“He has a multiple fracture of the jaw and has lost most of his teeth. We do not know, at this time, if he will regain full articulation for speech.” Her face was getting whiter and he forced himself on. “He has a skull fracture, and there is every chance of pressure against the brain. At this point we cannot tell if we can avoid complications, or if there will be some brain damage on a permanent basis. There was some inhalation of gases within the cockpit, and we are still uncertain of their effect on the brain.”
He lit a cigarette “Several ribs were crushed. Not just crushed, but broken off in pieces that have damaged his lungs. There appears to be injury to the heart; perhaps the valves. It will take some time to determine exactly what, but heart surgery appears inevitable. We’re concerned about injury to the spinal column. If the main nerves are affected, he may not be able to use even his remaining arm.”
He didn’t bother reciting the other injuries, the pelvic fracture, his left ear mutilated, the internal bleeding they suspected, the growing conviction there might be more serious pressure on the brain than the first X-ray had indicated, and—oh, Christ, why repeat it all to himself now?
He no longer looked at Jan Richards. He couldn’t. He looked through her. He had talked with Ashburn, they had spoken with the nerve surgeon in Colorado, Dr. Michael Killian, they were planning and hoping to do something for Steve, something drastic and unprecedented, but this was nothing to build a future on.
Wells was sure Steve Austin, if he could, would thank Wells for doing now what he would do himself with this girl.
Her life was to be lived. He found himself on his feet, looking down at her. “Do you love this man?”
“Oh, God . . .”
“Then do the one thing he would ask you himself. Leave him, and don’t ever come back.”
He pushed past her, through the door, walking down the corridor like an automaton.
CHAPTER 5
“We are prepared to support this project with whatever funds may be necessary. We understand this may run to a high figure, of course, but the implications, which I’m sure you gentlemen understand as well as Mr. McKay, lead us to accept whatever cost is involved.” Oscar Goldman, representative from the Office of Special Operations, leaned back in his seat, one arm resting on the chair, the other stretched forward so that his hand could toy with the ashtray in front of him. Goldman wore a dark suit, pale-blue shirt, and thin, dark tie. But Dr. Rudy Wells, Dr. Michael Killian, and other Air Force officers and officials were far less interested in Goldman’s appearance than in the offer of extensive financial support he’d brought with him. The fact that he mentioned Jackson McKay, the director of OSO, was also encouraging. McKay, who had cut his teeth through several decades of undercover operations for the United States, was involved personally in the decision to send Goldman with the offer of money.
Dr. Michael Killian, a distinguished surgeon and head of the Bionics Research Laboratory in Colorado, leaned forward to rest his weight on his elbows. “I have some experience with Mr. McKay,” he said carefully. “He has never been one to commit frivolously to a project of this size. I find this both heartening and also the basis for some suspicion.”
Oscar Goldman smiled. “I was told to expect this reaction from you.”
“My reaction is not the issue. You are talking about years of work, Mr. Goldman. What is involved here concerns the active participation of much of my laboratory, both the public facility, and, of course, our secret center. You are talking about dozens of skilled doctors, engineers, technicians, the use of at least one and perhaps two computers critically needed in other areas. We can promise you no real measure of success, and—”
“May I break in, Dr. Killian?” Goldman asked quietly. “Perhaps I can bring things to a head. What do you estimate would be the financial requirement for this program? More specifically, as it involves Colonel Austin.”
“Two million the first year, perhaps. After that it is difficult to tell. I would say from a half million to twice that much every year for some time to come.”
“Doctor, tomorrow by this time there will be placed within your fiscal control—nonreturnable so long as this project is under way—six million dollars.”
“I presume you are serious?”
Goldman barely shrugged. “You may confirm my orders, Dr. Killian. If you place a call to Mr. McKay’s office it will go through immediately.”
“Mr. Goldman.” They turned to Dr. Wells. “How much involvement do you foresee by OSO?” Wells said quickly.
“Minimal, Dr. Wells. We will not interfere with the basic construction. We will not interfere for a number of reasons, the first of which is that we are not qualified to do so, and the second is that you would not tolerate amateur meddling.”
“At what point would you become involved?” Wells asked.
“We would like to have one of our people assigned to the Colorado laboratories. We will provide an individual well trained and qualified either simply to observe or, depending upon your own feelings, to be used as an assistant or in any other capacity. He will not, I repeat, not, interfere. He will, however, maintain a meticulous record of all that takes place. We hope he would be in a position to have his queries responded to in order to meet our needs. Should this person we select prove to be unacceptable, for whatever reasons, he—or she—will be replaced at once and someone more suitable will be assigned to Colorado. You people will make the final decisions regarding Colonel Austin.”
