Soulminder

by Timothy Zahn

  “ … but as the initial euphoria about the breakthrough itself ran its course,” the reporter droned on, “questions and doubts began to appear … ”

  His eyes on the monitor, Sommer took a deep breath and willed calm into his throat. Why the producers had felt it necessary to recap Soulminder’s brief history for the viewers he couldn’t imagine—there couldn’t be any adult in the Western Hemisphere who hadn’t heard the story over and over again in the past year.

  But it hadn’t been worth arguing about. So he sat and suffered the pre-broadcast jitters, and wished they could just get on with it.

  As, he suspected, did at least three of the other four guests. Rabbi David Kaufmann was puckering his lips in and out as he stared the monitor, while the Reverend Robert Edgington’s hands rubbed back and forth endlessly across his chair arms and Father James Barry ran a finger inside his clerical collar as if trying to loosen it. Even the host of this circus, Barbara Leach, was staring down at her notes as if seeing them for the first time, a tight set to her mouth. Only Harper, at the far end of the semicircle, seemed totally at ease.

  The taped history lesson was coming to an end. Sommer took a deep, calming breath; he sensed the others doing the same. A shadowy figure behind the lights raised a hand and counted off the seconds—

  And by the time the red light on the central camera flicked on, everyone in front of it was calm and collected.

  “Good evening to you,” Leach said into the lens, her voice gravely polite. “Welcome to this special edition of Focus. For any who tuned in late, my guests this evening are, to my left, Dr. Adrian Sommer of Soulminder; beside him, Father James Barry and Rabbi David Kaufmann. To my right, the Reverend Robert Edgington; beside him, the Reverend Tommy Lee Harper. Gentlemen, welcome. As we just heard, the creation of Soulminder has raised a number of complicated ethical questions—not only questions about how the technology is to be applied, but concerns about the very nature of what Soulminder does. Rabbi Kaufmann, let me begin with you. Tell us what concerns, if any, you have about Soulminder.”

  “Oh, one must always have concerns about new inventions and technologies,” Kaufmann said. “That’s not to say we should automatically oppose them, of course, but that we should give them close and careful scrutiny. As you indicated, there are certainly questions that need to be asked: access to Soulminder for the poor, for instance, and at what stage in a person’s life Soulminder would represent just one more unrealistic attempt to prolong a life that’s ready to cease. But bear in mind that we’ve been wrestling with such issues for a good portion of the past hundred years. In that sense, Soulminder merely joins the list that already includes open-heart surgery, chemotherapy, and organ transplants.”

  “Does the idea per se of separating the human soul from its body raise any moral issues?” Leach persisted.

  Kaufmann raised his eyebrows slightly. “If you mean by that whether or not I consider it blasphemous—” he shrugged. “No. At least not at the moment, though I consider it my prerogative to change my mind if further study convinces me otherwise. God gave the Earth into mankind’s hands, and I don’t believe that anything mankind can learn or invent is in and of itself outside that dominion. However—” His face hardened. “As Auschwitz and the Nazi horror experiments so graphically showed, there are things that can be done that should not be done. Whether or not Soulminder falls into that category, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  Leach nodded. “Thank you, Rabbi. Father Barry? Your comments?”

  “In many ways the Church’s views parallel those of Rabbi Kaufmann,” the priest said. “We expect to be continually reminding Dr. Sommer and his colleagues that Soulminder must not become the province only of the rich and powerful; on the other hand, let me add that we recognize the realities of this world, that Soulminder’s start-up costs will probably keep the service out of reach of the average person for the short term. We do expect that to eventually change, though.” He gave Sommer a significant look.

  “We’re already looking for ways to increase our capacity while at the same time lowering maintenance fees,” Sommer told him. “There are also several unions and corporations who are exploring the possibility of adding Soulminder service to their general health benefits package, which may bring us into reach of at least a part of the general population even sooner.”

