Goldman did. Office of Special Operations had something special in mind for Steve Austin. Killian was to supervise directly, participate intimately in a program to create out of the mutilated human wreck not only a new man but a wholly new type of man. A new breed. A marriage of bionics (biology applied to electronic engineering systems) and cybernetics. A cybernetics organism.
Call him cyborg. The words rang through Killian’s mind, pushed aside the humanitarian issue of whether they could alter and modify Steve Austin’s body without his total cooperation. But would they try? Killian admitted to himself that he would not only accept this OSO effort but would grab at the opportunity. And what an opportunity! Goldman was right. Steve Austin was the most perfect of all candidates for the bionics laboratory in Colorado. It was far more than a matter of a human body to experiment on. Human bodies in every degree of damage were always available for his research programs; the people brought in in wheelchairs and basket stretchers could receive help from the research programs beyond anything available at the “normal centers” for amputees and other maimed patients. Not a man or woman brought to the Colorado laboratories had ever come through his doors without full consent. And Killian stuck to one ironclad rule; at the first indication from any patient that he might feel himself being used as a guinea pig for medical experiments, all work, including the direct medical procedures created solely for the patient’s own benefit, was halted at once, and reassignment of that individual was made to another, more conventional facility.
Killian without qualification was consumed in his work, a trait much approved by Goldman and his boss at OSO. And he had enjoyed his life, starting his medical career in the Second World War as a brilliant combat surgeon. He had been a concert pianist (his long, strong fingers were an asset), an astonishing avocation for any man, especially one so steeped in his medical and research work but those who encountered the intensity of his dedication accepted the unusual as usual. His children were long married and scattered around the world, and with his wife delighted to have settled down in the Colorado hills, he found virtually nothing to interfere with wholehearted dedication to his work.
He could not deny the truth. Steve Austin represented an extraordinary opportunity. Killian was perfectly aware that OSO hoped that as a consequence of its support Killian would transform the one-limbed torso stump of Steve Austin into some kind of superbeing. To be utilized for their own rather unique requirements, of course.
Except that when that day came, were Killian to be fully successful, then Steve Austin could make up his own mind, and Killian would be free of involvement.
Killian glanced at Rudy Wells, then turned his attention once again to the OSO man.
“Mr. Goldman, I will accept OSO under the conditions you have presented, but my acceptance could well be irrelevant.” He gestured to Rudy Wells. “There is the only man, I believe, in whom Steve Austin will place complete trust and faith. That man is Dr. Wells. It is my opinion as a doctor, Mr. Goldman, that unless Dr. Wells can persuade him otherwise, Steve Austin will take his own life. And if Austin does accept Dr. Wells’s thinking, he will come in many ways, for a period of time we cannot yet anticipate, to depend almost wholly on Wells for the decisions that will so drastically affect his life. So either Dr. Wells involves himself totally, or there is no use proceeding any further.”
Heads turned to Rudy Wells. Oscar Goldman withheld the obvious question. He sat erect in his chair, studying Wells, waiting.
Dr. Rudy Wells had long before made his decision about involvement. There could be only one way to go. But there was another decision to be made.
“There is an immediate problem,” he said. “Someone must decide for Steve Austin. The program must begin without his agreement. This is necessary because Steve is in no position now, and will not be for some time to come, to make a judgment we might consider logical, or, perhaps, even sane. I don’t want to make this decision for him, but I’m closest to him and I don’t want anybody else to bear that responsibility if we . . . fail.”
Goldman spoke with great caution. “Have you decided, Dr. Wells?”
Wells sighed and nodded. “Today is Friday. I recommend that no later than Tuesday morning we transfer Steve Austin to Colorado.” He glanced at Killian, who nodded in confirmation.
Goldman leaned forward. “I would like to speak with Colonel Austin. There are—”
“When do you propose to do this?” Wells interrupted icily.
“Perhaps next week. The end of the week,” he added hastily.
