A Woman a Day

by Philip José Farmer

  “Yah,” drawled Zack. “I ain’t as dumb as you think, doc. We done that before, din’t we?”

  Leif glanced at Sigur. He was standing by the kymo, his back to them, watching the stylos inking the alpha, beta, gamma, kappa and eta waves. The beeping continued; Sigur paid no attention to the noise.

  “When were you born, Zack?”

  “The third of Fertility, 190 A.R.,” Zack said.

  Leif checked that in his note book, then he winked at Zack.

  “Answer the same question in English, Zack. We want to check any difference in the waves effected by using different tongues.”

  Zack complied.

  At the same time, the beeps changed their pattern. Leif’s ear picked it up at once.

  What took you so long, Leif? This is hot. You should have come running. Shib. Here’s the message. Halla Dannto, the wife of the Archurielite, was hurt at 7300 in an auto collision. She was taken to this hospital. You’re to get to her fast. Fast! Get the doctor on-call off the case and call Ava.

  If Halla Dannto is dead, cremate her body without delay. Don’t let anybody besides Ava know you’re burning it. Then go back to her room and act as if she’s still alive.

  Get this! Don’t mention Halla’s death to the woman who’ll take her place.

  She’ll be wearing an old-fashioned street veil when she comes in. Ask no questions. Accept her as the real Halla Dannto. Got it?

  As if he were thinking of something, Leif nodded his head.

  He said, “Now, Zack, next question.”

  Rachel rushed into the room,

  “Doctor Barker!” she said breathlessly. “Doctor Trausti just called me and gave me a message for you. Your QB didn’t seem to be working, so I brought it myself. You’re to come down to room 113 at once. The wife of Archurielite Dannto has just been brought in, badly injured. Trausti wants you to take over.”

  Leif raised his eyebrows.

  “Can’t he handle it?”

  “I suppose he thinks she’s too important for him. Besides, she might die.”

  “And he wants me to take the responsibility for that?” said Leif, smiling. “Tell him I’ll be right down. And, Rachel, get hold of my wife. Demand she drop everything, even if it’s a baby, and get down to 113. Shib?”

  He turned.

  “Sigur, that cancels the experiments for the rest of the day. Tell the other subjects they can leave now.”

  He strode from the room. Outside, he collided with a man who was standing just in front of the door. The fellow staggered backwards; Leif had a fleeting impression that the impact had not been that hard, that the man was exaggerating a little.

  “Pardon me,” he said, and he went to pass on. A strong hand upon his arm stopped him.

  The stranger coughed and then said, “Doctor Barker?” His voice was high and had a slightly foreign accent.

  “I’m in a hurry. See you later,” said Leif.

  He absorbed the man with a glance. He liked to know who the people were around him, what they looked like, and what they were doing. Afterwards, he could give you the essential details.

  Leif was struck. There was something strange, almost artificial about him. He was short and stocky and had a very light skin and hair and light blue eyes. The lobeless ears were large. The nose was a contradiction with its broad flaring nostrils and high arch. The lips were thick.

  “What’s your name?” demanded Leif.

  The fellow coughed.

  “We... I mean I’m Jim Crew.”

  Leif caught the “we” and looked at the others sitting in the waiting room. A man and two women, all young, their faces looking enough like Jim Crew to make them his brothers and sisters.

  “You’re all here for the eegies?” he asked.

  “No, abba,” said Jim Crew. He looked at the others. Two of them closed their eyes. Their eyelashes were long and thick as spider’s legs. Tension suddenly pulled up the slack in the air. Leif felt as if there were invisible threads drawing around him.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “ Abba,” said Jim Crew, “we’ve come to you because you’re the only man in Paris who can help us.”

  One of the women rose to her feet. Her face leaped at Leif with a blonde and savage beauty. At the same time, her expression was strangely abstracted. If you could picture flesh as such a thing, it was like a cubist painting of an ancient saint.

  “Our child is dying,” she crooned, low and throaty. Her thick lips trembled, slurring the words.

