The Tomorrow File (51 page)

“No way,” Maya said. Climbing off her stretcher. “I’m mobile. And I’m not going to,miss the fun.”

It didn’t seem the right moment to assert my authority over her. If I had any.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s get on with Roach.”

The five of us got in each other’s way getting him off the stretcher onto the hospital bed. Finally, I made the two efs and Paul stand clear. Seth Lucas and I stripped Roach down. Maya’s first report had been accurate: The em was blessed.

“It looks like a baby’s arm with an apple in its fist,” I said. The standard encomium. “Paul, let’s have the syringe first.”

He took his plastic shopping bag from the closet, extracted a hypogun. There was a sealed vial in the case. Actually a cartridge to fit the gun.

“I’ll do it,” Paul said.

If he wanted to demonstrate his complicity, fine.

“In the neck,” I told him.

He loaded the gun expertly, cocked it by pulling back the springoperated plunger. He placed the muzzle on the side of Roach’s neck, pulled the trigger. There was an audible “Pflug!” sound. The indicator on the gun showed empty. Paul replaced it in the shopping bag.

We had decided on a purazine compound in a liquid that could be subcutaneously injected. We administered two cc’s. It would produce a temporary memory block for approximately eight hours prior to the time of injection. The memory erasure with this particular compound was not permanent. Within a week or two, Roach would remember everything. By then, we hoped, it would make no difference.

He was lying naked, supine on the hospital bed. I pulled him across to the left side. I straightened his left arm. Now everyone was serving. Roach’s digiwatch was removed from his left wrist, placed on the bedside table.

“The signet ring?” Mary asked.

“No, no,” I said hurriedly. “Leave it on. Identification that it’s really his arm. He’ll recognize it.”

The portable laserscope was brought close. The bed had to be raised electrically so that Roach’s arm could be slipped easily into the image tunnel. Then the laserscope was moved to one side. Dr. Seth Lucas wheeled over a sturdy stainless steel table covered with a towel on a square of plastirub padding. On the table were two natural-rubber blocks and a surgical mallet.

Roach’s forearm was laid across the rubber supports. Just below his elbow and just above his wrist. The arm was supported about five cm above the table surface.

“Seth,” I said casually, “give it a whack.”

I had intended to break Art Roach’s arm myself. But after Paul had proved his loyalty by administering the memory inhibitor, I computed it might be wise if Dr. Seth Lucas also performed an overt act.

Lucas picked up the surgical mallet. Suddenly his face was glistening with sweat. He looked at me. Appealing.

“Try for the radius,” I said. “A simple break. Not a compound fracture.”

Almost blindly, he hit Roach’s arm. Too close to the wrist, and such a light tap I doubted if it would bruise the skin.

“Give me that,” Mary Bergstrom growled. She grabbed the mallet roughly from Seth’s nerveless hand.

We moved in closer. Mary pursed her lips, studying the white, almost hairless arm. She pulped the flesh feeling for bone position and thickness. Then, with a look of utter concentration, she raised the mallet and smacked it down.

We all heard it. I was convinced Roach’s arm had been shattered into a million pieces. But no, it appeared whole. No jagged splinters of bone protruded.

“Laserscope,” I ordered.

Paul and Lucas (breathing heavily) held Roach’s arm immobile while the table was rolled away and the laserscope moved close. The arm was slid into the tunnel, the set switched on. We crowded around the viewing screen. There it was: a definite hairline break in the radius, midway between elbow and wrist.

“Beautiful, Mary,” I said. “Just what we wanted.”

“Thank you,” she murmured. “Another tap? A light one, just to enlarge it?”

“No, no,” I said hastily. “This will do fine. Paul, take the plates, from various angles. Make certain the signet ring shows.”

We took a holder of 3-D holographic laserpix. Dr. Seth Lucas departed with the film to have it processed by the night crew in the lab. We wheeled the tables out of the way. Paul and I moved Roach back into the center of his bed while Mary pressed the two sections of his cracked arm tightly together.

Paul took the inflatable arm splint out of his bag of tricks and handed it to me. I slid my hand inside, felt about cautiously.

“The Electronics Team did a good service,” Paul said.

He was right. The self-powered transmitter was no larger than a postage stamp, and almost as flat. What bulk it had came from the plastifoam padding in which it was encased. So it wouldn’t press into the arm and impede circulation.