Wells glanced at Killian, who nodded. “Next week? Mr. Goldman, you have no idea what is involved here. Let your education begin now. You will not be able to speak with Colonel Austin for several months, perhaps as long as six months, and you will speak to him only when I so decide.”
Wells rose to his feet.
“Don’t call us, Mr. Goldman. We’ll call you.”
CHAPTER 6
The sense of unreality was almost overpowering. Rudy Wells stood before a thick, glass window, an oval shape in a thick metal door. Beyond this first barrier, bathed in the warning glow of red light, lay another, similar door. The two doors, tightly sealed, formed a pressure-airlock barrier to the chamber beyond, the hyperbaric world within which they had imprisoned Steve. The pressure airlock cast its red glow into Wells’s eyes, adding to the unreality of the sight beyond. The special overhead lights, casting off little heat but an intense illumination, targeted the unconscious form beneath.
He waited for the inside door to be locked by one of the doctors inside before the airlock door would slide open. A green light flashed; an instant later the hiss of air escaping through the sliding door began. Cool air, enriched with oxygen, washed against Wells as he stepped inside the chamber. He stopped, turned to his right, pressed a flashing switch. The door through which he had entered closed behind him and he heard the inrush of air. He looked up at the pressure reading. One dial showed the heavy pressure within the hyperbaric chamber, the other, the airlock in which he stood. The two finally matched and another green light flashed on, this one over the entrance into the final chamber. As quickly as Wells stepped through, the door closed to seal off the chamber.
Steve’s body lay partially exposed. The oxygen was rich in his system. His tissues were almost sealed off by now. The internal barriers to destruction were compensating, rerouting, rebuilding, changing, and adapting for their unconscious host. Wells studied him with professional care, noticed the even movement of the chest, the barely discernible flaring of nostrils. A metal frame held the sheet above him but let the air bathe the naked form beneath, and brought a slow oxygen flow against the angry, red skin where there had been legs and an arm. Steve existed at this moment as the terminal of wires and tubing. His shaven skull, resting in a molded receptacle to prevent undue movement, sprouted wires from electrodes held against the skin, the alpha pattern coursing through his brain, his body responding to the subconscious beat, holding him safely within whatever darkness flowed through his mind. Whatever might be, Rudy Wells knew it could be only infinitely better than what awaited Steve this side of consciousness. They had kept the tubes leading through his nostrils into the trachea. The intravenous bottle suspended above his arm sustained the flow into Steve’s system.
Electrodes placed around the heart measured every movement, every sound, every pulse and coursing moment of that magnificent pump; measured what went on within the body and flashed its signals to a battery of instruments. Oscilloscopes, recording graphs, a battery of lights, even a buzzer that would clamor its warning should the heart falter. The same instruments on this body that Austin had worn walking the desolation of the moon—they were here again, this time sending their messages barely a few feet instead of a quarter of a million miles. At least now they could respond to failure, and do so instantly; they were constantly at his side.
The doctors had performed emergency surgery. Enough to assure his body would stabilize. Wells looked at the battered face, the swollen lips, bruis
es along both sides of the face; yet, even in this moment of studying the mauling of that splendid man, the strength he had known showed clearly. Wells needed no movement of his own, needed no survey of Steve Austin, to know the other wounds and mutilations. He closed his eyes and thought of the work that must be performed. Work. A common word for uncommon efforts to sustain the animal creature so that the mind, that wondrous vessel inhabited solely by man, might survive to continue its wonders. They must teach Steve Austin to want to sustain the animal that hosts the mind. Rudy Wells understood that before Steve might win his own torturous battle for life, he must hate the man who would guide him through the dark shadows. Understanding that now would make it more tolerable later, Wells told himself.
He had spoken with Ashburn of the decision to be implemented this Tuesday. Just a few more days. The journey to Colorado was essential. It was, in fact, critical. Steve could recover here, might be shipped later to a veterans’ hospital, where the most advanced prosthetics science would be available to him, promising him the glorious future of a broken doll that has learned to imitate some order of coordinated movement. And that would be it. He’d kill himself first, Wells knew. Here was a man of two worlds, and the future had to hold more than the posturings of a clever marionette.
