The Select

by F. Paul Wilson

  "Thanks a lot." He nuzzled her throat. "But I have an idea. A compromise. We'll make it a rule between us that we don't make love on campus. When we can we'll sneak away to the No-Tell Motel or something and go nuts, but at The Ingraham we stay strictly platonic."

  Quinn tried to see his face in the dark. Was this one of his put-ons? She wished she knew because it sounded perfect to her.

  "Where'd you come up with that?"

  "Oh, I don't know. I just put myself inside a very practical, borderline-nerdy mind and tried to imagine what that mind could come up with."

  She punched him lightly on the shoulder and he winced.

  "Ouch!"

  "Sorry. But is that what you think of me?"

  "Isn't that what you'd have come up with?"

  Reluctantly, she had to agree.

  He said, "But there's got to be an angle we can work with this. Maybe we can apply to Dr. Alston for extra credit when we make our little off-campus trips."

  "Extra credit?"

  "Sure. Extracurricular studies in anatomy. Or how about human sexuality lab? Gotta be worth something. In fact I think I'm ready to earn a few extra credits right now."

  Quinn slid her hand down his abdomen. "Yes, you are. Yes, you are indeed."

  MONITORING

  "What the hell happened to you?"

  Verran was staring at Kurt's swollen, purpling nose as he and Elliot arrived in the control room.

  "The kid got in a lucky one when I wasn't looking." He sounded like he had a bad cold.

  "Great. Just great. That means you're going to have to stay out of sight until that thing heals."

  "What the hell for?"

  "Because Brown saw you in the student lot before he left and your nose was fine then. If he knows he clocked one of the guys who attacked him on the nose and then he sees you with a freshly busted beak—"

  "Aw, he'd never put the two together."

  "Maybe not. But these kids ain't here because they're dummies. Just to be sure, I'm keeping you on the graveyard shift till that heals up."

  "Aw, Lou."

  Verran held out his hand. "Where's the bug?"

  Elliot leaned forward and dropped it into Verran's palm.

  "Safe and sound, Chief."

  Verran stared at it. Such a tiny thing to cause so goddamn much trouble.

  "Want me to see if I can fix it?" Elliot said.

  "Are you kidding?"

  Verran bent and placed the errant bug on the concrete floor, straightened, then ground it flat under his heel.

  "That's the last time that little sonovabitch will give us any grief."

  Elliot grinned and headed for his console while Kurt went to find some ice for his nose. Verran surveyed the varicolored meters, terminals, and LEDs of his little domain with quiet satisfaction. Only one problem remained to mar his serenity: the Cleary broad.

  Elliot had run an exhaustive, comprehensive check on her SLI unit yesterday and had found everything in perfect working order, but tightass Alston was still insisting that there had to be something wrong with it. Verran knew there wasn't. As far as he was concerned, the problem wasn't with the unit, it was with the girl.

  And since it was Alston's responsibility to screen the students, that put the ball in his court.

  Which was a big relief to Verran. He'd solved his own missing bug problem; let Dr. Tightass figure out the Cleary problem.

  As far as Louis Verran was concerned, it was back to business as usual in the control room.

  DECEMBER

  THE WORLD'S LONGEST CONTINUOUS

  FLOATING MEDICAL BULL SESSION

  (III)

  Tim had dragged Quinn to another session tonight in Harrison's room. He told her the usual: She was working too hard lately and needed a break. But that wasn't the main reason. He simply needed to be with her a little more.

  During the weeks since Atlantic City, despite the awful time he'd had keeping his hands off her, Tim had stayed true to his word and abided by their agreement, hands-off on campus. And when he'd suggested some HSR lab—HSR being their code for human sexual response—Quinn had never turned him down. She'd even suggested it a couple of times herself. After Thanksgiving break she'd told him she'd started on the pill, but still she insisted he wear a condom. One very careful lady.

  They didn't get to the Quality Inn that often, but when they did she left Tim wrecked for days.

