Whirling World

by Drinkel, Dean M

  Frank chuckled. The doorbell sounded impatient.

  A few seconds later the door opened. A man, aged about sixty, dressed in pyjamas. He looked at the other two, then down at the leather bag, and nodded.

  “Can I help you?”

  “We’re from Central Building,” said Frank. “My name is Frank and this is…” He snapped a finger at Luke.

  “Luke.” He almost extended a hand. The man looked kind and slightly nervous.

  Frank consulted his slip of paper. “Are you Mr John Frederic with a C Ballows, B-A-L-L-O-W-S?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I see some form of identification, Mr Ballows?”

  The old man left for a moment and returned with a wallet which he opened to reveal a bank card. Frank glanced at it and nodded.

  “Thank you. May we come in?”

  Ballows grunted. “Do I have a choice?”

  “Well, under section 21 of the Organ Act you are entitled to an appeal against the compulsory donation, costs of which are against you should the appeal fail. A few people have been successful, Mr Ballows, but just between you and me, the chances aren’t good.”

  The old man breathed heavily for a few seconds, then pulled open his pyjama coat to reveal a long scar on his torso. “It’s just that I’ve already contributed a lung.”

  “I see. Don’t worry. We’re not after the other one.” He nudged Luke in the ribs like he expected him to see the funny side.

  “Mr Ballows, we need your donation,” said Luke. “Um…that is, the city requires all citizens to contribute what they can…” He trailed off, wishing again he’d had some sort of training for this.

  But Frank nudged him in the ribs again. “My companion here is right, Mr Ballows. It is your civic duty. May we come in please?”

  “I suppose so.” The old man stood aside and they entered a neatly furnished, quiet lounge room. The TV had been turned down to silent. It showed a news broadcast of a Luddite demonstration that had taken place in another city earlier that day. Hundreds of citizens marching against the domination of the machinery. Many had been arrested. Luke couldn’t help looking at the broadcast for a moment. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the Luddites.

  “What a mob of idiots,” said Frank, also watching the screen. “How can the machinery function if it doesn’t have contributions from its citizens?” He sat down on the sofa without being asked. Ballows remained standing, looking from one man to the other.

  “One thing the Luddites fail to understand,” continued Frank, “is just how much of our bodies we don’t actually need in order to survive. Tonight, Mr Ballows, you have been selected to contribute one of your kidneys.”

  The old man swayed a little. Luke reached out to catch him, but managed to stop himself. It would not be good to appear too concerned about the fears of contributors. He didn’t want Frank to tell the machinery he might have Luddite sympathies.

  “I didn’t expect it to be a kidney. I thought, after my lung…maybe something less essential?”

  “That’s what Central Building has audited you for.” Frank dug out the slip of paper and held it up as some sort of evidence. “Yes, here it is. Right nephrectomy.”

  “But I need my kidneys.”

  “You need one of them. It won’t take a moment, and you can rest assured your kidney will be put to good use in a water filter somewhere.”

  Ballows managed to sink into the low armchair in front of the TV. “I don’t suppose…no. I guess not. You want it now?”

  Frank indicated the leather bag Luke had placed on the floor. “All set. If you show my assistant where to get some towels and hot water we’ll get started.”

  Luke had to admit, once the contribution began, the operation was efficiently carried out. They laid Ballows on a plastic sheet on his bed with a minimum of fuss and administered an anaesthetic. Pre-sterilised instruments gleamed in the single bulb that illuminated the room. The tang of carbolic acid stung Luke’s nostrils. The surgical gloves felt slick on his hands.

  “Most people understand they have a civic duty,” Frank told him as he sliced into the old man’s back. “Of course, at his age the kidney won’t last all that long before it gives out but then he won’t need it for much longer himself.” He tied off and severed the renal vein. “The need is constant, but we try to take only things no one really requires.” He left a good length of ureter attached to the kidney. The organ went into an insulated box.

