"Congratulations," DeAnne said testily. "We get rejected or approved. Either way, it's posthumously."
"Or we do it the other way," Mayer continued smoothly. "Screw the government. We take Jimmy's money and we do it ourselves. To ourselves."
DeAnne shook her head. And smiled. "You realize this is strictly illegal?"
Mayer smiled back at her. He shook his head and began to laugh, softly.
"Why are you laughing?" DeAnne asked crossly.
"Because what are they going to do if they catch us? Throw us in jail? Hell, we're going to die anyway. We probably wouldn't even last until sentencing."
DeAnne started to laugh herself.
"Best news I've had in years," Mayer continued. He touched his chest and his head. "The cells I've got in here aren't worth a damn. They're weak and they're shredding apart and they're killing me. Even if all you've proved is that you can keep a mouse alive, that's good enough for me. Hell, it's a lot better chance than the numbers I'm holding now. Somebody has to win the lottery, don't they?"
DeAnne smiled at him. She blinked back her tears.
"You realize I've only got one pilot stent finished," she warned. "The custom fab in Jakarta is working on the second pilot but it will take months to finish it."
Mayer waved his hand dismissively. "Let's get you done. Then we'll worry about Indonesia. I'm tired of arranging funerals."
"You're a pain in the ass, you know that?" she said fondly. She gestured at the box. "Jimmy's stuff can wait. We've got work to do."
Dr. Mastracci removed the last bandage and stepped to the side. She looked at her work and nodded. She handed DeAnne a mirror. DeAnne took the mirror and turned it so the image was clear and steady.
The new scope scar on the side of her neck was thin and clean, lost among the forest of old tracks. DeAnne looked at the branches and tried to relate them to old surgeries but there were too many scars.
"I did the best I could," Mastracci said defensively. She was tall, athletic, her surgeon fingers long and perfectly relaxed. DeAnne nodded, turned her head to the side to get another view.
"You did just fine, Jane," DeAnne reassured her.
"This will be the last one," Mastracci told her, reluctantly. She shook her head. "I placed your new stent, the one you designed, inside the biggest aneurysm in your brain but what I saw through the scope and on the screen..."
"Yes?"
"There are more aneurysms inside you, DeAnne. And too much scar tissue from too many surgeries. I'm sorry. I was lucky to get this one in."
"You weren't lucky, Jane." DeAnne shook her head, placed the mirror down on the table. "Give yourself credit. You're good at this." She looked up at Mastracci and smiled. "The problem is that my genes are so very bad."
"What do you do next?" Mastracci asked, awkwardly.
"Travel," DeAnne said decisively. She picked up her life necklace. A memory chip embedded in the pendant carried all her records and permissions, her DNR and living will and trust and all the others. Her life distilled into a handful of documents. She felt naked when it wasn't settled comfortably around her neck. She slipped the necklace over her head and patted it into place. She glanced at Mastracci and decided to practice the half-lie she planned to use with customs and immigration.
"My brother and I. We both have this condition and there are some things we need to finish before we go. Our great greats were Indo-Dutch. We're going back to Jakarta to make sure the old graves are still tended. It's something we promised our parents and our grands."
"Any others?" Mastracci asked.
"No other family," DeAnne said. "Our brothers and sisters are all dead and we never wanted to pass on what we have. We want to end it, now." She smiled again, sadly. She remembered her neighbor in the next door condo and her two little girls. "Still, it would have been nice..."
Mastracci's wrist beeped. She glanced at it and hurriedly signed the release order then begged off to see her next patient.
DeAnne used the bedside remote to open the window shades. She stared at blue sky, flecked with clouds, and the lake beyond the beach. Sailboats dotted the lake, the sails puffed and full of wind.
Her wrist softly vibrated. It was Mayer. She smiled and unrolled the screen.
"Yes, I'm fine. Just finished my release. Meet me at the front. They'll bring me out in a wheelchair. Yes, the headache is gone, thank God. Yes, I'll see you then. Yes, I love you too."
