The news report blatted in Jeff Meyer's ear from the little car radio.
The words came through, but he hardly heard them as his eyes watched
the huge glass doors of the administration building of the Hoffman
Medical Center.
... no word has yet been received, but it is believed that the
Eurasian governments may be in session several hours more in an
attempt to stem the inflation. On the home front, the stock-market
nosedive, which resulted from the new Senate taxation bill yesterday,
leveled off when the Secretary of Corporative Business announced this
morning that the government would abandon attempts to enforce the new
law, at least for the time being. Secretary Barnes stated that further
study of the bill would be undertaken when more pressing governmental
problems had been cleared--
Jeff snapped off the switch with a snarl. The street passing the Center
was crowded. Lines of cars moved into and out of the traffic stream
from the huge Center parking tiers. The building rose high, tier
upon tier. Its walls gleamed white in the bright morning sunlight,
reflecting brilliant facets of golden light from thousands of polished
windows.
It was an immense building, sprawling across six perfectly landscaped
city blocks, tall trees and cool green terraces setting off the
glistening beauty of the architecture. The structure sent tower after
tower up from the dingy street below, and at the foot of the towers was
a buzz of furious activity. Supply trucks, carrying food and supplies
for the twenty-two thousand beds and the people in them, and for the
additional thirteen thousand people who worked day and night to keep
the huge hospital running, moved toward the unloading platforms.
The Hoffman Medical Center was an age-old dream which had finally come
true. Even those who had conceived it had not realized the tremendous
need it would fulfill. From its very inception, no expense had been
spared. The finest architects had thrown up the shimmering ward-towers,
turned toward the sun, to bring light to the sick and injured who
rested and healed within. Equipment unequaled anywhere in the world
had filled the Center's dressing and surgical rooms. The doctors,
nurses, researchers and technicians who staffed the institution had
been gathered from the world over. And all the world had conceded the
Hoffman Center its place as leader in the realm of medicine, ever since
the cornerstone had been laid that rainy morning in the spring of the
year 2085. Twenty-four years had passed since that day, and in those
years the Hoffman Center had never once faltered in its leadership.
The men in the car sat in stony silence. Finally, Jeff Meyer stirred,
extended his hand briefly to Ted Bahr. "You'll cover things out here?"
"Don't worry about it." Bahr shook the hand. "Well wait to hear from
you." He watched, almost wistfully, as the huge man cut through the
traffic and headed for the large glass doors. Then, with a sigh, he
stepped on the starter button and snaked the little jet car into the
stream of traffic moving toward the city.
* * * * *
Jeff Meyer stopped in the great, bustling lobby and stared about him
almost in awe. He had never been inside the Hoffman Center before,
though he had heard of it many times and in many places. Since it had
taken over service of the huge metropolis of Boston-New Haven-New
York-Philadelphia, the newspapers and TV had been full of stories of
the lifesaving and healing that had gone on within its walls. The
disease research, conducted by specialists in all phases of medicine
who were for the first time gathered together under one agency, had
startled the world again and again.
But there had been other stories, too--not from the papers and TV, not
these stories. These tales had come by word of mouth: a short sentence
or two, a nervous laugh, a sneering joke, a rumor, a whispered story
from a wide-eyed alky hanging over a bar. Not the sort of stories one
really believed, but the sort that made one wonder.
Several dozen white-garbed women moved across the floor of the huge
lobby and talked quietly among themselves. Jeff sniffed uneasily.
There was a curiously distasteful odor in the air, an odor of almost
unhealthy cleanliness and spotless preservation. The lobby was a mill
of activity: the elevators and interbuilding jitneys terminated here;
people moved briskly, carrying with them the familiar air of hurry and
vast pressure that infected the whole world outside.
Jeff watched, spotting the corridor leading to the main administrative
offices. He saw the elevators constantly rising to and returning from
the huge admission offices. He noted the corridor twisting off to the
staff living quarters. He stood silent, his quick gray eyes cautiously
probing and watching. He tried to print an indelible picture in his
mind of the layout of the building and was almost floored by the
hive-like bustle of the place. There was a complexity in the curved
doorways and the brightly lighted corridors.
Somewhere here he could find Paul Conroe. Somewhere in this maze of
buildings and passageways was the man he had hunted for. Logic told him
that. They had spent the night searching every possible alternative.
