The Transvection Machine (2 page)

She still remembered the arguments they had over coffee, far into the night, with Ganger maintaining that the individual atoms of matter in outer space were too distant from each other for transvection to work there. “Your transvected object would simply disintegrate when it reached the limits of the atmosphere,” he argued.

But Vander Defoe was firm in his beliefs. It was about the time of their split that Ganger was drawn to Gretel, perhaps because both of them were having increasing difficulty in living with the political aspirations of Defoe. His conferences with government officials, his journeys across the world—all the glamorous activities which had first attracted Gretel to him—were now beginning to pain her immeasurably.

She sought solace first in a variety of drugs, settling finally for the exquisite pleasures of a Japanese brand of homogenized laudanum tablets. Then there was an increasing variety of lovers, many of them friends and business associates of Vander Defoe. At last he’d had enough of it, and he ordered her from the house, in much the same way he’d ordered Hubert Ganger from the business they’d formed together.

Ganger used to tell Gretel, on those first early evenings of mutual sympathy, that Defoe would be helpless without him, that he could never build even a single transvection machine without Ganger’s help. But Defoe had the laugh on both of them. Within a year, the transvection machine had been built and tested. A cigar box was transvected between rooms in a laboratory, a monkey was transvected from Boston to New York, and finally a young Chinese girl was transvected from Washington to Calcutta—a distance of over 8,000 miles. More than that, Vander Defoe had persuaded the government to let him place a machine in the USAC Venus Colony for experimental purposes. That was when the president had stepped into the picture, and offered Vander a newly created cabinet position as secretary of extraterrestrial defense.

The move was more political than practical on the president’s part. Video newsmagazines had been full of details about the Russo-Chinese Venus Colony, which was larger and more successful than the USAC one. There were men and women living on Venus so long now that they’d taken out the newly ordained Venusian citizenship. And with no real ties to Earth, these people were being attracted to the Russo-Chinese Colony in increasing numbers, forming themselves into a force that might someday attack the USAC Venus Colony, if not the USAC itself. The president needed a dramatic move, a ploy to take the spotlight away from the Russo-Chinese successes, at least momentarily. He found what he wanted in the Department of Extra-Terrestrial Defense, with the newsworthy Vander Defoe as its secretary.

And so Defoe moved into a plush office at the New White House, and Gretel moved into a Georgetown apartment and filed for divorce. It was Hubert Ganger, though, who kept her from taking the final step toward freedom. He argued, in their newly found complicity, that Vander could be milked dry of the money he so rightly owed them both. And Ganger did more than argue—he supplied her with the weapon to use against her husband, the weak spot in his armor that even she had never suspected till then.

Gretel and Hubert Ganger did not become lovers at once. She had other men in her life, the highly placed officials whom she’d first met through her husband. But as her frustrations led her deeper into a dependency on laudanum, they led her also into the affair with Hubert Ganger. She’d known from the first that he would be a responsive lover, and she felt increasingly certain that he could be trained to perfection. With Hubert she could have the glamour of the scientific world that had first attracted her to Vander, and she could have much more besides.

But the game of bleeding poor Vander of his cash was tiring now. She wanted something more, something like the freedom to marry Hubert and travel far away. She dreamed sometimes of a honeymoon by sea-rail, visiting all the remote island resorts one only read about. The casinos of the Canary Islands, the hunting preserves of Monrovia, the great sun mirrors of Easter Island. That was the life she wanted, and she could have it. She could have
all
of Vander’s money.

But not by divorcing him.

“Killing your husband?” Hubert Ganger repeated. “You mean Vander?”

“He’s the only husband I have at the moment.”

“But darling, we don’t kill the goose who’s laying the golden eggs.”

“We do if it’ll get us all the eggs at one time. The government would have to hire you to finish work on the transvection machine, and you would get all that money, instead of Vander.”

But Ganger shook his head. “I want to ruin him, not murder him.”

“Haven’t you ruined him enough already?”

“Not publicly. He still has his government position.”

