Robert Silverberg - Thorns

Burris stood absorbed in the sight, forgetting for a moment the million tiny pricking pains that were his constant companions. So big? So enfleshed? The man had devoured a legion of cattle to gain that bulk.

Beside him, Aoudad gently urged him forward, not quite daring to touch Burris’s elbow.

“Let me see you,” Chalk said. His voice was light, amiable. “Up here. Up to me, Burris.”

A moment more. Face to face.

Burris shrugged off the hood and then the cloak. Let him have his look. Before this mound of flesh I need feel no shame.

Chalk’s placid expression did not change.

He studied Burris carefully, with deep interest and no hint of revulsion. At a wave of his pudgy hand, Aoudad and d’Amore vanished. Burris and Chalk remained alone in the huge, dim room.

“They did quite a job on you,” Chalk remarked. “Do you have any idea why they did it?”

“Sheer curiosity. Also the desire to improve. In their inhuman way, they’re quite human.”

“What do they look like?”

“Pockmarked. Leathery. I’d rather not say.”

“All right.” Chalk had not risen. Burris stood before him, hands folded, the little outer tentacles twining and untwining. He sensed a seat behind him and took it unbidden.

“You have quite a place here,” he said.

Chalk smiled and let the statement roll away. He said, “Does it hurt?”

“What?”

“Your changes.”

“There’s considerable discomfort. Terran pain-killers don’t help much. They did things to the neural channels, and no one here knows quite where to apply the blocks. But it’s bearable. They say the limbs of amputees throb for years after they’ve been removed. Same sensation, I guess.”

“Were any of your limbs removed?”

“All of them,” Burris said. “And put back on again a new way. The medics who examined me were very pleased by my joints. Also my tendons and ligaments. These are my own original hands, a little altered. My feet. I’m not really sure how much else of me is mine and how much theirs.”

“And internally?”

“All different. Chaos. A report is being prepared. I haven’t been back on Earth long. They studied me awhile, and then I rebelled.”

“Why?”

“I was becoming a thing. Not only to them but to myself. I’m not a thing. I’m a human being who’s been rearranged. Inside, I’m still human. Prick me and I’ll bleed. What can you do for me, Chalk?”

A meaty hand waved. “Patience. Patience. I want to know more about you. You were a space officer?”

“Yes.”

“Academy and all?”

“Naturally.”

“Your rating must have been good. You were given a tough assignment. First landing on a world of intelligent beings—never a cinch. How many in your team?”

“Three. We all went through surgery. Prolisse died first, then Malcondotto. Lucky for them.”

“You dislike your present body?”

“It has its advantages. The doctors say I’m likely to live five hundred years. But it’s painful, and it’s also embarrassing. I was never cut out to be a monster.”

“You’re not as ugly as you may think you are,” Chalk observed. “Oh, yes, children run screaming from you, that sort of thing. But children are conservatives. They loathe anything new. I find that face of yours quite attractive in its way. I daresay a lot of women would fling themselves at your feet.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t tried.”

“Grotesqueness has its appeal, Burris. I weighed over twenty pounds at birth. My weight has never hampered me. I think of it as an asset.”

“You’ve had a lifetime to get used to your size,” said Burris. “You accommodate to it in a thousand ways. Also, you chose to be this way. I was the victim of an incomprehensible whim. It’s a violation. I’ve been raped, Chalk.”

“You want it all undone?”

“What do you think?”

Chalk nodded. His eyelids slid down, and it appeared that he had dropped instantly into a sound sleep. Burris waited, baffled, and more than a minute passed. Without stirring, Chalk said, “Surgeons here on Earth can transplant brains successfully from one body to another.”

Burris started, seized by a grand mal of fevered excitement. A new organ within his body injected spurts of some unknown hormone into the bowl of strangenesses beside his heart. He dizzied. He scrabbled in the roiling surf, dashed again and again onto the abrasive sand by relentless waves.

Chalk went on calmly, “Does the technology of the thing interest you at all?”

The tentacles of Burris’s hands writhed uncontrollably.

The smooth words came: “The brain must be surgically isolated within the skull by paring away of all contiguous tissues. The cranium itself is preserved for support and protection. Naturally, absolute hemostasis must be maintained during the long period of anticoagulation, and there are techniques for sealing the base of the skull and the frontal bone to prevent loss of blood. Brain functions are monitored by electrodes and thermoprobes. Circulation is maintained by linking the internal maxillary and internal carotid arteries. Vascular loops, you understand. I’ll spare you the details by which the body is shaved away, leaving only the living brain. At length the spinal cord is severed and the brain is totally isolated, fed by its own carotid system. Meanwhile the recipient has been prepared. The carotid and jugular are dissected away and the major strap muscles in the cervical area are resected. The brain graft is put in place after submergence in an antibiotic solution. The carotid arteries of the isolated brain are connected by a siliconized cannula to the proximal carotid artery of the recipient. A second cannula is fixed in the jugular of the recipient. All this is done in a low freeze to minimize damage. Once the grafted brain’s circulation is meshed with that of the recipient body, we bring the temperature toward normal and begin standard post-operative techniques. A prolonged period of re-education is necessary before the grafted brain has assumed control over the recipient body.”

“Remarkable.”

“Not much of an achievement compared with what was done to you,” Chalk conceded. “But it’s been carried out successfully with higher mammals. Even with primates.”

“With humans?”

“No.”

“Then—”

“Terminal patients have been used. Brains grafted into recently deceased. Too much goes against the chance of success there, though. Still, there have been some near misses. Another three years, Burris, and human beings will be swapping brains as easily as they swap arms and legs today.”

Burris disliked the sensations of intense anticipation that roared through him. His skin temperature was uncomfortably high. His throat throbbed.

Chalk said, “We build a synthetic for you, duplicating in as many respects as possible your original appearance. We assemble a golem, you see, from the spare-parts bank, but we do not include a brain. We transplant your brain into the assemblage. There will be differences, naturally, but you’ll be fundamentally integral. Interested?”

“Don’t torture me, Chalk.”

“I give you my word I’m serious. Two technological problems stand in the way. We have to master the technique of total assembly of a recipient, and we have to keep it alive until we can successfully carry out the transplant. I’ve already said it would take three years to achieve the second. Say two more to build the golem. Five years, Burris, and you’ll be fully human again.”

“What will this cost?”

“Perhaps a hundred million. Perhaps more.”

Burris laughed harshly. His tongue—how like a serpent’s now!—flickered into view.

Chalk: “I’m prepared to underwrite the entire cost of your rehabilitation.”