Georgia On My Mind and Other Places

by Charles Sheffield

  “For God’s sake, we shouldn’t talk about that now.” He stared around the room. “I’ll do it, you know I will, but it will take a while. We’ll have to set up an acquisition program, search the area for donors—”

  “The country. We want tissue types as close to me as possible. Unfortunately, I have no close living relatives.”

  “Then we’ll have to set up the facilities here—they’re very special, controlled low-temperature. But we can’t talk about it now. Not with—” He gestured to the floor. Sylvia lay panting on her stomach, her mouth gaping and her eyes rolled up so that only the whites showed.

  Greenwood gazed down at her calmly. “A pretty creature, isn’t she? Lucky Tommy. However, I must point out that it was your choice to show her off to me, not my request that you bring her. I would suggest a little less stimulation, then you can leave her here with me while you check the rest of the system. And before you leave, we must of course discuss the financial needs of the tissue and organ bank. Now, to work. You go ahead, and I’ll give the signal in one minute. Low level, so they won’t do anything dangerous getting to me.”

  Matlock walked quickly toward the back of the house until he came to the kitchens. Two of the household staff were there, preparing food and talking quietly to each other. They nodded to him, but did not stop work. He was a familiar figure to them.

  He examined the two men closely. They looked and sounded completely normal. The programmable implants were hollow cylinders, less than a millimeter wide and three millimeters long. The operation to install them took a precise brain mapping using a PET scanner, followed by a five-minute procedure in which a hollow needle was driven through the skull and meninges to its destination deep beneath the pia mater. The implant was then passed inside the needle, along with its hair-thin antenna, and the needle itself was withdrawn. No inflammation, no postoperative recovery period. Matlock had observed the process most closely in Sylvia’s case. She had been anesthetized early one evening in her apartment, carried to the hospital, received the implant, and been taken home again within three hours. She knew nothing of what had happened to her. So far as she was concerned, she had drowsed off after lovemaking and woken at midnight with Matlock still at her side. He had observed no aftereffects, not even a complaint of an itch at the installation site or a headache from the anesthetic.

  As Matlock watched, the two men suddenly straightened. They placed the utensils they were holding neatly on a counter, and one of them switched off the oven. Then they turned in unison and headed for the door, pushing past him without a word of comment. They marched off side by side along the corridor that led to Miriam Greenwood’s quarters, making good speed but with no great urgency. Each man had a contented smile on his face.

  Matlock followed slowly. It was a low-level test, true enough, but the men’s response was surely too leisurely to satisfy Greenwood. Probably a signal loss in the circuits that connected the wheelchair to the household’s main computer. If he had some time at the weekend, he might return and give the system a bit of fine tuning.

  But the next weekend, Matlock was in Bermuda. The sudden decision to leave felt like random impulse, caused by cold, snowy weather at home and a desire to explore his new relationship with Sylvia. But sitting on a beach in warm sunshine, a planter’s punch in his hand, Sylvia adoring by his side, he also reached a new insight.

  He wanted to break away from Miriam Greenwood—desperately. And he could not.

  In the past two years, he had made more money than he had ever dreamed of. There ought to be four million dollars in his bank account. Instead he was broke, with new bills coming in every day. The casino was an endless maw, its opening date still six months away, and the vacation home was far from paid for. Back taxes loomed larger and larger. He did the calculations over and over. If Greenwood survived for another year and a half, and he remained in her employ, he could be home free. If she died before that, he was on the rocks.

  He rose to change for dinner filled with a new resolve. Since Greenwood wanted to live, desperately, he would throw all his efforts into helping her. If necessary he would ask for a leave of absence from the hospital—it produced only five percent of his income now—and devote himself to the care of Miriam Greenwood. He would become her slave, as Sylvia was now his slave.

