“Dr. Lankh’s laboratory. Fifteen have died in his experiments this month—fifteen kids in changeover have died here in this hospital. Digen, we’ve got to get Skip away from him!”
Digen stood, cold, in the middle of the elevator, trying to sort it through. “The chances that Skip will hit that point while here in the hospital are miniscule.” He glanced narrowly at Hogan. “What sort of work is Lankh doing? What could he possibly want with Skip?”
“Everybody’s been talking—but I guess they just don’t talk when you’re around. Digen, he’s trying to stop changeover and reverse it in mid-course. He says he has succeeded. Parents sign their kids over to him. It’s all legal. They’d rather the kids be dead than Sime.”
Digen heard only the words “stop changeover and reverse it in mid-course.” He went pale. When the door of the elevator opened, he plunged wildly into the dank corridor outside the pathology lab. He stopped, one hand to the rough, damp wall, a sensory link to the world. He concentrated on the feel of that wall against the palm of his hand, trying to drive away the vision of kids dying in First Need.
One word wrenched out of Digen, in Simelan, over and over, until he whispered it, “Fifteen. Fifteen. Fifteen!”
Digen had seen this death altogether too often. Things went wrong in changeover. A good Sime Center could save some. But some died. Yet—fifteen, tortured to death!
Hogan came up to Digen, hesitant. Digen shrank from the Gen. A Gen could do such a thing. Inhuman ghouls.
“He’s insane!” grated Digen.
Hogan’s hand came lightly onto Digen’s shoulder.
Hogan didn’t say anything, but Digen could feel the concern in him, a sweet resonance, shattering the grip of cold horror on him. “I’m sorry,” said Digen. “That’s the way I almost died, you know. Attrition. I’m too sensitive to it.” Too sensitive. Too sensitive. The thought lodged in his mind, accompanied by a strange sense of déjà vu. His brother Wyner had been too sensitive. Too sensitive to live.
“We’ve got to do something,” said Hogan.
Nobody could reverse changeover, Digen knew, any more than birth could be reversed, or, more to the point, metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly. Lankh was lying to himself and to others, if he really believed he had succeeded. Why? What drives a man like that? It’s got to be something more than just fear.
With an effort, Digen drew himself away from the wall. “Lankh will be stopped. Now that I know.”
“Digen, if they find out I told you….”
“Don’t worry. They won’t. But he’ll be stopped.”
The next day Digen dropped a pointed hint to the Sime Center statisticians, and then put the matter from his mind.
It was barely a week before his scheduled transfer with Im’ran, and Digen still saw Thornton striding through the EW on occasion, briskly ordering this or that done immediately. Once Digen had seen Thornton going through a stack of charts Digen had just filed. Twice he heard his name and Thornton’s muttered in conversations hastily abandoned as he approached. He began to feel like a specimen under a microscope.
Then, one evening, Digen was wrapping a sprained ankle for a little girl who was clutching her kitten and crying disconsolately, when Dr. Thornton came into the treatment room and called Digen aside.
“Dr. Farris, I’d like you to take a look at a patient in room eight.”
Digen knew something was up immediately. Thornton never said, hesitantly, “I’d like you to—” he said, “Do it,” over his shoulder as he passed through. “Something interesting, Dr. Thornton?”
Walking beside Digen, Thornton said, “Looks like a classic hot appendix. Too classic. It’s a sixteen-year-old girl. She has no establishment card. Sixteen’s a little old for changeover—but…”
“Well,” said Digen, “I had one who was seventeen once. He died. But there’s a case in the literature of an eighteen-year-old who survived. The average changeover age seems to be going up, you know.”
Thornton shrugged, ushering Digen into room eight. “You’re the expert on that.”
When Digen examined the girl she was unconscious, unable to give Thornton clue responses to the standard tests for changeover. He took Thornton into a corner for a fast, confidential report.
“It’s both,” he said glibly. “Even through the retainers, I can pick up—definite prechangeover indications. But they are not what’s causing the abdomen. That could be an acute appendix.”
