Georgia On My Mind and Other Places

by Charles Sheffield

  Before I could fire the predator had reached us. I saw the maw above me, the dark serrated edge of the carapace, the colonies of mite and tick parasites clinging to the coarse body bristles. Then I was knocked flat by the casual swat of one powerful leg.

  I sprawled under the housewide body and saw the chelicerae reach down, seize one of my companions at midriff, and crush until his simulacrum fell apart into two pieces.

  He writhed but he did not scream—here.

  (I knew that his real body, coupled by its telemetry headset to control his simulacrum and receive its sensory inputs, would be writhing and screaming in genuine agony.

  It didn’t have to be that way. I would have been quite happy to do without pain signals altogether, useful as they might be as a warning for simulacrum injury. But any proposal to eliminate pain was consistently vetoed by the paying customers for Adestis. They wanted referred pain when their simulacrum was injured. It was part of the macho (male and female) view of the game. The Adestis hunt had to feel real, as real as it could be; occasional deaths, from the heart failure that can accompany terror and intense agony, were an important part of what they were paying for.)

  And at the moment my own body, the gigantic form that somewhere infinitely far above us sat motionless in the Adestis control theater, was within a split second of its own writhing, screaming agony. The spider knew I was underneath it—knew it not from sight, which was a sense it did not much rely on, but from touch. The legs, in spite of their power, were enormously sensitive to feel and to vibration patterns. The spider was backing up, questing. It wanted me. I was shaking with fear, my hands trembling and my belly so filled with icy terror that the muscles of my whole midsection were locked rigid.

  And then came the single precious touch of good luck, the accident of position that saved me and the rest of our group. As the spider moved over me I saw the pedicel; there it was, the thin neck between cephalothorax and abdomen, the most vulnerable point of the whole organism. It was directly above my head, impossible to miss. I lifted my weapon. Fired. And blew the spider into two clean halves that toppled like falling mountains on either side of me.

  But not this time. In my dream, the pedicel moved out of view before I could squeeze off a shot. I was staring up at the hard underside of the cephalothorax—at the head section—at the doomsday jaws and glistening poison glands as they lowered toward me. They would engulf me, swallow me whole, to leave me struggling and hopeless within the dark interior cavern of the spider’s body.

  I knew, at some level of my mind, that spiders do not swallow their prey. They inject enzymes, predigest their victims, and suck them dry. But we select our own personal nightmares. I would die slowly, in the night of the spider’s body cavity.

  I braced myself for the unendurable.

  And came to shuddering wakefulness at the loud, insistent ring of my bedside telephone. I realized where I was and groped for the handset, almost too relieved to breathe.

  “Fletcher?” The voice in my ear was familiar. It ought to have suggested a face and a name, but in my dazed condition it was just a voice.

  “Uh-uh.” I squinted at the clock. Seven-fifteen. Two and three-quarter hours of sleep. Although I had eaten little and drunk nothing last night, I felt hung over and a hundred years old. Seven-fifteen P.M. was what I’d had in mind as a decent wake-up time.

  “Clancy Fletcher?” insisted the voice.

  “Uh-uh.” I cleared my throat. “Yes. That’s me. I’m Clancy Fletcher.”

  “Don’t sound like him. This is Everett Halston. I need to talk to you. You awake enough to take anything in?”

  “Yes.” I’d found the face, and the name, even before he gave it. He sounded older.

  Palpitations and inability to breathe came back, worse than when I woke. Everett Halston. He really was old. The Pearce family’s professional aide and confidant for three generations. And Miriam’s personal lawyer.

  “Did Miriam—” I began.

  “Listen first, Mr. Fletcher, then you can ask questions.” The brisk, salty voice was oddly reassuring. Its next words were not. “Dr. Miriam Pearce left a tape with me, some time ago, and gave me specific instructions. I was to play that tape only if, in my judgment, she was in very serious trouble and unable to act on her own behalf.

