The Transvection Machine (14 page)

“Was anything missing?”

“Not that I could see. I …”

A light flashed on Tromp’s desk and he flicked on his vision-phone. “Tromp here.”

“There’s a man at the East Gate wants to see Carl Crader. Says his name is Earl Jazine, but I wanted to check with you before I let him in. He’s battered up a little and his nose is bleeding.”

“What?” Crader was at the screen, peering at the uniformed guard and at the bloodied figure of Earl Jazine standing next to him. “Send him right up!” he said, not waiting for Tromp to speak.

When Jazine reached the office, Crader rushed to his aid. “What happened to you?” he wanted to know.

Tromp reached for the phone. “I’ll get the White House physician down here. Phley has something for every emergency.”

“No, no!” Jazine held up his free hand while the other one dabbed at his bloodied nose. “It’s nothing, really. Looks a lot worse than it is.”

“At least let us put something on it,” Tromp insisted. Then, to Crader, “There’s a medicine cabinet in my private bath. Through that door.”

Crader entered the tiled bathroom off the office—wondering at the expense to the taxpayers—and rummaged through the overstocked medicine cabinet. He passed over bottles of cryogen spray and ascorbic acid and heparin and chlortrimeton before choosing a container of spray-stitch and an antiswelling compound. Working on his face together, Crader and Tromp managed to stop the bleeding and bring down the bruises.

“How did it happen?” Crader asked again.

Earl Jazine ran his tongue over tender lips, screwing up his face at the bitter taste of the spray-stitch they’d applied to his nose and mouth. “Damndest thing that ever happened to me. I was on my way to meet you here when I spotted that nurse from Salk Memorial—Bonnie Simmons. There was something about her that didn’t seem quite right, so I decided to follow her.”

“Not quite right how?”

“She seemed to be sneaking around, glancing over her shoulder to make certain she wasn’t being followed.”

“So you followed her.”

Jazine nodded. “And I guess it was worth it, chief. She walked a few blocks, to the expressway, and pretty soon a car came down the ramp to meet her. A man got out, dressed like a computer worker, but after a moment I recognized him. It was Doctor Groton from the hospital—the man who signed Defoe’s death certificate, and the first one to reach the operating room after the computer started screwing up.”

“You say he was dressed like a workman?”

Jazine nodded. “When I walked up and called him by name, he swung around and slugged me! I hit the sidewalk and the two of them were gone before I got back on my feet.”

“We’ll put out an alarm for him,” Crader growled. He didn’t like his people being pushed around.

“I’ll take care of it,” Jazine replied. “I’m mostly interested in why he did it. Why was he dressed like that? What were they trying to hide?”

Maarten Tromp offered him a shot of scotch. “Here—you need this, even if Mr. Crader did decline.”

Jazine glanced at Crader, shrugged, and downed the scotch. “Good stuff.” He nodded approvingly.

Tromp offered the bottle in Crader’s direction once more and then replaced it. “This nurse is the one who was with Vander?”

Jazine nodded. “I questioned her the other day. She tells a fairly straightforward story, though we haven’t ruled out the possibility that she’s covering up a mistake.”

“Maybe this doctor is covering it up with her,” Tromp suggested. “What does she think killed Vander?”

“The only theory she advanced was that he was a secret hemophiliac and bled to death at the first incision.”

“Impossible,” Tromp scoffed. “That would have been on his medical records. And it certainly would have shown up in the blood test our doctor gave him.”

Crader was inclined to agree, but that reminded him they hadn’t yet spoken to the White House physician. “Could we see Colonel Phley after all? We should ask him a few questions for the record.”

Colonel Phley arrived within five minutes, a bustling army man who’d taken to wearing civilian clothes since his White House appointment. As the president’s physician, he also looked after the health of special assistants and cabinet members when they were on the premises. He knew his business, and he’d helped to maintain Andrew Jackson McCurdy as the healthiest president in a decade. “When I think of those poor fellows fifty or seventy-five years ago,” he liked to say, “combating air pollution and cancer and syphilis, I find today’s medical profession a bit on the boring side. Now we have machines to do everything, even to collecting overdue bills. The physician can spend his whole day at aqua-golf.”

