S.T.A.R. FLIGHT (12 page)

Oddly there was no pain.

I’m dead, he thought. He shot me, smashed my heart, ripped my lungs. He coughed and red sprayed over the green he wore. He looked up and saw running nulls. They seemed to be dwindling, shrinking, falling back even as they ran.

He knew they could never arrive in time.

It was comfortable to be dead. There was no pain, no fatigue, no hunger or thirst. There was nothing but a blissful sensation as if floating on a cloud. I’m in Heaven, thought Preston. I was shot and killed and now I’m in Heaven. But Heaven was a noisy place. Someone was talking and he wished they wouldn’t.

“Wake up! Please wake up! You must wake up!”

A woman’s voice, he decided. Or rather that of a girl. Somehow it lacked the tonal strength which came with maturity. A young girl, he thought. A frightened young girl. But frightened of what?

“You must wake up!” The voice held a note of desperation. “Please wake up! Please!”

“Why should I?” said Preston. If it was a dream he was enjoying it. “Stop bothering me.”

“You’re awake! Good. Now listen. I know that you can hear me. Pretend to be worse than what you are. It’s very important that you make out you’re really sick. On no account let them move you. I’ll be back.”

Then silence and time for thought, for exploration.

He wasn’t deaf or, if he was, the girl had spoken mind-to-mind. Telepathic? Preston didn’t think so. The voice had been too sharp, too precise for that. So he wasn’t deaf and, apparently, he wasn’t in Heaven.

Perhaps, incredibly, he wasn’t even dead.

Not dead, he thought. Injured, dying maybe, but not dead. Not yet at least, he qualified. But if Dultar has his way I won’t be enjoying life for long. Then he remembered, the gamma, the crude knife shearing into his brain, the wild spray of shots and the running nulls.

Then nothing.

Cautiously he tried to lift his arms and found they wouldn’t obey. His legs the same. His head refused to move. His eyes? He felt terror as he stared at darkness knowing that his eyes were open and that he should be seeing something, anything. He opened his mouth and yelled his panic. His tongue, at least, seemed to be working. He called again, louder. A third time.

“Steady!” Another voice, masculine, hard, sharp, devoid of patience. “There’s no need for that.”

“I’m blind,” said Preston. “I can’t see.”

“Not with the mask on, you can’t,” the voice agreed. Preston felt something fumble at the side of his head and cool air struck his cheeks. Blinking, he looked up at a man dressed in delta blue. “Is that better?”

Preston nodded.

“What’s the matter with your voice?”

“I …” Preston swallowed, feigning huskiness. “It’s all right, I guess.” He rolled his eyes, afraid to turn his head, “What happened? Where am I?”

“You were shot,” said the delta curtly. “The nulls applied emergency treatment and passed you through for medication. I am in charge of you while you are here.”

“You operated on me?”

“No. A local did that. You had a complete heart-lung regraft and have been in accelerated healing. Subjective time,” the delta explained. “Speeded metabolism. A week to you was an hour to us. It’s over now,” he added. “A few hours for orientation and you’ll be fit enough to move.”

Preston took a deep breath. “Not dead?”

The delta shook his head. “Not yet,” he said grimly. “Not until you’ve answered quite a few questions.” He looked sharply at Preston. “Is anything wrong?”

“I … my …” Preston let his mouth gape, rolling his eyes upwards. “Feel faint,” he gasped. “Weak —”

“Scared,” said the delta. “You’ve got a lot to answer for and you know it. You’re scared, not weak.” He moved out of
sight. “Scared,” he said again and there was the click of a closing door.

Scared, thought Preston. Maybe so, but I’ve reason to be weak and you just try to prove that I’m not. He remembered the strange, whispering voice. Strapped as he was in a hospital cot, it offered a slender ray of hope. Someone knew about him and cared enough to communicate. And the instructions were simple to follow. He did feel weak. Shaken at the thought of what had happened.

You died, he told himself. The way you were shot you could have done nothing else. But the nulls got to you in time. They did something and sent you here. New heart and lungs, he thought. A major regraft. They hooked your brain to a bypass machine to feed it with oxygenated blood. They opened your chest as if you’d been a suitcase and exchanged the damaged organs as if they had been mechanics switching a set of injectors on a hover car.

