What had been taken from the pale cold cadavers behind the fence was that mere nothing, life. What remained was good organic matter. And that was another queer thing, thought Ryeland. It would have been a superb animal feed! Or, if on this one point the Plan of Man had reason to be tender, why, how many thousands of acres of mined-out farmland could be rejuvenated with the protein and phosphate in those corpses?
The Plan did not choose to use them in that way. Each night the accumulated parts were chuted to a barge—the barge towed out to sea—the contents given the deep six. Fish, crabs, drifting jellies and moored bivalves would ingest their flesh. Why? Men would eat the fish; why not shorten the chain?
Ryeland shifted uneasily, and turned his thought, away—for, if Angela told the truth, from this sort of rubble his own body had been built. . . Anyway, it was almost time.
There was a murmur of public-address speakers from the cottage areas. He couldn't hear the words, but it was unusual for them to be used at all so late at night. Then another cluster of speakers spoke up-nearer, this time. It sounded as though a name were being called.
Ryeland swore under his breath. The sentry nearest him stood rigid as the Machine itself, gazing out over Heaven. Couldn't he at least take a break, stretch, yawn, gaze at the stars—couldn't he do anything but remain alert and watchful at his post?
The loudspeakers again. It was the circuit around the lake, Ryeland guessed. And the .tone was becoming irritable, as though the guard in his microphone room atop the Clinic was being annoyed by higher authority . . . and was passing his annoyance on to the cadavers of Heaven.
Then closer still; and Ryeland heard the name this time. His own name. "Ryeland!" Only it came bouncing off half a dozen speakers at once, each delayed a tiny fraction of a second by distance and echo: "RYELAND^ye/tfftdryeland," ricocheting away.
He was not surprised; he had been more than half expecting it. He listened to the measured words, cadenced to let the echo of each fade before the next word was spoken: "You . . . are . . . ordered ... to . . . report ... to ... the .. . South . . . Clinic . . . at. . . once!" And off toward the lake Ryeland could see lights moving.
Ryeland took a deep breath. He would have to chance it, even if the guard did not look away—
He caught himself, poised. The guard moved. He turned his head and nodded, to someone out of sight; and then, so quickly that Ryeland might scarcely have noticed he was gone if his eyes had not been glued to the man, the guard stepped inside.
Ryeland ran, climbed, swung himself over the fence, ripped off his clothes, balled and hid them under a body and flung himself, naked and acrawl with revulsion, onto the heap of pale, cold corpses.
There was classic terror. It was like the buried-alive man of humanity's oldest, most frightening story: the awakening in the narrow box, the dark, the smell of damp earth, the hollow muffled sound of the hammered coffin lid with six feet of graveyard dirt above. It was like the war wounded given up for dead, awakening in one of Grant's wagons after Shiloh, or the mass graves of Hitler's Sixth Army outside Stahngrad—the dead all around, the man himself as good as dead.
Ryeland thanked God for meprobamate. He lay face down and limbs under him, as much as he could. No reason to make a guard wonder why a relatively intact corpse should be on the heap. He did not move. He smelled an acrid, sour reek that nearly made him vomit and he was, in a moment, bitter cold. He swore silently. It had not occurred to him that the metal walls of the trashbin would be refrigerated.
He waited. And waited.
He dared not look up, dared hardly breathe. It would be, he calculated, at least a matter of hours before the bin would tip and chute its contents into the barge. His flesh crawled and tried desperately to shiver, but he would not allow it.
A bright light flared.
Ryeland froze. He heard a murmur of voices. But that was all right; it probably was time for changing the shift of guards, and that was good, because it meant time was passing even faster than he had dared hope. The light would be only a routine inspection, of course. . . Another light flared, and another.
The area of corpses was flooded with light, he was drowning in light; over him he could hear the wash of copter vanes adding their light to the scene. He dared not move. He dared not even blink, though the lights were cruel; but it was in vain; everything was in vain. There was a sudden string of orders and a commotion at the steel ladder that admitted workmen to the sump. Four guards ran in. They did not hesitate; they picked their way rapidly across the stainless-steel floor, stepping on torsos, pushing limbs aside. Straight to Ryeland.
"Good try," one of them grinned. Then, without humor, "But don't do it again."
They hurried him to the ladder and up it. They had not allowed him to retrieve his clothes. Now that it was too late his body was racked with shivering. He stammered, "How—how did you know?"
The guard caught his elbow and lifted him to the roof of the North Clinic. He was not unkind. He gestured to the row of searchlight-like things that Ryeland had feared might be floodlights. "Infrared scanners, Ryeland. Sniffed out your body heat. Oh, you can fool them—but not while you're alive, not without clothes on to hide your heat. And clothes would have given you away anyhow," he added compassionately, "so don't feel bad. You just didn't have a chance." He opened a door and shoved Ryeland, reeling, into a hall of the Clinic. "Now get a move on. Somebody wants you. Somebody important."
14
They rushed him through the corridors, into a room, left him there for a moment; they threw a pair of coveralls at him, gave him barely time to squirm into them and paid no attention to the fact that they were four sizes too small. "It doesn't matter where you're going," rumbled the guard with the white tunic and the red heart. "Come on!" And they led him to another room and once again left him.
Through an open door Ryeland saw an operating theater.
Thank heaven for meprobomate, he thought without emotion, for this was undoubtedly the end of the trail. The asepsis lights were burning over the twin tables; a full O. R. crew was in view behind the transparent contamination-bar. On one table was a man of Ryeland's approximate build, with a great sighing bellows box pumping air through a complicated nest of piping. A lung machine? Yes. And the man, Ryeland knew, was about to get new lungs. And the lungs would have to come, of course, from Ryeland . . .
Or would they? Ryeland was baffled. For both tables were occupied, the one with a cadaver from Heaven as well as the one with a useful citizen come to collect a new part.
It was very queer.
But it only meant, probably, he assured himself, that he would be the donor for the next useful part. It was not kind of them to make him witness the operation, of course. But the Plan of Man was only impersonally kind. He glanced at the scene, looked away, then watched with helpless fascination. Faintly he could hear the brisk, businesslike orders of the surgeon, slitting skin, slicing through muscle, sculpting bone . . .
The operation was nearly over when he heard a sound behind him.
He turned.
Donna Creery walked in the door.
Donna Creery! She looked at him as though he were furniture. "Took you long enough to get him," she said grumpily to the man behind her—chief surgeon of the Clinic, by his bearing and his frown. "All right. I've got this—" she waved a radar gun—"so he won't give me any trouble. Will you, Ryeland?"
The surgeon said doubtfully, "It's most irregular."