by Anthology
My perception, never good enough to dig the finer structure clearly, was good enough to tell me that my crawling horror had come to the boundary line of the first joint.
It was this pause that was causing the burning pain.
According to what I'd been told, if someone didn't do something about me right now, I'd lose the end joint of my finger.
Nobody came to ease my pain, nor to ease my mind. They left me strictly alone. I spent the time from noon until three o'clock examining my fingertip as I'd not examined it before. It was rock hard, but strangely flexible if I could exert enough pressure on the flesh. It still moved with the flexing of my hands. The fingernail itself was like a chip of chilled steel. I could flex the nail neither with my other hand nor by biting it; between my teeth it had the uncomfortable solidity of a sheet of metal that conveyed to my brain that the old teeth should not try to bite too hard. I tried prying on a bit of metal with the fingernail; inserting the nail in the crack where a metal cylinder had been formed to make a table leg. I might have been able to pry the crack wider, but the rest of my body did not have the power nor the rigidity necessary to drive the tiny lever that was my fingertip.
I wondered what kind of tool-grinder they used for a manicure.
At three-thirty, the door to my room opened and in came Scholar Phelps, complete with his benign smile and his hearty air.
"Well," he boomed over-cheerfully, "we meet again, Mr. Cornell."
"Under trying circumstances," I said.
"Unfortunately so," he nodded. "However, we can't all be fortunate."
"I dislike being a vital statistic."
"So does everybody. Yet, from a philosophical point of view, you have no more right to live at the expense of someone else than someone else has a right to live at your expense. It all comes out even in the final accounting. And, of course, if every man were granted a guaranteed immortality, we'd have one cluttered-up world."
I had to admit that he was right, but I still could not accept his statistical attitude. Not while I'm the statistic. He followed my thought even though he was esper; it wasn't hard to follow anyway.
"All right, I admit that this is no time to sit around discussing philosophy or metaphysics or anything of that nature. What you are interested in is you."
"How absolutely correct."
"You know, of course, that you are a carrier."
"So I've come to believe. At least, everybody I seem to have any contact with either turns up missing or comes down with Mekstrom's--or both."
Scholar Phelps nodded. "You might have gone on for quite some time if it hadn't been so obvious."
I eyed him. "Just what went on?" I asked casually. "Did you have a clean-up squad following me all the time, picking up the debris? Or did you just pick up the ones you wanted? Or did the Highways make you indulge in a running competition?"
"Too many questions at once. Most of which answers would be best that you did not know. Best for us, that is. Maybe even for you."
I shrugged. "We seem to be bordering on philosophy again when the important point is what you intend to do to me."
He looked unhappy. "Mr. Cornell, it is hard to remain unphilosophical in a case like this. So many avenues of thought have been opened, so many ideas and angles come to mind. We'll readily admit what you've probably concluded; that you as a carrier have become the one basic factor that we have been seeking for some twenty years and more. You are the dirigible force, the last brick in the building, the final answer. Or, and I hate to say it, were."
"Were?"
"For all of our knowledge of Mekstrom's we know so very little," he said. "In certain maladies the carrier is himself immune. In some we observe that the carrier results from a low-level, incomplete infection with the disease which immunizes him but does not kill the bugs. In others, we've seen the carrier become normal after he has finally contracted the disease. What we must know now is: Is Steve Cornell, the Mekstrom Carrier, now a non-carrier because he has contracted the disease?"
"How are you going to find out?" I asked him.
"That's a problem," he said thoughtfully. "One school feels that we should not treat you, since the treatment itself may destroy whatever unknown factor makes you a carrier. The other claims that if we don't treat you, you'll hardly live long enough to permit comprehensive research anyway. A third school believes that there is time to find out whether you are still a carrier, make some tests, and then treat you, after which these tests are to be repeated."
Rather bitterly, I said, "I suppose I have absolutely no vote."
"Hardly," his face was pragmatic.
"And to which school do you belong?" I asked sourly. "Do you want me to get the cure? Or am I to die miserably while you take tabs on my blood pressure, or do I merely lose an arm while you're sitting with folded hands waiting for the laboratory report?"
"In any case, we'll learn a lot about Mekstrom's from you," he said. "Even if you die."
As caustically as I could, I said, "It's nice to know that I am not going to die in vain."
He eyed me with contempt. "You're not afraid to die, are you, Mr. Cornell?"
That's a dirty question to ask any man. Sure, I'm afraid to die. I just don't like the idea of being not-alive. As bad as life is, it's better than nothing. But the way he put the question he was implying that I should be happy to die for the benefit of Humanity in general, and that's a question that is unfairly loaded. After all, everybody is slated to kick off. There is no other way of resigning from the universe. So if I have to die, it might as well be for the Benefit of Something, and if it happens to be Humanity, so much the better. But when the case is proffered on a silver tray, I feel, "Somebody else, not me!"
The next argument Phelps would be tossing out would be the one that goes, "Two thousand years ago, a Man died for Humanity--" which always makes me sick. No matter how you look at us, there is no resemblance between Him and me.
I cut him short before he could say it: "Whether or not I'm afraid to die, and for good or evil, now or later, is beside the point. I have, obviously, nothing to say about the time, place, and the reasons."