  Barry nodded. “As to theoretical questions of splitting the soul from the body, Barbara, the Church has historically held that the soul doesn’t leave this world until irreversible damage to the body has taken place. In that light, you could easily make a case for putting Soulminder in the same class as the temporary surgical removal of the heart.”

  Leach nodded, and Sommer found his breath coming a little easier. The producers hadn’t allowed him to have any input in choosing the other three guests, but it was beginning to look as if Soulminder had some strong allies on the panel.

  And it was going to need them. At the far end of the semicircle Harper was watching Sommer steadily.

  “Since your feelings about Soulminder are well known, Dr. Sommer,” Leach said, a touch of dry humor in her voice, “I’d like to pass you up for the moment and move on to my other guests. You’ll then have the opportunity to answer any questions they might bring up.”

  Sommer nodded acceptance, and Leach turned to her right. “Reverend Edgington?”

  “My views are pretty much in line with those that have already been aired,” Edgington said, his voice deep and resonant and verging on the pompous. His church was in the forefront of what he and his colleagues liked to call “modernization,” which seemed to involve throwing out most traditional beliefs and teachings. “I’d like to add one thing, though, to Father Barry’s equating of Soulminder with other surgical techniques. While organ transplants have been with us for decades, it’s only been in the past couple of years that the invention of ultra-efficient heart-lung machines and neuropreservatives have made many types of transplants even possible. Bodies can now be kept healthy and free from decay for weeks or even months until the proper recipient for a given organ can be found. Soulminder actually does nothing more, except that instead of preserving a body for the benefit of others, it preserves it for the benefit of the original owner.” He smiled. “There’s really no way you can argue against saving lives, Barbara.”

  He nodded slightly, signaling he was through … and, unconsciously, Sommer braced himself. It was Harper’s turn.

  “Reverend Harper, you’ve been one of the most outspoken critics of Soulminder since its invention,” Leach said, “first in your own congregation and, since then, on your syndicated television show. Tell us why.”

  Harper paused, cocking his head slightly to the side. “First of all, Barbara,” he said, his voice even and polite but with heat smoldering beneath it, “let me say that I join Father Barry and Rabbi Kaufmann in wondering if Soulminder will indeed wind up perpetuating the social injustice that continues to drive wedges between the rich and the poor of this world. At the same time”—a hard edge began to creep into his voice and his gaze drifted from Leach to settle onto Sommer—“I also think that they and Dr. Sommer have all either missed or deliberately ignored Soulminder’s basic flaw: the fact that by its very nature the artificial removal of a human soul from the body is blasphemy.”

  Beside Sommer, Father Barry shifted in his chair. Harper’s eyes flicked to him, then returned to Sommer. “The soul simply isn’t part of mankind’s realm,” he continued. “It isn’t for us to hold or deal with; it certainly isn’t ours to keep back from God when He’s summoned it home.”

  “And yet isn’t all of medicine in a sense the holding back of a soul from God?” Leach interjected. “People used to die who can now be routinely saved.”

  “That’s exactly my point,” Harper told her, his eyes still on Sommer. “We keep people alive—asleep under anesthetics, sometimes, or in comas—or we let them die. Life”—he he
ld a hand out, palm upward—“or death.” He held out the other hand beside it. “Those have always been our only two choices. And properly so, because life and death are the two states of existence that were ordained for mankind in the beginning. But Soulminder does more, and in doing more it goes beyond any comparison with normal medical treatment. It creates a third state of existence—a state that’s neither true life nor true death. A disembodied existence: conscious, with all human desires and ambitions and needs, yet completely and utterly cut off from participation in, or communication with, the rest of creation.” His eyes flicked to Father Barry. “A man-made purgatory, Father?”

  “Perhaps,” Barry said evenly. “On the other hand, in a lesser sense, don’t we all have some control over each other’s existence? Over their souls, if you will? Isn’t that really what government or even community means?”

  Harper shook his head. “You can’t equate social influence—not even the heavy coercion of a tyranny—with the one-hundred-percent control exerted by Soulminder over those in its power. That’s not what was intended for mankind.”

