The Select (40 page)

"How about I come visit you down
there?" he found himself asking without thinking.

"No, Matt. You've got better
—"

"What's better than visiting an old
friend who sounds like she needs a friend."

"That's nice of you, Matt, but really,
I'll be busy in the lab and there's not much to do around this part
of Maryland if you aren't working. I appreciate it, and I'll be
fine. And I promise to call you as soon as I get back home. Then
the three of us can go out together and catch up."

"The three of us?"

"Sure. Tim will be back by then. He's
got to be. He wouldn't stay away through Christmas."

"Right," Matt said slowly. "Sure. The
three of us. That'll be great."

I hope you're right, Quinn, he thought
as he hung up a few minutes later.

The phone rang almost immediately.
Matt didn't recognize the voice at first.

"Matthew? This is Lydia Cleary.
Quinn's mother."

Why on earth was she calling? She
sounded upset.

"Hi, Mrs. Cleary. I was just talking
to Quinn."

"Oh. That's why your line was busy. I
was speaking to her earlier and she says she's going to stay down
there next week."

"She told me."

"Matthew, you've got to get her home.
Something terrible is going to happen to her if she stays there.
Just like it happened to that friend of hers."

Cold fingers did a walk along Matt's
spine.

"What do you mean, 'happened' to Tim?
Tim took off for Las Vegas."

"I don't know about any of that. I
just know something bad's happened to him and the same will happen
to Quinn if she stays down there. You know how stubborn she is. She
won't listen to me."

"She won't listen to me,
either."

"Maybe if you go down there, Matthew.
Maybe she'll listen to you then and you can bring her back. I know
it's a lot to ask..."

"It's not a lot," he said, trying to
soothe the growing agitation in her voice. "Not a lot at all. I'll
leave as soon as they cut me loose on Friday."

"Oh, thank you, Matthew." She sounded
ready to cry. "I'll be eternally grateful for this."

He eased himself off the phone, then
sat there, wondering, feeling uneasy. Her sense that something had
'happened' to Tim rattled Matt. And she was so convinced the same
was going to happen to Quinn. Superstition, of course, but
still...

Matt decided then to leave for
Maryland Friday afternoon without telling Quinn. He'd catch her by
surprise and work on her all weekend. By Sunday he'd have her
packed up and ready to go.

In a few days he'd have Quinn home
safe and sound. But what about Tim? He wished he could do the same
for Tim.

Tim, old buddy, where the
hell are you?

*

Tim existed in a timeless space of
boredom, rage, and terror. Sometimes he slept, and dwelt in a
nightmare in which he had no body. Sometimes he was awake, and
dwelt in a nightmare in which he could not feel his
body.

The staff took good care of that body.
Three times a day, every shift, his limbs were put through their
ranges of motion to keep the joints limber and prevent
contractures. He was turned back and forth, his position changed
every few hours to prevent pressure ulcers in his skin. And
whenever they were in the ward, all the nurses spoke to him
constantly, like girls talking to their dolls.

And that was what Tim began to feel
like. He couldn't feel, couldn't reply, couldn't move on his own.
He was a giant Ken doll.

Despite all the care, he
was afraid for his body. What had they done to it? Had they
scorched his skin? Was he now a burn victim like the others? He
felt nothing. If only he could feel
something
—even pain would be
welcome—he might know.

And Tim had begun to fear for his
mind. Imprisonment in an inert, mute body was affecting it. Every
so often he would feel his mental gears slip a few cogs, would
catch his thoughts veering off and have to reel then in from wild,
surreal tangents filled with giant, floating syringes and
stumbling, mummified shapes. He knew one day—one day too soon—those
thoughts could slip their bonds and never come back.

Focus. That was the only thing that
kept his mind in line. Focusing on movement, on brief, tiny
increments of victory over the drug that crippled his nervous
system.

He'd learned to recognize the signs
that his previous dose of 9574 was wearing off. Mostly it was a
tingling, beginning in his fingertips and toes and spreading across
his palms and soles. When the sensation came he focused all his
will on his fingers. Sometimes he was positioned so he could see
them, but many times he wasn't. He didn't let that stop him. For
most of the day, his hands didn't exist. But when the tingling
came, it told him where they were, and then he could locate them,
focus on them, make them the center of his world, and demand that
they obey him.

Tim couldn't be sure, but it seemed to
him that the episodes of tingling were lasting longer, starting a
little sooner before each new injection. What did that mean? Was he
building up a tolerance to the drug? Was his liver learning to
break it down faster? He'd read that the liver could "learn." When
a new substance was introduced to the bloodstream, the liver's job
was to break it down and dispose of it. At first it would
metabolize the substance slowly. But as the substance made more
passes through the liver, the enzymes within the hepatic cells
adjusted and became increasingly efficient. That was why a
teetotaler could get tipsy on a single glass of wine while a
drinker might down half a bottle with little or no effect: the
teetotaler's liver has no experience breaking down ethanol but it's
routine for the drinker's.

Tim knew he had a good tolerance for
alcohol—always had. Maybe that indicated an especially efficient
liver. Maybe his liver was learning new ways to clear the 9574 from
his blood, and getting a little better at it every day.

He clung to that thought. It wasn't
much of a hope, but at least it was hope. And he needed all the
hope he could muster. His hands were tingling now. He was lying on
his back, staring at the ceiling, so he couldn't see them. But he
knew where they were now. There was another sensation today. A dull
pain on the outer aspect of his left thigh. He ignored that. It was
his hands that concerned him. He focused on them, concentrating his
will...

"Is Number Eight awake?"

That voice. He knew that
voice!

"Yes, Doctor."

