“Ready to”
“Never mind, Buford. Can you carry out, say, a mastectomy here?”
“No, not quite.”
“You mean you could cut off the nipple but not the rest? What does that mean, man?” She was becoming very angry. “Appendectomy? No? Tonsillectomy? You mean you can’t even take out someone’s tonsils anymore?”
“It would be difficult.”
Ryan interrupted the argument. “You’ve lost all of the basic medical skills, Buford?”
“Not precisely lost, outlander Cawdor. More that they have been rather mislaid.”
Mildred closed her eyes for a moment, struggling for self-control in the face of this staggering confession. “Can you explain what ‘mislaid’ means?”
“There were records of all sorts. Vids and machines to play them on. Demos of every operation ever known, taken step by step. We still have most of the equipment. Books and micros and disks. It was one of the finest medical libraries in the whole world.”
“And?”
He sniffed. “An electrical fault. Fire. All gone.”
“When?”
Buford scratched his cheek thoughtfully. “Can’t say precisely. About thirty years ago. Maybe nearer to fifty. Nobody who’s alive here now remembers it, except for the great Professor Crichton himself.”
Krysty spoke. “So, all you do here now is what you call your research? That right?”
“Yes,” he replied miserably.
“No surgical or medical skills left at all? Not a single one?” Mildred probed.
Buford’s face brightened for a moment. “Not quite. Last year, after some experiments, we rediscovered how to pull out a diseased tooth.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The standoff had been going on for nearly half an hour, while everyone stood around the atrium, waiting. Krysty, after a request from Ryan, was provided with a chair.
“Sure you’re all right, lover?”
She squeezed his hand. “Sure. Nearly back to normal again. But this hanging around is getting on my nerves. How longs it been?”
Ryan checked his own chron against the big clock. “Twenty-eight minutes since Buford went tottering off like a gaudy slut in a tantrum.”
“Here he comes, Dad,” Dean called.
Buford had taken up his stick again. His face was even more pale than usual, and he was perspiring profusely.
“Well?” Ryan said. “Do we get to see the rest of this place or do we all simply pack our bags and blasters and leave?”
“The Professor didn’t take it at all well, being threatened like that. His first reaction was to order the sec men to take remedial action against you.”
Trader laughed raucously. “Bunch of soft stupes who mince around looking like oven-ready chickens! That’s a serious delusion, mister.”
Buford tried an ingratiating smile with the grizzled man, ignoring the fact that the muzzle of the Armalite happened to be pointing at his groin. “Professor Crichton, in his wisdom, made it clear he had no wish to have nine innocent lives laid on his conscience.”
Trader shook his head sorrowfully. “You pathetic little triple stupe! Move a finger in here and you’d drown in the blood that we’d spill.”
“Let him finish, Trader,” Ryan said quietly. “You can see we’ve already won the argument. No need to carry on rubbing his nose in it.”
Buford almost bobbed him a curtsy. “Thank you, Cawdor. I put to Professor Crichton your offer that Miss Wroth would assist us in our research. Subject to certain controls and conditions, of course. And in return we would conduct you through the remainder of the institute.”
“And he agreed?” J.B. queried.
“Yes, yes he did. But he made the point that much of it would make no sense to you, despite your undoubted remarkable range of skills.”
“Fair enough.” Ryan helped Krysty to her feet. “Then let’s go.”
AFTER THREE QUARTERS of an hour, Krysty whispered to Ryan, “Buford was right. I haven’t understood one word in every hundred. You?”
“Not much.” He closed his eye and put his head to one side. “The research for the last many years here in the redoubt, I mean the institute, has been directed at recreating life but making it perfect. Removing all the rotten parts and replacing them with good bits from elsewhere. That it?”
“Like breeding horses or cultivating flowers, working to make them better and better.”
Ryan nodded. “That’s why they’re interested in Jak. Want to study him and see what it is in his genes that makes him an albino. Then try and replicate That the right word? Replicate? Yeah. Make a new Jak who’s normal.”
Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110