Edward Llewellyn

by Prelude to Chaos

  IV

  The similarity to my own entrapment was not coincidental. I lay awake half the night fitting the various pieces of the jigsaw together and the nearer the picture approached completion, the uglier it looked.

  When I sat down opposite Judith at breakfast the next morning she played with her roll and avoided my eye. “Well—what do you think?”

  “You write like a true scientist.”

  She took my remark as a compliment. “Thanks. But I mean about—”

  “At times the woman breaks through. Unexpectedly. The sudden changes in style are disconcerting.”

  To glare at me she had to look at me. “About what I say! Not about how I say it!” She bit her lip. “I suppose everybody here claims they’re innocent!”

  “Not me. I admit I killed a woman.” I saw the shock in her face. “But you—you never killed anybody in your life.” I sipped my coffee. “Tell me—those detectives who caught you red-handed. Did either of them have laid-back teeth? Look rather like a shark with acne?”

  “One looked like a rat with acne.”

  “Near enough. I wonder how many of us hard-core holdouts were framed?”

  Her eyes widened. “Were you framed too? Are there others like me?” She looked round the mess-hall, as though seeing her fellow-prisoners through fresh eyes.

  “None of ’em are like you, Judy. But I’m damned sure most of the later arrivals aren’t premeditated murderers. That woman priest, for instance. Look at her holding forth over there! Can you imagine her killing anybody on purpose? Equally, can you imagine her keeping quiet about any evil she’s unearthed? I’ll bet she stumbled on something the Ad- 1 ministration didn’t want publicized and started to shout it | from the rooftops. So she was grabbed and gagged under the f Social Stability Act. There must be dozens who were either 3 maneuvered into fixing themselves or were framed.”

  “Then why don’t they talk about what happened to them, The old ones talk about nothing else.”

  “Why didn’t you tell everybody what happened to you?”

  She looked down at her plate. “Because I thought no- ] body’d believe me.”

  “Judy, that’s only part of the truth. The other part is be- j cause you’re ashamed of what you did. Fall in love with a man you’d snatched from a colleague. Hate her for snatching him back. Then him for dumping you.”

  “Damn you, Gavin—”

  “That woman priest probably had an affair with a choir girl. So she feels guilty, though not about whatever they hung on her. My guess is that it’s much the same with most of the others. I know I’m ashamed of what I did. Although that isn’t why they canned me. They canned me to keep me quiet. Like they did you.”

  Judith sat silent, considering my hypothesis while I finished my breakfast. I pushed away my plate and asked, “All set for tonight?”

  “You still want to try?”

  “I hate the prospect. But the choice is between taking an , outside chance and never getting outside.” I stood up. “Got j your gear and rabbits?”

  She nodded.

  “Then I’ll fix the mikes and cameras. After supper we’ll go I and plead for permission to make love.”

  “I’ve asked already. The Controller gave me a long talk- j ing-to. Warned me you were a bad bet. When I wept and I swore I loved you, she gave way.” A flush flooded Judith’s cheeks. “May the Light forgive me for lying in my teeth!”

  “All in a good cause.” I bent and kissed her for the benefit of our watching colleagues and the ever-scanning cameras. “See you at supper!”

  Once more we stood hand-in-hand facing the image of the Controller while she lectured me on my lax morals, and hoped that this time I would form a meaningful relationship I with a fine young woman. In return I repented of my licen-

  (ious past and asked only that I be allowed to share with J udy our remaining years in the Pen.

  That took the fire from the old girl; she must have known that within a few months Judith was scheduled to be wiped from my mind along with all my other memories. Her eyes glistened and she sent us off with her blessing to enjoy our night of love. “You laid it on pretty thick!” snapped my partner as we reached her cell.

  “I was aiming to make her feel guilty so she’ll leave us together as long as she can tomorrow morning.” I slipped an opaque cover over the lens of the monitoring camera and masked the mike. Then I bent to fake the interlock on the cell door. “Now they’ll only see us as blurs and hear us as noise. We can move out when we’re ready.” I straightened and turned. Judith was still standing by her bed, as though starting to doubt the wisdom of what we were doing. “Come on, girl! This is no time to ruminate! We’re committed.”