We sat there and glared at one another; he didn't know whether to laugh or snarl and I didn't care which he did. It seemed to me that he was leading up to something that looked like the end. Then I'd get the standard funeral and statements would be given out that I'd died because medical research had not been able to save me and blah blah blah complete with lack of funds and The Medical Center charity drive. The result would mean more moola for Phelps and higher efficiency for his operations, and to the devil with the rest of the world.
"Let's get along with it," I snapped. "I've no opinion, no vote, no right of appeal. Why bother to ask me how I feel?"
Calmly he replied, "Because I am not a rough-shod, unhuman monster, Mr. Cornell. I would prefer that you see my point of view--or at least enough of it to admit that there is a bit of right on my side."
"Seems to me I went through that with Thorndyke."
"This is another angle. I'm speaking of my right of discovery."
"You're speaking of what?"
"My right of discovery. You as an engineer should be familiar with the idea. If I were a poet I could write an ode to my love and no one would forbid me my right to give it to her and to nobody else. If I were a cook with a special recipe no one could demand that I hand it over unless I had a special friend. He who discovers something new should be granted the right to control it. If this Mekstrom business were some sort of physical patent or some new process, I could apply for a patent and have it for my exclusive use for a period of seventeen years. Am I not right?"
"Yes, but--"
"Except that my patent would be infringed upon and I'd have no control--"
I stood up suddenly and faced him angrily. He did not cower; after all he was a Mekstrom. But he did shut up for a moment.
"Seems to me," I snarled, "that any process that can be used to save human life should not be held sec
ret, patentable, or under the control of any one man or group."
"This is an argument that always comes up. You may, of course, be correct. But happily for me, Mr. Cornell, I have the process and you have not, and it is my own conviction that I have the right to use it on those people who seem, in my opinion, to hold the most for the future advancement of the human race. However, I do not care to go over this argument again, it is tiresome and it never ends. As one of the ancient Greek Philosophers observed, you cannot change a man's mind by arguing with him. The other fact remains, however, that you do have something to offer us, despite your contrary mental processes."
"Do go on? What do I have to do to gain this benefit? Who do I have to kill?" I eyed him cynically and then added, "Or is it 'Whom shall I kill?' I like these things to be proper, you know."
"Don't be sarcastic. I'm serious," he told me.
"Then stop pussyfooting and come to the point," I snapped. "You know what the story is. I don't. So if you think I'll be interested, why not tell me instead of letting me find out the hard way."
"You, of course, were a carrier. Maybe you still are. We can find out. In fact, we'll have to find out, before we--"
"For God's Sake stop it!" I yelled. "You're meandering."
"Sorry," he said in a tone of apology that surprised me all the way down to my feet. He shook himself visibly and went on from there: "You, if still a carrier, can be of use to The Medical Center. Now do you understand?"
Sure I understand, but good. As a normal human type, they held nothing over me and just shoved me here and there and picked up the victims after me. But now that I was a victim myself, they could offer me their "cure" only if I would swear to go around the country deliberately infecting the people they wanted among them. It was that--or lie there and die miserably. This had not come to Scholar Phelps as a sudden flash of genius. He'd been planning this all along; had been waiting to pop this delicate question after I'd been pushed around, had a chance to torture myself mentally, and was undoubtedly soft for anything that looked like salvation.
"There is one awkward point," said Scholar Phelps suavely. "Once we have cured you, we would have no hold on you other than your loyalty and your personal honor to fulfill a promise given. Neither of us are naive, Mr. Cornell. We both know that any honorable promise is only as valid as the basic honor involved. Since your personal opinion is that this medical treatment should be used indiscriminately, and that our program to better the human race by competitive selection is foreign to your feelings, you would feel honor-bound to betray us. Am I not correct?"
What could I say to that? First I'm out, then I'm in, now I'm out again. What was Phelps getting at?
"If our positions were reversed, Mr. Cornell, I'm sure that you'd seek some additional binding force against me. I shall continue to seek some such lever against you for the same reason. In the meantime, Mr. Cornell, we shall make a test to see whether we have any real basis for any agreement at all. You may have ceased to be a carrier, you know."
"Yeah," I admitted darkly.
"In the meantime," he said cheerfully, "the least we can do is to treat your finger. I'd hate to have you hedge a deal because we did not deliver your cured body in the whole."
He put his head out of the door and summoned a nurse who came with a black bag. From the bag, Scholar Phelps took a skin-blast hypo and a small metal box, the top of which held a small slender, jointed platform and some tiny straps. He strapped my finger to this platform and then plugged in a length of line cord to the nearest wall socket. The little platforms moved; the one nearest my wrist vibrated rapidly across a very small excursion that tickled like the devil. The end platform moved in an arc, flexing the finger tip from straight to about seventy degrees. This moved fairly slow but regularly up and down.
"I'll not fool you," he said drily. "This is going to hurt."
