The All-Purpose Bodies: A Fast-Paced Thriller (Commander Shaw Book 11)

by Philip McCutchan

  “Which?” I scarcely dared to look at Flair by this time. I didn’t know how she’d managed to keep going. Myself, I was more and more revolted.

  High frowned and said, “Well, now, this is really where we reach the nub, you know. You won’t begin to see the connection quite yet — there’s something else I’ll have to show you first — but I can tell you this man’s due for a brain transplant.”

  “You’re really advanced, aren’t you!”

  “Well, one likes to think so,” High said with a show of unlikely modesty. “As a matter of fact, Shaw, I’ve done several already. Brain transferences, you know, from one to another. The long-term results should really be quite fascinating … but they don’t concern us here and now. It’s the short term that’ll interest you — it’s the short term results I’ve obtained that have made possible my current project for WUSWIPP, you see. That’s really what my brain experiments have been leading to, but the side issues are immensely interesting as well. Personality transference — is this going to be possible one day?” He paused, his eyes alight. “Actually I’ve got one very intriguing case where there does in fact seem to have been such a personality transference. I must get you to meet him. Of course he’s at an early stage comparatively and not quite a good basis for advanced deductions to be made, but I do think I may be arriving at some indications that a transferred brain takes its attributes of personality and experience with it to the new body, if not in full then at least in part. But I don’t want to forecast too far ahead. One can be made to look awfully silly at times when you do that.” He glanced at his watch. “Let’s get on, Shaw. I’d like you to see one more ward, though really it’s not so much a ward as a storehouse.”

  We went back again to the lift and down, right down into the cold bowels of this rock hospital where so much that was pure evil was going on. I could well see now why this man wasn’t able to practise his filthy medicine in any civilized country; no-one had yet quite reached his stage of unrespect for the human body, closely as in some cases the world might be approaching it — I had heard stories that had come out of the Soviet Union, and Britain and America were going that way as well, though more slowly. But when we entered what High had called his storehouse, we saw something that was far more appalling than any of the stories I had ever heard from anywhere. I think I’d expected to find a cold-storage chamber containing human organs frozen right down for use in future transplants, but this wasn’t that sort of storehouse at all. To begin with it wasn’t cold, wasn’t even cool; it was about body temperature and it stank to heaven even through the antiseptics and disinfectants and air-purifiers that did their best to keep the smell down and the atmosphere fresh. This was a storehouse all right, but it was a storehouse of bodies just about alive in a very much worse sense than the bodies in the previous ward. It was a kind of spare-part bank consisting of parts growing, or existing till required, on human hosts, living human vegetables providing a feeding ground for living, beating hearts, for kidneys, livers, spleens, brains, lungs, eyes, digestive systems — you name them, High had them. Flair took one look and passed out on the floor like a flicked-off light. So she missed some of what I was forced to look at. I had to see the organs, living and healthy, cut from other bodies and now connected to blood vessels in their hosts and kept alive in glass or plastic capsules. Two hearts beat away at the ends of their connections to an inert but living human thigh; a brain lived on, waiting its time to control another body, joined in its complexity to the base of the neck of a host trunk. A headless body existed by virtue of its connection to a complicated assemblage of shining steel and red plastic tubing. A complete digestive system from esophagus to lower bowel pulsated at the end of a tube leading to and from the vegetable stomach of its feeder body.

  “We have everything here,” High told me, and I gagged. I was sick on the floor. An orderly with one normal leg and one embryonic hopped across and cleared it up, looking squeamish at his task.

  12

  Outside the ward I said, “At least you have no ethical problems here … such as, at what point does the human body die?”

  “Oh, no,” High said. “Nothing like that at all.”

