Part 2 (1/2)
”So far, I do. I'm still learning to handle the male form properly, but if it doesn't pay off in my writing, I'll be very pleased to change back.”
He paused and looked at the panel in front of him, where a cl.u.s.ter of yellow and violet lights had suddenly started a mad blinking.
”I'd like to talk to you about your job sometime, but right now I have to get back to the board. There's a stuck conveyor on the eighth level, and no mechanics there. I'll have to try and borrow a couple of machines from Parthenogenetics two floors down.” He began to key in to his controller. ”Just go where the location director tells you,” he said vaguely, already preoccupied completely with his problem.
”We're on our way. Good luck with the writing,” said Wolf.
They went over to the elevators. As they continued up to the fifth floor, La.r.s.en could see a trace of a smile on Wolf's thin face.
”All right, Bey, what is it? You only get that expression when there's a secret joke.”
”Oh, it's nothing much,” said Wolf, though he continued to look very pleased with himself. ”At least, for the sake of our friend back there I hope that it's nothing much. I wonder if he knows that for quite a while there have been theories-strong ones-that although the face he is wearing may have belonged to Shakespeare, all the plays were written by somebody else. Maybe he'd be better off trying to form-change to look like Bacon.”
Bey Wolf was a pleasant enough fellow, but to appeal to him a joke had to have a definite twist to it. He was still looking pleased with himself when they reached the office of the director of transplants. One thing he hadn't mentioned to John La.r.s.en was the fact that a number of the theories he had referred to claimed that Shakespeare's works had been written by a woman.
”The liver came from a twenty-year-old female hydroponics worker who had her skull crushed in an industrial accident.”
Dr. Morris, lean, intense, and disheveled, removed the reply slip that he had just read from the machine and handed it to John La.r.s.en, who stared at it in disbelief.
”But that's impossible! Only yesterday, the ID tests gave a completely different result for that liver. You must have made a mistake, Doctor.”
Morris shook his head firmly. ”You saw the whole process yourself. You were there when we did the microbiopsy on the transplanted liver. You saw me prepare the specimen and enter the sample for chromosome a.n.a.lysis. You saw the computer matching I just gave you. Mr. La.r.s.en, there are no other steps or possible sources of error. I think you are right, there has been a mistake all right-but it was made by the medical student who gave you the report.””But he told me that he did it three separate times.”
”Then he probably did it wrong three times. It is no new thing to repeat a mistake. I trust that you are not about to do that yourself.”
La.r.s.en was flushed with anger and embarra.s.sment, and Morris, pale and overworked, was clearly resentful at what he thought was a careless waste of his precious time. Wolf stepped in to try to create a less heated atmosphere.
”One thing puzzles me a bit,” he said. ”Why did you use a transplant, Dr.
Morris? Wouldn't it have been easier to redevelop a healthy liver, using the biofeedback machines and a suitable program?”
Morris cooled a little. He did not appear to find it strange that a specialist in form-change work should ask such a naive question.
”Normally you would be quite right, Mr. Wolf. We use transplants for two reasons. Sometimes the original organ has been so suddenly and severely damaged that we do not have time to use the regrowth programs. More often, it is a question of speed and convenience.”
”You mean in convalescence time?”
”Certainly. If I were to give you a new liver from a transplant, you would spend maybe a hundred hours, maximum, working with the biofeedback machines.
You would need to adjust immune responses and body chemistry balance, and that would be all. With luck, you might be able to get away with as little as fifty hours in interaction. If you wanted to regrow a whole liver, though, and you weren't willing to wait for natural regeneration-which would happen eventually, in the case of the liver-well, you'd probably be faced with at least a thousand hours of work with the machines.”
Wolf nodded. ”That all makes sense. But didn't you check the ID of this particular liver before you even began the operation?”
”That's not the way the system works.” Morris went over to a wall screen and called out a display of the hospital operational flow. ”You can see it easiest if you follow it here. When the organs are first taken from their donors, they are logged in at this point by a human. Then, as you can see, the computer takes over. It sets up the tests to determine the ID, checks the main physical features of the donor and the organ, fixes the place where it will be stored, and so on. All that information goes to the permanent data banks. Then, when we need a donor organ, such as a liver, the computer matches the information about the physical type and condition of the patient with the data on all the available livers in the organ bank. It picks out the most suitable one for the operation. Everything after the original logging in is automatic, so the question of checking the ID never arises.”
He came back from the wall displays and looked questioningly at Wolf, whose face was still thoughtful.
”So what you're telling us, Doctor,” said Bey, ”is that you never have any organs in the banks which didn't have an ID check made when they first entered it?”
