Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

Dr Thackeray’s secretary was not present when Metzger entered the Department of Medicine offices the following morning – his nerves jagged after a sleepless night. Since he knew he was expected, he knocked and entered the Chairman’s office. Sanctum sanctorum, soul of the Center, he thought with a tinge of hysteria.

“Dr Thackeray, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all night . . .” He halted, startled to find the Chairman of Surgery seated within.

“It’s all right, Dr Metzger,” pronounced Dr Thackeray. “Dr Lipton is a party to . . . this matter we have to discuss.”

Numbly Geoff dropped into the room’s vacant chair. The two older men faced him with carefully composed mien – eyes alert as birds of prey.

Geoff thumped a fist against the black vinyl folders in his lap. “God, it’s all here!” His eyes were feverish. “Everything I’ve done, all I’d hoped to establish – a number of aspects I’d never considered!”

Dr Thackeray nodded, eyes unblinking.

“Well, Christ, where did you get this? If you knew someone else was working in my field, why didn’t you tell me earlier? Hell, this is too important for professional jealousy. I’ll gladly share any of my data with these researchers. To hell with who gets official credit!”

His voice began to shake. “This research – this information! My god – it means a definite cure for almost every form of human cancer! Why, this delineates each etiological factor involved in cancer – pinpoints two definite stages where the causative agent can be destroyed, the disease process completely arrested! This research marks the triumph of medicine over leukemia, most of the systemic dysplasias – individual organ involvement will be virtually eradicated!”

“Quite true,” Dr Lipton agreed. His long surgeon’s fingers toyed with the silver-and-onyx ring he wore.

“Well, no more suspense, please! Whose work is this? Where’s it being done?” Geoff s excitement was undiminished by the coolness of the other two physicians.

“One paper was prepared from the work of Dr C. Johnson Taggart,” Dr Thackeray told him.

“Taggart? No wonder it’s . . . But Taggart died ten years ago – brain tumor! You mean they’ve taken this long to piece together his notes?”

“The other paper, as you’ve noticed, is considerably older. Most of it was the work of Sir David Aubrey,” Dr Thackeray concluded.

Geoff stared at them to determine whether they were playing some horribly sick joke. “Aubrey died at the turn of the century.”

“True again. But he was responsible for most of the pioneer work in this field,” Dr Lipton added with a tone of reproof.

The overweighted shelves of accumulated knowledge seemed to press down on Geoff s soul. A windowless room in the center of the complex, like a chamber of the vast heart of some monstrous entity. “I don’t understand,” he whispered in a choked voice. “Why hasn’t this information been used before now? Why were millions left to die?”

“Perhaps the world wasn’t ready for a cure to cancer,” Dr Thackeray replied.

“That’s . . . that’s insane! I don’t understand,” quavered Geoff, noticing now that Dr Thackeray wore a ring similar to Dr Lipton’s. There was a seal set into the onyx. He had seen it before. It was stamped on the spines of the black binders.

“You can understand,” Dr Thackeray was saying. “This will be strange – traumatic perhaps, at first. But think carefully. Would it be wise to circulate a total cure for cancer just now?”

“Are you serious? You can’t be! The lives, the suffering

“The price of power, Dr Metzger. The price of power – just as every empire is built upon the lives and suffering of the expendable.” Dr Lipton’s voice was pitiless as the edge of his scalpels, excising without rancour the organism’s defective tissue.

“Think of cancer in more rational terms,” Dr Thackeray went on. “Have you any conception of the money invested every day in cancer research, in treatment of cancer patients? It’s incalculable, I assure you. Do you think the medical profession can sacrifice this wealth, this enormous power, just for a humanitarian gesture?”

“But a physician’s role is to heal!” screamed Metzger, abstractly noting how thoroughly the endless shelves muffled sound.

“Of course. And he does heal,” put in Dr Lipton. “But where would a physician be if there were no sickness to be healed?”

They were mad, Geoff realized. Or he was. He had been overworking. This was a dream, a paranoid fantasy.

This knowledge made him calmer. He would follow this mad logic – at least until he could be certain with whom the insanity lay. “But some diseases are eradicated,” he protested.

“When they become expendable,” Dr Thackeray told him. “Some, of course, simply die out, or fall victim to nonmedical intervention. Others we announce a cure for – makes the profession look good. The world has restored faith in medicine, praises its practitioners, and pours more money into research. The prestige a physician enjoys in the community is an essential factor to us.”

Lipton’s frown furrowed into his close-cropped hair where it grew low on his brow. “And sometimes we slip up, and some fool announces a major cure without our awareness. Thank God, there’s less of that now with the disappearance of independent research. As it is, we’ve had some damn close calls – took a lot of work to discredit a few of these thoughtless meddlers.”

Geoff remembered some of them. And now he knew fear. Fear greater than his dread of insanity; fear that these men were all too sane. “I suppose something can happen to some of these researchers who might cause difficulty.”

“You make it sound like a line from a gangster movie, but yes,” Dr Thackeray acknowledged. “Quite a number of them die from some sudden illness, and the scientific community regrets that they left their brilliant promise unfulfilled.”

“It’s a way of avoiding other dilemmas as well, as I think you’ll follow me,” Dr Lipton growled. “Meddlers who become aware of our existence. Fools who would destroy the medical profession with Communistic laws and regulations, endanger the social structure with ruinous legislation.

“And don’t look shocked, young man. Think instead just what kind of doctor you might be right now, if some of these late and unlamented wild-eyed liberals could have done all they intended to this country and to the medical profession.”

“Murder . . .” breathed Geoff weakly.

“Not actually,” Dr Thackeray broke in. “After all, as physicians we have to see human society as a living organism. The social organism is subject to disease just like any other entity. To be trite, it isn’t murder to excise a cancerous growth. Regulation treatment – sometimes drastic treatment – is essential if the organism is not to perish. This is the rationale behind all forms of government; the alternative is chaos. I think you’ll agree that an educated elite is best suited to direct the social destiny of us all. After all, an epithelial cell is scarcely suited to handle the functions of a nerve cell. It functions smoothly, dies when its time comes – all because the brain, of which it has no conception, directs its course. How else would you have it?”

“You can’t suppress medical knowledge indefinitely,” Geoff returned defiantly. “Someday someone will eradicate cancer. They were aware of its etiology as far back as Aubrey—”

“Certainly.”

“In fact, it’s amazing that Aubrey understood cancer so thoroughly – considering the relatively crude apparatus of the day.”

Dr Thackeray smiled. “Ah, but we’ve talked earlier about the possibility of what I believe you termed ‘recondite scientific knowledge.’ And besides, Aubrey had several advantages over moderns as to the matter of his starting point.”