  Then all that remained was to suture the wound up and leave the still unconscious Mr Ballows to recover. Frank wrote and signed a receipt and placed it on the coffee table.

  “Always leave a receipt,” he said. “There’ve been a number of cases where we had to give the organs back. Nasty business, that.”

  They saw themselves out and climbed into the car. The feeder still sat there, staring blankly into the night.

  Frank’s brainbox buzzed. “Good timing,” he said, pulling the flat black box out of his pocket and stimulating the small chunk of brain inside to open the incoming message.

  Luke looked down at his work smock. A spray of blood made a scarlet line across the front. When did that happen? The surgery had been clean, quick, with a minimum of cutting. Had he blacked out at some point and Frank had done something he shouldn’t? Frank’s own smock was in a similar state. Blood splashes on the sleeve and front.

  “Is…is Mr Ballows going to be all right?” he asked.

  “Hmm? Oh, sure. The machinery will send someone to check on him in a few hours when he wakes up.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  The slap of the old man’s kidney into the insulated box, the sight of the bean-shaped lump of meat, still slick and slippery, remained in his head. So much blood.

  He hadn’t expected it to be like this.

  But what had he expected?

  “Next job is a good one.” Frank closed the brainbox. “Enucleation. Eye donation. Just in the next sector, so really quick to get there, too.”

  Luke stared at Frank. “An eye? We’re taking an eye from someone?”

  The other man chuckled. “Yeah. Eyes are in short supply at the moment. Good for us though, we get paid more for eyes.”

  Eyes were useful, he said. Eyes had been installed in each room in Central Building, allowing the machinery to see what its employees did. Eyes could also be used in bar code readers, scanners, medical equipment - anywhere, in fact, the machinery needed to see.

  “Where’s the job?” Luke asked to put his thoughts aside.

  Frank gave the address to the feeder. A fifteen minute drive, no more.

  The black leather bag, now containing Mr Ballows’ kidney, sat on the floor at Luke’s feet. Kidneys were useful too, in coffee machines, water filters, purification devices. He wondered if it were possible to build artificial organs. If complex things like the machinery could be constructed, surely it could be done with hearts and lungs and other body parts. Of course, he himself didn’t have the mechanical skills to conceive of how such a thing might work, and doubtless it had been tried. The machinery knew everything. It always had known, ever since the Industrial Revolution. If an artificial kidney could be built, no doubt it would have been. And since it hadn’t, it must not be possible.

  He dismissed the thought when Frank spoke again.

  “You heard me say to Mr Ballows about what people can do without. It’s really quite remarkable how much of the human body is disposable. Here…take this.” He fished in his smock pocket and handed over a card. “You’ll need to memorise what’s on there. All the things we can take without a problem for the contributor. Well, not much of a problem, anyway.”

  One lung, one kidney, some of the liver, teeth, one eye, one ear. A human being could survive without all but a metre and a half of small bowel, and no large bowel either at a stretch. Half a stomach. Hair, appendix, reproductive organs, pancreas, spleen, oesophagus, larynx, hands, arms, legs, feet, adipose tissue: all those
could go with no unsolvable problems.

  “Frontal lobes?” He hadn’t expected the final item on the list.

  “Most of the stuff necessary for life is controlled by the bottom of the brain,” said Frank. “The frontal lobes control the personality, and there’s some people who’d actually benefit from losing that.” The chuckle again. “Anyway, that’s the list. We don’t question it. We just do it.”

  All useful things for the machinery. And the machinery drove industry, and industry provided for society. And society…well, Luke hadn’t had much to do with that, sitting in a taxi for the last couple of years. Before that he’d been in school, and society was pretty much an unknown thing for him at that time.

  “Society’s important, I suppose,” he said out loud.

  “Huh? Society?”

  “Nothing.”

  The car turned a corner and left the river behind. Luke looked over his shoulder at the twinkling lights of the city on the far side. Central Building - half machinery, half human parts - stood out taller and brighter than all the others. Its lights never went out; huge dynamos in the basement powered its hungry needs. Often organs weren’t enough to fulfil society’s requirements. The items on the list which Luke still clutched in his hand were all useful. But sometimes the whole brain was needed, or a heart, or some other vital system.