  She held her hand out. Jim Crew took it. They said, together, “Our child has been struck by the same auto that killed Halla Dannto.”

  The third woman, still sitting on the divan, her eyes closed, moaned, “Our child is dying. Her skull is cracked open, and there is a splinter of bone pressing upon her brain.”

  The other man suddenly laughed. Contrasted with the evident distress of the others, the laugh was shocking. Leif winced.

  “It doesn’t matter,” the man said. “In one way, no. In another, yes. But if you don’t come quick, our child will be dead.”

  Leif felt as if he were in a dream. He was impatient to get to Mrs. Dannto’s room. Yet, he couldn’t leave.

  “What do you know about Mrs. Dannto?” he said. “How do you know she’s dead?”

  “We know,” said Jim Crew. “We also know she lives again.”

  “I have to go to Mrs. Dannto,” said Leif. “I’m sorry about your child, and I’ll do all I can for her as soon as possible. What room is she in?”

  “She’s not here,” replied the standing woman. She opened her eyes. Bright and light blue, they shone with a glow that did not come from the light-panels.

  “Our child is in a room deep under the city.”

  “What is this all about?” barked Leif. “Tell me quickly. I’ve little time for nonsense.”

  The man on the divan said, “Nonsense such as we mean—” he waved his hand to take in the two women and Jim Crew—“is the only real sense.”

  Jim Crew smiled with big teeth and sad lips.

  “She was struck by the auto that crashed into Halla Dannto’s car. We did not bring her here because that would have meant her death—and ours.”

  The savage beauty moaned, “And our child knew that she might be crushed, and that you might have to come to her and save her.”

  “I’m intrigued,” said Leif in a deep voice, the cords on his muscular neck standing out. “But I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I’m beginning to wonder why you think I wouldn’t call the Uzzites. You’re evidently a case for them.”

  “You wouldn’t do that,” said Jim Crew.

  “You couldn’t,” said the beauty. “We know. Our child knew.”

  “You’ll come to the sewers,” said the second woman.

  “Like H I will,” said Leif. “If you want me to operate on your child, bring her here.”

  He strode away, brushing past Jim Crew.

  As he went through the door, he halted in midstride, almost as if the air had jelled around him.

  Out of the air had come an unsound, a voice that had no syllables borne on no air waves, yet unmistakably made itself heard.

  “ Quo vadis?”

  He turned around.

  “What are you doing?”

  Jim Crew said, “Don’t feel violated, Dr. Barker. We did it so you’d know we’re not... crackpots.”

  “Nor,” added the savage beauty, “people to be slighted.”

  She looked at him, and he was suddenly filled with a grief that he could contain only by the most violent effort.

  He didn’t like it, and his face must have shown it, for in the next second it was gone, leaving him wondering if he had not been imagining it.

  The man on the divan laughed loudly again. And Leif felt like laughing back.

  He gripped the side of the door and squeezed. With the feel of strength came a summoning of rejection. They were looking at him now, all eight eyes blue with a glare that seemed to be
a focus for something shining from inside them: a single light rayed through four pairs of peepholes. He wouldn’t soak any of that light up! He was a mirror, reflecting it back at them, unabsorbed! Master of himself, the way he wanted it, the way he had to have it.

  “I truly would like to come,” he said. “But if you know so much, you know I can’t.”

  “Ah,” breathed Jim Crew through his high-bridged, Gothic nostriled nose, “but you can. Halla Dannto is dead. You can do her no good.”

  He felt as if the floor were slipping away from him. He was sure there should be only three who knew she had died; the interne, Zack and himself. And he and Zack weren’t sure.

  But he didn’t have time to investigate them. Zack had been too insistent on the speed with which he got to room 113 and the secrecy he kept thereafter. Big, dark things, were moving in the background, and he had no time to stop and talk.

  He slammed the door and walked across the room to the QB. He dialed Rachel. The transparent cube projecting from the wall became flickered into a miniature of her office. And at once began flickering again.

  “Rachel,” he said, “did you get hold of Mrs. Barker?”

  “Yes, sir. She’s coming right now.”

