The next step is all too predictable. Kronkol’s next televised speech will have been given a good excuse to be even more hydrophobic, the Americans, as rumored, will no doubt blanket all of Russia, leading to even better atrocity footage from which to cut yet more inflammatory commercials for Kronkol.
The hairiest of Bears are being used like Hollywood extras by these mercenary American media-masters. Have no rational illusions. These people could sell dehydrated water in the Sahel desert and they can sell a raving atavism like Vadim Kronkol to the Ukrainians.
After all, they sold Harry Burton Carson to the Americans, didn’t they?
—Mad Moscow
Sonya had been in a meeting with the Renault people when some nameless ESA functionnaire had telephoned Red Star, and the first call hadn’t gotten through to her. It took a second call, this one from Boris Velnikov himself, to get the switchboard to break into the meeting, and then ESA had told her that a car and a police escort were already on the way. They were there within fifteen minutes, but le rush had already started, and it took an hour to get through the traffic even with a motorcycle escort.
All Velnikov had been able to tell her was that there had been some kind of accident, a hydrogen explosion or something. Jerry was alive, but he was badly injured, some kind of brain damage. They had helicoptered him to the nearby airport hospital, which, Velnikov assured her, was the state of the art when it came to head-trauma cases.
Velnikov was waiting at the entrance when she finally arrived at the hospital, along with a gray-haired woman in doctor’s greens, whom he introduced as Hélène Cordray, the chief of the neurosurgery unit.
“How is he? What happened?” Sonya demanded as they hustled up the stairs and into the building.
“Your husband’s condition has been stabilized, and his life is in no immediate danger, Madame Reed,” Dr. Cordray said.
“There was an accident on the test bed,” Velnikov told her, “a hydrogen leak, a small explosion—”
“—a small piece of metal was embedded in his medullary cortex, we were able to remove it quickly and keep the damage localized, but there has been significant trauma and a permanent loss of function—”
By this time they had reached a bank of elevators. One of the doors opened, Dr. Cordray ushered them inside, hit the button for the third floor. “I’ll be able to explain it more fully in my office—”
“I want to see him,” Sonya told her. “Now.”
The doctor looked at Velnikov, shook her head.
“It’s my husband, not his, and you’ll take me to him now,” Sonya snapped angrily.
“Very well, Madame Reed, if you insist,” the doctor said without rancor, and she hit the button for the fifth floor.
They rode up to the fifth floor in silence and walked rapidly down a green corridor smelling of disinfectant and synthetic lilac, past a series of heavy metal doors and large windows, through which Sonya could not keep herself from catching unsettling glimpses of patients lying in hospital beds in various states of unwholesome infirmity, hooked up to IV stands, computers, ominous-looking banks of life-support machinery.
“Your husband is in a sterile chamber, so we can’t go inside,” Dr. Cordray told her, as they stopped by one of the windows.
“Merde . . . ,” Sonya whispered as she peered through the glass.
There was a bed in the room, all but hidden by banks of machinery, and a nurse at the foot of it, sitting on a chair before a series of monitors. Jerry lay in the bed with his eyes closed and his skull swathed in white bandages. There were IV lines in both of his arms and another catheter in the bandages near the top of his skull. Two electrical cables led from the back of his head to a pair of consoles about the size of large television sets that looked something like mainframe computers. There were electrodes taped all over his bare chest with leads running to yet more bulky devices. A transparent oxygen mask fit over his nose and mouth.
“The brain areas that control respiration and heartbeat have been destroyed,” Dr. Cordray said softly. “We’re using computers to simulate the lost function. There has been no deterioration of the higher brain centers, and we believe that motor control, excretory, and sexual functions have not been lost. Barring unforeseen circumstances, we believe he will make a full recovery.”
“A . . . a full recovery?” Sonya stammered.
“Except for what has already been lost. He will always require computer assist to maintain heartbeat and respiration, of course. . . .”
“He’ll have to spend the rest of his life like this!” Sonya cried. “You call that a full recovery!”
“This is only temporary, Madame Reed, please try to control yourself, there are other patients—”
“Equipment is being flown in from Star City,” Velnikov said, “and it’s far more sophisticated than this.”
“From . . . from Star City . . . ?” Sonya stammered.
“I wanted to discuss the prognosis before you subjected yourself to this sight, Madame Reed, but you insisted on seeing the worst immediately,” Dr. Cordray said soothingly. “I assure you the situation is not as hopeless as it currently seems. Now please let us go to my office where we can discuss matters much more calmly.”
Numbly, Sonya let herself be led back to the elevator, down to the third floor, along a corridor to a small spare office, where the doctor sat down behind a plain metal desk and she and Velnikov perched on hard metal chairs before it.
“The Soviets are flying in a new piece of equipment,” Dr. Cordray said.
“It’s an experimental device we’ve been developing for really long-duration space travel,” Velnikov told her. “The idea is to slow down respiration and heartbeat to produce an artificial state of hibernation, but the software can easily enough be modified to induce normal heart and lung function.”
