She gurgled happily. “Joe, you’re a genuis!”
4
As Dr. Boyle came out of the operating theater Mr. Salomon stood up. “Doctor!”
Boyle checked his impatient strides. “Oh. You again. Go to hell.”
“No doubt I will. But wait a moment, Doctor.”
The surgeon answered with controlled fury: “Listen, chum—I’ve been operating eleven hours with one short break. By now I hate everybody, especially you. So let me be.”
“I thought perhaps you could use a drink.”
The surgeon suddenly smiled. “Where’s the nearest pub?”
“About twenty yards from here. In my car. Parked on this floor. Stocked with Australian beer, both cold and room temperature. And other things. Whisky. Gin. Name it.”
“My word, you Yahnk barstahds do know how. Right. But I must change first.” Again he turned away.
Salomon again stopped him. “Doctor, I took the liberty of having your street clothes packed into your bag and placed in my car. So let’s have that drink at once.”
Boyle shook his head and grinned. “You do take liberties—too right. Very well, if you can stand the stink, I’ll tub and change at my hotel ‘Lay on, MacDuff!’”
Salomon let it go at that until they were locked into his car and he had poured beer for them—the authentic kangaroo kick for the surgeon, a much weaker American brew for himself; he had tangled with Australian beer in his youth and was wary. The big car started smoothly and-continued so; Rockford had been warned that drinking might take place in the passenger compartment.
Salomon waited until his guest bad half a glass down him and had sighed in relief. “Doctor, bow did it go?”
“Eh? Smoothly. We had planned it, we rehearsed it, we did it. How else? That’s a good team you got for me.”
“I take it you are saying the operation was successful?”
“‘—but the patient died.’ That’s the rest of the old saw.”
Jacob Salomon felt a wave of sorrow and relief. He sighed and answered, “Well, I expected it. Thank you, Doctor. I know you tried.”
“Slow down! I don’t mean that this patient died; I merely completed the cliché. The operation went exactly as planned; the patient was in satisfactory shape when I relinquished control to the support team.”
“Then you expect him to live?”
“‘It,’ not ‘he.’ That thing back there is not a human being and may never be. It won’t die, it can’t—unless one of your courts gives permission to switch off the machinery. That body is young and healthy; with the support it is receiving it can stay alive—as protoplasm, not as a human being—for any length of time. Years. And the brain was alive when I left; it was continuing to show strong alpha-wave response. It should stay alive, too; it is receiving blood supply from that healthy body. But whether that brain and that body will ever marry into a living human being—what church do you attend?”
“I don’t.”
“Too bad, I was about to suggest that you ring up God and ask Him, as I do not know. Since I saved the retinas and the inner ears—first surgeon ever to do that, by the bye, even though they call me a quack—it might be able to see and hear. Possibly. If the spinal cord fuses, it might regain some motor control, even be able to dispense with some of the artificial support. But I tell you the stark truth, Counselor, the most likely outcome is that that brain will never again be in touch with the outside world in any fashion.”
“I hope your misgivings are unfounded,” Salomon said mildly. “Your contingent fee depended on your achieving sight, hearing, and speech, at a minimum.”
“In a pig’s arse.”
“I’m not authorized to pay it otherwise. Sorry.”
“Wrong. There was mention of a bonus, a ridiculously large sum—which I ignored. Look, cobber, you shysters are allowed to work on contingent fees; we butchers have other rules. My fee is for operating. I operated. Finis. I’m an ethical surgeon, no matter what the barstahds say about me.”
“Which reminds me—” Salomon took an envelope from his pocket. “Here’s your fee.”
The surgeon pocketed it. Salomon said, “Aren’t you going to check it?”