Robert Silverberg: The Pain Peddlers

The leg was bare.

The scalpel descended.

Northrop winced as vicarious agony shot through him. He could feel the blazing pain, the brief searing hellishness as the scalpel slashed through diseased flesh and rotting bone. His whole body trembled, and he bit down hard on his lips and clenched his fists and then it was over.

There was a cessation of pain. A catharsis. The leg no longer sent its pulsating messages to the weary brain. Now there was shock, the anesthesia of hyped-up pain, and with the shock came calmness. Steele went about the mop-up operation. He tidied the stump, bound it.

The rushes flickered out in anticlimax. Later, the production crew would tie up the program with interviews of the family, perhaps a shot of the funeral, a few observations on the problem of gangrene in the aged. Those things were the extras. What counted, what the viewers wanted, was the sheer nastiness of vicarious pain, and that they got in full measure. It was a gladiatorial contest without the gladiators, masochism concealed as medicine. It worked. It pulled in the viewers by the millions.

Northrop patted sweat from his forehead.

“Looks like we got ourselves quite a little show here, boys,” he said in satisfaction.

The mood of satisfaction was still on him as he left the building that day. All day he had worked hard, getting the show into its final shape, cutting and polishing. He enjoyed the element of craftsmanship. It helped him to forget some of the sordidness of the program.

Night had fallen when he left. He stepped out of the main entrance and a figure strode forward, a bulky figure, medium height, tired face. A hand reached out, thrusting him roughly back into the lobby of the building.

At first Northrop didn’t recognize the face of the man. It was a blank face, a nothing face, a middle-aged empty face. Then he placed it.

Harry Gardner. The son of the dead man.

“Murderer!” Gardner shrilled. “You killed him! He would have lived if you’d used anesthetics! You phony, you murdered him so people would have thrills on television!”

Northrop glanced up the lobby. Someone was coming around the bend. Northrop felt calm. He could stare this nobody down until he fled in fear.

“Listen,” Northrop said, “we did the best medical science can do for your father. We gave him the ultimate in scientific care. We—”

“You murdered him!”

“No,” Northrop said, and then he said no more, because he saw the sudden flicker of a slice-gun in the blank-faced man’s fat hand. He backed away, but it didn’t help, because Gardner punched the trigger and an incandescent bolt flared out and sliced across Northrop’s belly just as efficiently as the surgeon’s scalpel had cut through the gangrenous leg.

Gardner raced away, feet clattering on the marble floor. Northrop dropped, clutching himself. His suit was seared, and there was a slash through his abdomen, a burn an eighth of an inch wide and perhaps four inches deep, cutting through intestines, through organs, through flesh. The pain hadn’t begun yet. His nerves weren’t getting the message through to his stunned brain. But then they were, and Northrop coiled and twisted in agony that was anything but vicarious now.

Footsteps approached.

“Jeez,” a voice said.

Northrop forced an eye open. Maurillo. Of all people, Maurillo.

“A doctor,” Northrop wheezed. “Fast! Christ, the pain! Help me, Ted!”

Maurillo looked down, and smiled. Without a word, he stepped to the telephone booth six feet away, dropped in a token, punched out a call.

“Get a van over here, fast. I’ve got a subject, chief.”

Northrop writhed in torment. Maurillo crouched next to him. “A doctor,” Northrop murmured. “A needle, at least. Gimme a needle! The pain—”

“You want me to kill the pain?” Maurillo laughed. “Nothing doing, chief. You just hang on. You stay alive till we get that hat on your head and tape the whole thing.”

“But you don’t work for me—you’re off the program—”

“Sure,” Maurillo said. “I’m with Transcontinental now. They’re starting a blood-and-guts show too. Only they don’t need waivers.”

Northrop gaped. Transcontinental? That bootleg outfit that peddled tapes in Afghanistan and Mexico and Ghana and God knew where else? Not even a network show, he thought. No fee. Dying in agony for the benefit of a bunch of lousy tapeleggers. That was the worst part, Northrop thought. Only Maurillo would pull a deal like that.

“A needle! For God‘s sake, Maurillo, a needle!”

“Nothing doing, chief. The van’ll be here any minute. They’ll sew you up, and we’ll tape it nice.”

Northrop closed his eyes. He felt the coiling intestines blazing within him. He willed himself to die, to cheat Maurillo and his bunch of ghouls. But it was no use. He remained alive and suffering.

He lived for an hour. That was plenty of time to tape his dying agonies. The last thought he had was that it was a damned shame he couldn’t star on his own show.