  I was damn nearly babbling, I think, by the time we all got back to his office. The human suffering that lay hidden in this diabolical rock was quite appalling. In spite of a certain amount of experience of human nature up and down the world, I found it hard to believe that any man could be quite so callous, so cold-blooded as this man High. At the same time I was not unaware of the scientific outlook, the fanatically held belief of many researchers that the end justified the means. I could understand, though never agree with, the kind of mind that considered scientific progress to be of paramount importance. What I could not understand yet was what this man was after and where his horrible unit fitted in with his plans in regard to Lifeforce. I could see no logical connection at all.

  When I told him this he said, “You’ll see it all soon, Shaw. I’ll be much better able to explain now you’ve seen what I’m doing, even though you haven’t seen the particular operation that links my work here with what I have to carry out in Australia.”

  I asked, “What’s that?”

  “This,” he said, and reached into a drawer in his desk. He brought out a minute metal object, shiny and cylindrical, and handed it to me. I studied it as it lay in the palm of my hand. It was no bigger than a small plain pin, a pin without either head or sharp point, but unlike a mere pin it had noticeable weight. “What is it?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you in a moment. First, I’d like to tell you in more detail about what we mean to do in Australia.” High sat forward and leaned across the desk, earnestly, as he had done when I’d first met him that morning. He sat very still as he talked and he hardly blinked as he stared me in the eyes. He said quietly, “I expect you realize how far the Australians have gone already towards basing their whole economy on the irrigation of their central areas by the Lifeforce complex. Can we take that as read?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Good. Then I’ll just say this: without Lifeforce the Australian economy would in fact virtually collapse, for a long time at least. It’s during that time that the continent will be at its most vulnerable, when it will be widest open to … outside pressures. I think you understand me, don’t you, Shaw?”

  I’d opened my mouth to say no I didn’t when it hit me like a bomb, hit me like the hammer blow that would hit the Northern Territory when High’s boys blew Lifeforce itself. It hit me so hard I got to my feet and walked about the room with my hands to my head. High didn’t object; he just sat there, smiling quietly, totally sure of himself. I don’t know why in hell I’d missed out on it till now, except that I’d had precious little time to give real thought to anything since High had first told me he meant to bring about the blow-up of Lifeforce. And even now I couldn’t see the link with his human guinea pigs …

  Smiling still he said, “Well, Shaw?”

  “You mean the Western strike-back, don’t you? WUSWIPP’s going to wipe out the Australian half of it. That’s it — isn’t it?”

  He nodded and went on smiling at me across the room. He said abruptly, “Sit down.” I obeyed, my thoughts milling turbulently about inside my head. Earlier, in Australia, I’d had vaguish ideas about the strike-back. Half the West’s hopes and future happened to lie in Australia now. Britain herself had pulled out of the unequal struggle to maintain any sort of a strike-back against a war which we had all hoped wouldn’t ever come anyway. With no money, you can’t prepare against remote contingencies, and that, today, was the way they looked at war back home. Other things were really with you — education, the health service, retirement pensions, racial pressures, all the trappings of the welfare state — they cost enough without worrying about the things that would never happen. So the burden had been shifted. We in Britain had nothing now, just a tiny standing army, reduced to something like the post-war Gurkha Brigade, to cope with isolated incidents and
help the police stop hooliganism at football matches. There was a handful of obsolete aircraft at three RAF stations, and the RN didn’t exist any more — it had been merged into the Water Transport Companies of the Royal Corps of Transport. Gone were the Polaris missiles, and the submarines that had carried them were in mothballs waiting for a buyer. So far as the West was concerned, everything was pinned on the United States and Australia. America would take care of the Northern Hemisphere; Australia the Southern. That was the carve-up and that was the plan and as things stood it was quite a good one really. Both countries had the space to cope with modern defensive missile and anti-missile and anti-anti-missile-missile systems. We in Britain had not. But down in Australia that defence system in turn depended on Lifeforce — directly to a very large extent, indirectly to an even greater extent. Blow Lifeforce and the pipelines and you just about blew the whole of the southern half of the strike-back automatically. After that it would be up to America alone to carry the whole of the political West. It was as simple as that.