  He twisted the dial and started to walk away when Rachel’s voice called. “Dr. Barker. Wait! Rek calling.”

  He turned and dialed her in again. This time her image came in clearly.

  “I’ll tune you in with Archurielite Dannto,” she said. He saw her press some buttons on her desk, and then her office faded away. It was replaced by another, a far larger and more luxuriously furnished office. The desk was huge and dwarfed the man standing behind it. Absalom Dannto was a big man with enormous shoulders, a mountainous paunch, and two chins, the lower of which quivered like the bag of a frightened cow. Leif smiled at the thought and then wiped it off, for the Archurielite was not a man to be trifled with.

  Dannto’s voice boomed through lips distinguished by their absence. “Barker? I’ve just been told my wife was in an accident and that she’s in your hospital. Is she hurt badly?”

  Leif was surprised. The man seemed genuinely concerned.

  “No, abba. I’ve just been told. You interrupted me on my way to her.”

  “Barker, there’s nobody I’d rather have attending her than you. Get down there and save her.”

  Leif veiled his eyes. “I always do my best. No matter who the patient is.”

  “I know that. But for the sake of the Forerunner, do better than your best.”

  There was agony in his voice.

  “Whatever can be done, will be,” said Leif.

  He went to flick the switch that would cut them off, something nobody but himself would have dared do.

  Dannto said, “Wait! I understand she was in an automatic taxi. I suspect unreal conduct on the part of the techs at the control center. So I’ve put Candleman on the case. He’ll probably be down very shortly. Give him every aid so that we may track down the culprits. I’ll be down in a few hours. Just as soon as I can get rocket-clearance. You’ve complete charge of Halla.”

  “Shib, abba,” said Leif. “Does that include precedence over Candleman?”

  “I said complete, Barker.”

  Chapter 4

  LEIF TURNED OFF the QB and strode through the halls, vaguely conscious that the nurses turned admiration towards him, that they liked his bigness, broad shoulders, curly yellow hair, easy smile. He talked and laughed without fear and did not try to catch them in some unreality or other. When he was around, they could unstring their muscles for a while and feel bright and human.

  He halted an elevator going up and stepped in. The nurse standing in it said, “Have you heard that Mrs. Dannto’s been hurt?”

  “That seems to be a very big secret,” said Leif dryly. “I’m taking the car over because I’m on my way down there. You don’t mind?”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Would it make any difference?”

  He pressed the button that sent it sliding downwards at emergency speed. “Not just now, Sarah. What else have you heard?”

  “Dr. Trausti says she’s dead.”

  Leif cursed inwardly, but he smiled.

  “Mrs. Dannto can’t die unless I give the official pronouncement, Sarah. And while I know it’s unethical to question another doctor’s judgement, it’s possible that being human, he’s made a mistake. Also, being too busy to do much reading, he may not have learned of a new technique that has been very successful in ferreting out the dying spark of life in patients who have already been pronounced dead.”

  He lied, of course. But Sarah’s mouth was as big as it looked. In a short time after he’d gone into room 113, she’d have spread it all through the hospital that that wonderful Dr. Barker was using a miraculous technique to bring Mrs. Dannto back from the dead. By the time the story got to the ends of Rigorous Mercy Hospital, it would have Halla Dannto hurrying out the front door on her way to a tennis match.

  Leif stepped from the car and sped down the hall. He found 113 closed and knocked on the door. A group of nurses and orderlies were standing near. He shot a look like buckshot. They scattered.

  Trausti opened the door. His long black hair fell down across his high, narrow forehead. He brushed it aside muttering, “There’s something very strange here, Doctor.”

  Leif stepped inside the room, noting as he did so the sheet-draped form on the cart beside the wall.

  “Something strange?” he said to Trausti. He managed to put a slightly menacing tone in his voice as if he suspected that Trausti might be implicated in something not routine.

  Trausti must have detected the tone, for the hands holding a strip of film trembled.

  “Pardon me, Doctor Barker,” he said. “I mean, something definitely out of the ordinary. At least, I think it is. That is—well, I don’t mean anything. I will allow you to make the decision.”

