R. D. Brown, page 1
CEORGE OPPERLY was awakened by the sounds of bombs and sirens. He awoke in the dark with the stench of CS26 boring out his nostrils and an urge to puke he knew would become irresistible in about ten seconds. He made it to the john with no time to spare, gettting most of it in the sink. His head reeled and he splashed cold water on himself. This brought his attention to his hands and arms, and the sores.
He looked at himself in the mirror. He was shaking so violently that his face was a blur. Sores were beginning to develop all over him. He sobbed in terror, took a breath for another sob, and a gust of air brought the smell of the gas into the bathroom. There was an open window in his bedroom!
He rushed back to the bedroom, pushed the window in, pressed the seal around it, and turned the air filtration system up full blast, putting his head by the vent and sucking in long gasps. He heard a moan from the bed — Mary Opperly coming awake. He grabbed his wife and pulled her over to the vent, holding her weight by her tinselly hair and shaking her hard.
“Stop it, George,” she said, “I’m all right.’
He let go of her. “Goddam absent-minded bitch. Why didn’t you close the window when you came to bed?”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You went to sleep last. You’re supposed to check.”
Mary sat on the bed and lowered her head, looking somewhat shamed, but looking also somewhat like an animal making ready to charge. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot. How do you expect me to remember this kind of thing all the time. Do you know you’re the only person I know who hasn’t even had a lung job?”
“When I need a part replaced, Mary, I’ll get it replaced. Not until.” “Look at your skin, dummy.”
“Those clear up in a couple of weeks.”
“Couple of months, more like.”
A sore on his arm popped, cracked. He felt fluid running down his arm, but refused to look at it. “They still clear up. You know, Mary, I think maybe you left the window open on purpose — at least subconsciously. You want me to get replaced because you think replacements are fashionable.”
“They are fashionable, George,” Mary hissed. “They are so fashionable that these days, if you don’t have a replacement you’re suspect.” “That’s not true.”
“It is, and you know it. Too many people have had to get replacements.”
“They cost money, lots of money. The department has to have some justification . . he held a finger to her lips. “I know, I’ve got justification now. They’re replacing parts automatically now with far less reason than this rash I’ve got. I’ll talk to Pederson tomorrow.”
Mary would have nothing to do with peacemaking after that insult, though. She slapped his hand away from her mouth. Being slapped with a nusteel arm hurts. “We wouldn’t have to worry about windows if we lived underground.”
“I put in an application as soon as I made ‘A’ but everything in Old Fort Knox is filled. I haven’t been class A that long. All right, I’m sorry for that remark about the window.”
She relented. “OK,” she said, and leaned back on the bed to prepare for sleep again.
George walked over to the Doc in the comer and inserted a bill in the roller. The Doc began to buzz and click. “But these damn replacements are going to break our economy,” he said, last word-wise. “Look at you. You’ve had three.” It occurred to him that his mouth was getting him into trouble again. “I guess you’ve been maintaining my status for me,” he concluded. He laughed. She laughed. Privately, he wondered if she were accident prone. First an arm, then lungs and chest, then a skull fracture. Tinsel hair, unchanging in length, attached to a shiny nusteel skull. A year and a half ago a bomb had whistled down onto a crowded street, and everyone had ducked in time but her. He looked at her body across the bed, shimmering with invulnerability, almost half replaced, and cursed. He looked down at his own vulnerable flesh, being swabbed and bandaged by the Doc. And cursed.
By the time the Doc had finished with him it was time to put on his safety suit and go to work. An armored personnel carrier stopped by his freehold building every hour and a half to pick up workers. George hated the long wait. He decided to walk to work. It was an hour’s walk, but he’d still probably get there before the APC did. There was hardly ever any bombing during the day.
Two blocks away from his freehold he walked into devastation. Louisville Supply had been bombed into rubble. The instruments on his safety suit showed that in addition to a high concentration of CS26 in the area, there was a trace of radiation — far more likely to have come from something in the supply compound itself than from the bombs. He looked out over the slabs of concrete, the broken stone, the ash, and saw one lonely wall standing amid the field. Something white flashed from behind it. He pulled his gun and went over to investigate.
Behind the wall was an AAA crab-man who scuttled away from him weakly on all fours, connected to a parachute (the flash of white) which was tangled in its cord. The crab-man’s carapace was severely cracked. His chute must have become tangled, somehow, in the air. The sight enabled George to overcome his revulsion at the miscegenous creature enough to smile at the implications of what he saw. It was true, then, that the African-Arab Alliance didn’t have enough jet packs to go around. They might beat the AAA yet. His mouth contorted with disgust and he aimed into the crack in the carapace and shot the crab-man, who twitched a little, then stopped moving.
George hurried on. There might be uninjured ones about, and a tear in his suit would likely kill him before he got to safety.
Of all the AAA genetic modifications, the clawed varieties scared him the most. Of course, the more he was replaced, the less there would be to fear. The claws could do no more than scratch nusteel. But all of the AAA creatures gave him the creeps, and would undoubtedly continue to do so no matter what happened. In the nineteen years the war had gone on they had never stopped giving him or his fellow-countrymen the creeps. In fact, he remembered, it was the AAA’s refusal to sign the Genetic Research Treaty that precipitated the war.