We gently pulled the limp plastic sleeve over Roach’s cracked arm. It reached from just below his elbow to the limits of the metacarpals, the large knuckles. His fingers, and that signet ring, hung free.

We attached the bottle of compressed air provided by Dr. Seth Lucas. We began to inflate the splint. Slowly. Smoothing out the wrinkles. Pulling it taut. I kept an eye on the splint valve. When the dial showed the recommended pressure for the splint, I gave it an additional two psi, cut it off, detached dial, tube, valve nipple. The splint was rigid, hard as plaster.

“Let’s check it out,” I said. “Paul, you go. We’ll keep talking.”

I gave him the key to my Rover. We had put the receiver on the back seat, covered with the topcoat I had brought down from GPA-1.

Paul left. Maya Leighton said, faintly, “I think I better sit down.”

Mary and I whirled to look at her. She was suddenly quite pale, forehead moist. Mary got to her first, helped her into a chair, felt for her pulse. I rummaged through Paul’s shopping bag, found the half-liter of natural brandy I had asked him to provide. I poured a double dollop into a Hospice plastiglass, held it to Maya’s lips.

“A little at a time,” I told her. “Gently, gently. You deserve it all. You were magnificent.”

“I was, wasn’t I?” She smiled wanly. “Did you have to break his arm?”

“Yes.” I nodded seriously. “We did. We could have put the splint on a whole arm and told him it was broken. But what if he insisted on proof? Show him someone else’s plates? What if he wanted to see it himself on the laserscope, or asked for another doctor, another set of plates? Or went to another Hospice? Also, we couldn’t put a bugged splint on Seymour Dove’s arm. Roach is very cautious, very careful. He’d have been immediately wary of taking a bribe from an em with his arm in a splint. Roach would have suspected an implanted bug. But it won’t occur to him that
he
might be shared. This way, he won’t take the other em to a sauna or steam room. And because the splint covers his left wrist, where he usually wears his digiwatch, he’ll have to wear the watch on his right wrist. That reduces the possibility of his wearing a wrist monitor and discovering he’s a walking broadcasting station.”

“You thought of everything,” Maya marveled. Sipping her brandy.

“We tried to anticipate every eventuality.” I nodded. “But tonight was just preparation. We’re not home free. Now we—”

The door was unlocked. Paul strode in. Grinning from ear to ear.

“Clear as a bell,” he laughed. “We’re home free.”

“Mary,” I said, “will you take care of Maya? Get her cleaned up, into a hospital gown. Bandage that hand. Maybe a romantic head bandage, a turban, would be nice.”

Maya looked at me.

“What I’ve got aching you can’t bandage,” she said.

That brandy had served quickly.

October 19.

1010: I was in the offices of Group Lewisohn. Had been since 0800. A Hospice nurse was sitting with Art Roach. Her orders were to call me the moment he showed signs of regaining consciousness. When the call came, I grabbed up the file of laserpix and went directly to his room. He was sitting up in bed, looking as ridiculous, helpless, and furious as any object wearing a short paper gown slit up the back. He gawked when I came in.

What are
you
doing here ?” he demanded. Instantly suspicious. “Nurse,” I said quietly, “would you leave the room, please.” After the door closed behind her, I went up to his bedside. I lifted his right wrist. Pressed the inner surface professionally. Not bothering to count.

“How are you feeling?” I asked sympathetically.

“Lousy,” he said. He repeated: “What are
you
doing here?” “I’ve been here for five days. Treating Hyman Lewisohn. Angela knows where I am. When you were brought in, they called me. Because of your security clearance.” I added virtuously: “Regulations.”

“I know the regulations,” he said angrily.

Suddenly he realized what I had said.

“Brought in?” he said. “Brought in from where? When?” “Don’t you remember?”

He groaned, rubbed his free hand across his forehead.

“I don’t remember a damned thing since—since—what day is this?”

“October 19.”

“Then it was yesterday. The eighteenth. I was sitting in my office at Headquarters. About 1600. I was signing requisitions. That’s the last thing I remember.”

“Oh-oh,” I said. “That doesn’t sound so good. Let me take a look.”

Fear came into his eyes. We had been counting on his hypochondria.

“What is it?” he gasped. “What’s happened to me?”

I didn’t answer. I pressed him back onto the pillow. I shoved up his eyelids, beamed a pencilite into his pupils. Then I felt his skull, fingertips probing through his fine, brush-cut hair.

