Read Ebook: The Colonization of North America 1492-1783 by Bolton Herbert Eugene Marshall Thomas Maitland

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Ebook has 942 lines and 34290 words, and 19 pages

"An asset? Very neat, if it can be done." The medicouncilor's expression said it couldn't be.

"Gland opera," said Cameron, hurrying on. "The most popular program in the solar system, telepaths, teleports, pyrotics and so forth the heroes. Fake of course, makeup and trick camera shots.

"But Docchi can be made into a real star. The death-ray man, say. When his face shines men fall dead or paralyzed. He'd have a tremendous following of kids."

"Children," mused the medicouncilor. "Are you serious about exposing them to his influence? Do you really want them to see him?"

"He'd have a chance to return to society in a way that would be acceptable to him," said Cameron defensively. He shouldn't have specifically mentioned kids.

"To him, perhaps," reflected the medicouncilor. "It's an ingenious idea, doctor, one which does credit to your humanitarianism. But I'm afraid of the public's reception. Have you gone into Docchi's medical history?"

"I glanced at it before I called him in." The man was unusual, even in a place that specialized in the abnormal. Docchi had been an electrochemical engineer with a degree in cold lighting. On his way to a brilliant career, he had been the victim of a particularly messy accident. The details hadn't been described but Cameron could supplement them with his imagination. He'd been badly mangled and tossed into a tank of the basic cold lighting fluid.

There was life left in the body; it flickered but never went entirely out. His arms were gone and his ribs were crushed into his spinal column. Regeneration wasn't easy; a partial rib cage could be built up, but no more than that. He had no shoulder muscles and only a minimum in his back and now, much later, that was why he tired easily and why the prosthetic arms with which he'd been fitted were merely ornamental, there was nothing which could move them.

"Then you know what he's like," said the medicouncilor, shaking his head. "Our profession can't sponsor such a freakish display of his misfortune. No doubt he'd be successful on the program you mention. But there's more to life than financial achievement or the rather peculiar admiration that would be certain to follow him. As an actor he'd have a niche. But can you imagine, doctor, the dead silence that would occur when he walks into a social gathering of normal people?"

"I see," said Cameron, though he didn't--not eye to eye. He didn't agree with Thorton but there wasn't much he could do to alter the other's conviction at the moment. There was a long fight ahead of him. "I'll forget about Docchi. But there's another way to break up the group."

The medicouncilor interrupted. "Nona?"

"Yes. I'm not sure she really belongs here."

"Every young doctor thinks the same," said the medicouncilor kindly. "Usually they wait until their term is nearly up before they suggest that she'd respond better if she were returned to normal society. I think I know what response they have in mind." Thorton smiled in a fatherly fashion. "No offense, doctor, but it happens so often I'm thinking of inserting a note in our briefing program. Something to the effect that the new medical director should avoid the beautiful and self-possessed moron."

"Is she stupid?" asked Cameron stubbornly. "It's my impression that she's not."

"Clever with her hands," agreed the medicouncilor. "People in her mental classification, which is very low, sometimes are. But don't confuse manual dexterity with intelligence. For one thing she doesn't have the brain structure for the real article.

"She's definitely not normal. She can't talk or hear, and never will. Her larynx is missing and though we could replace it, it wouldn't help if we did. We'd have to change her entire brain structure to accommodate it and we're not that good at the present."

"I was thinking about the nerve dissimilarities," began Cameron.

"A superior mutation, is that what you were going to say? You can forget that. It's much more of an anomaly, in the nature of cleft palates, which were once common--poor pre-natal nutrition or traumas. These we can correct rather easily but Nona is surgically beyond us. There always is something beyond us, you know." The medicouncilor glanced at the chronometer beside him.

Cameron saw the time too but continued. It ought to be settled. It would do no good to bring up Helen Keller; the medicouncilor would use that evidence against him. The Keller techniques had been studied and reinterpreted for Nona's benefit. That much was in her medical record. They had been tried on Nona, and they hadn't worked. It made no difference that he, Cameron, thought there were certain flaws in the way the old techniques had been applied. Thorton would not allow that the previous practitioners could have been wrong. "I've been wondering if we haven't tried to force her to conform. She can be intelligent without understanding what we say or knowing how to read and write."

"How?" demanded the medicouncilor. "The most important tool humans have is language. Through this we pass along all knowledge." Thorton paused, reflecting. "Unless you're referring to this Gland Opera stuff you mentioned. I believe you are, though personally I prefer to call it Rhine Opera."

"I've been thinking of that," admitted Cameron. "Maybe if there was someone else like her she wouldn't need to talk the way we do. Anyway I'd like to make some tests, with your permission. I'll need some new equipment."

