James Gunn - The Immortals

“But where’s your control?” Harry demanded. “How can you prove you’ve helped them? If you can’t trace cause and effect, if no one else can duplicate your treatment, it isn’t science. It can’t be taught.”

“When a healer is successful, he knows,” Pearce whispered. “So does his patient. As for teaching—how do you teach a child to talk?”

Harry shrugged impatiently. Pearce had an answer for everything. There are people like that, so secure in their mania that they can never be convinced that the rest of the world is sane. Man had to depend on science—not on superstition, not on faith healers, not on miracle workers. Or else he was back in the Dark Ages.

He lay back in the bed of leaves, feeling Marna’s presence close to him. He wanted to reach out and touch her, but he didn’t.

Else there would be no law, no security, no immortality…

The bracelet woke him. It tingled. Then it began to hurt. Harry put out his hand. The bed of leaves beside him was warm, but Marna was gone.

“Marna!” he whispered. He raised himself on one elbow. In the starlight that filtered through the trees above, he could just make out that the clearing was empty of everyone but himself. The places where Pearce and the boy had been sleeping were empty. “Where is everybody?” he said, more loudly.

He cursed under his breath. They had picked their time and escaped. But why, then, had Christopher found them in the forest and brought them here? And what did Marna hope to gain? Make it to the mansion alone?

He started up. Something crunched in the leaves. Harry froze in that position. A moment later he was blinded by a brilliant light.

“Don’t move!” said a high-pitched voice. “I will have to shoot you. And if you try to dodge, the Snooper will follow.” The voice was cool and precise. The hand that held the gun, Harry thought, would be as cool and accurate as the voice.

“I’m not moving,” Harry said. “Who are you?”

The voice ignored him. “There were four of you. Where are the other three?”

“They heard you coming. They’re hanging back, waiting to rush you.”

“You’re lying,” the voice said contemptuously.

“Listen to me!” Harry said urgently. “You don’t sound like a citizen. I’m a doctor—ask me a question about medicine, anything at all. I’m on an urgent mission. I’m taking a message to the governor.”

“What is the message?”

Harry swallowed hard. “The shipment was hijacked. There won’t be another ready for a week.”

“What shipment?”

“I don’t know. If you’re a squire, you’ve got to help me.”

“Sit down.”

Harry sat down.

“I have a message for you. Your message won’t be delivered.”

“But—” Harry started up.

From somewhere behind the light came a small explosion—little more than a sharply expelled breath. Something stung Harry in the chest. He looked down. A tiny dart clung there between the edges of his jacket. He tried to reach for it and couldn’t. His arm wouldn’t move. His head wouldn’t move, either. He toppled over onto his side, not feeling the impact. Only his eyes, his ears, and his lungs seemed unaffected. He lay there, paralyzed, his mind racing.

“Yes,” the voice said calmly, “I am a ghoul. Some of my friends are headhunters, but I hunt bodies and bring them in alive. The sport is greater. So is the profit. Heads are worth only twenty dollars; bodies are worth more than a hundred. Some with young organs like yours are worth much more.

“Go, Snooper. Find the others.”

The light went away. Something crackled in the brush and was gone. Slowly Harry made out a black shape that seemed to be sitting on the ground about ten feet away.

“You wonder what will happen to you,” the ghoul said. “As soon as I find your companions, I will paralyze them, too, and summon my stretcher. They will carry you to my helicopter. Then, since you came from Kansas City, I will take you to Topeka.”

A last hope died in Harry’s chest.

“That works best, I’ve found,” the high-pitched voice continued. “Avoids complications. The Topeka hospital I do business with will buy your bodies, no questions asked. You are permanently paralyzed, so you will never feel any pain, although you will not lose consciousness. That way the organs never deteriorate. If you’re a doctor, as you said, you know what I mean. You may know the technical name for the poison in the dart; all I know is that it was synthesized from the poison of the digger wasp. By use of intravenous feeding, these eminently portable organ banks have been kept alive for years until their time comes…”

The voice went on, but Harry stopped listening. He was thinking that he would go mad. They often did. He had seen them lying on slabs in the organ bank, and their eyes had been quite mad. Then he had told himself that the madness was why they had been put there, but now he knew the truth. He would soon be one of them.

Perhaps he would strangle before he reached the hospital, before they got a breathing tube down his throat and the artificial respirator on his chest and the tubes into his arms. They strangled sometimes, even under care.

He would not go mad, though. He was too sane. His mind might last for months.

He heard something crackle in the brush. Light flashed across his eyes. Something moved. Bodies thrashed. Someone grunted. Someone else yelled. Something went pouf! Then the sounds stopped, except for someone panting.

“Harry!” Marna said anxiously. “Harry! Are you all right?”

The light came back as the squat Snooper shuffled into the little clearing again. Pearce moved painfully through the light. Beyond him was Christopher and Marna. On the ground near them was a twisted creature. Harry couldn’t figure out what it was, and then he realized it was a dwarf, a gnome, a man with thin, little legs and a twisted back and a large, lumpy head. Black hair grew sparsely on top of the head, and the eyes looked out redly, hating the world.

“Harry!” Marna said again, a wail this time.

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. It was a momentary flash of pleasure, not being able to answer, and then it was buried in a flood of self-pity.

Marna picked up the dart gun and threw it deep into the brush. “What a filthy weapon!”

Reason returned to Harry. They had not escaped after all. Just as he had told the ghoul, they had only faded away so that they could rescue him if an opportunity came. But they had returned too late.

The paralysis was permanent; there was no antidote. Perhaps they would kill him. How could he make them understand that he wanted to be killed?

He tried to speak through his eyes.

Marna had moved to him. She cradled his head in her lap. Her hand moved restlessly, smoothing his hair.

Carefully Pearce removed the dart from his chest and shoved it deep into the ground. “Be calm,” he said. “Don’t give up. There is no such thing as permanent paralysis. If you will try, you can move your little finger.” He held up Harry’s hand, patted it.

Harry tried to move his finger, but it was useless. What was the matter with the old quack? Why didn’t Pearce kill him and get it over with? Pearce kept talking, but Harry did not listen. What was the use of hoping? It only made the pain worse.

“A transfusion might help,” Marna said.

“Yes,” Pearce agreed. “Are you willing?”

“You know what I am?”

“Of course. Christopher, search the ghoul. He will have tubing and needles on him for emergency treatment of his victims.” Pearce spoke to Marna again. “There will be some commingling. The poison will enter your body.”

Marna’s voice was bitter. “You couldn’t hurt me with cyanide.”