  Leifs eyebrows rose. “Allow?”

  Trausti became even more flustered. “I—I mean that—well, I mean that I wanted to call to your attention something I do not understand.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Leif, his tone indicating that he did not see at all. “Well, what is it?”

  He was laughing inside himself, for Trausti mercilessly bullied the nurses and internes under him. Leif liked to keep Trausti oil balance, keep him worrying. He suspected Trausti was spying on him for the Uzzites, and he hoped someday to get Trausti into a position where he, Leif, could turn him over to the Uzzites and thus get rid of the danger he represented. Plus also making life easier for the poor devils who had to submit to Trausti’s hectoring.

  “It’s the X-rays I took of Mrs. Dannto,” said Trausti. “Apparently she died of a broken back, but...”

  “I’ll render the official verdict of her demise,” said Leif. “All I want from you is an account of this thing you called strange.”

  Trausti swallowed and said, “Shib, shib, Doctor Barker. However, I am required to give you my findings. You may do what you like then, of course. It is my official opinion, based on these X-rays, that she suffered a broken back, a broken left arm, two broken ribs, compound fractures of the thigh, a broken pelvis, a ruptured liver, and a wound in the solar plexus. You may check my findings when you examine those films.”

  He pointed to a row of strips clipped to a large board.

  “However, these films—” he waved the strip in his hands—“show something that I—forgive me if 1 am wrong —think is rather... uh... odd. This film is an X-ray I took of the uterogenital region.”

  Leif took the film from Trausti’s shaking hand and held it up against the light from the wall. He saw at once what Trausti had meant. A tubular curving body occupied the posterior fornix, the recess behind the neck of the uterus where the upper portion of the vagina surrounded the vaginal portion of the uterus.

  Leif put the film in his pocket and said, “Probably a growth. Whatever it is, it can wait examination until Mrs. Dannto is out of danger.”

  He did
not know if the body was a tumor or cancer or something else. But he wanted to squelch curiosity on Trausti’s part.

  Trausti handed him the second film with a shaking hand.

  “This is an interior shot of the front part of the head.”

  Leif held the strip up to the light—and almost dropped it.

  The film, though called an X-ray because of tradition, actually was the reproduction of images formed by the absorption of ultrasonic beams by organs. This film was one of a series which had photographed the interior of the head in one millimeter stages from front to back. The picture was plain enough. Two nerve cables ran from the posterior of the skull’s frontal bone through the cranial dura mater or protective membrane of the brain. There the two cables were lost in the network of the brain’s frontal lobe.

  The nerve cables had no business being there! Leif had never seen anything like them

  Outwardly nonchalant, but inwardly shaken, Leif also put the second film in his jacket pocket.

  “I’ve seen a case like this before,” he lied. “Also a female. The dissection showed that the nerve cables were mutations. However, since Mrs. Dannto is not dead, we won’t be able to dissect her, will we?”

  He paused, narrowed his eyes, and said harshly, “Do you have Mrs. Dannto’s medical history?”

  Trausti swallowed several times. “N—no. I did not think it was necessary to send for her records, since she is obviously dead. At least, I thought...”

  “Have her history radioed at once from Montreal!” said Leif. “You have been guilty of unrealistic conduct, namely, assumption of too much authority and negligence. How can I treat her without an adequate knowledge of her medical background?”

  Trausti looked as if he were going to strangle. After a struggle, he said, “Then you think...?”

  “I think we medical lamechians know more than you lower order of doctors,” said Leif. “We have techniques available for the members of the hierarchy, which are denied to the lower classes because they do not deserve them. Tell me, has anyone besides yourself and Mrs. Pals-son seen the X-rays?”

  Trausti shook his head, his black hair falling across his eyes.

  “I suggest,” said Leif, “that you two keep this to yourselves. It might be that the Archurielite would not like it to get out that his wife is not quite normal. In fact, I know he wouldn’t. He might reward loose talk with a trip to H.” Trausti, naturally as pale as a fish’s belly, managed to whiten even more.