A Matter of Proportion, Page 2

have no history of injury that couldcrop up to haywire you in a pinch. So, "Hospital? You sure don't show itnow."

  Clyde was certainly below par. To cover his slip he backed into abigger, if less obvious, one. "Oh, I was in that Operation Armada atGolden Gate. Had to be patched up."

  He must have figured, Ferd had been a kid then, and I hadn't been tooold. Odds were, we'd recall the episode, and no more. Unfortunately, I'dbeen a ham operator and I'd been in the corps that beamed thosefireships onto the Invader supply fleet in the dense fog. The wholeepisode was burned into my brain. It had been kamikaze stuff, thoughthere'd been a theoretical chance of the thirty men escaping, to justifysending them out. Actually, one escape boat did get back with three men.

  I'd learned about those men, out of morbid, conscience-scaldedcuriosity. Their leader was Edwin Scott, a medical student. At the verystart he'd been shot through the lower spine. So, his companions put himin the escape boat while they clinched their prey. But as the escapeboat sheered off, the blast of enemy fire killed three and disabled two.

  Scott must have been some boy. He'd already doctored himself withhemostatics and local anaesthetics but, from the hips down, he was deadas salt pork, and his visceral reflexes must have been reacting like aworm cut with a hoe. Yet somehow, he doctored the two others and gotthat boat home.

  The other two had died, but Scott lived as sole survivor of OperationArmada. And he hadn't been a big, bronze, Latin-Indian with incongruoushazel eyes, but a snub-nosed redhead. And he'd been wheel-chaired forlife. They'd patched him up, decorated him, sent him to a base hospitalin Wisconsin where he could live in whatever comfort was available. So,he dropped out of sight. And now, this!

  Clyde was lying, of course. He'd picked the episode at random. Exceptthat so much else about him didn't square. Including his name comparedto his physique, now I thought about it.

  * * * * *

  I tabled it during our odyssey home. But during post-mission leave, itkept bothering me. I checked, and came up with what I'd already known:Scott _had_ been sole survivor, and the others were certified dead. Butabout Scott, I got a runaround. He'd apparently vanished. Oh, they'dcheck for me, but that could take years. Which didn't lull my curiosityany. Into Clyde's past I was sworn not to pry.

  We were training for our next assignment, when word came through of thesurrender at Kelowna. It was a flare of sunlight through a black sky.The end was suddenly close.

  Clyde and I were in Victoria, British Columbia. Not subscribing to thefolkway that prescribes seasick intoxication as an expression of joy, wedid the town with discrimination. At midnight we found ourselvesstrolling along the waterfront in that fine, Vancouver-Island mist, withjust enough drink taken to be moving through a dream. At one point, weleaned on a rail to watch the mainland lights twinkling dimly like thehope of a new world--blackout being lifted.

  Suddenly, Clyde said, "What's fraying you recently, Will? When we weretaking our ICEG reconditioning, it came through strong as garlic, thoughyou wouldn't notice it normally."

  Why be coy about an opening like that? "Clyde, what do you know aboutEdwin Scott?" That let him spin any yarn he chose--if he chose.

  He did the cigarette-lighting routine, and said quietly, "Well, I _was_Edwin Scott, Will." Then, as I waited, "Yes, really me, the real metalking to you. This," he held out a powerful, coppery hand, "oncebelonged to a man called Marco da Sanhao ... You've heard oftransplanting limbs?"

  I had. But this man was no transplant job. And if a spinal cord is cut,transplanting legs from Ippalovsky, the primo ballerino, is worthless. Isaid, "What about it?"

  "I was the first--successful--brain transplant in man."

  For a moment, it queered me, but only a moment. Hell, you read in fairytales and fantasy magazines about one man's mind in another man's body,and it's marvelous, not horrible. But--

  By curiosity, I know a bit about such things. A big surgery journal,back in the '40s, had published a visionary article on grafting a wholelimb, with colored plates as if for a real procedure[A]. Then they'ddeveloped techniques for acclimating a graft to the host's serum, so itwould not react as a foreign body. First, they'd transplanted hunks ofear and such; then, in the '60s, fingers, feet, and whole arms in fact.

