Paul went over to talk to Mary Bergstrom. I went back to my apartment, to sleep. I didn’t need a Somnorific. I had an REM dream of an ef galloping a black stallion. She had a death’s-head.
X-4
I awoke irritably at 0700 when my radio alarm clicked on to the strains of “Esperanti Street Songs.” We were enduring one of the periodic Esperanto revivals, although linguists had proved—to my satisfaction at least—that the world had more to lose from a universal language than from a profusion of national tongues. The only valid universal languages were music, scientific symbology, and gold.
I did twenty minutes of slow hatha asanas, followed by twenty minutes of meditation. I showered, shaved, used my ultrasonic tooth strigil. I applied light pancake makeup, a rosy shade; my skin was rather sallow. Just a touch of lip rouge. An eyebrow darkener. My hair was still black, but my eyebrows were beginning to go gray. Probably an enzyme deficiency. I dressed while drinking the day’s first glass of chilled Smack, laced with a packet of high-potency vitamin concentrate. I also ate two probisks. They tasted as you might expect: anise-flavored sawdust.
As usual, I arrived at my office before any of my three secretaries. Each was assigned one of the three general areas into which I had divided my responsibilities: (1). Day-to-day activities of DIVRAD; (2). Relations with Satisfaction Section and the other three divisions it ruled; (3). Relations with food and drug manufacturers, makers of prosthetic devices and organs, commercial laboratories, biomedical academies, neuroscientific associations, etc.
I found three neat stacks on my desk awaiting me, each left by one of my secretaries. All included memos, letters, and papers to be scanned; tapes to hear; films to see.
I glanced first at two bright-red teletyped messages. One was the weekly Satrat (Satisfaction Rating) Report from DIVDAT (Division of Data & Statistics). It showed the national Satrat was up .4 percent. That was encouraging.
The second red teletype was less encouraging. It was a medical report from SATSEC’s Rehabilitation & Reconditioning Hospice No. 4, near Alexandria, Virginia. It stated that Hyman R. Lewisohn, the government’s foremost theorist, showed no improvement under continued treatment. Lewisohn was suffering from leukemia. We had been trying a new manipulated form of methotrexate, with apparently no improvement. We might have to add vincristine and cytosine arabinoside. I jotted a note on the teletype to flash the Chief Resident at R&R No. 4 and discuss it. Lewisohn’s survival was the responsibility of my Division. I did not take the duty lightly.
I then went through everything else rapidly, making three new stacks of my own: (1). Requiring immediate attention; (2). Leave till tomorrow or for a week at most; (3). When I had time. Or never.
I was still at this organizing procedure when Ellen Dawes, one of my secretaries, came in. She was an AINF-B, a female bred by artificial insemination. I had long ago decided that the Examiner who had assigned her a Grade B rating had been more impressed by her personality than her genetic code. I didn’t blame him a bit.
At the moment, as she stood in the doorway and held a plastic cup out to me, her eyes were as wide as those of an addict preparing a fix.
Without speaking, I went to my office safe, inserted my magnetic key, swung open the heavy door. I withdrew the five-pound can that had cost me fifty new dollars on the black market. She watched me measure out five tablespoons into her plastic cup. She licked her lips. Her eyes were still glistening.
“Thank you, Dr. Flair.”
“Thank you, Ellen.”
We both laughed. She left with the precious grind. I put the can back in the safe and locked the door. Fifteen minutes later Ellen was back with a steaming mug, put it carefully on my desk on a little plastimat. I didn’t touch it until she had left to enjoy hers with the other two secretaries, both ems.
Then I sat back in my swivel chair, took a sip, closed my eyes. It was so hot it burned my lips. But I didn’t care. It was the genuine thing. The last can I had bought, from an unfamiliar pusher, had turned out to be mostly chicory, oregano, and ground-up peanut shells. But this was real coffee. Possibly from Columbia State.
It was 0942 before I could get through to Lieutenant Oliver of the New York Peace Department. My office digiclock showed 1020 before I had things organized. Then we left the compound.
