The girl's mother spoke English. I told her there were signs that the cancer might have spread. She wept, and thanked me for my good work.
Masika didn't say a word about the incident, but by the end of the day I could hardly bear to look at him. When Okwera departed, leaving the two of us alone in the locker room, I said, “In three or four years there'll be a vaccine. Or even HealthGuard software. It won't be like this forever.”
He shrugged, embarrassed. “Sure.”
“I'll raise funds for the research when I get home. Champagne dinners with slides of photogenic patients, if that's what it takes.” I knew I was making a fool of myself, but I couldn't shut up. “This isn't the nineteenth century. We're not helpless anymore. Anything can be cured, once you understand it.”
Masika eyed me dubiously, as if he was trying to decide whether or not to tell me to save my platitudes for the champagne dinners. Then he said, “We do understand Yeyuka. We have HealthGuard software written for it, ready and waiting to go. But we can't run it on the machine here. So we don't need funds for research. What we need is another machine.”
I was speechless for several seconds, trying to make sense of this extraordinary claim. “The hospital's machine is broken—?”
Masika shook his head. “The software is unlicensed. If we used it on the hospital's machine, our agreement with HealthGuard would be void. We'd lose the use of the machine entirely.”
I could hardly believe that the necessary research had been completed without a single publication, but I couldn't believe Masika would lie about it either. “How long can it take HealthGuard to approve the software? When was it submitted to them?”
Masika was beginning to look like he wished he'd kept his mouth shut, but there was no going back now. He admitted warily, “It hasn't been submitted to them. It can't be—that's the whole problem. We need a bootleg machine, a decommissioned model with the satellite link disabled, so we can run the Yeyuka software without their knowledge.”
“Why? Why can't they find out about it?”
He hesitated. “I don't know if I can tell you that.”
“Is it illegal? Stolen?” But if it was stolen, why hadn't the rightful owners licensed the damned thing, so people could use it?
Masika replied icily, “Stolen back. The only part you could call ‘stolen’ was stolen back.” He looked away for a moment, actually struggling for control. Then he said, “Are you sure you want to know the whole story?”
“Yes.”
“Then I'll have to make a phone call.”
Masika took me to what looked like a boarding house, student accommodation in one of the suburbs close to the campus. He walked briskly, giving me no time to ask questions, or even orient myself in the darkness. I had a feeling he would have liked to have blindfolded me, but it would hardly have made a difference; by the time we arrived I couldn't have said where we were to the nearest kilometer.
A young woman, maybe nineteen or twenty, opened the door. Masika didn't introduce us, but I assumed she was the person he'd phoned from the hospital, since she was clearly expecting us. She led us to a ground floor room; someone was playing music upstairs, but there was no one else in sight.
In the room, there was a desk with an old-style keyboard and computer monitor, and an extraordinary device standing on the floor beside it: a rack of electronics the size of a chest of drawers, full of exposed circuit boards, all cooled by a fan half a meter wide.
“What is that?”
The woman grinned. “We modestly call it the Makerere supercomputer. Five hundred and twelve processors, working in parallel. Total cost, fifty thousand shillings.”
That was about fifty dollars. “How—?”
“Recycling. Twenty or thirty years ago, the computer industry ran an elaborate scam: software companies wrote deliberately inefficient programs, to make people buy newer, faster computers all the time—then they made sure that the faster computers needed brand new software to work at all. People threw out perfectly good machines every three or four years, and though some ended up as landfill, millions were saved. There's been a worldwide market in discarded processors for years, and the slowest now cost about as much as buttons. But all it takes to get some real power out of them is a little ingenuity.”
I stared at the wonderful contraption. “And you wrote the Yeyuka software on this?”
“Absolutely.” She smiled proudly. “First, the software characterizes any damaged surface adhesion molecules it finds—there are always a few floating freely in the bloodstream, and their exact shape depends on the strain of Yeyuka, and the particular cells that have been infected. Then drugs are tailor-made to lock on to those damaged adhesion molecules, and kill the infected cells by rupturing their membranes.” As she spoke, she typed on the keyboard, summoning up animations to illustrate each stage of the process. “If we can get this onto a real machine… we'll be able to cure three people a day.”
Cure. Not just cut them open to delay the inevitable.
“But where did all the raw data come from? The RNA sequencing, the X-ray diffraction studies…?”
The woman's smile vanished. “An insider at Health-Guard found it in the company archives, and sent it to us over the net.”
“I don't understand. When did HealthGuard do Yeyuka studies? Why haven't they published them? Why haven't they written software themselves?”
She glanced uncertainly at Masika. He said, “HealthGuard's parent company collected blood from five thousand people in Southern Uganda in 2013. Supposedly to follow up on the effectiveness of their HIV vaccine. What they actually wanted, though, was a large sample of metastasizing cells so they could perfect the biggest selling point of the HealthGuard: cancer protection. Yeyuka offered them the cheapest, simplest way to get the data they needed.”