Rudy Wells was prepared to give him every chance.
The research lab was known simply as The Rock, a facility within which Killian and his brilliant associates enjoyed the sanctuary of government support and, to some extent, the isolation of government security. The Rock had been named long before the appearance of either Dr. Michael Killian or even the United States Air Force. Doubtless some miner or hunter had had good reason to curse the high sheer face, the jagged outcroppings, and almost numbing sterility of its higher reaches. Despite the lush timber growth along the lower flanks and the stunningly beautiful land stretching away from the eastern shoulder of the Rockies, it was unmistakable to the viewer. In winter, with the world swathed in the heavy snows expected in high Colorado land, the black face of the rock jarred the view. No trees, and a sheer face kept it free of a white blanket. Below that blank granite, however, there shone glass and metal, and lights gleamed through the night. Here nestled the twin laboratories run by Dr. Killian, of which only one presented its face to the world—the bionics lab, called by its occupants, The Shop. The second lab, in which cybernetics was of paramount interest, lay deeper within the mountain and officially it did not exist.
If Steve Austin had to face horrendous months ahead, at least there could be few more beautiful geographic settings for it. The Rockies did not form a single line of peaks, their own serration of jagged ramparts, but rather a grouping of ranges, a thick cluster of mountain barriers separating the eastern and western parts of the nation. Pike’s Peak, abutting Colorado Springs, overshadowing the community, was almost the height of the Matterhorn. And forming the thick skeletal backbone were many other peaks higher than Pike’s. The land directly east of the mountain foothills was a gently rolling plain of a rich green-and-yellow carpet, sliced and ravined by water streaming violently down from the Rockies so that the grassy realm was grooved with gullies and buttes, with deep streams and sudden outcroppings of rock. Then, approaching the Rockies from the east, the green carpeting yielded to stands of rich timber.
There would be more than enough facilities to support whatever Steve and his team of specialists would need for the years ahead. Near the town of Colorado Springs itself was Peterson Field, the only major civil airport in the area, convenient not only to the community, but serving the needs of the sprawling Air Force Academy, which lay northward along the mountain’s flanks. There was also the activity created through the presence of Fort Carson, an Army camp that had stood as an area fixture for decades; this was served by its own airport, Butts Army Field. Fort Carson had long been secured within a restricted area so that when it became necessary to fly in security-labeled materials or personnel, it was simple enough to do so in a military aircraft that would attract no special attention at Butts. Helicopters or Army vehicles completed the trips to the labs.
The country sprawling around the mountains and along the high rolling hills to the east of the Rockies carried the colorful names affixed by trappers, hunters, and miners, along with the Indians, of course: Texas Creek, Black Forest, Cotopaxi, Shawnee, Silver Cliff, Buffalo Creek, Shaffers Crossing . . . And the two laboratories, bionics and cybernetics, used the code name of Slab Rock, which became the official name of the post office.
Colorado Springs, with its plush Broadmoor Hotel, lay about eighteen miles from where Slab Rock jutted from its mountain. You drove north from Colorado Springs, and then northeast, picked up a road that drifted back to north and northwest, and then began curving up the mountain foothills. There was no attempt at concealment; quite the opposite, since the hospital design took every advantage of the breathtaking scenery through huge windowed areas. Coming down from the mountain road, which ended at the laboratories, a side road led directly to U.S. Highway 87, which in turn worked its way southward to the Air Force Academy and resort ranches sprinkled through the area. Denver lay about one hundred miles north of Colorado Springs.