  That stung her into action. She pointed to a chair. “Take off your shirt and sit astride that. Hunch forward. Shift around so you can see your own back in the mirror.” She took a large rabbit from its cage and sat it on the table facing me. It looked me over, then continued eating lettuce. “Watch carefully. So you’ll know how to dig out my transponder.” Now that the moment of truth had come I had my own moment of doubt. “You’re sure—?”

  “I’m sure of nothing except this is the only chance we’ve got.” She draped me with a sheet of transparent plastic, then flattened it out so it stuck evenly across my back. “Swing your shoulders forward. I have to go under the medial aspect of your right scapula. The edge of this bone here!” She began to probe my skin. “Make the first injection here.” She prodded a spot about three centimeters from my backbone and then took a syringe from a tray she hooked out from beneath the bed with her foot. I winced at the sight of the long needle. The rabbit on the table stopped chomping lettuce to watch.

  “Just a prick!” I jerked. The rabbit blinked. “Now I’m infiltrating. Keep injecting as you push the needle in so that you anesthetize the tissue ahead. It shouldn’t hurt. Tell me if it does. You’ve got to go right into the body of the trapezius.” She sank the needle in up to its hilt, then drew it smoothly out. “Same thing here—and here—and here. Along the line I’ve marked.”

  The rabbit lost interest and returned to chewing lettuce. I clenched my teeth, not from pain because after the first prick there hadn’t been any, but at the thought that I would soon have to do the same thing to her.

  “Good! That’s fixed you. Now for George.” She left me with a numb strip to bend over the rabbit, turning back his fur to expose a shaven patch along his shoulder. She gave Mm the same series of injections she had given me. George didn’t even alter his chew rate.

  “You’ll both be ready for surgery by the time I finish scrubbing. Five minute scrub by the clock in this antiseptic. Can’t use gloves as I have to grab those two transponder wires with bare skin as I lug them out.” She continued scrubbing. I sat worrying. George went on eating.

  He stopped as her scalpel opened up a three-centimeter incision in his back. He resumed as she spread it open with a retractor and peered down the hole. “Well into muscle,” she remarked with satisfaction, and packed wet gauze into the gaping wound. “Now for you.”

  “Can I have some lettuce to munch on?”

  “Pay attention and don’t attempt humor!” She rinsed her hands, picked up a fresh scalpel, and poised it over my back.

  The edge to her voice awakened the memory of my first weapons instructor. The tone used by all determined teachers to keep lighthearted trainees in line. The tone Judith must have used on brash medical students. I watched her in the mirror as she drew the blade along the line of puncture points left by the needle. A scarlet slash appeared as plastic and skin opened together.

  “No need to hurry, but cut boldly. Don’t chop and scrape or you’ll leave a scar and the patient will curse you for life.” She made another smooth stroke and I recognized her skill. It is always a pleasure to watch an expert on the job, whether it’s a whore or a surgeon.

  “Keep a bloodless field. When you cut a small artery put on a snap.” She reached into me with a pair of scissorlike forceps and snapped
them onto something deep in the incision. Then she mopped up blood and said, “See it? That black thing down there?”

  I saw it. The encapsulated body of the transponder, its two veralloy leads disappearing into a red mass which I presumed was my trapezius muscle. The thing telling the surveillance computer that I was alive and at present in Judith’s cell.

  She was separating leads from muscle mass with a fine probe. “Don’t bother with this when you find mine. Just grab it, rip it out with one jerk, and hand it to me stat!” She reached into the incision with her fingers, gave a quick twist, and thrust the transponder at me. “Clamp onto those wires! Clamp hard!”

  I clamped so hard the leads cut into my fingers. Unless the transponder continued to tell the computer that all was well with Gavin Knox the alarms would start ringing.

  “Give!” Judith had to jerk the thing from me. She pushed it down into George, then carefully maneuvered the leads among the muscles. “You don’t have to worry about this part. I’ll be doing it.”

  I sat and worried, conscious of the slit gaping in my back and the electromagnetic radiations I hoped were still going out from the transponder. George froze momentarily, then returned to his lettuce.

