An intangible factor was involved. It had been such a simple thing. Just to tell the man, "You'll be all right, fellow, take it easy. We'll have you out of here good as new in a little while...just settle back and get some sleep...and let me get my job done; we've got to work together, you know..."

That was all, just that much, and the life that had been in that mangled body would not have been lost. But the robot had stood there ticking, efficiently repairing tissue.

While the patient died in hopelessness and terror. Then Bergman realized what it was a human had, a robot did not. He realized what it was a human could do that a robot could not. And it was so simple, so d.a.m.nably simple, he wanted to cry. It was the human factor. They could never make a robot physician that was perfect, because a robot could not understand the psychology of the human mind.

Bergman put it into simple terms...

The Phymechs just didn't have a bedside manner!

CHAPTER FIVE.

Paths to destruction.

So many paths. So many answers. So many solutions, and which of them was the right one? Were any of them the right ones? Bergman had known he must find out, had known he must solve this problem by his own hand, for perhaps no one else's hand would turn to the problem...until it was too late.

Each day that pa.s.sed meant another life had pa.s.sed.

And the thought cursed Bergman more than any personal danger. He had to try something; in his desperation, he came up with a plan of desperation.

He would kill one of his patients...

Once every two weeks, a human was a.s.signed his own operation. True, he was more supervised than a.s.sisted by the Phymech on duty, and the case was usually only an appendectomy or simple tonsillectomy...but it was an operation. And Lord knew the surgeons were grateful for any bone thrown them.

This was Bergman's day.

He had been dreading it for a week, thinking about it for a week; knowing what he must do for a week. But ithad to be done. He didn't know what would happen to him, but it didn't really matter what was going on in their hospitals...

But if anything was to be done, it would have to be done boldly, swiftly, sensationally. And now. Something as awful as this couldn't wait much longer: the papers had been running articles about the Secretary of Medicine's new Phymech Proposal. That would have been the end. It would have to be now. Right now, while the issue was important.

He walked into the operating room.

A standard simple operation. No one in the bubble.

The phymech a.s.sistant stood silently waiting by the feeder trough. As Bergman walked across the empty room, the cubicle split open across the way, and a rolling phymech with a tabletop-on which was the patient-hurried to the operating table. The machine lowered the tabletop to the operating slab, and bolted it down quickly. Then it rolled away.

Bergman stared at the patient, and for a minute his resolve left him. She was a thin young girl with laugh-lines in her face that could never be erased...except by death.

Up till a moment ago Bergman had known he would do it, but now...Now he had to see who he was going to do this thing to, and it made his stomach feel diseased in him, his breath filled with the decay of foul death. He couldn't do it.

The girl looked up at him, and smiled with light blue eyes, and somehow Bergman's thoughts centered on his wife Thelma, who was nothing like this sweet, frail child. Thelma, whose insensitivity had begun in his life as humorous, and decayed through the barren years of their marriage till it was now a millstone he wore silently. Bergman knew he couldn't do what had to be done. Not to this girl.

The phymech applied the anaesthesia cone from behind the girl's head. She caught one quick Hash of tentacled metal, her eyes widened with blueness, and then she was asleep. When she awoke, her appendix would be removed.

Bergman felt a wrenching inside him. This was the time. With Calkins so suspicious of him, with the phymechs getting stronger every day, this might be the last chance.

He prayed to G.o.d silently for a moment, then began the operation. Bergman carefully made a longitudinal incision in the right lower quadrant of the girl's abdomen, about four inches long. As he spread the wound, he saw this would be just an ordinary job. No peritonitis...they had gotten the girl in quickly, and it hadn't ruptured. This would be a simple job, eight or nine minutes at the longest.

Carefully, Bergman delivered the appendix into the wound. Then he securely tied it at the base, and feeling the tension of what was to come building in him, cut it across and removed it.

He began to close the abdominal walls tightly.

Then he asked G.o.d for forgiveness, and did what had to be done. It was not going to be such a simple operation, after all.

