The Reproductive System (Gollancz SF Library) (20 page)

He let the figure get some little distance past him, then squeezed the trigger. His first silent shot shivered the man’s helmet; the next two completely destroyed his head.

Vetch hurried off to the launching rendezvous without pausing to look at the body of the last proletarian he would ever see.

Suggs was surprised to see another figure waiting at the secret launching pad, wearing a space suit like his own. Ghosts rose unbidden to his mind, but he shook them off. No, it must be Beele. It was odd that the young assistant had got through all right. He must have had to take care of a couple of Russkies on the way—with his bare hands! There was something frightening about getting in the ship with this man.

Suggs made a thumbs-up sign and the figure replied. Of course it was Beele. Suggs turned his attention to inspecting the rocket itself, so cunningly disguised. So this was how the sneaky Frogs had done it! He had to hand it to the bastards.

Vetch was surprised to see another figure arrive at the launching pad wearing a space suit like his own. Ghosts rose unbidden to his mind, but he shook them off. No, it would be the valet, of course. As if reading his thoughts, the figure made a cheery, working-class thumbs-up sign and Vetch replied with all his heart. Of course it was the valet! The sturdy peasant had double-crossed these capitalist pigs who supposed themselves his masters!

Vetch turned his attention to inspecting the rocket itself, so cunningly disguised. In his ears, the countdown had reached (in the droning voice of a tape recording)
quatre-vingt dix-neuf
. Vetch strapped himself carefully into his couch seat.

‘Hey, man, this sure is good stuff,’ said Ron. He and Kevin Mackintosh lay in chaises on a dark rooftop overlooking most of the city. They were sipping mint tea to slake the thirst created by
kif
. ‘Sure is good,’ he said again.

Kevin nodded wearily. He hated to tell Ron that a
real
kif-head never talked about how good the stuff was.

‘Hey,’ said Ron, with a lazy gesture over the roof edge. ‘I just saw—I mean
seen
—two Martians, down in the street.’

Martians, Christ!
thought Kevin. ‘What were they doin’?’ he asked dreamily.

‘Shooting at each other, man. Like in
Night of the Phallopods
, you know? Like in
Invasion of the Saucer Men
. They were silver all over, with big white heads, see. Shooting with

ray guns that didn’t make no noise. One cat shot the other one. Then he
skinned
him.’

‘Yeah? Like in
Creature from the Voidd
?’

‘Yeah, and then he shot hell out of another one. The body is still lying down there.’

Kevin leaned over the parapet and looked down. A body with glistening silver skin lay inert.
It had no head
, A chill ran through him. It was just like
I Was a Teenage Beach Monster
. Maintaining a disinterested expression, Kevin leaned back once again. At that moment, the earth began to tremble. A few blocks away, a battery of floodlights came on. The tremors increased, rattling the tea glasses in their saucers.

‘Do you see what I see?’ cried Ron. ‘Do I see it?’

‘Man, this sure is good stuff,’ Kevin breathed, watching in wonder.

A minaret rose slowly into the air, supported on a column of fire.

‘Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? No.’

SHAKESPEARE

The perfect symmetry of Susie Suggs’s body was settled on the edge of a black leatherette examining table, the only furniture in the room. While her tears had subsided, an unaccustomed frown troubled Susie’s forehead—but the frown, too, was perfectly symmetrical. Rhythmically, her white boots kicked at the side of the table, while she, seeing that she had chewed the polish off one nail, went to work on its opposite number.

Dr. Smilax had not only learned everything he could about Susie Suggs—from the contents of her purse and from her

father’s security file—but he had studied her for some time through a peephole. Her movements, he saw, were quick but graceful; impulsive, but eager to please and generous. Having donned a white coat and jammed a stethoscope in his pocket, Dr. Smilax unlocked the door and let himself into the room.

‘I’m Dr. Smilax, my dear,’ he said unsmilingly, sitting beside her to take her pulse. ‘And you are Miss Susan Suggs of Santa Filomena, California. Is that correct? Do your friends call you Susie?’

