He had missed some of what Farelli had been saying, and with effort he tried to hear the rest above the pounding in his ears.
‘-and they kept pumping the air out of the chamber, and there I was, strapped in the pilot’s seat with the electro-cardiograph equipment attached to me, and the altitude gauge rising and rising, and-but what is the use to remember it now? At thirteen miles altitude, I gave up breathing and blacked out, as the aviators say-there was blood all over my face-and those animals carried me out, and I lived because I am a dray horse and will not die like that.
‘I was in the Dachau infirmary three weeks, too ill to be of use to them, and when I recovered, I said I was still too weak to write their medical paper, but pledged to write it for Dr. Rascher and Himmler if they sent me back to my beloved prison in Rome. So they sent me back, but then everyone was busy with the landings, and I never wrote their paper. I also never recovered. I am still under medical care. Just as Dr. Stirbey and Dr. Gorecki are. I heard from old Gorecki the week before I came here, congratulating me, and recalling the horror of that day. He will write a book about it, he says. I hope he does. Someone should, to show the thin borderline that divides the doctors of Hippocrates from the sadist doctors of Satan. You know, I often think, it is not that men of our profession indulged in such bestialities that troubles me, but that not one man of our profession, in all of Germany, had the courage to raise his voice against these human experiments. Ah, well, it is past.’
For Garrett, at first his brain so long fastened to the obsession that Farelli had been the prosecutor of the evil and not its victim, the turnabout had been too dizzying to comprehend. But once comprehension came, there came with it the relief of self-preservation, that he had not leaked a falsehood, to be denied and disproved and to make of him an ostracized leper. Now that Farelli was through speaking, one last emotion gnawed through Garrett, and that emotion was shame.
Because he had to live with himself, he now tried to tell himself that even if he had been so wrong about this, his conscience-his conscience and Öhman and Craig-had not permitted him to go ahead with the canard. Too, the other irritations still existed-Farelli’s use of his discovery, although his wrongness about Dachau made him doubt himself about this point-Farelli’s self-promotion, although even here… but now, Garrett saw that these rationalizations were of no use. Shame sat fat and mocking on his head and shoulders. He had been a victim of himself. What would Dr. Keller call it? Paranoia. He knelt to the truth.
Raising his head, meaning to say something, anything, that might be placating to Farelli, he realized that Farelli had turned sideways from him and was staring at the door. He followed Farelli’s gaze, and then he, too, saw Dr. Erik Öhman in the door.
He had never seen Öhman like this before. His picture of Öhman was of a reddish granite person of zeal and indestructibility, and now the picture was shattered. The reddish granite had been pulverized, and zeal had been crushed also, and what stood in the doorway was the representation of all anti-strength-in one person frailty, lassitude, bafflement, nullification, repudiation, and embodiment of every loss on earth.
‘He’s dying,’ Öhman croaked. He came unsteadily into the room, limply carrying his surgical mask. ‘Count Ramstedt is dying. The transplantation has failed.’
He tripped slightly, and Farelli grabbed him, and helped lower him into a chair.
Garrett scrambled to his feet, beside Farelli at once.
‘What do you mean?’ Farelli was demanding. ‘What do you mean by that? Speak some sense to us!’
Öhman looked up blankly. ‘I cannot explain it. The immunity mechanism, the white cells and other agents, they are destroying the foreign tissue. There is activated rejection. All the signs-cyanosis-tachycardia-hypotension-’
‘But you can’t know so soon!’ Garrett found himself shouting, ‘There must be a mistake-it takes three weeks to know!’
Öhman shook his head. ‘Dr. Garrett, you go in there-you can see-he will be dead by nightfall.’
Garrett felt faint, and gripped Farelli’s arm to right himself. Farelli alone stood strong, but the news had drained his countenance.
‘Something must have been overlooked, something in administering the serum, or the surgery-’ Farelli began.