Goldman moved his gaze about the table, studying each man present. “We would like to assure you, each and every one of you, that we fully understand the unprecedented nature of this matter. To us, this is an investment in an area where we hold grave responsibility. If the promise of this new—let us say development—is sustained in your work, then several things will happen simultaneously.” One by one he held up his fingers. “First, we at OSO will gain what may be an extraordinary new capability in carrying out our assigned tasks. At the same time, this means, of course, the nation benefits to a considerable extent. Second, you people will be provided with the means to carry out your hopes for human research, involving as it does a total application of bionics and cybernetics. Third,” Goldman said, suddenly very sober, “there is the matter of Colonel Steve Austin. The man. Every business, his or ours, suffers its casualties, and he has been struck down by the odds. Until now we had no special interest in Colonel Austin. Now we have an overriding concern with his future progress, and above all, as you all well understand, with what he becomes. Your offices will—”
“Mr. Goldman—” They turned to Rudy Wells. “—there’s the matter of Steve Austin. As you say, Mr. Goldman, there is the matter of the man. No one has yet asked him what he thinks about all this. It can hardly go through without his acceptance, don’t you agree?”
“I should think,” Goldman said, “there wouldn’t be any question on the matter one way or the other.”
“But there is,” Wells persisted. “It’s his life. He may decide to end what’s left of it rather than to accept your elaborate schemes for, as you put it, reconstruction. Recreation would be more like it. Perhaps Steve won’t like playing the role of the phoenix. I am not prepared at this time, Mr. Goldman,” he said carefully, “to second guess Steve Austin. Such a decision really belongs to him.”
“Do you have any idea how he will decide?”
“He is still unconscious, has been unconscious, for that matter, ever since the crash. We are keeping him that way,” Wells added quickly, “for reasons I’m sure are obvious.”
Goldman had to push and he did. “Dr. Wells, do you believe in this program, in what we propose for Steve Austin?”
“Of course I do,” Wells replied, his surprise evident. “There’s no question but that—”
“Will you recommend this program to Austin?”
“Yes.”
Goldman’s head almost snapped, he moved it so swiftly to confront the other doctor. “And you, Dr. Killian? Are you prepared t
o push for our proposal? Will you commend to Austin, whenever he is conscious, that he go ahead?”
Killian nodded slowly.
They could almost see the man shifting gears. “All right,” Goldman said briskly. “I will preface my remarks by stating that they may offend you. My position here is strictly as a messenger. I am a mechanic in our organization, gentlemen. It is the policy of Mr. McKay,” and he nodded to Dr. Killian, “and you, Doctor, know this from your own association with this man, not ever to give you reason to suspect we are holding back on you. Feel free to be insulted—” with a wry smile “—but believe that we are at least completely honest with you. First, Steve Austin. Why is it this particular man we are willing to invest so heavily in? And the investment is comparatively minor in terms of dollars, but extraordinary in terms of personnel, genius, and facilities.” They accepted the obvious compliment in stony silence. Goldman had set the rules for candor and they were willing to let him carry the ball.
“There are plenty of men who have been torn up physically as bad as Austin,” Goldman continued, “or even worse. You both know that. So it is not simply a man in whom we are interested, but specifically a man so unusual, extraordinary, in fact, as to command our attention. Dr. Wells, here, knows Steve Austin personally. He knows him so well he has come to regard this young man almost as a son.” Goldman flicked his eyes in the direction of the doctor sitting like a statue, then nodded and turned to Killian. “You, Dr. Killian, are the scientist, and Austin means something entirely different to you. Vindication of theory, for one. Proof of years of experiments, for another. Opportunity, for a third. The opportunity to establish that physical mutilation need not be a living death for a man. Also, as a spin-off, there will be the opportunity to expand your own research into restoring physical movement to paraplegics.
“We all know Colonel Austin’s background. Test pilot, astronaut, a man who’s been to the moon. But there’s more. There’s an extraordinary rounding out of this particular individual. Physically an outstanding specimen. A great athlete. An advanced student of the military arts. At the same time, a man with no less than five degrees. Steve Austin breezed through his masters and his doctorate.”
Goldman again glanced at Dr. Wells. “There is another advantage, one we had not counted on,” he said slowly. “Austin has no immediate family. His father died in Korea; in fact, he died in a Chinese prison camp. His mother passed away some four years ago, and he was an only child. The closest relative is a distant cousin, and there has been no family contact with Steve Austin for many years. There was one potential complication in this area, but it has been, well . . .” Wells’s face remained frozen but his eyes were alive and they stabbed straight at the OSO man. “It has been . . . resolved,” Goldman said carefully. “We have no comment one way or the other, being unqualified for any involvement. Our only interest is that there is no family to create undue complications.” It was a dangerous reef and at least they were all beyond the barrier. At least for the moment.
Dr. Killian listened in silence. He did not like Oscar Goldman. Too damned sure of himself. Made a habit—a career—of meddling in the affairs of others. Killian slipped back into the reserve for which he was known in his profession. To the public at large he was a man who inspired awe for the minor miracles he worked daily with the human system. He even looked the part that had been created for him by a properly impressed media. The clichés moved around him—tall, stately, dignified, brilliant, genius. In truth, Killian was an extraordinarily respected and distinguished figure not only in the United States but throughout the international community as well. He was now sixty-two years of age; his name had become synonymous with daring, brilliant surgery, and he was as much the pioneer as he was the surgeon, with his revolutionary procedures and research efforts involving transplants and transplanting nerve sheaths from one individual to another. He had turned upside down the procedures for electrical stimulation of body systems; he had returned “dead” limbs to an astounding new life. He had brought controlled movement to the legs of paraplegics by routing the still-living nerves of the newly dead into the bodies of paraplegics, by-passing the spinal-column block to perform what had been—until he began his new program—medical feats considered impossible.
