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that only the boy's mother still visited him.
Hogan, hands thrust in pockets, contemplated the white tips of his shoes.
"And what would you do, Hajene Farris?"
He wasn't mocking Digen. They had many long discussions on the different
approaches of healing used here and in the Sime Center. "There isn't anything
I could do. But if by some miracle of timing, Skip should go through
changeover, now that the wounds are cleaned of all foreign matter, well, this
particular set of microbes couldn't survive in the Sime metabolism. Changeover
is the only chance I can see for him."
"Hm," said Hogan. "There are those who would consider that a fate worse than
death."
"Oh, it's not that bad."
They looked at each other, laughed silently, and went for coffee. The next
day, Digen found Hogan lingering around Skip's door. He hung back, seeing that
the mother was inside, sitting by the bed, crying silently but wretched-y.
After a time, Hogan went in and spoke softly to the woman, who wiped her eyes
and made a brave face. "Mrs. Cudney, we really do think we're going to be able
to save both of Skip's legs. He's responding very well to the medications."
It was a false hope. Skip had responded well to every new drug, but then the
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infection would break out with some new microbe dominating. It was only a
matter of time and they would have to take his legs. But Hogan was convinced
that it was better to give hope than utter resignation.
Or is that his rationalization? Digen wondered.I sit that he can't face
death? Or is it just Skip's death he can't face ?
She raised a tear-stained face to Hogan and said, so low Digen almost didn't
hear, "He said he's going into changeover. He said it would make him well. He
wanted to make me feel better! I'd rather he were dead!"
Oh, joy, thought Digen.He overheard me talking to Joel .
Digen went in then and tried to comfort the woman, to explain what he'd said
and why. He promised to keep an eye on Skip. He'd been doing that anyhow. The
boy was just about the right age for changeover, and something indefinable had
alerted Digen.
Over the next few days, the mother came less and less often, spent less time
with Skip. And one day Digen walked into the room and found another doctor
confronting Hogan, who was standing with his fists clenched, restraining
himself mightily. Hogan's nager was ripe with the odd anxiety pattern that
always appeared in the Gen when he was confronted with changeover. But there
was no sign of changeover in the boy.
Digen knew the other doctor's name was Dr. Lankh and that he worked in the
research wing, wherever that was. But Digen had no idea what Lankh did there.
Lankh said, "Dr. Farris. May I ask what you're doing here?"
"Just looking in, Doctor."
"Your assignment is in the emergency ward, Doctor. You're not supposed to be
on this ward except when bringing up a patient."
"I know the rules, Dr. Lankh. But Skip doesn't have an attending doctor, and
since Dr. Thornton let me scrub on the case, I've been expected to follow it."
Digen surmised that Lankh had been reprimanding Hogan for the same thing.
Lankh said, "I am his attending now. You will no longer be permitted to write
orders on the Cudney case. I don't want to see you in this room again."
Digen opened his mouth to protest. He was irritable, impatient with rising
need, as the time of his first transfer with Im'ran was approaching. Hogan,
who had begun to grasp how Digen's temperament varied with need, stepped
forward. "Come on, Dr. Farris. We have work to do."
Out in the hall, Hogan whispered harshly, "That's Dr.Lankh , you idiot!"
Safe in the elevator, Digen vented his feelings by barking, "And who the
blazing shen is Dr. Lankh?"
"You don't know?"
Digen shook his head.
Hogan peered around the elevator as if expecting to find an eavesdropper.
"Since we've been here-, the hospital has turned over nineteen changeover
victims to the Sime Center."
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"Well, I know that! The center's statisticians have been going crazy trying
to figure out why the sudden drop in the city's average."
"I know where the other fifteen went."
Digen stopped, suspicion dawning. "Where?"
"Dr. Lunch s laboratory. Fifteen have died in his experiments this
month fifteen kids in changeover have died - here in this hospital. Digen,
we've got to get Skip away from him!"
Digen stood, cold, in the middle of the elevator, trying to sort it through.
"The chances that Skip will hit that point while here in the hospital are
miniscule." He glanced narrowly at Hogan. "What sort of work is Lankh doing?
What could he possibly want with Skip?"
"Everybody's been talking but I guess they just don't talk when you're
around. Digen, he's trying to stop changeover and reverse it in mid-course. He
says he has succeeded. Parents sign their kids over to him. It's all legal.
They'd rather the kids be dead than Sime."
Digen heard only the words "stop changeover and reverse it in mid-course." He
went pale. When the door of the elevator opened, he plunged wildly into the
dank corridor outside the pathology lab. He stopped, one hand to the rough,
damp wall, a sensory link to the world. He concentrated on the feel of that
wall against the palm of his hand, trying to drive away the vision of kids
dying in first need.
One word wrenched out of Digen, in Simelan, over and over, until he whispered
it, "Fifteen. Fifteen. Fifteen!"
Digen had seen this death altogether too often. Things went wrong in
changeover. A good Sime Center could save some. But some died. Yet fifteen,
tortured to death!
Hogan came up to Digen, hesitant. Digen shrank from the Gen. A Gen could do
such a thing. Inhuman ghouls.
"He's insane!" grated Digen.
Hogan's hand came lightly onto Digen's shoulder.
Hogan didn't say anything, but Digen could feel the concern in him, a sweet
resonance, shattering the grip of cold horror on him. "I'm sorry," said Digen.
"That's the way I almost died, you know. Attrition. I'm too sensitive to
it."Too sensitive. Too sensitive . The thought lodged in his mind, accompanied
by a strange sense of deja vu. His brother Wyner had been too sensitive. Too
sensitive to live.
"We've got to do something," said Hogan.
Nobody could reverse changeover, Digen knew, any more than birth could be
reversed, or, more to the point, metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a
butterfly. Lankh was lying to himself and to others, if he really believed he
had succeeded.Why? What drives a man like that? It's got to be something more
than just fear .
With an effort, Digen drew himself away from the wall. "Lankh will be
stopped. Now that I know."
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