"Hardly," his face was pragmatic.
"And to which school do you belong?" I asked sourly. "Do you want me to
get the cure? Or am I to die miserably while you take tabs on my blood
pressure, or do I merely lose an arm while you're sitting with folded
hands waiting for the laboratory report?"
"In any case, we'll learn a lot about Mekstrom's from you," he said.
"Even if you die."
As caustically as I could, I said, "It's nice to know that I am not
going to die in vain."
He eyed me with contempt. "You're not afraid to die, are you, Mr.
Cornell?"
That's a dirty question to ask any man. Sure, I'm afraid to die. I just
don't like the idea of being not-alive. As bad as life is, it's better
than nothing. But the way he put the question he was implying that I
should be happy to die for the benefit of Humanity in general, and
that's a question that is unfairly loaded. After all, everybody is
slated to kick off. There is no other way of resigning from the
universe. So if I have to die, it might as well be for the Benefit of
Something, and if it happens to be Humanity, so much the better. But
when the case is proffered on a silver tray, I feel, "Somebody else, not
me!"
The next argument Phelps would be tossing out would be the one that
goes, "Two thousand years ago, a Man died for Humanity--" which always
makes me sick. No matter how you look at us, there is no resemblance
between Him and me.
I cut him short before he could say it: "Whether or not I'm afraid to
die, and for good or evil, now or later, is beside the point. I have,
obviously, nothing to say about the time, place, and the reasons."
We sat there and glared at one another; he didn't know whether to laugh
or snarl and I didn't care which he did. It seemed to me that he was
leading up to something that looked like the end. Then I'd get the
standard funeral and statements would be given out that I'd died because
medical research had not been able to save me and blah blah blah
complete with lack of funds and The Medical Center charity drive. The
result would mean more moola for Phelps and higher efficiency for his
operations, and to the devil with the rest of the world.
"Let's get along with it," I snapped. "I've no opinion, no vote, no
right of appeal. Why bother to ask me how I feel?"
Calmly he replied, "Because I am not a rough-shod, unhuman monster, Mr.
Cornell. I would prefer that you see my point of view--or at least
enough of it to admit that there is a bit of right on my side."
"Seems to me I went through that with Thorndyke."
"This is another angle. I'm speaking of my right of discovery."
"You're speaking of what?"
"My right of discovery. You as an engineer should be familiar with the
idea. If I were a poet I could write an ode to my love and no one would
forbid me my right to give it to her and to nobody else. If I were a
cook with a special recipe no one could demand that I hand it over
unless I had a special friend. He who discovers something new should be
granted the right to control it. If this Mekstrom business were some
sort of physical patent or some new process, I could apply for a patent
and have it for my exclusive use for a period of seventeen years. Am I
not right?"
"Yes, but--"
"Except that my patent would be infringed upon and I'd have no
control--"
I stood up suddenly and faced him angrily. He did not cower; after all
he was a Mekstrom. But he did shut up for a moment.
"Seems to me," I snarled, "that any process that can be used to save
human life should not be held secret, patentable, or under the control
of any one man or group."
"This is an argument that always comes up. You may, of course, be
correct. But happily for me, Mr. Cornell, I have the process and you
have not, and it is my own conviction that I have the right to use it on
those people who seem, in my opinion, to hold the most for the future
advancement of the human race. However, I do not care to go over this
argument again, it is tiresome and it never ends. As one of the ancient
Greek Philosophers observed, you cannot change a man's mind by arguing
with him. The other fact remains, however, that you do have something to
offer us, despite your contrary mental processes."
"Do go on? What do I have to do to gain this benefit? Who do I have to
kill?" I eyed him cynically and then added, "Or is it 'Whom shall I
kill?' I like these things to be proper, you know."
"Don't be sarcastic. I'm serious," he told me.
"Then stop pussyfooting and come to the point," I snapped. "You know
what the story is. I don't. So if you think I'll be interested, why not
tell me instead of letting me find out the hard way."