“Well, you better get your people on it right away, because it is an appendix—on plus-time, in my opinion.”
“I couldn’t judge the appendix without a lateral contact examination. But if you’re right about that, there’s nothing the Sime Center can do for her. We don’t practice surgery.”
“You mean you’d just let her die from a silly little thing like that?”
“Yes,” said Digen, meeting Thornton’s gaze levelly. “There’s nothing we could do.”
“That’s—that’s—criminal!”
“Yes. It is. That’s why I’m here, Doctor. To learn surgery and bring the techniques in-Territory.”
Thornton absorbed that. Even through the retainers, Digen could feel the man’s nager shifting. When their eyes met again, there was a new understanding between them.
“Prechangeover,” mused Thornton. “What would happen if we did her—right now, within the hour?”
With a leap of excitement, Digen thought it over. The nerve tissues that had begun to form wouldn’t carry selyn currents for another couple of days. “If you use a midline incision, you shouldn’t be in any danger, and—she just might survive.” He balanced the factors in his head, her field reading, general health, stage of changeover, age, and so forth. “It would be a better chance than if you don’t do her. That is, if you’re right about the appendix. But—I can’t give you a legally binding channel’s opinion without a full lateral contact examination. I could be wrong about her state of changeover—in a case like this, sixteen years old….”
“But with a full contact examination, you would be certain?”
“Absolutely—and precisely about the appendix, too.”
Thornton thought it over quickly. “You’re no naive young intern, Dr. Farris. You know what’s going on in this hospital, at the higher administration levels.”
“Not specifically,” said Digen. “But I get the picture.”
“This would blow the lid off.”
“Not unless you want it to,” said Digen. “You do her at eleven, and I’ll diagnose her and take her over to the Sime Center at one—if you want it that way.”
“What about postop? They have no experience over there. She could require a lot of blood—complications….”
“Changeover is enough of a complication all by itself. I’ll have her on my own ward. We’ll manage—or we won’t. But if you’re right about the appendix, which I don’t doubt, then this way at least she’ll have a chance.”
“I’ve seen breakout contractions. They’ll rip the incision wide open.”
“She has a couple of days yet. In changeover, wounds often heal exceptionally fast. If I have to—I could rupture her membranes to avoid contractions. And—there are drugs….” The more he thought about it, the more Digen itched for the challenge. He might even get permission to use Ilyana’s field to stimulate the healing. But any way it went, the center would know. It would be a beginning.
But the law would have to be bent a little, to save a life. Together, he and Thornton laid plans. Digen got his full contact examination and confirmed Thornton’s diagnosis, and the state of changeover, but they logged the lateral exam as taking place at one in the morning, half an hour after rather than half an hour before the operation. Since he wasn’t supposed to be involved in the case at that point, Digen wasn’t permitted to observe the actual surgery.
Then Digen was called in for the official channel’s consultation in a room off the postoperative recovery ward. As he came out of the locked room, easing his retainers back
into place, Digen met Thornton’s eyes and nodded. As he turned to the telephone to call for the Center’s pickup squad, he thought he saw a familiar figure disappear around a corner. Lankh? What’s he doing here?
Waiting for the squad, Digen began to feel nervous. By Tecton law, he had been required to phone for the squad an hour ago when he first learned that the girl was in changeover. The official record, the only record anyone at the Center would see, clearly stated that his first contact with the girl had been after the operation. Only he and Thornton—and maybe one or two nurses—knew it hadn’t happened that way.
A couple of days later, Digen eased the girl through changeover, cheating her of her normal breakout experience but putting her well on the path to a long and healthy life. For days the hospital was buzzing with rumors about why the chief of surgery had been doing a midnight appendectomy that turned out to be a changeover victim. Hogan told Digen some of the more bizarre explanations, ending, “I think, though, that she is really his niece, and that’s why he was so interested he got out of bed to come in and see her.”
“Niece?” said Digen.
“Well,” said Hogan, “Thornton has certainly changed toward you since you saved her life.”
Digen told him, then, the whole story.