  Those nights were like his wildest dreams come true. For all the no-nonsense prudishness Quinn projected when she was fully dressed, between the sheets she was a different species. Her inhibitions seemed to slough off with her clothes. She approached sex like she approached everything else—seriously, practically, with boundless enthusiasm. She attacked it, she studied it—that was hardly a surprise—and wanted to try everything. Very little was taboo. She even rented triple-X videos for instruction and she and Tim had spent exhausting nights mimicking the couples on the screen.

  But for Tim the sex was the icing on the cake. It cemented the substance of their relationship, which for him was simply being with her, sharing her presence. He never seemed to get enough of her. Between the hours they were required to spend in class and in the various labs, plus Quinn's job as Dr. Emerson's research assistant, and the wasted hours grudgingly surrendered to sleep, there wasn't any time for them simply to be together. Sometimes they'd study together, holding hands when they weren't scribbling notes or turning pages, but her presence was too distracting for Tim to get much done.

  He hungered for her presence. And that baffled him. He'd always been so self-sufficient. Now, when Quinn wasn't around, he felt incomplete. Tim wasn't sure he liked that.

  But looking at her face now, at the disturbed and troubled expressions playing across it, he wondered if he'd been wise to include her in the bull session tonight. Her expression drifted toward horrified as Harrison elaborated on his ideas on the formation of a central government authority to oversee the equitable redistribution of medical resources. Tim couldn't understand her reaction. Harrison's plan made perfect sense to him.

  "I don't believe you people," Quinn said when Harrison took a breath. "You're all talking about 'redistributing' medical care like you're discussing natural resources."

  "A country's medical care is a natural resource," Judy Trachtenberg said. "Once of its most valuable resources."

  "But it's not a natural resource," Quinn said. "It wasn't sitting underground waiting to be dug up. It's human made. You're not talking about moving lumps of coal or steel around, you're talking about people—doctors, nurses, technicians. I don't know about you folks, but I don't become a national resource just because I've earned a medical degree. I'm not something to be shipped around at the whim of some appointee in Washington. I don't remember signing off my human rights when I became a student at The Ingraham."

  The room was silent. The eight other occupants sipped Pepsi or munched pretzels as they stared at her.

  "Easy Quinn," Tim said.

  "No. I won't take it easy." She was getting hot now. He could see the color rising in her cheeks.

  She said, "Since when are all of you in favor of bureaucrats making medical decisions? What are we going to medical school for? To become glorified technicians? To spend our professional lives taking orders from a bunch of political appointees? 'Here, Brown. Fix this one here but forget that one over there.' They'll shunt you here and shift you there and call you a 'provider' and a 'resource,' but what about the patients?"

  The room was utterly silent. Tim saw eight uncomprehending faces staring at Quinn as if she were speaking a foreign language.

  "Well," Harrison said slowly, "it's because of the patients—for the patients—that tiering is necessary. They can't all receive top-level care, so some will have to be satisfied with second-level care, and some with third-level care. And someone has to decide who deserves what level of care. No one's happy with that, but it's a reality that has to be faced. Hiding your head in the sand won't make it go away."


  The crack annoyed Tim but Quinn simply laughed it off.

  "Who's got his head in the sand? You're talking about social engineering. What next? Eugenics? Or maybe a new Master Race?"

  Judy groaned. "We're not Nazis."

  "You know, I wish you'd all wake up and smell the coffee. I mean, don't you think there'll be a temptation for some of us to 'tier' patients according to political, religious, and racial prejudices?"

  Harrison cleared his throat. "I can't see that being a problem for an ethical physican."

  "I aggree," Quinn said. "But we're not all ethical—we're human. And we should be treating illness wherever we find it, not just in a select population. That's a God game I don't want to play."

  "But it's going to be the only game in town," Harrison said. "That's why it's so important that graduates of The Ingraham go into primary care. That's where the front lines are. That's where we'll be exposed to both the useful and the useless members of society. That's where we can make a real difference. And maybe we can work it so that some of those useless folks can contribute something to society." He turned to Tim. "You've been unusually quiet tonight, Brown. Any comments?"

