He roused himself and sat up. "Nothing I can have," he said bitterly.
"Oh, no, Colonel!" Her eyes showed shock. "I mean—well, excuse me. I don't have any right to talk to you like that. But, dear Lord, Colonel, if there's anybody in this world who can have anything he wants, you're it!"
"I wish I felt that way," he grumbled; but he was watching her closely and curiously, he did feel something—something he could not identify, but something which was not the pain that had overwhelmed him only moments before.
Sulie Carpenter glanced at her watch and then pulled up a chair. "You sound low, Colonel," she said sympathetically. "I guess all this is pretty hard to take."
He looked away from her, up to where the great black wings were rippling slowly over his head. He said, "It has its bad parts, believe me. But I knew what I was getting into."
Sulie nodded. She said, "I had a bad time when my—my boyfriend died. Of course, that's nothing like what you're doing. But in a way maybe it was worse—you know, it was so pointless. One day we were fine and talking about getting married. The next day he came back from the doctor's and those headaches he'd been having turned out to be—" She took a deep breath. "Brain tumor. Malignant. He was dead three months later, and I just couldn't handle it. I had to get away from Oakland. I applied to be transferred here. Never thought I'd get it, but I guess they're still short-handed from the flu—"
"I'm sorry," Roger said quickly.
She smiled. "It's all right," she said. "It's just that there was a big empty place in my life, and I'm really grateful I've got something to fill it here." She glanced again at her watch and jumped up. "The floor nurse'll be on my back," she said. "Now, listen, really, is there anything I can get for you? Book? Music? You've got the world at your command, you know, including me."
"Not a thing," Roger said honestly. "Thanks anyway. How come you picked coming here?"
She looked at him thoughtfully, the corners of her lips curving very faintly. "Well," she said, "I knew something about the program here; I've been in aerospace medicine for ten years in California. And I knew who you were, Colonel Torraway. Knew! I used to have your picture on my wall when you were rescuing those Russians. You wouldn't believe the active role you played in some of my fantasies, Colonel Torraway, sir."
She grinned and turned away, stopping at the door. "Do me a favor, will you?"
Roger was surprised. "Sure. What?"
"Well, I'd like a more recent picture. You know what security is like here. If I sneak in a camera, can I take a quick snapshot of you now? Just so I can have something to show my grandchildren, if I ever have any."
Roger protested, "They'll kill you if they catch you, Sulie."
She winked. "I'll take my chances; it's worth it. Thanks."
After she had gone Roger made an effort to go back to thinking about his castration and his cuckolding, but for some reason they seemed less overwhelming. Nor did he have a great deal of time. Sulie came in with a low-residue lunch, a smile and a promise to be back the following morning. Clara Bly gave him an enema, and then he lay wondering while three identical fair-mustached men came in and went over every inch of floor, wall and furniture with metal detectors and electronic mops. They were total strangers, and they stayed in the room, on new-brought chairs, silent and watching, while Brad came in.
Brad was looking not merely ill but seriously worried. "Hi, Roger," he said. "Jesus, you scared us. It's my fault; I should have been on tap, but this damn flu bug—"
"I survived," Roger said, studying Brad's rather ordinary face and wondering just why he wasn't feeling outrage and resentment.
"We're going to have to keep you pretty busy now," Brad began, dragging up a chair. "We've phased out some of your mediation circuits for the moment. When they're full in again we're going to have to limit your sensory inputs—let you work up to handling a total environment a little at a time. And Kathleen's jumping to get you started on retraining—you know, learning how to use your muscles and all that." He glanced over at the three silent watchers. His expression, Roger thought, was suddenly full of fear.
"I guess I'm ready," Roger said.
"Oh, sure. I know you are," said Brad, surprised. "Haven't they been giving you updates on your readouts? You're functioning like a seventeen-jewel watch, Roger. All the surgery is over now. You've got everything you need." He sat back, studying Roger. "If I do say so"—he grinned—"you're a work of art, Roger, and I'm the artist. I just wish I could see you on Mars. That's where you belong, boy."