Hogan laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t know why I ever worried about you getting a raw deal here. Barely a month in Westfield, and already you’ve got the surgical residency sewed up!”
Digen sobered. “I wouldn’t go that far, Joel. It’s a long haul from here to there.” And I might not live that long. “You better get some sleep. I’ve got to get over to the Center and file my monthly reports.”
Everything, Digen knew—literally everything—depended on his getting his transfers straightened out. He couldn’t—he didn’t dare—go into surgery proper, doing all that cutting and sewing, in anything less than top shape physically.
And though things were going well at the hospital, he had problems at the Center. While Im’ran was technically assigned to him exclusively, the Donor still had to spend quite a bit of time with Jesse Elkar, the channel who had gotten them into this mess. No, that’s not fair, thought Digen. It was Mickland’s incompetence that had gotten them messed up.
Jesse Elkar, like Digen, had been shorted in transfer far longer than he could endure. Every year, it seemed, there were fewer and fewer of the High Order Donors, the kind of Gens who could serve Digen’s Need, or serve channels like Jesse Elkar.
Mickland had released Jesse from therapy a little early in order to assign Im’ran to Digen. When Jesse attempted his transfer, he had aborted—painfully—several times, because his newly assigned Donor was inadequate. Mickland had then sent Im’ran into the room to try to pull Elkar through, but instead, Elkar had attacked Im’ran, leaving the Donor with no choice but to complete the transfer or force another abort—which would surely have killed Elkar.
Now, as a result of that incident, Jesse Elkar was deep into a transfer dependency with Im’ran. He literally couldn’t take his transfer from any other Donor.
Up until now, Digen had stayed strictly out of the affair. Im’ran was the therapist, it was his responsibility to bail Elkar out of it. In fact, Digen hadn’t laid eyes on the First Order channel who was contending for his Donor. Legally, Im’ran was Digen’s. But—emotionally, Im’ran was torn. At last, Digen felt it was time he took a stand.
By the time Digen got off rounds at the hospital, saw Hogan tumble into bed, and changed his clothes, it was thundering. Just as he walked out the hospital doors, a warm, sluicing rain poured out of the sky, and in moments Digen was wading along the city street, leaning into the wind. He scurried up the nearest steps into Sime Center, soaked to the skin and dripping.
Finding himself in the out-Territory collectorium, walking between two benches where Gens sat waiting their turn to donate selyn to the collecting channels, Digen keyed the elevator that would let him out opposite his office door. He had a small bathroom where he kept a change of clothes just off the storeroom behind his office. As he got into some dry things, he made some phone calls and found out that Jesse Elkar was scheduled for his transfer within the hour. He had moved into the deferment suite two days ago.
Searching for an elevator that would take him up into the south tower of the huge, sprawling Sime Center building, Digen became really worried. A channel moved into the deferment suite only when he reached a state of need where he no longer trusted his self-control. If Elkar were in that condition, certainly the transfer dependency with Im’ran was the cause. This could very easily turn into a brutal business.
He found the deferment suite, heavily insulated, removed from the daily pressures and concerns of a channel’s life. Elkar had the corner room, a large, comfortably furnished studio apartment, surrounded on two sides by observation booths, which were separated from the studio itself by heavily insulated, transparent partitions.
With great misgivings, Digen touched the signal button. Momentarily the door latch clicked and Digen pushed the door open. The room was decorated in forest green and immaculate white trimmed with gold accents. Heavily draped and upholstered, the room held a quiet hush characteristic of deferment suites.
On the contour lounge in the center of the room, just sitting up now that Digen had walked in, was Jesse Elkar. The two channels stared at one another for a moment in sheer disbelief. Then Digen said, “Shu-ven! Jesse Elkar! The name—it’s common enough, I thought it must be some other—you never told me you made First Order!”
They embraced, Digen shaking the other man like a long lost brother. “When did you qualify? Why didn’t you write me?”
