“Which one?”
“There’s only one project around here at the moment. A hell of a project. Incredible. You a reporter?”
“No.”
“Well, I don’t think I’d better go shooting my mouth off anyway.”
“I’m from the Rockefeller Institute. Doctor Martin. Are you involved in the Blaylock project?”
“Look, I really can’t talk about it. If you want info go to Sarah or Tom Haver. Gerontology’s to the left past the elevator bank and four doors down. You’ll be able to locate it by the smell of the rhesus colony.”
He returned to his welding and Miriam left the lab. Too bad he hadn’t been more forthcoming. At least it was reassuring to know that they were keeping the details secret. No doubt they didn’t want information leaked until she was thoroughly measured.
She went down the hallway counting doors. ‘Very well,’ she thought, ‘measure me. The more you poke and prod, the more time I’ll have with Sarah.’
The technician had been right, you could certainly smell the Gerontology lab. Miriam opened the door, fully expecting the confrontation.
Instead, she found herself in a small outer office not unlike the one Sarah kept upstairs, but even more crowded with records. A computer terminal, glowing with numbers, stood on an old desk. Miriam spent a moment watching the display but it was useless. She couldn’t understand.
Miriam passed through the room to an inner office which contained rolled-up cables, television equipment and stacks of empty cages. There were two exits beyond. Miriam chose one and went through.
There was a thunderous uproar. She was in the rhesus colony. Monkeys leaped about their cages, gesticulating, posturing at her. Many of them had sockets embedded in their skulls so that electrodes could be plugged in at the researcher’s convenience.
How would it be to wear such a socket in her own head? Would they go that far if they had the chance?
The monkeys were made frantic by her presence; the odor of a strange animal disturbed them. She backed out of the room. The other door would certainly lead to Sarah. Once again she prepared herself, blanking her mind, opening the inner eyes to receive and evaluate Sarah’s emotional state. Even now she could feel it fairly well, but not well enough to understand it. Years of training were necessary before a human being’s emotional field extended much beyond his own body, years of loving someone with touch and wanting desperately to please him or her.
She turned the knob and swept the door open. Marshaling all of her confidence and power, forcing back the hunger their scent evoked, she strode into the room.
The warm emotional flow that emanated from Sarah Roberts was not what she had anticipated. It was the most delicious touch that she had experienced since her own family was alive. Sarah’s heart was full of eager curiosity and love for her coworkers. The edge of fear was still there, but in her laboratory, among friends, Sarah obviously felt secure despite the blood running in her veins.
Miriam had hoped that Sarah would be a good choice, had come to be sure of it, but had not dared hope for anything like this. If only these emotions could be redirected toward herself!
But not at this moment. As Sarah looked up from her work and saw Miriam the emotional atmosphere changed to anger and wary fear. The face was haggard too. Sarah would have had periods of great difficulty by now. She had the sunken cheeks of one who was ignoring the hunger. From now on, each time it came back it would be stronger.
“Hey,” Sarah said into the hum of voices, “a problem just arrived.” Miriam noticed that they were working with another computer terminal.
“Let’s see what happens if we standardize the baselines,” Tom Haver said to a woman, who punched the keyboard. The graphs glowing on the screen jiggled and changed shape.
Sarah grabbed his shoulder, turned him around. “Hey, folks,” he said in a quavering voice, “we have a visitor.”
A small, fat man, bald and sweating, said in an undertone to the one Miriam assumed was the computer operator, “Match the curves to standard deviations —”
“Charlie, Phyllis — heads up.”
“Oh.”
Miriam moved toward them. They drew together, four frightened people. “Sarah said yesterday that I was supposed to come back.”
The computer warbled and the woman Tom had called Phyllis turned it off. As did all moments of great importance in her life, this one brought Miriam a flash of understanding. If things had been just a little different, she realized that she would have been able to simply tell Sarah to come along and that would have been that. Sarah thought her beautiful. Her mind was full of avid fascination, guilty passion. Fear must be an aphrodisiac for Sarah.