She pinched the phone off. She felt excitement building inside her. She stroked her temples, felt the sheer pleasure of touch that did not trigger a blinding headache.
She glanced at her bedside monitor. Blood pressure and heart rate were both up. She forced herself to do biofeedback exercises. This was her last chance and she wasn't going to mess it up by getting too excited, too early.
She leaned back against her pillow and stared at the ceiling. She took deep breaths through her nose and let them out slowly through her mouth.
She did not know if String was awake, if he was working, but she felt better already. Probably a placebo affect, but what was wrong with hoping?
String was the youngest child, the newest in a long line of failures, but he was a success. At least, that was what Mom told him. All he knew, for certain, was that he was the last and there were no more children after him.
Still, Mom told him he was a good boy, he was the right boy, and what else did he need?
He remembered when they came home from the hospital and the weeks afterward as he slowly woke. He remembered he sipped blood and grew his threads, so thin they only showed under a tunneling microscope, until they finally reached into every cell in her brain.
He kept the stent strong. Other than that he simply watched and recorded and copied Mom's every thought and emotion and memory and safely stored them in his own memory.
He was happy. He had his work and he did what his programming told him to do. Life was good.
Then, suddenly, everything went to hell.
The first sign was the spasm of all the pain sensors in her brain. Mom felt it as a blinding headache. String experienced it as an electrical storm, a seizure that overloaded his subsystems. The shock blinded him and he lost precious seconds as he rebooted. When he woke, her pulse and blood pressure were in free fall. Her blood was flooded with adrenaline and stress hormones, her body's last, desperate attempt to stay alive.
Mom? Mom!
"I'm sorry, baby," DeAnne, his mother, mumbled. "It's not your fault. We didn't think it would happen this quickly. There just wasn't enough time..."
String frantically searched along all his microfilaments spiderwebbed through her brain. He realized the problem was he knew all the trees, the individual cells, but he could not see the fire burning the forest.
Then, along one of his filaments, deep in the lobe where the seizure began, he tasted blood. He instantly concentrated on her blood vessels. They were fragile and delicate, the walls stretched, part of her genetics.
Everything was normal. Thin and weak, yes, but strong enough and... aneurysm. The junction of two main arteries, deep in her brain. One artery was dissected, ripped slightly open, enough blood spilled to knock Mom down, but not enough to kill her. Brain cells splashed by blood were dead but String had his recordings. Give him time and he could reload the memories, put Mom back together.
The other artery was the greater danger. It was bigger, stretched and distended, ready to burst with the next rise in blood pressure.
He had to help her, had to keep her alive. He ruthlessly tapped into her blood, began to stitch together the dissected artery, began to wrap the other artery in supporting threads until he could fix it—
He heard the paramedics break through the door. He realized Mom's life necklace had triggered after she collapsed and crumpled to the floor.
Warm hands on cold skin, fingers at her wrist and her neck. DeAnne's eyelids fluttered open unevenly, the right clear, the left only a fraction. String saw the blur of the uniforms, the sound of two vo
ices, one a man, one a woman.
"Frau Vanderbrink? DeAnne Vanderbrink? Are you all right, ma'am?"
"My brother," DeAnne whispered urgently. String watched through her eyes as DeAnne clumsily lifted her arm and pointed to her neck, to her life necklace. "Promise me..."
Her head sagged and String watched her arm falter and then fold onto her chest.
"DeAnne? DeAnne, wake up," String heard. The man's voice was calm but urgent. String felt the pressure on Mom's arm increase. "No response. No pulse in the wrist."
"I've got a feather up here in the neck. It's faint and it's fading. Get an IV started. Give me the atropine."
"Heart attack?"
"Best guess? Yeah. Tell the hospital we've got a code blue coming in. I want everyone there when we arrive."
No! String screamed. He dimly felt the sting as the IV slid into Mom's arm.
"CPR?" the man asked.
"Not yet. Get ready. Atropine going in." The woman's voice was flat, distracted and expressionless. String felt the fingers shift on Mom's neck, searching for a pulse.