  Judith spread a white compound along the margins of his incision, then held it closed. “Polyurethane surgical adhesive,” she explained, glancing at me while still clamping George. “Give it two minutes to set. And keep it off your fingers or you’ll have to cut them apart. There! That’s done it!” She left George and returned to me. “Very nice!” she congratulated herself, peering into the slit in my back. “No bleeders.” She removed the retractor, spread adhesive, and then held my incision closed as she had held George’s. Finally she stepped back and ripped off the plastic sheet.

  I jumped and cursed. “Sorry,” she said in the automatic voice used by doctors and dentists after they have inflicted an instant of agony. “You’re done. Now go to work on me.”

  This was the moment I dreaded. It is one thing to dress the wounds of a comrade ripped by a mortar shell. It’s another to cut in cold blood. I stood shaking while Judith placed another rabbit beside George and gave him a helping of lettuce. “Here’s Rupert.” She took George toward the cage.

  “No!” I said, snapping back from the prospect to the present.

  “What do you mean? No?” She looked at me as if I were some junior contradicting the Chief of Surgery.

  “That cage is metal. Put him in it and you may screen the transponder. Or weaken the signal enough for the computer to send a guard to find out whaf s going on.”

  “Lucky you think electronically, Gavin.” She placed George gently on the bed. “Stay there, rabbit. Or I’ll knock your head off!” She rubbed the base of his ears, so that he stopped eating to enjoy the new sensation. When she spoke to me it was in quite a different tone. “Don’t sit there gaping.

  Go and start scrubbing. Ask questions while you’re washing your hands.”

  I scrubbed away, trying to select the most imperative from the many important questions I wanted to ask. Judith pulled a fresh set of instruments from under the bed and prepared Rupert’s back. Rupert stamped his foot once and was mollified by a slice of carrot.

  “Keep scrubbing! Five minutes by the clock!” She unzipped her jumpsuit, turned it down to the waist, and took off her bra. “You’re a surgeon now, Gavin. It’s considered unethical to stare at a patient’s breasts except for clinical reasons. And you’re going to operate on my back—not my front!” She took her seat astride the chair, shifting her position to get a good view of the area I was about to cut into. I continued to scrub.

  “Five minutes is enough. Leave some skin on your hands! Dry them on that towel. No! The sterile towel. Spread out the plastic. Stretch it tight. Use the flat of your hands. Gavin, for God’s sake, get a grip on yourself! I’m the one who ought to be shaking.”

  I stepped back to calm myself and study the operative field, determined to make my incision along the skin stress-line as she had told me, trying to remember whether that was the same as the direction of the muscle fibers I must part without cutting once I was through the skin. I reached for the scalpel and was stopped by my patient.

  “So you’re one of those bastards who don’t bother with anesthesia for minor surgery, are you, Doctor?”

  “Sorry! Of course!” I picked up the syringe and approached her back with the needle.

  “If you wish to give the maximum amount of pain when making an injection,” she remarked coldly, “Use a blunt needle and push it slowly through the skin, thus exerting the most pressure for the longest possible time on the cutaneous pain receptors. Gavin! For Christ’s sake go in like I showed you! One swift, firm thrust. Similar to rape!”

  “Damn you, Judy—I’m doing my best!” I rammed the needle through the skin and into the muscle.

  “That’s better—Ouch—the idea is to inject the anesthetic ahead of the needle. Not to push the needle ahead of the anesthetic!”

  I did not apologize, and by the time I had made the fifth injection I was getting the hang of it. Judith snapped, “Now scrub again while the stuff you’ve shot into me takes effect.

  From the amount you’ve used I’m expecting to lose all iw-ling in my fingers at any moment!”

  I scrubbed away in silence. I was no longer nervous. Only ingry. And I stayed angry even after I realized that had been her objective.

  I picked up the scalpel. Cut boldly, she had said. One smooth sweep of the blade through the skin. Another with the back of the scalpel to separate the muscle fibers. They parted as they should. Then a bright red fountain sprayed from the incision.

