The Immortals

by James Gunn

  Bone frowned cautiously. “What’s in them?”

  “Nothing that can hurt you.” Flowers shook out a couple into his hand, tossed them into his mouth, swallowed. “See?”

  Bone nodded, satisfied. “Okay. Take the two of them back,” he said to the policeman.

  “Wait a minute,” Flowers objected. “Aren’t you going to turn us loose?”

  “Where’d you get that idea?” Bone chuckled. “I like having a medic around. Gives me a feeling of security.”

  Flowers sighed, accepting it. “Well, I guess there’s nothing I can do.” He bent to pick up the bag and noticed the expression of disappointment that flickered across Leah’s face. His hand strayed past Bone’s neck. “Here,” Flowers said to the officer watching them suspiciously, “I suppose you’ll want to keep this.”

  The policeman stepped forward to accept the bag and moved back with it in his hand. With the hand that held the gun, he reached down to scratch the back of his other hand.

  Slowly Bone collapsed behind Flowers. It made a rustling sound. The policeman tried to lift the gun, but it was too heavy. It pulled him down. As he fell, he half turned.

  “What’s happened?” Leah asked, startled. “What are those noises?”

  Flowers caught up her hand and scooped up the black bag in one swift motion. “I knocked out Bone with supersonics and the cop with a hypodermic of neo-curare. Come on.”

  As they went through the glass doors into the hall, he wondered again: Where’s Coke? There were probably stairs, but he couldn’t run down them leading a blind girl. He thumbed the elevator call button and waited in a frenzy of impatience. Leah held his hand firmly, confidently.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll get us out.”

  Cool certainty flooded over him. His shoulders straightened.

  “What medicine did you give him?” she asked.

  Flowers chuckled. “Sugar pills. Placebo. Imaginary medicine for an imaginary illness.”

  When the elevator doors opened, the sergeant was behind them. He stared at them, surprised, and his hand dropped to his gun.

  Flowers stepped forward confidently. “Bone said to let us loose.”

  “That don’t sound like Bone,” the sergeant growled. He tugged his gun loose. “Let’s go check.”

  Flowers shrugged, released Leah’s hand so that he could shift the bag into that one, and swung around so that the bag bumped into the sergeant’s leg. The sergeant brushed the spot casually, took two steps and fell, heavily.

  As Flowers and Leah stepped out of the elevator into the basement hall, the lights went out. Coke, Flowers thought, and groaned.

  “What’s the matter?” Leah asked, alarmed.

  “The lights went out.”

  “I could help if I knew what you were trying to do.”

  “Find the ambulance. It should be somewhere in the basement.”

  “They must have brought me in that way,” Leah said thoughtfully. “There was a door that clanged, some steps, another door, some more steps, and then a straight stretch to the elevator. Come on.”

  Flowers held back for a moment and let her pull him into the darkness. “There are steps,” she said. They walked down carefully. Flowers found the handle of the door and held it open. A moment later they were going down more steps.

  “This way,” Leah said confidently.

  Within seconds they were beside the ambulance, climbing through the door, switching on the light. Flowers swung the responsive vehicle around with a feeling of elation approaching giddiness. Even the sight of the closed garage door didn’t bother him. He eased the ambulance as close as possible, swung out, touched the door gingerly, and tugged at the handle. It rose with well-oiled ease.

  After that it was nothing. Flowers headed north for I-35, to avoid ambush and shake off pursuers. On the road he could outdistance anything. After a few minutes they hit Southwest Trafficway. Flowers turned the driving over to the chauffeur, and swung around to look at Leah. She was sitting on the cot.

  “Look!” he began. “I—” He stopped.

  “Don’t you know what to do with me?” she asked gently.

  “Well, I—I guess that’s right. I can’t leave you alone out here, and if I take you to your home, Bone might pick you up again. There are rules against taking anybody but a patient into the Center—” He took a deep breath. “The hell with the rules. Listen! You’re a patient. For—an eye operation, replacement of opaque corneas. You’ve been transferred from the Neosho County Hospital—that’s just outside Chanute, Kansas, in case they ask questions—and you don’t know why your records haven’t got here yet. Understood?”

