Cyborg, page 14
Wells kept his silence. Steve was groping. He turned suddenly, started moving at a trot, working his way through the course. Several times he stumbled, fought for and regained his balance. Steve wasn't aware of what was becoming clear to Wells and the others. The legs were improving, and rapidly. He could punish the bionics limbs now for more than an hour without difficulty. It was as if a time block existed for operation without fault. At that time his system began to tire, as would any man's, and a flow of erratic nerve messages was the result. According to their own calculations, in several weeks Steve would be through the worst of it, and his endurance would be measured not by the feedback of signals through the bionics limbs and his own system, but by his own ability to endure. The bionics limbs would have nothing to do with it. They were dealing with a superb athlete who knew better than any of them the extent to which he might abuse his own body.
Their superb athlete, unfortunately, also suffered a hair-trigger temper, considerably aggravated at this point by his frustrations. During one run through the testing maze, Steve was pressing hard ahead with fifty pounds strapped to his back. The bionics limbs did not fail but Steve, operating now under an altered center of gravity, stubbed a toe and sprawled helplessly. He clambered to his feet with an expression of anger and disgust and let fly with a well-aimed kick at the rock that had caused his tumble.
The rock took off like a rifle bullet, tore through a plate-glass viewing window, scattering observers in all directions, went on to penetrate a wall, and came to a stop in the next wall beyond. A sheepish, slightly stunned Steve Austin balanced himself on one foot, lowered his body carefully to the floor, and stared ruefully at the mangled end of his right "toe." The toes were crushed inward, and the sudden heat of compression had fused the material.
Rudy Wells sat down beside him and they watched Art Fanier leaping obstacles through the maze to reach their side in his own record time. "How," Fanier asked, pointing at the battered foot, "does it feel?"
Steve looked up. "You're kidding."
"Hell, no, I'm not kidding. How does it feel?"
"It's not my leg, dammit. You guys built this thing here in your candy factory."
Fanier shook his head. "You're wrong," he insisted. "It is your leg. And you'd better start thinking about it that way, because you sure can't keep on doing that."
Steve glanced up at Rudy. "Maybe Art's got something there. It does feel sort of strange, at that."
Wells raised an eyebrow. "Well, it does, dammit," Steve said.
"How? Any pain?"
"Not pain. It's more like a tingling sensation. It doesn't hurt, but it's annoying. If I look away from the foot, it reminds me something's wrong. It feels like that, anyway."
"You mean that?" Fanier asked.
"Yeah." Steve looked at the other man. "What the hell is the matter with you?"
Fanier pointed again to the leg. "What you just said… we had theories about it, but this, well, I mean… it's more than I ever really hoped for. It's compensation," he said with near awe in his voice. "Compensation beyond any level we ever thought possible." A rising tone of excitement came into his voice. "Do you know what this means? Good God, the two systems, the bionics and the physiological, are proving their total compatibility. And I mean total." He rubbed his hands briskly together. "The body, Steve… it can't provide a pain sensation because you haven't those types of nerve endings any more, so it's compensating. It's substituting a new feeling, a new sensation as a warning. It's a pain indicator without pain!"
Fanier gestured to Wells. "We've got to get him back in the lab, check out the readings. If I understand what's going on here, the end is in sight."
Steve's arm shot out like a piston, grabbed Fanier's wrist. He had a scowl on his face. "Explain that."
Fanier squirmed. "Hey… you're hurting…" His face had gone white.
"Steve!" Wells shouted. "You're going to break his arm. Let go, man!"
Steve withdrew his hand. "Oh, hell," he said softly, his words almost a moan. "I'm sorry, Art. I didn't know…" It had been his left arm. The bionics limb. Steve stared at it as if he were seeing it for the first time.
"No… no sweat," Art Fanier gasped. "What I meant, Steve, was that compensation on this order means another month, maybe two and no problems anymore… I—" He was white. He turned to Wells. "Doc… I think it's broken." He cradled the arm against the other.
