"Look, let's get this straight right now. Don't lie to me. I'll catch
you every time." The doctor's eyes were hard. "I see a man who's eaten
well for a long time, wearing dirty but expensive clothes, who doesn't
drink, who doesn't use drugs, who is young and strong and capable. He
tells me he wants to join the Mercy Men for money. He tells me a lie.
Now I'll ask you again: why are you here?"
"For money. For one hundred and fifty thousand dollars."
The doctor sighed and leaned back. "All right, no matter. We'll go
into it later, I suppose. But I think you'd better understand certain
things. It's no accident that your information on the Mercy Men is
so vague. We've been careful to keep it that way, of course. The
more vague the stories, the fewer curiosity-seekers and busybodies
we have to contend with. Also, the more distasteful the stories,
the more desperate people will become before they come to us. This
we particularly desire. Because the work we do here requires a very
desperate man to volunteer."
As he talked, the doctor brought out a pack of cards from the desk
and began riffling them nervously in his fingers. Jeff's eyes caught
them and a chill went down his back. They were curious cards, not the
regular playing variety. These were smaller, with a peculiar marking
system in bright red on the white faces. Jeff shivered and he was
puzzled at the chill that gripped his body. He shifted in his chair in
growing tension and tried to take his eyes from the cards.
The doctor snubbed out his cigar, leaned back in the chair and gave
the cards a riffle and regarded Jeff closely. "We've done a lot here
since the Center opened--work based on years of background research. A
century or more ago there were terrible medical problems to be faced:
polio was a killer then; they had no idea of cancer control; they were
faced with a terrific death rate from heart disease. All those things
are beaten now, a thing of the past. But as the old killers moved out,
new ones took their place. Look at the half-dozen NVI plagues we've
had in the past few years--neurotoxic virus infections that started to
appear out of nowhere twenty years ago. Look at the alky-sikys you
see in every bar today, a completely new type of alcoholism-psychosis
that we haven't even been able to describe, much less cure. Look at the
statistics on mental disease, rising in geometric progression almost
every year."
The tall doctor stood up and walked to the window. "We don't know why
it's happening, but it is. Something's on the march, something ghastly
and evil among the people. Something that has to be stopped." He gave
the cards a sharp riffle and tossed them onto the desk with a sigh. "We
can't stop it until we know something about the human brain and how it
works, and why it does what it does, and how. We don't even understand
fully the structure of the nervous system, much less understand its
function. And we've learned all we can from cats and dogs and monkeys.
Any further study of a monkey's brain will give us great insight into
the neuroses and complexes of monkeys, no doubt. But it won't teach us
anything more about _men_." His voice was very soft. "You can see where
this leads, I think."
Jeff Meyer nodded slowly. "You need men," he said.
"We need men. Men to study. Cruel as it may sound, men to experiment
upon. We can't learn any more from any other variety of ...
experimental animal. But there are problems. Toy around with a man's
brain and he is likely to die, quite abruptly. Or he may be deranged,
or he may go violently insane. Most of the work, however well planned,
however certain we were of results, however safe it appeared, proved to
be completely unpredictable. Much of the work and many of the results
were quite horrible. But we're making progress, slow--but progress
nonetheless. So the work continues.
"It hasn't been very popular. No man in his right mind would volunteer
for such a job. So we hired men. For the most truly altruistic work in
the world, our workers come with the most mercenary of motives: we pay
for their services and we pay well. A hundred thousand dollars is a
small fee, on our scale. We have the government behind us. The sky is
the limit, if we need a man for a job. The money is paid, when the work
is completed, either to the man himself or to his heirs. You see why
the name they've given themselves is so curious--Medical Mercenaries,
the 'Mercy Men.' That's why a man must be desperate to come to us.
That's why we must be so very careful who joins us, for what motives."
Jeff Meyer stared at his hands and waited in the silence of the room.
His eyes strayed once again to the curious cards, and the chill of fear
went through him like a ghastly breeze. This was a port of last resort,
a road that could end in horror and death. Ted Bahr had said it wasn't
worth it--that Conroe would never escape alive--but he knew that Conroe
could. And he knew Conroe well enough to know that he would.
Jeff felt the old bitterness and hatred swell up in his mind, and his
hands trembled as he sat. He had long since thrown aside his life as
he had known it, cast off the veneer of civilized life that he had
acquired, to hunt Paul Conroe down and kill him. There was nothing else
in his life that mattered. It had been a long, grueling hunt, tracking
him, following him, studying him, tracing his movements and habits,
plotting trap after trap, driving the man to desperation. But there had
been no indication, anywhere along the line, that Conroe would turn to
such a desperate gamble as this.
But he must have known that death otherwise was inevitable. Here he
could be changed. He might disappear from the face of the Earth in
the oblivion of quiet death, to be sure, but he also might emerge,
unscathed, to live in wealth the rest of his life, unrecognizable and
safe.
Jeff Meyer looked up at the doctor and his eyes were hard. "I haven't
changed my mind," he said. "What has to be done to join?"
Dr. Schiml sighed, and turned resignedly to the file panel. "There are
tests that are necessary and rules to be obeyed. You'll be confined
and regimented. And once you're assigned to a job and sign a release,
you're in." He leaned forward and punched the visiphone button. Tapping
his fingers idly on the desk, he waited until an image blinked and
cleared on the screen. "Blackie," he said tiredly. "Better send the
Nasty Frenchman up here. We've got a new recruit."
The visiphone snapped off and Jeff sat frozen to his seat, his pulse
throbbing in his neck, every nerve in his body screaming in excitement.
The face on the screen had been clearly visible for a moment: a pale
face with large gray eyes--a woman's face, surrounded by flowing black
hair. It was a face that was impressed indelibly on his memory. It
belonged to the girl who had danced the night before in the red light.