  “Won’t that mean trouble for you?” she asked.

  “Nothing I can’t get out of. If anyone sees us together—why, I was fooled, too, that’s all. No argument now. It’ll give us an extra day to decide what to do with you.”

  “Will I be able to see my father?”

  “Of course not,” Flowers said. “Not if he’s in Experimental, anyway. The only ones allowed to enter Experimental are doctors and attendants on duty.”

  “I understand. All right, I’ll leave it up to you.”

  Again Flowers felt that quick, irrational flood of happiness. He had no reason to feel happy; he didn’t want to feel happy—it would interfere with what he had to do. He shoved the feeling down, deep, as the walls of Medical Center opened and took them in.

  They were lucky. There was no one around as Flowers parked the ambulance in the vast underground garage and led Leah cautiously to the subway. They waited in the shadows until an empty car swung into view.

  “Move quickly,” he said. “Trust me.”

  He led her onto the moving belt, holding her forearm in a sure grip. Even so, she swayed and almost fell. He pulled her up and led her swiftly after the car moving on the belt beside them. Just as they reached the end of the approachway, Flowers helped her into the car and swung himself after her.

  He was sweating. The subway wasn’t built for the blind.

  Getting off was much less difficult. The sign above the archway said: EENT. They walked into an elevator and let it lift them to the fifth floor. Flowers watched from the concealment of a cross-corridor while Leah walked blindly down the hall, feeling her way to the glass enclosure of the duty office.

  “Is anyone here?” she asked out of her darkness. “There was a medic, but he had to leave. I’m from the Neosho County Hospital. . . .”

  As Flowers faded down the hall, he saw the nurse come out of the office with a look of concern. He sighed. Leah was safe for the moment.

  He walked through the dark halls wondering where everybody was. It was only eight o’clock in the evening.

  The floor under his feet was yielding and resilient. He breathed in the hospital smells of anesthetic and alcohol, the old odors, omnipresent, eternal. They were his first memory of his father. It was a good smell. He filled his lungs with it, held it in tightly, as if he could hold on to everything he valued, if only he could keep the odor from escaping.

  This was his place, his home. This was his job. This was his life. He had to believe that. Otherwise everything was worthless, seven years of study and labor were wasted, and a lifetime of dreams was turned into nightmare, and everything that was to come, the dedication, the rewards. . . .

  Charley Brand looked up from his desk, surprised. “My God, man! Where’ve you been?”

  “A long story,” Flowers said wearily. “First, I’ve got to have some food and some rest.”

  “They’ll have to wait. There’s a royal request on your desk.”

  A message glowed on the plate set into the top of his desk. He read it with a cold, shrinking feeling.

  Your presence is requested at the meeting of the Wyandotte County Medical Society this evening and at the meeting of the Political Action Committee to follow.

  J. B. Hardy, M.D.

  Secretary

  Flowers looked around the dormitory with frantic eyes; he had to discuss this with som
eone. “Where’s Hal?”

  “Do you think he’d miss a meeting?” Brand asked sardonically and added a good imitation of Mock’s knowing voice. “ ‘These things look good on your record.’ Better run along. If you hurry you can still make the convoy.”

  It was more of a tradition than anything else—this convoy detail with the minesweepers snuffling ahead, the tanks lumbering heavily on either side, and helicopters hovering above. No one was foolish enough to attack anything stronger than a lone ambulance.

  They drove north on Seventh Street Trafficway over the Armourdale Industrial District that flamed below them in the night, past the ruins of the old stockyards where no man went by night and few dared to go by day. Flowers looked out, unseeing, his fatigue and his hunger conquered by anxiety.

  Why did the PAC want to see him?

