The Select (16 page)

True enough, perhaps, on paper. True
enough according to the numbers the medical facilities had used to
encode her diagnoses for the government computers.

True enough: Her heart failure had
been gauged as Grade II, which meant the old pump was failing, its
reserve low enough to make a breathless chore of walking a single
block, but still pumping well enough to keep her from being
completely incapacitated; Grade II heart failure warranted only a
limited work-up and certainly not aggressive therapy.

True enough: Her Grade II gallbladder
disease did not trigger attacks of sufficient severity to yellow
her skin or generate enough unremitting pain to warrant emergency
surgery, but her rattling gallstones did cause her daily abdominal
distress and incessant belching, and she lived in constant fear of
another attack, so much so that each meal had become a form of
gastric Russian roulette.

True enough: The Grade III arthritis
in her hip elicited a bolt of pain whenever she went up or down a
stair, and her spine was arthritic enough to cause it to stiffen
like a rusty gate whenever she sat or reclined for more than
fifteen minutes, which made rising from a chair or getting out of
bed each morning an excruciating ordeal; but her symptoms—when
adjusted for age—did not code severe enough (you needed Grade V)
under the federal guidelines to warrant hip surgery or even one of
the newer, more potent anti-inflammatory medications that were in
such short supply; she'd have to make do with the older, more
tried-and-true (and lower-priced) generics.

All true enough—when each condition
was considered one at a time. If she had been afflicted with just
the arthritis, or merely the gallstones, or simply the heart
failure, she could have handled it. And she even might have coped
fairly well with a combination of any two of them.

But all three?

The triple whammy was slowly doing her
in, melting her days into exhausted blurs, nibbling away at her
quality of life to the point where she'd begun to wonder whether
life was worth living any longer.

Why wasn't there a code
for the quality of life? Why couldn't the computers add up a
person's Grade II's and Grade III's and send up a red flag that
said
Help
when
they reached a certain critical number—regardless of
age?

Was that what it was going to be like?
Number-coded doctors treating the number-coded diseases afflicting
number-coded patients? There had to be another way.

But what?

"Quinn?" It was Tim's voice. "Yo,
Quinn. Where are you? Come back to us."

Quinn shook herself. "I'm, uh,
thinking," she said.

"Good," Tim said. "I thought you were
in a trance. Come up with anything?"

"No," she said. "No solution. Sooner
or later the politicians and bureaucrats are going to take over
completely. They can control the funds and the distribution of
their so-called resources—and they'll consider us 'resources'
too—but they can't control the delivery of compassion, can
they?"

Judy groaned but Tim cut her off with
a karate-chop wave of his hand.

Tim nodded. "You said it. The empty
suits will try to get into the hospital charts, into the operating
rooms, into the office records, even into the examining rooms." He
tapped his chest. "They'll even try to get in here, and believe me,
plenty of times they'll succeed, but they can't get a piece of that
special chemistry that happens between a doctor and a patient
unless we let them. And part of that chemistry is compassion.
Empathy."

"The floor's getting gooey with
idealism," Judy said. "How about a little realism here?"

"We're still students," Tim said.
"We're not supposed to be realists. That comes later. For the
moment let's believe in the healing power of
compassion."

Quinn saw the fire in his eyes, the
ferocity in his tight smile, and knew she'd found a kindred spirit.
She raised a fist to chin level and responded with a smile of her
own.

"Compassion," she said.
"Let 'em find a procedure code for
that
."

MONITORING

"I believe it's time to start the
night music," Alston said. "What do you think?"

Louis Verran concealed his annoyance
as Alston stood with his hands behind his back and leaned forward
over his shoulder, studying the main console.

Right, Verran thought. Like he almost
knows what he's looking at.

"You're the boss," he said, not
meaning a word of it. In this room Louis Verran was the
boss.

Alston pointed to one of the
read-outs. "My goodness, what's going on in room 107."

Verran glanced up. The mattress weight
sensor for bed B had risen into the red.

"Looks like some extra bodies on the
bed. I'd guesstimate about four."

Alston's eye widened. "Really? What on
earth could they be doing?"

"Probably an orgy," Verran said,
keeping his face deadpan. "Don't you wish we had video?"

"Certainly not. Turn up the audio and
let's hear what's going on."

Verran activated the audio. All of the
rooms had been wired with tiny electret microphones. The sound of
male voices quizzing each other on hepatic histology swelled
through the speakers.

"Orgy indeed!" Alston said. He pointed
to another read-out panel. "Look at room 224. What's—?"

Verran took a deep puff on his cigar
and floated a trio of blue-white smoke rings. He watched with
concealed amusement as Alston backed away, waving his hand through
the air.

"Must you, Louis?"

"If you can't stand the smoke," Verran
muttered, "stay away from the console."

He glanced at Alston and was startled
by the fury that flashed across his features. It showed only for an
instant, then was gone as if it had never been, and the prissy,
supercilious expression was back in control. But Verran realized
his remark had caused the mask to slip and allowed a darker side of
Dr. Arthur Alston to peek through.

Verran glanced at Kurt and Elliot.
Both of his assistants were busy at their own consoles, checking
the mattress sensors to see who was in bed and who wasn't. They
gave no indication that they had heard or seen anything. Good.
They'd learned quickly to act oblivious to the squabbles between
their boss and Dr. Alston. Verran had known them both when he'd
been with the CIA. He'd hired them away from the Company when he'd
landed this job.

