Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (25 page)

Beyond Miriam Greenwood was a standard operating table, and on it stood a container of blood and a frightful jumble of organs and body parts. The organ bank?—except that Matlock had not yet begun to create it. What he was looking at had once been a man.

He turned and started to move away, but Ronson was right behind him. His white coat was filthy and blood-streaked, and a long yellow stain of urine ran down his left trouser leg. The red hair, always carefully styled and brushed, hung down in greasy locks across his forehead. Ronson’s eyes were sunken and bloodshot, and there was a smear of blood on his unshaven left cheek.

“Test tissue type.” The whispering came from all around, from every audio outlet. “Need a better match.”

The white-clad figures in the room moved with the drunken gait of men who had been given no moment of rest for three days and nights, but they moved with perfect coordination. Suddenly there was a tight ring of people around Matlock, closing in on him.

He backed away, shrinking from the touch of bloody hands. Soon he could go no farther. The wheelchair dug into his back.

He spun around in a frenzy. “Die.” He screamed at Miriam Greenwood’s unconscious body. “You monster. Die, damn you. Let them go.”

Strong fingers were on his shoulders. His own hands grabbed at a cluster of IVs and jerked them out of the wasted arm. The hands that held him shivered and released their grip. All the lights in the room went out for a second, then flickered back to half-power.

“Die, die, DIE.” He was roaring at the top of his voice, but all the audio outlets in the room were screaming back in fury:
“Live, live, LIVE.”

He had his fingers at Miriam Greenwood’s open skull, driving them toward the spongy brain tissue. He was pulled away. A dozen hands lifted him, carried him across to the operating table.

He dropped into a soggy welter of still-warm organs. He was held by his arms and legs so that he could not move. Above him the flickering lights of the room reflected from a gleaming scalpel. As the knife moved toward his throat, Matlock lifted his head. Six men were holding him, the seventh about to cut.

“No, no, stop.” He jerked and writhed. “For God’s sake, stop.”

The blade moved in. And all around the table the faces smiled down at him, with the serene ecstasy of a mother holding her firstborn.

Afterword to “Health Care System”

I’m reasonably conscientious regarding my health and continued existence. By this I mean that I do not smoke cigarettes, I do not drink to excess, I do not sky-dive or race cars for a hobby, and given the choice I will walk rather than ride. On the other hand, I am not
unreasonably
conscientious about my health. I’m about fifteen pounds overweight, I smoke a cigar maybe once a month, I keep irregular hours, I do not exercise every day, and I do not follow a low fat or a low cholesterol diet.

In other words, although I enjoy life and certainly do not want to die, I am not willing to go to extreme measures to remain alive. When I realized that truth about myself a few years ago, I found myself asking the obvious question: Suppose that a person would go to any lengths to prolong his life. What would he do, if living as long as possible was the only thing that mattered?

This story provides an answer. And an unpleasant one it is. I think my mother has a much better answer. She will be ninety-two years old in December. She has no idea of her blood pressure or her cholesterol level, and her diet is high in fat, sugar, caffeine, and salt. She does not smoke cigarettes, having given them up when she was eighty-three, but she still enjoys alcohol. She attributes her longevity to living one day at a time and avoiding doctors. She must be the despair of the health care profession.

One other thing. It should be obvious from the publication date, but I want to point out that this story was written long
before
health care systems became one of our national obsessions.

Humanity Test

“In the past few days we have heard a great deal of talk about the
origins
of the Shimmies. It has been stated—several times—that Jakob Schimmerhann’s actions were completely illegal; that we all know this to be the case; and that he richly deserves punishment.

“Very well. Suppose that we admit it. His actions were certainly illegal. The use of human DNA in genetic experiments was and is strictly forbidden. Some form of punishment is surely not inappropriate.

“But now let us go on, and admit that the origin of the Shimmies has no bearing at all on the findings of this tribunal! Whether or not the Shimmies
should
exist is quite irrelevant. They
do
exist! When we ask what rights a child has, do we ask who its parents were, or how it came into the world? Of course not. Once a baby is here, we insist on its fair and humane treatment. Origins and rights have little to do with each other.