The medicouncilor found the sheet he'd been looking for from time to time. He creased it absently. "Go ahead with those tests if it will make you feel better. I'll personally approve the requisition. It doesn't mean you'll get everything you want. Others have to sign too. However you ought to know you're not the first to think she's telepathic or something related to that phenomena."

"I've seen that in the record too. But I think I can be the first one to prove it."

He had one answer--but the medicouncilor believed in another. "Perhaps you're right. She'll have to stay here no matter what happens."

"She will. It would solve your problems if you could break up the group, but don't count on it. You'll have to learn to manage them as they are."

"I'll see that they don't cause any trouble," said Cameron.

"I'm sure you will." The medicouncilor's manner didn't ooze confidence. "If you need help we can send in reinforcements."

"I don't anticipate that much difficulty," said Cameron hastily. "I'll keep them running around in circles."

The picture collapsed into meaningless swirls of color. For an instant the voice was distinguishable again before it too was drowned by noise. "Did you understand what I said, doctor? If it isn't clear contact me. Deviation can be fatal."

"I can't keep the ship in focus," said the robot. "If you wish to continue the conversation it will have to be relayed through the nearest main station. At present that's Mars."

It was inconvenient to wait several minutes for each reply. Besides the medicouncilor couldn't or wouldn't help him. He wanted the status quo maintained; nothing else would satisfy him. It was the function of the medical director to see that it was. "We're through," said Cameron.

He sat there after the telecom clicked off. What were the deficients the medicouncilor had talked about? A subdivision of the accidentals of course, but it wasn't a medical term he was familiar with. Probably a semi-slang description. The medicouncilor had been associated with accidentals so long that he assumed every doctor would know at once what he meant.

Deficients. Mentally Cameron turned the word over. If it was used accurately it could indicate only one thing. He'd see when the medicouncilor's report came in. He could always ask for more information if it wasn't clear.

The doctor got heavily to his feet--and he actually was heavier. It wasn't a psychological reaction. He made a mental note of it. He'd have to investigate the gravity surge.

In a way accidentals were pathetic, patchwork humans, half or quarter men and women, fractional organisms which masqueraded as people. The illusion died hard for them, harder than that which remained of their bodies, and those bodies were unbelievably tough. Medicine and surgery were partly to blame. Techniques were too good or not good enough, depending on the viewpoint--doctor or patient.

Too good in that the most horribly injured person, if he were found alive, could be kept alive. Not good enough because a certain per cent of the injured couldn't be returned to society completely sound and whole. The miracles of healing were incomplete.

There weren't many humans who were broken beyond repair, but though the details varied in every respect, the results were monotonously the same. For the most part disease had been eliminated. Everyone was healthy--except those who'd been hurt in accidents and who couldn't be resurgeried and regenerated into the beautiful mold characteristic of the entire population. And those few were sent to the asteroid.

What they did want was ridiculous. They had talked about, hoped, and finally embodied it in a petition. They had requested rockets to make the first long hard journey to Alpha and Proxima Centauri. Man was restricted to the solar system and had no way of getting to even the nearest stars. They thought they could break through the barrier. Some accidentals would go and some would remain behind, lonelier except for their share in the dangerous enterprise.

It was a particularly uncontrollable form of self-deception. They were the broken people, without a face they could call their own, who wore their hearts not on their sleeves but in a blood-pumping chamber, those without limbs or organs--or too many. The categories were endless. No accidental was like any other.

Docchi sat beside the pool. It would be pleasant if he could forget where he was. It was pastoral though not quite a scene from Earth. The horizon was too near and the sky was shallow and only seemed to be bright. Darkness lurked outside.

A small tree stretched shade overhead. Waves lapped and made gurgling sounds against the banks. But there was no plant life of any kind, and no fish swam in the liquid. It looked like water but wasn't--the pool held acid. And floating in it, all but submerged, was a shape. The records in the hospital said it was a woman.

"Anti, they turned us down," said Docchi bitterly.

"What did you expect?" rumbled the creature in the pool. Wavelets of acid danced across the surface, stirred by her voice.

"I didn't expect that."

"You don't know the Medicouncil very well."

"I guess I don't." He stared sullenly at the fluid. It was faintly blue. "I have the feeling they didn't consider it, that they held the request for a time and then answered no without looking at it."

"Now you're beginning to learn. Wait till you've been here as long as I have."

Morosely he kicked an anemic tuft of grass. Plants didn't do well here either. They too were exiled, far from the sun, removed from the soil they originated in. The conditions they grew in were artificial. "Why did they turn us down?" said Docchi.

"Answer it yourself. Remember what the Medicouncil is like. Different things are important to them. The main thing is that we don't have to follow their example. There's no need to be irrational even though they are."

"I wish I knew what to do," said Docchi. "It meant so much to us."

"We can wait, outlast the attitude," said Anti, moving slowly. It was the only way she could move. Most of her bulk was beneath the surface.

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