‘Yes?’ Her voice was husky with fear, and she tried to draw her hand away. He imprisoned the wrist.

‘Now, I’m not going to hurt you, my dear. I’m only going to examine you.’ His tone achieved just the right balance between kind concern and brusque command.

‘But I don’t want to be examined. I don’t
need
to be examined. I’m not sick. All I did was faint, when they arrested me.’

He released her hand after a moment, at the same time letting the creases round his eyes crinkle into a smile. ‘Of course, if that’s the way you prefer it. Feel all right, do you?’ She nodded. ‘That’s fine, then. I had almost hoped there was something I could do …’ Letting his voice and expression fade to blankness, he turned to stare at the olive-drab wall.

‘You see,’ he went on after a moment, ‘there isn’t much reward in being a military doctor. I assist at deaths, that is all. I—I can hardly go on, sometimes, when I think of those poor men I save—only to send them out to be killed!’

‘How awful!’ she murmured. He stood up and paced the room.

‘Yes, the Army does not think of itself as a group of men but rather as a machine. Men are not humans to it, merely coks—mere cells in a great big organism.’

For some reason, Susie blushed at the word.

‘I would give anything not to have to do it—but someone must!’ he said passionately. Sitting down again, heavily, he dropped his face into his long, slender, artist’s hands. ‘Someone must!’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, laying a hand on his arm hesitantly. He feigned not to notice. ‘I had no idea—’

‘No, of course not.
To you
, to everyone on the outside, we are mere monsters—mere machines which can work on and on, performing miracles on cue, without even a word of thanks, a

kind thought, without a single one of those little touches of humanity that make life worth living at all. But we are not monsters! Do I look like a monster to you? Do I?’ He was well aware that he looked, at the moment, like a motherless child who happened to have grey hair.

‘Oh no!’ she assured him, taking his hand. ‘You’re not the least bit scary, Dr. Smilax.’

‘Thank you, my dear. Yours is the first human warmth, the first human contact I have had these many years. I’m human, too—God, can’t they see I’m human? I may seem superhuman—I may seem a
god
in the operating room, because I must be, but I still have—’

‘A heart of clay?’ she asked seriously, almost swooning over the metaphor. Strangling a fiendish laugh that threatened to leap up in his throat, the doctor nodded.

‘An apt way of putting it, my dear, peculiarly so. The other day I performed open-heart surgery upon a little girl. When she had recovered, she thanked me, saying, “I’m so glad you fixed my heart up good, doctor. But why can’t you fix your own heart, too?” Yes, that child saw through me like an X-ray. Would you mind, by the way?’ As he spoke, he led her into the next room and pressed her out upon the X-ray table. ‘Yes, in effect, that child—’ He slid a plate in the drawer beneath her and swung the machine’s head into position, ‘—that innocent child said to me—Deep breath, now. Hold it! All right—said to me, “Physician, heal thyself!” Ah, would that I could take her excellent advice. But the scars are too deep, too deep on my—heart of clay!’ Again he fought down a snigger that brought tears to his eyes.

‘Was it some woman, doctor?’ she asked, as he led her back to the examining room. Without answering, the doctor palpated her firm, plump kidneys for a moment.

‘Not just “some woman”,’ he corrected. ‘Say rather Woman herself! The incarnation of fair womanhood! The sweetest, most perfect, most symm—most sympathetic creature ever to rejoice in youth and health! And she was mine! Ah, better far that I had never met her, than lose her to the black forces of Death!’

Tears of sympathy boiled in Susie’s eyes. ‘Death?’ she whispered.

‘Yes, she died. Ironically enough, it was the work of a man known as a “great surgeon”. Oh, fool that I was to have ever

believed in him! Though only a medical student at the time, even I could have performed the operation with more skill than he. “Great surgeon”—Nay,
great butcher
!

