The Transvection Machine (16 page)

Frost whistled softly. He wasn’t really surprised, since everything he’d heard about the rejuvenated HAND pointed toward violent action. He’d used violence on Venus when it was necessary, and he’d been willing to kill Vander Defoe when he returned to Earth. Somehow, violence had become a part of his life. He knew his father would not have approved, but the peaceful ways had brought his father nothing but an early grave.

“Which one?” he asked.

“The biggest first, just to show we mean business. The Federal Medical Center in Washington.”

Frost thought about that. “Wouldn’t it be more to our advantage to hit an industrial complex first? Better publicity, that sort of thing?”

“The Federal Medical Center’s computerized medicine—everything from blood tests to surgery by machine—is just as dehumanizing as an automated factory, perhaps more so. The healing of man’s body certainly deserves the attention of another human being rather than the circuitry of a computer.”

“You have weapons?” Frost asked. He was beyond arguing the morality of it anymore. He was one of them. He believed in HAND and he would fight for it.

“We have lasers and stunners. And also a quantity of smoke grenades and hydrobombs. That should be sufficient.”

“There’s no need to kill people unless they get in our way.”

Axman sighed with something like exasperation. “You killed people on Venus,” he reminded Frost.

“One person.”

“And then there was Vander Defoe.”

“I told you how that was.”

“All right, don’t worry. We’ll just use the stunners wherever we can.”

“Not at close range. I saw a girl killed by a stunner at close range.”

Axman stared out at the water for a moment, then back at Frost. “We’re not playing games, Euler. We’re in this for keeps. As you know, the penalty for destroying a computer is life in prison, the same as for killing a man.”

“There’s still a difference. When we start thinking there is no difference, we become as bad as them.”

“All right.” Axman sighed. “I’ll tell the others to be careful with their stunners, and to use the lasers only on the machines.”

Frost had another thought. “What about Crader?”

Axman merely smiled. “Crader will be taken care of.”

“How taken care of?”

“Leave that to me. You can just be sure he won’t bother us.”

“All right. How much should I pack?”

“Bare minimum. We’ll be carrying all the weapons and explosives we can manage.”

“When do we meet the others?”

“Tomorrow, in Paris. We’ll all be traveling together, but on false passports. We’ll enter the country as members of a touring Chin-Chan team, then head directly for Washington. On Tuesday, we hit the Federal Medical Center.”

“I have one question,” Frost said, choosing his words carefully.

“What would that be?”

“When Crader was here, he asked me where the money came from to support HAND. I told him I didn’t know, that perhaps even you didn’t know.”

The bearded man smiled slightly. “It comes from many sources. Some of it comes from the casino here on the island.”

“Does some of it also come from the Russo-Chinese?”

“No.” Then, perhaps seeing that his answer did not fully satisfy Frost, he added, “When we’re in Washington I’ll tell you more about it. But now let’s talk of other things.”

Axman refilled their glasses with palm wine, and they drank another toast to the success of HAND.

Frost spent the night with Gloria, assuring her in their waking moments that he would return in a few days. Privately, he wondered if he would. He wondered if Axman’s team would be able to destroy several million dollars’ worth of computers and escape.

“The mission bothers you, Euler,” Gloria said, rolling over on the bed to face him. “You afraid.”

“No, not really.”

“You afraid Crader?”

He shook his head. “Axman says Crader is taken care of, but he didn’t explain how.”

She giggled—a soft lilting sound he’d come to love. “I know about that. I know about Crader.”

“How do you know?”

“Genet tells me. While Crader was here at house yesterday, explosive wafer was hidden in lining of the flightcase he always carries with him. Axman will set off by radio waves, and Crader is no more.”

Frost thought about that. Well, was it so different from his attempt on Defoe’s life? Crader was the enemy, opposing their cause. So why did it bother him?

Was it because he knew the man, had talked to him?

He dozed finally, sinking into a troubled sleep, dreaming he was on trial before a jury of machines, with a machine judge to pass sentence. When finally he awakened, his body cold with sweat, he wondered if it had been a dream at all.

