Implant

by J. Grace Pennington

  “But—but you’re a doctor!” Gordon tried again, his voice weak.

  “Oh of course, a doctor is a different class of human being. Doctors are the only ones who have any kind of duty to help others or exercise compassion. Everybody else, they can just do whatever.”

  Gordon swallowed. His heartbeat accelerated and he closed his eyes.

  “What do I use to irrigate the wound?” he asked.

  He didn’t look for Doc’s smile, but he felt it. “Water. It’s in the pitcher on the table.”

  “And the surgical thread?”

  “In a kit in the top drawer of the nightstand.”

  Gritting his teeth, Gordon stepped forward and reached for the pitcher. He filled a cup, and prepared to do what he’d seen Baum and his father do a hundred times.

  As he brought the water, a rag, and some scissors to the man on the bed, he hesitated. What if he made things worse? What if something went wrong?

  He felt the air clear a little, and turned towards Doc. The older man was grinding his cigarette beneath the heel of his old shoe.

  Taking a deep breath, Gordon set the cup and rag down and cut the pant leg away at the thigh, where the blast had hit.

  He cleaned the wound carefully, slowly, and his hands didn’t shake as he worked. Doc never spoke, never moved, never smoked, he just sat watching, without apparent judgment. After cleaning the wound, Gordon threaded the thick needle.

  “I’m sorry we don’t have any anesthesia,” he said gently. “But I’ll try not to hurt you too much. Just keep still and relax. It won’t take long.”

  Pete nodded, his brown eyes wide. Gordon breathed deeply again. He’d watched this so many times he could do it in his sleep. Pulling the rag away from the wound, he pressed the edges of the skin together, and began to stitch.

  He didn’t realize he was sweating until a big drop plopped onto Pete’s leg. It cued a wave of nervousness, startling him out of his concentration, but he looked up at Pete’s white face and pulled himself together. He finished the job with a neatness that surprised him.

  “Get some rest,” he said, as he washed his hands in the basin that stood near the tent flap. “I’ll be back to check on you later.”

  Pete nodded blankly. “Thank you.”

  Gordon turned to address Doc, but found he had gone. The tension left his shoulders and he breathed a sigh. Only then he realized he’d wanted Doc to see how well he’d done. Maybe even give him some form of gruff praise. Where was he? Probably off arguing with Neil about the next stage of the plan.

  Feeling weighed down by the thick, warm air, he walked out of the tent and stood outside.

  For a moment, he had belonged there. Now he was lost again.

  “Finished? I was just coming to get you.”

  Doc’s voice startled him, and he turned to the left to see him walking along the dusty path in the moonlight. “Why?”

  “I saw you were finishing up and thought you could use a drink. Come on.”

  He turned back in the direction he’d come, and Gordon hurried to fall into step with him. The weight lifted a little, and the tension in his stomach relaxed.

  “How’s the patient?” Doc asked.

  The simple question brought a smile to Gordon’s lips. “He seemed pretty distressed. I left him resting, said I’d check on him later.”

  “I guess you’d be distressed too, if you’d been shot in the leg.

  Gordon laughed. “How are things going with Dagny Dalton?”

  Doc shrugged. “I don’t know. I had other things on my mind.”

  For some reason, this delighted Gordon.

  Doc led him to a tent at the other end of the medical section, and then inside. Mostly empty, it had a little round table and two chairs in the middle, a few boxes and crates around the edge, and a tall electric floor lamp in one corner, casting a yellow light through the area. “What’s this?” Gordon asked.

  “Just a place we use if somebody needs to talk or have a drink.” Doc pulled out one of the chairs and sat down.

  Gordon followed his example and opened his mouth to ask where the drinks were, when a young woman hurried through the tent flap. She wore a neat but drab brown dress and carried two drinks, smiling.

  “Here you are, Doc. Mr. Harding.” She plopped one drink, a large blue mug with a big chip in the rim, in front of Doc and the other, a tall, semi-transparent pink-tinted glass, in front of Gordon.

  “Thanks, Liz.”

  The girl nodded and hurried out.

