"And what exactly does that mean?"
Turnbull sighed. "Doctor, we have studied every conceivable angle, and we keep coming up with the same answer. If these people can't be treated legally in the Health Control framework, they're going to have to be provided with treatment illegally. Somehow these unqualified people have to be contacted, by way of rumor, the underground medical grapevine, by any means we can think of—but somehow—and made to understand that they can and must get treatment for the Shanghai flu on a subrosa basis if they can't qualify for Health Control care. Health Control has got to be out of it; the government can't formally change its policy. But Health Control facilities can help. The outpatient clinics can provide the vaccinations and Viricidin shots and just look the other way as far as qualifications are concerned —on an unofficial basis—but unqualified people have got to get the word. If the doctors practicing underground medicine can get the word to their patients fast enough, on an underground basis, we might have a chance to defuse this thing."
For a long moment there was silence in the room. Then Doc spread his hands. "Mr. Turnbull, you're still asking for the impossible. How are you going to recruit doctors to go along with this sort of illegal program? How do you tell who's practicing underground medicine and who isn't? Who's going to believe you're sincere in asking this kind of help? You know what a doctor faces when he's convicted of underground practice—heavy fines, punitive surveillance, loss of his medical license, maybe even prison time. Who do you think is going to admit to underground practice just because you Health Control people all of a sudden want them to?"
"Suppose no admission were necessary," Turnbull said.
"What do you mean?"
"Precisely what I said," Turnbull replied. "Look, Dr. Long, if we're going to put our cards on the table, let's do so." He reached down and pulled a large manilla folder form his briefcase. "I have a folder of data here —a dossier, if you will—dealing with certain legally unsanctioned medical activities of one Dr. John Long, Chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at Health Control Hospital Number Seven, and incidentally, an active practitioner of underground medicine for a period of over ten years. The data in this file goes back to the year 2007, although the early notes are very sketchy. Health Control didn't have its intelligence program very well organized at that time; we had all kinds of problems with local police authorities, and our surveillance techniques were still pretty crude. But in recent years we have done far better. We have been using surveillance techniques so effective and sophisticated that you have never even heard of them, much less had any way to avoid them. And with them, we have been following your activities. In fact, you might just be a little startled to know how very closely we've been following your activities."
Doc was sitting up straight now, peering intently at the little Health Control man. "Just how closely, for example?"
"All right, our records show that for the past four years you have been working with a medical supplies man—a so-called bladerunner—whose name and background are obscure but who is commonly known as 'Billy Gimp.' He has a crippled foot, I believe, with first stage of surgical repair accomplished in early childhood. You've also had the help of a surgical nurse named Barret off and on for almost six years—an excellent girl, it seems, who thinks that the Eugenics Control laws are a travesty, and who has been involved in a couple of 'Nurses' Crusades' here at Hospital Number Seven, agitating for legal repeal—but that's neither here nor there. In the past several months, with the aid of the girl and the bladerunner, you've been accelerating your underground activity quite sharply, several surgical cases a week, ranging from routine procedures to some rather
technically difficult cases, including at least two gall bladder resections, right? Yes. Our last note, dated night before last, indicates that you performed tonsillectomies on the children of a family named Merriman in an apartment complex in the Trenton Sector, and that as you left the place your bladerunner was apprehended in a police ambush while you made an escape via heli-cab. The boy was interrogated, submitted to computer-court hearing, filed an appeal, and was released under continuous transponder surveillance. Last evening you saw the boy, and since your visit and that of another as-yet-unidentified person, the transponder has been inactive— hasn't moved as much as five feet on the grid. In our experience, that probably means that the transponder has already been muffled and replaced with a stationary phony, although, of course, we can't be sure of that yet. We could resolve the question easily enough, but there's no need. The only reason for planting that transponder was to be very certain that we had either you or the boy quite firmly under our thumbs at this particular point in time. For the moment we're quite content to let the boy go where he wants to go, undetected." Turnbull set the folder down on the desk. "Dr. Long, I could go on and on with this, but what's the point? When I said that Health Control has permitted underground medical practice to flourish, I meant just that. We have all the data we need to stop it if it served our purposes to do so. We know the doctors involved, their bladerunners, their -sources of medical supplies; but we have also been aware of the thin margin of acceptance for our Health Control programs during this transition period. To clamp down on the underground practitioners would close a very necessary escape valve, far too risky at this point."
