Alan E. Nourse - The Bladerunner (21 page)

He pondered it as he rode the crowded elevator down to his office floor. One thing was sure: Billy would not like it. Billy was nobody's fool; already he was the unwilling victim of Health Control surveillance, for all that he might have escaped it temporarily. Billy might work for Doc, might even trust Doc (as much as he trusted anybody) but he would most assuredly not trust the unsupported word of a Health Control official even if Doc himself were convinced it was safe. If he were to cooperate at all, it would only be through Doc's influence—and the question was, would he even trust Doc when it came to something like this? If he wouldn't, there was no chance of the plan working. And there was precious little time for Doc to do any tall convincing, either.

Arriving at his office, he was both surprised and relieved to find Molly Barret waiting there. "What are you doing here?" he said. "I thought you had cases this morning."

"I did," she said, "but they pulled me out, told me to report to you. It was Dr. Durham's order. She said you were going to need me."

"Well, she's right about that." Doc sighed and sat down at his desk. "We're going to have our hands full for the next few days, I think." Quickly he told her about the meeting with Katie Durham and the Health Control man, the computer data on the epidemic and the unorthodox attack plan that Mason Turnbull had proposed. "It's got to be underground and it's got to be fast," he concluded, "which means doing a dozen things at once. I've got to contact and recruit every doctor I know that has an underground practice, and in the meantime you and I, between us, are going to have to contact every underground patient we've ever seen and either get them to come in for protection or take the medicine to them. But most crucial of all, Health Control wants me to recruit Billy to get the word spreading through the underground—to reach every person he can that isn't yet qualified for Health Control care and line them up for treatment some way, any way, up to and including directing them into the Hospital Clinics for medication."

"Even if they don't qualify?"

"Even if they don't qualify. Health Control doesn't dare make a public pronouncement, but they'll look the other way in order to get these people protected. If the word can just reach the unqualified ones that it's deadly to try to 'ride out' this Shanghai flu, and that protective medication can be had with no questions asked, Health Control thinks they'll come in. They may be wary and suspicious, but they'll come."

"But those people can't get into a Health Control Clinic without giving their names, identifying numbers, addresses, qualifications, the whole works," Molly protested.

"That's the whole point," Doc said. "The word has got to get out that they
can,
in this instance. The clinic personnel are all getting the word that they aren't even to ask names, just administer the medicine to all comers."

Molly looked at him. "Do you really think Health Control will carry through on something like that?" she asked.

"Yes, I really think they will. I think they
have
to. Molly, if this underground epidemic isn't slowed down right now, there isn't going to be any Health Control; there's going to be chaos. People are going to start dropping like flies, and there's going to be a panic like nothing that's been seen since the Dark Ages. Well, Health Control can't let that happen. They're going to
have
to stand by their word."

"Well, maybe you believe it," Molly said, "and maybe I believe it, but Billy isn't going to believe it."

"He isn't going to want to believe it, but we're going to have to convince him," Doc said.

"How?"

"That's the trouble. I don't
know
how," Doc exploded. "Seems to me we're at loggerheads half the time, that kid and me. Oh, he does his job, no problem there, but when it comes to trusting me, I don't know, I just can't seem to get through to him. He listens to you, all right, but when it comes to me, I might as well be talking to the wind."

"Maybe that's because I treat him like a human being," Molly said softly.

"Well, how do you think / treat him?"

"Like a bladerunner. Somebody to do what you want, when you want it, the way you want it done. Like a clamp or a scalpel or something—just another tool."

"But a bladerunner is a bladerunner."

"Yes, but he's also a person, with feelings and problems just like anybody else." The girl looked up at him angrily. "Doc, if you can't see it for yourself, how am I going to tell you? Of course he doesn't trust you. Why should he? You expect him to do what you want, sure, but when did you last think about what
he
might want? How many times has he asked you about that foot of his? And you just brush him off. There are ten surgeons around here who could fix that foot if you asked them to, and you keep promising, but nothing ever happens."