Paul and I led in an intemal-combustion-engined sedan. I drove; Paul never could learn how to shift gears. His IMP equipment was in the back seat. Behind us came a fuel-cell-powered ambulance driven by Mary Bergstrom. With her were two laboratory attendants. They were both young gene-variant ems, bred by electrical parthenogenesis before we had satisfactorily solved the problems of chromosomal injection of the egg. Their appearance was normal, but both suffered from Parkinsonism. It was controlled with an improved form of L-dopa.
We stopped at the New York City Resting Home, after driving around the block three times before we found a parking space. I went inside with Mary Bergstrom.
There was no problem; Lieutenant Oliver had already alerted them. I signed the release form. Before Mary and the attendants took the cadaver away on a wheeled stretcher, I zipped the body bag down far enough to take a look.
Face contorted in agony. Bulging eyes. Rictus. Deep lateral scratches across the thoracic area. It was difficult to imagine, but he might have been handsome. I wondered if he and Angela had been users.
The guardian let us into the apartment. I locked the door; we looked around. All the furniture, the rugs, the prints on the walls, the linens, the plates and cutlery, even the clothing in the dressers and closets appeared to be leased. That was not unusual. Few people owned more than trinkets and minor personal effects. Styles and fashions changed rapidly; you could trade in all your belongings annually and lease new, tooty “possessions.”
Paul began unpacking his equipment. I wandered about. The guardian and the officers who had removed the corpus had already polluted the air, the rugs, possibly the furniture. It was not an ideal situation for gathering IMP samples.
I went into the nest. Neat and clean. A row of six-hour Somnorifics in the medicine cabinet, along with the usual array of unrestricted drugs. Nothing unexpected. Paul started taking adhe-sive patches from the sink. I went into the living room. Cold, cold.
. . . Who had lived there? No one had lived there. A ghost maybe. It was empty of human track. The bedroom wasn’t much better. But the bed was rumpled, the thermal blanket thrown back, the plas-tisheet still showing an indentation where Frank Lawson Harris had rushed to an excruciating stop.
Near one leg of the bed a glint caught my eye. I bent over to stare at it. It appeared to be the foil seal of a Somnorific inhaler, balled up and flicked away. I went to Paul’s case for a little self-closing plastic envelope. I slid the balled-up Somnorific seal into the bag and pressed the lips tightly together. I slipped the envelope into the pocket of my zipsuit. I went back into the nest. Paul was on his knees, sleeves rolled up, probing down into the toilet drain with a long, flexible instrument we called an “eel.”' It had a rounded, adhesive knob on the end.
“I’m going now,“ I said to Paul.
“Right.”
“There are Somnorifics in the medicine cabinet. Bring them along.”
He didn’t answer. He was intent on what he was doing. He could probe a toilet drain, but he wouldn’t do a postmortem or even look at a stopped em.
I went back to the compound^.I had a lot of service to get through, heavy because in two days I was due for a threeday and wanted to train to Detroit, GPA-3, to visit my parents. And Millie.
First I took the little plastic envelope from my pocket and sent it down to A Lab for analysis of the Somnorific seal. Then I went back to scanning the daily team reports. My Division was organized into teams: Nutrition Team, Transplant Team, Genetic Team, Biochemistry Team, etc. We did a tremendous amount of original biomedical research. In addition, we performed the functions of what was formerly the Food and Drug Administration. We tested all commercial drugs and foods for purity. Well . .
. maybe not for purity, but for nontoxicity. And our field forces inspected production facilities regularly.
I was proud of the fact that DIVRAD was self-supporting. That is, we developed new foods, drugs, artificial and cloned organs, new laboratory equipment and techniques, etc. These, when not restricted, were licensed for commercial production. The fees received more than paid for the expenses of DIVRAD
Only two other governmental departments were self-supporting.
One was the Atomic Energy Commission of the Department of National Resources (formerly the Department of the Interior). The other, of course, was the National Contribution Commission (formerly the Internal Revenue Service), a division of the Department of Profitability (formerly the Department of the Treasury).
(Incidentally, all these name changes of government departments were not made by whim. They were decreed by the Office of Linguistic Truth, OLT, formerly the Office of Governmental Euphemisms, OGE.)
The following morning, Angela Teresa Berri returned from her threeday in California. I met her by chance in the corridor outside her office. We chatted casually, all-colored zipsuits moving by us on both sides.