"But you have clamped down," Doc protested. "What about all the arrests, convictions, fines we're hearing about?"
"Oh, a few showcase convictions have been necessary. After all, it is illegal, and we've had to demonstrate that the Health Control programs can't just be ignored. But mostly we've only bothered the most flagrant offenders. As long as we've known which doctors were involved there's been no need for widespread action. We've felt that once the transition period was over and the Eugenics Control laws were more widely accepted we could then phase out the underground practice a little at a time without resorting to legal action at all—just a little pressure in the right places at the right time."
Doc picked up the folder bearing his name and medical identification number, leafed through it for a moment. "And you mean to say you have this kind of file on every doctor engaged in underground practice?" he said increduously.
"No, no, nothing that exhaustive. We've only kept records on the leaders, the activists in the underground —the ones we thought might really give us trouble one way or another. There's been no need to keep tabs on the others. We figured if we ever had to crack down, these key men would be the ones to stop, and most of the others would just quietly pull out without any other urging."
"I see." Doc sat silent for a long moment. Then he looked up at the little Health Control man. "Mr. Turn-bull, why are you telling me all this?"
"I suppose I'm trying to convince you that we aren't entirely the monsters you make us out to be," Turnbull said. "We know more about underground practice than anyone suspects, but by and large we've kept our hands off because it's served a useful, necessary purpose. We're not indifferent to the needs and feelings of the people who oppose Eugenics Control, we never have been. And now, with this crisis on our hands, we can't just sit by. We need the underground network now, need it badly, but we haven't time to convince every underground doctor of that, and we can't publicly back off from the Eugenics Control laws. That's why we desperately need you, and other key underground men, to get the word spread and get help to these unprotected people fast."
"'But what can I do, realistically?" Doc said. "Sure, I could contact a dozen or so other doctors and try to enlist them, maybe contact a thousand patients one way or another, but that's not even a drop in the bucket."
"I know that," Turnbull said. "By yourself you'd be almost as helpless as we are. You just don't have the breadth of contact with the underground that we need right now—but you know someone who does. What we need now is a pyramid effect, a chain-letter effect, with the warning spreading out throughout the whole vast net of underground medical workers and their contacts, with each one of them contacting twenty more. We've got to get
a wildfire underground rumor spreading fast, within the next twenty-four hours, if possible. Well, you can't do it yourself, Doctor, but there's one person who can do it for you if you can beg, bribe, or bludgeon him into it—one person you know with absolutely impeccable underground connections who could get the word spreading far and wide."
"You mean my bladerunner," Doc said quietly.
"I mean your bladerunner," Mason Turnbull replied.
XI
It was not until later, as he was making his way back down to his office, that Doc began to realize the full magnitude of the risk he had been asked to take—the risk to himself and, more particularly, to Billy Gimp. There had been no record made of the meeting with Mason Turnbull, no demonstrable evidence that it had occurred at all, except for Katie Durham's presence. There had been no promises made, no guarantees of immunity, no real assurance that Doc's cooperation, or Billy's, might not be met with harassment, redoubled surveillance or both. For all he could prove, it might be nothing but an elaborate scheme to entrap them, a move on the part of Health Control to put them out of action once and for all. The best Doc had to go on was his own certain knowledge that the exploding epidemic was terribly, frighteningly real (there was no doubting that) and Mason Turnbull's unsupported word that Doc's and Billy's cooperation with Health Control in fighting it would not soon be forgotten. Nor were there any suggestions that Health Control might be considering any basic reforms in the Eugenics Control program if this crisis could be overcome—nothing but Doc's growing conviction that the Department of Health Control would finally read the handwriting on the wall and recognize the grave, recurrent danger of similar epidemics in the future. Conceivably—just conceivably—they might learn something from the crisis and be impelled to begin modifying the disastrously rigid program that currently existed. But precisely how he was supposed to get such a tenuous possibility across to Billy Gimp in any convincing way and recruit him for the underground task that had to be done, Doc was far from certain.
