Mack Reynolds - Once Departed

“Oh, everybody knows of Nicolas Ferencsik. He’s absolutely most prominent in his field.”

“Yeah, but I’m ignorant All I know about him I read in Time or Newsweek in the Science or Medicine sections. He wins the Nobel prize, he lectures at Johns Hopkins, he’s lauded by the Mayo Clinic people.”

“Well, he transplants organs. His successes have been startling.”

Quint was impatient. “But everybody’s been getting into that act lately. I even read about a Philadelphia dentist whose been transplanting teeth ever since 1959.”

“Doctor Mezrow?” she nodded.

“He takes a healthy tooth from someone whose mouth is too small to hold the usual quota and needs an extraction, and transplants it into the mouth of someone who’s had an extraction.”

Marylyn nodded. “But teeth are simple, compared with organs. Nicolas Ferencsik has been successful in transplanting, first in animals, and now in human beings, just about every organ in the body. Oh, others have done it too. American doctors have been successful in taking a diseased kidney from one person, and replacing it with a healthy kidney from another person. It works quite often between identical twins, but only in a few instances otherwise. You see, Quentin, the body has an… well, instinctive tendency to reject any foreign tissue that’s been grafted into it, unless it’s from an identical twin. But Ferencsik has startled the world by combating this body instinct. He utilizes azathioprine, a new immunity suppressor, actinomycin C, an antibiotic which is sometimes used against cancer, a cortisone-type hormone, heart stimulants, diuretics, and so forth. And he’s been successful in practically rebuilding people hurt in accidents. Of course, in the Iron Curtain countries, especially Russia where he did a lot of his work, they’ve gone further than we have in establishing banks of not just blood but hearts, kidneys, livers and other organs as well.”

“You’re getting beyond my depth,” Quint said. “At least beyond my depth with my head feeling the way it does now. However, I picked up the idea recently that he’s been able to even transplant brains. At least on an anthropoid ape level.”

She frowned, as though that went beyond either her belief, or at least her approval, but she said, “Yes, you mentioned that the other night.”

A new party was descending the brick steps which led down to the cellars from the restaurant proper on the ground level. There were four of them, all men, and one of the four was Bart Digby. Quint hoped the other wouldn’t recognize him, and then realized there was fat chance of that. The alleged former C.I.A. man’s eyes swept the ten or fifteen tables of the cellar dining rooms with a professional glance, landing on Quint immediately.

When the party had been seated by the captain, Digby evidently excused himself and came toward Quint and Marylyn Worth.

Quint came to his feet, without over-much trouble, and made introductions, which were routinely responded to, including an appreciative laying-on-of-eyes by Bart of Marylyn.

Without invitation, Digby took an empty chair and said to Quint, “Look, I wanted to talk to you some more.” His eyes went back to Marylyn.

Quint said, wearily, “Miss Worth is a teacher out at the Air Force school. She comes from Nebraska and is very sincere and probably very patriotic and believes in true values and things like that which I don’t understand. What her security rating is with the F.B.I., I don’t know, but I suspect you can talk in front of her at least as freely as you can in front of me. And besides, I’ve got a hangover, confound it. I would have said damn it, instead of confound it, but Miss Worth forbids me to swear.”

Digby looked at him. “Are you swacked?”

“Miss Worth calls it under the influence ,” Quint said. “The answer is , yes. Mildly. I’m almost over it.”

“You must have kept going since I saw you at lunch,” Bart Digby growled unhappily. “Look, I want to talk to you some more. But it’ll keep until tomorrow.”

“About what?” Quint said.

Bart shot another look at Marylyn.

Quint said, “Oh, for crissake…”

Digby said, “Remember my mentioning Bormann, Mueller and Doktor Stahlecker this morning?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’ve done some backchecking on this Doktor Stahlecker who was evidently one of Hitler’s most fervent from way back when the Nazi party was first getting organized. Remember when the German generals tried to knock him off, planted a bomb in his bunker when he was having a staff meeting?”

“Yeah, Along in 1944. Half the general staff was in on it, even Rommel.”

“That’s right. Well, it was our friend Doktor Stahlecker who kept Hitler alive at that point. He was blown half to pieces, but the good doctor patched him up.”

Quint was irritated. He wasn’t up to much in the way of thinking right at this point. “So,” he said.

“So, it seems that Doktor Stahlecker was the top authority in Germany at that time on such items as organ transplants, grafting of limbs, and such like. There evidently is some evidence that one of Hitler’s arms was blown completely off, but Doktor Stahlecker was able to sew it back on. It’s only been in the past year or so that American doctors have been up to that sort of work.”

Quint Jones looked at him blankly. “Organ transplants? That’s Nicolas Ferencsik’s line.”

Digby grunted exasperation. “You begin to get the message, eh? Well, chew on this for awhile. Doktor Stahlecker was also one of the famed German doctors who butchered thousands of Jews, gypsies, Poles and Russian prisoners in the name of scientific research. The good doctor seemed interested in such supposed scientific items as how long could a woman live when her time for delivery was upon her and you tied her legs together, and how long could a Jew live with his skin completely flayed from his body? Or, how long could a man live in below zero water?”

Quint shot a look at Marylyn who seemed to have frozen in horror. He said, “Take it easy, Bart.”

Bart Digby said, “Well, at any rate, of all the Nazis still at large, Doktor Stahlecker is one of those most wanted. There’s a rope waiting for the good doctor in just about any country that participated in World War Two.”

“What’s the connection with Professor Ferencsik?” Quint said.

The former C.I.A. man came to his feet. “That’s what I’d like to know,” he said. “I’ll talk to you about it in the morning.” He looked at Marylyn. “Where’ve I seen you before?” he asked in puzzlement.

“At a police line-up in Chicago, probably,” Quint growled at him. “Good grief, get lost, Bart. Miss Worth was at the party last night. That’s where you saw her.”

Quint Jones was awakened from no deep dream of peace by the brutal ringing of the phone next to his bed. He tried manfully to ignore it. It wasn’t to be ignored.

He grabbed it and snarled, “Yes?”

Mike Woolman said cheerfully, “Come on, come on. I can tell from your voice, you’re not out of bed. It’s eleven o’clock.”

Quint grumbled, “It got very drunk out last night.”

“Where’s all that gung ho energy you had yesterday? All that impressive column writing ambition?”

“Shut up,” Quint said. “What’d you want?”

“Look Quint, this case is pyramiding. Rumors are beginning to get around amongst the boys. I got a call from Paris headquarters of World Wide Press. They’re thinking of sending a special man down here to handle the story.”

That wasn’t so good from Mike’s viewpoint. He ought to be able to wrap a story up on his own, not depend on outsiders to come in and do his work for him when it got inportant.