"Molly, if you think it's just the foot—"

"It isn't just the foot, that's just one of a dozen things. Oh, Doc, are you completely blind? He doesn't want to be just another tool; he looks up to you like nobody else. He wants to be somebody you can be proud of, not just another cheap bladerunner all his life. And yet he hates you half the time because you never give him an inch. If you'd once just give him an inch, just one little inch, you wouldn't believe the difference it would make."

For a long while Doc sat in silence, looking up at the girl. Finally he sighed. "Well, maybe you're right, and I've been blind. Or selfish, or both. I can't change it now, not all at once, that will take time, and there isn't time for changes now. For right now, all I can do is ask him to help. Maybe he will, and maybe he won't—but the chips are really down now, Molly. There's nothing else I can do but try."

Slowly, then, he picked up the telephone and punched out Billy's number.

PART THREE

THE BLADE RUNNER

I

For Billy Gimp the twenty-four hours that had elapsed after Doc had left him were the longest he had ever spent in his life. After Doc had gone, he had sat shivering in his room, waiting for the aspirin to beat down the fever, huddling in his coat as he alternately chilled and perspired. Finally he had crawled into bed, turned out the lights, and tried to sleep, but sleep came fitfully, with fever nightmares jarring him awake every twenty or thirty minutes. He tried sitting up and reading for a while, but could not keep his mind on the cheap paperback book. Finally, he lay blinking up at the darkness, his mind raising phantoms as fearful as the nightmares that had shaken his sleep.

Around his wrist he felt the hard pressure of the transponder bracelet and the muffler mesh that now surrounded it. At first he had welcomed the chance to be free of the tell-tale signal from the court-imposed transmitter, but now he was having second thoughts. Too feverish and achy to think it through at the time, it now occurred to him that it must be quite as illegal to muffle a transponder and substitute a phony signal as to remove it altogether. So far he had escaped prison terms or correctional time in his many scrapes with the law, but it seemed to him that getting caught out in a deliberate fraud, an inactivated bracelet still attached to his wrist, would practically guarantee a confinement sentence if he should be nailed. And certainly the risk of detection would be great. Surely whoever was monitoring his transponder signal would get suspicious sooner or later if it never moved more than a block or two on the grid from one day to the next, and such freedom as he had with the muffler in place would be short-lived at best. And how could he trust the man who had installed the muffler, or even Doc himself, not to talk if the police were to put on the pressure? Maybe the man did owe Doc a favor, but such casual disregard for the law and its potential penalities?

Billy shook his head, feeling increasingly bewildered. Most confusing of all was Doc himself. Why had he been so anxious to get Billy's transponder muffled? He wasn't usually so solicitous of Billy's wants and feelings. Of course, it was nice enough for Doc to have Billy free to move around without surveillance—but what would he do if Billy got caught? As usual, Doc himself was in the clear. Sure, he'd taken a certain small risk, coming to Billy's room, but he could always claim he'd been called out to see a Hospital patient, perfectly legal even though Health Control frowned on it. Doc always managed to stay in the clear, but how far would he go for Billy if it came to a real showdown? How far could he really be trusted in a crunch? Probably not very far. After all, bladerunners were a dime a dozen these days. He could throw Billy to the wolves any time he wanted to—and there was precious little Doc had ever done to suggest that he thought of Billy as anything but a handy convenience, a link in the chain of getting his underground work done, but an expendable link that could be replaced without a second thought any time Doc thought it was necessary.