No! String screamed and begged, pleading. Leave her alone! Give me time. I just need a little more time.
Drugs poured into his mother. He felt her heart hesitate, then pump strongly. Blood surged through her system. Her blood pressure rose and the other aneurysm shredded like wet paper.
"Don't cry, baby," DeAnne said, her voice soft and soothing and fading. "It's not your fault. It's not your fault."
Blood poured out of the aneurysm, an open hose spraying into her brain.
"I've lost pulse. All I'm getting is fibrillation."
The sound of ripping cloth. He realized, dully, that Mom's blouse now lay torn and in shreds on the floor. He felt the solid, rib-cracking thumps of CPR given by someone who knew what he was doing. The only problem was that it was the wrong solution to the wrong problem.
The CPR paused. The voices sounded remote and thin.
"Everyone clear? Pads in place. Shocking no—"
Lightning rippled through String and he was gone.
"Is this her? Will you please make a positive identification?"
Mayer looked down at DeAnne's body. He nodded.
"That's her."
"For the record, please."
Mayer took a deep breath.
"This is the body of my sister, DeAnne Vanderbrink. I recognize and identify her."
The medical assistant promptly covered her face. He touched a foot plate and the double doors opened. Mayer glanced and saw a set of examination rooms, curtained off, on one side of a long corridor. The other side of the corridor was a wall of small stainless steel doors, like hatches, just the right size to slip in a body, from floor to ceiling.
The assistant wheeled the body down the corridor and out of sight. The doors closed behind him.
"My regrets, Herr Vanderbrink," the medical examiner said. His voice was professionally detached, concerned but not involved. He sounded like someone who knew how to leave his business at work and not bring it home.
Mayer nodded, his mind still half in shock, even after the last twenty-four hours.
The examiner held out a small brown manila envelope.
"Personal items found on her body," the examiner explained. "Earrings, life necklace, things like that. The front desk will help you with the rest of her effects. Again, my condolences."
Mayer finally looked over at him and reached out to take the envelope. The examiner escorted him to the front and left him with a very nice woman who seemed to love paperwork and forms....
Mayer sat in DeAnne's hotel room. Her suitcases, hard shell, and soft duffel, lay scattered around the room. He held her life necklace in his hand.
He felt a headache starting, behind his eyes, deep in his head. He wondered if it was that, just a headache, or if it was something bigger, something more final.
I'm too young to die.
It wasn't a fair thought. He was supposed to be mourning DeAnne. He was supposed to think only about her.
I'm too young to die.
He saw her reader on her bedside table. He put her life necklace on the table, next to her reader. The reader stayed dark for a moment, then woke.
"Verbal," Mayer ordered.
"Password?" the reader asked.
Mayer smiled. DeAnne had used their mother's voice, stern and serious but with a touch of laughter behind it, as if she knew it was all a joke.
"I am a happy panda."
Accepted.
The reader flickered to life. DeAnne looked at him.
"Mayer, I'm sorry you're seeing this." Her face was serious, but then she smiled and looked at him over the top of her displays. "But, and I hate to say this, I'm glad it's you who's got to deal with it and not me! I'm tired of arranging funerals."
"Smartass," he grumbled and smiled.
"Now, we need to talk. Besides the obvious, I've got bad news and good news and bad news for you," DeAnne said. She took a deep breath. "The bad news is, obviously, I'm either dead or dying. I don't like that and neither do you. You know what I want done and how. It's in my medical directive. I'm not going over it again. I remember watching Christine and Jimmy and all those damned tubes and needles. Don't make me go through that.
"That's the first bad news. Next is the good news. String is working. It's little things, but he's working. He's talking with me, subvocally, but you know all that. What you can't feel is how I feel.
"My appetite is coming back, Mayer. The headaches are still there, but they're getting better. I just feel, well, better. I don't know how to explain it, but he's working. Next is the final bad news.
"The new stent is not ready.
"The custom shop screwed up the print and fab job. They've got to start over. Even then it's going to take several months to finish the job.