Steve stared at him, his own face white.
"Just when everything is going so beautifully with the project, too." Art Fanier used his left hand in a clumsy effort to handle his coffee cup. He spilled some, put it back to the table. "The bionics part is more than we could have hoped for. What's gone wrong with Steve?"
Wells looked at Fanier and the others in the room.
"He thinks he's becoming a Frankenstein. You can't argue him out of it. We know it's not true. He doesn't." Wells rose to his feet. "We'll just have to see who has the last word."
"You may feel cosmetics is hardly the word for what you have in mind, but it is as necessary as the other surgery that has been performed. Yes, cosmetic surgery is as vital to—"
"Shut up and get on with it." Steve made no attempt to disguise his impatience with the fluttering, talkative man.
Arnold Dupre was his name and he was the walking revival of Ichabod Crane, a gaunt, spare giant who bent strangely at all angles through his knobby frame.
"He operates a rather special kind of beauty parlor," Wells said with a laugh. "No advertising, and the price is right. He's an expert. Not a surgeon, of course, but he might as well be one."
"Where's he from?" Steve growled.
"CIA."
"What?"
"That's right. They think he's the best in the business. And it is important."
When Dupre got down to business, even Steve was impressed. "They made a mistake with your new arm and your left leg," Dupre announced without preamble, managing to astonish everyone in the room. Steve, Rudy Wells and Art Fanier stared at one another and turned their attention back to the knobby figure. "Notice," Dupre said imperiously. "The left arm is now of the same dimensions as the right. That does not occur as a natural growth, so? This man is right-handed. So his right biceps, his forearm, his wrist, would all be better developed than his left. But the, ah, replacement? Aha, the replacement matches the dimensions of the right arm." He grasped Steve's wrist suddenly in bony fingers. Astonished, Steve offered no resistance. "See here? The mark of a fighter pilot. Even if I did not know of Colonel Austin this is clear to me. The musculature, eh? See? Where he has spent years gripping a control stick. Fighter pilots have this characteristic."
Steve pulled his arm free. "How the hell do you know all this? You hardly seem the type, I mean, you—"
"Tut, tut, Colonel," Dupre said, "you of all people should not make assumptions. Perhaps you should have looked at my wrist."
They did, and Steve saw what had missed him before. The right wrist of Dupre was more heavily developed. "Are you telling me," Steve said in open disbelief, "that you—"
"Thunderbolts, Fifteenth Air Force. Four thousand hours, single-engine fighters, Colonel. I also shot down eight German fighters."
Steve sat in silence through the rest. "I imagine you had some difficulty becoming accustomed to your legs, so?" Dupre swept on. "Obvious. The weight is the same, approximately, I imagine, as your own legs. But the mass balance? All wrong. That changes the inertia, so? The body mixes up the signals. It takes time to adapt. No, no, Colonel Austin, no need to answer. I am familiar with such problems." They stared at the gaunt figure who had just stated in a few words what had escaped them all. Fanier's mouth was open in disbelief.
"But," Dupre shrugged, "other factors, right? Here, see where the flesh joins the plastiskin. We need a permanent dye. More hairs. Oh, yes, much more hairs. If the skin is exposed to the sun, the skin will darken, but not the plastiskin. We will create some scars along the limb. It will cover the junction, right? And the hairs will make pigmentation differences more difficult to see. Yes, it must have water resistance. Salinity must be considered. We can also supply you with a dye, a lotion, that will closely match any change. It will function for both legs and the arm. Now, are we ready for the tests?"
Steve was frozen, baked, and immersed for hours at a time while Dupre fussed about him like an old maid. The specialist recommended injections to darken the skin, were that necessary, and Steve wondered at such attention to matching the plastiskin with his own. But finally Dupre ended his sessions.
"What now?" he demanded of Rudy Wells.
"Your eye," the doctor told him. "You're getting to look too much like Moshe Dayan. Time we changed that."