T
HE DAYS AT SALK
Memorial were no longer pleasant interludes of adventure for Bonnie Simmons. She knew from the looks the others gave her that her days there were numbered. Even the training program which had equipped her to work on computerized surgery would not weigh heavily enough in her favor. A cabinet member—one of the twenty or so most important men in the country—had died while in her care. That was something which would follow her throughout her professional career, unless she could somehow show that what happened was in no way her fault.

She’d thought for a time that Dr. Groton might be able to help her, and certainly she would not have minded bestowing a few favors in return for his help. But then that detective, Jazine, had entered the picture. He was a handsome devil, but he hadn’t pursued his advantage with her. He seemed to be holding back, perhaps because he considered her as a suspect. And Groton had all but abandoned her, not even speaking when they passed in the hall of the hospital the morning after the scene in her apartment.

For a time she considered leaving Salk Memorial on her own, perhaps moving to California, where there were new one-thousand-bed hospitals opening almost every month in the massive retirement cities. They needed nurses there, and she understood the pay was better than in the east. Perhaps she could even change her name and start over.

But if she changed her name, what of her nurse’s training, her license, her references? Who could she write to for a reference, living in California under the name of Jane Doe? Certainly not Dr. Groton or Salk Memorial.

She’d thought about Vander Defoe often in the days since his death, seeing him again under her hands, with the blood suddenly spurting against the automated scalpel. She’d gone over it in her mind in every detail of the preparation, every bit of their conversation as she remembered it. Vander Defoe, wheeled into the operating room from the emergency ward, his mind still sharp even after the spinal they’d given him. The motorized lift to place him on the operating table, the records projector that she’d focused on the wall above his head. Their conversation, the signal light on the machine, the beginning of the operation. And then—what? She hadn’t worked a computerized operation since the tragedy, since all such surgery had been suspended pending the outcome of the investigation. Instead, they’d consigned her to operating room data processing, a boring task that hardly needed the qualifications of a trained nurse. Working over the reels of magnetic tape with their tiny punched symbols was hard on the vision, and she was forced to remove her soft contact lenses every hour or so to bathe her eyes.

It was during one of these breaks in her routine, staring out the window at the landscape blurred by her uncorrected vision, that a thought came to her. It had to do with action and reaction, not exactly like the work that made her eyes tired, but action and reaction nevertheless. She replaced her lenses and went down the hall to the operating room.

The machine she remembered so well from that day stood bleak and lonely now, hardly visible in the dark of the windowless room. She switched on the radiant ceiling and walked over to it. Her hand went out to touch the icy smoothness of its stainless steel body.

It was sleeping now, unprogrammed, waiting for the operating instructions which might never come. She felt sorry in a way, because, for those brief months, the machine had been almost a part of her. She would not believe it was the machine’s fault that Vander Defoe had died, any more than it was her own fault. In a moment of passion she’d come close to cursing it when Earl Jazine had questioned her the first time, but now with the passing of more time the conviction was growing in her that the cause of Defoe’s death lay elsewhere.

She gripped one of the machine’s dangling arms, moving it slowly back and forth. This was the laser scalpel arm, she knew, empty now, but only resting. This was the arm that had sliced through the skin with its laser beam and then directed its steel scalpel at the insides of Vander Defoe’s helpless body. But how easily it moved! A breath of air could almost set it in motion, though of course there was no moving air in the operating room. Even the atmosphere conditioning was carefully baffled.

Suppose something had moved the arm. Not air, not another person, certainly not Bonnie herself. But suppose … Action and reaction. What was it she’d thought originally? That Vander Defoe had …

“Nurse Simmons?”

She turned, startled at the sound of her name. She hadn’t wanted to be found here, where she no longer belonged. “Yes? What can I …?”

She saw the steel scalpel flash in the light, and she opened her mouth to scream.

But it was too late for screaming.