“Hurt here?” I asked. “Here? Here? Here?”

“No. No. NO! Goddamn it, doc, what’s wrong?”

I don’t like to be called doc.

“Loss of memory might indicate possible concussion,” I said coldly. “But I see no gross indicators. Eyes clear. No cranial contusions. But that amnesia bothers me. Maybe we should take some tests.”

“What kind of tests?” he cried desperately.

“Very simple,” I said cruelly. “We go into the brain with a needle—local anesthetic; you won’t feel a thing—and draw off some fluid for analysis.”

“My brain feels fine,” he said. Shaken. “Just fine.”

“Sure it does,” I said softly. “The brain has no capacity to feel pain inflicted on itself. You think everything’s normal, and then—’ ’ I snapped my fingers.

“My God,” he breathed.

“Well,” I said briskly, “we’ll discuss that later. Now . . .how’s the arm?”

“This?” he said. He raised the inflated splint in front of him and looked at it with wonderment. “What the hell
is
it?!’

I shook my head. Discouraged.

“You really don’t remember, do you? You broke your arm. We put it in an inflatable splint. Want to see the plates?”

I held the laserpix to the light. I pointed out the hairline fracture. He saw his own signet ring.

“Will it heal okay?” he asked anxiously.

“It should,” I said. Doctorial hedging. “You’ll have to carry it in a sling for about two weeks. I don’t anticipate any complications. Any other aches or pains?”

“My neck,” he groaned. Rubbing it. “Here, on this side. It hurts.”

Where Paul had shot him with the hypogun. I inspected it carefully.

“Just a
min
or bruise,” I told him. “If that’s all you’ve got, you’re lucky. After that accident.”

“Accident?” he cried. Horrified. “What accident?”

“Oh, that’s right. Amnesia. Well, do you remember having a date with Maya Leighton?”

“Yes. Yes, I remember that. I was supposed to go to her place for dinner last night.”

“Very good,” I nodded approvingly. “Now do you remember being there?”

“No. I don’t remember that at all.”

“Oh. Too bad. Well, according to Maya, you arrived on time,' had dinner, and then, about2140, you both decided to go out. Some cabaret or tavern. The King’s Pawn, I think it was. Does that ring any bells?”

“I don’t remember going there last night. But I know the place. We’ve been there before.”

“Well, you and Maya were on your way there. Maya was driving. It’s a two-lane road. A semitrailer was coming in the opposite direction. Some nut swung out to pass just as the truck went past you. Maya swerved to avoid a head-on. Her car went off the road, down into a gully, banged into the trees. Thankfully, she wasn’t driving too fast. The doors were sprung, you were both thrown out. No one stopped to assist. Maya came to, and, when she couldn’t bring you around, staggered down the road to call for help.”

I could almost hear his synapses clicking.

“Who did she call?” he asked.

“The Hospice. Here. She knows the regulations. She wouldn’t call the local cops. So they sent out an ambulance from the Welcome Ward to bring you and Maya in.”

“What happened to the car?”

“Maya’s sports car? Banged up considerably. Ruined front fender. Probably need new doors. It’s in a garage over in Hamlet West.”

“How’s Maya?”

Sweet em. I thought he’d never ask.

“Maya’s doing fine. She’s got a bad hand and scalp lacerations, but we can’t find anything worse.”

“Listen, doc, can you gloss this? I mean, I don’t want to get Maya in any trouble.”

It was his own muffin ass that was troubling him.

“Well.. . .” I considered thoughtfully. Frowning. Chewing my lips. “I can probably gloss it at this end. Lose the file, and so forth. As a personal favor to you. ...”

“Oh sure, doc. I’d really appreciate it.”

“Look,” I said, “suppose we do this. Suppose you stay here

until noon tomorrow. You’ll be able to gloss that at your office, won’t you?”

“Well . . . maybe,” he said doubtfully.

“I’ll take another look at you tomorrow morning. If everything shows go, you can check out. By noon. October twentieth. Then you can consult the Medical Section at Headquarters if you need further treatment. How does that sound?”

"Sounds fine, ” he said. Almost laughing. "Sounds real good." Why shouldn’t it? He could make the meet with Seymour Dove. 

“There’s your digiwatch,” I told him. “Your zipsuit, underwear, shoes, and so forth are in that closet. I have your identification, BIN card, wallet, and keys in a downstairs safe.”