"You, of course, were a carrier. Maybe you still are. We can find out.
In fact, we'll have to find out, before we--"
"For God's Sake stop it!" I yelled. "You're meandering."
"Sorry," he said in a tone of apology that surprised me all the way down
to my feet. He shook himself visibly and went on from there: "You, if
still a carrier, can be of use to The Medical Center. Now do you
understand?"
Sure I understand, but good. As a normal human type, they held nothing
over me and just shoved me here and there and picked up the victims
after me. But now that I was a victim myself, they could offer me their
"cure" only if I would swear to go around the country deliberately
infecting the people they wanted among them. It was that--or lie there
and die miserably. This had not come to Scholar Phelps as a sudden flash
of genius. He'd been planning this all along; had been waiting to pop
this delicate question after I'd been pushed around, had a chance to
torture myself mentally, and was undoubtedly soft for anything that
looked like salvation.
"There is one awkward point," said Scholar Phelps suavely. "Once we have
cured you, we would have no hold on you other than your loyalty and your
personal honor to fulfill a promise given. Neither of us are naive, Mr.
Cornell. We both know that any honorable promise is only as valid as the
basic honor involved. Since your personal opinion is that this medical
treatment should be used indiscriminately, and that our program to
better the human race by competitive selection is foreign to your
feelings, you would feel honor-bound to betray us. Am I not correct?"
What could I say to that? First I'm out, then I'm in, now I'm out again.
What was Phelps getting at?
"If our positions were reversed, Mr. Cornell, I'm sure that you'd seek
some additional binding force against me. I shall continue to seek some
such lever against you for the same reason. In the meantime, Mr.
Cornell, we shall make a test to see whether we have any real basis for
any agreement at all. You may have ceased to be a carrier, you know."
"Yeah," I admitted darkly.
"In the meantime," he said cheerfully, "the least we can do is to treat
your finger. I'd hate to have you hedge a deal because we did not
deliver your cured body in the whole."
He put his head out of the door and summoned a nurse who came with a
black bag. From the bag, Scholar Phelps took a skin-blast hypo and a
small metal box, the top of which held a small slender, jointed platform
and some tiny straps. He strapped my finger to this platform and then
plugged in a length of line cord to the nearest wall socket. The little
platforms moved; the one nearest my wrist vibrated rapidly across a very
small excursion that tickled like the devil. The end platform moved in
an arc, flexing the finger tip from straight to about seventy degrees.
This moved fairly slow but regularly up and down.
"I'll not fool you," he said drily. "This is going to hurt."
He set the skin-blast hypo on top of the joint and let it go. For a
moment the finger felt cold, numb, pleasant. Then the shock wore away
and the tip of my finger, my whole finger and part of my hand shocked me
with the most excruciating agony that the hide of man ever felt. Flashes
and waves of pain darted up my arm to the elbow and the muscles in my
forearm jumped. The sensitive nerve in my elbow sang and sent darting
waves of zigzag needles up to my shoulder. My hand was a source of
searing heat and freezing cold and the pain of being crushed and twisted
and wrenched out of joint all at the same time.
Phelps wiped my wet face with a towel, loaded another hypo and let me
have it in the shoulder. Gradually the stuff took hold and the awful
pain began to subside. Not all the way, it just diminished from
absolutely unbearable to merely terrible.
I knew at that moment why a trapped animal will bite off its own foreleg
to get free of the trap.
From the depths of his bag he found a bottle and poured a half-tumbler
for me; it went down like a whiskey-flavored soft drink. It had about as
much kick as when you pour a drink of water into a highball glass that
still holds a dreg of melted ice and diluted liquor. But it burned like
fury once it hit my stomach and my mind began to wobble. He'd given me a
slug of the pure quill, one hundred proof.
As some sort of counter-irritant, it worked. Very gradually the awful
pain in my hand began to subside.
"You can take that manipulator off in an hour or so," he told me. "And
in the meantime we'll get along with our testing."
I gathered that they could stop this treatment anywhere along the
process if I did not measure up.