The Bladerunner

by Alan E Nourse

  Bedlam broke loose in the tavern as people poured out the door after him. Roberts and his friends were scattering in three directions; Billy headed across the street and down a darkened alley, moving as swiftly as he could on his poor foot. There was shouting and he heard footfalls behind him as two of the Naturists took pursuit. Frantically Billy searched for a doorway, a fire escape, a cul-de-sac, anyplace to get out of full view, but nothing presented itself. Then up ahead he saw traffic on a cross street, and a darkened warehouse building with a door hanging loose on its hinges. Ducking between two cars, he scrambled to the far side of the street as his pursuers paused, trying to dodge traffic. Then, almost to the warehouse door, he misstepped and sprawled. Before he could recover himself, the two were on him. He struck out viciously as one tried to drag him to his feet by the collar; the other moved in to pin his arms. Desperate now, Billy fought with fists, elbows, knees and head, wriggling out of one’s grip only to be seized by the other. A heavy blow caught the side of his head and he reeled back against the building as the two closed in on him, panting.

  Suddenly the three of them were bathed with bright light and a siren screamed as a hovercraft moved down between the buildings, blowing up clouds of dust and grit, its floodlights streaming downward. The two Naturists broke and ran in opposite directions, cursing. Billy, still groggy from the blow, hauled himself to his feet. Somebody aboard the craft was bawling something from a loudspeaker, but he ducked his head and ran for the warehouse door even as the craft settled down to the street.

  Inside the warehouse, darkness enveloped Billy like a blanket. More than anything, then, he wanted darkness and rest. His head was reeling and the strength seemed drained from his legs as he moved ahead into blackness. Then light from the floodlights streamed in the doorway, and he saw a set of rotten stairs ahead. He plunged down them into a dank, wet corridor that smelled like mold. Boxes and crates were stacked to the ceiling, and he hobbled down the hallway, searching for some place to hide. Then he saw a door, wrenched it open, and collapsed to the floor in a small storage room. Creeping to a corner behind a packing case, he huddled, panting, trying to stifle his coughing and to listen at the same time.

  There were hesitant footfalls on the floor above, and he heard men’s voices. “Jesus, this floor’s rotten, Pete. Watch your step there!”

  “Okay, I’ll cover this end, you check that side. Hold it, there’s a stairway going down.”

  “Give me a light, I’ll check down there.” Even as he huddled in the room below, it seemed to Billy that there was a familiar ring to that third voice. He heard steps on the stairs, a pause, then footfalls in the corridor, and a flashlight beam struck the half-open door of the side room. “Billy? Billy, are you down there?”

  Billy couldn’t believe his ears. He struggled to his feet, and his attempt to answer was blocked by a paroxysm of coughing. The steps quickened as he struggled for the door. “Doc! Is that you?”

  The flashlight caught him as he emerged, and then he heard Doc’s unmistakable voice, saying “Billy, for God’s sake, Billy, what are you doing in this place, you damned fool?”

  “I had to … I had to get to Roberts — ” Billy broke off, coughing again. “I lost my list, must have left it in my room, got a lot more people to contact.”

  “No, Billy, no more, forget it. I should never have sent you out in the first place. Why didn’t you have sense enough to quit?” Billy felt Doc’s arm under his, holding him up as his knees buckled, and Doc was still talking, half laughing, half hysterical, as he tried to help him back down the corridor and up the stairs, shouting for help above. And then, for an instant, it hit Billy that it really was Doc there, trying to help him, and there was so much to say, and then the darkness closed in for real and Billy slumped onto the stairs in Doc’s arms.

  V

  Later, Billy recalled, there were a confusion of images and impressions as he had drifted in and out of consciousness. He remembered vaguely being half led, half carried, up the stairs, a hard stretcher under him, then a siren that seemed to go on and on as he drifted back into blackness. Later he became half aware of a cool, white room and white-gowned figures moving about him, talking quietly but incomprehensibly. Still later it was night and a single bed-lamp threw grotesque shadows on a white wall, then darkness again.

