The Bladerunner

by Alan E Nourse

  Billy sat listening, his bewildered expression slowly changing to a frown. “And Health Control came to you with this scheme?” he said slowly.

  “That’s right. They came to me.”

  “And you’re supposed to sell me on the idea, and I’m supposed to go out and start beating the drum, is that right?”

  “That’s the idea,” Doc said. “Molly and I will be working on our end, and — ”

  “And all they want me to do is go down into that jungle and lay my neck out on the block in order to help bail them out of a mess that their own Eugenics Control program has gotten them into, is that right?”

  “Well — ” Doc looked at Molly doubtfully. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

  “Yes, well, maybe this clown you talked to at Health Control thinks I’ve gone out of my mind or something,” Billy retorted hotly, “but I haven’t, not by a long way, and as far as I’m concerned, Health Control can go choke. Why should I help them, after what they’ve done to me? They’ve bugged me and harassed me, and staked me out until I couldn’t move.” He held up the transponder on his wrist and shook it under Doc’s nose. “Where do you think this came from? It’s on me because they wanted it on me, and if they find out I’ve jumped it, they’ll throw me in the tank without a second thought. They want me locked up, they’ve always wanted me locked up.”

  “You make it sound like some kind of a personal feud,” Molly said, “and that’s silly. There’s nothing personal about it, it’s just part of their policy.”

  “Well, it may not be personal to them, but it’s plenty personal to me. What about my life? It’s been Health Control and their precious policies that have kept me running blades all these years, like a common thief. Do you think I like that? If it weren’t for Health Control and their policies I could be a Med-Ex right now, a legitimate doctor’s assistant, maybe even a lay anesthetist or a medical student, but what chance have I ever had? And what help do I get from them when I need medical care? I’ve had this crooked foot to limp around on all my lousy life; it wasn’t my fault, I was just born with it, and I’ll have it till I die, as far as they’re concerned. They don’t care about people. All they care about is trimming down budgets and cutting down the population and playing around with people’s genes and never mind what people think or how people feel. Well, now they’re in trouble, and I think that’s just great. They’re not going to get any help from me.”

  “But it isn’t really Health Control you’d be helping,” Doc said quietly. “There are people, hundreds of thousands of people who are going to be sick and dying if this epidemic isn’t stopped before it turns into a major national crisis.”

  “So maybe that’s what we need to break their Health Control system apart,” Billy retorted. “A crisis they can’t handle.”

  “And you think this is the kind of crisis you want for that? Believe me, you don’t. Nobody does. Sure, once this is under control, if Health Control can squeeze through this somehow, they’re going to face another kind of crisis — a crisis of confidence like nothing they’ve faced before. And they’re going to have to make changes, modify their programs. They can’t take a risk like this again. But the changes are going to have to come slowly, not convulsively. And in the meantime, thousands of people are in deadly danger now.”

  “Well, I didn’t put them in danger,” Billy said. “Why should I have to be responsible?”

  Doc sighed. “Maybe for the same reason that I have to be responsible for all the people you and I and Molly have treated on the underground. It’s just part of what we bargained for when we started work together, Billy. There’s been a real, consuming need for what we’ve been doing, a need that the Health Control system was simply ignoring. Well, we picked up the ball — you just as much as me. I went underground because there wasn’t anything else I could do as a doctor. People needed underground doctors. But in a way we’re to blame that a lot of the people we treated never qualified for Health Control. We kept them away, and we’re responsible. And now those people and a lot of others need help from you to help head off a real disaster.”

  Billy stared at him, shaking his head in confusion. “Doc, you can’t say that I’m to blame. All I ever did was what you wanted done, what you told me to do.”

  “Okay, then say this is one more thing I want you to do. Say it’s just another one of my cases, a tough case and just incredibly important. I’m into it up to my ears, but I can’t handle it alone. I need your help.”

  For a long time Billy sat there, staring first at Doc, then at Molly, and then back. His head was pounding fiercely, and the room seemed so stifling he could hardly breathe. On the wall above Doc’s head the lights on the page board blinked in an ever-changing random pattern as he tried to fix his attention, express the suspicions and misgivings that were screaming through his mind. “Suppose it’s all phony,” he said finally. “Suppose this is all just a dodge that Health Control has set up to bring people into the Clinics so they can nail down their names and ID numbers and scare them or force them into qualifying whether they want to or not. How do you know they’re not just sucking you in too?”

  “I don’t think so, Billy,” Doc said. “If I didn’t think this was dead serious I wouldn’t be sticking my neck out. It’s too big to be phony; there are too many parts that I know are true.”

  “What about you, Molly? Are you in on it too?”

  “I think I have to be. If it’s phony, Health Control is making a terrible mistake — but I don’t think it’s phony. I’ve been watching the lines of sick people coming in here. They’re very real. And very sick.”

  Billy clenched his jaw, suddenly shivering. “I don’t like it,” he said miserably. “I don’t understand it, and I don’t trust it, and I don’t get anything out of it, and if there’s something wrong with it, it’s going to be my neck that gets broken, not yours. I don’t like any part of it, and I don’t feel good. My head’s not even on straight, and you want me to go out and try to sell a bunch of very rough people on a story they’re not going to believe in a million years.”

