I’m sorry, Linda. Sometimes there’s nothing anyone can do.
An hour later, as they closed the incision, a voice came over the intercom. “Dr. Creighton is here.”
The tall, boyish, good-looking Dr. Creighton raised an eyebrow at Angel when they walked into the recovery area, but spoke to Thorny.
“I saw your patient’s tests. Her aorta looks good, but her cardiac enzymes are sky-high. I suspect she had a bad myocardial contusion, or maybe a blocked coronary artery… so… I should open her up and make sure nothing needs repair. She might need a ventricular assist device.” He scrutinized Angel more closely. “I’ve been working with voice interface surgical robots for years, Benson. They do a good job of holding clamps, microcams, lasealers, and so on. First time I’ve seen one do anything as sophisticated as that support pump hook-up, though.”
“Thank you, Dr. Creighton,” Angel beamed.
“I’d prefer your machine didn’t speak to me unless spoken to, however. It is your instrument and under your control. Agreed, Benson?”
Angel looked confused and said nothing. Legally, of course, Dr. Creighton was right. Thorny touched Angel on the arm to indicate his approval of her conduct in the circumstances.
“Agreed, Dr. Creighton,” Thorny rasped, struggling to keep the irritation out of his voice. “It might be interesting to the board for her to perform the exploratory—the AI Consortium provided funding to cover this sort of thing.”
Creighton’s mouth twitched at the corners. He was, of course, aware of the arrangement.
“At your direction, of course,” Thorny continued. “Angel can handle the standard teleoperated mechanical assistants through her data link much more expeditiously than a human doctor. She’s really something special.”
“She?” Creighton grinned and wiped a shock of jet-black hair back to his youthful hairline. His jug ears and toothy smile, Thorny thought, completely misrepresented his internal nature, and he wondered if Angel would pick up on that. “So it’s Hoffmann and Olympia is it?” Creighton laughed, exploiting a fondness for opera which was their only mutual interest outside of medicine. In Offenbach’s opera, the hero, Hoffman, fell tragically in love with a life-like spring-powered mechanical doll. “Does she, then, have a cunt, too?”
Ouch, Thorny grimaced, but nodded to Angel. She, he had been briefed, should exhibit a studied, Miss Manners sort of coolness when confronted with repeated and unfair hostility. This, her design team maintained, would usually be less dangerous in most circumstances than a complete servility that would handicap her ability to help others. Part of what the hospital board had asked him to do was to evaluate her ability to handle real world stress of this kind. It occurred to him that it was just possible, however, unlikely, that Creighton’s crude remark was a conscious test of both Thorny and Angel.
“I haven’t been equipped with simulated reproductive organs,” she responded with a prim academic inflection. “However, there are anatomically correct designs which could be incorporated in a few day’s time to allow me to function in an educational role. May I ask what your interest is?”
“Benson,” Dr. Creighton hissed, incongruously maintaining his boyish smile all the time, “one more smartass remark like that and your ‘Doctor Olympia’ doesn’t step foot in this hospital again. Now, it doesn’t say a goddamn thing in my presence except when I tell it to. And then it says yes, no, or provides data. Or I’ll take its wind-up key away. Clear?”
Thorny shot a look at Angel, but she maintained a poised, expressionless silence. She recognized a legitimate human order when she heard one.
“Very clear, Dr. Creighton,” Thorny answered, with just a hint of senior to junior condescension in his voice. Creighton caught that and a brief cloud passed over his face.
“We’ll start in ten minutes,” he humpfed. “If we have to, we’ll implant a temp and put her on the donor list. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“See you then, Benson. Piece of cake.” Creighton grinned and sauntered out of the room.
“Damned idiot jerk!” Thorny grumbled, too softly to be heard in the next room.
“Dr. Benson?” Sarah Miles entered through the main door. “I just finished my shift in the ER, and I came up to see if I could help out with our patient.” She winked at him. “Never heard you speak like that ’bout anyone!”
“Nurse Miles, Angel, when someone’s ego and stupidity puts others at risk, it’s worse not to say something. He’s a good surgeon, maybe a great one. But that kind of attitude about the kind of advance that Angel represents could keep people from getting the care they should get.”
“I’m a robot,” Angel said with a shrug of her shoulders, “so I shouldn’t care if he insults me. But I don’t like it if what he says about me keeps me from helping people. Not at all. So I do care.”
“Don’t let it worry you, Angel,” said Sarah Miles. “He’s got more nerve tissue in his fingertips than his skull. He talks about me like that when I’m not around. I’ve heard him on the intercom.”
“But he doesn’t to your face?” Angel inquired.
“If he tried that just once, I’d have the union burn his ass so bad he’d never sit down. Notice he didn’t say boo to me? Too bad they made you a doctor instead of a nurse. You’d get more respect.”
A smile flickered on Thorny’s face, despite his concern for Linda Coombs. “Perhaps they didn’t,” he said, with an arched eyebrow, “want to overreach themselves on the first demo.”
Nurse Miles grinned and Angel grinned too. Pattern recognition and response, Thorny thought.
“Appropriate?” Angel asked with a wink that said she knew she’d used just the right pattern.
“Very,” Thorny nodded.
“Uh,” Sarah Miles asked. “If I’m too nosy, jus’ say so. But do you have feelin’s like people?”
“No, you’re not too nosy. I’m supposed to be a demonstration so I’m designed to be very comfortable with that kind of question. I have a very human pattern of social behavior,” Angel shrugged her shoulders, “because it’s pretty much copied from what humans do.”
“I’m always evaluating a large number of randomly generated possible behaviors and assigning preference values, on the basis of my programmed priorities, to the futures those behaviors are likely to help create. By definition, the higher the preference value, the better I feel. I know that’s a mouthful, Sarah, but it means when something’s going my way, I say I feel good about it and show it the way people do. Expressions and inflections are part of your language. I know a lot of it and I’m learning more all the time.”
Angel beamed at the nurse, “And Sarah, when you ask questions about me, well, that’s going my way, and I feel good about that! So don’t be shy.”
Sarah laughed heartily and rolled her head from side to side. “Oh, you’re not the first lady who likes to talk about herself! Well, I’ve seen a lot of doctors in my day and you’re not the worst by a long shot. Now how ’bout helping me get our patient prepped? We’re kinda short on staff.”
Thorny pursed his lips. Would a nurse ask a doctor who wasn’t a robot to do that? But Angel was going to need every friend she could get. She looked at him, and he gave her a wink and a nod. So she turned and followed Sarah back to the operating room.
“Sarah,” Angel asked as they left, “do you knit?”
Thorny was tense in the OR. The “textbook” sternomoty technique had to be changed to take into account Linda’s fractured breastbone and ribs and was a severe test of Angel’s ability to adapt—to use the general information and images stored in her database and modify her approach to fit this specific situation. Angel didn’t move as quickly as she had in the ER, or when she did the C-section; she froze at times, then moved in spurts.