“
Prove
the Shimmies are human, says counsel for the defendant. But no one has ever devised a foolproof humanity test. Genetically speaking, we are told, a Shimmy is closer to a chimpanzee than he is to a human, since Jakob Schimmerhann used less than one tenth of one percent of human DNA sequences in creating the Shimmy form. The defendant therefore suggests that a Shimmy is only one thousandth part human. But what is left unmentioned is that we—humans and chimpanzees—share ninety-nine percent of our DNA sequences! Humans and chimpanzees are close cousins. The Shimmies are closer to us yet. So when the Attarian Corporation claims, in their use of Shimmies as slave laborers—”

“Objection. Your Honor, the term ‘slave laborers’ is an inappropriate one to describe working animals, which the Schimmerhann chimpanzees in our contention are.”

“Objection sustained.”

“I withdraw the term. I will say that the differences between humans and Shimmies are mainly the superficial ones of appearance, but in all real respects we are astonishingly close.

“But reject all those arguments about DNA, if you will, and say that they are no more than scientific mumbo jumbo. Look instead at the bald, undisputed facts, and our case still holds. As Professor Miraband pointed out earlier this week, an adult Shimmy can speak, and speak better than a human child at three years old. What difference does it make if that speech must be done through sign language? Would my honored colleagues suggest that a human person without a larynx, who must also communicate through sign language, ought to be stripped of his or her human rights for that reason? Or that a human child of three, who happens to be sick, may be put down for convenience? It is just as wrong to murder a Shimmy—”

“Objection. The term murder’ is not appropriate to describe the death of an animal.”

“Objection sustained. Counsel, please employ a terminology that bears less semantic loading. I am sure you are able to do so.”

“Yes, your Honor. I repeat, would a human child who was sick, or a human unable to communicate by speech, be mistreated, or killed? Of course not. Even the suggestion is ludicrous.

“And when it comes to manual skills, or the ability to follow direction, or—let us be quite explicit—the ability to
think
, our last witness made it very clear: an adult Shimmy surpasses the average human child of four years! Would you agree that a four-year old has no human rights? If there happened to be an excess of four-year olds, how do you react to the idea that their numbers be reduced? And yet that is exactly what could happen to any Shimmies, until their rights are established and protected.

“I say in conclusion, we are asking for full rights. But we are not talking animal rights here, we are talking
people
rights. Those rights for the Shimmies are not merely due, they are long overdue. It is immoral and it should be illegal to treat them as animals. They must be treated as
people
. They
are
people. Our case rests.”

Leon Karst was smiling as he nodded to the trio on the tribunal—one woman, two men—and resumed his seat. But Sally Polk could see that he was sweating. Karst had told Sally that the first week was crucial: “We make our case on direct testimony, not on cross-examination. By the end of the week we need to have the tribunal persuaded, and make sure the other side is staggering.”

If he were right—and Sally had seldom found him wrong—then this case was by now won or lost. Sally glanced around the packed courtroom, then looked up at the tribunal, leaning back in their seats after nearly thirty hours of testimony. As a new junior it was her first time in court. She tried to read their expressions. Dean Williams, the retired judge, was inscrutable. He wore a polite, remote expression, as though his mind was somewhere else. But the precision of his questions proved that was far from true. It was merely that his face gave nothing away. The man and woman flanking him were perhaps easier. Richard Kanter was a shrewd, dark-haired, out-of-condition lawyer from the Midwest, and he was nodding slowly, clearly approving of Leon Karst’s summation for the plaintiff. Laurel Garver, youngest of the three, and sitting to Judge Williams’s right, was leaning across to speak earnestly in his ear. Through the whole week she had seemed sympathetic to the case that Karst was making on behalf of the Shimmies.

Judge Williams listened carefully to Laurel Garver, nodded, and leaned back in his chair. “Well have to resolve that later,” he said. Then, to Leon Karst and his counterpart on the other side, “Unless you have procedural matters to take care of, the tribunal is adjourned until nine o’clock on Monday morning. Do you have anything?”