One additional organization provided a tremendous flow of traffic and resources when needed, especially since it operated on both sides of its own security wall. This was NORAD, headquarters for North American Air Defense Command, residing within great tunnels and caves gouged from the deeper bowels of Cheyenne Mountain. As the electronic nerve center for space tracking, detection, and surveillance systems by the United States throughout the entire world, and as the command center for alerting the nation in the event of enemy strategic strike, NORAD functioned as a multibillion-dollar iceberg. Its purpose and its location were known, deep within the mountain, but it showed little of that face to the world.
The bionics and cybernetics laboratories, under their code name of Slab Rock, benefited directly from the gargantuan construction task that created the complex NORAD facility within Cheyenne Mountain. Tunneling an entire mountain could hardly have been kept a secret, and the thousands of engineers and construction workers raised dust that drifted for hundreds of miles. When they were through, assembly groups moved in, and a throng of electronics specialists went to work to establish the intricate substance of NORAD. It was, essentially, a complex of electronic linkage to the entire world and beyond the world, the whole of it run by banks of massive computers to whom their human masters were essentially servants tending their electronic oracles.
Slab Rock came into being as an offshoot of the construction within Cheyenne Mountain. It was a matter of official convenience. Construction of the NORAD center required extensive laying of cable between Cheyenne Mountain and main trunk terminals in the Denver area, and the engineers built what were known as booster stages along the cable lines. One such stage, on the road leading to a substation officially identified as Slab Rock, called for blasting deep within a mountain. Later, much later, that same area was selected as the site for the Air Force’s bionics laboratory to be run under the direction of Dr. Michael Killian. As the outer shell of the hospital laboratory slowly assembled, the cybernetics laboratory, concealed entirely within the mountain, also came into being. Thus a normal flow of traffic, of personnel, supplies, and equipment was carried out in completely open fashion to the bionics lab, which functioned both as a research center and a hospital. It required little additional effort to distribute further whatever was necessary for the inner, secret laboratory after it arrived at the “outer office.”
No small measure of miracles had emerged from Killian’s bionics research. His goal was to substitute for what nature had provided, and had then been removed, for those who suffered amputation and severe disfigurement. This was not simply a matter of plastic surgery or prosthetic limbs. That constituted the most piddling of goals compared to what Killian and his staff sought. To Dr. Killian, an artificial leg was a real leg. Not flesh and bone, but intended to be fully as articulate as the origi
nal, and capable of rendering the same flexibility provided by nature. It had to extend far beyond a fancy stump or appendage with flesh-colored plastiskin and hairs embedded in the material. The idea was to create a replacement for the original that could not be distinguished by an observer as artificial, and this demanded a test of movement.
The new leg had to be as good or better than the real thing. Indeed, it must be the real thing, with the only difference being that the replacement was fabricated rather than created through original living tissue.
Rudy Wells would become in many ways the alter ego of Steve Austin. For some time to come, until shock eased from that young and impressionable mind, Wells would have to think for Steve—function not only as an intelligence center, but also supply the patterns of reason and logic that would for some time be missing from Steve’s thinking. Steve would need to be sustained, protected from himself, so to speak, until shock eased and he regained complete control of himself once more. Wells also knew that the same levels of thinking might never again be achieved. In this he could only hope for the best and work.
There were two keys to the work in which Wells would immerse himself in the program for Steve, and both were peripheral to medicine as that word is commonly defined. Cybernetics was known as the science of computers or electronic brains, but that was rather the restrictive term. To the laboratories at Slab Rock, cybernetics covered a wider gamut of activity. It involved the computers, of course, meaning in the broader sense any artificial instrument—a sensor that received an input, examined it, made a decision, and initiated an action—that added to a cybernetics system. A device that functioned as an automatic pilot to hold an airplane on the proper heading, course, and altitude, and could be slaved to a radar or radio-homing system, to follow that system through turns at a certain time and space, and would even initiate a descent and carry it through to a landing, utilizing pressure altimeters and radar altimeters, and compensate for temperature and humidity and the effects of crosswind—this was wholly an automatic pilot that must be considered a computer.
Cyborg 01 - Cyborg Page 6