Finally, the corridor reasonably clear, she murmured, “Anything?”
“No,” I whispered in return. “Not yet. It’s very complex. I’ll contact you when I have something. Or nothing.”
“Who else knows?”
“Paul Bumford.”
She looked at me steadily. Greenish, flecked eyes.
“You trust him, Nick?”
“Of course.”
She nodded, and was gone.
Late that afternoon, A Lab returned my little plastic envelope with their report. They had identified the inclosed object as a standard Somnorific seal. Hardly earth-shaking news. But on the underside of the seal they had discovered minute quantities of a substance they “believed to be” (typical scientific hedging, there) 5-HT.
Now, 5-HT—5-Hydroxytryptamine—is known to biochemists as serotonin. Nanogram amounts of platelet-bound iso-serotonin were found. And platelets are particles suspended in human blood, formed by bone marrow, and necessary in the clotting of blood and the sealing of injured blood vessels.
It was interesting.
The following morning, at 1030, Paul Bumford, Mary Bergstrom, and I were in my apartment, seated in plastivas slings drawn up around my new 3-D TV set (leased). The shades were down, the door locked, the flasher disconnected. The set was switched to Tape. ,
I leaned forward so I could see her, past Paul.
“Mary, what lens did you use?”
“Infinite focus,” she said in that cold, toneless voice of hers. “Wide angle. Electronic zoom by voice-actuated switch. But no' sound. There was no need for sound.”
“Of course not,” I said. I leaned back, pressed the Start button of my control unit.
The guard glass flickered. Wild images. Then, as the lasers took hold, the holograph image steadied in the box. We were looking at the pain-racked features of the stopped Frank Lawson Harris. Focus was sharp, colors were lifelike—or rather, unlifelike.
The naked corpus was stretched out on a stainless steel table, slightly tilted, with a run-off channel at the bottom. Mary stood behind the table, masked, gowned, gloved, scalpel in hand.
She gave us a running commentary, in person, her voice flat, without inflection.
“Closeup of features. Contorted. Agonized. Notice lips drawn back from teeth. Rictus. Long view of total anatomy. Limbs twisted. More than normal rigor. Notice hands half-clenched. Now this—close-up of lateral scratches in thoracic area. Analysis of tissue under object’s fingernails proved scratches self-inflicted. Clawed at chest. Long shot again. Here—close-up of genitalia. Penis and testicles flaccid. Now . . . autopsy begins. I’m going in. Butterfly incision. Firm skin. Good muscle tone.”
I was fascinated. I was aware that Paul Bumford was not watching.
“Everything normal,” Mary continued tonelessly. The camera zoomed in to show her knife at work. ‘ ‘Now I’m going into the chest cavity. Heart normal but aorta unusually small to the touch. My first clue. Liver somewhat fatty but not pathologic. Here’s a close-up. Healthy.”
I watched the tape hum along. I admired her technique. She was sure, deft, unhurried. She removed the organs swiftly, put them gently aside.
“Now I’m into the stomach cavity. Normal. Except for that abdominal aorta. Unusually tortuous. You’ll see a close-up in a second. There it is. Rigid, nodular. Now I’m at the pancreas. Everything out. Everything normal. Intestinal tract normal. Within four hours prior to stopping object had consumed proveal, propep, natural starch—possibly spaghetti—red petrowine, and a few other things. I have it all on my taped report. Now I’m in the lower abdominal area. This took more time than is shown, of course. I cut and spliced the Instaroid tape so you wouldn’t get bored. Genitalia normal. There they are. Testicles large but soft. I’m going into them now. Ejaculation two hours before stopping. Penis small. Here, close-up, discoloration on glans. Analysis showed it to be Amour Now, a popular brand of lip rouge. Color: Passion Flower.”
A sound came out of Paul Bumford next to me. Whether it was a groan, a sigh, or a giggle, I could not tell.
“Into the legs now,” Mary Bergstrom continued, staring intently at the TV screen. “Nothing unusual. Good musculature. Strong. Good skin tone. But here again, close-up, tortuous and sclerotic femoral arteries. That completes the tape of the PM. Now we go to the tissue slides.”
Paul straightened in the sling, took his hand from his eyes, looked at the TV glass.