  The decision helped a lot. He was at last able to enjoy his meal, and notice the envious glances of the men around him. Here was a young, stunning, sexy woman, with no eyes for anyone except the man who sat opposite. Whenever there was an opportunity to do so, she was touching his hand, reaching out under the table to rub his calf with her stockinged foot, or nudging her knee against his. And the most curious thing about it was the secret looks that he was receiving from the women. They seemed even more interested than the men, particularly a pouting brunette who sat two tables away. Twice she had caught Matlock’s eye, and held it regardless of the irritated looks from her companion, a bald-headed man in his late fifties.

  New vistas were opening. Sylvia was healthy and obviously happy, with no harmful physical effects from the implant. She had remembered nothing of the episode with Miriam Greenwood, and other experiments suggested that times spent with the pleasure impulse at its maximum were lost at once from memory. She would do anything to please him now, anything to touch and hold him. But she was not the only woman in the world—already he found it hard to recall his own desperate obsession of just a few weeks earlier.

  Why not that brunette? Why not two women with programmable implants, or a dozen of them? He could make them all dote on him alone, all ready to do whatever he wanted them to do. It would take only a little more money and help from Miriam Greenwood. One more reason to stay in her service…

  Matlock returned from his holiday mentally relaxed, pleasantly sated physically, and resolved to make his patient live indefinitely. He landed at BWI Airport in the beginning of a new snowstorm, dropped Sylvia off at the apartment, and drove by the hospital for a routine check for messages.

  He felt a twinge of guilt as he approached his office. Two years ago he had promised to leave notice of his whereabouts, so that Miriam Greenwood could always reach him if she wanted to; but in his urge to get away from everything he had told no one at the hospital where he was going.

  At the threshold he stopped and stared. He had left the modem in his office computer switched on, and now the whole floor was covered with paper from the printer in the corner. The machine was chattering even as he walked across to it.

  COME AT ONCE, NEED YOU URGENTLY.

  Thirty seconds later, the printer was at work again.

  COME AT ONCE, NEED YOU URGENTLY.

  Was that all? He knew the message could have come from only one place, but surely Ronson and Miriam Greenwood would have sent more than just those few words.

  Matlock sank to his knees and began to look for the beginning of the paper scroll. His heart was pumping a hundred beats a minute. If she had died while he was away, without even a day of notice, he was a ruined man.

  He scrabbled at the folded and twisted sheets. It was there, the beginning of the whole message sequence—and it was from Ronson.

  Miriam Greenwood had suffered a major stroke in the left occipital lobe of her brain. Substantial hemorrhaging. She was alive, but there were other problems. Ronson was too busy to describe them. Matlock was to come to the house at once, then he and Ronson—

  The message broke off in midsentence.

  Come at once. Matlock’s eyes went to the top of the first sheet and he cursed aloud. 09:02:33—88/1/3. That meant nine A.M. on January 3rd. Three days and four hours ago, while he had been lounging on a sunny beach. And since then?

  He ran the scrolled paper through his hands, sheet after sheet. Nothing more from Ronson, but at 9:05 on January 3rd, just three minutes after that first message, a single command appeared and went on and on.

  COME AT ONCE, NEED YOU URGENTLY.

  COME AT ONCE, NEED YOU URGENTLY.

  No signature, no
other word anywhere on the page.

  Matlock left the room at a run. He was inside his car and out of the parking lot within thirty seconds. It was still snowing. Midafternoon traffic was light. He was able to reach 270 North in fifteen minutes. The road had been well-plowed, but other drivers were nervous and hindered his progress. He tailgated, passed as soon as he could, and still averaged no more than fifty.

  Stroke, in the occipital lobe. Sight would be affected, almost certainly. Hemorrhaging. But how much hemorrhaging, and where was the blood flow? Was there significant clotting? God, after three days there could be just about anything. The one good sign was that repeated message. It came from the household computer, and that was under Miriam Greenwood’s direct control. She was still alive.

  “Hang in there, old woman. Don’t die on me now.” He muttered it to himself under his breath. Ronson was a fair doctor, but he didn’t have Matlock’s skills and knowledge. The only hope was Miriam Greenwood’s own will to live. If there were any way to cling to life until Matlock arrived to help, that tough old mind would find it.