  Doc looked at him sharply. “Haven’t you been taking those capsules I left you last night?”

  “Capsules? Well, maybe some of them, I guess. What were they for? Seems like I went to look for them and couldn’t find them or something.”

  “Oh, lord.” Doc dug in his bag, brought out a temp-clip and snapped it to Billy’s ear. “Well, there’s no fever right now,” he said a moment later. “But, Billy, you’ve got to take this medicine, do you hear me? I’ll give you some more by injection, and some more capsules, but you’ve got to take them. Your neck isn’t sore, is it?”

  “No more than anything else. Everything’s sore right now.”

  “Billy, if you’re going to do this, you’ve got to stay on your feet.”

  “Well, I still don’t like it. I need some time to think.”

  “There isn’t time now. If you can’t move with us now, we’ll just have to go back to Health Control and start looking for somebody else. Billy, can’t you just trust me this once? Work with me like you always have. If we can help get this thing slowed down, I swear I’ll get anything for you that you want, if there’s any possible way, with Molly as my witness.”

  Billy looked up at him. “You mean even my foot?”

  “Your foot? Yes, certainly your foot, if that’s what you want. Anything.”

  “In this Hospital? Without having to meet any qualifications?”

  “Yes, I’ll guarantee it. If I have to take Health Control apart with my bare hands, I’ll see that it’s done.”

  Billy sat up slowly. “You heard him, Molly? You heard what he said?”

  “I heard,” the girl said. “And I’ll hold him to it.”

  “Okay, then. He’s got a deal.” Billy struggled to his feet, started to climb into his coat again. “Better get me that medicine, Doc. And some aspirin too, maybe. I may not have a fever, but my head’s swimming.”

  “Do yo
u want Molly to go along with you?”

  “No, no, that wouldn’t be safe. What you’re talking about is going to be very tricky. I’ll go alone, and I’ll either make out all right or I won’t.” He winced as Doc’s injection pierced his arm, rubbed the spot as he pulled his sleeve down. “I think I’ll be okay if I can get this head to stand still.”

  “Well, don’t take silly chances, and check back here by phone this evening, do you understand? Leave a message if I’m not here. Molly and I will be contacting all the patients I have records on, but I’ll keep one phone line open with a tape on it all the time. If you run into trouble, let me know, and call sooner if you need to.”

  “Okay.” Billy opened the door, started out, then turned back. “Okay. But Doc — you’d better not forget what you said.”

  “Don’t fret about it,” Doc said quietly. “This time I won’t forget.”

  II

  In spite of his aching muscles and his aching head and the lingering feverish distrust of the whole impossible project, Billy Gimp moved swiftly after leaving Doc and Molly behind. He had understood the scope of their talk perfectly well, for all his apparent bewilderment, and he recognized from the start that the people he would have to contact and — somehow — convince of the urgency of the crisis and the necessary steps to be taken could not be reached by telephone. They would have to be sought out one by one in their nests and warrens throughout the Lower City — those that were willing to be sought out at all — and Billy knew the search would not be easy. And since cabs would be the fastest way to move through the labyrinthine regions of the city that he was going to have to travel, Billy chose cabs, using the handful of currency that Doc had shoved into his hand for the purpose as he was departing.

  Before leaving the Hospital, however, he stopped at a public phone in the lobby and placed a code call to Parrot, waiting for the receiver to be lifted and then punching out the musical number-and-letter sequence he always used to tell Parrot he was coming to his shop so that no voice-print record could be lifted from a phone tap. In this case, after a moment’s hesitation, he added a special code signal to indicate that he had to see Parrot urgently and in person, and then held the line open until, at last, Parrot’s “come ahead” signal came through.

  It was, in effect, a peremptory demand for an audience, and he knew that Parrot wouldn’t like it, but there was nothing else to do. As far as Billy could still think rationally, it seemed to him that he had to start with Parrot. If he couldn’t convince Parrot of the urgency of the crisis, and enlist his active help — Parrot, who had known him and dealt with him for all these years and who probably trusted him about as far as Parrot trusted anyone — there would be no point in going any further. With Parrot’s help there was a slender outside chance that he might conceivably be able to contact and convince others that he had to convince. Without Parrot’s help he would be in a hopeless — and exceedingly dangerous — situation.