Fear, then, would be the key.
Tom Haver went to a telephone. Miriam spoke, trying for every bit of authority she could muster. “Stop. I have a proposition. You may study me if you promise to let me go free at the end of the day.” Haver responded smoothly. “We have no intention of keeping you against your will. For that matter, we haven’t got the right.”
Miriam ignored that issue. If it was obvious to her that they could commit her it must be obvious to them too. Human courts were not set up in the expectation that situations such as this might arise. Miriam felt safest assuming that they would grant her no rights at all.
“Why did you do it, Miriam?” Sarah’s eyes were steady, cool. Behind them Miriam could sense the conflict and the turmoil, but the surface was admirably unruffled.
“Do what?”
In answer Sarah extended her left arm, the one Miriam had chosen for the transfusion. A purple blotch disfigured the white skin. Because of the need to create a maximum effect fast, the transfusion had been very large. Seeing its result, however, made Miriam want to help Sarah, to save her. Unbidden, a touch rose out of her heart. Sarah blinked and averted her eyes, her face flushing red. This touch was like a kiss, the kind that follows a first admission of love. Tom Haver’s arm came around Sarah, and she huddled against him. Miriam’s extended hand was not taken.
“Mrs. Blaylock, she asked you a question. I think you’d better answer it.” There was real menace in Haver’s voice. It told Miriam that he was very much in love with Sarah. Would he die for his love? Did he understand that it might well come to that?
“I came here to help you,” Miriam said gently. “I think you know why.”
Sarah shook her head. “We do not know why. We’d like very much to know.”
Miriam didn’t like that “we.” It was a wall between her and Sarah. “I want to share myself with you. I have read your work. I have reason to believe that my physical makeup may be of interest to you.” “Is that your motive?” Haver asked.
“Is that why you contaminated her with your blood? Don’t you realize how dangerous that is?”
“You could have killed me, Miriam!”
They were like two shrieking crows.
“I am the last of my kind,” Miriam said grandly. “What I gave you was a great gift. You should take it in that light.”
“The last?”
Miriam nodded. It perhaps wasn’t true, but it fit her needs at the moment. “I knew you would never take it voluntarily and I may have very little time. At the least, Sarah, it will double your life-span.”
Haver was becoming less menacing. There was also a slight reduction of tension in Sarah’s face.
“We have a battery of tests,” the fat man blurted. “We’d very much like to run them.”
“I’m ready.” There it was; the price and the payment. Now she must enter their dull catalogues, be weighed and analyzed. She, who soared so far above them, must submit to their machines. But what would they learn? Machines only gather facts and must therefore lie.
“I’d better get the bureaucracy rolling,” Tom said. “What shall we start with, Sarah?”
“X ray.”
“I’ll set up the appointment.”
Sarah nodded. She spoke gently to Miriam, a tone she might use with a frightened child
. “We’d like to do an epidermal biopsy, which just involves scraping off some surface tissue, take some more blood, and run electrograms of various types. Would that be acceptable to you?”
Miriam nodded.
Sarah came to her, seemed about to touch her. “Why are you the last?”
Miriam hesitated. As an individual, she was so powerful that it was hard to think of herself as a member of a failed species. And yet, if she was not the last, she was certainly one of a very few. “I don’t know,” she said. The sorrow and the truth in her own voice surprised her.
“We have half an hour in X ray,” Tom said, putting down the telephone. “Let’s get going.”
Miriam followed them down the hallway feeling somewhat more confident. They hadn’t done anything violent to her yet. And Sarah was not in a state of panic. In fact, there was even some warmth there. A crack such as that in somebody’s resistance was to Miriam the same as a chasm. If she was bold and careful she had a very good chance with Sarah. She watched Sarah walking along, her gait a little heavy, her hair gleaming softly in the corridor’s shadows.
It would feel so good to take Sarah in her arms, to comfort her as a lover, to teach her as she might teach a daughter.
