Alan E. Nourse - The Bladerunner (16 page)

Katie Durham bit her lip thoughtfully. "Twenty-four hours, maybe. Maybe less." She stared at him for a long moment, then picked up her phone with an air of decision. "Will you see if Tim Lerner in the data bank can come up here, Mary? Right now, if possible, it's urgent."

They waited in silence, Doc lost in thought, Katie closing her eyes and rubbing her forehead wearily. Only a few moments later the secretary ushered in a tall, thin young man in a white lab coat and horn-rimmed glasses. "Dr. Durham?"

"Come in, Tim. Dr. Lerner, this is Dr. John Long, surgical staff. You've probably never met. John, Tim is our Chief Records Analyst and heads up the Department of Statistics. Now, then. On this meningitis study you've got started, Tim, we need some preliminary data yery urgently." Carefully, she began outlining the problem, the question of relationship between flu victims and the meningitis cases admitted to the hospital. Lerner pulled out a pipe, filled it and lit it as he listened. When she finished he said, "When do you need this?"

"The sooner the better. Tomorrow morning at the latest."

Lerner whistled. "You know that this will all show up anyway when the general study is finished."

"That's far too slow. Set the rest of it aside and get this going fast. Commandeer all the computer time you need. I'll sign the priority. We want a search on every viral meningitis case diagnosed either in the outpatient clinics or in the hospital in the past six weeks, with a tight resume of follow-up—what happened to each one of them. Even more important, search their records for any history of general influenza symptoms within two weeks prior to onset of meningeal symptoms. Never mind the lab data, we'll correlate that later. But tabulate old patients and new patients separately—we need hard figures on how many meningitis victims might have delayed clinic or hospital visits on account of ineligibility. Is that clear?"

"You mean you want separate figures for former patients and never-treated patients?" Lerner jotted notes on a pad. "Fine, we can do it. I'm not sure we can vouch for statistical significance on this kind of run, but with any luck we can get you some sort of a picture."

"That's what we need right now—a preliminary picture. We can pick up details later. But put this through tonight, Tim. It could be critically important."

When Dr. Lerner had left, tapping his note pad thoughtfully, Katie turned back to Doc. "Okay, now we'll see. Personally, I think you're way out in left field, and this little canter is going to cost the hospital a small fortune in computer time, but we'll see. Meanwhile, we still haven't resolved the small problem of Dr. John Long and his part in the robot-training program."

"I know," Doc said.

"So what answer can you give me?"

"I just don't know."

"Well, obviously I can't keep you in the program any longer unless you're willing to cooperate. And if I can't keep you on it, I'm going to have to explain why to Health Control, and they're going to start to probe."

"Can you give me twelve hours to answer?"

"Do you really need twelve hours?"

"I've got to think it through. I'm not sure what I can do. Some time would be a help."

"Then take your twelve hours. Check with me in the morning. I should have data on this other thing by then; you can give me your answer then too. And, John, for God's sake don't play games with me anymore. Make it the right answer this time."

Doc paused at the office door, turned back to her with a smile. "For you, Katie, I'll try. But if I can't, it won't be your fault. I won't have anybody to blame but myself."

Back in his own office, Doc turned off the lights, leaned back wearily in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. On his way from Katie's office he had stopped on the surgical floors, intending to make evening rounds on his morning cases and the patients still hospitalized from surgery earlier in the week. But after seeing Mabel Turner and one other, he had given it up as a bad job and come back to his office, counting on the resident surgeons to flag him in the event of any trouble. His mind was far too unsettled to concentrate on routine; there were far more pressing decisions to make than what to do about a post-operative fever.

Now, in the quiet office he thought once again about his confrontation with Katie Durham. Of course, it had been sure to come sooner or later. His methods of obstructing the robot-training program had not always been the most subtle, and he had known that Katie Durham was no dunce. True, he had often enough mulled over excuses he might use when the time came, innocent explanations to account for the failures and missteps, one by one. But when the confrontation finally came, such arguments had obviously been pointless. Katie had done her homework too well; when she had finally faced him, she had an airtight case. He could have delayed and stalled and challenged her figures and insisted on having other pantograph analysts go over her data, but it would only have gained him another few days at best, as well as infuriating Katie at the same time, and there was nothing to be gained by that. Faced with it cold, there had been nothing he could do but accede to her accusations and hope that she might somehow begin to comprehend, maybe even understand, the depth and bitterness of his opposition to the robot-training program and all that it represented in the government's Health Control program.

And in a way, she had surprised him. There had been no mistaking her tone and attitude. She had dreaded the confrontation as much as he had, and she clearly had sympathy, even support, for his feelings. But it was also clear the official position she had to take. Like it or not, she would surely blow the whistle on him if he continued to try to sabotage the program. There would be no more games, no more sabotage. He could cooperate, or he could quit the program. It was as simple as that.

And as complicated. Because he couldn't just quit and walk away free to more ordinary hospital duties, that was clear. To refuse to cooperate was to take things out of Katie's hands. There would be a Health Control investigation to probe what he had been doing to the training program and why. At best Katie might let him continue his own surgical work at the hospital until Health Control was through with him. Or she might ground him altogether pending a Health Control judgment, perhaps even level civil or even criminal charges against him. But whatever she did, it appeared that a Health Control probe would not stop with just his hospital work—and that, above all, had jarred him. Maybe Katie had been bluffing about an in-depth probe of his private life, his associations, his illegal practice, but somehow he didn't think so. And if she
wasn't
bluffing, then his whole career as a legally licensed physician was in jeopardy. A full-blown Health Control probe could ruin him—and expose everybody he was associated with to scrutiny.