The scalpel was an electro-blade-thin as a whisper-and as he brought it toward the flesh, his plan ran through his mind. The spin of a bullet, the pa.s.sage of a silver fish through quicksilver, the flick of a thought, but it was all there, in totality, completeness and madness...

He would sever an artery, the robot would sense what was being done, and would shoulder in to repair the damage. Bergman would slash another vein, and the robot would work at two jobs. He would slash again, and again, and yet again, till finally the robot would overload, and freeze. Then Bergman would overturn the table, the girl would be dead, there would be an inquiry and a trial, and he would be able to blame the robot for the death...and tell his story... make them check it...make them stop using Phymechs till the problem had been solved.

All that as the electro-blade moved in his hand.

Then the eyes of the girl fastened to his own, closed for a moment to consider what he was doing. In the darkness of his mind, he saw those eyes and knew finally: What good was it to win his point, if he lost his soul?

The electro-blade clattered to the floor.

He stood there unmoving, as the Phymech rolled near-silently beside him, and completed the routine closure.

He turned away, and left the operating room quickly.

He left the hospital shortly after, feeling failure huge in his throat. He had had his opportunity, and had not been brave enough to take it. But was that it? Was it another edge of that inner cowardice he had shown before? Or was it that he realized nothing could be worth the taking of an innocent girl's life? Ethics, soft-heartedness, what? His mind was a turmoil.

The night closed down stark and murmuring around Bergman. He stepped from the light blotch of the lobby, and the rain misted down over him, shutting him away from life and man and everything but the dark wool of his inner thoughts. It had been raining like this the night Calkins had Intimidated him. Was it always to rain on him, throughout his days?

Only the occasional whirr of a heater ploughing invisibly across the sky overhead broke the steady machine murmur of the city. He crossed the silent street quickly.

The square block of darkness that was Memorial was dotted with the faint rectangles of windows. Lighted windows. The hollow laughter of bitterness bubbled up from his belly as he saw the lights. Concessions to Man...always concessions by the Almighty G.o.d of the Machine.

Inside Bergman's mind, something was fighting to be free. He was finished now, he knew that. He had hadthe chance, but it had been the wrong chance. It could never be right if it started from something like that girls death.

He knew that, too...finally. But what was there to do: And the answer came back hollowly: Nothing.

Behind him, where he could not see It, a movement of metal in the shadows.

Bergman walked in shadows, also. Thoughts that were shadows. Thoughts that led him only to bleak futility and despair. The Zsebok Mechanical Physicians. Phymechs.

The word exploded in his head like a Roman candle, spitting sparks into his nerve end!;. He never wanted to destroy so desperately in his life. All the years of fighting for medicine, and a place in the world of the healer...they were wasted.

He now knew the Phymechs weren't better than humans...but how could he prove it? Unsubstantiated claims, brought to Calkins, would only be met with more intimidation, and probably a revoking of his license. He was trapped solidly.

How much longer could it go on?

Behind him, mechanical ears tuned, robot eyes fastened on the slumping, walking man. Rain was no deterrent to observation.

The murmur of a beater's rotors caused Bergman to look up. He could see nothing through the swirling rain-mist, but he could hear it, and his hatred reached out. Then: I don't hate machines, I never did. Only now that they've deprived me of my humanity, now that they've taken away my life. Now I hate them. His eyes sparked again with submerged loathing as he searched the sky beneath the climate dome, hearing the whirr of the beater's progress meshing with the faint hum of the dome at work; he desperately sought something against which he might direct his feelings of helplessness, of inadequacy.

So intent was he that he did not see the old woman who stepped out stealthily from the service entrance of a building, till she had put a trembling hand on his sleeve.

The shadows swirled about the shape watching Bergman-and now the old woman-from down the street.

"You a doctor, ain'cha?"

He started, his head jerking around spastically. His dark eyes focused on her seamed face only with effort. In the dim light of the illumepost that filtered through the rain, Bergman could see she was dirty and ill-kempt. Obviously from the tenements in Slobtown, way out near the curve-down edge of the climate dome.

She licked her lips again, fumbling in the pockets of her torn jumpette, nervous to the point of terror, unable to drag forth her words.