  “Late last night I played the tape. I played it because Miriam is unconscious, and no one seems able to tell me when or if she is likely to awaken.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I’ll get to that. You were always a good listener. Listen now. Miriam is at New Hanover Hospital, on the fifth floor. Don’t hang up, Mr. Fletcher. I know you want to. Wait until I am finished. She was moved to an intensive care unit two days ago, from her own research facility, a few hours after she was discovered unconscious. Her vital signs are stable and she is being fed intravenously. However, the attendant physicians are much concerned about her condition. They state—insofar as one can persuade a physician to make any firm statement whatsoever—that they have ruled out all forms of stroke, tumor, and subdural hemorrhage. CAT and PET scan show no abnormalities, although they plan to repeat those today.

  “I am now going to play you Miriam’s tape, or at least the portion of it that concerns you. Wait a few moments.”

  I waited, suspended from life. It was three years since I had seen Miriam Pearce, more than two since I had spoken to her.

  “If there is a strictly legal decision to be made, Everett, and I am for any reason unable to participate, I want you to use your own best judgment.” Miriam’s delivery had not altered at all. Slightly uneven in rhythm, as though she constantly changed her mind about how the sentence ought to end. Confident, jaunty, and a little short-tongued, so that “r” was always a trifle breathier than normal.

  “However, other situations may arise. I could be in danger, or encounter a problem where conventional solutions cannot be applied. It may even be that you do not know what has happened to me, or where I am. In such a case, I want you to contact Clancy Fletcher. Ask him to help me. And commit to him all the financial or other resources that you control in my name.”

  The message ended, or was more likely cut off by Halston. There was a dead silence, while my head spun with questions. The financial resources of Miriam, and of the whole Pearce family, were huge. They could buy the absolute best of anything including medical care. Danger I might have been able to handle. But what could I possibly do for her if she was sick?

  “Mr. Halston, I’m not a doctor.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “I can’t help Miriam.”

  “If you do not try, you certainly cannot. However, I think you are wrong. Let me suggest that you should not prejudge your potential usefulness. If you intend to proceed to New Hanover Hospital, your point of contact there is Dr. Thomas Abernathy.”

  Halston paused, I am sure for my benefit. He felt that I would need time to recover from the shock. Halston knew that Tom Abernathy was Miriam’s close colleague and probably her sexual partner, as surely as he knew that I was Miriam Pearce’s sometime collaborator and lover. He also, by the sound of it, suspected or knew something that he was not going to reveal to me.

  “I have told Thomas Abernathy of Miriam’s instructions to me,” he went on. “I have also informed him that those instructions will be supported by me and by the full weight of the Pearce estate.”

  “He must have loved that.”

  “Let us say that he did not offer an argument, once he had listened to Miriam’s tape.”

  Of course not. Tom Abernathy was far, far smarter than Clancy Fletcher. Abernathy knew instinctively what I had only learned the hard way: You should not try to argue with fifteen billion dollars. That much money creates winds like a hurricane, all around it. A wise man allows himself to be swept along with the gale, but he does not fight it. Because he cannot win.

  “Could I hear the tape again?”

  “Certainly.”

  We both listened in silence. Miriam�
�s voice was so infinitely familiar. Too familiar. I had heard her on a nanodoc television broadcast less than a year ago, a couple of months after a minor operation on her larynx. Her voice was slightly affected then. I had assumed that the change would be permanent.

  “Mr. Halston, when did Miriam make that tape?”

  There was a click as though some recording device had been turned off, followed by a dry chuckle at the other end of the line. “Mr. Fletcher, you are as perceptive as ever. This tape has been in my possession for over three years.”

  Three years. Before Miriam hated me.

  “I suspect that Miriam Pearce forgot about it,” he went on, “or did not get around to changing it. However I will argue, in a court of law if necessary, that no action of Miriam has ever led me to suspect that the recording reflects anything other than her current wishes. Now. Will you be going to New Hanover Hospital?”

  “As soon as we get through.”

  “Then I will say only three more things. First, I will make sure that you are expected at the hospital. Second, Thomas Abernathy will probably not be your friend.”

