Дэймон Найт - Orbit 3

“But you can always console yourself that your motives were pure, that it was all for Science, can’t you, Dr. Darin?” Rae asked mockingly.

He looked at her. “Go to hell,” he said.

It was late when he turned off his light. Kelly met him in the corridor that led to the main entrance. “Hard day, Dr. Darin?”

He nodded. Her hand lingered momentarily on his arm. “Good night,” she said, turning in to her own office. He stared at the door for a long time before he let himself out and started toward his car. Lea would be furious with him for not calling. Probably she wouldn’t speak at all until nearly bedtime, when she would explode into tears and accusations. He could see the time when her tears and accusations would strike home, when Kelly’s body would still be a tangible memory, her words lingering in his ears. And he would lie to Lea, not because he would care actually if she knew, but because it would be expected. She wouldn’t know how to cope with the truth. It would entangle her to the point where she would have to try an abortive suicide, a screaming-for-attention attempt that would ultimately tie him in tear-soaked knots that would never be loosened. No, he would lie, and she would know he was lying, and they would get by. He started the car, aimed down the long sixteen miles that lay before him. He wondered where Kelly lived. What it would do to Stu when he realized. What it would do to his job if Kelly should get nasty, eventually. He shrugged. Barbie dolls never got nasty. It wasn’t built in.

Lea met him at the door, dressed only in a sheer gown, her hair loose and unsprayed. Her body flowed into his, so that he didn’t need Kelly at all. And he was best man when Stu and Kelly were married. He called to Rae, “Would that satisfy you?” but she didn’t answer. Maybe she was gone for good this time. He parked the car outside his darkened house and leaned his head on the steering wheel for a moment before getting out. If not gone for good, at least for a long time. He hoped she would stay away for a long time.

The author says this story is a “polytropic paramyth’’ —a sort of literary Rorschach test, in which different people may see different things. It was inspired by a line in Henry Miller's Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, which Farmer quotes from memory as follows: “There are diamonds born during the night in violent storms.’’ See what it means to you; then try it on your friends.

The knife slices the skin. The saw rips into bone. Gray dust flies. The plumber’s helper (the surgeon is economical) clamps its vacuum onto the plug of bone. Ploop! Out comes the section of skull. The masked doctor, Van Mesgeluk, directs a beam of light into the cavern of cranium.

He swears a large oath by Hippocrates, Aesculapius and the Mayo Brothers. The patient doesn’t have a brain tumor. He’s got a diamond.

The assistant surgeon, Beinschneider, peers into the well and, after him, the nurses.

“Amazing!” Van Mesgeluk says. “The diamond’s not in the rough. It’s cut!”

“Looks like a 58-facet brilliant, 127.1 carats,” says Beinschneider, who has a brother-in-law in the jewelry trade. He sways the light at the end of the drop cord back and forth. Stars shine; shadows run.

“Of course, it’s half-buried. Maybe the lower part isn’t diamond. Even so. . .”

“Is he married?” a nurse says.

Van Mesgeluk rolls his eyes. “Miss Lustig, don’t you ever think of anything but marriage?”

“Everything reminds me of wedding bells,” she replies, thrusting out her hips.

“Shall we remove the growth?” Beinschneider says.

“It’s malignant,” Van Mesgeluk says. “Of course, we remove it.”

He thrusts and parries with a fire and skill that bring cries of admiration and a clapping of hands from the nurses and even cause Beinschneider to groan a bravo, not unmingled with jealousy. Van Mesgeluk then starts to insert the tongs but pulls them back when the first lightning bolt flashes beneath and across the opening in the skull. There is a small but sharp crack and, very faint, the roll of thunder.

“Looks like rain,” Beinschneider says. “One of my brothers-in-law is a meteorologist.”

“No. It’s heat lightning,” Van Mesgeluk says.

“With thunder?” says Beinschneider. He eyes the diamond with a lust his wife would give diamonds for. His mouth waters; his scalp turns cold. Who owns the jewel? The patient? He has no rights under this roof. Finders keepers? Eminent domain? Internal Revenue Service?

“It’s mathematically improbable, this phenomenon,” he says. “What’s California law say about mineral rights in a case like this?”

“You can’t stake out a claim!” Van Mesgeluk roars. “My God, this is a human being, not a piece of land!”

More lightning cranks whitely across the opening, and there is a rumble as of a bowling ball on its way to a strike.

“I said it wasn’t heat lightning,” Van Mesgeluk growls. Beinschneider is speechless.

“No wonder the e.e.g. machine burned up when we were diagnosing him,” Van Mesgeluk says. “There must be several thousand volts, maybe a hundred thousand, playing around down there. But I don’t detect much warmth. Is the brain a heat sink?”

“You shouldn’t have fired that technician because the machine burned up,” Beinschneider says. “It wasn’t her fault, after all.”

“She jumped out of her apartment window the next day,” Nurse Lustig says reproachfully. “I wept like a broken faucet at her funeral. And almost got engaged to the undertaker.” Lustig rolls her hips.

“Broke every bone in her body, yet there wasn’t a single break in her skin,” Van Mesgeluk says. “Remarkable phenomenon.”

“She was a human being, not a phenomenon!” Beinschneider says.

“But psychotic,” Van Mesgeluk replies. “Besides, that’s my line. She was 33 years old but hadn’t had a period in ten years.”

“It was that plastic intra-uterine device,” Beinschneider says. “It was clogged with dust. Which was bad enough, but the dust was radioactive. All those tests . .

“Yes,” the chief surgeon says. “Proof enough of her psychosis. I did the autopsy, you know. It broke my heart to cut into that skin. Beautiful. Like Carrara marble. In fact, I snapped the knife at the first pass. Had to call in an expert from Italy. He had a diamond-tipped chisel. The hospital raised hell about the expense, and Blue Cross refused to pay.”

“Maybe she was making a diamond,” says Nurse Lustig. “All that tension and nervous energy had to go somewhere.”

“I always wondered where the radioactivity came from,” Van Mesgeluk says. “Please confine your remarks to the business at hand, Miss Lustig. Leave the medical opinions to your superiors.”

He peers into the hole. Somewhere between heaven of skull and earth of brain, on the horizon, lightning flickers.

“Maybe we ought to call in a geologist. Beinschneider, you know anything about electronics?”

“I got a brother-in-law who runs a radio and TV store.”

“Good. Hook up a step-down transformer to the probe, please. Wouldn’t want to burn up another machine.”

“An e.e.g. now?” Beinschneider says. “It’d take too long to get a transformer. My brother-in-law lives clear across town. Besides, he’d charge double if he had to reopen the store at this time of the evening.”

“Discharge him, anyway,” the chief surgeon says. “Ground the voltage. Very well. We’ll get that growth out before it kills him and worry about scientific research later.”

He puts on two extra pairs of gloves.

“Do you think he’ll grow another?” Nurse Lustig says. “He’s not a bad-looking guy. I can tell he’d be simpático.”