An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (2 page)

Tony tilted her pale face to one side and used his fingers to scoop out
a clump of stinking goo
the consistency of cottage cheese
.
With a strong flip of his wrist he sent the mess spraying across the small open floor area
,
adding to
Sargasso Sea of
discarded gum, ink stains
, news capsules
,
and cigarette butts
—and simultaneously
decorating a number of shoes,
trousers,
and hose.

“Now tilt back the head and blow in her mouth
,
”
Granther’s disembodied voice ordered in Tony’s
mind
.
He
took the precaution of wiping off her mouth with his sleeve before bending over and placing his lips on hers
.

A wet slime sprayed up through her nose across his cheek. The taste of sour milk and stale cookies filled his mouth. “Oh, yeah, pinch nose.”
This time he succeeded in expanding her chest with his breath
.

“THINK!” Tony shouted out
.
The packed TriMet commuters managed to back away
slightly, giving
him a few more centimeters of room
.
“
Is it two breaths and thirty
chest compressions or the other way around
?”
Everyone looked dumbfounded
.
“QUICK!”
he
barked
,
looking directly into the dyed green
-
and
-
yellow face of an
Oregon
University
student.

“Please stop, citizen
.
Your a
ctivities
may be legally actionable
.”

Tony didn’t hear a word, totally focused on his own question.
The racing in
his
chest gave him
the
answer
.
More beats to his heart than the number of times he breathed
.

“Lace your fingers together and push hard on the chest directly between the nipples.” The sharp multiple report
s
of the woman’s ribs dislocating carried through the bus
,
while
everyone watched in
morbid
curiosity
.
A man in the front row fell over in a faint, caught
and held nearly upright by the press of
the other bystanders
.

“Stop that
!
You’re killing her!” one passenger insisted
.

This time the lift
-
bus came to
Tony’s
defense
.
“Negative,” came the pleasant voice, still trying to instill calm
.
“There is no murder taking place.”

“The first compression will almost certainly crack the victim’s ribs
.
Don’t despair
,
because
repairing
broken ribs is much easier than restarting a heart which has been stopped too long
.”

One large man looked menacingly down at Tony.
“Leave her
,” he insisted. “
The doctors will take care of her
—
if she has medical, that is
.”

Tony
paid no attention,
slow
ing
his compressions
.
“
After thirty full
compressions, each about every half second or so, you need to give two breaths of air, assuming your victim is
n’t
breathing,” Granther said through him
.
Tony’s ear
moved
right next to the woman’s face
.
He still heard nothing
.

“
Continue your thirty chest
compressions followed by two breaths until help arrives or the victim’s heart starts
.
This should be checked every compression set
.”

Tony continued his physical lifesaving
.
Many wouldn’t even look
.
Others stared
with the same sort of
fascination
as
if
watching someone put their head in the mouth of a lion.

“Yes, I know
,” he mumbled jerkily during
one chest compression session.
“
Everyone says don’t get involved. Stay at arm
’
s reach. It’s not my problem
.
But I can’t sit here while someone dies
.”

Time lost its cohesion for Tony
.
He muscles burned and his own chest ached with the unusual labors
.
Thirty
.
Two
.
Thirty
.
Two
.
Thirty
.
The repetition kept him going
.
Whether one minute passed or sixty, Tony’s heart leapt when he detected a pulse
—
faint, but
definitely
there
.
At last, t
he woman began to breathe on her own
.

Tony all but collapsed against the seat, still straddling
the old woman’s
torso
.
Spots danced before his eyes and his ears rang
.
He coughed heavily between
desperate
drags of air as the bus
gently set
tled
down on a landing pad
.
A
pair
of red
-
suited medicos waited along with a Metro cop, completely sealed in his blue suit of armor
showing
no face to the world
.

The trio slowly filed on as soon as the doors opened
.
The Metro, in a rare instance
of friendliness
, helpfully directed civilians toward a waiting replacement bus.