  “I know that. What’s the other one?”

  “Just good luck, Clancy. Good luck for you; and good luck for Miriam.”

  The New Hanover Hospital was a nine-story spire of glass and carved stone, a whited sepulchre jutting from well-tended lawns.

  In one sense it was a memorial, a testament to Pearce money. The entrance hall bore a message inlaid into its marble mosaic floor, informing the world that the construction of the edifice had been made possible by Pearce munificence. The fifth floor, where Miriam lay unconscious, was known as the Meredith Franklin Pearce ward.

  I did not get to see Miriam at once, much as I wanted to. When the elevator door opened Thomas Abernathy was there, lying in wait for me.

  We had never met, although I had studied his career from afar. But still I did not know him. As he came forward with outstretched hand I watched his face closely, as a Druid might have peered from the misted woods at an arriving Christian. What was the newcomer who had taken my place?

  Just as important, what had she told him of me? Had there been long afternoons of naked revelation, luxurious nights when Tom Abernathy heard all about poor, despised Clancy? Miriam babbled after lovemaking, in a dreamy stream of consciousness at odds with her usual controlled speech.

  We all give to ourselves an importance that is seldom justified. Dr. Thomas Abernathy did stare at me when we shook hands, but it was with perplexity rather than knowing amusement. He did not seem to know who or what I was. But he himself looked a real smoothie, tall and fair and elegant, with a just-right handshake and a physician’s perfect bedside manner.

  One that he was not willing to waste too much on me.

  “I do have the right person, don’t I?” he said after a few moments of critical inspection. “When Everett Halston said Clancy Fletcher, I thought, if that’s the toy man…”

  “The Small Game Hunter. That’s right. That’s me.” It was the way that the present owners of Adestis ran their television advertisements, a business over which I had no control. Did you think that the Big Game Hunt became impossible when the largest carnivores became extinct? (Television shots of a rearing grizzly, a leaping tiger.) Not so! The world’s most deadly game has always been at smaller scale. (Three shots, in rapid sequence, of a praying mantis, a dragonfly, and a trapdoor spider, enlarged to the scale that would be seen by a simulacrum.) These prey are available to hunt today, in unlimited numbers. Join an Adestis safari, and go on a Small Game Hunt—where the line between hunter and hunted can never be drawn. (A final shot of a writhing figure, totally human in appearance as a true simulacrum never was, being dismembered by a quartet of furious soldier ants.)

  It was one way to make a living.

  “I’d like to see Miriam Pearce. I assume that she is still unconscious?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Abernathy hesitated. It was easy to see his problem. Someone had been dumped in his lap who presumably knew nothing about medicine, someone who made his living in a trivial way from what Thomas Abernathy must regard as toys designed for adults with more money than sense. And poor Doctor Tom, who was surely a god in his own domain, had to humor this clown. Because the clown had unfortunately been given the keys to the Pearce treasure chest, and if Clancy Fletcher felt like it he could throw Abernathy out of his own hospital, at least until Miriam Pearce awoke.

  The terrible thing was my own feelings. I hated Abernathy from deep inside me. If I was to help Miriam, I had to control myself.

  The other terrible thing, of course, was my conviction that I was inadequate to help Miriam in any way.

  “Do you have any idea what happened to her?” I had to start Abernathy talking, or that conviction was bound to prove correct.

  “I have—a theory.” He was finally moving, leading me along the corridor away from the elevator. “You know, I assume, that Dr. Miriam Pearce is one of the world’s pioneers in the field of microsurgery?”

  “Yes. I know that.”

  “Well, what is not so well-known is that she has over the years been operating at smaller and smaller scales. When she began, ten years ago, her first generation of remotely guided instruments for microsurgery were huge by today’s standards. Each one was as big as your fingertip. They were also primitive in their remote-control capability. The human operator could use them to perform only limited surgical functions. However, about three years ago Dr. Pearce learned how to produce a line of much more sophisticated instruments, smaller and more versatile.”