He pondered it as he rode the crowded elevator down to his office floor. One thing was sure: Billy would not like it. Billy was nobody's fool; already he was the unwilling victim of Health Control surveillance, for all that he might have escaped it temporarily. Billy might work for Doc, might even trust Doc (as much as he trusted anybody) but he would most assuredly not trust the unsupported word of a Health Control official even if Doc himself were convinced it was safe. If he were to cooperate at all, it would only be through Doc's influence—and the question was, would he even trust Doc when it came to something like this? If he wouldn't, there was no chance of the plan working. And there was precious little time for Doc to do any tall convincing, either.
Arriving at his office, he was both surprised and relieved to find Molly Barret waiting there. "What are you doing here?" he said. "I thought you had cases this morning."
"I did," she said, "but they pulled me out, told me to report to you. It was Dr. Durham's order. She said you were going to need me."
"Well, she's right about that." Doc sighed and sat down at his desk. "We're going to have our hands full for the next few days, I think." Quickly he told her about the meeting with Katie Durham and the Health Control man, the computer data on the epidemic and the unorthodox attack plan that Mason Turnbull had proposed. "It's got to be underground and it's got to be fast," he concluded, "which means doing a dozen things at once. I've got to contact and recruit every doctor I know that has an underground practice, and in the meantime you and I, between us, are going to have to contact every underground patient we've ever seen and either get them to come in for protection or take the medicine to them. But most crucial of all, Health Control wants me to recruit Billy to get the word spreading through the underground—to reach every person he can that isn't yet qualified for Health Control care and line them up for treatment some way, any way, up to and including directing them into the Hospital Clinics for medication."
"Even if they don't qualify?"
"Even if they don't qualify. Health Control doesn't dare make a public pronouncement, but they'll look the other way in order to get these people protected. If the word can just reach the unqualified ones that it's deadly to try to 'ride out' this Shanghai flu, and that protective medication can be had with no questions asked, Health Control thinks they'll come in. They may be wary and suspicious, but they'll come."
"But those people can't get into a Health Control Clinic without giving their names, identifying numbers, addresses, qualifications, the whole works," Molly protested.
"That's the whole point," Doc said. "The word has got to get out that they can, in this instance. The clinic personnel are all getting the word that they aren't even to ask names, just administer the medicine to all comers."
Molly looked at him. "Do you really think Health Control will carry through on something like that?" she asked.
"Yes, I really think they will. I think they have to. Molly, if this underground epidemic isn't slowed down right now, there isn't going to be any Health Control; there's going to be chaos. People are going to start dropping like flies, and there's going to be a panic like nothing that's been seen since the Dark Ages. Well, Health Control can't let that happen. They're going to have to stand by their word."
"Well, maybe you believe it," Molly said, "and maybe I believe it, but Billy isn't going to believe it."
"He isn't going to want to believe it, but we're going to have to convince him," Doc said.
"How?"
"That's the trouble. I don't know how," Doc exploded. "Seems to me we're at loggerheads half the time, that kid and me. Oh, he does his job, no problem there, but when it comes to trusting me, I don't know, I just can't seem to get through to him. He listens to you, all right, but when it comes to me, I might as well be talking to the wind."
"Maybe that's because I treat him like a human being," Molly said softly.
"Well, how do you think / treat him?"
"Like a bladerunner. Somebody to do what you want, when you want it, the way you want it done. Like a clamp or a scalpel or something—just another tool."
"But a bladerunner is a bladerunner."