”Not for adults. Of course, there are many infant organs that don't have their IDs filed. Anything that fails the humanity tests is never given an ID-the computer creates a separate file in the data bank for the information about those organs.”
”So it is possible for a liver to be in the organ banks and yet have no ID.”
”An infant's liver, from a humanity-test failure. Look, Mr. Wolf, I see where you're heading, and I can a.s.sure you that it won't work.” Morris came to the long table and sat down facing Wolf and La.r.s.en. He ran his hand over his long jaw, then looked at his watch. ”I have things that I must do, very soon, but let me point out the realities of this case. The patient who received the liver, as you saw for yourself, was a young adult. The liver we used on her was fully grown, or close to it. I saw it myself at the time of the operation.
It certainly didn't come from any infant, and we would never use infant organs except for children's operations.”
Wolf shrugged his shoulders resignedly. ”That's it, then. We won't take up any more of your time. I'm sorry that we've been a nuisance on this, but we have to do our job.”They rose from the table and turned to leave. Before they reached the doorway, a gray-haired man entered and waved casually to Morris.
”Hi, Ernst,” he said. ”Don't let me interrupt you. I noticed from the visitors log that you have people in from Form Control, so I thought I'd stop by and see what's happening.”
”They were just about to leave,” said Morris. ”Mr. Wolf and Mr. La.r.s.en, I'd like to introduce you to Robert Capman, the director of Central Hospital. This is an unexpected visit. According to the hospital daily scheduler, you have a meeting this morning with the Building and Construction Committee.”
”I do. I'm on my way there now.” Capman gave Wolf and La.r.s.en a rapid and penetrating look. ”I hope that you gentlemen were able to get the information that you wanted.”
Wolf smiled and shrugged. ”Not quite what we hoped we'd get. I'm afraid that we ran into a dead end.”
”I'm sorry to hear that.” Capman smiled also. ”If it's any consolation to you, that happens to us all the time in our work here.”
Again, he gave Wolf and La.r.s.en that cool and curiously purposeful look. Bey felt a sudden heightening of his own level of attention. He returned Capman's measured scrutiny for several seconds, until the latter abruptly nodded at the wall display and waved his hand in farewell.
”I'll have to go. I'm supposed to be making a statement to the committee in four minutes time.”
”Problems?” asked Morris.
”Same old issue. A new proposal to raze Central Hospital and put us all out in the green belt, away from the tough part of the city. They'll be broadcasting the hearings on closed circuit, if you're interested, Channel Twenty-three.”
He turned and hurried out. Wolf raised his eyebrows. ”Is he always in that much of a hurry?”
Morris nodded. ”Always. He's amazing, the work load he tackles. The best combination of theorist and experimenter that I've ever met.” He seemed to have calmed down completely from his earlier irritation. ”Not only that, but you should see him handle a difficult committee.”
”I'd like to.” Wolf chose to take him literally. ”Provided that you don't mind us staying here to watch the display. One more thing about the liver.” His tone was carefully casual. ”What about the children who pa.s.s the humanity tests but have some sort of physical deformity? You did mention that you use infant organs in children's operations. Are they taken from the ones who fail the tests?”
”Usually. But what of it?”
”Well, don't you sometimes grow the organs you need, in an artificial environment, until they're the size you want for the child?”
”We try to complete any repair work before the children can walk or speak; in fact, we begin work right after the humanity tests are over. But you are quite correct; we do sometimes grow an organ that we need from infant to older size, and we do that from humanity-test reject stock. However, it's all done over in Children's Hospital, out on the west side. They have special child-size feedback machines there. We also prefer to do it there for control reasons. As you very well know, there are heavy penalties for allowing anyone to use a biofeedback machine if they are between two and eighteen years old-except for medical repair work, of course, and that is done under very close scrutiny. We like to get the children away from here completely, to prevent any accidental access here to form-change equipment.”
Morris turned to the display screen and lifted the channel selector. ”I suppose that I should admire your persistence, Mr. Wolf, but I a.s.sure you that it doesn't lead anywhere. Why, may I ask, do you lay all this emphasis on children?”
”There was one other thing in the report from Luis Rad-Kato-the medical student. He says that he not only did an ID check on the liver, he did an age test, too. The age he determined was twelve years.”
”Then that proves he doesn't know what he's doing. There are no organs usedhere from child donors. That work would be done over at Children's Hospital.
Your comment to Capman was a good one-you are trying to pursue this whole thing through a dead end. Spend your time on something else, that's my advice.”