Perhaps the secret of why her species had dwindled was hidden in emotions such as these. If one loved human beings, how could one also kill them and still be happy enough with oneself to love one’s own kind, and bear young?
Sarah dropped back until she was walking beside Miriam. They did not speak. Miriam touched and found friendly interest.
Her face revealed nothing of her triumph. She knew now that the two of them were going to walk many paths together, and serve the hunger well.
Sarah’s earlier symptoms had disappeared during the course of the morning. Despite not having slept all night she was beginning to feel extraordinarily alert. They had left Geoff an hour ago working on a method of removing Miriam’s blood from Sarah’s body, but as time passed it was beginning to seem less necessary. If there was going to be any damage, it would surely be happening by now.
She walked along beside Miriam, her mind full of the test protocols that had been developed yesterday afternoon. This was an extremely excited place. Sam Rush had called Miriam history’s most important experimental animal. That reflected the thinking of the whole institution. And Sarah’s as well.
Obviously, they wouldn’t be keeping her in any cages, but the paperwork had been started for an involuntary commitment to Riverside’s Psychiatric Center. The board wasn’t too worried about the details. Legal didn’t feel that Miriam Blaylock could successfully press a suit to win her freedom.
They had a nice room all ready. Sturdy, well locked. On the violent ward. Sarah felt like ordering flowers for it, she was so delighted that Miriam had returned.
Only God knew what this was going to mean. Prizes, grants, extraordinary breakthroughs. The kind of incredible chance that scientists don’t even dream about.
As they passed people in the halls eyebrows were raised, smiles opened up, Sarah got a few quick arm squeezes. As soon as Tom had called Marty Rifkind in X ray word must have spread through the institution. People thought of Miriam as the find of the century, perhaps of all time. And rightly so.
Rifkind bustled around his equipment making fussy, excited preparations. The receptionist had directed them to his best suite. When they came in he was all but dancing with anticipation. Sarah watched his reaction when he first saw Miriam. He suddenly became very serious, almost wary.
It reminded her of the way fodder mice acted when placed in a snake’s terrarium.
“Miriam,” Sarah said, “we’re going to want you to lie on this table.”
“It’s quite comfortable, really,” Marty blurted.
“It’ll be moving around a lot, but you won’t fall off,” Sarah continued. Was she the only one here capable of dealing with Miriam? Rifkind was scurrying around all over the place, completely forgetting the requirements of the profession. Miriam got up on the table. “I’m sorry,” Sarah said, “but you’ll have to take off your clothes.” Miriam began to comply. “Not everything,” Sarah added hastily. “Just your outer garments and any metal objects.” Miriam’s eyes met hers, gay, laughing. It was an awful moment.
Rifkind controlled himself enough to affix the straps that would restrain Miriam as the table moved from position to position. She allowed herself to be strapped down, but Sarah noticed the rigidity of her face, the watery stare. Miriam was frightened. Somehow it touched Sarah. “You can unbuckle those yourself if you want to,” she said. Miriam looked at her, the relief obvious.
Rifkind plastered on his most ingratiating smile. “We’re going to do a full-body scan. One picture for each quadrant of the body, one for each skull view and two for the legs. That way we’ll have a full record of your skeleton.”
“Minimal dosage. I don’t like X ray.”
Rifkind grinned, his face popping sweat. “Minimal dosage it is. That’s a promise.” He beckoned the group into the control room. With the X-ray head on a tracked grid and the table fully mobilized, all of the pictures could be aimed from the control panel. Once the patient was positioned there was no need for the radiologist to enter the room until the session was over. Thus, staff dosage was kept to a minimum and sessions were greatly speeded up.
“She wants minimal dosage,” Rifkind said when the control room door was closed. “Too bad we’ve got to fry her.”
“Don’t you dare hurt her, Marty!” Sarah wanted to hit him, pulp his fat face.
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I mean, let’s keep the dosage to the minimum necessary. She’s valuable, remember. No risks, however remote.”
