Considering the state of medical education and licensing, maybe he was right.
"His will provided for a secret search for the cure of cancer. He must have got a lot of consolation daydreaming about it. One day the Foundation would announce to a startled world that it had cracked the problem and that old Oscar Moorhead was a servant of humanity and not a baby-poisoner after all.
"Maybe secrecy is good for research. I'm told that we know a number of things about neoplasms that the pathologists haven't hit on yet, including how to cure most types by radiation. My job, besides clipping coupons and reinvesting funds for the Foundation, is to find and send on certain specified types of cancer patients. The latest is what they call a Rotino 707-G. You. The technical people will cure you without surgery in return for a buttoned lip and the chance to study you for about a week. Is it a deal?"
Hope and anguish struggled in Dr. Oliver. Could anybody invent such a story? Was he saved from the horror of the knife?
"Of course," he said, his guts contracting, "I'll be expected to pay a share of the expenses, won't I? In common fairness?"
The woman smiled. "You think it's a racket, don't you? Well, it isn't. You don't pay a cent. Come with your pockets empty and leave your check book at home if you like. The Foundation gives you free room and board. I personally don't know the ins and outs of the Foundation, but I have professional standing of my own and I assure you I'm not acting as a transmission belt to a criminal gang. I've seen the patients, Dr. Oliver.
I send them on sick and I see them a week or so later well. It's like a miracle."
Dr. Oliver went distractedly to his telephone stand, picked up the red book and leafed through it.
"Roosevelt 4-19803," the woman said with amusement in her voice.
Doggedly he continued to turn the "W" pages. He found her. "Mgrt WINSTON invstmnt cnslr R04-19803." He punched the number.
"Winston investments," came the answer.
"Is Miss Winston there?" asked.
"No, sir. She should be back at three if you wish to call again. May I take a message?"
"No message. But—would you describe Miss Winston for me?"
The voice giggled. "Why not? She's about five-eight, weighs about 135, brown hair and eyes and when last seen was wearing a tailored navy culotte suit with white cuffs and collar. What're you up to, mister?"
"Not a thing," he said. "Thanks." He hung up.
"Look," the woman said. She was emptying her wallet. "Membership card in the Investment Counselors' Guild. U.M.T. honorable discharge, even if it is a reduced photostat. City license to do business. Airline credit card. Residential rental permit. Business rental permit. City motor vehicle parking permit. Blood-donor card."
He turned them over in his hands. The plastic-laminated things were unanswerable, and he gave himself up to relief and exultation. "I'm in, Miss Winston," he said fervently. "You should have seen the fellow they showed me after an operation like mine."
The Slave He shuddered as he remembered Jimmy and his "splendid adjustment."
"I don't have to," the woman said, putting her wallet away. "I saw my mother die. From one of the types of cancer they haven't licked yet. I get the usual commission on funds I handle for them, but I have a little personal interest in promoting the research end…."
"Oh. I see."
Suddenly she was brisk. "Now, Dr. Oliver, you've got to write whatever letters are necessary to explain that you're taking a little unplanned trip to think things out, or whatever you care to say. And pack enough things for a week. You can be on the jet in an hour if you're a quick packer and a quick letter-writer."
"Jet to where?" he asked, without thinking.
She smiled and shook her head.
Dr. Oliver shrugged and went to his typewriter. This was one gift horse he would not look in the mouth. Not after Jimmy.
Two hours later the fat sophomore Gillespie arrived full of lies and explanations with his overdue theme on the Elizabethan dramatists, which was full of borrowings and evasions. On Dr. Oliver's door was pinned a small note in the doctor's handwriting: Dr. Oliver will be away for several days for reasons of health.
Gillespie scratched his head and shrugged. It was all right with him; Dr.
Oliver was practically impossible to get along with, in spite of his vague reputation for brilliance. A schizoid, his girl called him. She majored in Psych.
CHAPTER III
THE MOORHEAD FOUNDATION proved to be in Mexico, in a remote valley of the state of Sonora. A jetliner took Dr. Oliver and Miss Winston most of the way very fast. Buses and finally an obsolete gasoline-powered truck driven by a Mexican took them the rest of the way very slowly. The buildings were a remodeled rancheria enclosed by a low, thick adobe wall.
Dr. Oliver, at the door of his comfortable bedroom, said: "Look, will I be treated immediately?" He seemed to have been asking that question for two days, but never to have got a plain yes or no answer.
"It all depends," Miss Winston said. "Your type of growth is definitely curable and they'll definitely cure it. But there may be a slight holdup while they're studying it. That's your part of the bargain, after all. Now I'll be on my way. I expect you're sleepy, and the lab people will take over from here. It's been a great pleasure."
They shook hands and Dr. Oliver had trouble suppressing a yawn. He was very sleepy, but he tried to tell Miss Winston how grateful he was.
She smiled deprecatingly, almost cynically, and said: "We're using you too, remember? Well, goodbye."
Dr. Oliver barely made it to his bed.
His nightmares were terrible. There was a flashing light, a ringing bell and a wobbling pendulum that killed him, killed him, killed him, inch by inch, burying him under a mountain of flashes and clangs and blows while he was somehow too drugged to fight his way out.
HE REACHED fuzzily in the morning for the Dialit, which wasn't there.
Good God! he marveled. Was one expected to get up for breakfast? But he found a button that brought a grinning Mexican with a breakfast tray. After he dressed the boy took him to los medicos.
The laboratory, far down a deserted corridor, was staffed by two men and a woman.
"Dr . Oliver," the woman said briskly. "Sit there." It was a thing like a dentist's chair with a suggestion of something ugly and archaic in a cup-shaped headrest.
Oliver sat, uneasily.
"The carcinoma," one of the men said to the other.
"Oh yes." The other man, quite ignoring Oliver as a person, wheeled over a bulky thing not much different in his eyes from a television camera. He pointed it at Oliver's throat and played it noiselessly over his skin. "That should do it," he said to the first man.
Oliver asked incredulously: "You mean I'm cured?" And he started to rise.
"Silence!" the woman snarled, rapping a button. Dr. Oliver collapsed back into the chair with a moan. Something had happened to him; something terrible and unimaginable. For a hideous split-second he had known undiluted pain, pure and uniform over every part of his body, interpreted variously by each. Blazing headache, eye-ache and ear-ache, wrenching nausea, an agony of itching, colonic convulsions, stabbing ache in each of his bones and joints.
"But—" he began piteously.
"Silence!" the woman snarled, and rapped the button again.
He did not speak a third time but watched them with sick fear, cringing into the chair.
They spoke quite impersonally before him, lapsing occasionally into an unfamiliar word or so.