  “And if God had intended man to fly, He would have given us wings?” Edgington suggested sardonically. “Inventions and technology are never evil in and of themselves, Mr. Harper. It’s what we do with them that’s important.”

  Harper sent him an icy look, and Sommer swallowed. The arch-conservative, seated next to the arch-liberal. Fleetingly, he wondered if Leach had deliberately put them next to each other, and decided she probably had. He certainly wouldn’t have wanted to sit in the crossfire between them. “I trust, Mr. Edgington,” Harper said, his voice as cool as his look, “that you haven’t forgotten that the Earth and everything in it is in a fallen state. Nothing that man can invent is untouched by that taint. For that matter, I can name you a set of inventions that is evil in and of itself.”

  “And that is … ?”

  “Instruments of torture,” Harper told him. He held Edgington’s eyes a moment longer, then looked back at Sommer. “I’d like to ask you a question, Dr. Sommer, if I may.” He paused a split second, as if waiting for Leach to step in and stop him, then continued, “You claim that Soulminder is to be used for medical purposes only, that once the body has been repaired it will be reinsouled.”

  “That’s correct,” Sommer said, wondering uneasily where Harper was going with this.

  “Let’s assume for the moment that we all find that particular usage acceptable,” Harper said. “So. Assume the body is now repaired. What if you then change your mind and decide to continue holding the soul and body apart?”

  “That would be unethical, of course,” Sommer agreed carefully. “A timely insertion of the soul has always been our policy.”

  “Ah—timely.” Harper arched his eyebrows. “What does timely mean, Doctor? An hour after the doctors declare the body is sufficiently healed? Six hours, just to be on the safe side? A week? Two weeks?

  “Five years?”

  “Of course not,” Sommer insisted. “Timely is—well, it’s an individual thing, something that has to be decided between our people and the person’s own physician.”

  “Remarkably similar to the language of free abortion,” Harper said. “But suppose the doctor doesn’t feel the patient is yet ready, even after you do? For that matter, what if the body can’t actually be repaired at present? How long do you hold the soul in your electronic limbo on the off chance that someday that body might be useful again?

  “Where do you draw your lines, Doctor?”

  Sommer took a deep breath, but before he could speak he was rescued. “Much as I hate to interrupt good drama,” Leach said gravely, “we do have to take a break here. When we return, we’ll have Dr. Sommer’s response, and further debate.”

  She held the pose a moment … and then the camera light went out, and she exhaled loudly. “Two minutes, gentlemen,” she said, standing. “If any of you want to stretch, this is your chance.”

  Sommer wondered briefly if his knees were up to standing. “Don’t let him get to you,” Father Barry murmured beside him. “A lot of his arguments are pure smokescreen.”

  “And a lot of them aren’t,” Sommer said heavily. “This is all too reminiscent of those college bull sessions on situational ethics and morality that used to keep me up nights.”

  The priest shrugged. “I remember those, too. But until and unless God grants us omniscience—”

  “Dr. Sommer?” a stagehand loomed before him, silhouetted by the lights. “Phone call, sir, from Dr. Sands. She says it’s urgent you call her.”

  “Thank you,” Sommer said, turning his cell back on and punching in Sands’s number.

  She answered on the first ring. “God, I’m glad I got you,” she said, her voice tight and urgent. “We’ve got trouble. The minute you’re done there get straight over to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital.”

  Sommer’s stomach hardened into a knot. “What’s happened? Someone get hurt?”

  “I wish it were that simple,” she said grimly. “One of our clients died there an hour or so ago—heart attack or something. The trap caught him okay, no problem there. But the hospital’s declared him dead and are getting ready to start carving him up for spare organs.”

  “They’re what?” Sommer demanded. “No—they can’t do that. What about the hold-and-suspend protocols?”

  “Either he never filed them, or they got lost somewhere in the system,” Sands said. “Porath’s trying to get an emergency injunction, and one of his staff’s gone to the hospital to try and reason with them. But he’s not going to have nearly the stalling power you will.”