Jesse Elkar had gone through changeover about the same time that Digen had. They had both been assigned to the same training camp for their First Year, the year when the learning rate is magnified in the new Sime, often by as much as ten times the normal rate. Digen, being a Farris, had qualified as a First Order channel on his very first transfer. Jesse Elkar, a more typical channel, had had to work hard to achieve what Digen had been born with. Yet they had become inseparable comrades at the camp, as Digen tutored his friend and in turn learned from him what it was like to struggle to overcome an inability. It was a lesson that had sustained Digen through all the years after the accident that had left his lateral scarred.
Elkar was withdrawn, tight under Digen’s hands. “Digen, Digen, after all you’ve done for me, just look what I’ve done to you! It had to be your Donor I intercepted—your Donor I’m in this rotten dependency with!”
“Sit down, sit down,” urged Digen. “None of this is your fault. It’s the Donor shortage. And—if someone had to get my Donor, I’d rather it were you. Why didn’t you come up and say hello to your Sectuib? Surely in Zeor we could have worked something out weeks ago, if I’d known it was you!”
Elkar shook his head. “I’m sorry, Sectuib.” Digen realized then just how humiliated Elkar was over the whole dependency thing. He couldn’t face me! Well, now wasn’t the time to tackle it. The man was primed and ready for transfer.
“Never mind, Jesse. I came up here to be of help, not—well, just relax and tell me….”
At that point the door signal ticked. Elkar jumped, startled, and Digen realized just how tense his friend was. He reached over Elkar and released the door catch.
As the door opened, a strange man’s voice was saying, “…better work, Im’ran.”
Im’ran answered, his head turned as he walked into the room, “It’s perfectly straightforward, and Mickland said it was all right as long as we kept her away from Digen….”
Mora Dyen, the channel who had managed Digen’s departments before he had come, was doing a magnificent job of keeping Im’ran’s very high field from dominating the room. In fact, Digen barely felt Im’ran’s shock while he saw the dismay on Ilyana’s face and turned to see Digen standing beside Elkar.
In synch with Ilyana and striving to control her blazing field was the large man Digen recognized as the chann
el who limped, whom he had first seen in Mickland’s office. He had no idea who the man was, but he was obviously a very accomplished First Order channel, with every bit of the precision one expected to see only in Zeor-trained channels. Digen had heard that the man’s limp was the result of a bout of shaking plague.
The group of two channels and two Donors advanced into the room, spreading out to ease the fields for Elkar. Digen’s eyes came to Ilyana, and for a moment everything vanished as he slipped into hyperconsciousness, seeing only her selyn field, silky gold and perfectly matched to his Need. Then a dark blot spoiled the moment, kicking Digen rudely down into duoconsciousness, and the room became visible through the fields.
It was the big man between him and Ilyana. Digen judged him to be about fifty-five, and a figure accustomed to authority. The man advanced on Digen, saying, “I’m sorry. I had to do that to you. She’s—”
“Yes, I know,” said Digen, with a huge sigh. “My matchmate.”
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
The man’s nager was charged with half a dozen distinct emotions, which abruptly cut off under strict discipline. Digen shook his head. “Should I?” He was aware that everyone was watching him, but he couldn’t imagine why.
“The last time I saw you—it was at Vira’s changeover party. You were only four. You used to call me Uncle Rin.”
“Rindaleo Hayashi!” The only channel ever to have been thrown out of the House of Zeor.
Digen stood there, assailed with a hundred memories. Vira, Digen’s older sister, had died fighting the same outbreak of shaking plague which had claimed his parents and two older brothers, and which had resulted in Hayashi’s disgrace. Digen remembered Vira as the smallest one in the family, tough and wiry, almost un-Farris-like. At her changeover party, Digen had stolen a whole bowl of sugar frosting from the kitchen and eaten it all at once. “Uncle Rin” had taken him out into the woods where he could be sick in private. Afterward, they had a long talk about Zeor standards, about human greed, about temptation, and about Sime Need and the Zeor channels’ self-control. Satisfied that Digen understood, in principle, what he had done wrong, the man had never told on him.
Unto Zeor, Forever Page 7