  Gordon looked down into the bubbling brown liquid and asked, a bit uncertainly, “What is it?”

  “Whiskey. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Gordon wrinkled his nose. “I don’t drink.”

  “How do you stay alive?”

  “I mean I don’t drink alcohol.”

  Doc shrugged. “That’s what I was afraid of. Kidding, I dug up a coke for you.”

  Still a little suspicious, Gordon took a sip. That tasted like Coca-Cola, if a little flat. But it would do.

  Doc raised his mug. “To Doctor Gordon Harding.”

  Gordon laughed a bit, raised his own cup and said, “To success tomorrow.”

  They bumped the cups together, creating a thick clink, and both took a long swig. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, Doc raised his drink again. “To that excitable, determined fool, Neil Crater.”

  “Hear hear,” Gordon grinned, and the cups clinked again. They drank, then Gordon held his glass up slightly. “To catching bugs in traps.”

  Doc chuckled, they toasted, and drank again.

  “To a future with doctors and without bugs,” Doc proposed.

  Gordon agreed and downed the rest of his drink, feeling like a man. Doc gulped his down and slammed the mug on the table. “Wonder how Neil’s getting along?”

  Gordon shrugged. “When do you think I ought to go check on my patient?” He let the words “my patient” slide smoothly off his tongue, and they felt good.

  “Oh, he’ll be all right for another thirty minutes. It was just a few stitches, after all.”

  “Maybe you could check after me and make sure I did it all right.”

  “You did fine, and don’t you doubt it. A man can’t be immersed in medicine all his life and not know something about something as simple as suturing.

  A man. Gordon grinned again.

  Someone burst into the tent, making them both jump and jerk their heads towards the tent flap.

  Neil stood there, his huge eyes wider than ever, his always-pale skin even paler.

  “Gracious, you scared me.” Doc leaned back in his chair. “We’re just celebrating our bug-catching success and Doctor Harding’s entrance into the medical profession.”

  Neil didn’t seem to hear them. He stared from Doc to Gordon and back again, panting. “Pete…” he gasped.

  “Oh is that all?” Doc laughed. “Pete’s all right. Just a little leg wound. He was a real baby about it. It’s all taken care of. Sit down, have a drink with us.”

  Neil shook his head with a gasp. Worry crept into Gordon’s gut and settled there. “What is it?” he asked.

  “Do you know why Pete was out tonight in the first place?” Neil asked.

  Doc and Gordon glanced at each other and shook their heads.

  “He was on his way to take the blueprints of the new project to the Academy.”

  Doc shot up, knocking his chair over, every vestige of frivolity gone. “The traitor?” he yelled.

  Gordon sat, frozen. Pete was still in the medical tent. He had been stopped. It would be all right.

  “Computers registered him leaving the east side about half an hour ago. We checked everywhere for the blueprints, but they’re gone.”

  Swearing, Doc pushed past Neil out of the tent. Gordon didn’t move. He couldn’t process it. Pete—gone—blueprints—healed by Gordon’s hand.

  A man? No.

  He was just a boy.

  Neil stared at him, panic standing in his eyes. Gordon wanted to drop
to his knees and apologize, but he stayed seated and motionless.

  Doc stormed back in. “He’s gone!” he roared. “The rat—after what we did for him…”

  “Shut up!” Neil barked. “We’re going to have to get everyone underground. We don’t have much time.”

  Chapter Nine

  For once, Doc agreed with Neil without a single word of argument. “You make the announcement. I’ll check the passages.”

  Neil nodded. “Seal off any that aren’t entirely secure. Gordon, get to engineering and tell them to pack up everything they can and turn off everything except the generator.”

  “Neil…” Gordon said, his voice coming in a low, cracked tone.

  “Not now, Gordon, just do it! Both of you meet me in the lab in twenty minutes.” Not sparing another second, Neil turned and ran out.

  “Neil!” Gordon called after him, jumping up. “Neil, I’m sorry!”

  Before he could go another step or say anything else, he felt something sting his face, hard. The impact blurred his vision, and he stumbled back into his chair, trying to clear his head as Doc’s hand moved away from his face.

