Alan E. Nourse - The Bladerunner (2 page)

"I know," the girl sighed. "Well, do the best you can, and we'll just hope we see you tonight. And Billy—be careful, whatever you do. Doc may hate to cancel cases, but he'd hate even more to have you in trouble. After all, without you functioning there couldn't be any cases."

II

Outside the station the wind was getting colder, and Billy Gimp pulled his coat and muffler up tight around his neck. A cream-colored ground-cab was just discharging passengers, but he passed it by and started back on foot toward the lift down to the Lower City. Ordinarily Billy would never have dreamed of going to Parrot's any way but by private ground-cab—but this, he decided, was no ordinary evening.

The customary cab tide was not just a matter of Billy's crippled foot, although any extended walking was slow and painful for him. Far more, the cab was a matter of image and status. A bladerunner with a topflight, busy doctor was making money, and people with money never walked, not in the city. What was more, Parrot himself would begin to get edgy if a bladerunner walked to his establishment too often. After all, Parrot too had certain standards to uphold.

In fact, it had been Parrot's extraordinary reputation that had brought Billy there in the first place. In every underworld there is a hierachy, and Parrot was tops in his branch of the world of underground medicine. Parrot was far more than merely a supplier of stolen surgical goods, although he was that too. A former army medic, Parrot knew surgical procedures, and he knew what supplies were needed for each kind of case. Unlike many suppliers, Parrot never believed the labels on the surgical packs that came into his hands, stolen from hospital supply rooms all over the city, and he had no faith in their supposed sterility. Each pack he personally opened and inspected, adding extra blades to this one, additional forceps to that one, more sponges for one, double gloves for yet another. Always he allowed for a margin of error, and prepared his packs accordingly before autoclaving them himself for certain sterility. There was no pressing need for a margin of error in the government Hospital surgeries; if a surgeon found something missing at any time, a second pack could always be opened on the spot. But kitchen-table surgery was a different matter. Some docs carried their own extra supplies and some did not, but when the chips were down in the middle of a difficult underground case, that was no time to have to send a bladerunner out for additional supplies.

For Parrot, the care he expended was no labor of love; it, too, was a matter of status. Parrot's clientele was elite, and no one knew it better than Billy Gimp. He had dealt with plenty who weren't, in the course of his seventeen years. His first job as a bladerunner had taught him the difference between good medicine and bad. His doc at that time had been a greenhorn, dreadfully inexperienced and scared to death of detection; his work had been both overswift and oversloppy. Small wonder that his bladerunner had been equally careless. Cheap suppliers provided dirty dressings and contaminated instruments; the doc had tried to cover by using some of his own supplies stolen from Central Supply at his Hospital, but there were still far too many postsurgical infections, unnecessary complications, even operative and postoperative deaths in those days, and Billy found himself nervously moving from doc to doc, always afraid that some spectacular surgical disaster would drop the axe on his neck as well as the doc's.

And then, three years ago, he had found Doc, and things were suddenly different. Doc could spot contaminated surgical packs from a mile away, and either did his own boiling or turned them back, with short shrift for Billy
and
the supplier. "Tabletop surgery is bad enough without making it any worse than necessary," Doc had said angrily. "The patients are paying me for sterile packs, and that's what I'm going to get them, or your supplier can go whistle."

It had been a novel attitude, in Billy's experience, almost an amusing attitude until it finally dawned on him that Doc was no greenhorn in underground medicine, and really meant what he said: that he wouldn't take or use inferior supplies; from that point on it became a matter of pride for Billy to find him good supplies, and his search for a reliable supplier had become a major quest. Money wasn't the issue; Doc didn't mind paying premium coin if the supplies were good. Doc never argued a price hike with Billy, and soon, to his own surprise, Billy was no longer overpricing the goods to Doc so badly. And then he had heard of Parrot, who allowed no gouging whatever, and who was fussy which doctors he supplied and which bladerunners he dealt with. After long negotiations Parrot had finally, reluctantly, agreed to supply Billy and Doc, on the strength of Doc's legitimate reputation as a topflight Hospital surgeon, and Billy's reputation as a runner who kept his nose clean. There were certain conditions, however. The first was that no one except Parrot did any price gouging, and the second, even more stringent, was that no one dragged a dead fish across Parrot's trail for
anything.