"Well, What do you want? Bergman was harsher than he had intended, but his banked-down antagonism prodded him into belligerence.

"I been watchin' for three days and Charlie's get tin' worse and his stomach's swellin' and I noticed you been comin' outta the hospital every day now for three days..." The words tumbled out almost incoherently, slurred by a gutter accent. To Bergman's tutored ear-subjected to these sounds since Kohlbenschlagg had taken him in-there was something else in the old woman's voice: the helpless tones of horror in asking someone to minister to an afflicted loved one.

Bergman's deep blue-black eyes narrowed. What was this? Was this filthy woman trying to get him to attend at her home? Was this perhaps a trap set up by Calkins and the Hospital Board? "What do you want, woman?" he demanded, edging away.

"Ya gotta come over ta see Charlie. He's dyin', Doctor, he's dyin'! He just lays there twitchin', and evertime I touch him he jumps and starts throwin' his arms round and doublin' over an' everything!" Her eyes were wide with the fright of memory, and her mouth shaped the words hurriedly, as though she knew she must get them out before the mouth used itself to scream.

The doctor's angry thoughts, suspicious thoughts, cut off instantly, and another part of his nature took command. Clinical attention centered on the malady the woman was describing.

"...an' he keeps grinnin', Doctor, grinnin' like he was dead and everything was funny or somethin'! That's the worst of all...I can't stand ta see him that way, Doctor. Please...please.., ya gotta help me. Help Charlie, Doc, he's dyin'. We been tagether five years an' ya gotta...gotta...do...somethin'..." She broke into convulsive weeping, her faded eyes pleading with him, her knife-edged shoulders heaving jerkily within the jumpette.

My G.o.d, thought Bergman, she's describing teta.n.u.s! And a badly advanced case to have produced spasms and risus sardonicus. Good Lord, why doesn't she get him to the hospital? He'll be dead in a day if she doesn't.

Aloud, he said, still suspicious, "Why did you wait so long? Why didn't you take him to the hospital?" He jerked his thumb at the lighted block across the street.

All his earlier anger, plus the innate exasperation of a doctor confronted with seemingly callous disregard for the needs of a sick man, came out in the questions. Exploded. The old woman drew back, eyes terrified, seamed face drawn up in an expression of beatenness. The force of him confused her.

"I-I couldn't take him there, Doc. I just couldn't! Charlie wouldn't let me, anyhow. He said, last thing before he started twitchin', he said, don't take me over there to that hospital, Katie, with them metal things in there, promise me ya won't. So I hadda promise him, Doc, and ya gotta come ta see him-he's dyin', Doc, ya gotta help us, he's dyin'!"

She was close up to him, clutching at the lapels of his jumper with wrinkled hands; impossibly screaming in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. The raw emotion of her appeal struck Bergman almost physically. He staggered back from her, her breath of garlic and the slums enfolding him. She pressed up again, clawing at him with great sobs and pleas.Bergman was becoming panicky. If a robocop should see the old woman talking to him, it might register his name, and that would be his end at Memorial. They'd have him tagged for home-pract.i.tioning, even if it wasn't true.

How could he possibly attend this woman's man? It would be the end of his stunted career. The regulations swam before his eyes, and he knew what they meant. He'd be finished. And what if this was a trap?

But teta.n.u.s!

(The terrifying picture of a man in the last stages of lockjaw came to him. The contorted body, wound up on itself as though the limbs were made of rubber; the horrible face, mouth muscles drawn back and down in the characteristic death-grin called risus sardonicus; every inch of the nervous system affected. A slamming door, a touch, a cough, was enough to send the stricken man into ghastly gyrations and convulsions. Till finally the affliction attacked the chest muscles, and he strangled horribly. Dead...wound up like a snake, frothing...dead.) But to be thrown out of the hospital. He couldn't take the chance. Almost without realizing it, the words came out: "Get away from me, woman; if the robocops see you, they'll arrest us both. Getaway... and don't try approaching a doctor like this again! Or I'll see that you're run in myself. Now get away. If you need medical aid, go to the phymechs at the hospital. They're free and better than any human!'" The words sounded tinny in his ears.