Without replying, Rifkind flipped the switches that controlled the table and started aiming the X-ray head. Sarah was surprised at the intensity of her own feelings. Was it really appropriate for her to want to protect Miriam? She did not know the answer to that question.
The woman remained absolutely motionless, her lips parted, eyes staring straight at the window into the control room. Those eyes seemed to seek Sarah’s and she allowed them to meet. All through the skull series Sarah let Miriam stare into her eyes. It was a wonderful, mesmerizing experience, like being naked before one you truly loved.
Tom was watching Sarah carefully. “I’m not so sure that Miriam isn’t dangerous,” he said. He was beginning to think that Sarah hadn’t heard, when she swung around, her face flushed, her eyes blazing.
“That’s an unprofessional statement!”
“She drugs you, transfuses you with foreign blood, and you defend her. I’m afraid I can’t understand that.”
“She’s precious. I admit that her behavior is highly unpredictable. But there’s so much knowledge to be gained! Think of the recognition, Tom.”
“Thank you. I’m just glad Miriam Blaylock has a nice secure place to spend the night.”
“Look at it from my standpoint. I want you to understand what I feel about her —”
“Do you?”
“I almost halted the aging process with Methuselah. And now what drops into my lap but this . . . female being with blood characteristics similar to his right before he died. The only difference is she’s perfectly healthy.”
Sam Rush had come into the room behind them. His voice startled Tom. “Just don’t let her get away from us again. Consider her continued presence your most critical responsibility.”
“Very good, Doctor.” Tom thought of the Psychiatric wing with its burly guards — carrying only night-sticks. He made a mental note to post an armed guard as well on Miriam’s cell.
“Doctors, please, let’s keep it down so I can concentrate. I’m going to make a fluoroscope run of the skull, if anybody’s interested.” Rifkind spoke into the intercom. “Mrs. Blaylock, turn your head to the right, please.” He adjusted some knobs, then turned on the fluoroscope. “Abnormal,” he said in a tight voice. “Wonderfully abnormal!” Into the intercom: “Open your mouth, please.
Thank you. Close it. Swallow.” He was almost jumping with excitement. “Look at that inferior maxillary! Jack, give us the lowdown,” he said to the osteologist Tom had called earlier. He turned off the fluoroscope. “Don’t want her to glow in the dark.”
“There are a number of gross variances,” Jack Gibson said. He was a resident in osteology, attached to the hospital, and obviously pleased to be invited to a project in the elite research section. “The angle of the inferior maxillary is significantly more pronounced than normal, and the symphysis is more apparent. The whole structure is developed to a more powerful jaw. You could see the compensation in the heavier malar bone and much more developed zygoma. I also noticed more curvature to the cranium. We’d have to measure, but I’d say the brain case was larger than normal by a good twenty percent.”
“So you’d say it’s definitely not a human skull.” Tom knew the answer, but he had to ask the question just in case. If his Christmas candy was going to be taken away, he wanted to know it now.
“Humanoid, certainly. I’m sure it’s a derivation of the primate line. But human, in the strict sense of the word? No. It’s a completely valid structure, though, not the result of some deforming process.”
That was the kind of supporting observation that would eventually wind up in the paper Sarah would already be planning on Miriam, a paper that would stun the scientific community, not to mention the outside world.
Miriam’s voice crackled through the intercom. She wanted out. Rifkind took a final series of the skull and neck. They would have to pursue more detailed work later. But this had been an excellent start. “She sounds angry,” Tom said. “Sarah, you try to pacify her. We don’t want her walking out of here again.” She went into the X-ray room. “We’re finished, Miriam,” she said in what Tom hoped was a calming tone, “you can get up now.” The Velcro straps could easily be removed by the patient, but Miriam seemed to be having trouble. Tom watched Sarah help her. As she drew near he saw Miriam gaze fiercely at her. The look was deep and personal. Intimate. Much too intimate. Sarah assumed a posture Tom was familiar with. She put her hands behind her back and bowed her head, almost as if to say “do with me as you will.” Tom had seen it in their bedroom.
The Hunger Page 23