But this was not true of Colonel Phley. He was hard-working, always on duty, and always prepared with answers. He sat in the chair opposite Carl Crader and said, a bit testily, “You could have called me about this fellow, you know. I’d have fixed up his face a good deal better than that.”

Earl Jazine chuckled through his puffy lips. “I was afraid I’d end up in the army with you treating me.”

Crader came directly to the point. “As you know, colonel, the CIB is investigating the circumstances surrounding the death of Vander Defoe. I understand you examined him here following his attack?”

“Yes, I did. He complained of cramps, general pain in his lower abdomen, gradually localizing on the right side, and vomiting. All the classic symptoms of appendicitis.”

“You did a blood test to confirm your diagnosis?”

“I did. It’s simple enough these days. I just stick it in the machine and even the blood count is done automatically. His white cells had increased—and that confirmed it. I had him rushed to Salk Memorial and arranged for the operation.”

“By computer?”

He shrugged. “That was the hospital’s decision. The process seemed perfectly safe, though. The identical taped operation had been used on many others, including a state governor.”

“Would your test have shown the presence of hemophilia or any other blood disorder?”

“It certainly would have! The sample is completely analyzed by machine, and I get a full readout. The test showed nothing but an increase in white cells.”

“Was Defoe out of your sight after that?”

“Not until Maarten and I had him safely aboard the rocketcopter. I stayed right with him.”

“But you didn’t go to the hospital?”

“That wasn’t necessary. I sent the results of the blood test to Salk Memorial by video printout, and told them he was on the way. They simply administered local anesthetic and prepared him for the operation. They requested the taped operation from the Federal Medical Center.”

“And you remained at the New White House during the entire time, colonel?”

He nodded. “As a matter of fact, I was in conference with the president and Maarten here. The president was deeply concerned and wondered just how long a recovery would be necessary. We were still together when word came of his death.”

“Have you ever heard of a computerized operation going wrong before?”

“Never.”

“I believe there were some deaths years ago during heart and brain transplants.”

“Those were not fully computerized. The errors were human, in every case. As you know, brain transplants were discredited some time back, along with cryonics and cystical abortions.”

“All right,” Crader said. “Thank you, colonel, for your time.” He turned to Maarten Tromp. “I’ll be heading back to New York now. I know the president had a busy schedule today, and I appreciate his giving me the time.”

Colonel Phley left them, and Tromp strolled out to the rocketcopter with Crader and Jazine. “You must realize the president is under a great strain these days, and Vander’s death has only aggravated it. There’s pressure in the Congress and the video press to expand our Venus Colony, to come to grips with the Russo-Chinese question once and for all. Vander’s death set back work on the transvection machine, and it also raised the possibility of an antigovernment plot.”

Crader paused by the door of the rocketcopter. “The Russo-Chinese are still saying it was the government that killed him.”

Maarten Tromp’s expression was serious. “Do you believe that?”

Crader thought about it. “No,” he answered at last. “No, I don’t.”

Once they were aboard the rocketcopter, Jazine asked, “Am I returning to New York with you?”

Crader shook his head. “No, but it might be best for Tromp and anyone watching us to think that you are. I’ll drop you across town at the jetport. I want you to find out about this Doctor Groton and why he assaulted you.”

“You told Tromp you didn’t think the government was involved.”

“And I don’t, anymore. This business with the Chinese girl was obviously news to President McCurdy. He’s not that good an actor to hide his reactions. Besides, Colonel Phley says he was with Defoe and Tromp, and later the president and Tromp. There’d have been no opportunity for McCurdy to order an execution, or for Tromp to carry one out. No, it was the least likely of my four possibilities, right from the start.”

“What are the other three?” Jazine asked.