I'd been half expecting something like this since Masika's comments back in the hospital, but I was still shaken. To collect the data dishonestly was bad enough, but to bury information that was halfway to a cure—just to save paying for what they'd taken—was unspeakable.
I said, “Sue the bastards! Get everyone who had samples taken together for a class action: royalties plus punitive damages. You'll raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Then you can buy as many machines as you want.”
The woman laughed bitterly. “We have no proof. The files were sent anonymously, there's no way to authenticate their origin. And can you imagine how much HealthGuard would spend on their defense? We can't afford to waste the next twenty years in a legal battle, just for the satisfaction of shouting the truth from the rooftops. The only way we can be sure of making use of this software is to get a bootleg machine, and do everything in silence.”
I stared at the screen, at the cure being played out in simulation that should have been happening three times a day in Mulago hospital. She was right, though. However hard it was to stomach, taking on HealthGuard directly would be futile.
Walking back across the campus with Masika, I kept thinking of the girl with the liver infestation, and the possibility of undoing the moment of clumsiness that would otherwise almost certainly kill her. I said, “Maybe I can get hold of a bootleg machine in Shanghai. If I knew where to ask, where to look.” They'd certainly be expensive, but they'd have to be much cheaper than a commissioned model, running without the usual software and support.
My hand moved almost unconsciously to check the metal pulse on my index finger. I held the ring up in the starlight. “I'd give you this, if it was mine to give. But that's thirty years away.” Masika didn't reply, too polite to suggest that if I'd owned the ring outright, I wouldn't even have raised the possibility.
We reached the University Hall; I could find my way back to the guest house now. But I could't leave it at that; I couldn't face another six weeks of surgery unless I knew that something was going to come of the night's revelations. I said, “Look, I don't have connections to any black market, I don't have a clue how to go about getting a machine. But if you can find o
ut what I have to do, and it's within my power… I'll do it.”
Masika smiled, and nodded thanks, but I could tell that he didn't believe me. I wondered how many other people had made promises like this, then vanished back into the world-without-disease while the Yeyuka wards kept overflowing.
As he turned to go, I put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “I mean it. Whatever it takes, I'll do it.”
He met my eyes in the dark, trying to judge something deeper than this easy protestation of sincerity. I felt a sudden flicker of shame; I'd completely forgotten that I was an impostor, that I'd never really meant to come here, that two months ago a few words from Lisa would have seen me throw away my ticket, gratefully.
Masika said quietly, “Then I'm sorry that I doubted you. And I'll take you at your word.”
Mubende was a district capital, half a day's drive west of Kampala. Iganga delayed our promised trip to the Yeyuka clinic there until my last fortnight, and once I arrived I could understand why. It was everything I'd feared: starved of funds, understaffed and overcrowded. Patients' relatives were required to provide and wash the bed-clothes, and half of them also seemed to be bringing in painkillers and other drugs bought at the local markets—some genuine, some rip-offs full of nothing but glucose or magnesium sulfate.
Most of the patients had four or five separate tumors. I treated two people a day, with operations lasting six to eight hours. In ten days, seven people died in front of me; dozens more died in the wards, waiting for surgery.
Or waiting for something better.
I shared a crowded room at the back of the clinic with Masika and Okwera, but even on the rare occasions when I caught Masika alone, he seemed reluctant to discuss the details of getting hold of a bootleg HealthGuard. He said, “Right now, the less you know the better. When the time comes, I'll fill you in.”
The ordeal of the patients was overwhelming, but I felt more for the clinic's sole doctor and two nurses; for them, it never ended. The morning we packed our equipment into the truck and headed back for Kampala, I felt like a deserter from some stupid, pointless war: guilty about the colleagues I was leaving behind, but almost euphoric with relief to be out of it myself. I knew I couldn't have stayed on here—or even in Kampala—month after month, year after year. However much I wished that I could have been that strong, I understood now that I wasn't.
There was a brief, loud stuttering sound, then the truck squealed to a halt. The four of us were all in the back, guarding the equipment against potholes, with the tarpaulin above us blocking everything but a narrow rear view. I glanced at the others; someone outside shouted in Luganda at Akena Ibingira, the driver, and he started shouting back.
Okwera said, “Bandits.”
I felt my heart racing. “You're kidding?”
There was another burst of gunfire. I heard Ibingira jump out of the cab, still muttering angrily.
Everyone was looking at Okwera for advice. He said, “Just cooperate, give them what they want.” I tried to read his face; he seemed grim but not desperate—he expected unpleasantness, but not a massacre. Iganga was sitting on the bench beside me; I reached for her hand almost without thinking. We were both trembling. She squeezed my fingers for a moment, then pulled free.
Two tall, smiling men in dirty brown camouflage appeared at the back of the truck, gesturing with automatic weapons for us to climb out. Okwera went first, but Masika, who'd been sitting beside him, hung back. Iganga was nearer to the exit than me, but I tried to get past her; I had some half-baked idea that this would somehow lessen her risk of being taken off and raped. When one of the bandits blocked my way and waved her forward, I thought this fear had been confirmed.