Of course, he did have one other alternative. He could resign from his hospital post completely, give up legal medical practice altogether, and go underground. Plenty of doctors had done just that, and many that Doc knew personally were glad they had taken that route, claiming that anything was better than willingly participating in the hated Health Control program. But for his part, Doc had never been convinced of that. Necessary as it might be, underground medicine at its best was poor medicine, a desperately limited stop-gap measure that could only be justified if there were some hope that it might someday help bring changes in the rigid Health Control system. The underground doctor was working with both hands tied, placing every patient he saw in jeopardy. Certainly it was no long-term solution to the problem of providing medical care for the nation. The only
good
solution would be a top-to-bottom revision of the way Heinz-Lafferty formulas were applied, a rethinking of the whole government medical program. As it was, where the Heinz-Lafferty formulas failed to meet the medical needs of the people, the peoples' needs were being twisted to fit the formula, as the government tried desperately to force a vastly imperfect system into perfect function. And the government was stubborn; any revision in the program, any shift of policy whatever, was going to have to be forced upon it, and even then change could only be accomplished one tiny step at a time. Any such changes, however tiny, could only come from doctors working within the system, not from doctors working outside it in totally illegal medical activities.

It was for this reason that Doc knew he couldn't go underground completely. He could never hope to force any change if he quit his hospital post. What he could accomplish working within the system was something else again. Maybe nothing, all by himself; he could beat his head on the wall forever, to no avail. But if one with Katie's power in the system would join him, the result could be different. And if a crisis were to arise, a desperate situation that Health Control could not cope with under the present system. ...

He sat there, and suddenly realized that his heart was pounding. He stood up, poured some reheated coffee, then sat back again, sipping it thoughtfully. Throughout history, epidemic illnesses had triggered medical crises. For centuries men had had no defense against such scourges as plague, syphilis, rubella, smallpox. Then immunizations were divised, antibiotics made treatment possible. In recent decades the discovery of potent viral antibiotics had even allowed medicine to contain and stop viral infections among those who had not been immunized. And this was fine—so long as the whole population had medical care available to it. But under the Heinz-Lafferty formula, there were multitudes of people who were purposefully avoiding medical treatment as long as possible. What would happen if a potentially fatal virus infection were spreading across the country, an infection that seemed relatively harmless at first and did not reveal its true nature until the mild early symptoms had run their course and the virus was too well-entrenched in the victim's body to be quelled or effectively treated? Those who could qualify for Health Control care, those who had accepted sterilization as the legal prerequisite, would be safe as long as they came in for treatment when symptoms were mild. But what about the vast numbers who would try to ride out the early infection? With such an infection the hospitals might only have seen a tiny percentage of all the cases so far, and among the population at large the infection could be a smouldering brush fire eating its way along the ground, ready to explode into a veritable firestorm when it finally reached a certain critical point. At first concealed, then erupting in fury.

Slowly Doc stood up and snapped a light on in the darkening office. Katie was right, of course; there wasn't any proof. Not yet. Tomorrow there might be some answers—and tomorrow he would have to answer Katie, too, tell her where exactly he stood. He sighed, feeling time crowding him on all sides. He needed time—to think, time to come up with a workable answer—and slowly, inexorably, time was running out.

It was enough to think about, but to top it off there was the nagging worry that had plagued him since the rooftop ambush of the night before—worry about Billy Gimp. His message box had still been empty when he returned to his office. Now he punched out Billy's home phone number on his computer console, waited impatiently for the relays to close, and blinked down at the same message he had seen twice before that day:this telephone is temporarily out of service if you have a question an operator will come on the line to help you when you hear the—Doc cancelled in disgust. No word from Molly Barret, either, although it was almost six o'clock and she would not ordinarily leave the hospital without leaving a contact number for him. Just as he was about to have her paged, there was a rap on his door and Molly's head popped in. "Doc! Thank God you're back. They told me you were in conference with Dr. Durham."

Doc nodded. "Most of the afternoon."

"Nothing serious, I hope."

"Serious enough." He looked at the girl closely. "You haven't been aware of any snooping going on around
you,
have you?"

Molly frowned. "Not that I know of. Why?"

"Well, I can't explain right now. Later, when we have time." He took a deep breath. "Molly, what about Billy?"

"That's why I'm here," she said. "He called me about an hour ago. A very odd call."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he didn't use the TV scan, and if I hadn't been sure it was his voice I wouldn't have believed it was Billy." She shook her head. "He sounded so
beaten,
somehow. He said he had to talk fast, he couldn't hang on, but to tell you he was nailed good, couldn't even try to contact you for the time being. I asked him what was the trouble and he said there wasn't any trouble, exactly, but that he was under close surveillance and couldn't try to reach you until he could figure out how to shake it. I . . . I told him to call you anyway, I thought you should talk to
him
direct, but he said he couldn't, or didn't care, or something. And that was all, he just hung up."