"A glass eye? I might as well—"
"No, not a glass eye. Something better. Tomorrow morning. You'll see."
Steve felt uncomfortable in his presence. The man with the balding head waited patiently in the optical chamber, wearing a white tunic, standing behind a wide table cluttered with plastic models of skulls and eyeballs. He extended his hand as Steve entered with Wells and Jean Manners.
"Oscar Goldman," he said to Steve. "My pleasure, Colonel Austin."
Steve shook hands cautiously. "Did you say Doctor Goldman?" Steve asked.
"No. Not doctor." He nodded to Wells. "That's his department. I'm a specialist in ceramics and plastics. Also, some familiarity with electronics." He gestured to a leather chair. "Would you sit there, please?"
"Maybe I should have explained more, Steve," Wells told him. "Mr. Goldman is a specialist in his, well, his field. He'll help you decide on types of equipment."
Still suspicious, Steve took the seat. Centered in the table, directly before him, was an exact replica of his own head. Only this model was of lucite, plastic, and other materials, was transparent, and came apart in sections. There were also oversized sections of the eye, the socket, and the optical system. Steve studied the display, turned to Goldman.
"My business extends somewhat beyond the cosmetic," Goldman said abruptly. "We both know your vision cannot be restored. There are different methods, however, for a replacement eye to function. It can be glass or plastic, and it simply fills the socket. Its effect as a cosmetic is illusory, for the eye does not move with the eye muscles. The so-called vacant stare straight ahead is its fault."
Steve did not make a sound, and Goldman paused long enough to pick up a large eyeball. "This is what we propose for you," he continued. "The weight, the weight distribution, match your eye. Color is the same, but this has added properties. We have developed a refractory ceramic that not only matches the cornea of your right eye, but will shift color depending upon light intensity and angle. More than that, it contains light-sensitive materials that will enlarge and decrease corneal size, again matching your right eye. The pupils will approximate one another as they change. Dr. Wells, here, and Dr. Killian will explain to you how the eye will be placed in your socket so that it moves when you alter your point of visual reference. As your right eye moves up or down or to the side this eye will do the same." He placed the model back on the table.
"Let's me do everything but see, won't it?" Steve picked up the model, studied it more closely.
"No one can replace the eye. Not yet. The Russians are doing amazing things with transplants but even they haven't gone that far yet. Only God can give you back your sight. My office can provide, however, a certain insight."
"Get to it."
"There are different ways for an eye to be useful," Goldman told Steve. "We propose one of these for you."
"Mind identifying the 'we'?"
"Your government." Goldman turned to the model of the head. "Here is what we have in mind. Please watch very closely, Colonel Austin."
Goldman leaned forward with a small suction disk in his hand. He placed it gently against the lens of the eye in the model head, pressed in, and then twisted the disk to the left. Steve watched intently as the lens turned, and Goldman carefully withdrew a cylindrical tube from the eye. He placed it on the table beneath a huge magnifying glass and bright light, motioning for Steve to come closer to him. Goldman's fingers worked deftly as he brought a tweezers into view beneath the glass. Two minutes later Steve stared at a tiny, disassembled camera.
Goldman took the chair across the table. "It takes its pictures with regular or infrared film. It operates up to two-hundredths of a second. Anything over four feet is automatic infinity focusing, and light-sensitive cells handle exposure readings. You're familiar with Tri-X film? This will operate with twice the speed on the ASA rating. It can handle twenty exposures per microcartridge. It's not perfect," Goldman said, the first personal tone in his voice, "but it really is rather effective. It would be easier, of course, to build the entire eye as a camera. But then we couldn't make the eyeball a permanent installation—or Dr. Killian couldn't—and the eye would not move in a normal fashion and, except to an expert, be indistinguishable from a normal eye. It could be a dead giveaway."
Steve glanced from Goldman to Wells and back to the strange man across the table. "A giveaway to who?"
"I can't say."
"Who the hell are you, mister?"
"Somebody doing his job. Like you, Colonel Austin. You're still on active duty."