  Conditions worsened when he hit Route 15. The snow fell more heavily, the Lamborghini’s heater and defroster were inadequate, and the road narrowed to a two-lane highway. Overtaking was impossible. He became part of a procession, moving with the speed of the slowest and most nervous. By the time he reached the road that led through the park, struggled over its highest part, and was at last descending toward the Greenwood estate, it was nearly dark. He forced himself to slow down. If he slid the car off the road now he would never get out of the drifts.

  Another ten minutes. The fence and the metal gates were finally visible through the swirling snowflakes. Matlock hunched over the wheel, his shoulders and neck tight with tension, and stared at their dark outlines.

  Something was wrong. As he came closer he realized what it was. The gates. They were not tightly closed. Instead they were moving through a jerky cycle, like the wings of some great maimed bird. While his car crept closer the barred gates came to maximum aperture, held for a second, then swung quickly in to clash shut.

  He drove to within ten feet of the gates, left the engine running, and stepped out of the car. No other vehicle tracks were visible, entering or leaving the estate. The metal sentry box was in its usual position, covered with driven snow. He walked to stand shivering in front of it. Instead of the usual request for identification he heard a sinister mechanical growling, its volume changing in a cadence that matched the moving gates.

  Within a few seconds his feet, already chilled from the journey, were freezing. He hurried back to the Lamborghini, held his hands for a second in front of the heater, backed the car up thirty feet, and waited. After a few seconds the gates began to open again. He eased the car forward in second gear, careful to avoid spinning the wheels on the untouched snow. By the time he reached the wide-open gates he was traveling at maybe twenty miles an hour. He went safely through before they again began to close.

  He drove the rest of the way to the house, parked, and ran to the main door. It was not locked, and like the main gates it was opening and closing in an irregular rhythm. No time to worry about guards. He waited for his moment and darted inside. In the entrance, the level of the lights flickered and fluctuated, in that same strange cycle. He dashed across the stone floor and headed straight along the corridor to Miriam Greenwood’s study.

  It was deserted. Silent and empty. For the first time in his experience, the wheelchair with its familiar, fragile occupant was not there.

  Matlock wiped melted snow from his forehead, walked across to warm his hands on the hot-water radiators on the other side of the room, and stood frowning up at the TV monitors. They had never before been turned off, and now they were dark and silent.

  A flicker of movement at the door caught his attention. Someone had hurried past along the corridor.

  “Hey!” He ran across to the door. “Hey, you.”

  The man did not pause or turn around. He was wearing the white uniform of a nurse and carrying a shiny metal tray. His pace did not change. If he heard Matlock, he did not acknowledge it.

  Matlock swore and started out after him. They were heading for the back of the house—toward the main medical area and surgery! Naturally. Matlock felt an enormous relief. If Miriam Greenwood needed an operation, that was exactly where Ronson should have taken her.

  “Hey, wait for me.” He called out again, and increased his pace. Still the man in front did not respond. He was moving in through the wide-open doors of the main treatment center and operating room. Half a dozen other white-clad figures were visible inside, and Matlock recognized Ronson’s flaming red hair and broad back.

  “How is she?” He started to ask questions before he was even in the room. “I was wondering on the way here about intracranial pressure. How much edema did you see? And how did the CAT scan look?”

  She was there, as he had hoped and expected. Matlock pushed past the others and moved to her side.

  They had not tried to take her out of her wheelchair. Instead they had moved the setting to full reclining position, raising it to form a bed and, when necessary, an operating table. Her clothes had been cut away. The telemetry sensors, computer leads, catheters, and IVs of blood and antibiotics still hung from the chalk-white, skinny body and attached to the bare, delicate skull. Her eyes were closed and the whole upper rear of her braincase had been opened up. Matlock could see the pinky-gray cerebral cortex, partly obscured by a darker stain of venous blood.