Once more, Öhman shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘If-uhhh-if I had performed this myself-uhhh-I would think so-my inexperience-but both of you were present-you witnessed every move-you supervised-you saw me-you assisted-’
Garrett tried to think, reviewing each step of the transplantation in his mind, but nothing had been omitted or been different, every move had conformed to the grafts he had made in the past. He realized that Farelli was reviewing the surgery, too, and that Farelli’s conclusion coincided with his own. It had been perfect. The transplantation had been merely a routine extension of their own discovery and their own experiments and successes. Because they had proved its worth, they had won the Nobel Prize, and now suddenly, inexplicably, it had failed, and all that had come before or might be planned ahead was blackened by doubt. ‘Proved’ had been stamped over by the old Scotch verdict ‘Not Proven’-meaning neither guilty nor innocent but simply Unknown (with Some Doubt).
‘It can’t be,’ murmured Garrett. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘There is always the exception one fears,’ said Farelli, more to himself than to anyone.
‘We’ve got to do something!’ cried Garrett. ‘Why, if this gets out-’
The same thought, and projection of it, seemed to strike Farelli at the same time, for he turned to Garrett, and their eyes met in a common bond of fear.
‘It has got to get out,’ said Öhman helplessly. ‘Half the members of the royal family are in the waiting-room. I must report to the King-’
Garrett articulated the common fear first. ‘But the prize,’ he said. ‘It’ll discredit our prize.’
‘Uhhh-yes-yes, I have thought of that already. This will support the minority of the Nobel Medical Committee, who felt the vote for you was-uhhh-premature. The moment this is in the newspaper there will be controversy-a scandal, if you accept the prize this afternoon. You must-must turn it down-refuse the award before the Ceremony-send a joint note to the committee explaining more work will have to be done-but the prize is out of the question now.’
‘Are you crazy, Öhman? Che diavolo!’ Farelli was in a temper, unreasoningly furious with the suggestion. ‘What about Dr. Garrett’s years of experimentation and my own-our discovery-our proved successes?’
‘Please-please-it is not in my hands,’ begged Öhman. ‘I am telling you what will happen. If your discovery had a hundred proved successes, and the hundred-and-first was a failure, by the same method, it would mean-in the eyes of the medical world-the public-your discovery is not infallible-not fully proved-is-uhhh-open to doubt. They will let you gracefully withdraw from accepting the prize-there will be talk about next year or the year after or someday-but if you refuse to withdraw, they will be forced to disgrace you by withholding the prize. They will do this, because they do not dare to have a repetition of the Dr. Koch fiasco.’
Garrett leaned over Öhman. ‘Dr. Koch fiasco? What is that? What the devil are you talking about?’
‘Uhhh-Dr. Garrett, my friend-we are friends, believe me-I owe what I am to you-I am not the prize-giving committee or the public, so do not blame me.’ Öhman rubbed his forehead. ‘I owe you the truth, before the world falls on your head, on both of your heads. Were there many medical discoverers in history greater than Dr. Robert Koch, of the Berlin Institute for Infectious Diseases? Consider his work with infections, anthrax bacilli, the solidifying media for bacteria-his discoveries, in eight years, of the tubercle bacillus, cholera bacillus, tuberculin. As you know so well, Dr. Koch found the bacillus that causes tuberculosis, and then he found the miracle drug, tuberculin, that might cure it. The whole world was in a fever of excitement, and the Kaiser commanded the nomination of Dr. Koch for the Nobel Prize, even though Dr. Koch wanted more time to experiment. So-in 1905 we made him a laureate, gave him the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine “for his investigations and discoveries in relation to tuberculosis”-which the world knew was for his discovery of tuberculin. Dr. Koch took his-uhhh-medal and diploma and money and went back in triumph to Berlin-and six months later his serum, hailed because it cured, suddenly began to kill. Hundreds of tuberculosis patients were killed by the serum, because tuberculin was not ready, except for cattle, and maybe Koch knew it. When he died, five years later, I am sure he died of-uhhh-of-uhhh-grief. And the Caroline Nobel committee was made to appear accomplices to murder, and scientific dunces, and since then, they have been conservative, always conservative. Now, this morning, the first time since 1905, what happened to Dr. Koch has happened again-a great discovery-my life is devoted to it-I believe in it-but now, there is an important patient in my surgery, expected to benefit from it, but now dying because of it-and soon, the truth of the failure will be everywhere.’