"What could I lose? Some paraplegics seem to live a fuller life than
ever. Me, I was going mad. And I'd seen the dogs this research team at
my hospital was working on--old dogs' brains in whelps' bodies, spry as
natural.
"Then came the chance. Da Sanhao was a Brazilian wrestler stranded here
by the war. Not his war, he said; but he did have the decency to
volunteer as medical orderly. But he got conscripted by a bomb that took
a corner off the hospital and one off his head. They got him into
chemical stasis quicker than it'd ever been done before, but he was dead
as a human being--no brain worth salvaging above the isthmus. So, the
big guns at the hospital saw a chance to try their game on human
material, superb body and lower nervous system in ideal condition,
waiting for a brain. Only, whose?
"Naturally, some big-shot's near the end of his rope and willing to
gamble. But _I_ decided it would be a forgotten little-shot, name of
Edwin Scott. I already knew the surgeons from being a guinea pig on
ICEG. Of course, when I sounded them out, they gave me a kindly
brush-off: The matter was out of the their hands. However, I knew whose
hands it _was_ in. And I waited for my chance--a big job that needed
somebody expendable. Then I'd make a deal, writing my own ticket because
they'd figure I'd never collect. Did you hear about Operation
Seed-corn?"
That was the underground railway that ran thousands of farmers out of
occupied territory. Manpower was what finally broke Invader, improbable
as it seems. Epidemics, desertions, over-extended lines, thinned that
overwhelming combat strength; and every farmer spirited out of their
hands equalled ten casualties. I nodded.
"Well, I planned that with myself as director. And sold it to Filipson."
I contemplated him: just a big man in a trench coat and droop-brimmed
hat silhouetted against the lamp-lit mist. I said, "You directed
Seed-corn out of a wheel chair in enemy territory, and came back to get
transplanted into another body? Man, you didn't tell Ferd a word of a
lie when you said you were used to walking up to death." (But there was
more: Besides that dour Scot's fortitude, where did he come by that
high-hearted valor?)
He shrugged. "You do what you can with what you've got. _Those_ weren't
the big adventures I was thinking about when I said that. I had a team
behind me in those--"