One of the watchers cleared his throat. "It's getting toward that time, Dr. Bradley," he said.
The worried look returned to Brad's face. "Coming right away. Take care, Rog. I'll be back to see you later."
He left, and the three government agents followed him, as Clara Bly came in and fussed around the room.
A mystery was suddenly clear. "Dash is coming to see me," Roger guessed.
"Smart!" sniffed Clara. "Well, I guess it's all right for you to know. It wasn't all right for me to know. They think it's a secret. But what kind of secret is it when they turn the whole hospital upside down? They've had those guys all over the place since before I came on duty."
"When will he get here?" Roger asked.
"That's the part that is a secret. From me, anyway."
But it did not stay a secret very long; within the hour, to an unheard but strongly felt "Hail to the Chief," the President of the United States came into the room. With him was the same valet he had had on the presidential jet, but this time he was obviously not a valet, only a bodyguard.
"Marvelous to see you again," said the President, holding out his hand. He had never seen the revised and edited version of the astronaut before, and certainly the dully gleaming flesh, the great faceted eyes, the hovering wings must have looked strange, but what showed in the President's well-disciplined face was only friendship and pleasure. "I stopped off a little while ago to say hello to your good wife, Dorrie. I hope she's forgiven me for messing up her fingernail polish last month; I forgot to ask. But how are you feeling?"
How Roger was feeling was once again amazed at the thoroughness of the President's briefing, but what he said was, "Fine, Mr. President."
The President inclined his head toward the bodyguard without looking at him. "John, have you got that little package for Colonel Torraway? It's something Dorrie asked me to bring over to you; you can open it when we've gone." The bodyguard placed a white-paper package on Roger's bedside table and slid a chair over for the President in almost the same motion, just as the President was preparing to sit down. "Roger," said the President, sharpening the creases in his Bermudas, "I know I can be honest with you. You're all we've got now, and we need you. The indices are looking worse every day. The Asians are spoiling for trouble, and I don't know how long I can keep from giving it to them. We have to get you to Mars, and you have to function when you get there. I can't overestimate the importance of it."
Roger said, "I think I understand that, sir."
"Well, in a way, I guess you do. But do you understand it in your gut? Do you really feel, deep down, that you're that one man, maybe two, in a generation who somehow or other gets himself in a position that's so important to the whole human race that even inside his own mind what happens to him doesn't measure up in importance? That's where you are, Roger. I know," the President went on sorrowfully, "that they've taken some mighty sacrificial liberties with your person. Didn't give you a chance to say yes, no or maybe. Didn't even tell you. It's a piss-poor way to treat any human being, let alone somebody who means as much as you do—and somebody who deserves as well as you do, too. I've kicked a bunch of asses around here about that. I'll be glad to kick a lot more. If you want it done, tell me. Any time. It's better if I do it than you—with those steel muscles they've given you, you might damage a few of those pretty behinds on the nurses past the point of repair. Do you mind if I smoke?"
"What? Oh, hell, no, Mr. President."
"Thanks." The valet had an open cigarette case in one hand and a glowing lighter in the other as soon as the President stretched out his hand. He took a deep draw and leaned back. "Roger," he said, "let me tell you my fantasy about what I think is in your mind. You're thinking, 'Here's old Dash, politician to the end, full of bulishit and promises, trying to trick me into pulling his chestnuts out of the fire. He'd say anything, he'd promise anything. All he wants is what he can get out of me.' Anywhere near right, so far?"
"Why—no, Mr. President! Well . . . a little bit."
The President nodded. "You'd be crazy if you didn't think a little bit of that," he said matter-of-factly. "It's all true, you know. Up to a point. It's true I'd promise you anything, tell you any lies I could think of to get you to Mars. But the other thing that's true is that you have us all by the genial organs, Roger. We need you. There's a war coming if we don't do something to stop it, and it's crazy but the trend projections say the only thing that can stop it is putting you on Mars. Don't ask me why. I just go by what the technical people tell me, and they claim that's what the computers print out."