  “What…” he gasped.

  “Don’t apologize!” Doc insisted. “Don’t even think about feeling like you shouldn’t have healed that rat.”

  “But if I…”

  Doc slapped him again, and this time Gordon cried out.

  “Stop it,” Doc ordered. “If this is anybody’s fault, it’s mine. It was my plan, and I’m the one who told you to take care of Pete. You did right. The fact that it went wrong doesn’t change a thing.”

  Gordon summoned every ounce of anger to find the strength to push Doc away, jump up, and run out of the tent.

  Running felt good, though the exhaustion overcame him before he even got to the engineering section.

  “Listen!” he cried as he entered the dark building. It was still the middle of the night, and only half a dozen workers manned the stations around the room. “Neil says you have to pack up whatever you can and turn off everything except the generator. You’re going underground.”

  Voices erupted, questioning, criticizing, demanding, but he ignored it all with a yelled “Hurry!” and ran towards the lab. He didn’t want to stop and think. Even a few minutes of contemplating what was happening and what was about to happen would zap his last shred of confidence into nothing.

  He had to stop running about a block from the lab because his leg cramped again, but he kept his thoughts racing, focusing them on things other than himself. People were running, everywhere. Everyone carrying something. Were they all looking at him? Eyeing him accusingly? No. Doc was right. He’d done the right thing. And he had to keep doing the right thing. This was no time to stop. He had to go on, whether he liked it or not, if it killed him and everyone else in the world, he had to go on. He had to, he had to—

  Reaching the lab door, he turned the knob. Neil and Doc would have something for him to do.

  “Did it,” he announced breathlessly as he burst in, but Doc stood alone in the room, examining a smooth, white, hand-shaped object on the lab table.

  “Did what?” he asked, then he nodded. “Oh. Me too.” He slammed his palm on the table and said, “Let’s go find him.”

  Gordon nodded and sidestepped just in time to get out of Doc’s way as he stomped out. Just taking time to close the door behind them, Gordon hurried to catch up.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No. Probably still making announcements—let’s head to the computer center and check.”

  Gordon nodded, not daring to waste breath. His heartbeat was still pounding rapidly.

  “There are only ten safe tunnels,” Doc puffed, walking with his big fists clenched. “Don’t know if everyone will fit or not, but we’ll have to do the best we can. There’s—you’ve got to—what the…”

  Unable to account for Doc’s sudden spluttering loss for words, Gordon looked straight ahead. A cold chill swept through him, settling in his stomach, making his spine turn to ice. A scream rose in his throat but didn’t escape; he stopped, stumbled, forced himself to remain upright. No. No, no, no, no!

  Neil stood directly ahead. He didn’t move, didn’t turn to look at them. His face was pale, his arms rigidly poised by his sides.

  But it wasn’t Neil’s appearance that terrified Gordon. It was the man in front of Neil. Black jumpsuit, satisfied smile, detonator carefully poised until its ugly head pointed straight at Neil’s heart, the man was as motionless as Neil himself.

  There was no one else around. No one moved.

  How had the man gotten in? Possibilities raced through Gordon’s head before he heard Doc’s low voice swearing beside him.

  “My patient.”

  The man they’d used to leak the information to Dagny in the first place. Had they forgotten to capture him, or had he escaped?

  Either way, here he was.

  It all happened in one second, but it seemed to unfold slowly before Gordon’s eyes, mechanically, one thing after another. The outsider’s long finger settled on the button, and he flicked out his tongue to lick his lips.

  Neil lifted his head higher and stood, unflinching, his thin face pale but composed.

  As the finger tightened over the button, something near Gordon moved. The musty odor of Doc’s old jacket filled his nostrils as Doc moved, faster than Gordon had ever known him to move, towards Neil.

  The button pressed down into the remote as a brown and blue blur moved between the two figures. Neil and Doc were thrown to the ground, Doc shielding Neil with his body. The man released the button and stared at the pair for an instant.