C
RADER HAD SAID LITTLE
to explain his excitement, or the reason why Jazine had to return to Washington by rocketcopter and find Hubert Ganger. But Jazine had learned long ago that his superior’s hunches usually paid off. If he thought Ganger was still in Washington, he had some reason for thinking so.

Jazine took Mike Sabin with him, and the young man was filled with gratitude. He knew the information he’d given Crader about the Chinese girl had been valuable, and had set off this whole chain of events, and if he didn’t quite understand it, he still seemed more than willing to follow Jazine’s lead.

“I want you to get over to Ganger’s apartment, Mike, and keep an ear on it. Set up an electronic sound field and move in the minute you hear anything. Arrest anyone who enters the place.”

“If he’s there, I’ll get him for you!” Sabin said, pleased with his newly assigned responsibility.

Alone, Jazine headed for Gretel Defoe’s place. It was the other likely possibility in his search for Ganger, but it proved a dud. There was still no one home.

It was while standing in front of Mrs. Defoe’s apartment that a sudden question hit him. He wondered why he hadn’t thought to ask it before. Mrs. Defoe had told him she heard the news of her husband’s death on the video news and went right to the hospital. She said she’d seen Nurse Simmons, but nowhere in her testimony had Bonnie Simmons mentioned seeing her. It might have been simply an oversight, or it might mean something. He decided it was worth a drive to Salk Memorial.

A hospital on a late afternoon in October is always a busy place, with the early evening darkness placing a special strain on drivers who tried to negotiate rush hour traffic in their little electric cars. This afternoon was no exception at Salk Memorial. A rocketcopter was unloading three accident victims as Jazine arrived, and it took him a few moments to find a nurse with time to answer his question. “Where can I find Nurse Simmons?”

“Try operating room data processing,” she told him without looking up. Her hands were busy spraying liquid stitching on an ugly wound.

But the data processing room, when he reached it, was empty. He sighed and looked around, then started down the hall toward the computerized surgery room. Perhaps she was still working there, although he doubted it.

The room was unlocked when he reached it, but in darkness. He stepped inside and switched on the radiant ceiling. The surgery machine was still in place. Beneath it, on the operating table, Bonnie Simmons sprawled bloody in death. Her throat had been cut with a scalpel that now dangled from one of the machine’s tentaclelike arms.

Jazine drew a sharp breath and stepped closer. When he saw there was nothing he could do for her, he reached up and pressed the red alarm button above the table. After a moment the door opened behind him and Dr. Groton rushed in, his face white with fright.

“This room’s not in use,” he barked. “What in hell are you doing here?”

Jazine stepped aside so that Groton could see the body on the table. “It was used by somebody, doctor. And you were the first one here again, just like the other time.”

Jazine called Carl Crader on the vision-phone and told him what had happened. Crader simply sat and stared, and finally asked, “Any chance she was killed by the machine, Earl?”

“None, chief. They’d disconnected its power source because it wasn’t in use. Apparently our killer didn’t know that, though. He tried to rig it to look like the machine.”

“Any strangers around the hospital?”

“They’re so busy they could have an army of strangers without knowing it. Anyone in a sterile smock can walk the halls without question.”

“What about Groton?”

“He’s a possibility. I’m questioning him.”

Crader sighed and rubbed a hand across his eyes. “Keep on top of it, Earl. And find Ganger!”

“Think he might have had a hand in this?”

“It’s not impossible. Somebody was scared of Bonnie Simmons. I only wish to hell we knew why.”

Jazine broke the connection and went back into the operating room. The local police had finished making their holograms, and had vacuumed the room for clues, but there was nothing. Jazine answered some questions, filled out the necessary forms stating his government connection, and then went in search of Dr. Groton.

He found the man in the staff lunchroom, sitting alone over a warming-cup full of black coffee. He looked up as Jazine approached and said, quietly, “You won’t believe this, but I loved her.”

“Sure you did!”

“All right—it happens to be true! My first marriage was a disaster that I’m still paying off. My present marriage isn’t much better. With Bonnie I felt like a new man. I felt young again.”