  And, at a distance, convincing Parrot seemed plausible. But an hour later when he was facing Parrot in person, in the basement storage room of Parrot’s own shop, with the fat little man’s cold, untrusting eyes stabbing at Billy over his grotesque little half-glasses, Billy’s confidence of convincing Parrot of anything vanished like a fever-dream. Billy talked, and realized as he talked that what he was saying could only sound insane to Parrot. If Billy’s own distrust of aiding and abetting a Health Control-sponsored scheme in any way had been dogged and pervasive in spite of the urging of Doc and Molly, Parrot’s was positively monolithic. At first he virtually turned off everything Billy was saying, scowling and shaking his head and drinking cup after cup of the scalding black coffee from his back burner, but Billy was persistent and presently Parrot, still scowling and shaking his head, at least began to listen. There had, after all, been rumors, a singular increase in emergency calls filtering through Parrot’s hands, and the words “meningitis” and “epidemic,” seldom before bandied about in his circles, had been turning up spontaneously and with disquieting frequency lately. Little that occurred in the world of underground medicine escaped Parrot’s ears for long, with the sweeping breadth of his contacts and involvements, and certain items he had heard and passed off as unlikely or plainly false before struck an oddly familiar note now, coming from Billy. Parrot listened, and scowled, and pulled on his fingers as Billy, huddled and shivering on a stool across the coffee bar from him, told him everything that Doc had recounted in detail, and toward the end Parrot was still scowling as blackly as ever, but now nodding his head from time to time instead of shaking it “And you believe all this?” he said when Billy finally finished.

  “I don’t know. I guess so. I don’t trust Health Control for anything, but Doc seems to, in this case.”

  “And there was no question on the computer analysis?”

  “I guess not”

  Parrot pulled his lip. “All right, go through this all again, right from the start.” He poured Billy more coffee, and then listened intently as Billy sipped and shivered and repeated himself, emphasizing the odd pattern of the infection, the prodromal flu-like symptoms, the period of apparent recovery from the flu (“Doc says in most cases it’s about a week, but sometimes it’s only a day or so of apparent partial recovery before the meningitis starts”) and then the later secondary symptoms of headache and stiff neck and spiraling fever. As Billy talked, Parrot hoisted himself from his chair, nodding to keep him talking, and began riffling through a large circular card file, jotting occasional notes on a sheet of paper. “If it were a severe, alarming infection right from the beginning, there would be less problem,” Billy said. “People would seek out medical help of some kind, legal or illegal, right away, but that hasn’t been happening. It just acts like a minor flu bug at first, and then by the time the secondary symptoms begin the fat’s already in the fire.”

  “And what’s the meningitis mortality?” Parrot prompted. “Forty percent?”

  “Not that much, but it’s close to thirty, from the Hospital records, and Doc said the Health Control man confirmed it, said it might be even higher, depending on the individual victim’s age and general condition and other things.”

  “But what’s the infection rate? How many people get the thing at all?”

  “Nobody’s sure,” Billy said. “There aren’t any underground statistics at all, and the Hospital statistics only show the top of the iceberg, but they think probably the flu is hitting twenty-five to thirty percent of the general population, about the same as an ordinary flu epidemic, and that thirty percent of them are coming up with the meningitis later.”

  Parrot whistled softly. “Lord, you know what that could do if it ever really hit?”

  “It could wipe out Health Control,” Billy said.

  “And everything else too, including us. Talk about health riots — there wouldn’t be a doctor or bladerunner or supplier left alive, if it’s really true and isn’t stopped. Okay, first we check things out If it’s true here, it’s true elsewhere too, and others have the story. You just sit tight awhile.”

  Billy sat, still shivering, while Parrot huddled over the telephone, a husher obscuring his words but not the gray expression on his face. Half an hour passed, then another, as Parrot talked, pausing now and then to redial, occasionally scribbling a note. Finally he turned back to Billy. “You say that Health Control is willing to treat everybody, whether they’re qualified or not?”

  “That’s what Doc said. No questions asked. For the flu itself a hefty dose of injectable Viricidin will stop it cold. Those exposed but without symptoms should get immune globulin along with the Viricidin. Even the meningitis can be stopped with Viricidin in massive doses if it’s given early enough, but they’ll hospitalize people for support if they have to. At least that’s the story Doc got.”

  Parrot nodded. “It jibes with some other sources just enough to believe it. The trouble is, a whole lot of people won’t go in for treatment, infection or no infection. They just won’t trust the governmen
t.”

  “I know, but if the bladerunners can get the word out to their suppliers, and other bladerunners and their docs, really get a hot rumor going, not just piecemeal stuff but a real underground rumble, and then each one canvass all the patients he knows, a lot of people will at least see their docs on the underground.”

  “And Health Control is not going to jump these people, or the bladerunners, or the docs? Not in any way?”

  “That’s supposed to be the deal. Nothing official, but there’s supposed to be no surveillance, no questioning for qualifications. The Hospital personnel will be instructed to just turn their backs on the questions and give the medication wholesale, and supplies will be provided for the underground at every Hospital. The problem is to contact every bladerunner we can, and every supplier we can, just as fast as we can.”

  Parrot returned to his card file thoughtfully. “I can reach some of these people best and quickest myself. But some of the bladerunners you can hit better than I can, especially if I flag them first with code calls so they won’t be too suspicious when they see you. You’re going to have to do some fast talking, though, with all the hard data you can give them. They’re not going to want to believe you.” He added more names, addresses, and phone contacts to a lengthening list and thrust it across to Billy. “Whatever you do, don’t let this out of your hands,” Parrot warned. “And for both our sakes, let’s hope your information is straight. We could both be in very bad trouble if this is even a little bit phony.”

  “I know,” Billy said wearily. “But we should know within twelve hours if Health Control is really opening up the Clinics and the underground supplies. If they aren’t, well just have to pull back and take our chances.”