“Hurry,” Tony urged, barely having enough air for
a few desperate words
.
“Has pulse,” he gasped
with
his last possible breath
.
The medicos
,
not bothered by Tony’s pleas
,
casually lifted the woman’s wrist and scanned her
DNA
from her epithelial cells
.

“She’s got full medical
.
Get the life capsule in here on the double
!
”
Haste replaced the formerly lax efforts
.
A high-tech gurney floated in.

“Out of the way, civilian,” one of the
medicos
all but yelled at Tony
.

Still winded
,
Tony
didn’t respond
,
instead crawling
a few feet out of the way
.
The
doctors
lifted her quickly into the golden coffin-like device and closed the lid
.
The life capsule would
sustain
any spark of life left in her
.

“I did it
!
I saved her
!” h
e gasped
breathlessly,
as his chest
gradually
felt
less and
less like he’d spacewalked without a suit
.
“It feels good
!
Did you see what I just did
?”

“Sir, are you a relative?” the policeman asked, snapping him back to reality like the first yank of a bungee jump.

“Huh
?
No, sir
.
She was just another passenger
.
She was sitting there and then her face went white and
—
”

While the policeman’s fully armored face contained no clues
,
Tony still
detected
a sense of disappointment or resentment.
“I’m going to have to ask for your ident,” came his voice, colder than
before
.

“Certainly
,
officer,”
Tony
said,
offering
his own wrist for a
DNA
sample
.
The officer scanned it with a device built into his left index finger
.
“First time I’ve ever had a policeman scan my ident
.
Is that a fourteen-seventy-five Merrick Scanner
?”

The policeman ignored
the question
.
“
You aren’t
a trained medic.”

“No
,
sir.” While
Tony
paid his police protection money promptly every month,
he saw
no reason to antagonize this
officer
.
Who knows who might
’
ve paid them more
?
And paid or not, police could and would arrest you for anything they might feel like
.
“But my grandfather was a paramedic in the Australia
n
Civil War
.
He taught me
—”

“Then why were you attending to her?
You could be in a great deal of fiscal trouble
.
This
lift
-
bus carries all the proof she needs to convict you of malpractice.”

“I understand, sir
.
But I couldn’t
just stand
there and let her die.”

“You could and should have
.
I suggest you go home and think this over
.
I
’ll
notify your work, Tony Sammis.”

“Yes, sir
.”
Tony exited the bus back into the gray wetness of the day with extreme emotions simmering
—
excitement, happiness, fear
,
and dread
.
He walked absently toward the replacement transport when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

“Sir, your box,” offered the Metro
.
The emotional stew boiled over
.
Having a policeman’s attention never boded well
.
Without thinking he took the proffered box from the
cop’s blue-clad arms
.

“Thank you, sir,” he said, stepping onto the bus
.
In retrospect, Tony never knew why he took the box.

* * *
 

The subtle scent composition
“
American Beauty
,
”
by the Master Composer Beatrix Smith, wafted jasmine and cinnamon across the room.

“This October meeting will come to order,” called an unamplified voice
.

The
décor’s
pure simplicity proclaimed the
occupants’
wealth
.
A simple mahogany table, the wood alone
valued as much as
a large home, dominated the room
,
with matching straight-backed chairs added as a garnish
.
Manufactured-diamond glasses and decanters with ice water sat next to pads of actual wood-pulp paper
,
where a lesser organization would
’
ve used computer screens, or perhaps even synthetics
.
The
steel
-
gray depression that coated
Portland
nine months of the year artificially filtered in colors through a stained-glass mosaic that ringed the one-hundred-ninety-sixth floor penthouse
.
Fittingly, it depicted the purchase of
Manhattan
from the natives for a handful of trinkets.

Ten of the richest individuals in the entire Sol system calmly took their seats around the table
.
For all their wealth
,
they still wore almost identical charcoal-gray suits, differing in cut only for physical size and sex
.
They’d been
the cogs of the great megacorps
too long
to
fully embrace
the individuality they
’d earned the right to
express with impunity.