  “Agreed.” Behind the cameras someone called a one-minute warning. “I’ve got to go, Jessica. I’ll get out there as soon as I can. Where are they?”

  “Room 258. At least that’s where they were ten minutes ago—I presume they haven’t moved him. I’ll see if there are any strings I can pull from here in the meantime.” She hesitated. “I trust you can see just exactly how much is riding on this. If our big expensive safety net can lose someone this easily … ”

  “I get the picture,” Sommer told her. “I’ll be there when I can.”

  The rest of the debate remained forever afterward little more than a fuzzy blur in Sommer’s memory. He remembered answering Harper’s arguments, though with a vague accompanying sense that he hadn’t really done a very good job of it. He remembered a polite verbal free-for-all in which everyone basically ganged up against Harper, with occasional jabs at each other, while Leach sat back and allowed herself just enough control to hold things together without ruining the spontaneity of it all. But the details remained lost to him. There was too much on his mind.

  He didn’t remember much about the drive to the hospital, either, except that, like the debate, it seemed to take forever.

  He expected to find a crowd of reporters jamming room 258 and the surrounding corridor. Thankfully, the media apparently hadn’t yet been alerted.

  Standing just outside the room, his back to the door, was a young man Sommer recognized as one of Murray Porath’s legal staff. Facing him were half a dozen medical types and a youngish man in an expensive-looking three-piece suit. Their voices were too low for Sommer to make out the words as he approached, but from the tone it was abundantly clear that the conversation wasn’t a friendly one.

  “Good evening,” Sommer nodded, coming up to the group and scanning their faces as they turned to face him. Concern—awkward concern, even—from the medical people; quiet anger and suspicion from the man in the suit, who wasn’t quite as young as he’d looked from a distance. “I’m Dr. Adrian Sommer of Soulminder,” Sommer continued. “What seems to be the trouble here?”

  “It’s called illegal restraint,” the suited man bit out before anyone else could speak. “Your people are preventing, by threat of force, the lawful performance of legitimate medical duties, and in doing so are threa
tening the well-being of at least four other people.”

  Sommer cocked an eyebrow. “I take it you’re a lawyer.”

  He hadn’t intended it to sound like an insult, but the other apparently took it as one, anyway. “My name is Tyler Marsh,” the other said coldly. “I doubt that that means anything to you, but yes, I have had a certain amount of legal experience. Enough to know that you have no right to interfere with the carrying out of a deceased man’s last wishes.”

  “Mr. Ingersoll is not yet deceased,” the Soulminder lawyer interjected. “That’s the whole point of—”

  “Then what is this?” Marsh cut him off, waving a paper in his face.

  “What is that?” Sommer asked him.

  One of the doctors cleared his throat. “It’s a death certificate, Dr. Sommer,” he said.

  Sommer regarded him. “Signed by … ?”

  The other sighed. “Me.”

  “And it’s perfectly legitimate,” Marsh put in. “By every legal and medical definition in the book, Wilson Anders Ingersoll is dead.”

  Sommer pursed his lips and turned to the Soulminder lawyer. “Mr. Walker, why don’t you fill me in.”

  “Yes, sir.” Walker took a deep breath. “Mr. Ingersoll came down from New York two days ago on business. Early this morning he suffered a heart attack at his hotel and was rushed here in critical condition. Dr. Raines”—he nodded to the doctor—“was in charge of the team who treated him. They succeeded in repairing the damage to the heart muscle. Despite that, two hours ago his heart abruptly stopped again—”

  “And Mr. Ingersoll died,” Marsh put in.

  “And Mr. Ingersoll’s EEG trace went flat,” Walker corrected, an edge to his voice. “Dr. Raines declared him dead and filled out a death certificate, and the body was put on neuropreservatives and a life-support machine.”

  “He was carrying an organ donor card,” Raines explained. “Liver, lungs, and corneas. Dr. Bartok, here”—he indicated the woman standing beside him—“has been assigned to remove the organs.”