  But was she alive? Matlock leaned closer. He could see her chest rising and falling with a now-familiar irregular rhythm. She ought to have died—days ago. But she had not. The will to live was in every harsh, shallow breath.

  “How is she?” He repeated the question, realizing how foolish it was and suddenly aware that no one else had spoken since he came in. He stared around him for the first time.

  Beyond Miriam Greenwood was a standard operating table, and on it stood a container of blood and a frightful jumble of organs and body parts. The organ bank?—except that Matlock had not yet begun to create it. What he was looking at had once been a man.

  He turned and started to move away, but Ronson was right behind him. His white coat was filthy and blood-streaked, and a long yellow stain of urine ran down his left trouser leg. The red hair, always carefully styled and brushed, hung down in greasy locks across his forehead. Ronson’s eyes were sunken and bloodshot, and there was a smear of blood on his unshaven left cheek.

  “Test tissue type.” The whispering came from all around, from every audio outlet. “Need a better match.”

  The white-clad figures in the room moved with the drunken gait of men who had been given no moment of rest for three days and nights, but they moved with perfect coordination. Suddenly there was a tight ring of people around Matlock, closing in on him.

  He backed away, shrinking from the touch of bloody hands. Soon he could go no farther. The wheelchair dug into his back.

  He spun around in a frenzy. “Die.” He screamed at Miriam Greenwood’s unconscious body. “You monster. Die, damn you. Let them go.”

  Strong fingers were on his shoulders. His own hands grabbed at a cluster of IVs and jerked them out of the wasted arm. The hands that held him shivered and released their grip. All the lights in the room went out for a second, then flickered back to half-power.

  “Die, die, DIE.” He was roaring at the top of his voice, but all the audio outlets in the room were screaming back in fury: “Live, live, LIVE.”

  He had his fingers at Miriam Greenwood’s open skull, driving them toward the spongy brain tissue. He was pulled away. A dozen hands lifted him, carried him across to the operating table.

  He dropped into a soggy welter of still-warm organs. He was held by his arms and legs so that he could not move. Above him the flickering lights of the room reflected from a gleaming scalpel. As the knife moved toward his throat, Matlock lifted his head. Six men were holding him, the seventh about to
cut.

  “No, no, stop.” He jerked and writhed. “For God’s sake, stop.”

  The blade moved in. And all around the table the faces smiled down at him, with the serene ecstasy of a mother holding her firstborn.

  Afterword to “Health Care System”

  I’m reasonably conscientious regarding my health and continued existence. By this I mean that I do not smoke cigarettes, I do not drink to excess, I do not sky-dive or race cars for a hobby, and given the choice I will walk rather than ride. On the other hand, I am not unreasonably conscientious about my health. I’m about fifteen pounds overweight, I smoke a cigar maybe once a month, I keep irregular hours, I do not exercise every day, and I do not follow a low fat or a low cholesterol diet.

  In other words, although I enjoy life and certainly do not want to die, I am not willing to go to extreme measures to remain alive. When I realized that truth about myself a few years ago, I found myself asking the obvious question: Suppose that a person would go to any lengths to prolong his life. What would he do, if living as long as possible was the only thing that mattered?

  This story provides an answer. And an unpleasant one it is. I think my mother has a much better answer. She will be ninety-two years old in December. She has no idea of her blood pressure or her cholesterol level, and her diet is high in fat, sugar, caffeine, and salt. She does not smoke cigarettes, having given them up when she was eighty-three, but she still enjoys alcohol. She attributes her longevity to living one day at a time and avoiding doctors. She must be the despair of the health care profession.

  One other thing. It should be obvious from the publication date, but I want to point out that this story was written long before health care systems became one of our national obsessions.

  Humanity Test

  “IN THE PAST few days we have heard a great deal of talk about the origins of the Shimmies. It has been stated—several times—that Jakob Schimmerhann’s actions were completely illegal; that we all know this to be the case; and that he richly deserves punishment.