Robert Heinlein: I Will Fear No Evil

"But the Parsons case sealed it; a man is dead when all brain activity has stopped, permanently,"

"And what does that mean?" Smith persisted.

"The Court declined to define it. But in application— look, Johann, I'm a corporation lawyer, not a specialist in medical jurisprudence nor in forensic medicine—and I would have to research before I—"

"Okay, so you're not God. You can revise your remarks later. What do you know now?"

"When the exact moment of death is important, as it sometimes is in estate cases, as it often is in accident, manslaughter, and murder cases, as it always is in an organ, transplant case, some doctor determines that the brain has quit and isn't going to start up again. They use various tests and talk about ‘irreversible coma' and ‘complete absence of brain wave activity' and ‘cortical damage beyond possibility of repair' but it all comes down to some M.D. laying his reputation and license on the line to certify that this brain is dead and won't come alive again. Heart and lungs are now irrelevant; they are classed with hands and feet and gonads and other parts that a man can do without or have replaced. It's the brain that counts. Plus a doctor's opinion about the brain. In transplant cases there are almost always at least two doctors in no way connected with the operation and probably a coroner as well. Not because the Supreme Court requires it—in fact only a few of the fifty-four states have legislated in re thanatotic requirements—but—"

"Just a moment, Mr. Salomon—that odd word. My typewriter has placed a query after it." Eunice kept her hand over the "Hold" light.

"How did your typer spell it?"

"T-H-A-N-A-T-O-T-I-C."

"Smart machine. It's the technical adjective referring to death. From the Greek god Thanatos, Death."

"Half a second while I tell it so." Eunice touched the "Memory" switch with her other hand, whispered briefly, then said, "It feels better if I reassure it at once. Go ahead." She lifted her hand from the "Hold" light.

"Eunice, are you under the impression that that machine is alive?"

She blushed, then touched "Erase" and covered "Hold."

"No, Mr. Salomon. But it does behave better with me than with any other operator. It can get downright sulky if it doesn't like the way it is handled."

"I can testify to that," Smith agreed. "If Eunice takes a day off, her relief had better fetch her own gadgets, or fell back on shorthand. Listen, dear, knock off the chatter. Talk with Jake about the care and feeding of machines some other time; great-grandfather wants to go to bed."

"Yes, sir." She lifted her hand.

"Johann, I was saying that in transplant cases the medical profession has set up tight rules or customs, both to protect themselves from criminal and civil actions and also, I am sure, to forestall restrictive legislation. They have to get that heart out while it's still alive and nevertheless protect themselves from indictments for murder, cum multimillion-dollar damage suits. So they spread the responsibility thin and back each other up."

"Yes," agreed Smith. "Jake, you haven't told me a thing I didn't know—but you have relieved my mind by confirming facts and law. Now I know it can be done. Okay, I want a healthy body between ages twenty and forty, still warm, heart still working and no other damage too difficult to repair...but with the brain legally dead, dead, dead. I want to buy that cadaver and have this brain—mine-—transplanted into it."

Eunice held perfectly still. Jake blinked. "When do you want this body? Later today?"

"Oh, next Wednesday ought to be soon enough. Garcia says he can keep me going."

"I suggest later today. And get you a new brain at the same time—that one has quit functioning."

"Knock it off, Jake; I'm serious. My body is falling to pieces. But my mind is clear and my memory isn't bad—ask me yesterday's closing prices on every stock we are interested in. I can still do logarithmic calculations without tables; I check myself every day. Because I know how far gone I am. Look at me—worth so many megabucks that it's silly to count them. But with a body held together with Scotch tape and string—I ought to be in a museum.

"Now all my life I've heard ‘You can't take it with you.' Well, eight months ago when they tied me down with all this undignified plumbing and wiring, having nothing better to do I started thinking about that old saw. I decided that, if I couldn't take it with me, I wasn't going to go!"

"Humph! ‘You'll go when the wagon comes."

"Perhaps. But I'm going to spend as much as necessary of that silly stack of dollars to try to beat the game. Will you help?"

"Johann, if you were talking about a routine heart transplant, I would say ‘Good luck and God bless you!' But a brain transplant—have you any idea what that entails?"

"No, and neither do you. But I know more about it than you do; I've had endless time to read up. No need to tell me that no successful transplant of a human brain has ever been made; I know it. No need to tell me that the Chinese have tried it several times and failed—although they have three basket cases still alive if my informants are correct."

"Do you want to be a basket case?"

"No. But there are two chimpanzees climbing trees and eating bananas this very day—and each has the brain the other one started with."

"Oho! That Australian."

"Dr. Lindsay Boyle. He's the surgeon I must have."

"Boyle. There was a scandal, wasn't there? They ran him out of Australia."

"So they did, Jake. Ever hear of professional jealousy? Most neurosurgeons are wedded to the notion that a brain transplant is too complicated. But if you dig into it, you will find the same opinions expressed fifty years ago about heart transplants. If you ask neurosurgeons about those chimpanzees, the kindest thing any of them will say is that it's a fake—even though there are motion pictures of both operations. Or they talk about the many failures Boyle had before he learned how. Jake, they hate him so much they ran him out of his home country when he was about to try it on a human being. Why, those bastards—excuse me, Eunice."

"My machine is instructed to spell that word as ‘scoundrel,' Mr. Smith."

"Thank you, Eunice."

"Where is he now, Johann?"

"In Buenos Aires."

"Can you travel that far?"

"Oh, no! Well, perhaps I could, in a plane big enough for these mechanical monstrosities they use to keep me alive. But first we need that body. And the best possible medical center for computer-assisted surgery. And a support team of surgeons. And all the rest. Say Johns Hopkins. Or Stanford Medical Center."

"I venture to say that neither one will permit this unfrocked surgeon to operate."

"Jake, lake, of course they will. Don't you know how to bribe a university?"

"I've never tried it."

"You do it with really big chunks of money, openly, with an academic procession to give it dignity. But first you find out what they want—football stands, or a particle accelerator, or an endowed chair. But the key is plenty of money. From, my point of view it is better to be alive and young again, and broke, than it is to be the richest corpse in Forest Lawn." Smith smiled. "It would be exhilarating to be young—and broke. So don't spare the shekels.

"I know you can set it up for Boyle; it's just a question of whom to bribe and how—in the words of Bill Gresham, a man I knew a long time ago: ‘Find out what he wants—he'll geek!'

"But the toughest problem involves no bribery but simply' a willingness to spend money. Locating that warm body. Jake, in this country over ninety thousand people per year are killed in traffic accidents alone—call it two hundred and fifty each day—and a lot of those victims die of skull injuries. A far percentage are between twenty and forty years old and in good health aside from a broken skull and a ruined brain. The problem is to find one while the body is still alive, then keep it alive and rush it to surgery."