“With your permission, we will keep your husband under sedation and implant permanent electrodes in his brain and then seal the incision,” the doctor said. “The Soviet device needs no physical connection, it uses external electrodes that complete the circuit through electromagnetic induction. This prevents the probability of infection through a permanent opening in the skull and fascia.”
“And since it has been designed for use by cosmonauts, where weight counts, it has been highly miniaturized, and the power requirements have been reduced to the point where it can run on a twelve-volt battery.”
“Your husband will have considerable mobility, Madame Reed.”
“Considerable mobility . . . . ?” Sonya said, looking back and forth between the two of them distractedly. “Highly miniaturized . . . . ?”
“It weighs only eleven kilos with the battery,” Velnikov said. “It’s about the size of a portable television set, and we can mount it on a cart for mobility. The connecting cable can be as long as you like, so Jerry will be able to move freely around a room without moving the controller.”
“It all sounds quite horrible,” Sonya said. “Isn’t there something else you can do? A brain transplant, maybe?”
Dr. Cordray shook her head. “Only the Americans are working on anything like that, and they’re at least five years away, and by that time . . .”
Velnikov shot her a dirty look. But it was too late.
“By that time, what?” Sonya demanded.
The doctor’s eyes became furtive.
“Tell me!” Sonya insisted. “I have a right to know!”
Dr. Cordray sighed. “The Soviet device can only approximate normal hindbrain function, of course,” she said. “Also, there will be an enzyme debt from the loss of brain tissue that will be difficult to compensate for with artificial supplements. Eventually, there will be accumulated vein and artery damage, mini-strokes, perhaps full-bore cerebral hemorrhages, slow emphysema. . . .”
“I see . . . ,” Sonya whispered. “How long?”
“Two, perhaps three years, at the outside,” the doctor said. “Of course, by that time, there could be new advances, you never know. . . .”
“You’re talking about two or three years of . . . of . . . of a slow horrible deterioration toward . . . toward . . .”
“I’m sorry, Madame Reed, it’s the best we have to offer,” Dr. Cordray said. “A year ago, there would have been nothing at all.”
She reached into a desk drawer, pulled out some printed forms and a pen, and handed them to Sonya.
“What’s this?” Sonya stammered.
“Permission forms. Since this certainly qualifies as heroic life-extension measures, we need the permission of next of kin to implant the electrodes. We also need permission to keep him on the present life-support machinery beyond ninety-six hours.”
“You mean if I don’t sign these papers, you’ll just turn it all off and let him die?”
“That is the law. As his wife, you are legally next of kin.”
“Ex-wife,” Sonya blurted.
Dr. Cordray glanced at Velnikov. “I thought . . . ?” She looked back at Sonya and frowned. “This is rather ambiguous, legally,” she said. “Is there someone else who could sign quickly? A son? A daughter?”
“Our son is in America. Our daughter is an Aeroflot pilot, and I have no idea where she is right now.”
Dr. Cordray frowned. She grimaced. “This does present legal problems,” she said. She drummed her fingers on the desktop. “The devil take it!” she finally exclaimed. “I’ll take your signature as next of kin, and let the law argue about it later. I’ll not stand by and let someone die over such a minor technicality.”
“Assuming that I’m willing to sign . . . ,” Sonya said.
“There is no other alternative, Madame Reed.”
“Oh yes there is, Dr. Cordray.”
“You’re not thinking of . . . ?”
But Sonya was. Jerry would never live to take his spaceship ride. He would probably never even be able to work again. He would be tied to an eleven-kilo piece of machinery for what little remained of his life. And what would remain would be a slow but steady physical deterioration. Perhaps mental degeneration as well. And he would be alive and aware the whole time to watch his own decline. Wouldn’t it be more merciful if he never awoke?
He would be an invalid, with no one to take care of him, no—
A wave of self-loathing washed over her as she thought it. That’s it, Sonya, isn’t it? she told herself in disgust. There’s no one but you to take care of him, is there? No one but you to sit around and watch him slowly die and listen to his complaints and his anguish and his self-pity on the long way out.
For over twenty years, she had lived with this man. They had raised a son and a daughter together. She had watched as his life had narrowed down to a single obsessional point, an obsession that now lay forever beyond his grasp. She had betrayed him. She had divorced him. She had broken his heart.
And now, rather than face a few sad short years of taking care of him, she had been willing to let him die.
Let him die?
No, Sonya, nothing so passive as that. If you don’t sign these papers, if you’re not willing to do what must be done, what no one else can do in the time left to him, you’re not letting him die, you’re killing him. As surely as if you pulled the plug with your own hand.
Sonya sighed. She took up the pen. “No, of course not,” she said, “we’ve got to do what little we can.”
* * *
THEY FROZE TESSA TINKER’S BRAIN!
An exclusive source close (very close!) to Hollywood sex queen Tessa Tinker, who died last week of injuries sustained when her Maserati-Mercedes smashed into a Beverly Hills garbage truck at 75 mph, has told us that her brain has been preserved by a process derived from hush-hush military work by a funeral home in wacky Northern California. Someday it may be revived and transplanted into a new body cloned from the dead actress’s flesh, to star in another thirty-three pant-and-groan epics.