This damned fiddling around with peoples’ genes should have been prohibited at the time of the first in vitro conception, George thought. The immorality of genetic modification was plain to most folks even then. Instead, it had attracted a host of scientists and piles of money, and when the programs were made illegal in one place, the men and money moved to another. The UN acted too late. By the time the Genetic Research Treaty was passed, those few Arab and African countries which still supported it had found it too profitable to quit, and were spawning armies of monsters. George winced. “Armies” was all too accurate a word.
At least the big bangs had never come. The fear of The Bomb accounted for that only partially, though. The AAA had used a few tactical nuclear weapons at the beginning, combined with some bacteriological wonders, but the UN had not bothered to reply with any nuclear weapons at all. Instead, they shot over some chemical agents that made mustard gas look like Ben-Gay, and the war was on. The AAA had defended its citizens by breeding them, and the UN had done the same for its people by replacing them. Both techniques had succeeded well enough to drag the war on for almost two decades. Maybe The Bomb would have been better in the long run. Such thoughts made George feel more and more defenseless, and he was glad when he got to the Louisville Personnel door.
He inserted his card and was admitted, went down to his office and stripped off his suit. Pederson was waiting for him. “My God,” Pederson said, “what happened to you?”
Opperly’s first reaction was to tell him about the crab-man, but then he realized that Pederson was talking about the bandages all over him. Great. A perfect opening for introducing The Subject. “I wanted to talk to you about that,” he said, “The wife left a window open last night — you know, we still have to live above ground even though I’m an ‘A,’ and I was . .
Pederson whistled. “You haven’t heard about CS27 yet, have you?” “What?” Chemical agents had been combined by the enemy into a kind of stew, the broth for which was CS. Every time new ingredients were fitted in, the number was raised.
“One new agent has been added. They haven’t figured out what the effects are yet. They haven’t even figured out whether a safety suit protects against it.”
“Pederson, let me get to the point right away. I want to go over to CHD and have some tests done today, see about some replacements. How bad do you need me?”
“Hell, 1 don’t need martyrs at all. I’d say it’s about time you got over there. Do you know that people have been wondering about you?” Opperly’s face flushed with anger. “What the hell right . .
“Now, don’t get started. I’m telling you this for your own good. One of your fellow workers, I won’t mention who, has actually questioned your mental stability — questioned whether or not you were suicidal. Repressed death-wish, you know, typical laymen senseless psychiatry. I stopped that, of course. It never got beyond me. But still, those kinds of thoughts do occur to people.” Pederson tapped his nusteel chest. “Anyway, what I’m saying is to get a replacement as soon as possible, to get on over there right away. Maybe they can learn something about the effects of this new agent from you. Take all the time you need.” “Thank you, sir.” Opperly was unsure about just how thankful he really was. He slipped his safety suit back on and started for the door.
Pederson’s voice caught him in the office vestibule. “Of course, if you should get back in time today to do any work, we need to reorganize police assignments. They dropped some crab-men in the area of the hit.”
Opperly didn’t feel
THE CENTER for Human Development was a converted ten-story freehold building much like his own, except for the fact that it was underground. After he told the WAC at the front desk his business there she said, “Physical and testing in room 107. After that, you’ll want to see our Mr. Capra in 652.”
They photographed him inside and out and stuck him full of needles. One medical assistant measured him all over with calipers — something George had never heard of being done there. When George asked him about it, he told George to shut up and measured his mouth. After it was all over, they made George sit for a half hour before letting him go down to room 652.
The sign on the door read “H. Capra, Prosthetics Director.” He knocked and a cheery voice said, “Come in.”
The office was cluttered with plaques, framed certificates, and trophies. Behind an enormous oaken desk a glittering, all-nusteel man was rising. George started, and began to back out of the door, when the man said, “Relax, George, and come on in. There are going to be a lot more like me pretty soon; it’s time you got used to us.” He grinned, revealing shiny metal teeth, bounded over the great desk, and shook George’s hand. “I’m Harry Capra, have a seat and let’s talk.” Capra skipped happily back to his chair behind the desk, and George took a comfortable seat next to it, shaking his head sharply to rid himself of bedazzlement.
Capra pulled some papers off the desk and waved them around. “I’ve got your reports here. We still don’t seem to be able to figure out what that new agent’s for. It’s driving us crazy.”
George smiled, a little. “Maybe it doesn’t do anything. Maybe they just put it in to drive you crazy.”
Capra blinked, then laughed. “Maybe you’re right. Anyway, the other twenty-six agents have done their work. Actually, your exposure was slight — and a good thing, too — but the skin on your upper body has taken it pretty hard.”
Maybe that was what had happened to Capra, George thought, metal skin. “So you’re going to replace it?”
“Not exactly,” said Capra. “Please try not to be upset by this question, but why did you wait so long before coming to us?” He pulled a form out of the stack of paper and held a pencil over it expectantly.
“I’ve never been this badly off before. Replacement costs the department a lot of money. I didn’t want to come in for something trivial.”