Sally stared at the lawyers for the other side. All of them had been no more than names and reputations on Monday morning. Now she had a strong feel for each of them. Deirdre Walsh—the famous Deirdre Walsh, chief counsel for the defendant—was shaking her head in reply to Judge Williams’s question. From her record and Leon Karst’s comments, she had to be tough, smart, and ruthless. She showed no sign at all that she was ready to give up on the case, but Sally would never have known of her toughness from her manner in court. Deirdre Walsh was conservatively dressed in a trim blue-gray business suit, set off by a wisp of blue lace at the throat and a sprig of fresh lavender on her lapel. She seemed friendly and quiet-spoken. (“But wait a bit,” Leon Karst had told Sally a couple of evenings ago. “Next week she’ll show her teeth.” He sounded pleased at the prospect. The press coverage would peak during the second week of the hearings.)

“One small point,” Karst was saying now to Judge Williams. “We will need to know the names of Monday’s witnesses.”

This was an important moment. The tribunal did not meet over the weekend, but no one pretended that it was a time for rest The three tribunal members would be reviewing the evidence presented during the week, then meeting at mealtimes to discuss the theory of the case. Deirdre Walsh and her assistants would be combing the transcripts of the previous week’s testimony, looking for any material that helped their case; and Leon Karst, with Sally’s help, would be deciding on the line of cross-examination for the first witnesses produced by the defendant. Each afternoon at close of business, the side whose case was being presented finally provided the names of the next day’s witnesses; each evening, the other side desperately prepared cross-examination materials.

“We will have only one witness on Monday.” Deirdre Walsh sounded casual. “That will be Captain Russell Grenville.”

There was a great buzz of conversation through the courtroom. Leon Karst grunted in surprise, while Sally puzzled over what was happening. She knew Grenville’s name—everyone did—but it had not been mentioned before during all the preparation for the Shimmy rights’ case. Surely that meant he could not be offered as a witness?

Karst was on his feet again, speaking through the din. “Your Honor, no one has previously offered Captain Grenville as a potential witness. He is therefore ineligible.”

“Quiet, please.” Judge Williams inclined his head toward Deirdre Walsh. “Counsel?”

“Normally, yes,” she said. “But let me remind my honored colleague for the plaintiff of the legal code, as established following
Rose v. Watkins.
‘In the event that a potential witness is off-Earth, and the time of the return of such witness cannot be guaranteed in advance, then such witness may appear without prior notification, with cross-examination postponed upon request of counsel for an added twenty-four hours.’ That applies exactly to Captain Grenville.”

“Is he on Earth now?” asked Laurel Garver. “For the code you cite to be applicable . . .”

“He is not. But he is on the way. I can guarantee that he will be here, in this tribunal, on Monday morning.”

“Then the witness is approved. Any more discussion?” Judge Williams glanced around the room, smiling for the first time in a week. “Very well. Court adjourned.”

* * *

The cross-referenced database yielded masses of information about Captain Russell Grenville. Too much information. Sally Polk had to boil it down to something that could be summarized and used.

Commander of
Sunskimmer
, and first human to lead a landing party on the surface of Mercury. Tsiolkovskii Medal winner. First human to take a ship through the rings of Saturn. Congressional Medal winner. First human to lead a party surviving an encounter with Karkov’s Object. Explorers’ Club Award for Gallantry. First human to return volcanic samples from Io. Daedalus Award....

The list went on for pages. Nothing to grab on there. Grenville’s reputation as a commander and a leader was pure gold.

She keyed to personal data. Unmarried, but apparently heterosexual.
No long-term relationships.
She underlined that mentally, for possible future reference. Religious, high-church Episcopalian, but no evidence of extreme views. From a moderately wealthy family, two brothers, one an army general, one a successful businessman. No evidence of financial problems, or even of much interest in money. Politically conservative, consistent with the family’s background (in Sally’s experience, only
very
rich families were liberals—
moderately
rich ones ran conservative).