“I’m not sure Boss is going to like this.”
“Forget it. I’m going to chew him out for letting you take I risks. If he gives me any back talk, he’ll find I have enough chips to hire you away from him. Be sensible, Eunice; this doesn’t cost him a dollar; it’s a business expense that he is already incurring. Change of subject. What do you think of his plans for this soi-disant ‘warm body’?”
“Is a brain transplant possible? Or is he grabbing at a straw? I know he’s not happy tied down to all that horrid machinery—goodness. I’ve been combing the shops for the naughtiest styles I can find but it gets harder and harder to get a smile out of him, is it practical, this scheme?”
“That’s beside the point, dear; he’s ordered it and we are going to deliver. This Rare Blood Club—does it have all the AB-Negatives?”
“Heavens, no. The last club report showed less than four thousand AB-Negs enrolled out of a nationwide probability of about million.”
“Too bad. What do you think of his notion of page ads and prime time on video?”
“It would cost a dreadful lot of money. But l suppose he can afford it.”
“Certainly. But it stinks.”
“Sir?”
“Eunice, if this transplant is to take place, there must be no publicity. Do you remember the fuss when they started freezing people? No, you’re too young. It touched a bare nerve which set off loud howls, and the practice was very nearly prohibited—on the theory that, since most people can’t afford it, no one should be allowed to have it. The Peepul, bless ‘em—our country has at times been a democracy, an oligarchy, a dictatorship, a republic, a socialism, and mixtures of all of those, without changing its basic constitution, and now we are a dc-facto anarchy under an elected dictator even though we still have laws and legislatures and Congress. But through all of this that bare nerve has always been exposed: the idea that if everyone can’t have something, then no one should have it.
So what will happen when one of the richest men in the country advertises that he wants to buy another man’s living body—just to save his own stinking, selfish life?”
“I don’t think Boss is all that bad. If you make allowances for his illness, he’s rather sweet.”
“Beside the point. That bare nerve will jump like an ulcerated tooth. Preachers will denounce him and bills will be submitte4 in legislatures and the A.M.A. will order its members to have nothing to with it and Congress might even pass a law against it. Oh, the Supreme Court would find such a law unconstitutional I think—but by then Johann would be long dead. So no publicity. Does the Rare Blood Club know who these other AB-Negatives are who are not members?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“We’ll check. I would hazard that at least eighty percent of the people in this country have had their blood typed at some time. Does blood type ever change?”
“Oh, no, never. That’s why we rares—that’s what we call ourselves—are so in demand.”
“Good. Almost all of the population who have been typed have the fact listed in computers somewhere, and with computers so interlinked today it is a matter of what questions to ask and how and where—and I don’t know how, but I know the firm to hire for it. We progress, my dear. I’ll get that started and off-load the details onto you, and then get other phases started and leave you to check on them while I go to South America and see this butcher Boyle. And—”
“Mr. Salomon! Bad turf coming up.”
Salomon thumbed his intercom. “Roger.” He added, “Damn them, those two beauties like to go through Abandoned Areas. They hope somebody will shoot so that they will have legal excuse to shoot back. I’m sorry, my dear. With you aboard I should have given orders to stay out of A.A.s no matter what.”
“It’s my fault,” Mrs. Branca said meekly. “I should have told you that it is almost impossible to circle near Nineteen-B without crossing a bad zone. I have to detour way around to reach Boss’s house. But we’re safe inside, are we not?”