If the revived actress’s future performances run true to previous form, brain damage won’t be much of a problem as long as her new body is faithfully reproduced by the cloning process, silicon implants and all.
Look for Return of the Zombie Sex-Queen to appear sometime within the next two hundred years!
—The National Enquirer
KRONKOL GOES TOO FAR, PRESIDENT GORCHENKO DECLARES
President Constantin Semyonovich Gorchenko has strongly repeated his declaration that the Ukraine has no such legal basis for seceding from the Soviet Union after Vadim Kronkol, candidate of the Ukrainian Liberation Front for the Presidency of the Ukrainian S.S.R, declared that he would consider his election a referendum on Ukrainian independence.
“We may have no legal basis under Soviet law for preventing American agents from foisting off Kronkol on the Ukrainian people,” the President admitted. “But neither would his election constitute a legally binding secession referendum under the constitution, and Soviet law provides ample means for keeping him from leading the Ukrainian people into an act of open rebellion, up to and including mobilizing the Ukrainian national militia and placing it under Red Army command,” he warned the Ukrainian revanchists.
—Pravda
* * *
XXIII
A dull throbbing ache, a scratchy feeling, a pressure, emerged from the void. The ache slowly localized itself at the back of his head. The scratchy feeling was a raw dry throat. The pressure was the weight of his body in a supine position. Images began to drift across his mind’s eye—a big bowl of Häagen-Dazs chocolate ice cream covered with chocolate syrup, the living room of the apartment on Avenue Trudaine, a figure in a bulky old spacesuit walking in slow motion on the gray surface of the Moon, the clean white contrail of a Concordski cleaving the blue sky over the Île St.-Louis, a bank of rocket engines throttling up and down in a musical sequence, a crowded rush-hour RER car, his hand toggling a switch back and forth, Dieter Albrecht handing him a motor cowling, a floor coming up at him as he fell, a soft whooshing explosion, blackness—
Jerry Reed realized that he was awake. And conscious. And alive.
Not without effort, he blinked open gummy eyelids, winced as a cruel light blinded him, blinked again rapidly, squinted his eyes, slowly let them adjust to the slitted light, then opened them wide.
He was in a small white-walled room. Lying in a bed. He tried to bring his hands to his face to wipe his eyes clear of tears and found that his arms were restrained. He swiveled his head left, right, saw that his forearms were tied down to handboards, saw the IV needles in the pits of his elbows, looked down the length of his body and saw the electrodes taped to his bare chest.
Hospital room. A lot of bulky electronic equipment around his bed. He wriggled his toes. In working order. He blinked rapidly several times, and his vision slowly cleared.
There were two people sitting by the foot of the bed. In green smocks. Women. One of them seemed to be staring at something hidden by the bulk of an electronic console. Watching TV? The other was reading a newspaper.
The woman reading the newspaper was . . . was . . .
“S . . . Sonya?” he croaked weakly against some kind of peculiar resistance.
The woman started, rose, tossed aside the newspaper, rushed to the head of the bed. “Jerry!” she cried. “You’re awake!”
It was! It was Sonya! Looking ashen and drawn, but smiling down at him.
“So it would seem,” Jerry managed to say. But the words did not come easily, somehow; he seemed to be fighting the rhythm of his own breathing.
“I’ll get Dr. Cordray,” the other woman said, a nurse no doubt. “You’ll want a few minutes alone.”
“Sonya . . . I feel kind of strange. . . .”
There were tears in her eyes. “There was an accident. You were hurt.” She paused. She hesitated. Her lower lip trembled.
She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “But I’m here to take care of you, and you’re going to be all right.”
“Take care of me . . . ?”
“They say you can leave the hospital in a few days, and I
’ll be taking you home.”
“Home?”
“Avenue Trudaine, remember, Jerry?”
“But we . . . but you . . .”
Sonya wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “You’re going to need someone to take care of you . . . while you . . . recover,” she said. “And who else is there? You don’t want to spend weeks in the hospital by yourself, now do you?”
“But you and me . . . it’s been years. . . .”
Sonya laid a finger on his lips. “Not now, okay, Jerry?” she said softly. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk all that out later.”
And she replaced her fingers with her lips. “For now, let me just be glad you’re alive,” she said after she had kissed him. “Let’s not worry ourselves just yet about the past.”
Jerry’s mind was still fuzzy, but not so fuzzy that he didn’t realize something must be very wrong, or Sonya would not be here, crying like this, kissing him, and telling him she was going to take him home and care for him after all these years.
“What’s wrong with me, Sonya?” he demanded. “What’s happened?”
“You were hit in the head by a piece of metal from the explosion,” Sonya said. “There was . . . there was . . .” She seemed to be choking on something she couldn’t bring herself to spit out.
It could be only one thing.
“Brain damage?” Jerry whispered.
Sonya looked down and nodded.
Jerry wriggled the fingers of his right hand, then his left. He tried out his toes again. He moved his arms against the restraints. He kicked his feet under the bedclothes. There was nothing wrong with his vision or his hearing. He was thinking clearly now. He could smell the acridly chemical hospital odor, the thin tang of ozone from the electronic equipment surrounding him, Sonya’s jasmine perfume.
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