  So then the mortician teams took someone, a whole someone, to provide the necessary material. One such team had taken Luke’s father a few years ago. He’d been diagnosed with cancer, but much of the rest of him would be useful as parts. Luke had watched his mother crying as the team led his father away, head bowed. The morticians’ black frock coats seemed to swallow the light.

  Everyone had to contribute somehow.

  The car pulled up in front of another house, not so affluent this time, a wooden structure with a plain garden and no view of the river. Luke surveyed the house as his partner checked the address on his brainbox.

  “A man in his twenties,” he said. “Steven Mathers. First timer, never contributed before. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

  They left the car and swung the gate open. It creaked slightly. Noises, Luke had long ago decided, always seemed more alarming at night. No fancy doorbell this time; Frank knocked on the wooden panelling.

  In the city, there were only two reasons someone knocked on the door at night: the organists, or the morticians. It took some time before the door opened, and then it stayed mostly shut. A blue eye looked out of the gap.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr Steven Charles Mathers,” said Frank. “Hello. We’re organists. How are you this evening?”

  “Go away.”

  “Now, Mr Mathers…”

  The door slammed shut. A few seconds later, the light in the room behind it went out.

  Luke looked at Frank, who simply shrugged his shoulders and pulled out his brainbox.

  “Mr Mathers!” he called. “If you don’t open up, we’ll be forced to call the morticians!”

  A pause.

  The light flicked back on. The door opened. A man about Luke’s age stood there, one hand on the door, his face holding a fierce scowl.

  “Please see reason, Mr Mathers.”

  The young man pointed a finger at Frank. “This is an outrage! I pay my exemption fee!”

  The brainbox was consulted again. “According to our records, Mr Mathers, you didn’t pay your last quarterly exemption fee. You’ve been placed back on the list of potential donors.”

  Mathers’ face fell. He mumbled a few words, then said: “You’d really call the morticians?”

  The reply spilled out of Frank’s mouth like he’d uttered it a thousand times before. “That is the required procedure in instances where citizens are reluctant or dilatory in providing the city with their legal obligations, to wit such organs or other bodily parts required for the effective functioning of the machinery. You’ll find the provisions in City Ordnance number 367 stroke 4B, which I can bring up on my brainbox should you need to refer to it.”

  “No need. I’ve read it.” Mathers stood aside, but the scowl remained. As he passed inside, Luke threw an apologetic grin at the man, who didn’t acknowledge it.

  Inside, the lounge room was dark, but a light blazed in the kitchen. Luke stepped towards it and froze.

  “Erica?”

  His sister sat at the kitchen table, pale hands resting in her lap. Long blonde hair, blue eyes, dressed in a track suit.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Erica stood up, backed off from Luke slightly, a half-smile frozen on her lips.

  “Luke! I didn’t…”

  Frank entered and put the leather bag down on the table. “You two know each other?”

  “I didn’t know you were…” Luke glanced at Mathers in the doorway. “…dating?”

  He hadn’t seen Erica for a couple of weeks. Her job took her to different parts of the city, and with his looking for a new career path, there just hadn’t been time to catch up.

  “I’ve been, yes, dating. Well, for a few days anyway.” She looked at Mathers, who nodded. “Steven, this is my brother, Luke.”

  Mathers didn’t offer to shake hands, just crossed his arms and leaned against one side of the door.

  “I see. He’s an organist. You didn’t tell me that.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  Luke wanted to back out the door and into the car and drive away. Anything but this, his own sister. He couldn’t take her boyfriend’s eye out - surely Frank wouldn’t expect him to?

  “Good evening madam,” Frank said to her. She said nothing in reply, just stared at him. “You are…hmm, not on record as living here.” He clicked on his brainbox to send a message.

  “What do you want from me?” asked Mathers.