  In that instant, Gordon leapt forward. Neither or both of his friends and mentors might be dead, but he couldn’t think or feel right now. He had only a second to jump to the man and grab his wrist. That momentary surprise gave him the advantage he needed, and he forced the man’s hand around towards himself.

  Every person on earth except Gordon was fitted with an Implant.

  The man didn’t seem to realize what was happening until the remote was nearly at his heart. He struggled, backing up, wrenching his arm, but Gordon gripped it in both hands, planting his feet firmly in the dust, keeping his eyes fixed on the remote.

  A low groan from behind fueled his determination. Steeling his heart, he pressed the button.

  Only then did Gordon dare look into the man’s eyes. He wished he hadn’t. They were the eyes of an animal in a trap, a helpless creature more surprised than afraid. The pathetic expression wrenched Gordon’s heart. He wasn’t made for moments like this. He should be sitting quietly in college, studying alone in his dorm, preparing for an uneventful life in business.

  The eyes stared into his. The man coughed.

  “Doc?” It was Neil’s voice, behind him.

  He let go of the remote and closed his eyes again as the man crumpled to the ground. Tears threatened to break out of his fiercely closed eyelids.

  Dropping the remote, he turned away before opening his eyes again.

  Doc lay prostrate on the ground, one arm thrown out towards Gordon, face turned towards the sky. Neil knelt on the ground beside him, laying a hand on the convulsing chest.

  Gordon rushed to Doc’s other side. Neil’s face was paler than ever. His glasses had fallen off during the struggle, and his big eyes looked naked without them. They met Gordon’s, and a silent message passed between them.

  He’s dying.

  Doc’s eyes were wide open, but expressionless. They fluttered closed just as Gordon looked at them, and a rasping breath gurgled in his throat.

  Gordon clutched his hands to his stomach. No. He would not feel for Doc’s heartbeat. He couldn’t stand any more.

  But Neil saw the motion and grabbed Gordon’s right wrist roughly. Looking sternly into his face, he guided the hand down to Doc’s heart, where the Implant had just been detonated. For a second, Gordon was only aware of Doc’s chest rising and falling beneath his fingers. Then he crie
d out as he felt the sporadic beating of the wounded heart. It pounded hard, so hard it seemed it would crack the ribs, then three beats later softer than the wings of a moth. The rhythm wasn’t consistent, and as he pressed down, he felt a soft surging beneath his fingers

  Jerking his hand away, he pulled the dingy white shirt open and looked where his hand had been a moment before. A large purple-red blotch was forming under the skin.

  His vision wavered, and he swayed. He wasn’t ashamed when a tear rolled his face and dripped onto Doc’s.

  Doc opened his eyes and looked up at him. “Stop crying, boy,” he said, hoarsely, but as roughly as ever.

  Gordon gripped Doc’s cold hand and squeezed it in both of his. Doc gripped fiercely, and Gordon couldn’t stop another tear from splashing onto the calloused, toil-worn fingers.

  “Don’t forget… when you go back,” Doc wheezed.

  “Doc!” Gordon cried in protest. As if he could forget any of this.

  “Don’t forget,” Doc went on, ignoring the exclamation completely. The gruff voice faded, and Gordon clutched the hand close to him, as if he could pull Doc back from death itself.

  “Doc…” Neil’s voice trembled.

  Doc closed his eyes again and muttered. “This doesn’t mean I have to like you.”

  “Of course not.” Neil laid a hand on the dying man’s shoulder and smiled, but his eyes were clouded with moisture.

  “I still think you’re an emotional baby.”

  Neil took Doc’s other hand and pressed it. “And I still think you’re a heartless brute.”

  Doc smiled. He opened his eyes again and looked at Gordon. His voice sank to a hollow whisper and Gordon leaned down to catch the words as they fell from the dry lips.

  “Take care of yourself, Gordon.”

  Gordon. With his last breath, Doc had finally called him by his name. But Gordon no longer cared.

  Even as he whispered, “I’ll try,” the hazel eyes glazed over, and the exposed chest heaved one last time before the tired heart stopped trying to beat, and the determined soul was gone.

  Gordon dropped Doc’s hand and looked slowly up at Neil’s big eyes.