He thought of Hilda Thorenson. She could have done it, he told himself. A lot of surgeons on Earth could have done it. It isn’t anything unusual. Just a replacement. Back home it would have cost you a fortune — here you’ve had it done for free.

But, he thought, the payment would come later. And it would be a hell of a price to pay. The condemned man, he mused. You’ve got to cure him before you can kill him and never mind the cockeyed logic. Only here there would be logic and it wouldn’t be a simple matter of killing. He would take a long, long time to die and, even when dead, there would be no guarantee that he would stay that way.

They’ll torture me to death, he decided. And then revive me to torture me again. Over and over until they’ve learned all there is to know. And what then? STAR would be made to suffer and so would Earth. Turned into a charred ruin, perhaps, a ghastly example and a warning to others never to raise their hands against the Kaltich. And he would be a small part of that example. A living, screaming, suffering scrap of humanity used to show others what to expect if they
disobeyed.

No, he thought bleakly, this isn’t Heaven.

The cot was in a small room which was glassed down one end so as to give full visibility from outside. The door was set in the glass. When they had eased the restraints Preston could see other doors facing his own across a wide corridor. Most of the rooms seemed empty but a few held patients, some barely visible beneath a mass of machinery. Life-support systems, he supposed. Mechanisms to control the speeded metabolisms. Feeding, if nothing else, would be a problem in such a condition.

The corridor was rarely empty. Orderlies dressed in pink walked up and down the passage. Doctors in their lime green hustled by. Women in powder blue were nurses. Red green and blue, thought Preston. Familiar colours but not Kaltich shades. They can’t wear white, he told himself. Only the underlings, the serfs do that and these people aren’t serfs. They’re skilled medical personnel. But they wear distinguishing colours.

He wondered if they were Kaltich at all.

He asked his doctor, a thin-faced man with short-cropped hair and a brusque manner. The lime green of his clothing gave him a sallow, unhealthy expression. His nails and person were scrupulously clean. He glanced to where a screen was set in the ceiling.

“I am not here to answer your questions,” he said sharply. “You are my patient and it is my duty to see that you get fit and well in as short a time as possible. And I must confess I am baffled at your continuing weakness. It should have passed by now.”

“It hasn’t,” Preston insisted.

“You were naturally in deep shock,” said the doctor. “And these burns on your wrists didn’t help.” He pursed his lips, thinking. “We’ll give it a little longer,” he decided. “To the maximum degree of tolerance at least. After that we shall have to consider the psychological aspect.”

‘Thank you, Doctor,” said Preston dryly. “I appreciate
your concern. But I’m not a slab of beef on a butcher’s counter. Neither am I a culture on one of your agar plates. Nor,” he added pointedly, “am I a criminal in your sense of the word. I am a man and therefore curious.”

“What do you know of agar plates?”

“Enough. One of my best friends is a doctor. A surgeon. She contends that the more a patient knows of his condition the more cooperative he is able to be. Frustration is bad medicine, Doctor. So why not answer? Are you of the Kaltich?”

“No.”

“You just work for them?”

“We work for all who need our skills.”

“Your medical skills, of course,” said Preston. He frowned, thinking. “Do you mean,” he said carefully, “that anyone, no matter what race, creed or social standing, can come to you for medical treatment?”

The doctor was stiff. “Naturally. What else?”

Dedicated, thought Preston. The idealised conception of a true medical service. The spirit of Florence Nightingale, Pasteur, a thousand others. All the men and women who risked and gave their lives for the purpose of easing human suffering. And, apparently, a dedication unsullied by considerations of material gain.

“This world,” he said abruptly. “It isn’t the home of the Kaltich?”

“No.”

“But they come here,” said Preston. “They all come here. Thousands and millions of people. The longevity treatment,” he said, with a sudden flash of insight. “It’s yours. You developed it. You issue it.”

“You are talking too much,” said the doctor. “You must not overexert yourself.”

Millions, thought Preston, shaken at the concept. Millions from Earth alone. And what of the other worlds? It has to be a worldwide culture, he decided. It can’t be anything less. A whole planet devoted to the pursuit of
medical knowledge. Laboratories instead of factories. Hospitals instead of hotels. The breeding of helpful bacteria instead of delving for minerals. But where do they get their raw supplies? Their food? The things they must have?