His muscles ached and his eyes were red from sleeplessness, but there
was a hot, angry glow in his heart. He knew that this was the only
place that Conroe could have gone. Yet the place where he must be
hiding was a place Jeff had heard of only in rumor, a place whose
mention carried with it a half-knowledge of staggering wealth and
almost indescribable horror.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned, startled, to face a
huge, burly man with a suspicious face and a gray uniform. "You got
business here, mister, or are we just sight-seeing?"
Jeff forced a grin. "I don't know where to go," he said truthfully.
"Maybe you should go back out then. No visitors until this afternoon."
"No, I'm not a visitor. I'm looking for the Volunteer's Bank. The ads
said to come to the administration offices--"
The guard's face softened a little. He pointed a finger toward a
corridor marked RESEARCH ADMINISTRATION. "Right over there," he said.
"Office is the first door to your right. The nurse will take care of
you."
Meyer strolled toward the corridor, his mind fumbling with the rumors
and bits of half-knowledge that were all that he had to work on:
stories of drunks stumbling into the Emergency Rooms and never coming
out; tales of quiet, swift raids on narcotics houses, of people who
never reached the police stations.
But how could he make the right contact here? "Research Administration"
covered a multitude of meanings. He had read the advertisements for
Hoffman volunteers in all the buses, in the 'copters, on the roads.
Newspapers and TV had carried them for years. Meyer glanced down at
his unpolished shoes, rubbed a finger over his purposely unshaven
chin. What would they expect a volunteer to look like? How could they
detect a fraud, an interloper? He shivered as he faced the office door.
It would be a gamble, a terrible chance. Because with all the other
publicity, no mention had ever been made of the Mercy Men. He glanced
back, found the guard still staring at him, and walked into the office.
Several people sat along the wall. A small, mousy-looking man with a
bald head and close-set eyes had just sat down in the chair before the
desk. He waited for the prim-looking woman wearing a ridiculous little
white hat to put down her pen. She didn't even glance up as Jeff took
a seat, and she kept writing for several minutes before turning her
attention to the little bald man. Then she looked up and gave a frosty
smile at him. "Yes, sir?"
"Dr. Bennet asked me to come back today," the little man said.
"Follow-up on last week's work."
"Name please?" The woman took his name and punched the button on a
panel before her; an instant later a card flipped down in a slot. She
checked it, made an entry and nodded to the man. "Dr. Bennet will be
ready for you at eleven. You'll find magazines in the lounge." She
indicated another door, and the little man disappeared through it.
Another person, a middle-aged woman, moved to take the little man's
place before the desk. Jeff felt restless and glanced at his watch. It
was almost eleven. Must she move so slowly? Nothing seemed to hurry
her. She worked from person to person, smiling, impersonal, just a
trifle chilly. Finally she nodded to Jeff, and he moved to the chair.
"Name, please?"
"You don't have a card on me."
She looked up briefly. "A new volunteer? We're happy to have you, sir.
Now if you'll give me your name, I can start the papers through."
Jeff cleared his throat, felt his pulse pounding in his forehead. "I'm
not sure just what I want to volunteer for," he said cautiously.
The woman smiled. "We have a rather large selection to choose from.
There are the regular 'mycin drug runs every week on Tuesdays and
Thursdays. You take the drug by mouth in the morning and give blood
samples at ten, two and four. Many of our new Volunteers start on that.
It pays six dollars and your lunch while you're here. Or you could give
blood, but the law restricts you to once every three months on that,
and it only pays thirty-five dollars. Or--"
Jeff shook his head and leaned forward. He looked directly into her
eyes. "I don't think you understand," he said softly. "I want money.
Lots of it. Not five or ten dollars." He looked down at the desk. "I've
heard you have other kinds of work."
The woman's eyes narrowed. "There are higher-paying categories of
Volunteer work, of course. But you must understand that they are
higher paying because they involve a greater risk to the health of the
Volunteer. For instance, we've been running circulation studies with
heart catheterizations. We pay a hundred dollars for these, but there
is an appreciable risk involved. Or sternal marrow punctures for blood
studies. Usually we start--"
"I said money," said Jeff implacably. "Not peanuts."
Her eyes widened and she stared at him for a long moment. It was a
strange, penetrating stare that took him in from his face to his feet.
Her smile faded and her fingers were suddenly nervous. "Have you any
idea what you're talking about?"
"I have. I'm talking about the Mercy Men."
She stood up abruptly and disappeared into an inner office. Jeff
waited, his whole body trembling. Beads of sweat broke out on his
forehead, and he gave a visible start when the woman opened the door
again.
"Come in here, please."