  “Snap! Get a snap on the bleeder! That’s right. You’ve got it. Well done. Leave it for the moment. You may have to tie it off later. Mop out the blood. I told you to keep a dry field! You’ve got to be able to see what you’re cutting, and blood’s opaque. Slow and easy. Good! That retractor’s got a ratchet. It’s not there for ornament. Use it! Give yourself a full exposure. You’re not a damned cosmetic surgeon prettying up some fat softig. And keep your fingers out of the incision until you’re sure what you’re grabbing. Okay, that’s enough! Move back and mop your brow. I don’t want you dripping your filthy sweat into my rhomboideus major! And for God’s sake use a sterile towel. That’s the one I spread over George!”

  I stepped back, dried my face, and admired my handiwork. The black body of the transponder was clear in the base of the incision. <

  “Okay—you’ve had your time out! Get a good grip on it. Now—don’t worry about me. Rip it out and hand it over. That’s the boy!” She grabbed the bloody thing from my hand, jumped over to Rupert, and rammed it into him, ignoring the retractor sticking out of her shoulder and the blood running down her back. I pressed a sterile dressing against her incision while she held Rupert’s closed.

  “It’s working, thanks be to the Light!” She let go of Rupert and returned to slump forward astride the chair, leaving me to extract the snap, stanch the bleeding, and close the incision as best I could.

  I spent some time tidying up before I was satisfied with the results. “There!” I said. “You’re repaired.”

  “At last!” She came back to life and spirit, studying my workmanship in the mirror. “We’ll make a surgeon out of you yet, fumblefingers!”

  “They must have forgotten to feed you a child this morning!” I began picking up bloody swabs from the floor.

  She said nothing but stood up to inspect first the rabbits and then me. Finally she went to lie face-down on the bed. After a few minutes she reached out a hand to grip my fingers. “We’ve done it!” The triumph in her voice, the squeeze of her hand, soothed the bruises on my psyche.

  I cleaned the floor, flushed the handbasin, and put the instruments back under the bed. Then I sat down beside her. “What now?”

  “We can’t start moving before two. So we get some rest.”

  “Rest and recreation?” I suggested, patting'her bottom.

  “It’s uneth
ical for a surgeon to fondle a patient’s backside,” she mumbled, her fa.ce still cradled in her arms.

  “That’s for professionals. I’m only an amateur.”

  “You were better than some interns I’ve had inflicted on me!” She pushed my hand away.

  I caught her wrist. “Judy, we may never get another chance after tonight. Let’s take what we can get while we can get it!”

  She lifted her head and studied my face. At last she said, “Okay—if you really want a last bang as much as all that— I’ll oblige.”

  I didn’t want a “bang” and I didn’t want to be “obliged.” I wanted something from Judith which I hadn’t yet earned and she wasn’t prepared to give. “Forget it! I shouldn’t waste my strength screwing around.”

  “And I need sleep. We’ll have lots of excitement later.” With that ambiguous remark she dropped her head back onto her arms and was asleep within two minutes. The way I had been able to fall asleep at her age, even when I had thought I would only awaken to die.

  I sat watching her and wondering what kind of person she really was. Then I switched off the light, took the opaque cover from the camera lens, and unmasked the microphone before going to stretch out beside her. If Surveillance looked at us now they would see only the outlines of a couple sleeping contentedly together, weary from making love.

  I shivered in the chill of the morgue, nerving myself for the next step in our macabre escape. When we had slipped from Judith’s cell and sidled past the corridor cameras, when she had demonstrated that her memory of the door-codes was not perfect, when we had scurried through the hospital to the security of the Surgeon’s Lounge, I had been too conscious of our immediate peril to worry about our destination. When we printed along the passages in the guard zone and took the morgue elevator I was better prepared to fight any guards we i mi than to face the cold silence we found.

  There was a deathly chill about the place. In the middle of • In- room, on the rails leading to the doors across the exit tunnel, was a container the size of a cell. One side was open mid inside were four coffins. Their lids were hinged back mid in each the body of someone I had known lay face upwind in that sickly imitation of life shown by wax flowers on untended graves.