Elliot and Kurt—the tortoise and the
hare.

Elliot was careful, meticulous, one of
the best electronic surveillance jockeys in the business. He could
bug a room six ways from Sunday with no one the wiser. But he'd
been stopped on the street in Costa Rica one night and couldn't
explain all the electronic junk in his trunk. Spent one very rough
week in an Alajuela jail before the Company could extricate him.
Elliot never spoke of that week, but even now he got quiet and
twitchy whenever anyone mentioned jail. After the Costa Rica
incident, he refused any and all foreign assignments. Which meant
his career was dead in the water.

Kurt was fast on his feet but a little
flaky. He had gained a reputation around the Company as something
of a loose cannon and had been passed over a number of times when
promotions came around. It was obvious he wasn't going to move any
farther up the ladder.

Neither had hesitated when Verran
offered them jobs at the Ingraham. He'd never regretted it, and
neither had they.

But he did regret having to deal with
Alston. Even so, Verran wouldn't have made that kind of crack if
Alston were his direct superior. But after seeing Alston's
ferocious reaction, Verran was suddenly very glad that he didn't
have to answer to the man. He had a feeling life could be pretty
shitty for an underling who got on the good doctor's bad side.
Fortunately, security had its own responsibilities, separate from
Alston's education bailiwick. They both answered to the Foundation,
however. And the Foundation, of course, answered to Mr.
Kleederman.

Verran had never met Mr. Kleederman
and had not the slightest desire to do so.

"I assure you, Louis," Alston said
levelly, "I wouldn't be here if I didn't have to be. I don't enjoy
your smoky presence any more than you enjoy mine."

Verran put his cigar in the ashtray—he
would let it sit there and go out as a peace-making gesture.
Besides, he needed peace to function in this job.

Maybe he'd been letting Alston get too
far under his skin. The creep was a long-term irritation, like his
ulcer, and he'd have to learn to live with him, just like he'd
learned to live with the gnawing hunger-like pain in his gut. But
if the undercurrent of hostility between them broke out into the
open, it could impinge on Verran's concentration. And he couldn't
allow that. Security at The Ingraham was a seven-days-a-week,
around-the-clock process that ruled his life ten months a year. And
he was good at his job. Damn good. There'd been a few glitches over
the years, and a couple of close calls, but he and Alston had been
able to keep them nice and quiet, with no one—except the
Foundation—the wiser.

So, like it or not, he and Alston had
to work together, or their heads could wind up on the chopping
block.

"I've got nothing against you, Doc.
It's just that we're dealing with delicate equipment here.
State-of-the-art sensors and pick-ups. Very temperamental. I get
nervous when anybody but me or Kurt of Elliot gets near it. This
stuff is my baby and I'm a protective daddy. So don't take it
personal."

Alston accepted the truce with a
slight nod of his head. "I understand. No offense taken. It's
forgotten."

Right, Verran thought. Tightasses
never forget.

"So," Alston said, clearing his throat
with a sound like a record needle skipping to another track, "it
seems to me that we've given them enough time to acclimate to their
new surroundings. A few weeks should suffice for anyone. All the
equipment is in a state of readiness, I assume?"

"The SLI units are ready and waiting.
Every room in the dorm is on line and working like a
dream."

"Excellent. And our new charges, are
they all behaving themselves? No bad apples in the
bunch?"

"All but one: the Brown
kid."

"Timothy Brown? The high-IQ boy from
New Hampshire? What's he been up to?"

Alston's ability to recognize each
student's face and reel off their vital statistics never failed to
amaze Verran. It was the one thing about Alston he
envied.

"All-nighters," Verran
said.

"We certainly don't discourage
studying, Louis."

"No. I mean
out
all night. Off
campus."

"Really?" Alston frowned with concern.
"That's not good. Where?"

"Baltimore, I think."

"How often?"

"Twice, so far."

"Weekday nights?"

"Let me check." Verran swiveled to his
computer keyboard and punched in Brown's room number. His data file
scrolled down the screen. "One Tuesday into Wednesday, and one
Saturday into Sunday."

"Hmmm. I don't like that
mid-week absence. Let's hope he doesn't make a habit of it. We'll
have to come down on him if he does, but we'll let it go for now. I
don't particularly care about the weekends. Any night music they
hear on weekends is a lagniappe anyway. But do keep a close watch
on young Mister Brown. I do
not
want another fiasco like two years
ago."

Verran's stomach burned at the memory.
Neither did he. One of those was enough for a lifetime.

"Will do," he said. "You're the
boss."

Alston smiled and it looked almost
genuine. "You sound so convincing when you say that,
Louis."

"Well, you
are
the DME, after
all."

"Yes. The maestro, as it were. Very
well, strike up the band and let The Ingraham's nocturnal concert
series begin."

He turned and headed for
the door, humming a tune Verran recognized from
The Phantom of the Opera
..."The
Music of the Night."

OCTOBER

Carbenamycin (Carbocin - Kleederman
Plarm.), the new macrolide released just two years ago, has become
the number-one-selling antibiotic in the world.

P.M.A. News

CHAPTER TEN

A warm day for October, with a high,
bright sun cooking the asphalt of the parking lot like summer. Good
driving weather.

"Are you
sure
you don't want some
company?" Tim said, leaning against the driver's door of his car
and speaking through the open window. "I'll even do the
driving."

"Any other time and I'd say yes,"
Quinn said as she adjusted the seat belt. "But this is
personal."