Frederik Pohl - Man Plus

“So they cut out his prostate.”

“And implanted a steroid capsule, Mr. President. He won’t become effeminate. Physically, he’s now a complete self-contained eunuch, and — Oh. I mean unit.”

The President nodded. “That’s what they call a Freudian slip.”

Kayman shrugged.

“And if you think that way,” the President pressed, “what the hell do you think Torraway thinks?”

“I know it’s not easy for him, Mr. President.”

“As I understand it,” Dash went on, “you aren’t just an areologist, Don, you’re a marriage counselor, too. And not doing too well, right? That trampy little wife of his is giving our boy a hard time.”

“Dorrie has a lot of problems.”

“No, Dorrie has one problem. Same problem we all have. She’s screwing up our Mars project, and we can’t afford to have that happen. Can you straighten her out?”

“Well, I don’t mean make her a perfect person. Cut it out, Don! I mean, can you get her to put his mind at rest, at least enough so he doesn’t go into shock any more? Give him a kiss and a promise, send him a Valentine when he’s on Mars — God knows Torraway doesn’t expect any more than that. But he has a right to that much.”

“I can try,” said Kayman helplessly.

“And I’m going to have a few words with Brad,” the President said grimly. “I’ve told you, I’ve told you all, this project has to work . I don’t care about somebody’s cold in the head or somebody else’s hot pants, I want Torraway on Mars and I want him happy there.”

The plane banked to change course away from the traffic around New Orleans, and a glint of morning sun shone up from the greasy oil-slick surface of the Gulf. The President squinted down at it angrily. “Let me tell you, Father Kayman, what I’ve been thinking. I’ve been thinking that Roger would be happier mourning over the death of his wife in a car smash than worrying about what she’s doing when he’s not around. I don’t like thinking that way. But I have just so many options, Kayman, and I have to pick the one that’s least bad. And now,” he said, suddenly smiling, “I’ve got something for you, from His Holiness. It’s a present; take a look at it.”

Wondering, Kayman opened the purple box. It held a rosary, coiled on purple velvet inside the leather case. The Ave Marias were ivory, carved into rosebuds; the big Paternoster beads were chased crystal. “It has an interesting history,” the President went on. “It was sent back to Ignatius Loyola from one of his missions in Japan, and then it was in South America for two hundred years with the — what do you call them? — the Reductions of Paraguay? It’s a museum piece, really, but His Holiness wanted you to have it.”

“I — I don’t know what to say,” Kayman managed.

“And it has his blessing.” The President leaned back and suddenly looked a great deal older. “Pray with it, Father,” he said. “I’m not a Catholic. I don’t know how you feel about these things. But I want you to pray for Dorrie Torraway’s getting her head straightened out enough to last her husband a while. And if that doesn’t work, you’d better pray real hard for all of us.”

Back in the main cabin, Kayman strapped himself in his seat and willed himself asleep for the remaining hour or so of the flight to Tonka. Exhaustion triumphed over worry, and he drifted off. He was not the only one worried. We had not properly estimated the trauma Roger Torraway would receive from the loss of his genitals, and we had nearly lost him.

The malfunction was critical. It could not be risked again. We had already arranged for beefed-up psychiatric attendance on Roger, and in Rochester the backpack computer was being recircuited to monitor major psychic stress and react before Roger’s slower human synapses could oscillate into convulsions.

The world situation was proceeding as predicted. New York City was of course in turmoil, the Near East was building up pressures past the safety valves, and New People’s Asia was pouring out furious manifestos denouncing the squid kill in the Pacific. The planet was rapidly reaching critical mass. Our projections were that the future of the race was questionable on Earth past another two years. We could not allow that. The Mars landing had to succeed.

When Roger came out of the haze after his seizure he did not realize how close he had come to dying, he only realized that he had been wounded in all of his most sensitive parts. The feeling was desolation: wiped-out, hopeless desolation. He not only had lost Dorrie, he had lost his manhood. The pain was too extreme to be relieved by crying, even if he had been able to cry. It was the agony of the dentist’s chair without ahesthesia, so acute that it no longer felt like a warning but became merely a fact of the environment, something to be experienced and endured.

The door opened, and a new nurse came in. “Hi. I see you’re awake.”

She came over and laid warm fingers on his forehead. “I’m Sulie Carpenter,” she said. “It’s Susan Lee, really, but Sulie’s what they call me.” She withdrew her hand and smiled. “You’d think I’d know better than feeling for fever, wouldn’t you? I already know what it is from the monitors, but I guess I’m an old-fashioned girl.”

Torraway hardly heard her; he was preoccupied with seeing her. Was it a trick of his mediation circuits? Tall, green-eyed, dark-haired: she looked so very much like Dorrie that he tried changing the field of vision of his great insect eyes, zooming down on the pores in her slightly freckled skin, altering the color values, decreasing the sensitivity so that she seemed to fade into a twilight. No matter. She still looked like Dorrie.

She moved to scan the duplicate monitors at the side of the room. “You’re doing real well, Colonel Torraway,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m going to bring you your lunch in a little while. Anything you want now?”

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.”