Roger's wings were stirring restlessly, but the eyes were intent on the President.
"So you see," said the President heavily, "I'm appointing myself your hired hand, Roger. You tell me what you want. I'll make damn sure you get it. You pick up that phone any time, day or night. They'll put you through to me. If I'm asleep, you can wake me if you want to. If it can wait, you can leave a message. There's going to be no more fucking you around in this place, and if you even think it's happening you tell me and I'll stop it. Christ," he said, grinning as he started to stand up, "do you know what the history books are going to say about me? 'Fitz-James Deshatine, 1943—2026, forty-second President of the United States. During his administration the human race established its first self-sustaining colony on another planet.' That's what I'll get, Roger, if I get that much—and you're the only one who can give it to me.
"Well," he said, moving toward the door, "there's a governor's conference waiting for me in Palm Springs. They expected me six hours ago, but I figured you mattered a hell of a lot more than they did. Kiss Dorrie for me. And call me. If you don't have anything to complain about, call me to say hello. Any time."
And he left, with a dazzled astronaut staring after him.
Take it any way you liked, Roger reflected, it was really a pretty spectacular performance, and it left him feeling both awed and pleased. Subtracting 99 percent of it as bullshit, what was left was highly gratifying.
The door opened, and Sulie Carpenter came in, looking faintly scared. She was carrying a framed photograph. "I didn't know what kind of company you were moving in," she said. "Do you want this?"
It was a picture of the President, signed, "For Roger from his admirer, Dash."
"I guess I do," said Roger. "Can you hang it up?"
"When it's a picture of Dash, you can," she said. "It has a self-hanging gadget. Right up here?" She pressed it against the wall near the door and stepped back to admire it. Then she looked around, winked and pulled a flat black camera the size of a cigarette pack out of her apron. "Smile at the birdie," she said, and snapped away. "You won't rat on me? Okay. I've got to be going—I'm not on duty now, but I wanted to look in on you."
Roger leaned back and folded his hands on his chest. Things were turning out rather interestingly. He had not forgotten the internal pain of the discovery of his castration, and he had not put Dorrie out of his mind. But neither was perceived as pain any more. There were too many newer, more pleasant thoughts overlaying them.
Thinking of Dorrie reminded him of her gift. He opened it. It was a ceramic cup in harvest colors, ornamented with a cornucopia of fruits. The card said, "This is a way of telling you that I love you." And it was signed Dorrie.
All of Torraway's signs were stable now, and we were getting ready to phase in the mediation circuits.
This time Roger was well briefed. Brad was with him every hour—after taking a large share of the President's ass-kicking, he was chastened and diligent. We deployed one task force to oversee the phasing-in of the mediation circuits, another to buffer the readout-readin of data from the 3070 in Tonka to the new backpack computer in Rochester, New York. Texas and Oklahoma were going through one of their periodic brownouts just then, which complicated all machine data handling, and the aftereffects of the flu were still with the human beings on the staff. We were definitely short-handed.
Moreover, we needed still more. The backpack computer was rated at 99.999999999 percent reliable in every component, but there were something like 108 components. There was a lot of backup, and a full panoply of cross-input paths so that failure of even three or four major subsystems would leave enough capacity to keep Roger going. But that wasn't good enough. Analysis showed that there was one chance in ten of criticalpath failure within half a Martian year.
So the decision was made to construct, launch and orbit around Mars a full-size 3070, replicating all the functions of the backpack computer in triplicate. It would not be as good as the backpack. If the backpack experienced total failure, Roger would have the use of the orbiter only 50 percent of the time—when it was above the horizon in its orbit and thus could interlink with him by radio. There would be a worst-case lag of a hundredth of a second, which was tolerable. Also he would have to stay in the open, or linked with an external antenna otherwise.