  But a brain is another story. A cut nerve can grow together; every fiberhas an insulating sheath which survives the cut and guides growingstumps back to their stations. In the brain and spinal cord, no sheaths;growing fibers have about the chance of restoring contact that you'dhave of traversing the Amazon jungle on foot without a map. I said so.

  "I know," he said, "I learned all I could, and as near as I can put it,it's like this: When you cut your finger, it can heal in two ways.Usually it bleeds, scabs, and skin grows under the scab, taking a weekor so. But if you align the edges exactly, at once, they may joinalmost immediately healing by First Intent. Likewise in the brain, ifthey line up cut nerve fibers before the cut-off bit degenerates, it'lljoin up with the stump. So, take a serum-conditioned brain and fit it tothe stem of another brain so that the big fiber bundles are properlyfitted together, fast enough, and you can get better than ninety percent recovery."

  * * * * *

  "Sure," I said, parading my own knowledge, "but what about injury to themasses of nerve cells? And you'd have to shear off the nerves growingout of the brain."

  "There's always a way, Willie. There's a place in the brain stem calledthe isthmus, no cell masses, just bundles of fibers running up and down.Almost all the nerves come off below that point; and the few that don'tcan be spliced together, except the smell nerves and optic nerve. Evernotice I can't smell, Willie? And they transplanted my eyes with thebrain--biggest trick of the whole job."

  It figured. But, "I'd still hate to go through with it."

  "What could I lose? Some paraplegics seem to live a fuller life thanever. Me, I was going mad. And I'd seen the dogs this research team atmy hospital was working on--old dogs' brains in whelps' bodies, spry asnatural.

  "Then came the chance. Da Sanhao was a Brazilian wrestler stranded hereby the war. Not his war, he said; but he did have the decency tovolunteer as medical orderly. But he got conscripted by a bomb that tooka corner off the hospital and one off his head. They got him intochemical stasis quicker than it'd ever been done before, but he was deadas a human being--no brain worth salvaging above the isthmus. So, thebig guns at the hospital saw a chance to try their game on humanmaterial, superb body and lower nervous system in ideal condition,waiting for a brain. Only, whose?

  "Naturally, some big-shot's near the end of his rope and willing togamble. But _I_ decided it would be a forgotten little-shot, name ofEdwin Scott. I already knew the surgeons from being a guinea pig onICEG. Of course, when I sounded them out, they gave me a kindlybrush-off: The matter was out of the their hands. However, I knew whosehands it _was_ in. And I waited for my chance--a big job that neededsomebody expendable. Then I'd make a deal, writing my own ticket becausethey'd figure I'd never collect. Did you hear about OperationSeed-corn?"

  That was the underground railway that ran thousands of farmers out ofoccupied territory. Manpower was what finally broke Invader, improbableas it seems. Epidemics, desertions, over-extended lines, thinned thatoverwhelming combat strength; and every farmer spirited out of theirhands equalled ten casualties. I nodded.

  "Well, I planned that with myself as director. And sold it to Filipson."

  I contemplated him: just a big man in a trench coat and droop-brimmedhat silhouetted against the lamp-lit mist. I said, "You directedSeed-corn out of a wheel chair in enemy territory, and came back to gettransplanted into another body? Man, you didn't tell Ferd a word of alie when you said you were used to walking up to death." (But there wasmore: Besides that dour Scot's fortitude, where did he come by thathigh-hearted valor?)

  He shrugged. "You do what you can with what you've got. _Those_ weren'tthe big adventures I was thinking about when I said that. I had a teambehind me in those--"
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  I could only josh. "I'd sure like to hear the capperoo then."

  He toed out his cigarette. "You're the only person who's equipped forit. Maybe you'd get it, Willie."

  "How do you mean?"

  "I kept an ICEG record. Not that I knew it was going to happen, justwanted proof if they gave me a deal and I pulled it off. Filipsonwouldn't renege, but generals were expendable. No one knew I had thattransmitter in my temporal bone, and I rigged it to get a tape on myhome receiver. Like to hear it?"

  I said what anyone would, and steered him back to quarters before he'dthink better of it. This