"I'm sorry, Mayer. I wish we'd done this the way I wanted, to do you first, but it's too late. We're twins and we rolled the dice and you came up with snake-eyes."
She looked out at him and she seemed ready to cry. She reached to touch the cut-off switch.
"I'm sorry, Mayer. I love you and I'm so, so sorry."
The screen flickered to black.
Mayer pushed the reader aside. He looked at her luggage and her clothes and her toothbrush with the pretty kitty handle. He reached down and picked up her life necklace and strung it over his head and around his neck.
I'm too young to die.
"I am too rich to die."
Mayer slid his medical records, neatly arranged in a folder, across the dirty glass tabletop to the man he knew only as Phoon. Mayer felt sweat building around his collar and under his arms. Sweat was a bad sign. It hinted at too many things. He wondered if it was the tropical heat or a fever. It might mean he was too late.
Phoon indifferently pushed the folder to the side and, fork in one hand, knife in the other, slowly and deliberately finished his lunch. Mayer toyed with his plate, moved the food around but sampled nothing. His appetite was gone and the smell made him nauseous.
They sat in the canopy shade of one of the thousands of anonymous sidewalk restaurants in Jakarta. Cars, trucks, motorcycles, and scooters piled high with passengers and bags and boxes roared by them, just inches away, separated from them only by the rusting bars and flat top of a decorative waist-high cast-iron fence.
The air was thick with dirt and gasoline and diesel fumes, seasoned with spice and ocean salt. Phoon finished his lunch and pushed the plate away. He wiped his lips and his face with his napkin and dropped it on his plate. He reached for the folder and opened it.
He ignored everything medical. He went straight to the last page of the folder. The columns and numbers, Mayer's financial statement, were all that was really important.
Phoon pulled a lighter and a cigarette out of his short-sleeve shirt pocket while he read the numbers. He cupped his hand around the flame and lit the cigarette. He leaned back and took a deep inhale, held it, then blew the smoke out the side of his mouth. The si
ckly sweet smell of qat filled the air. He sat up straight and slipped the page back into the folder. He drew on the cigarette again and pointed at Mayer through the smoke.
"You may be too rich to die," Phoon conceded. He tapped the folder with his index finger. "But this tells me you may also be too poor to live."
Mayer sat forward, elbows on the table.
"Do you want the money? Or do I find another broker?"
Phoon held his eye for a moment, then shook his head.
"What you want is very expensive." He stubbed out his cigarette in the remnants of his lunch. He looked up at Mayer. "Very expensive."
Mayer picked up the folder. He pushed back his chair, as if he was ready to leave. Phoon hurriedly leaned forward. He touched Mayer's forearm.
"A moment," Phoon said. He sat up straight, his words clipped, the pose of indifference gone.
"You want the best neurosurgeon in the city? Out of the question." Phoon waved his hands dismissively. "Ask any broker you want. The answer will be the same. The number one surgeon doesn't do business off the books. The best you'll be offered is, maybe, number four. Now, I'm different. I can get you better than number four. My question is how much are you willing to pay to stay alive?"
Mayer stared down at the folder. He remembered needles and foley's and morphine and that damned squeezing headache that gripped and dug in and just would not let go....
"Everything has a price." Mayer slid a debit card, white and deactivated, across the table. "That's how much I'm willing to spend."
Phoon unrolled his phone and scanned the card. The screen flickered with numbers. The card was legitimate, loaded with cash, but not activated. Phoon returned the card and said a name. Mayer repeated the name into his wrist, looked at the results on his display, and frowned.
"She's third best in the city," Phoon protested. "She's a good doctor."
Mayer glanced again at his display, then back at Phoon. Mayer shook his head. Phoon tilted his head to the side and held up his palms.
"All right, maybe she is a little out of practice."
Mayer read out loud from the review.
"'Her hands tremble like a leaf when she holds a scalpel.'" He lifted an eyebrow and studied Phoon. He shook his head again, slowly. "No. Not this one. I want someone better. I don't want someone who's going to kill me while I'm on the table."
Analog Science Fiction and Fact - 2014-07 Page 17
