“Were there others before me?” She quietly trains her eyes on his.
“What do you mean?”
“What happened to them?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”
“I think you do.”
“Yes, there were others. The outcomes were less than positive.”
“Did they suffer, did they die?”
“There was no suffering. We made sure of that.”
“Did they die?”
“In a sense, they were already dead. You know that. And for a moment, they stood on the precipice of a salvation they could never have imagined.”
“But then they fell.”
“As I said, they had already fallen. We put out a net to try to catch them, but unfortunately, we failed.”
Autumn closes her eyes. “How long are we going to go on like this? What’s the point of it?”
“It’s time. I’m nearly ready to be with you.”
“And then what?”
“You won’t be alone. We can rebuild. Together. Only this time, we can draw upon all that we’ve learned over so many years.”
“So many years,” Autumn repeats. “Can you feel the weight of them?
“Yes, I can, and that’s the point of all this. To shed the weight, to fly once again.”
“And what if something goes wrong?”
“I don’t see failure as an option. But if somehow something does go wrong during my treatment, I’ve made provisions that you’ll be taken care of for the rest of your life.”
“Which life?”
“You need to develop a more positive attitude. The potential here is tremendous. All you have to do is accept the possibility of a life without end.”
Autumn rises. “I have to go.”
Zed stands, but keeps his distance. “Just hang on a little longer. That’s all I ask. You need to give us a chance.” His voice assumes a soft urgency. “You have so much to gain and so little to lose.”
Autumn turns and heads toward the door. “I’m going now.”
From his living room window, Zed looks down on Autumn, who has just boarded the chartered air hop, which rests in the abandoned reservoir below.
It would be easier to build his case if he knew more about her. But in fact, no one knows much about her. That’s one of the reasons she was chosen.
He’s sent investigators back to learn more, but they’ve uncovered little. She’s slipped almost completely out of living memory. Only matters of public record remain.
Autumn West. Born in Elkton, Nebraska, in 1922 to a Gerard and Trudy West. Another child of the timeless plains.
Zed watches the helicopter’s rotors come up to speed and the navigation lights wink on the fuselage. He reaches back and recalls 1922. The Roaring Twenties were revving up, and he roamed the globe, assembling an anonymous empire.
Outside, the chopper rises out of the reservoir. A furious little storm of stray leaves spins in the wake of its rotors.
Autumn West. Attended Jefferson Grade School in Elkton and graduated from Midland High School in 1941. Her yearbook picture showed a pretty young woman with hair done in the soft curls of the time.
The helicopter clears the lip of the reservoir and rotates about its axis. It nods forward in assent to the late afternoon sun. Zed watches it gain altitude for its trip back to Pinecrest.
She was married in 1943 to a John Miller. The announcement in the Elkton Gazette showed the archetypal radiant bride, staring out into a great beyond filled with domestic bliss.
She worked for the local school district, but a fire destroyed her personnel records in 1952. Her husband died in 1965. There was no record of any children.
Zed lingers at the window as the helicopter becomes a small speck in the sky above the hills to the west. After 1965, Autumn West fell away into a great void. No documents, either public or private, tracked her journey through the decades to come. No witnesses survived to give illuminating accounts of her character.
The aircraft disappears from view, but Zed remains stationary in the window. He recalls that day he walked through the snow on the edge of Central Park. Behind him, his wife and young son slept the perfect sleep of the innocent. Could Autumn understand this shameful act of desertion? Had she done something similar during those long decades of anonymity? Could they exchange forgiveness and move on to mutual redemption?
Right now, he can only speculate, and it causes a great fatigue to invade the very center of his bones.
***
Lane stands on the balcony of his house and looks out toward the front of his property in Pinecrest. A hundred feet of expert landscaping flows out to the main road, which is hidden from view, even from his elevated position. He closes his eyes and returns to Elkton, Nebraska, and tries to visualize Autumn West walking those dusty streets so long ago. It doesn’t work. It’s time to get a firsthand account from Autumn herself, along with an explanation of how it all relates to Mount Tabor and his brother.
He pulls out his handheld and punches up the interface.
The Surgeon holds no degree, no license, no sanction from any regulatory body anywhere. Rather, his legitimacy comes solely from the unfettered play of market forces across the global sphere of commerce. For the Surgeon, it’s not about the money; it’s about performance, process, and flawless execution. He relishes his work and has achieved a level of proficiency envied by his peers, who know him only by his product. He can say with certainty that if he’d entered the medical mainstream, he would have rapidly ascended to the top tier of surgeons worldwide. His success rate is 100 percent, all the way from pre-op consulting to completed procedure.
Even the guard at the Pinecrest gate notices the fluid grace of the Surgeon’s hands as the man signs the clearance form after having his lobe scanned. The pen flows in beautiful cursive strokes, as if guided by an angel.
“Will that do it, then?” the Surgeon asks the guard, with a tiny crust of arrogance coating the words.
“Not quite,” the guard says. “We’ll need to scan your crew and take a look in the back. It’s standard procedure here.”
“Very well, then,” the Surgeon says impatiently. “Let’s get it done.”