‘Ah, it is all over, all over,’ he said, kneading her kidneys savagely. ‘But I have ever since been fit for nothing else but this—a repairman of government equipment.’ Turning his head away, he fixed his gaze upon the polished toe of his shoe.

‘Please, I want to help,’ she said, moving closer and taking both his hands in hers.

He squeezed them. ‘I know you do,’ he said, ‘and I appreciate it, but it is too late for me.
Too late
. I am old enough to be, for example, your father. Old enough—to be wise, and still a fool.’ His smile was pained.

‘Oh, you aren’t so old. There are lots of men older than you,’ she said earnestly. ‘Listen. I know I could never replace
her
in your heart—your heart of clay—that would be just impossible, for heaven’s sakes—but I would like to help in any way I can. Please tell me something I can do—anything.’

‘Very well, I’ll mention it, but I know you won’t want to do it.’

‘Just try me,’ she said bravely.

‘Very well. The woman I once loved used to—tell me, have you ever undergone surgery before?’

‘Golly, no. But if it’s like handing you instruments and wiping your forehead and giving you moral support, I could learn. I’d really try.’

‘Well, no, what I have in mind, Susie, was you becoming—shall we say—a patient?’

‘Do you mean—?’

‘Yes, I know it is much to ask. But I so long to know all of you; your kidneys, gall bladder, spleen, yes, every secret of your heart. What is your answer, my love?’

For answer, Susie fell, suddenly sprawling across the table in perfect symmetry, unconscious.

Aurora felt hypnotized, having watched almost nothing for the last 15 hours but the white skips of line down the middle of an ever-unreeling strip of black asphalt. She had stopped once or twice and dozed off, but something, some inner sense of emergency kept waking her, impelling her onward.

Now, as the morning sun glared off the hood into his face, Grawk awakened. Bleary eyes regarded Aurora discourteously

from a red, porous face. Rasping a hand over his beard, Grawk yawned wider than any dental chart, displaying each one of his yellow, blocky teeth. He closed them on a fresh cigar.

‘We must be just about there, huh, babe? Can’t you get a little more speed out of this old buggy?’

‘You might have helped drive,’ she said. ‘We’d have made better time.’

‘Oh, you’re doing fine,’ he said cheerily, rubbing yellow grit from his eyes with the hairy back of one fist. ‘But see if you can’t step on it a little.’

Aurora congratulated herself on not losing her temper. She managed not to speak to him—for speaking to Grawk could never be other than an exchange of insults—until they came to the NORAD outer gate. The guard post seemed deserted.

‘Are you sure this is wise?’ she asked, slowing. ‘There must have been some reason for the guard to leave his post like that.’

‘You just keep driving,’ muttered Grawk, crushing down his cap over his ears. ‘Leave the thinking to me. We got two more checkpoints to pass before we get to the elevators.’

‘Do you know this place that well?’

‘Like I know women.’ He looked at her slyly through the grey mist of his cigar smoke.

They found the second gate likewise deserted, and Aurora’s anxiety increased. It was as if some grave, unknown disaster had swept the place clean of personnel. Still, Grawk seemed unperturbed, and for all his faults he was a military planner. Surely he could make a more intelligent assessment of this plainly military situation than she. Or could he?

The third checkpoint was just inside the opening of a steel-lined tunnel. One pair of iron doors slid closed behind the car as it entered, and another closed ahead of it. Electronic eyes and ears were trained on the car, and Grawk, with an amused wave of his hand, pointed out a crossfire arrangement of large-bore gun barrels protruding from the wall. ‘Just in case we get any ideas about messing up the place.’

A loudspeaker spluttered, then the voice of a telephone operator spoke. ‘Switch off your engine and get out of your vehicle, please,’ it said. ‘Stand on the red platform.’

They obeyed, Grawk seeming to enjoy the attention even of a security device, Aurora moving her stiff limbs warily. The red platform on which they stood remained motionless, while the