CHAPTER 14
SHE STOOD on the edge of the board, a superb body, bikini covering a minimum of flesh. She stepped back two paces, went forward and up, came down neatly on the edge of the board and into the air. A perfect swan and her arms came together for her to cut the water like a knife. She went the length of the pool underwater, searching him out at the far end where he was testing scuba gear. They broke the surface together. Kathy tossed her streaming hair away from her face and smiled at him. "Get rid of that junk and I'll race you to the other side of the pool," she said.
He studied her for a moment. Then the interest faded from his expression. "Maybe later," he told her. "Too busy now."
"Even for a short race?" she pressed. "Loser gets a whack on the ass."
"I said no," he told her, more sharply than he intended.
She stood motionless, beads of water glistening on her skin. Suddenly she shook her head, spun away from him, and swam to the opposite side of the pool, where she took the ladder quickly and left. Silence filled the pool for several moments.
Fanier took in the scene, then walked to where Steve stood quietly in the water. "Okay for test number three," Fanier told him. "You ready for four?"
Steve turned slowly, as if he still held an image of the beautiful girl in his mind. "Yeah," he said, looking up at the technician, his eyes resting briefly on the plaster cast. "Let's get with it." He disappeared beneath the water.
"Everyone here?"
Art Fanier nodded to Dr. Killian. "Yes, sir. Mr. Goldman was the last one in. We're all ready."
Killian took the seat next to Rudy Wells. Jean Manners was next to him. The chairs around the oval conference table all faced to the far end of the room where a motion-picture screen waited to come to life.
"We'll keep this as tight as we can," Wells started. "Steve Austin, as you all know, at this time is undergoing performance tests so we can establish the parameters of his physical abilities. Those tests will be finished either late tonight or by noon tomorrow. At this moment, in fact, Steve is in the Sangre de Cristo area. The sand dunes, to be specific, testing his ability to work through that sort of terrain, and especially so under low-oxygen conditions. The terrain elevation there exceeds nine thousand feet, so it constitutes a rather severe test. From what I understand, and this is from a radio report late this afternoon, he has left his competitors far behind."
He gestured to an aide and the room lights darkened. "We have edited the film records to bring all of you the highlights of the tests. We'll start with the short track events." The projector came on and they saw Steve and several athletes poised at the start of a hundred-yard-dash competition. Wells waited until the men flashed through the race, and there was a stirring in the room as they saw two men beat the man with the powerful bionics limbs. "From these tests we were able to remind Steve that a dash run is determined not only by experience and skill, but also oxygen saturation. In the first runs Steve lost regularly. Two days later—as you will see now—there was no longer any competition. Oxygen control, experience in handling his altered body mass and changing center of gravity… all these were now controlled by him." He paused again as they watched Steve almost launch himself from the starting board and continue pulling away until he hit the tape. "In that last run, Steve broke both the world and the Olympic records."
Wells hesitated; the film continued and a chalk board showed the words, "Endurance Runs." A telephoto lens shot of Steve in the far distance appeared; at the bottom right corner of the film was a timer. They watched Steve running in perfect form, his legs kicking up dust as he ground up distance, getting larger and larger, the foreshortening effect of the camera bringing out every detail. "Notice the timer in the lower right," Wells told his audience. "Steve has been running for four hours at this point. Four hours," he repeated, finding it unnecessary to say more as Steve came closer and closer to the camera, finally passing the lens. The, camera swung about to follow him and they watched the same nearly flawless grace of movement as Steve moved away from their point of view. "We ended this test, which was more for pacing and endurance than it was for speed, after six hours. As an indication of what he was able to do, for the entire six hours he averaged a mile in five point three minutes for the entire run," Wells said.
"He was fully wired, of course?" Goldman asked Wells.
"We have excellent telemetry. His heartbeat remained steady throughout, and only slightly over normal. If we had not observed the tests personally and had these films for corroboration, we would be hard put to believe the biomedical recordings."