Now he sat in a small room on the edge of the California desert, held captive by the promise of the financial rainbow offered by this strange man from an undercover organization in Washington, and feeling ill at ease because of this unaccustomed role. A national recession had taken its toll in research funds slashed by the watchdogs in Congress and the Air Force, which funded the lion’s share of Killian’s work at his Colorado laboratories. And just at the time when his research called for a larger staff, increased use of computers, far more elaborate facilities. At the doorstep of new success so great he was almost breathless with the thought, the fiscal axe had cut him down in midstride.
Killian had flown down to Edwards Air Force Base in California in response to an insistent telephone call from his old associate, Dr. Wells, and he had found enough to justify that sudden flight, not the least of which was the assurance of millions of dollars from the OSO, through this man, Oscar Goldman. That, and the miracle they might still perform with the shattered body of the unconscious Steve Austin.
As well as this irritating monologue from Goldman. With mounting surprise and annoyance, he listened to the recital by Goldman of his life in a manner that had never appeared in any newspaper or magazine.
“What has most impressed the media and the public,” Goldman was saying, “is the sensational, such as your success in returning sexual capability to paraplegics. If I recall, Dr. Killian, you instituted this program through direct electrical stimulation to the nerves of the ejaculation nerve center, which lies approximately in the center of the spinal column, and by experimental routing of nerves past, or around, this ejaculation center. This success, and the intense public interest, and, perhaps,” here Goldman smiled, “the age of Congressmen involved in appropriations, brought you some unprecedented funding to continue your work. In the last year, however, those funds have been reduced drastically, and you are now, to say it frankly, hard up to continue your more advanced experiments. To be even more blunt about the matter,” Goldman said with a direct stare at Dr. Killian, “you will have to eliminate some sixty percent of the programs you now have in their beginning stages.”
Goldman rode the issue without letup, not permitting Killian to break in. “You are better known, doctor,” he said, not without respect, “in Japan and the Soviet Union than you are even in this country. The work you did with the medical scientists of those two nations in limb grafts and organ transplants is astonishing. Dobrovolskii, in Russia, especially has the highest praise for you, and often refers to that period when you worked together with him as perhaps the most productive time of his career. If I recall, it was Dobrovolskii, in fact, who demonstrated to you the ability to restore sexual capability to men whose organs had been damaged by gunfire or other forces. This was work he had begun as a young medic during the Second World War. And Vasilov worked with you in optics, I believe, in performing what many people consider to be near miracles in restoring sight to damaged or diseased optical systems.”
Goldman shifted in his seat and, again, Killian and Wells had the distinct impression he was shifting mental gears as well, homing in more directly to the issue at hand. “Now we come closer to home,” Goldman said quietly. “The Air Force, because of the freedom it was enjoying in basic research, provided you with an elaborate medical laboratory and associated facilities just north of Colorado Springs. That medical center is, of course, well known. One of the reasons for its fame is that the Air Force has gone to great trouble to publicize, especially to appropriations subcommittees, the benefits accruing to the entire nation from this military program. So your facility, your Bionics Research Laboratory, has ridden a high crest of financial support. Your bionics lab and, of course, your somewhat more secret lab that is buried in th
e mountain behind the public façade.
“From our point of view, gentlemen,” he said, “the bionics laboratory and its hidden offshoot, your cybernetics systems, when combined with what we in OSO have to offer in the field of subminiaturization in electronics and related fields—”
“What your office has to offer, Mr. Goldman? You seem to forget the Air Force’s own work in what we could properly call microminiaturization. Or that of NASA, or any of the technical and military services, for that matter.”
“Of course, Dr. Killian,” Goldman said. “No argument. OSO is fully aware of developments in these fields. My point is that OSO also functions as a clearing house; we keep tabs, shall we say, on all work done by every other agency and organization in the country. We cooperate fully with them, and they with us. Through this clearing house, you can be assured that whatever new advance has been made, anywhere, in this country or elsewhere, its results will be provided immediately to you. Microminiaturization in the electronic and mechanical fields, combined with what you have done in bionics, all of which can be welded into a wholly new discipline through computer systems, well, that is what this is all about, isn’t it?
“One of the purposes of OSO, I should add, is to eliminate the sort of charade that developed through interagency competition over the years. I’m sure you’re aware of what has been going on when all our security and intelligence organizations must fight for their own piece of the appropriations pie. OSO doesn’t fit in there. We’re actually subordinate to the needs of the intelligence community. We work for them. Being noncompetitive, we give and receive absolute cooperation. We function as a, well, you might call us the Switzerland of our intelligence factions.”
Rudy Wells gestured to the OSO representative. “Mr. Goldman, would you be good enough to get on with it.”
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