A Gift From Earth

"Keller told the truth. Little hearts and livers!" Harry exclaimed. "Parlette, was the third gift an animal to replace the human heart?"

"Yes. Nearly all muscle. It reacts to Adrenalin by speeding up, but once again the lack of nervous-"

"Yee HAH!" Harry Kane began to dance. He grabbed Lydia Hancock, spun her around and around. Hood watched, gri

"A rotifer."

"A... rotifer?"

"It lives as a symbiot in the human bloodstream. It does things the human body will not do for itself. Kane, it has often struck me that evolution as a process leaves something to be desired. Evolution is finished with a man once he is too old to reproduce. Thus there is no genetic program to keep him alive longer than that. Only inertia. It takes enormous medical knowledge to compen-"

"What does it do, this rotifer?"

"It fights disease. It cleans fatty deposits from the veins and arteries. It dissolves blood clots. It is too big to move into the small capillaries, and it dies on contact with air. Thus it will not impede necessary clotting. It secretes a kind of gum to patch weak points in the walls of the arteries and larger capillaries, which is reassuring to a man of my age,

"But it does more than that. It acts as a kind of catch-all gland, a supplementary pituitary. It tends to maintain the same glandular balance a man is supposed to have at around age thirty. It will not produce male and female hormones, and it takes its own good time disposing of excess adrenaline, but otherwise it maintains the balance. Or so say the instructions--"

Harry Kane sank back on his heels. "Then the organ banks are done. Obsolete. No wonder you tried to keep it secretes

"Don't be silly."

"What?" Parlette opened his mouth, but Harry rode him down. "I tell you the organ banks are done for! Listen, Parlette. The skin mold replaces skin grafting, and does it better. The heart animal and the liver animal replace heart and liver transplants. And the rotifer keeps everything else from getting sick in the first place! What more do you want?"

"Several things. A kidney beast, for example. Or--"

"Quibbling.

"How would you replace a lung? A lung destroyed by nicotine addiction?"

Hood said, "He's right. Those four ramrobot gifts are nothing but a signpost. How do you repair a smashed foot, a bad eye, a baseball finger?" He was pacing now, in short jerky steps. "You'd need several hundred different artifacts of genetic engineering to make the organ banks really obsolete. All the same--"

"All right, cut," said Harry Kane, and Hood was silent. "Parlette, I jumped the gun. You're right. But I'll give you something to think about. Suppose every colonist on Mount Lookitthat knew only the facts about the ramrobot package. Not Hood's analysis, and not yours--just the truth. What then?"

Parlette was smiling. He shouldn't have been, but his white teeth gleamed evenly in the light, and the smile was not forced. "They would assume the organ banks were obsolete. They would confidently expect Implementation to disband."

"And when Implementation showed no sign of disbanding, they'd revolt! Every colonist on Mount Lookitthat! Could the Hospital stand against that?"

"You see the point, Kane. I am inclined to think the Hospital could stand against any such attack, though I would not like to gamble on it. But I am sure we could lose half the population of this planet in the bloodbath, win or lose."

"Then--you've already thought of this."

Parlette's face twisted. His hands fluttered aimlessly and his feet jumped against the floor as the effects of the sonic gave up their hold on him. "Do you think me a fool, Harry Kane? I never made that mistake about you. I first heard of the ramrobot package six months ago, when the ramrobot sent out its maser message. I knew immediately that the present crew rule over the Plateau was doomed."

Laney had vanished around to the left, around the great gentle curve of the Planck, while Matt stood gaping. He started after her, then checked himself. She must know of another entrance; he'd never catch her before she reached it. And if he followed her through, he'd be lost in the maze of the Hospital.

But he had to find her. She'd kept him in the dark as much as she could. Probably because she expected Castro to get him, and didn't want him to spill anything important. She hadn't mentioned the bomb until the fuse was in her hand, nor the detailed plans for invading the Hospital until she was already following them.

Eventually she'd have told him how to find Polly. Now he'd lost both.

Or ... ?

He ran toward the main entrance, dodging police who tried to run through his solid bulk. He would meet Laney at the vivarium--if she got there. But he knew only one route to reach it.

The great bronze doors swung open as he approached. Matt hesitated at the bottom of the wide stairs. Electric eyes? Then three uniformed men trotted through the entrance and down, and Matt trotted up between them. If there were electric eyes here, and men watching them, they could never keep track of the last minute's traffic.

The doors swung shut as he went through. They almost caught him between them. He cursed in a whisper and stepped aside for a ru

His legs ached savagely. He slowed to a brisk walk and tried not to pant.

Right, up a flight, take a right, then a left...

VIVARIUM. He saw the door down the corridor, and he stopped where he was and sagged gratefully against a wall. He'd beaten her here. And he was horribly tired. His legs were numb, there was a singing in his head, he wanted to do nothing but breathe. A taste in his mouth and throat reminded him of the hot metal taste of the void mist when he'd bored for the bottom less than thirty-six plateau hours ago. It seemed he'd been ru

It was good to rest. It was good to breathe. It was good to be warm, and the Hospital walls were warm, almost too warm for a cold-weather crewish overjacket. He'd ditch it when it got too hot. Probing idly in his pockets, he found a double handful of unshelled roasted peanuts.

Corporal Halley Fox rounded the corner and stopped. He saw a crew resting against a wall, wearing his over-jacket indoors. There was a ragged tear in the crew's ear and a pool of blood below it, soaked into the neck of his overjacket. He was cracking and eating peanuts, dropping the shells on the floor.

It was strange, but not strange enough.

Halley Fox was in the third generation of a family which traditionally produced Implementation police. Naturally he had joined Implementation. His reflexes were not quick enough to make him a raider, and he made a better follower than a leader. For eight years now he had been a competent man in a good position that did not require much responsibility.

Then... last night he'd caught a colonist invading the Hospital.

This morning there'd been a break from the vivarium, the first since the vivarium was built. Corporal Fox had seen blood for the first time. Man's blood, not drained into an organ-bank tank but spilled recklessly along a hallway in conscious murderous violence.

This evening the Head had warned of an impending attack on the Hospital. He'd practically warned Corporal Fox to shoot his own fellow guards! And everyone was taking him seriously!

Minutes ago there'd been a hell of a big blast outside the windows... and half the guards had deserted their posts to see what had happened.