Masika grabbed my arm, and when I tried to break free, he tightened his grip and pulled me back into the truck. I turned on him angrily, but before I could say a word he whispered, “She'll be all right. Just tell me: do you want them to take the ring?”
“What?”
He glanced nervously toward the exit, but the bandits had moved Okwera and Iganga out of sight. “I've paid them to do this. It's the only way. But say the word now and I'll give them the signal, and they won't touch the ring.”
I stared at him, waves of numbness sweeping over my skin as I realized exactly what he was saying.
“You could have taken it off under anesthetic.”
He shook his head impatiently. “It's sending data back to HealthGuard all the time: cortisol, adrenaline, endorphins, prostaglandins. They'll have a record of your stress levels, fear, pain…if we took it off under anesthetic, they'd know you'd given it away freely. This way, it'll look like a random theft. And your insurance company will give you a new one.”
His logic was impeccable; I had no reply. I might have started protesting about insurance fraud, but that was all in the future, a separate matter entirely. The choice, here and now, was whether or not I let him have the ring by the only method that wouldn't raise suspicion.
One of the bandits was back, looking impatient. Masika asked plainly, “Do I call it off? I need an answer.” I turned to him, on the verge of ranting that he'd willfully misunderstood me, abused my generous offer to help him, and put all our lives in danger.
It would have been so much bullshit, though. He hadn't misunderstood me. All he'd done was taken me at my word.
I said, “Don't call it off.”
The bandits lined us up beside the truck, and had us empty our pockets into a sack. Then they started taking watches and jewelry. Okwera couldn't get his wedding ring off, but stood motionless and scowling while one of the bandits applied more force. I wondered if I'd need a prosthesis, if I'd still be able to do surgery, but as the bandit approached me I felt a strange rush of confidence.
I held out my hand and looked up into the sky. I knew that anything could be healed, once it was understood.
An Office Romance
TERRY BISSON
Terry Bissonjust keeps writing his own way and like no one else. Last year it was virtual reality, this year it is the hum-drum world of office computers, transformed. Bisson's most impressive achievement this year, though, was not in short fiction but was the completion of Walter M. Miller's second novel, Saint Liebowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, set in the same future as his classic A Canticle for Liebowitz. Miller found himself unable to complete the book after decades of work, and agreed, before his death, to have Bisson complete it. And Bisson did so with marvelous fidelity. One should note the satiric irony in Miller, so integral a part of his serious work, is the same in kind, though not in tone, as Bisson's. Miller said anyone with a sense of humor ought to be able to finish his book. Bisson certainly qualifies. This story appeared in Playboy. Computer nerds will love it. If you have never used a computer, worked in an office, or heard of Microsoft, you may have to have the humor explained.
The First time Ken678 saw Mary97, he was in Municipal Real Estate, queued for a pickup for Closings. She stood two spaces in front of him: blue skirt, orange tie, slightly convex white blouse, like every other female icon. He didn't know she was a Mary; he couldn't see which face she had. But she held her Folder in both hands, as old-timers often did, and when the queue scrolled forward he saw her fingernails.
They were red.
Just then the queue flickered and scrolled again, and she was gone. Ken was intrigued, but he promptly forgot about her. It was a busy time of year, and he was running like crazy from Call to Task. Later that week he saw her again, paused at an open Window in the Corridor between Copy and Send. He slowed as he passed her, by turning his Folder sideways—a trick he had learned. There were those red fingernails again. It was curious.
Fingernails were not on the Option Menu.
Red was not on the Color Menu, either.
Ken used the weekend to visit his mother at the Home. It was her birthday or anniversary or something like that. Ken hated weekends. He had grown used to his Ken face and felt uncomfortable without it. He hated his old name, which his mother insisted on callin
g him. He hated how grim and terrifying things were outside. To avoid panic he closed his eyes and hummed—out here, he could do both—trying to simulate the peaceful hum of the Office.
But there is no substitute for the real thing, and Ken didn't relax until the week restarted and he was back inside. He loved the soft electron buzz of the search engines, the busy streaming icons, the dull butter shine of the Corridors, the shimmering Windows with their relaxing scenes of the exvironment. He loved his life and he loved his work.
That was the week he met Mary—or rather, she met him.
Ken678 had just retrieved a Folder of documents from Search and was taking it to Print. He could see by the blur of icons ahead that there was going to be a long queue at the Bus leaving Commercial, so he paused in the Corridor; waitstates were encouraged in high traffic zones.
He opened a Window by resting his Folder on the sill. There was no air, of course, but there was a nice view. The scene was the same in every Window in Microserf Office 6.9: cobblestones and quiet cafés and chestnut trees in bloom. April in Paris.
Ken heard a voice.
She pointed to her Folder, stacked on top of his, flush right.
<—did you do that?> he finished because it was in his buffer. She had the Mary face, which, it so happened, was his favorite. And the red fingernails.
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