  Tim shook his head. "No, uh...just listening."

  Tim avoided Quinn's eyes but knew she was giving him a strange look.

  He deserved it. He felt strange. He'd had the oddest feeling while sitting here listening to the conversation. Schizoid. Dissociated. A deep part of him completely agreeing with Quinn and yet another part tugging him the other way. The only times he noticed this dichotomy in his attitudes was on those rare occasions when he discussed medical politics with Quinn, or when she stopped by the bull session. He'd attributed his attitude shift to the fact that he was now more conversant with the issues associated with the coming healthcare crisis than he had been in September. None of the bull session regulars seemed to differ much on the issue of tiering health care delivery, simply on the mechanics of how to implement it. Quinn was becoming the gadfly, the Devil's Advocate they maybe needed to goad them into examining their premises.

  Except no one was examining premises. Tim seemed to be the only one of the group even remotely receptive to Quinn.

  But what had rocked Tim back on his heels was Harrison's last statement.

  That's why it's important that graduates of The Ingraham go into primary care. That's where the front lines are. That's where we'll be exposed to both the useful and the useless members of society. That's where we can make a real difference. And maybe we can work it so that some of those useless folks can contribute something to society

  It had been a typical Harrison statement. That wasn't the problem. The problem was in Tim's head: The same statement -not the same sentiment, the same statement, word-for-word—had gone through Tim's mind in response to Quinn's question.

  Almost as if he'd been coached.

  Suddenly he wanted out of the session.

  Not to walk out. To run.

  MONITORING

  "Guess who's on his way down," Elliot said.

  Louis Verran looked up from the daily status printout and groaned. "Don't tell me..."

  "Yep."

  "Shit," Verran said. He wasn't in the mood for Alston tonight. But then, when was he ever in the mood for Doc Tightass? "All right, pull that last bull session tape. Maybe it'll get him off our backs."

  Alston had developed this thing for the Cleary girl. He'd been on her case and had been dropping by the control room regularly since Thanksgiving, looking for anything and everything Verran could get on her.

  "Good evening, gentlemen," he said, breezing through the door like he owned the place. "Any new elucidating snippets of tape for me, Louis?"

  "As a matter of fact, yes," Verran said. "We found some good stuff for you this time." He turned to Elliot. "Got that tape cued up there? Let her roll."

  Alston took a seat and cocked his ear toward the speaker, listening intently. Verran listened, too, not so much to the words—he'd already heard them—as to the quality of the recording. Not bad. Pretty damn good, in fact. The kids must have been circled around the mike. Let Alston try griping this time about not being able to understand what they were saying.

  Verran didn't record everything. Couldn't, and wouldn't want to if he could. Most of what went on in the dorm was studying and sleeping, the sound of pages turning followed by deep, rhythmic breathing. And when the kids were talking, it was usually about the most trivial, boring junk imaginable. So he sampled here and there. He'd rotate from pick-up to pick-up, eavesdropping from within the rooms or along the telephone lines, listening for anyone who might be talking about The Ingraham, or about any particular staff or faculty member. Happy talk was bypassed for the most part, but gripe sessions were always recorded. And any talk of a potentially compromising nature—sexual encounters, schemes to cheat on tests—was recorded and cataloged and filed away in Louis Verran's personal J. Edgar Hoover file...just in case.

  The roving bull session tended to be as boring as all the other talk, except when a couple of them disagreed and got real pissed, but that only happened between newcomers early in their first year. After they'd all been here awhile, not only did the disagreements rarely get vehement, they rarely happened.

  But when Verran had picked up the Cleary girl's voice in last night's bull session, he'd stopped his wandering ways and settled down to record the whole thing. Alston had said he was looking for any tidbits that would give him another look into Cleary's views on the future of medicine. Verran had recognized one of her rare participations in the bull session as a golden opportunity. Originally he had planned to tease Alston along with it, dangle the recording before him like a carrot before a mule. But when he'd heard Cleary sounding off like she did, he knew he couldn't wait. He had to dump the whole thing on Alston in one shot...and watch him squirm.

