Weekly Short Story: To Walk a City's Street by Clifford Simak

Clifford Simak is one of my all-time favorite science fiction writers...his 1972 short story To Walk a City's Street is just another of several I have enjoyed over the years.  It appears in the anthology The 1973 Annual World's Best SF with Donald Wollheim (also a science fiction writer) the book's editor and publisher.  Simak's tale examines the desire that so many of us have...and it largely drives the food supplement industry...of a panacea that will eliminate illness and prolong our lives.  Ernie is a homeless man at some point in the not-so-distant future (from the author's 1972 perspective).  With their enhanced ability to collect accurate, specific data on the population's health by geographical area, the government health authority is able to determine that the immediate run-down, poverty-stricken urban neighborhood around homeless Ernie is completely disease-free.  Further investigation narrows the cause to Ernie himself: this simple man apparently is a carrier of good health and it wears off on anyone he contacts.  So the smart guys in Washington come up with the idea of hiring Ernie to walk up and down different heavily populated urban streets, in areas where there seems to be a higher level of sickness.  The results are coming back positive, sickness is being eliminated wherever he goes...but Ernie is also beginning to resent and resist his new life...well-paid and provided for he might be...missing his old friends and neighborhood in spite of his previous poverty.  Ernie's handlers are able to control him for the most part, but then they receive a sobering message about that old neighborhood of his.  I won't tell you how it all ends, but you should expect a sharp paradigm shift here...

One of the things I love the most about Clifford Simak's stories...and it distinguishes him from a lot of other sci-fi writers...is that he has a heart for his characters: Ernie's sweet, innocent personality comes out quickly in this very short tale, and even the government men assigned to accompany him on his walks are shown to have their own particular feelings and lives.  I've found writers who are able to accomplish this to be my favorites...it's probably the main reason I've read most of Stephen King's fiction.  But back to the notion that there is a panacea floating around out there that can rid us of our ailments if we can only pinpoint and corral it.  Our bodies are ecosystems within themselves, and the microscopic life permeating them have extremely complicated relationships.  If a drug is administered to kill off one type of invading bacteria but kills off other necessary bacteria, then the door is open for something else to invade the body.  When considering this complexity other data such as illness levels among the population don't necessarily line up in agreement, as Clifford Simak's story illustrates.  Also, it was clear to me that the terror of possible sickness and death...and the prospects of reversing it all...clouded the ostensibly scientific and objective process of those seeking to better the world through someone like Ernie.  What if there are carriers like him around...I encourage you to read To Walk a City's Street for yourself...