There was another reason for the back-up orbiter, and that was the high risk of glitches. Both the orbiting 3070 and the backpack were heavily shielded. Nevertheless they would pass through the Van Allen belts at launch, and the solar wind all through their flight. By the time they got to the vicinity of Mars the solar wind would be at a low enough level to be bearable— except in the case of flares. The charged particles of a flare could easily bug enough of the stored data in either computer to critically damage its function. The backpack computer would be helpless to defend itself. The 3070, on the other hand, had enough reserve capacity for continuous internal monitoring and repair. In idle moments—and it would have many idle moments, as much as 90 percent of its function time even when in use by Roger—it would compare data in each of its triplicate arrays. If any datum differed from the same datum in the other arrays it would check for compatibility with the surround data; if all data were compatible, it would examine all three arrays and make the one aberrant bit conform with the other two. If two did not conform, it would check against the backpack if possible.
That was all the redundancy we could afford, but it was quite a lot. On the whole, we were very pleased.
To be sure, the orbiting 3070 would require a good deal of power. We calculated the probable maximum draw against the probable worst-case supply of any reasonable set of solar panels, and concluded that the margin was too thin. So Raytheon got a preempt order for one of its MHD generators, and crews went to work on Route 128 to modify it for space launch and automatic operation in orbit around Mars. When the 3070 and the MHD generator arrived in orbit they would lock to each other. The generator would supply all the power the computer needed, and have enough left over to microwave a useful surplus down to Roger on the surface of Mars, which he could use both to power his own machine parts as needed or for whatever power-using equipment he might like to install.
Once we had completed all the plans we could hardly see how we had thought we could get along without them in the first place. Those were happy days! We requested, and were promptly given, all the reinforcements we needed. Tulsa went without lights two nights a week so we could have the energy reserves we needed, and Jet Propulsion Laboratories lost their entire space-medicine staff to our project.
The read-in of data proceeded. Glitches chased themselves merrily around both new computers, the backpack in Rochester and the duplicate 3070 that had been rushed to Merritt Island. But we hunted them down, isolated them, corrected them and were keeping right on schedule.
The world outside, of course, was not as pleasant.
Using a home-made plutonium bomb made out of materials hijacked from the breeder reactor at Carmarthen, Welsh nationalists had blown up the Hyde Park Barracks and most of Knightsbridge. In California the Cascade Mountains were burning out of control, the fire-fighting helicopters grounded because of the fuel shortage. An exploding epidemic of smallpox had depopulated Poona and was already out of control in Bombay; cases were being reported from Madras to Delhi as those who were able fled the plague. The Australians had declared Condition Red mobilization, the NPA had called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, and Capetown was under siege.
All of this was as the graphs had predicted. We were aware of all of it. We continued with our work. When one of the nurses or technicians took time to worry, he had the President's orders to reassure him. On every bulletin board, and placarded in most of the workrooms, was a quote from Dash:
You take care of Roger Torraway,
and I'll take care of the rest of
the world.
Fitz-James Deshatine
We didn't need the reassurance, we knew how important the work was. The survival of our race depended on it. Compared to that, nothing else mattered.
Roger woke up in total blackness.
He had been dreaming, and for a moment the dream and the reality were queerly fused. The dream had been of a long time ago, when he and Dorrie and Brad had driven down to Lake Texoma with a few friends who owned a sailboat, and in the evening they had sung to Brad's guitar while the huge moon rose over the water. He thought he heard Brad's voice again . . . but he listened more closely, his brain clearing from sleep, and there was nothing.
There was nothing. That was strange. No sound at all, not even the purrs and clicks of the telemetry monitors along the wall, not even a whisper from the hall outside. However much he tried, with all the enhanced sensitivity of his new ears, there was no sound at all. Nor was there light. Not in any color, not anywhere, except for the dullest of dim red glows from his own body, and a glow equally dull from the baseboards of the room.