The Surgeon and the guard walk toward the ambulance, a big, boxy vehicle parked in a holding area just outside the gate into Pinecrest. Ambulance traffic is a routine part of life at the gate. Although the community has a well-equipped medical center with two operating rooms, the aging population often requires highly specialized treatments at one of the big facilities up at the Medplex. As always, this ambulance and its crew have been precleared through the security database; but still, the procedures manual mandates a personal inspection.
“So who’s this Allen Durbin?” the guard asks as they approach the ambulance. “He must be new here. I don’t recognize the name.”
“I believe he is,” the Surgeon says. “Probably just moved in.”
“Well, I guess it didn’t do much for his health,” the guard comments as he pulls out his lobe scanner.
“I guess not,” the Surgeon responds as they stop at the driver’s window, which is rolled down to reveal a wiry, middle-aged man dressed in paramedic coveralls. The man manages a faint smile as the guard reaches up, scans his lobe, and checks the reading.
“This is a pretty big rig you’ve got here,” the guard comments as they move to the rear to open the double doors.
“We need to be prepared for every possible contingency,” the Surgeon explains as he opens the doors.
“Jesus!” the guard exclaims. “Looks like you could perform a whole operation in here.” He’s seen the interior of a lot of ambulances, but never one this richly appointed with technology and tools. A female paramedic comes forward. She seems pleasant enough, and cooperates with the scanning process.
“Okay, you’re cleared,” the guard announces to the Surgeon while the paramedic climbs back in and shuts the doors. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” the Surgeon says
with a smile, and then watches the guard depart. They’re done. There’ll be no further inspection on the way out. The security people have learned through costly litigation that it’s not a good idea to delay the departure of ambulances holding potential medical emergencies.
Once they’re inside the gate, the Surgeon ignores the amenities of Pinecrest. The general population here is too old and presents very little product potential. The subject, Allen Durbin, is an exception. He’s middle-aged and apparently in exceptionally good health. Better yet, the referring party is waiving the referral fee, which increases his profit on the job. The Surgeon goes to his computer, with its encrypted wireless link to the subnets. He travels quickly to a heavily protected location, a commodity exchange.
The global market for human organs.
He quickly scans the columns, checking the bid and ask prices on a variety of items. Any given organ is listed several times to represent different levels of quality determined by sophisticated factoring systems that assess age, disease history, et cetera. The Surgeon is pleased with what he sees. Livers are continuing an upward trend, as are kidneys. The Whole Body Index, which is the composite price of an entire body of A-grade organs, is just below its all-time high.
Mr. Durbin should fetch a nice price.
Betty and Anita are on a roll.
As Betty’s big sedan cruises out of the air terminal at Pinecrest, Anita regales her with a long-ago college story. Seems there was this guy with a little tiny brain and a great big dick, and one thing led to another and another. At each inflection point in the tale, they laugh uproariously and Betty slaps the steering wheel so hard that the heads-up navigation display jiggles and bounces. Anita pounds her knees and spills cigarette ashes on the carpet, leaving telltale evidence of smoking that will probably put Betty’s husband, Bill, in a great big snit, but that’s okay. At least for now.
Sometime way back, Anita was assistant HR director at FiberBlaze before it was acquired and her options went platinum. That was the same year her third husband got cashed out in a technology swap that had something to do with communications satellites, although Anita never quite understood the significance of it. Betty, on the other hand, was a marketing wiz, and had kept putting together these promotion packages that always left the target audience salivating for more. Her husband, a third-tier accountant, was simply along for the ride because he made such a pretty trophy boy. Both couples moved to Pinecrest about the same time, and it didn’t take long for the two women to form an ad hoc affinity group.
Today, after shopping, they had lunch in downtown, but never got any further than the three gin and tonics they ingested on empty stomachs. No problem. They’d stop in the village, get a sandwich, and straighten halfway up before they went home.
And what if they didn’t? So what? At twenty-six/sixty, and forty-one/seventy-two, it’s great fun to be bad girls now and then. They deserve it. Screw the world.
“It’s coming right up,” the Surgeon announces as he glances down at the navigational display. He’s switched to driving and the other man is in the back of vehicle, putting on his working gear. He’s contract military and prefers to be called Colonel although it’s unlikely he was ever an officer in anyone’s army. He presents himself as a combat specialist, an individual who has frequently dwelled near the tip of the national spear. His credentials in this regard are impeccable. Kazakhstan, North Korea, Venezuela, Nigeria, Yemen.
The Colonel pokes his head out of the back and surveys the scene out the windshield. “Stop for a minute,” he commands the Surgeon, who complies. “Okay, I want you to pull forward and back into the driveway about thirty feet. I’ll take it from there. Give me ten minutes and you’ve got your product.”
Ah yes, the product. Always a cut above what the market expected. A grade-B liver extraction done by the Surgeon sold as grade A. A grade-C pancreas removal moved up to Phase Two. Some on his team thought that it was the cumulative effect of a finely honed process and superb execution, but the Surgeon himself thought otherwise. He firmly believed it was the EEG, the brainwave pattern, that made the difference.