All of which explained why, on this particular evening and under these particular circumstances, Billy Gimp turned his back on the ground-cabs lingering outside the heli-cab station and proceeded on foot to find Parrot, to arrange for two T&A packs for the evening's work and to find out what, if anything, Parrot might have to say about the bug in Billy's room. Billy worked his way through the light foot traffic, picking down-ramps and elevators that carried him down from the Upper City of high-rise apartments, green-belt parks and swift monorails and heli-cabs crisscrossing the sky to the Lower City of darkened streets and alleys, tenements and cheap storefronts. Ground-cabs whispered by him on the ragged, pot-holed Lower City streets; in some places he was the sole pedestrian. And as he walked he kept a close watch to be as sure as possible he was not being followed.

At last he arrived at the place he sought: a narrow, decrepit building around the corner from a main Lower City arterial, with the crowded and dusty window of an antique shop facing the street. Inside, a single customer was poking around in the dusty rubble; Billy feigned interest in some ancient vases and pewter cups until the customer gave up and left. Immediately a wizened gran-ny popped up from behind the counter and peered at Billy through cataract lenses. "Late tonight, eh?" she said finally. "Thought you weren't coming."

"I got stalled," Billy said. "Is Parrot around?"

"He's down in the shop." The old woman brought out a pad and pencil. "Got an order for me?"

"Yes, but I need to see Parrot about it."

Granny wrinkled her mouth. "Pretty fussy these days, aren't you? Well, go on down, just don't waste his time with complaints."

Billy pushed aside a doorway drape, and hobbled down a narrow stairway into a subcellar below and to the rear of the storefront. Suddenly the shabbiness of the upstairs was gone, and he entered Parrot's warehouselike workroom, fastidiously clean, with shelves piled -high with green surgical packs, a huge central worktable surrounded by instrument bins, and a bank of autoclaves hissing steam along the back wall. Within half a minute a short, fat man with a doughy face and grotesque little half-glasses came out from the back room. Parrot beamed when he saw Billy; except for his huge curved nose and a hint of wariness about his eyes, Parrot seemed the epitome of the jovial fat man. "So you walked tonight, eh, Billy? How come? Doc forget to pay you?"

"Doc never forgets to pay me," Billy said.

"Ah, that's very good. Then we can settle accounts for last night." Parrot paused, punching at the computer console on the table. "That'll be two hundred in markers or four hundred in legal credits."

"Markers," Billy said. He pulled a handful of red chips from his pocket and piled them on the worktable. Parrot picked them up, dropping them one by one through a coin scanner. Then he pocketed all but one which he left lying on the table.

"You've got a bad one there, Billy." Billy replaced it with another. As he reached for the rejected marker, Parrot flipped it deftly into his own hand. "Wouldn't want it to get back into circulation, would we, Billy?" he said. "No, not so good, that. Now, then. What's for tonight?"

"Two T&A sets," Billy said. "And a can of ether. For some reason, Doc wants to use ether."

"For tonsils?" Parrot clicked his tongue. "That's a little odd."

"I don't argue," Billy said. "Those were Doc's orders, so that's what he wants. Just give me the locker key and see that the stuff is there by nine o'clock."

Parrot looked up over his half-glasses. "You're very sharp with me tonight, Billy. Something wrong?"

"You'd be sharp too if you woke up with a bug in your room."

"I see." Parrot pursed his lips slowly. "Well, now. A bug, you say? Now that is very interesting." He motioned Billy to a seat. "Tell me about this bug."

Billy told him. Parrot listened intently, scratching his chin, his eyes half closed. Finally Billy finished and Parrot looked at him.

"Anything in addition to the bug itself?" Parrot asked.