  Or was it? Because by my way of looking at it, when you blew Lifeforce you also did something else: you provoked a shooting war. It was a kind of built-in by-product of the main act. Indeed High himself had said as much, earlier. But when I put the point to him now, he didn’t see it that way at all.

  “No,” he said. “That’s just exactly what you don’t do. Not in the sense you mean, my dear chap. But let’s suppose for a moment it did work out that way, shall we? What would the result be? I can tell you quite simply: an immediate sea and airborne invasion from China, using Malaysia not only as a forward base of operations but also as allies. The fears Australians have always had of the yellow peril would materialize. You know that as well as I do. But I can assure you, Australia and the West won’t voluntarily go to war over Lifeforce, because once Lifeforce has blown it’ll be too late. There’ll be no teeth in half the system. The East, on the other hand, would be all ready to go the moment it became necessary. Australia could be overrun in almost no time at all.” He added, “Of course, it’s possible this invasion will come about, but definitely not in the early —”

  “What about the States?” I interrupted. “Don’t you think they’ll come in on this? Do you really imagine they’ll sit back and let your bunch of maniacs get away with it?”

  High said practically, “Well, look, just put yourself in the position of the American president. You’re sitting in the White House, the central point of an ordered and basically prosperous society with no thoughts of more war, of another Vietnam and so on. Don’t forget official relations with Moscow at any rate are good these days, will you? Even Peking is quiescent. Now, in the midst of all this happy peacefulness et cetera you hear of a big explosion a long way off in Australia, part of the British Commonwealth. What do you do, Shaw?” High was smiling again, as confident as he could be. “Do you rush to the television on a coast-to-coast hook-up to tell the American people they’re back in it again, in a state of total war, not just another Vietnam but a war for survival — all because you’ve decided to commit them on account of an explosion in a civil industrial complex in Australia? Do you? Do you start to dream up convincing reasons for plunging a peaceful nation into the horror of a nuclear war — or do you express great sorrow at what has happened, and send telegrams of sympathy to the Australian federal prime minister in Canberra, to the administrator in Darwin, to the Queen in Buckingham Palace? Which, my dear chap, do you do?”

  I said evenly, “I honour my treaties and I go to war. But fast!”

  High shook his head, smiling as ever. “I don’t think you do,” he said, “because you’d know you wouldn’t have a cat in hell’s chance of carrying your people with you. Or Congress, come to that. The American people have had a bellyful of war and believe me, they’re sick to death of it. I don’t blame them. You can bet your life, Shaw old man, the States’ll stay entirely aloof from this, until it’s far too late.”

  “Balls,” I said rudely. “The very moment there’s an act of war, America’s bound by treaty to intervene. It’s in her own interests anyway. She knows she can’t afford to be left as the sole Western power. You’ve got your thinking all mixed up, Doctor.”

  “I haven’t, actually, but that’s not to say there isn’t some truth in what you say,” High acknowledged, “and in fact I’d agree with you — if there was to be an overt act of war on our part. But —”

  “But isn’t there? You blow up Lifeforce on behalf of your precious peace-loving WUSWIPP, and —”

  “There will be no overt act of war,” High interrupted loudly. “For God’s sake, man — don’t you see? I’ve told you already, haven’t I, WUSWIPP stays right behind the scenes, no outside agency will be used at all, Lifeforce is to commit suicide and —”

  “Yes,” I said flatly. “I get your point now. Since Learoyd and your other stooges’ll be atomized with everyone else on the island, it’ll appear to have been an accident.”

  “That’s it,” High said. He sat back. “A complete accident. A terrible tragedy due to some fault which it’ll never be possible to find. Now — you’re still the president of the United States, Shaw. Do you turn out the dogs of war, old chap, or don’t you?”