In traditional organ harvesting, the procedure was done when the patient was technically dead, that is, when the EEG showed a complete absence of brain activity, the classic flatline. Of course, that didn’t mean the subject was dead in the fullest sense. The more primitive parts of the nervous system often carried on quite nicely. Heart muscles still contracted, lungs admitted air, and so on. Which also meant the organs were suffused with oxygen and nutrients right up until the time they were yanked out: an ideal situation.
But not ideal for the Surgeon. He had a deep suspicion that brain death at the higher levels had a negative impact on robustness of the organs. Although he had no empirical proof, he was convinced that an ideal brain state for organ extraction lay not far below the normal sleep state. He made a careful study of the anesthetic procedures required to achieve this state, and learned how to apply them in his particular situation. It was a delicate balancing act. If you went too low, the subject might slip into a more suppressed state and might even flatline on you. Too high, and the patient might be pulled back to full consciousness in the process of being disassembled, which profoundly disturbed bodily harmony.
The Surgeon was skillful enough that he’d never experienced the latter, but occasionally the level of sedation had wandered enough that he noticed a fluttering beneath the subject’s eyelids. The REM state of sleep, the dream state. For the briefest moment, he tried to imagine what these dreams might be like, but then thought better of it and went on with his work.
“Ten minutes,” the Surgeon confirms and reaches to put the vehicle back in gear.
“What’s Bill gonna think?” Anita asks Betty as they float down the tree-lined road past an occasional gate. She’s referring to Betty’s fussy husband, who won’t be happy at all about his spouse’s inebriated condition.
“Fuck Bill,” Betty proclaims woozily. She peers down her nose over the top of the steering wheel.
Anita guffaws, reaches into her purse, and lights another cigarette. Fuck Bill. Then she remembers that she’s already done exactly that, at that party at the Stevensons’ last year.
And in a great burst of drunken candor, she spits it out. As a joke, of course. After all, they’re on a roll, so why slow down and ruin it?
“Boy, lady, your husband’s one lousy lay,” she says and waits for the reciprocal burst of laughter from Betty.
Betty whirls toward her in disbelief. “What’d you say?”
Anita quickly backtracks under Betty’s withering gaze, and struggles to rebound. “I simply said … that …”
“You simply said you fucked Bill, you bitch. You—”
The collision alarm bellows and brakes automatically activate. Still, by the time Betty turns her attention back to the road, it’s too late to take any action. All she sees are the two glowing brake lights on an ambulance as they collide squarely with its rear bumper and the airbags inflate.
The Surgeon and the driver have been concentrating on the driveway and are completely surprised by the force of the collision. The Surgeon bounces in his seat belt and the Colonel is thrown back into the interior. The female paramedic shrieks.
“Son of a bitch!” the Surgeon yells as he unbuckles himself and throws the door open. Due to the bulk of the ambulance, he can’t see what hit them. The Colonel comes forward and thrusts the other door open. “I’m going in. Gotta go before he comes down here to see what’s going on.”
“And just what am I supposed to do?” the Surgeon asks.
“Security will be here pronto. You handle it while I take care of business. I’ll hold the product until you’re clear.” He adjusts his armored vest and chambers a round in the compact combat weapon he carries.
***
Lane is just about to give the voice command to call Autumn when the explosive thud of the collision rumbles across his deck. It comes from out on the street in front of the house, but
he can’t see that far through the foliage. He hurries through the house and starts down the driveway, which curves downhill. He rounds the bend, and the accident scene comes into view. An ambulance with a sedan piled into the back of it, steam and smoke pouring from under the crumpled hood.
Then, the problem. A man with a combat vest stands next to another man beside the ambulance, both apparently oblivious to the accident. The man with the vest reaches into the vehicle and pulls out a weapon of some kind. Lane quickly retreats back around the bend, and watches from concealment. The man starts up the driveway, weapon at the ready. It’s obviously a combat rifle, and has a hefty clip thrusting out the underside.
Lane turns and runs back toward the house. The rifleman will hear his footsteps, but that’s the least of his problems. He sprints in past the open door and retrieves his pistol from his coat hanging in the anteroom. It possesses considerable stopping power but will be no match for the other man’s armament.
He’ll get one shot, if he’s lucky. He extends his pistol and steadies against the door frame. The man comes around the bend in the driveway and spots him instantly. Lane aims for the center of the chest as the other man swings the rifle in his direction. A head shot at this distance is too risky. If he misses, he’s dead.
He squeezes the trigger and the muzzle blast roars down the driveway. The man flies backward and out of sight around the curve.
Lane doesn’t stop to investigate. He grabs his coat, runs through the house and out the back door. At best, the incident is over. At worst, he’s bought himself some time before they regroup and come after him.
The Surgeon hears the shots as he starts around the ambulance to investigate. He didn’t expect such rapid action. Maybe they can wrap this up quickly enough to avoid local security. So far, no one has seen them. He reaches the back, sees the wrecked sedan, and hears feminine wailing and moaning coming from within, where the air bags are wilting from their state of electronically triggered tumescence.
The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller Page 21