She smiled up at him, understanding the hatred if not the logic. “But don’t you see? …”

The buzzing of the vision-phone interrupted her and she rolled over on the bed to answer it, flipping off the vision switch first so she wouldn’t be seen naked. “Hello?” she said, keeping her voice low and uncommitted.

She listened to the voice on the other end, saying nothing until a final, “Thank you for calling.”

“Who was that?” Ganger asked.

She reached for another laudanum tablet, and then thought better of it. “Maarten Tromp, at the New White House. It seems that dear Vander has just been stricken with an attack of appendicitis. They’re rushing him to Salk Memorial by rocketcopter, and he’ll have a preprogrammed operation within the hour.”

T
HE NURSE WAS YOUNG
and blond and quite pretty, and her name was Bonnie Simmons—a good old-fashioned twentieth-century sort of name. She looked down at him on the operating table and checked the record sheet projected on the wall over his head. “Your name is Defoe, like in
Robinson Crusoe
?” she asked.

He had to smile at that, even through the gray cloud of anesthesia. “I didn’t think anyone read Defoe these days. He’s not exactly teleprinter entertainment.”

“We read his
Journal of the Plague Year
in medical school,” she told him with a trace of pride.

“Things have changed since my days.” He glanced up apprehensively, seeing the great stainless steel machine that was moving along an overhead track to position itself above his naked abdomen.

Nurse Simmons adjusted the focus of the record projector, checking over the coded details of his life and health. “Tell me, Mr. Defoe—or should I say Secretary Defoe—just when did the pains commence?”

He took a deep breath, fighting back the anesthetic. “This morning, about six or seven hours ago. There were just cramps at first, and a sort of general pain. I vomited once, about noon. Then, about an hour ago, the pain localized down here, on the right side. That’s when I phoned the White House physician, Colonel Phley. He did a fast blood count and found an increase in white cells.”

Nurse Simmons nodded in agreement. “That usually confirms a diagnosis of appendicitis. Too bad your parents didn’t have it removed at birth. Most people do now, you know.”

“They didn’t fifty-one years ago, I can tell you that!” He tried to move, tried to comfort himself, but it was impossible. “In an age when you can cure cancer with a simple injection, I’d think you could do something about my appendicitis.”

She smiled down tolerantly. “We
are
doing something about it, Secretary Defoe. We’re going to operate by preprogrammed tape. You’ve probably read about it. We use the system quite frequently these days for routine surgery, and especially for appendicitis—the commonest of all conditions requiring abdominal surgery.”

“You mean you and that … that
machine
are going to operate on me, without even a surgeon? I
am
a member of the president’s cabinet, after all!”

Again the tolerant smile. “Mister Secretary, I’m well aware of your position. I’m aware also that you are the inventor, or coinventor, of the transvection machine. Surely one as machine-oriented as yourself should not fear the blandishments of a computer-controlled surgery machine. As a matter of fact, your operation will be performed by Dr. Ralph Cozzens—one of the finest abdominal surgeons who ever lived.”

“Who
ever
lived? But he is no longer living, is he?”

Bonnie Simmons made some slight adjustments above his head, lining up a series of sighting lamps until they formed a straight line down the center of his body. “Dr. Cozzens died in 2043, but he left behind a wealth of taped material,” she explained. “Complete operations, programmed onto tape for use by future generations. As long as the surgical technique remains the same, Dr. Cozzens and other fine surgeons will go on operating, even though they have been dead for ten or twenty or thirty years.”

“But isn’t it dangerous to have only a nurse in charge?” Despite the anesthetic, his wits were clearing. He felt as if his head and arms and chest were floating clear, somehow detached from the rest of his body. It was a not unpleasant feeling, reminding him of the time in his youth when he’d received a spinal anesthetic for an operation on a broken leg that had failed to mend properly. He supposed they’d given him a spinal this time too, though the anesthesia guns they used these days were so painless as to be completely unnoticed.

“I resent that
only a nurse
remark,” she told him. “I took a special ten-week course in the surgery machine, and I hold an operating certificate for it. But it really will be Dr. Cozzens who cuts into your abdomen, you know. Every move will be his.”