The old woman fell back, light from the illumepost casting faint, weird shadows across the lined planes of her face. Her lips drew back from her teeth, many of them rotting or missing.

She snorted, "We' d rather die than go to them creations of the devil! We don't have no truck with them things...we thought you was still doctors to help the poor...but you ain't!" She turned and started to slip away into the darkness.

Faintly, before the rustle of her footsteps were gone, Stuart Bergman heard the sob that escaped her. It was filled with a wild desperation and the horror of seeing death in the mist, waiting for her and the man she loved.

Then, ever more faintly...

"d.a.m.n you forever!'.

Abruptly, the tension of the past months, the inner horror at what he had almost done to the blue-eyed girl earlier, the fight and sorrow within him, mounted to a peak. He felt drained, and knew if he was to be deprived of his heritage, he would lose it the right way. He was a doctor, and a man needed attention.

He took a step after her dim shape in the rain.

"Wait, I..."

And knowing he was sealing his own doom, he let her stop, watched the hope that swam up in her eyes, and said, "I-I'm sorry. I'm very tired. But take me to your man. I'll be able to help him."

She didn't say thank you. But he knew it was there if he wanted it. They moved off together, and the watcher followed on silent treads.

CHAPTER SIX.

The forever stink of Slobtown a.s.saulted Bergman the moment they pa.s.sed the invisible boundary. There was no "other side of the tracks" that separated Slobtown's squalor from the lower middle-cla.s.s huts of the city, but somehow there was no mistaking the transition.

They pa.s.sed from cleanliness into the Inferno, with one step.

Shadows deepened, sounds m.u.f.fled, and the flickering neon of outdated saloon signs glared at them from the darkness. Bergman followed stolidly, and the woman led with resignation. She had a feeling the trip would be in vain.

Charlie had been close to the edge when she had left, and this doctor's coming was an unexpected miracle. But still, Charlie had been so close, so close...

They threaded close to buildings, stepping wide around blacker alley mouths and empty lots. From time to time they heard the footpad of muggers and wineheads keeping pace with them, but when the noises became too apparent, the woman hissed into the darkness, "Geddaway from here! I'm Charlie Kickback's woman, an' I got a croaker fer Charlie!" Then the sounds would fall behind.

All but the metal follower, whom no one saw.

The raw sounds of filthy music spurted out of the swing doors of a saloon, as they pa.s.sed, and were followed almost immediately by a body. The man was thrown past the building, and landed in a twisted heap in the dirty gutter. He lay twitching, and for an instant Bergman considered tending to him; but two things stopped him.

The woman dragged him by his sleeve, and the gutter-resident flopped over onto his back, bubbling, and began mouthing an incomprehensible melody with indecipherable words.

They moved past. A block further along, Bergman saw the battered remains of a robocop, lying up against a tenement. He nodded toward it, and in the dusk Charlie Kickback's woman shrugged. "Every stiff comes in here takes his chances, even them devil's tinkertoys."

They kept moving, and Bergman realized he had much more to fear than merely being deprived of his license.

He could be attacked and killed down here. He had a wallet with nearly three hundred credits in it, and they'd mugged men down here for much less than that, he was sure.

But somehow, the futility of the day, the horror of the night, were too insurmountable. He worried more about the fate of his profession than the contents of the wallet.

Finally they came to a brightly-lit building, with tri-V photoblox outside, ten feet high. The blox showed monstrously-mammaried women doing a slow tri-V shimmy, their appendages swaying behind the thinnest of veils, which often parted. The crude neon signs about the building read:THE HOUSE OF s.e.x s.e.x s.e.x s.e.x!!!

AFTER SHOWS THE GIRLS' TIME IS THEIR OWN AND NO HOLDS BARRED!.

MORE THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE FOR A CREDIT!!!.

LADY MEMPHIS AND HER EDUCATED BALOO-TRIX DIAMOND-MLLE. HOT!.

COME NOW, JACK, COME NOW!!.