"Yes, but he's also a person, with feelings and problems just like anybody else." The girl looked up at him angrily. "Doc, if you can't see it for yourself, how am I going to tell you? Of course he doesn't trust you. Why should he? You expect him to do what you want, sure, but when did you last think about what he might want? How many times has he asked you about that foot of his? And you just brush him off. There are ten surgeons around here who could fix that foot if you asked them to, and you keep promising, but nothing ever happens."
"Molly, if you think it's just the foot—"
"It isn't just the foot, that's just one of a dozen things. Oh, Doc, are you completely blind? He doesn't want to be just another tool; he looks up to you like nobody else. He wants to be somebody you can be proud of, not just another cheap bladerunner all his life. And yet he hates you half the time because you never give him an inch. If you'd once just give him an inch, just one little inch, you wouldn't believe the difference it would make."
For a long while Doc sat in silence, looking up at the girl. Finally he sighed. "Well, maybe you're right, and I've been blind. Or selfish, or both. I can't change it now, not all at once, that will take time, and there isn't time for changes now. For right now, all I can do is ask him to help. Maybe he will, and maybe he won't—but the chips are really down now, Molly. There's nothing else I can do but try."
Slowly, then, he picked up the telephone and punched out Billy's number.
PART THREE
THE BLADE RUNNER
I
For Billy Gimp the twenty-four hours that had elapsed after Doc had left him were the longest he had ever spent in his life. After Doc had gone, he had sat shivering in his room, waiting for the aspirin to beat down the fever, huddling in his coat as he alternately chilled and perspired. Finally he had crawled into bed, turned out the lights, and tried to slee
p, but sleep came fitfully, with fever nightmares jarring him awake every twenty or thirty minutes. He tried sitting up and reading for a while, but could not keep his mind on the cheap paperback book. Finally, he lay blinking up at the darkness, his mind raising phantoms as fearful as the nightmares that had shaken his sleep.
Around his wrist he felt the hard pressure of the transponder bracelet and the muffler mesh that now surrounded it. At first he had welcomed the chance to be free of the tell-tale signal from the court-imposed transmitter, but now he was having second thoughts. Too feverish and achy to think it through at the time, it now occurred to him that it must be quite as illegal to muffle a transponder and substitute a phony signal as to remove it altogether. So far he had escaped prison terms or correctional time in his many scrapes with the law, but it seemed to him that getting caught out in a deliberate fraud, an inactivated bracelet still attached to his wrist, would practically guarantee a confinement sentence if he should be nailed. And certainly the risk of detection would be great. Surely whoever was monitoring his transponder signal would get suspicious sooner or later if it never moved more than a block or two on the grid from one day to the next, and such freedom as he had with the muffler in place would be short-lived at best. And how could he trust the man who had installed the muffler, or even Doc himself, not to talk if the police were to put on the pressure? Maybe the man did owe Doc a favor, but such casual disregard for the law and its potential penalities?
Billy shook his head, feeling increasingly bewildered. Most confusing of all was Doc himself. Why had he been so anxious to get Billy's transponder muffled? He wasn't usually so solicitous of Billy's wants and feelings. Of course, it was nice enough for Doc to have Billy free to move around without surveillance—but what would he do if Billy got caught? As usual, Doc himself was in the clear. Sure, he'd taken a certain small risk, coming to Billy's room, but he could always claim he'd been called out to see a Hospital patient, perfectly legal even though Health Control frowned on it. Doc always managed to stay in the clear, but how far would he go for Billy if it came to a real showdown? How far could he really be trusted in a crunch? Probably not very far. After all, bladerunners were a dime a dozen these days. He could throw Billy to the wolves any time he wanted to—and there was precious little Doc had ever done to suggest that he thought of Billy as anything but a handy convenience, a link in the chain of getting his underground work done, but an expendable link that could be replaced without a second thought any time Doc thought it was necessary.
Alan E. Nourse - The Bladerunner Page 15