It was a foolish question. Think of Earth, he told himself. Remember the uncounted billions poured out on defence, the endless stream of wealth wasted on weapons and means to kill. Think of all that money channelled into medicine. Think of what we could have accomplished had we not followed the god of war.

The doctor finished his examination, held his hands in a stream of warm, antiseptic air, looked down at Preston. “I’m removing the rest of the restraints,” he said. “You can do without them now. However, I must warn you not to get up and most certainly not to leave this room.” Again he glanced at the ceiling. “If you need anything that button will summon assistance. If you are bored that control will provide entertainment.”

“I’ll remember that,” said Preston. “Doctor, I’d like to thank you.”

The man raised his eyebrows.

“For saving my life,” said Preston.

“I did not save your life,” corrected the doctor. “The men who gave you the emergency treatment did that. Saved your intelligence at least,” he added. “Do you realize just how long the brain can be deprived of oxygen?”

“Three minutes,” said Preston. “A maximum of five.”

“So you know that?” The doctor pursed his lips. “I had been given to understand — but never mind. You are correct. We can provide means to throw the brain into a temporary stasis. We can even provide a vehicle to carry oxygen direct to the deprived cells. A bacteria,” he explained. “Injected into the skull it has an affinity for the cortex and will provide the missing gas for up to fifteen minutes. But, of course, its use rarely necessary. It takes so little time to get through a Gate.”

“If you have one handy,” said Preston.

“But naturally,” said the doctor. And left.

Preston stared at the screen set into the ceiling. A television screen, he thought, but he knew that it was more than that. A spy ear, he told himself. Somewhere a man sits watching every move I make, listening to every word I say. He guessed that every cubicle was so equipped for the sake of automated nursing. But I’m special, he reminded himself. I bet that I’ve got a watcher all to myself.

Restlessly he moved on the cot. He felt like a fly pinned to a board, a germ under a microscope. Even if he left the room where could he go? Hospitals had the same attributes as prisons — everyone wore a distinctive uniform. How far would he get dressed in a loose robe of silver grey?

He touched the control the doctor had pointed out. It was double, one graduated dial within another. He twisted the inner one and heard music coming from somewhere beneath his pillow. Thoughtfully he returned it to its original setting and twisted the outer dial. Light and colour filled the picture which seemed to be that of a butcher dissecting a steer. A mass of red and yellow tissue served as a background to the gleaming silver of instruments.

“… at work on a routine case of pancreas transfer. You will note that Doctor Beynon is using a Symond scalpel which not only cuts but temporarily seals the wound so that there is no hampering flow of blood. Temporarily, because of the need for free blood flow during later suturing. This, obviously, puts a time limit on the operation and no surgeon who has not sufficient skill to work at speed should use this particular instrument. If, for reasons of …”

Preston twisted the control. The soft voice died to be replaced by another together with accompanying picture. This time it was to do with the removal of a brain tumor. Another attempt resulted in detailed instructions on how to remove a kidney. A fourth had a professor talking about the lower intenstine.

Lectures, thought Preston. Tuition. Recorded operations
constantly broadcast so as to give everyone the benefit of vicarious experience. Natural enough on a world dedicated to medical care. Like the Christians, he thought. In the Middle Ages almost everything had some reference to religion. Irritably he turned the switch and this time caught a play. Serttling back he watched it. Watching he frowned.

The locale was Europe, the characters spoke of Austria, France, Germany and England. The action took place in Vienna. The hero was a small excitable man named Ignaz Phillipp Semmelweis. The play presented him much as a medieval mystery play would present Christ. He was the redeemer, the man with the message, the opener of the way.

Which, admitted Preston, was true enough. In 1847 Semmelweis had reached the conviction that cleanliness was essential to the practice of medicine. Knowing nothing of microbes, he had the pragmatic certainty that disease could be transferred by contaminated matter from the dead to the living and from those diseased to those who were well. His solution, that all doctors and students should wash their hands in chlorine water between examinations of patients, was verified by his own amazing success in reducing the mortality rate of those under his direct care.