"Not that I could see. I didn't try the phone or the computer to find out."

"That was very wise. What about a stakeout? Anybody following you? Mail tampered with recently?"

"I don't get mail," Billy said.

"Then what about other things? Doc having trouble with his cases lately?"

"Not much. Doc doesn't usually have trouble, and when he does he takes care of it."

"Yes, of course, your Doc is one in a thousand. And nothing has changed? Doc's nurse? The anesthetist?"

"The nurse is okay. The anesthetist is drunk about half the time, so Doc and I have to pinch hit sometimes. But where do you find an anesthetist who doesn't get drunk? Nothing different there." Billy paused. "Of course, somebody else could have fingered me."

"Ah, yes," the fat man said. "Like me, I suppose." He shrugged, chuckling. "But if so, I would hardly tell you about it, would I?"

"No," Billy said sullenly.

"Nor would I want you to be coming around again either, eh? No. Well, you add it up, Billy. If I ever wanted you to be nailed you wouldn't be coming around, you'd be nailed. So let's forget about me fingering you. The real question is, is Health Control really after you, or is this just a screening check that you happened to get caught in?"

"That's what I'd like to know," Billy said. "If it's a routine screener, I could at least use my phone. Until I know, I'm cut off from everything."

"Well, maybe we can help you find out," Parrot said. He reached forward and pushed an intercom button on the worktable. "Phil? Why don't you come out here." Parrot looked up at Billy. "You know Phil Hawk, don't you? Runs blades for Doc Gentry out of Hospital Number Eight. He's not feeling so good, got that Shanghai flu that's going around, so he's holed up here where I can keep an eye on him."

A door at the back of the shop opened, and an extremely thin, pinch-faced youth of fourteen emerged. He gave Billy a wan smile. "Hi, Billy. How things going?"

"Not so good," Billy said. "But you don't look so hot either."

The youth sat down, visibly shivering in a long, ragged bathrobe. "Don't get too close to me," he said, "there's been lots of this going around the last week or so." He looked up at Billy. "You got troubles?"

Parrot nodded. "Tell him, Billy."

Billy told the youth about the bug in his room. Phil Hawk listened, then looked over at Parrot. "You see?" he said. "I told you something funny was going on."

"What do you mean?" Billy said.

"I mean you aren't the only one," Phil replied. "I had the same thing last week, and so did my buddy Max— you know Max? They even hauled him in for a bunch of questions. But mine must have been a screening sweep, because two days later it was gone."

"Anybody else you know of?" Parrot said.

"Not personally, but the place I hang out there's a lot of talk."

"It's more than talk," Parrot said. "I know of twen-ty-five cases in the last month for sure, and they couldn't all be screening sweeps. And it's not only bladerunners, either."

"Then who else?" Billy asked sharply.

Parrot smiled. "Like me, for instance."

"You mean you're bugged right
nowT'

"For the last two weeks, to be exact."

Billy half rose from his chair. "You could have said something—"

Parrot laughed. "You're not talking into a bug right now, if that's what's worrying you. Bugs can be spoofed if you know how. The thing is that the bugging has been getting much heavier in the past few weeks, and it's Health Control that's doing the snooping. A couple of odd things, though: I haven't heard of a doctor being bugged during this period, and I haven't heard of a single arrest. A couple of guys like Phil's friend Max have been hauled in for questioning, but they've all been released without any charges. Right, Phil?"

The youth nodded. Billy blinked at them. "Then why the snooping?" he said.

"If we knew, we wouldn't have to worry," Parrot said. "All we know now is that something's going on. The next step is to find out what. Well, maybe we can. I have eyes and ears. I have some people in the clinics, and even a few contacts in Health Control administration." Parrot looked at Billy over his half-glasses. "Suppose I do a quiet check run on you and your Doc, your nurse, the anesthetist, your whole setup. If Health Control is really interested in
you,
then one of two things will happen. Either we'll push them to move, or we'll find out
why
they're onto you without pushing. Either way you'll be ahead."