Alan E. Nourse - The Bladerunner (27 page)

"Maybe you'd better look again."

Startled, Billy looked at his wrist. It was bare. Then he saw the transponder lying on the bedside stand, with the muffler net beside it. "I persuaded Health Control to persuade the court that you could probably manage without that," Doc said wryly. "They had to clear it through the Secretary himself, but they saw the light when I pointed out to them how eager the newspapers were to know just how all you bladerunners happened to cooperate so splendidly with the health authorities. Anyway, you're completely legal right now—for once. All you have to do now is get your strength back, and heal up your chest."

From the other side of the bed Molly Barret cleared her throat. "Wasn't there something else you were going to get arranged?"

"What do you mean?" Doc said.

"Seems to me I remember a promise you were tossing around the last time we were all together."

"Oh, that." Doc coughed. "Well, sure, but he can't be undergoing surgery in the shape he's in now. He'll need a couple of months to get up and around, get strong again—"

"Doc, you promised," Molly said hotly. "And doctor or no doctor, you're not going to wiggle out this time, if I have to go to Dr. Durham herself to make you come across!"

"—'and the orthopedic surgeon I talked to this morning refused to schedule Billy sooner than the first week in March, if his chest X-ray is clear. So we have a tentative date for March eighth. If you still want it done."

"You mean here? In the Hospital?"

"Right here, and one of the best bone surgeons in the city."

Billy sat looking at his foot for a long moment. "I suppose in a way I'll kind of miss it," he said finally. "But not too much. It's like getting rid of that transponder."

"And while you're waiting," Doc added, "you'll have time to be thinking about what to do with yourself after it's fixed. Lots of things are going to be changing, I think, including a whole new look at the problem of getting health care to people. And if the Senate legislates a new medical program with fewer eugenics controls and better legal health care coverage, we aren't going to need bladerunners any more."

"I suppose not," Billy said. "But what else? It's the only thing I know."

"You can learn," Doc said. "We don't know yet how drastic the changes will be. The robot-training program

is going to be shelved, and a whole new set of Health Control priorities worked out, including more legal care for more people without enforcing the qualification laws. Of course, there'll still be qualification tests for some illnesses, and there may still be a need for underground medicine of some sort, at least for a while. But you don't have to stay there, Billy. You know a lot more about practical medical care right now than most medical students. We may not need bladerunners too much anymore, but we'll need plenty of well-trained, capable medics to help the doctors out. And later on, if you want—well, I have a hunch we're going to be training a whole lot of new doctors soon, too."

A nurse interrupted with a call for Doc. He nodded, and touched Billy's hand. "You think about it," he said. "We'll talk later. We'll have plenty of time to talk."

He left them then, but Molly stayed a while longer, and they talked. "It's going to be strange," Billy said. "I mean, for you and me. Not like the old team at all."

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe not an underground team —but there are other kinds of teams."

"Maybe. But if I'm studying, and you're all tied up with work somewhere else—"

"But Billy, I'm not going anywhere. Before, we never really had a chance to even talk, much less get to know each other. Now at least there can be a chance, if we want it that way." They talked some more, until Billy began to doze. Molly promised to visit again the next day, and then tiptoed from the room. Later, when he awoke, it was nighttime. He eased himself out of bed, supporting himself with the back of a chair, and hobbled over to the window. Before him the whole city spread in -a blaze of night lights, the same old city as ever, showing no sign of the grim shadow of death and disaster that had swept over it so recently, yet oddly different now as Billy watched. Pulling the chair up, he sat staring out at the lights, seeing them now as he never had before, as

the implications of Doc's words struck home.
To walk straight and free and never to limp again. To work, someday, as a free and legal member of a great profession, to climb out of the dim underworld he had known for so long. . . .

Billy sighed, his fingers on the glass. There would be changes, all right. Things would never again be like they were—new work, new demands, new responsibilities, and no returning to times as they had been. Momentarily he felt a pang of regret, a twinge of panic, at the thought of a whole way of life left behind. Like a crippled foot, so familiar and yet so dreadful. Given a choice, a real choice. . . .

Slowly he turned away from the window, walked back to the bed, regret vanishing from his mind. Maybe, he thought, it was merely having a choice that let him see the future not with panic but with eagerness and excitement. Because now, he knew, he really had a choice.