  There were dreams, gray featureless dreams that terrified him without focusing on any specific reason for terror. Once he was being chased down endless dark corridors, fighting to draw his crippled foot along with him, repeatedly falling as he tried to run, and he jerked wide awake, soaked with sweat and icy cold at the same time. Later on — how much later? — he awoke in darkness, certain that he had to leave, get away from that place, wherever it was, get back to his room and the false transmitter before they raided him and found it. He stumbled weakly out of bed, groping in the darkness for clothes that weren’t there, crashing into the wall as he tripped across the cord to a respirator sitting idly by the bedside. And almost immediately there were people there, talking to him calmly, easing him back into the bed again. Still later he was certain that Molly Barret was there speaking very gently to him, urging him to respond, but his voice caught in a throat as dry as leather and he could only croak helplessly, and then when she was gone he could not be certain whether this had been dream or reality.

  At length, of course, he woke up with finality, raised up on an elbow and peered around him. He was in a white-painted room in a hospital bed, an oxygen tent still rigged at its head but pushed back out of the way. Pale morning sunlight was coming in a single window, and outside he could see patches of blue sky and the tops of high-rise dwellings. He was caught with a paroxysm of coughing, and suddenly realized that he had been coughing continuously for days, but this time he did not feel so weak or breathless as before. More than anything, he felt a dull inquiring ache in his abdomen, and realized that he was fiercely hungry.

  A nurse came in the door, looked at him and smiled. “Well, you’re finally awake. That’s good news.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Hospital Number Seven Isolation.”

  “How long have I been here? And where’s Doc? I’ve got work to do.”

  He started to climb out of bed, but the nurse restrained him. “Wait for Dr. Long to get here. He wanted to be called as soon as you were awake. It’s been a long time, more than a week.”

  Billy sank back in the bed, confused and alarmed. He had no business in a Hospital, he knew that, and the time lapse was staggering. A week? Wearily he stared up at the ceiling, dozed a bit, then woke again as a hand touched his forehead. Doc was there and Molly Barret too. “It’s about time you were coming to,” Doc said. “You had us worried for a while.”

  “Doc, what am I doing here?”

  “A good, ripe lobar pneumonia, mostly. Plus exhaustion and exposure and a few other things. Apparently the Viricidin shots we gave you stopped the flu virus, all right, but not before your resistance was hammered down to the point that you were a sitting duck for pneumonia. As it is, you’re lucky to be around. Pneumonia kills people too.”

  “But what about the epidemic?” Billy said. “There were a dozen people on Parrot’s list that I didn’t reach, Doc. I’ve got to get out of here — ”

  “Relax, your part’s over with. By now we’re just wrapping up.”

  “But even so, this is the Hospital, isn’t it? I’m not qualified to be here. If Health Control finds out — ”

  “ — they couldn’t do a thing. It’s all out in the open, Billy, they couldn’t keep it quiet, and right now Health Control couldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole. You or any other bladerunner. Public opinion wouldn’t stand for it — you’re the Boy Heroes of the Plague City, and Health Control knows it.” He tossed a pile of newspapers on the bed. “Take a look.”

  Billy blinked at the banner headlines. ILLEGAL MEDICS HEROES IN FLU CRISIS, one paper proclaimed. INFECTON CONTROLLED, SOURCES SAY. SENATE TO STUDY HEALTH CONTROL POLICIES. Billy shook his head
, incredulous, and looked up at Doc. “Then it really is out in the open.”

  “Wide open. It was a dangerous crisis, and Health Control was completely out of its depth. Things are going to have to change, maybe more swiftly than anybody thought. Nobody can risk such a thing happening again, least of all Health Control.”

  “But it’ll haul the undergrounders out into the open, too.”

  “Where they ought to be. Where they should have been all along. But in the crunch it was you and the other bladerunners that mobilized the fight in this epidemic. You spread the word and got people in for protection.” Doc shrugged. “It isn’t all over yet, but the computer projection shows that the epidemic has crested. There’ll be fewer and fewer showing up with the meningitis, and fewer and fewer deaths. And you guys can take a lot of credit.”

  ‘That’s great,” Billy said sourly. “But where does it leave me? I’m still sneaking around with a bracelet on my wrist.”

  “Maybe you’d better look again.”

  Startled, Billy looked at his wrist. It was bare. Then he saw the transponder lying on the bedside stand, with the muffler net beside it. “I persuaded Health Control to persuade the court that you could probably manage without that,” Doc said wryly. “They had to clear it through the Secretary himself, but they saw the light when I pointed out to them how eager the newspapers were to know just how all you bladerunners happened to cooperate so splendidly with the health authorities. Anyway, you’re completely legal right now — for once. All you have to do now is get your strength back, and heal up your chest.”