  Verran watched the growing concern on Alston's face as he listened. He barely moved. He was still sitting there listening even after Cleary had quit the session. He knew exactly what Dr. Tightass was thinking: Who can I blame this on?

  But Louis was ready for him when Alston finally swiveled in his chair and faced him.

  "What do I have to do, Louis, to induce you to repair that young woman's defective SLI unit?"

  "There's nothing to repair."

  "It's quite obvious to me, and I am sure it will be equally obvious to our overseers from the Foundation, that you are not getting the job done."

  Verran had suddenly had enough. He wanted to grab this twit and shake him until his brain rattled inside his skull. Instead he squeezed the arm rests of his chair.

  "I'm not in the mood for games, Doc, so here's the story: Her unit checks out. Elliot and I went back to her room again last weekend while Cleary and her boyfriend were off campus boffing each other. It checks out. You hear that, Doc: Her SLI is in A-1 shape. Perfectamento. So stop blowing smoke and tell me what you're going to do about it?"

  Alston was silent for a moment. His voice sounded tired when he finally spoke.

  "What else can I do? She'll have to flunk out."

  SEVENTEEN

  Tim was feeling restless, edgy. He couldn't handle studying tonight. He wanted to be with Quinn but she was booking it for the anatomy practical tomorrow. So he wandered.

  He wound up in the north wing's first-floor lounge—soft, shapeless leather couches, a dropped ceiling for acoustical effect, snack and soft drink machines lined up against the rear wall. Joe Nappo was stretched out in front of the big rear-projection screen watching some cop movie. Tim dropped into one of the rear seats. He didn't recognize the movie but he did recognize Peter Weller's face from the Robocop flicks. On the screen, Weller was tearing his apartment apart, looking for something. Tim didn't know what the film was about and didn't care. He stared at the screen without really following the action. He had other things on his mind.

  Like his own mind, for instance.

  His last bull session—the one Quinn had sat in on—still bothered him. It baffled him how h
e could believe one way and think another. The shrinks had a term for it: cognitive dissociation. Two conflicting points of view existing within the same person.

  ...on the screen Peter Weller pulled his telephones apart, then began unscrewing the plates over the electrical outlets in his walls...

  Tim realized he had two intellectual positions, one very much like Quinn's, the other identical to Harrison's, warring within him. The first seemed to spring from his gut, seemed to belong to him, but it had been battered into the mud by the second position. He might have forgotten it had ever existed had not Quinn's arguments caused it to stir. And that stirring had pointed up the vague strangeness of Harrison's position. What was it doing in his head? It sounded like an echo of everybody else who spoke up at the bull sessions.

  Everybody else.

  Tim had always prided himself on not thinking like everybody else. Yet he could sense himself becoming an intellectual clone of Dr. Alston. The guy was a charming and disarming lecturer, true, but he wasn't that good.

  ...on the screen Peter Weller was holding up something he had found. A small dark object. He was examining it, turning it between his fingers. The camera moved in for a close-up...

  Tim bolted upright in his chair.

  "What the hell?"

  The object in Peter Weller's hand looked startlingly familiar, like a tiny hockey puck on a pin.

  "Hey, Joe," he said. "What is this?"

  Nappo spoke without turning around. "Called Rainbow Drive or something like that."

  "What's going on?"

  "His partner got killed in the opening scenes and—"

  "No. I mean now. What's he up to?"

  "He just found out his apartment's bugged."

  Tim stared at the screen in cold shock, then got up and hurried for the door. His thoughts swirled in a chaotic jumble as he trotted down the hall and burst into the chill December night outside. The sky was a clear bubble and the stars seemed to spin as he walked aimlessly along the paths between the buildings that made up The Ingraham. He jammed his hands into his pockets against the late fall chill.