"Paingod and Other Delusions" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

Chapter two

The main operation theater of Memorial was constructed along standard lines. The observation bubble was set high on one wall, curving large and down, with a separating section allowing two viewing stands. The operating stage, on a telescoping base that raised or lowered it for easier observation from the bubble, squatted in the center of the room. There were no operating lamps in the ceiling, as in old-style hospitals, for the phymechs had their powerful eternalight mounted atop their heads, serving their needs more accurately than any outside light source could have.

Beyond the stage, there were anaesthetic spheres clipped to the walls — in five-container groups — where they could be easily reached should the phymech’s personal supply run dry, and a rapidroll belt running from a digital supply machine beside the operating table to the see-through selector cabinets that stood by the exits.

That was all; everything that was needed.

Even the spheres and extra cabinets might have been dispensed with; but somehow they had been maintained, just slightly limiting the phymech’s abilities. As though to reassure some unnamed person that they needed help. Even if it was mechanical help to help the mechanicals.

The three phymechs were performing the operation directly beneath the bubble when Bergman came in. The bubble was dark, but he could see Murray Thomas’s craggy features set against the light of the operating stage. The illumination had been a concession to the human observers, for with their own eternalights, the phymechs could work in a total blackout during a power failure.

Bergman held the crumpled news sheet in his hand, page one hundred and eighteen showing, and stared at the scene below him.

Naturally, it would be a brain operation today! The one day it should be a mere goiter job, or a plantar stripping, if just to keep him steady; but no, it had to be a brain job, with the phymech’s thirty telescoping, snakelike appendages extruded and snicking into the patient.

Bergman swallowed hard, and made his way down the slope of aisle to the empty seat beside Thomas. He was a dark man, with an almost unnaturally spadelike face. High, prominent cheekbones, giving him a gaunt look, and veins that stood out along the temples. His nose was thin and humped where it had been broken years before.

His eyes were deep and darkest blue, so they appeared black. His hair was thin, roughly combed; back from the forehead without affectation or wave, just combed, because he had to keep the hair from his eyes.

He slumped into the seat, keeping his eyes off the operation below, keeping the face of Murray Thomas in his sight, with the light from below playing up across the round, unflustered features. He held out the news sheet, touching Thomas’s arm with it; for the first time, as the young doctor started, Thomas realized Bergman was there. He turned slowly, and his placid stare met the wild look of Bergman; a question began to form, but Thomas cast a glance behind him, toward the top of the seat tier, at the silent dark bulk of the head resident. He put a hand on Bergman’s arm, and then he saw the news sheet.

Bergman offered it another inch, and Thomas took it. He opened it out, turning it below the level of the seats, trying to catch the light from below. He roamed the page for a moment, then his hands crumpled tight on the plastic. He saw the five-line filler.

Kohlbenschlagg was dead.

He turned to Bergman, and his eyes held infinite sorrow. He mouthed with his lips the words, “I’m sorry, Stuart,” but they died midway between them.

He stared at Bergman’s face for a moment, knowing he could do nothing for the man now. Kohlbenschlagg had been Stuart Bergman’s teacher, his friend, more a father to him than the father Bergman had run away from in his youth. Now Bergman was totally alone … for his wife, Thelma, was no help in this situation … her constitution could not cope with a case of inner disintegration.

With difficulty he turned back to the operation, feeling an overwhelming desire to take Bergman’s hand, to help ease away the sorrow he knew coursed through the man; but the sorrow was a personal thing, and he was cut off from the tense man beside him.

Bergman watched the operation now. There was nothing else to do. He had spent ten years of his life training to be a physician, and now he was sitting watching faceless blocks of metal do those ten years better than he ever could.

Murray Thomas was abruptly aware of heavy breathing beside him. He did not turn his head. He had seen Bergman getting nearer and nearer the cracking point for weeks now: ever since the phymechs had been completely installed, and the human doctors had been relegated to assistants, interns, instrument-carriers. He feverishly hoped this was not the moment Bergman would choose to fall apart.

The phymechs below were proceeding with the delicate operation. One of the telescoping, snakelike tentacles of one phymech had a wafer-thin circular saw on it, and as Thomas watched, the saw sliced down, and they could hear the buzz of steel meeting skull.

“God in heaven! Stop it, stop it, stop it … !”

Thomas was an instant too late. Bergman was up out of his seat, down the aisle, and banging his fists against the clear plasteel of the observation bubble, before he could be stopped.

It produced a feeling of utter hysteria in the bubble, as though all of them wanted to scream, had been holding it back, and now were struggling with the sounds, not to join in. Bergman battered himself up against the clearness of the bubble, mumbling, screaming, his face a riot of pain and horror.

“Not even a … a … decent death! ” he was screaming. “He lies down there, and rotten dirty metal things … things, God dammit! Things rip up his patients! Oh, God, where is the way, where, where, where …”

Then the three interns erupted from the door at the top rear of the bubble, and ran down the aisle. In an instant they had Bergman by the shoulders, the arms, the neck, and were dragging him back up the aisle.

Calkins, the head resident, yelled after them, “Take him to my office for observation, I’ll be right there.”

Murray Thomas watched his friend disappear in the darkness toward the rectangle of light in the rear wall. Then he was gone, and Thomas heard Calkins say: “Ignore that outburst, doctors, there is always someone who gets squeamish at the sight of a well-performed operation.”

Then he was gone, off to examine Bergman.

And Murray Thomas felt a brassy, bitter taste on his tongue; Bergman afraid of blood, the sight of an operation? Not likely. He had seen Stuart Bergman work many times — not Stuart Bergman; the operating room was home to Bergman. No, it hadn’t been that.

Then it was that Thomas realized: the incident had completely shattered the mood and attention of the men in the bubble. They were incapable of watering the phymechs any further today — but the phymechs …

… they were undisturbed, unseeing, uncaring: calmly, coolly working, taking off the top of the patient’s skull.

Thomas felt desperately ill.