  Well, of course I knew the answer to that one: like flaming hell I turned out the dogs of war — for a totally accidental explosion in Australia’s Northern Territory! I could just see Congress welcoming that with open arms, and the American men and women flocking to the colours or whatever, demanding their draft cards so they could strike a good blow for poor old threatened Uncle Sam. Demanding more and more taxes to pay for it all. Doing without holidays on the Continent. Reading the casualty lists, if there was ever time for them to be compiled, let alone printed. No — High was dead right! I’d settle, if I was in the White House, for the message of condolence to the Queen. I wouldn’t come in fighting on that one, because I wouldn’t be knowing — as I knew that morning on Kimbau — that one day when Australia was beaten into the ground WUSWIPP would go into action against the last remaining Western position and would win hands down.

  It was clever, all right. I said, “Okay, I’m with you this far. But I still don’t see why that bastard Learoyd wants to get himself blown up, just for a political ideal.”

  “I don’t suppose he does,” High said with a grin. “I doubt if he has any ideals, political or otherwise, come to that. But I really ought to point out that he isn’t a traitor.”

  “Oh?” I said in surprise. “In that case, what makes him blow the plant?”

  “This,” High said, and picked up the tiny metal cylinder that I’d put back on his desk. “But — and I’m sorry to keep putting you off as it were — I’d like you to see something else before I explain about my little invention.” He reached beneath his desk again and pressed his bell-push and Summers came in. High said, “We’re all ready, Summers,” and the turnip-headed man went across the room and switched on a television receiver that stood in a corner. When it flickered into life we saw a man lying on a bed with his eyes closed, lying completely inert like one of High’s experimental cases, his hands clasped on a large stomach. Dunwoodie. I recognized the face from photographs. As soon as she saw him Flair jumped to her feet and cried out, “Why, Jake! My God, it’s Jake! What have you been doing to him?”

  “Don’t worry,” High said. “He’s not been hurt in any way at all —”

  She whipped round on him. “Have you been trying any of your filthy experiments on him?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that. Just a very small operation that hasn’t even left a scar. You really needn’t worry.” High got up and went across towards the screen. “As a matter of fact, Mrs Dunwoodie, your husband’s a very important part of the plan. Now — if you’ll just watch for a moment and not ask me any questions yet, you’ll see the thing in action.” He went back to his desk and sat down and unlocked a drawer, using a key on a chain attached to his waist. He reached inside the drawer and fiddled with something and what I had taken to
be a solid wall opposite the screen I had crashed through earlier lifted silently upwards, disappearing to reveal a long compartment containing banks of computers. In front of these was a massive control panel, filled with dials and lights and switches, with one of the signal-vision screens, on a smaller scale than the smashed one, set in the centre. As the doctor went towards it this screen lit up and there was another image of Jake Dunwoodie on it. The television screen remained alive as well, so that we could now see two Dunwoodies. High said, “Now watch,” and moved a lever on the control panel. He spoke to the image on the signal-vision screen. “Dunwoodie,” he said in a quiet but clear and insistent voice, “you will wake shortly and when you do you will have a hangover. You’ll feel terrible. You’ve drunk a hell of a lot of whisky and beer over the last couple of weeks or so and you don’t remember anything about where you’ve been.” He paused, glanced quickly at me, then turned his attention back to the screen. On a note of command he said suddenly, “Now wake up.”

  Dunwoodie obeyed.

  Flair and I watched him come to, saw him blink, open his eyes fully, shut them again, and sort of flex his body in the bed. Then he put a hand to his head, licked at dry lips, and after that lay very, very still as if wondering whether or not his head had burst open. We heard him groan. He said distinctly, “——ing hell,” then sat up, gave his head a very gentle experimental shake, clasped it tight, and groaned again. I knew exactly how he felt. I’d often felt that way myself. He looked ghastly, as though the cat was stamping its feet hard on the floor above and he couldn’t take it anymore. He was undergoing torture, but he imagined it to have been self-inflicted.