  I knew all about that, too, far more than Thomas Abernathy would ever know. But my attention was elsewhere. As we were talking we had moved along the corridor and at last entered a private room. Miriam lay on a bed near the window, eyes not quite closed. I stepped nearer and saw a thin slit of pale blue iris. Her color was good, her expression calm. She was still beautiful, not at all like a person unconscious because of accident or disease. She seemed only asleep. But in her arm were the IVs and next to her stood a great bank of electronic equipment.

  I lifted her hand and pressed it gently. She did not stir. I squeezed harder. No response. I leaned over and spoke into her ear. “Miriam!”

  “Naturally, we have tried all the usual and safe stimulants.” Tom Abernathy’s expression said that he disapproved of my crude experiments. “Chemical, aural, and mechanical. The responses have been limited and puzzling.”

  Chemical, aural, mechanical. Drugs, noises, jabs. They won’t wake Sleeping Beauty. Did you try a kiss?

  I wanted to. Instead I straightened up and said, “You say you have a theory for what’s happening?”

  “I do. Dr. Pearce next produced a line of smaller microsurgery instruments, each one no bigger than a pea, and each capable of much finer control by the human operator. They were a huge success, and they have transformed surgical technique.

  “But they were still too big for certain operations, particularly for fine work within the brain. A few months ago Dr. Pearce took the next step. Nanosurgery, with dozens of multiple, mobile, remote-controlled tools far smaller than a gnat, and all under the control of a single operator.”

  He glanced at me for a reaction. I nodded to show that I was impressed. If he hoped to amaze me, he had a long way to go. There were Adestis games in which the player’s simulacrum was small enough to fight one-on-one with hungry single-celled amoebas, and there were other games in which one human controlled dozens or even hundreds of simulacra. But I was beginning to see why old Everett Halston believed I might have a role to play in solving Miriam’s problem. I didn’t know medicine or surgery, but I knew Adestis technology better than anyone on earth.

  “We tested the nanodocs on animals,” went on Abernathy, “and they seemed to work fine. So after we had the permits we performed our first work on human subjects. That was just five days ago. In my opinion those operational experiments succeeded perfectly. But Miriam—Dr. Pearce—had her reservati
ons. She believed that although the operations had given satisfactory results, our level of control of the nanodocs was an order of magnitude more crude than the design ought to permit. Her theory was that we were making tools so small that their performance was being adversely affected by quantum effects. I tended to agree with her.

  “That was where we were three days ago, when I left for a conference in Rochester. I returned a day later, and learned that Miriam had been found unconscious in the lab.

  “She had been in perfect health when I left, but naturally we assumed at first that it was some conventional medical problem. It was only when the routine tests showed normal results that I went back to see what Miriam had been doing while I was away. Yesterday I found that a set of the new nanodocs was missing—and the monitors insisted that they had been placed under Miriam’s control. According to the monitors, they are still under her control, even though she is unconscious.”

  “But where are they?” I was afraid that I knew the answer. Miriam had her own ideas as to how medical tests ought to be conducted.

  Thomas Abernathy nodded to the body on the bed. “I feel sure they are inside her, a couple of hundred of them. I can’t prove that idea—or let’s say, I dare not try. The only way to be sure would be to break the telemetry contact between Dr. Pearce and the nanodocs. If they are inside her, then letting them run out of control might kill her. Because in view of her condition it is natural to assume that they are lodged somewhere within her brain.”

  I took another look at the silent beauty on the bed. If hundreds of nanodocs were running wild inside Miriam, it did not show.

  “What do you plan to do about it, Dr. Abernathy?”

  He stared at me, uncertain for the first time since we had met. “I do not know what to do, Mr. Fletcher. Several of my colleagues are urging exploratory surgery—” (Saw the top off Miriam’s head. Slice open the protective membranes of her brain. Dive in, poke around, and see what you can find. I shivered.) “—but I regard that as a last resort. I would rather wait, watch, and pray for a change in her condition.”