  Frank tapped the side of his left eye. “Won’t take a minute.”

  “No!” Erica shot a look at Luke. “You can’t do that!”

  The brainbox beeped. “I just got an update from Central. There’s an acute eye shortage. It says here I’m authorised to request an eye from each occupant in this house.” Frank held the screen of the brainbox out, but Erica didn’t even glance at it.

  “Luke, do something!”

  Mathers sprang forward and grabbed Frank’s arm. “You can’t! Not both of us!”

  Frank threw him off, stepped back and almost tripped. Luke put out a hand to stop Mathers from advancing further, only to have the man throw his hand aside. Luke ended up next to his sister. He put an arm around her. “It’s all right,” he said softly.

  “None of that!” Frank’s voice sank low, threatening. “Any further resistance and I will be forced to contact the morticians. They can be here in minutes.”

  Mathers clenched his fists. “Eyes? Why does it have to be eyes?”

  “Now, Mr Mathers.” Frank went to the leather bag which Luke had placed on the kitchen table and unlocked it. “It won’t take a minute. A receipt will be given and be evidence of your contribution. It will put you - both of you - at the bottom of the list for future selection.”

  Luke began to despise Frank’s measured tones, his apparent calm. Did the man have any feelings at all? What contributions had he made, if any? Surely if he hadn’t personally lost any organs, someone in his family had. Everyone was a citizen. He must be aware of what it was like. As a taxi feed, Luke had never had to actually think about why the machinery needed human parts. Hell, he’d never done much thinking at all during that time. But after seeing Mr Ballows calmly accept his fate, after that Luddite march on the TV, after seeing Mathers here objecting…

  “You can’t take their eyes,” he said. “Not my sister’s…”

  Frank tapped his brainbox. “Central can authorise a contribution at any time. There’s a shortage of eyes. I want to get my quota filled. It’s that simple. Besides, I see from her record she hasn’t contributed anything yet. And neither, for that matter, have you.”

  “I su
ppose you have?” Mathers spat.

  “As an organist…”

  “I see.” Mathers reached out to a drawer under the sink, jerked it open and fumbled inside. When his hand emerged it held a knife.

  He stopped when he saw the gun in Frank’s hand.

  “Now I could call the morticians. But you don’t want that. And I don’t either. Lots of paperwork. The alternative is this gun, and either way you end up dead and off to the morticians anyway. And no receipt.”

  “Now look, Frank…” Luke stepped forward, but halted when the organist swung the gun on him.

  “I suppose you agree with them? Are you a Luddite?”

  “No I’m not, I’m…”

  “Just do your job!”

  The leather bag remained open on the table, spilling its guts of medical instruments, rubber gloves, bottles of anaesthetic. Luke gripped the two sides.

  “Keep that bag open! You will obey my instructions!”

  Frank had a fleck of foam in the corner of his mouth, a wild gleam in his eyes. In that instant, Luke knew what made the man such an efficient organist. He enjoyed his work. He liked cutting into people, taking them apart, removing bits of them to supply the machinery. It wasn’t about society or the good of mankind or even blind obedience to the machinery. He liked it.

  “I can’t let you do it.”

  The other laughed. “Who has the gun, moron? Maybe I’ll take your eyes too. Both of them.”

  Luke slammed the two halves of the bag closed. It was a dead weight in his arms as he lifted it off the table.

  “Open that bag immediately!” Frank aimed his gun.

  With a grunt Luke swung the bag at the man’s head.

  The gun roared.

  ***

  They carried Frank’s corpse into the bathroom and laid him on the floor of the shower. Luke then proceeded to carve up the body. It took less time than he had imagined, the scalpels were so sharp, so well designed for their task. A surgical saw easily cut through the bones.

  He removed the arms first, then the legs, and placed each in an insulated bag. He removed the head, still with the angry expression on its face, now there forever. Opening the chest, Luke removed organ after organ, stomach, liver, lungs, pancreas. He emptied the body cavity.