  From the other side of the bed Molly Barret cleared her throat. “Wasn’t there something else you were going to get arranged?”

  “What do you mean?” Doc said.

  “Seems to me I remember a promise you were tossing around the last time we were all together.”

  “Oh, that.” Doc coughed. “Well, sure, but he can’t be undergoing surgery in the shape he’s in now. He’ll need a couple of months to get up and around, get strong again — ”

  “Doc, you promised,” Molly said hotly. “And doctor or no doctor, you’re not going to wiggle out this time, if I have to go to Dr. Durham herself to make you come across!”

  “ — and the orthopedic surgeon I talked to this morning refused to schedule Billy sooner than the first week in March, if his chest X-ray is clear. So we have a tentative date for March eighth. If you still want it done.”

  “You mean here? In the Hospital?”

  “Right here, and one of the best bone surgeons in the city.”

  Billy sat looking at his foot for a long moment. “I suppose in a way I’ll kind of miss it,” he said finally. “But not too much. It’s like getting rid of that transponder.”

  “And while you’re waiting,” Doc added, “you’ll have time to be thinking about what to do with yourself after it’s fixed. Lots of things are going to be changing, I think, including a whole new look at the problem of getting health care to people. And if the Senate legislates a new medical program with fewer eugenics controls and better legal health care coverage, we aren’t going to need bladerunners any more.”

  “I suppose not,” Billy said. “But what else? It’s the only thing I know.”

  “You can learn,” Doc said. “We don’t know yet how drastic the changes will be. The robot-training program is going to be shelved, and a whole new set of Health Control priorities worked out, including more legal care for more people without enforcing the qualification laws. Of course, there’ll still be qualification tests for some illnesses, and there may still be a need for underground medicine of some sort, at least for a while. But you don’t have to stay there, Billy. You know a lot more about practical medical care right now than most medical students. We may not need bladerunners too much anymore, but we’ll need plenty of well-trained, capable medics to help the doctors out. And later on, if you want — well, I have a hunch we’re going to be training a whole lot of new doctors soon, too.”

  A nurse interrupted with a call for Doc. He nodded, and touched Billy’s hand. “You think about it,” he said. “We’ll talk later. We’ll have plenty of time to talk.”

  He left them then, but Molly stayed a while longer, and they talked. “It’s going to be strange,” Billy said. “I mean, for you and me. Not like the old team at all.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe not an underground team — but there are other kinds of teams.”

  “Maybe. But if I’m studying, and you’re all tied up with work somewhere else — ”

  “But Billy, I’m not going anywhere. Before, we never really had a chance to even talk, much less get to know each other. Now at least there can be a chance, if we want it that way.” They talked some more, until Billy began to doze. Molly promised to visit again the next day, and then tiptoed from the room. Later, when he awoke, it was nighttime. He eased himself out of bed, supporting himself with the back of a chair, and hobbled over to the window. Before him the whole city spread in a blaze of night lights, the same old city as ever, showing no sign of the grim shadow of death and disaster that had swept over it so recently, yet oddly different now as Billy watched. Pulling the chair up, he sat staring out at the lights, seeing them now as he never had before, as the implications of Doc’s words struck home. To walk straight and free and never to limp again. To work, someday, as a free and legal member of a great profession, to climb out of the dim underworld he had known for so long….

  Billy sighed, his fingers on the glass. There would be changes, all right Things would never again be like they were — new work, new demands, new responsibilities, and no returning to times as they had been. Momentarily he felt a pang of regret, a twinge of panic, at the thought of a whole way of life left behind. Like a crippled foot, so familiar and yet so dreadful. Given a choice, a real choice….

  Slowly he turned away from the window, walked back to the bed, regret vanishing from his mind. Maybe, he thought, it was merely having a choice that let him see the future not with panic but with eagerness and excitement. Because now, he knew, he really had a choice.

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  This edition published by

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  Copyright © 1974 by Alan E. Nourse

  All rights reserved.

  Cover image(s) © 123rf.com

  This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 10: 1-4405-6728-X

  ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-6728-5

  eISBN 10: 1-4405-6693-3

  eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-6693-6

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