Even at the time, Billy was aware that these were fever-thoughts, paranoid nightmares his mind was conjuring up to torment him. In the morning when he could think more clearly, he'd probably laugh at himself for such fears. Yet the very fact that the fears were there, so close to the surface, seemed slightly ominous. He wished desperately that Molly was there to talk to for a while. She, at least, could see things straight, and she had always treated him as an equal, a teammate rather than a flunky. Molly would be loyal, in a pinch, she would help if she could, but he couldn't call her out of bed at 4:00 in the morning. He got up, took more aspirin, trying to get his mind to quiet down. For now, there was nothing to do, nothing was going to happen before morning and that would be time enough to talk to Molly, if he still wanted to. Back in bed he closed his eyes again, forced his mind to relax, and finally slept for a while in spite of the recurring nightmares.

He woke to a grim winter day, almost 11:00 and the sky a threatening gray. Groaning, he dragged himself to his feet and started to dress. The headache and fever were back, and his body felt as if he had been pounded all night with sledge hammers. Groggily he looked for the envelope of capsules Doc had left for him—or had he dreamed that, too? Maybe he'd knocked them off onto the floor. He debated for a moment getting down on his hands and knees to look under the bed, but the very thought of that much exertion exhausted him and brought sweat out on his forehead. He found some more aspirin in the closet over the sink, swallowed two of them and then took two more for good measure. Maybe Doc would call and he could ask him about the capsules. He had no appetite, but he fished some rolls and butter and a half-finished milkshake from the refrigerator and forced himself to eat some. His eye caught the phony transmitter lying on his dresser, and he glanced down at the muffled instrument on his wrist. He was free to go out, move around if he wanted. He thought of this for a while, climbed into his coat, then lay back down on the bed in a fit of shivering. Maybe later he could go out, get some air, get away from the stifling atmosphere of this place for a while, but first he had to muster some strength. Doc probably wouldn't be calling until later in the day anyway, somewhere near his usual time if he had a case lined up for evening.

The telephone jangled loud in the room. It rang three or four times before he could get across the room to stop it. "Billy here," he said.

"This is Doc," the familiar voice said. "How are you doing?"

"Okay, I guess. I dunno, I just got up."

"All right, listen, Billy. I've got to talk to you. Something's come up that requires some fast action."

"Doc, if you've got a case tonight, I dunno, I don't feel very good."

"This isn't a case the way you mean," Doc said, "and it's really urgent Billy, I want you to grab a cab and get over here to my office as quickly as you can."

"To your office? You crazy or something? If they make a fix on this phony transponder you could have them right in your lap."

"You let me worry about that, okay? We've got to talk right away, and we can't do it on the phone. Get a cab and come on over just as fast as you can."

Before Billy could protest further, the receiver went dead. Billy sat staring stupidly at the phone for a few moments, still not certain that he had heard right. Suddenly an immense weariness seized him; more that anything else, he wanted to collapse into bed again, but instead he slowly buttoned up his coat, wrapped a scarf around his neck and checked his pockets for cab fare. A few moments later he took a last feverish look around his room and then stumbled down the stairs to the street.

The trip was a living nightmare as his mind slid in and out of waking fever-dreams. The snow was piled in drifts along the sidewalk and street, and he had to struggle up, over or through them, sometimes plunging down hip-deep into the soft stuff and filling his shoes with snow as he extricated himself. No shovel-trucks had yet made it to this tenement area of the Lower City, and there were no cabs until he finally reached one of the Upper City arterials. Even then they wouldn't stop, whizzing by as he waited, cringing in the face of an icy wind. Finally he stepped out in the street, waving his arms directly in the path of a cab and brought it to a skidding halt. He had to pay in advance, but a moment later he was huddling in the back seat, chilling as the cab moved up into the more open streets of the Upper City. He dozed as he rode; at one point it occurred to him to check to see if he was being followed, but even the effort of turning around and peering out the back window seemed more than he could manage. He finally gave up and sat back to rest as the cab made its way up the thoroughfares and finally pulled in at the main lobby entrance to Hospital No. 7. A moment later Billy was making his way through the crowds of people in the lobby to the first bank of elevators. At the twenty-eighth floor he turned right and finally stopped in front of an office door marked
JOHN H. LONG
, M.D. Wearily, he pushed his way in without knocking.