“An admirable attitude, on the face of it. But surely you must know that the government encourages replacement. A hurt arm, say, gets replaced with a better arm, and that arm’s not likely to get hurt again. Prosthetics means protection, and protection is the goverment’s job. In fact — I tell you this privately, you understand — in another month having at least one replacement is going to be a qualification for class B citizenship or better. Surely you can’t be that blind to what I might call the whole direction of a society.”
“I tried to explain …”
“Come now, confess!” Capra yelled, gesturing expansively, sending paper flying, his grin widening, “aren’t you a little put off by this…’’His fist clanked against his chest, “… a little scared by it? Be honest.” George sighed. “I guess I have to admit …”
“Of course you are! And it’s a perfectly normal reaction. I felt the same way myself at one time. Not any more, of course.” He grinned and clanked again, then composed his metal face into a more serious expression. “Normal or not, though, these attitudes are anachronistic, and are going to have to be recognized as such. And, in fact, they will be. Officially.”
Opperly began to panic. “Does this mean I’m not going to get a replacement?”
“Oh, no. You’re safe. You came to me in time. But you’re going to have to get a hold on yourself and develop a more positive attitude toward prosthetics, because your replacement is going to be a lot more extensive than what you probably planned on.”
George wished Capra would get to the point. “How extensive?” “Well, remember what you said about the high cost of replacement? I only wish more people understood the enormous expense involved in protecting our citizens. For years the state tried to save money by replacing only what seemed necessary at the time — just the most affected areas — on the theory that the war wouldn’t last much longer. Now we know that a short-sighted policy that was. Patients come back again and again. Your own wife, it says here, has been to us three times, and she’s not at all exceptional. The solution to this problem is now clear. For a slightly larger original investment we can save a lot of money in the long run with Total Replacement.”
George began to feel dizzy. “Total?”
“Total.”
“But I don’t need everything replaced, just …”
“Mr. Opperly, you weren’t listening. We don’t want you coming back here. We don’t want you to be injured again. Preventive prosthetics is the name of the game from here on out. You must learn to develop a healthy attitude toward it. The directive was signed by the Secretary General only two days ago, and it’s not going to change for a long time, if ever. We’re going to do it all ih one shot. You’ll be one of the first to benefit from this policy, one of the first to be truly and completely protected.” Capra expanded his chest with pride. “I was the first. I bet you didn’t know that. Two years ago … experimental, then.” He pointed to his shoulder.
George leaned over and looked where Capra was pointing. There was an identification plate on the shoulder which read “TRU1.” “You?” George asked.
“Total.” Capra rose up and beat his fist against various parts of his body. They all clanked.
A thought occurred to George. “What about the brain?” “Certainly,” said Capra. “There are nerve agents in that gunk they shoot at ust you know. Why worry about them?” He reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a clear packet of goo. “You must know that we’ve been able to manufacture brains from the various electragels for over a decade. Electragel neurons, if you can call them that, may not work the same way as bioneurons, but they accomplish the same thing,
or can be organized so they can accomplish it. The stuff set up its own circuits and the latest brain made from the gels has, I understand, actually a slightly higher storage capacity than the biological brain. The only problem with using it in prosthetics was that they couldn’t find a way to transfer the information into it from a biobrain. They solved that problem two years ago, and now the equipment for accomplishing the transfer takes up about the space of a beer can.”
“I’ve heard about the electragels,” said George, “but I’ve never heard of this.”
“It hasn’t been especially publicized. But we’ve been replacing just brains alone with the new techniques ever since they were perfected. Now, of course, an electragel brain is included in the Total Replacement Unit, along with the transfer equipment.” Capra shuttered his eyes. “Of course, there couldn’t be much publicity for it. For one thing, when we replace a brain the experience of transferral is necessarily eliminated. I mean, when the information is being transferred, neither brain is thinking, so there’s nothing to remember. And we don’t tell them. So folks who’ve had their brain replaced don’t know about it.”
Opperly laughed nervously. “So my brain could have been replaced already?”
Capra smiled. “It might have been. Those records wouldn’t be in this set. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter, since you’re going to be replaced tomorrow or the next day. And the unit can transfer information from electragel to electragel, too.”
Capra looked at the clock and said hurriedly, “I’m sure you must have many questions, but I’ve got another appointment in three minutes. We’ll schedule you another half-hour tomorrow..he pulled a big sheet of paper which had been divided into a lot of little squares off the floor and wrote “Opperly” across two squares, “… and get you replaced and out of here.”
THE SOUNDS of bombs and sirens woke him up again that night. He looked at the clock. No, morning. It was a little after five-thirty. His appointment was at seven. No sense in going back to sleep.
He took off his bandages and got into the Doc, looking down at Mary who, he decided, could sleep through anything. He looked at her tinsel hair scattered on the pillow, her nusteel skull. Was there pink and grey tissue inside that shell, or electragel? The explosion had been a year and a half ago. It could be. He tried to think of any personality changes occurring after the explosion. He couldn’t think of any. But then, there shouldn’t be any such changes, whether her brain had been replaced or not.
