oh, I don't know, the year 1900 or so, the average life span
of an American was only forty-seven years. More disease and harder work
combined to kill a man much earlier then, and this was around the same time
when his vision began to fail anyway due to natural causes."
"Everything's got to wear out," J.B. said.
"Agreed," Clarke replied. "However, by the year 2000, a man's life span had
increased to seventy-five years."
"Really."
"Yes. So, not only were people living longer, but they were better educated, which
meant more reading, and much of the technology was vision driven, which caused
even more wear on the eyes. Television and comp monitors. Very bad."
"Not anymore," J.B. remarked wryly.. Clarke continued with the explanation.
"Then, after we managed to take out most of civilization with nukes and chems
and God knows what else, another hundred years pass and in a century's time the
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life expectancy rate has dropped to a dreadfully low figure."
"How do you figure that?"
"I keep my own records. No census bureau to track it anymore," Clarke said
breezily. He gestured to one of the stools. "Now, please sit over there, on the edge
of the stool, and face me."
J.B. did as he was told, grateful the stool was covered with a spongy yellow pad.
"I'm going to hold up a finger "
"I'm not drunk, Doc."
"This isn't a sobriety test," the optician replied with a smile. "This is for ocular
movement. When I hold up my finger, please watch it as I move it back and forth.
Keep your eyes glued to the finger, but don't move your head."
"All right."
Clarke continued to speak as he moved the finger in a broad H-shaped motion. "I
would daresay due to disease and malnutrition, even with today's shorter life
spans, many men and women could use a pair of glasses. Children, too. But
expense and ignorance conspire to keep them trapped in their self-imposed blur,
squinting and straining to the see the world around them."
J.B. thought of some of the squalid conditions of the villes and outposts he'd
traveled through, and of the faces of the poor and helpless he'd seen. "There are
parts of Deathlands where lousy vision could be considered a blessing, Doc," he
said quietly.
"Quite. When did you receive your first pair of eyeglasses, Mr. Dix?" the optician
replied, mirroring Ryan's question from earlier that day.
"Way back. I'd noticed my vision was starting to go in my early teens. I was
having trouble with distance, but up close was fine. Reading wasn't getting
harder."
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"Wait you read?" Clarke asked in a surprised tone of voice.
J.B. glared at the doctor. "Hell, yes, I read."
"No reason for anger, Mr. Dix. Just making sure for my records. What do you like
to read?"
"Information on blasters. Rifle and pistol journals. Blaster specs. Anything I can
find, use, and tuck away in my brain. Even the history of the weapons long gone
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