“Cross sections,” Mary narrated. “Gross slices, gold-palladium coated. For the SEM. Arterial. One: Internal carotid. Two: External carotid. Three: Thoracic aorta. Four: Abdominal. Five: Common iliac. Six: Femoral. Now we go to venous. One: Jugular. Two: Iliac. Three: Subclavian. Four: Vena cava. Finally, sections of those ‘healthy’ organs. One: Heart. Two: Liver. Three: Kidney. That’s it.”
The tape wound to whiteness. I pushed the Off button. We sat there in semidarkness, in silence. I couldn’t believe what I had seen.
Paul Bumford spoke first.
“J-J-Jesus Christ!” he burst out. “Are those cross sections for real?”
“I have the shavings,” Mary Margaret Bergstrom intoned. “I have the slides. It’s all in my report.”
After my initial shock, I began to realize what had happened to Frank Lawson Harris. Those arteries and veins looked like obso iron pipes, the inside surfaces so encrusted with rust that flow was slowed and finally choked completely. It would take years, maybe a century, for iron pipes to become that obstructed. I suspected the stopped em’s circulatory system had been plugged in minutes, and the intensive venous involvement suggested a nonphysiologic process.
I stood and raised the shades. We blinked in the strong south light.
“Anyone want anything?” I asked.
“Something stronger than Smack,” Paul said. His voice was shaky.
I had been saving a bottle of natural apple brandy for a special occasion. This seemed like a “special occasion.” I poured three small glasses—real glass—and served their drinks, then brought mine. I stood before them, leaning on the TV set.
“Paul?” I said, “you all right?”
“Fine,” he said defiantly. “I’m fine.”
“You saw the tissue slides. Diagnosis?”
“Extensive, widespread infractions involving multiple organ systems.”
“Mary?”
“I concur.”
“Any idea what caused it, Paul?” I asked.
“Ingestion. Injection.”
“Not ingestion.” Mary Bergstrom shook her head. “I’d have found traces in the stomach lining or intestinal tract. Not injection. I went over the object carefully with a high-powered magnifier prior to PM. He was clean.”
“Inhalant?” I suggested.
They looked at me.
“Possible,” Paul said.
“Probable,” Mary said.
“All right.” I nodded. “Now what did he inhale?” “Something,” Paul said. “Something that caused wild, uncontrolled platelet agglutination and limpid deposition.”
“Serotonin,” Mary said. I looked at her, surprised and pleased. She had learned a lot, outside her discipline. “It’s got to be the serotonin. Probably a manipulated form of 5-HT. The East uses it as an interrogative technique. By injection. Very painful. Very. But this must have been by inhalation. Stopping him almost instantaneously.”
“I concur.” I nodded. “The military played with it in the obso days of hypothesized chemwar. But they rejected it. Too lethal.” “Too lethal?” Paul cried. “For a nerve gas?”
“Use your brain. It killed instantly. So we wipe out all of France. Seventy-five million humans stopped, plus all other warm-blooded animals, including those marvelous geese with their synthetic-hormone-injected livers. What do we do for foie gras then? Seriously, what would the military do? All those corpora to flame. Vegetation gone too, if we wanted. What’s the point? War is geography. That’s why the military put lethal gas in the icebox and switched to temporary incapacitators. Knock ’em out, walk in wearing masks, take away their weapons, wait for them to wake up. Then they go back to work, the horses pull, the dogs bark, the birds sing, and those geese feel their livers expand. Beautiful. Simple and humane. But at one time, back in the 1970’s and ’80’s, a 5-HT gas existed. Probably still does. In a deep cave somewhere in Colorado.”
I paused.
“The New York Peace Department will be very interested in this,” I continued smoothly. “Mary, you did a fine service.”
If I had told her she was gorgeous, she couldn’t have blushed a deeper hue.
“Thank you,” she said faintly.
“Run a lung slice to confirm. I think you’ll find it. Then put the object back together again. Paul will give you the final disposition.”
She nodded to us and was gone.
“A very bright ef,” I said, after the door closed behind her. “Sometimes she scares me,” Paul said gloomily.
‘‘Pure intelligence is always scary. You’ve never met Lewisohn, have you? There’s a creative intellect that’s terrifying.”
The Tomorrow File Page 4