He set the skin-blast hypo on top of the joint and let it go. For a moment the finger felt cold, numb, pleasant. Then the shock wore away and the tip of my finger, my whole finger and part of my hand shocked me with the most excruciating agony that the hide of man ever felt. Flashes and waves of pain darted up my arm to the elbow and the muscles in my forearm jumped. The sensitive nerve in my elbow sang and sent darting waves of zigzag needles up to my shoulder. My hand was a source of searing heat and freezing cold and the pain of being crushed and twisted and wrenched out of joint all at the same time.
Phelps wiped my wet face with a towel, loaded another hypo and let me have it in the shoulder. Gradually the stuff took hold and the awful pain began to subside. Not all the way, it just diminished from absolutely unbearable to merely terrible.
I knew at that moment why a trapped animal will bite off its own foreleg to get free of the trap.
From the depths of his bag he found a bottle and poured a half-tumbler for me; it went down like a whiskey-flavored soft drink. It had about as much kick as when you pour a drink of water into a highball glass that still holds a dreg of melted ice and diluted liquor. But it burned like fury once it hit my stomach and my mind began to wobble. He'd given me a slug of the pure quill, one hundred proof.
As some sort of counter-irritant, it worked. Very gradually the awful pain in my hand began to subside.
"You can take that manipulator off in an hour or so," he told me. "And in the meantime we'll get along with our testing."
I gathered that they could stop this treatment anywhere along the process if I did not measure up.
XVIII
Midnight. The manipulator had been off my hand for several hours, and it was obvious that my Mekstrom's was past the first joint and creeping up towards the next. I eyed it with some distaste; as much as I wanted to have a fine hard body, I was not too pleased at having agony for a companion every time the infection crossed a joint. I began to wonder about the wrist; this is a nice complicated joint and should, if possible, exceed the pain of the first joint in the ring finger. I'd heard tell, of course, that once you've reached the top, additional torture does not hurt any greater. I'd accepted this statement as it was printed. But now I was not too sure that what I'd just been through was not one of those exceptions that take place every now and then to the best of rules.
I was still in a dark and disconsolate mood. But I'd managed to eat, and I'd shaved and showered, and I'd hit the hay because it was as good a place to be as anywhere else. I could lie there and dig the premises with my esper.
There were very few patients in this building, and none were done up like the character in the Macklin place. They moved the patients to some other part of the grounds when the cure started. There weren't very many nurses, doctors, scholars, or other personnel around, either.
Outside along one side of a road was a small lighted house that was obviously a sort of guard, but it was casual instead of being formal and military in appearance. The ground, instead of being patrolled by human guards (which might have caused some comment) was carefully laid off into checkerboard squares by a complicated system of photobeams and induction bridges.
You've probably read about how the job of casing a joint should be done. I did it the same way. I dug back and forth, collecting the layout from the back door of my building towards the nearest puff of dead area. This coign of safety billowed outward from the pattern towards the building like an arm of cumulus cloud and the top of it rose like a column to a height above my range. It sort of leaned forward but it did not lean far enough to be directly above the building. The far side of the column was just like the rear side; even though I'm well trained, it always startles me when I perceive the far side of a smallish dead area. I'm inclined like everybody else to consider perception on a line-of-sight basis instead of on a sort of all-around grasp.
I let my thinker run free. If I could direct a breakout from this joint with a lot of outside help, I'd have a hot jetcopter pilot come down the dead-area column with a dead engine. The Medical Center did not have any radar, probably on the proposition that too high a degree of secur
ity indicated a high degree of top-secret material to hide. So I'd come down dead engine, land, and wait it out. Timing would have to be perfect, because I, the prisoner, would have to make a fast gallop across a couple of hundred yards of wide open psi area, scale a tall fence topped with barbed wire, cross another fifty yards into the murk, and then find my rescuer. The take off would be fast once I'd located the 'copter in the murk, and everything would depend upon a hot pilot who felt confident enough in his engine and his rotorjets to let 'em go with a roar and a lift without warmup.
During which time, unfortunately for all plans, the people at The Medical Center would have been reading my mind and would probably have that dead patch well patrolled with big, rough gentlemen armed with stuff heavy enough to stop a tank.
Lacking any sort of device or doodad that would conceal my mind from prying telepaths, about the only thing I could do was to lay here in my soft bed and daydream of making my escape.
Eventually I went to sleep and dreamed that I was hunting Mallards with a fly-rod baited with a stale doughnut. The only thing that bothered me was a couple of odd-looking guys who thought that the way to hunt Mallards was with shotguns, and their dress was just as out of taste as their equipment. Who ever hunted ducks from a canoe, dressed in windbreakers and hightopped boots? Eventually they bought some ducks from me and went home, leaving me to my slumbers.
* * * * *
About eight in the morning, there was a tentative tap on my door. While I was growling about why they should bother tapping, the door opened and a woman came in with my breakfast tray. She was not my nurse; she was the enamelled blonde receptionist.
She had lost some of her enamelled sophistication. It was not evident in her make-up, her dress, or her hair-do. These were perfection. In fact, she bore that store-window look that made me think of an automaton, triggered to make the right noises and to present the proper expression at the correct time. As though she had never had a thought of her own or an emotion that was above the level of very mild interest. As if the perfection of her dress and the characterless beauty of her face were more important than anything else in her life.