  Few medics and fewer doctors got summonses to appear before the committee. It was not an invitation to be envied. It was followed, frequently, by the person involved quietly collecting his personal belongings from the hospital and disappearing from the purview of medicine.

  When the convoy pulled up in front of the courthouse and parked within the protection of the concrete pillboxes on the lawn and the antiaircraft emplacements on the roof, Flowers was still tormenting himself with possibilities.

  As usual, the meeting was a bore. When the anxiety ebbed, Flowers dozed in his chair, jerking himself upright occasionally to hear a few fragments of the minutes of the last meeting, the treasurer’s report, the mumbling of research records. . . .

  There was a moving speech by the AMA field representative on the danger to ethical standards in new legislation pending before Congress. Its inevitable result was socialized medicine.

  Funny, Flowers mused, how that Hydra was never scotched. Cut off one head and two more grew in its place. Doctors should know enough to cauterize the stump.

  By unanimous voice vote, $325,000 was turned over to the Washington lobby for legislative action.

  When the chairman of the Political Action Committee stood up, Flowers studied him curiously. He was a tall, fleshy man with bushy, black hair, crouching eyebrows, and a ruddy complexion. Flowers didn’t know him. That wasn’t unusual in a four-county census of 10,000 doctors.

  According to the PAC, the political situation was under control at state and county levels. The Antivivisection Party had closed alliances with a number of quasi-religious groups during the last months, but this was expected to amount to no more than the usual annoyances. Everyone had been given a copy of the slate of the state and county candidates. They had all received PAC approval.

  The slate was accepted without dissent. A sum of $553,000 was voted for campaign expenses.

  There was more.

  When the general meeting had been adjourned, Flowers wandered slowly toward the door of the room announced for the meeting of the PAC.

  “Flowers?”

  It was the chairman of the committee. Flowers followed him numbly into the big room. There were five doctors, the chairman taking his place in the middle. They sat solemn faced behind a long, heavy desk made of real wood darkened by centuries of use.

  “You’re in trouble, boy,” the chairman began.

  The doctor on the chairman’s right leaned forward, a small memoreader in his hand. “Last night, while on an emergency call into the city, you turned over to the police an alleged shover named Crumm.

  “Crumm was dismissed at nine A.M. He had a license. And the penicillin in the ampule tested a full three hundred thousand units.”

  “A typical Bone trick! He took out a license and backdated it. And they’re lying about the penicillin. They couldn’t sell it at that price; it was less than wholesale.”

  “If you had been listening to the reports tonight, you would have learned that penicillin is worthless. When it was first introduced, immune bacterial strains averaged five percent. Now they are ninety-five percent and still climbing.”

  Flowers thought of the money shoveled into research and production for antibiotics that developed more virulent bacterial strains for which newer and better antibiotics had to be discovered.

  “How are we going to put a stop to it,” Flowers asked, “if we don’t punish them when we have a chance?”

  The doctor smiled. “That’s what the PAC is for. We’ve refused to renew John Bone’s contract. That will bring him to his senses.” His face hardened. “At least, we thought it would until today.”

  “What do you mean?” Flowers felt vaguely frightened.

  “Until Bone released you this evening.”

  Flowers stared at the five immobile faces with a feeling of frozen horror. “He didn’t release me. I escaped!”

  “Now, Flowers, don’t waste our time with stuff like that,” the chairman said impatiently. “Men don’t escape from John Bone. And we have evidence—a film of the examination and treatment you gave him!”

  “But I did,” Flowers broke in. “I used the supersonic anesthetizer and a hypodermic of neo-curare and I escaped—”

  “Fantastic! After treating Bone—”

  “I gave him sugar pills—”

  “Just as bad. For Bone, they’re as effective as anything else.”

  “Don’t you see why Bone sent you the films? If I’d really treated him, he’d have held these films over my head as a blackmail threat.”

  The committee members exchanged glances. “We might be able to accept that,” the chairman said, “except that we have other evidence to prove that you hold the Profession and its ethics rather lightly.”