Alston. Dr. Arthur Alston. Tim wanted
to roar the name, wanted to spring up and hurl himself at his
throat, but all he could do was lie here and feel the growing
tingle in his hands.

"When's he due for his next dose?"
Alston's voice said.

"Not for another twenty
minutes."

"Give it to him now. I've got a little
debriding to do here, and I don't want him twitching."

Suddenly Dr. Alston's face loomed over
him. He was wearing a surgical mask and cap.

"Hello, Brown. I'm terribly sorry it
had to come to this, but you gave me no choice. This, by the way,
is the last time you'll be referred to by your name. From now on,
you're the John Doe in bed eight. Don't look for rescue from the
Ward C staff. These nurses have been hand picked by the Foundation.
They don't know your real name, but they do know you're not one of
our usual burn victims, and they know you're here because you're a
threat to the Foundation."

Tim would have groaned if he could.
The nurses too?

"Is that surprise I see in your eyes,
Brown? A male chauvinist reaction? Do you see some reason why
professional women such as these nurses can't share the goals
pursued by the Foundation? We all have many common goals here in
Ward C. Perfecting the semi-synthetic burn grafts is just one. We
are all committed individuals, and we all work toward those goals
in our own way. But it's a group effort."

Alston sounded so sane, so rational.
Tim would have much preferred a mad-doctor persona. It would have
been easier to take. This was so damn unsettling. It almost made
Tim feel like the deviate. Almost.

Dr. Alston's face was replaced by the
mocha-skinned nurse's. Her eyes crinkled warmly as she smiled
behind her mask. She did something out of Tim's sight. He guessed
it was another dose of 9574. When the tingling in his fingers and
toes faded, he knew he was right.

"All right, Marguerite," Alston said.
"He should be ready now. Turn him on his side and we'll get to
work."

Tim's stomach gave a little heave and
the room did a quick spin as hands he could not feel rolled him off
his back and onto his right side. The picture window into the hall
swam into view but the curtains were drawn.

"Watch out for the N-G tube," Alston
said. "Good. Don't worry, Number Eight. That feeding tube is only
temporary. We'll put in a deep line for TPN soon. That's total
parenteral nutrition—something you would have learned about in your
clinical training over the next few years."

Clinical
training...

Tim realized he'd never see his
clinical training.

"Right there," Alston said to
Marguerite. "Perfect. And now the tray, please."

Tim's mind screamed out to know what
Alston was doing. He must have sensed Tim's thoughts. He spoke from
somewhere behind him.

"Just because you've been reduced to a
vegetative state doesn't mean your days of usefulness as a
productive human being are through. Quite the contrary. You're
earning your keep, Number Eight. And you're making a significant
contribution to the well-being of your fellow man."

Tim sensed movement behind him, heard
a rustle, the soft clank of a metal tray.

"You see, one of the ongoing problems
we've had with fully researching the new grafts has been our
inability to test them on fresh burns. Since the grafts must be
grown from cultures of the victim's own skin cells, they are, ipso
facto, unavailable for treatment of a fresh burn. We could keep a
bank of grafts for people at high risks for burns—firefighters, for
instance—for immediate use should a burn occur, and I'm sure that
such a program will come into being eventually, but at this early
stage it's not feasible. So what we've needed for a while is
another test subject whose skin grafts can be cultured in advance
and then tested on fresh burns of varying severity and surface
area."

Another
test subject? Tim thought.

"You do realize, don't you, that
you're not the first student to learn too much. We've had a few
unfortunate incidents in the past when the subliminal intrusion of
the SLI unit has triggered unsuspected psychoses in a student, but
until now only one other student has learned as much as you. That
was Anthony Prosser, two years ago."

Tim remembered the phrase he'd heard a
few second-year students use: To pull a Prosser. It meant to go
over the wall and never be heard from again.

Everybody probably thinks
I've pulled a Prosser.

"Anthony has been known as Number Five
for two years now."

Two years!

"During that period he has made an
enormous contribution to our graft research. But now..." Tim heard
Alston sigh. "Now he's given all he has to give. Now he just lies
there, completely mad. But we're not abandoning him. We'll take
care of him as long as he lives."

Give? What did Prosser
give?

"So, as unfortunate as it was that you
had to stumble on our little secrets here at The Ingraham, in a way
it proves rather timely. We were just beginning to perfect our
acute-stage grafting techniques when Number Five ran out of
undamaged skin. You can take over where he left off."

Tim's brain was
screaming.
They're going to burn
me!

"We've been culturing your skin cells
since you arrived. Yesterday we added a sedative to your afternoon
dose of 9574. While you were unconscious, I inflicted a
thirty-six-square-inch third-degree burn on the lateral aspect of
your left thigh."

Ward C—what Tim could see
of it—blurred and swam before his eyes. They'd
already
burned him!

"I felt it was kinder to put you out
during the procedure. Even though you'd feel nothing, you'd still
smell it. The odor of burning human flesh is rather unpleasant,
especially unpleasant when it is your own. I spared you that. We're
not cruel here, Number Eight. We bear you no ill will, no malice.
In fact, we feel sorry for you. You are the victim of a
particularly vicious and ironic Catch 22: The very attributes of
intellectual curiosity and sharply-honed analytical brilliance that
once made you an asset to The Ingraham have now caused you to
become a liability. We couldn't let you go, and we couldn't kill
you—despite what you must think of us, we're not murderers, Number
Eight. So we chose this method of neutralizing your threat to the
Foundation and The Ingraham. You still have your life and, in a
very important way, you're still contributing to the medical
well-being of your fellow man. Which was one of the reasons you
came to The Ingraham in the first place, isn't it, Number
Eight?"