“First, negligence on the part of Nurse Simmons, covered up by Doctor Groton. You must admit that’s beginning to look like a stronger possibility all the time. Second, assassination by Euler Frost or Graham Axman or even this Chinese girl—Gloria Chang. Somehow, though, I doubt if they’re involved. Frost came right out and admitted to me that he tried to kill Defoe last Friday with a poisoned anesthesia gun—which is quite a clever method, by the way. It leaves no trace, and the victim feels nothing. If murderers ever get onto it, the medical profession will have to go back to jabbing people with needles. I’d guess most shots and injections of all sorts are given by anesthesia gun these days. Neat and painless.”

“But if this Frost
admitted
he tried to kill Defoe …”

“That’s just why I’m inclined to believe him. If he were guilty, why admit anything?”

“What’s your third possibility?” Jazine asked.

“Defoe’s wife or Hubert Ganger—or maybe both of them together.”

Jazine nodded. “That’s where my money is.” He told Crader in detail about his questioning of the two. “Whatever Ganger says, I still think he could have used the transvection machine somehow to get into that operating room. Stranger things have happened.”

The rocketcopter was circling Washington and coming in low over the Potomac. In another moment they’d be landing at the jetport. “All right,” Crader told him. “Keep on it. And check out the hospital people too. I think we’re about due for a break.”

H
E DECIDED TO CONCENTRATE
first on Bonnie Simmons, if only because he could still feel the bruises on his face. She and Doctor Groton had a good deal of explaining to do, and it was about time they started. A call to Salk Memorial established that they were both off duty, so he rented an electric car at the jetport and drove out to the massive apartment project where she lived. It was almost dark when he arrived.

Georgetown Towers was a complex of towering structures that would not have been possible in Washington a century earlier, when the city strictly limited the height of buildings. Connected by electric subways below ground and tubular bridges above, the apartment buildings were a self-contained city—the closest thing in America to the futuristic dreams of twentieth-century city planners.

Bonnie Simmons lived alone on the twenty-fourth floor of building number six, a structure which also included a hologram movie theater and a video cassette rental service. Jazine stepped off the electronic elevator at her floor, aware that his arrival had already been signaled by the Guardex unit at the entrance, but still surprised to see her waiting at the door for him.

“I thought you’d be coming sooner or later,” she said. “Come on in.”

“You’re damned lucky I didn’t arrive with a couple of police officers! Your friend Groton battered me up a bit, in case you didn’t notice.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“When I think of a little guy like that taking me so easily …”

“Mike Groton was a college boxing champion.”

“I didn’t think anyone boxed anymore.”

“They still do in college,” she said. Her slim legs were encased in a blue body stocking, the top of which was covered by a fringed poncho in a bright zigzag pattern. The result was loud and just a bit sexy, perhaps a revolt against the sterile jumpsuit uniforms of Salk Memorial. “Could I fix you a drink?”

He ignored the attempt at bribery and asked, “Where’s Groton now?”

“I don’t know.”

“What was he doing this afternoon? Why did he hit me?”

“I think you startled him, calling him by name like that. Perhaps he thought I’d brought you to trap him somehow. He left me right after that—just drove off and left me. I ran around the corner before you got up.”

“Thanks for the help! I figured you’d gone with him. But what was he doing there in the first place? And why were you meeting him on the sly?”

She hesitated and then said, in a rush of words, “I suppose you could say he was trying to blackmail me. He felt I owed him something because he signed Secretary Defoe’s death certificate without question. He’s been trying to get me into bed with him for just about as long as I’ve been at Salk Memorial, and after what happened he redoubled his efforts.”

“Was there some question about Defoe’s death?”

“He … he thought I waited too long to call for help. He said it was more than just a minute or two.”

“Was it?”

She looked away, toward the windows, where the lights in the other towers had begun to go on. “I was nervous. The first thing I did was try to reverse the machine. It might have been longer than I thought, but it certainly was under three minutes.”

“Three minutes is a lot longer than the sixty seconds you reported originally. That would make it closer to four minutes before Groton arrived—right?”

“It could have been.” Her blond head was beginning to sag, as it had that day at the hospital. Jazine felt like telling her to forget the whole thing and hop into bed with him. She was certain to be better than Gretel Defoe. But then he remembered that was exactly what Dr. Groton had been trying to do.