  He switched on a recorder. Incredulously Flowers listened to his voice mouthing questions about medicine and fees and social problems. It had been skillfully edited. It was damning.

  Hal, he thought, Hal, why did you do it?

  But he knew why. Hal Mock was worried that he might not graduate. One less in the class was one more chance for Hal.

  The chairman was speaking to him. “You will submit your resignation in the morning. As soon after that as possible, you will collect your personal effects and leave the Center. If you are ever discovered practicing medicine or treating the sick in any way . . .”

  When it was finished, Flowers asked quietly, “What are you going to do with Doctor Russell Pearce?”

  The chairman’s eyes narrowed, and then he turned to the doctor on his right. “Doctor Pearce?” he said. “Why, he disappeared thirty years ago, didn’t he? He must have died long ago. If he were alive, he’d be over one hundred and twenty-five. . . .”

  Flowers stopped listening. Something had snapped inside him like a carbon-steel scalpel, and he didn’t have to listen anymore. A man spends his life searching for the truth. If he’s lucky he learns before he dies that no one has it all. We have little pieces, each of us, Flowers thought. The danger was in assuming our fragment was the whole. Medicine could not be both political and irresponsible. Dr. Pearce could not be both hero and villain.

  Flowers had finally found his way to the back of the statue and learned—in time—that half an ideal is worse than none at all. Father, he thought, you never got there. I’m sorry, Father.

  He turned and walked out of the room. There was a phone in the courthouse lobby. He called his number and waited and then spoke briefly and urgently into the pickup. While the chauffeur guided the ambulance back toward the Medical Center, he fished around in the black bag for a couple of amphetamine pills and ate them like candy.

  But his feeling of exhilaration and purpose began minutes before the stimulant hit him. It was all very well to be an integral part of a great social and ethical complex, but occasionally a man had to do his own thinking. And then, of course, the great social and ethical complex had to watch out for itself.

  He wasn’t even disturbed to discover that he was being followed. He shook off the distant white jacket in the subway.

  “Look,” he said to the pharmacist on duty, “it must get pretty boring here at night. Don’t you ever get an overwhelming yen for a cup of
coffee?”

  “I sure do.”

  “Go ahead,” Flowers said. “I’ll watch the pharmacy.”

  The pharmacist hesitated, torn between duty and desire. The decision to go resulted from a reluctance to appear timid before the medic.

  As soon as he was gone, Flowers went straight through the pharmacy to the vault. The heavy door was ajar. In the farthest corner was a modest cardboard carton. Its contents had been estimated, conservatively, as worth $10,000,000. Flowers pocketed an ampule, hesitated, and removed the eleven others from their cotton nests—suddenly doubtful that the hospital should be trusted with them. . . .

  “Thanks for the break,” said the pharmacist gratefully a few minutes later.

  Flowers waved carelessly as he left. “Any time.”

  At the barred door of Experimental Ward, the guard stopped him. “I don’t see your name here anywhere,” he growled, his finger moving down the duty list.

  “No wonder,” Flowers said, pointing his own finger. “They misspelled it. Powers instead of Flowers.”

  It worked. Inside he walked quickly past the blood bank with its rows of living factories, the organ bank with its surgery and automatic heart machines. . . . The part of the experimental rooms devoted to geriatrics was at the very end.

  Dr. Pearce made scarcely a dent in the firm hospital mattress. Flowers shook him, but the smudged eyelids wouldn’t open. He filled a hypodermic from the ampule in his jacket pocket and injected it into a vein.

  Flowers waited anxiously in the near darkness. Finally Dr. Pearce’s eyelids flickered. “Doctor Pearce,” he whispered, “this is the medic. Remember?” Pearce nodded, barely perceptibly. “I’m going to try to get you out of here, you and Leah. She’s here, too. Will you help?”

  Pearce nodded again, stronger this time. Flowers brought the long cart beside the bed and lifted Pearce’s bone-light body onto it. He pulled a sheet up over Pearce’s face. “Here we go.”