“Where is this master computer with the preprogrammed operation?”

“It’s located across town, actually, at the Federal Medical Center. But it could just as well be a thousand miles away. We use standard telephone lines for transmission.”

“And if the line goes dead in the midst of the operation?”

“Oh, we have a fail-safe mechanism. The entire operation must be received on our machine’s own tape before it begins cutting. That’s what’s happening now. See that glowing green light?” She patted the stainless steel monster above his head as if it were a living creature, a pet to be fed and watered and loved. “The actual operation might last anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or two, but all the programmed information is fed into our baby here in a matter of minutes. As soon as the green light goes out, we’ll be ready to begin.”

“Just how does? …”

“Well, the trickiest thing about it, from the machine’s point of view, is the fact that the appendix is an extremely mobile organ, and can be found in any one of eight or nine different positions within the abdomen. But once it’s located, the rest is easy. This laser scalpel arm here will make the initial incision—either a McBurney or a Right Rectus—about two to four inches long. The diseased appendix is then delivered into the wound, its base is securely tied off, and the organ is cut across and removed. The abdominal wall is then closed with plastic stitches. As I say, it can be over in a few minutes with luck—if your appendix is where it’s supposed to be.”

At that moment the green light blinked out, and Nurse Simmons let out her breath. “Does that mean it’s ready?” Vander Defoe asked.

“It’s ready. Just a double-check to see it’s the correct tape. Yes, we’re ready to begin now.”

He saw the machine begin to move above him, saw the sighting lamps contract like some living weapon stalking its prey. “I … I can’t…”

“Do you want a general?” she asked suddenly. “You really don’t need to be unconscious. It’ll be over before you know it.”

“I just don’t want to look at that damned thing coming down on me!”

“Oh, very well! I’ll put up a screen.” She pulled a pale green curtain across his middle, effectively blocking out the operating area. “There! How’s that?”

“Better,” he mumbled.

“Now just let your mind go blank. Don’t think of a thing. Or think of the weather. Think of your wife. Think of …”

His wife. Gretel. Gretel in bed. Living, thrashing about like some tormented tidal wave. Gretel the untamable. Gretel the machine, with a soul like the stainless steel monster above his head. He wondered if she had initiated her current lover, whoever he might be, into the boundless joys of the electric lance. Surgery by machine, and sex by machine. Was there really much difference? Ah, Gretel.

Ah …

“My God! You’re hemorrhaging! Something’s wrong!”

“What?”

“Don’t try to move!” She was pressing buttons, frantically trying to reverse the machine.

“What is it? What’s the matter? I don’t feel …”

“I don’t know,” she gasped out, fully panicked now.

“I don’t think I can …”

That was the last he heard, as a great wave seemed to sweep over him. He was suddenly far away from here, far away from the automated operating room in a Washington hospital in the middle of the twenty-first century. He was in a field, a field full of daisies, and his mother was calling to him, calling from far away.

I’m coming, he thought. Yes, I’m coming.

Ah. Yes.

“T
HERE’S NO GETTING AROUND
it, chief. Vander Defoe was murdered, and he was murdered by a computer.”

Carl Crader stared across the wide desk at his assistant director. Earl Jazine was young, full of a cool brash confidence in his own judgment that Crader couldn’t help but admire. He’d probably been like Jazine once himself in younger days, when the brash-ness of his manner had won him an audience with the president, and led to the establishment of the Computer Investigation Bureau. In those days of feuding government agencies and overlapping areas of responsibility, the birth of CIB as an independent agency reporting directly to the president had been a coup that made Carl Crader, in the words of one video, newsmagazine, “the most powerful law enforcement official since J. Edgar Hoover.”

As he approached his sixty-first birthday, there were days—more and more of them lately—when Carl Crader did not feel especially powerful. This was definitely one of them. The news of Vander Defoe’s death on the operating table at Salk Memorial Hospital had hit the New York headquarters of CIB like a bomb. First Maarten Tromp had been on the direct line, and then the president himself had come on the vision-phone, summoning Crader and Jazine to Washington by rocketcopter.