Then he was on the right track. He tried to conceal the excitement in
his eyes as he took a seat in the small room. He waited, fidgeting.
The woman packed up a small telephone on the desk and punched several
buttons in rapid succession. The silence was almost intolerable as he
waited, a silence that was alive and vibrant. Finally a signal light
flickered and she took up the receiver.
"Dr. Schiml? This is the Volunteer office, Doctor." She shot Jeff a
swift glance. "There's another man here to see you."
Meyer felt his heart pound. He shifted in his chair and started to take
out a cigarette. Then he checked himself.
"That's right," the woman was saying, eyeing him as if he were a
biological specimen. "I'm sorry, he hasn't given a name.... Ten
minutes? All right, Doctor, I'll have him wait." With that, she
replaced the receiver and left the room without a word.
Jeff stood up, stretched his legs and looked about the room. It was
small, with just a desk and two or three chairs. Obviously it served
as a conference room of some sort. One wall held the panel of file
buttons; another held the telephone and visiphone viewer. Over the
visiphone screen, a large lighted panel announced the date in sharp
black letters: 32 April, 2109. Below it, the little transistor clock
had just changed to read 11:23 A.M. Almost noon. And every passing
minute his quarry drew farther and farther away.
He glanced out the window at the rising tiers of buildings. Across the
courtyard the first of the ward-towers rose. To one side of it were a
series of long, low structures with skylights. These were the kitchens,
perhaps, or maintenance buildings. There were dozens of them--any one
of which could be hiding Paul Conroe. Jeff clenched his hands until the
nails bit his palms. He stared down at the buildings. Conroe could be
anywhere down there. _Another man had already seen Dr. Schiml...._
A door clicked behind him and he turned sharply. A man entered the room
and closed the door behind him. Smiling, he walked over to the desk.
Meyer nodded and watched the man. He felt a sinking feeling in the pit
of his stomach. For the briefest instant the doctor had caught his eye,
and Jeff felt everything that he had planned to say crumble like dust
around him.
The man hardly looked like a doctor, although his white jacket was
immaculate and a stethoscope peeped from his side pocket. He was tall
and slender, almost fifty years old, with round, cheerful pink cheeks
and a little pug nose that seemed completely out of place on his face.
A harmless-looking man, Jeff thought, except for his eyes. But his
eyes--they were the sharpest, most penetrating eyes Jeff had ever seen.
And they were watching him. Quite independent of the smiling face, they
watched his every move, studying him. The eyes were full of wisdom, but
they were also tinged with caution.
The doctor sat down and motioned Jeff to the seat facing the desk. He
pushed a cigar case across the desk to him.
Jeff hesitated, then took one. "I thought these were slightly illegal,"
he said.
The doctor grinned. "Slightly. Thanks to us, as you probably know. We
did most of the work here on tobacco smoke and cancer--actually got
legislation pushed through on it." He leaned back easily in his chair
as he lit his own cigar. "Still, one once in a while won't do too much
harm. And there's nothing like a good smoke to get things talked out.
I'm Roger Schiml, by the way. I didn't get your name."
"Meyer," said Jeff. "Jeffrey Meyer."
The doctor's eyes narrowed quizzically. "I hope my girl didn't bother
you too much. She channels most of the volunteer work here, as you see.
Then, occasionally, cases come in which she'd rather turn over to me."
He paused for a moment. "Cases like yours, for instance."
Jeff blinked, his mind racing. It would take acting, he thought, real
acting to fool this man. The face was deceptively young and benign,
almost complacent. But the eyes were far from young. They were old, old
eyes. They had seen more than eyes should see. They missed nothing. To
fool a man with eyes like that--Jeff took a deep breath and said, "I
want to join the Mercy Men."
Dr. Schiml's eyes widened very slightly. For a long moment he said
nothing, just stared at the huge man before him. Then he said, "That's
interesting. It's also very curious. The name, I mean--oh, I can
understand the attraction such an idea might have for people, but the
name that's become so popular--it baffles me. 'Mercy Men.' It gives
you a curious feeling, don't you think? Brings up mental pictures of
handsome young interns fighting the forces of evil and death, the brave
heroes giving their all for the upward flight of humanity--all that
garbage, you know." The eyes hardened quite suddenly. "Where did you
hear of the Mercy Men, I wonder?"
Jeff shrugged. "The word's been around for quite a while. A snatch
here, a story there--even though it isn't advertised too openly."
Dr. Schiml looked him straight in the eye. "And suppose I told you that
there is no such organization, either here or anywhere else on Earth
that I know of?"