Pohlstars (26 page)

Pale, slim Mr. Medwav in a sober scarlet jacket, smiling at the door, was waving him in. "Welcome to TransParts, sir. Please sit down. Would you care for a drink? Coffee? A Coke?

"I just wanted to ask you something.

"Certainly, sir! But before that, let me congratulate you on your civic spirit. Whatever you decide-and remember, TransParts will not attempt to influence your decision in any way-just the fact that you came here shows that you are an extraordinary person. Well. Let me tell you a little about us. TransParts supplies all of the surgical facilities in the Greater New York area with organs for transplant. Under Title Seven, Federal Statute 683, we are authorized to accept and process whole-body donations from any competent adult, and to reward the donor to the extent of fifty thousand dollars-assuming, of course, that the donor meets our rather rigid physical standards. But looking at you, sir, you seem the picture of health!

"That wasn't what-

"No outright sale, eh? twinkled Mr. Medway, stroking his lightly graying sideburns. "I don't blame you for that! Well, I think I know what you would like. We can offer you one thousand dollars for what is, essentially, a fifty-to-one chance that you will walk out of this office with everything you had when you came in,
plus
our cheek for a thousand deposited direct to your credit account. The procedure? Simplicity itself. We bring you to a very comfortable room and present you with a tray containing fifty sealed bottles of a very fine liqueur. Each of them has something added. Forty-nine of them contain a mild sleeping potion; you fall asleep; eight hours later you wake up, you walk out. The fiftieth-well, sir, that's the gamble, eh? And you can come back and repeat this process every week if you like. Think of that! A guaranteed income, a thousand dollars a week for life! Why, we have clients who have been living off the fat of the land for
years!
if you'll let me have your credit card, for identification purposes- It was easier to do it than to argue. Stan handed it over, while Mr. Medway babbled on. "I'm sure you know, sir, that TransParts is officially licensed by the Federal government. We operate under the most rigid inspection possible. If you fear that there might be some-what shall I say? tinkering'?-with the odds, let me tell you that our license would be pulled in a minute. We wouldn't dare! No, it's a fair draw and- He stopped, staring at the card reader.

He looked up at Stan, his expression ugly. "What the fuck, man? You're already on our books!

"I know that.

"Then what the hell are you doing here?

"I just wanted to ask you a question.

"Ask!

"There's a girl, said Stan. "Her name's Evanie. I.. . wanted to get in touch with her. She works here.

Mr. Medway stared at him for a minute, then laughed. He tossed Stan's credit card back and punched a combination on his desk top. "Yeah, he said, reading. "She's in Post-Session Care, right? She's just about to go off duty. You can probably catch her at the employees' entrance.

The most astonishing thing about Evanie was, she still looked good. A little depressed, but good. When she caught sight of Stan her face flickered into a smile, then became sadder than ever.

"Hi, Evanie.

"Hey, Stan.

He put his hand on her shoulder, then pulled her to him and kissed her deep and long. He didn't let go, and she smiled up at him. "Don't you ever wear out, Stan?

"I'm the picture of health. Want to do something, Evanie? We could go back and try out one of the other rooms at Harry's.

"Stan, it's crazy to waste your money like that.

"Why is it crazy? That's what I get it for, to spend it. If I run out, I go back and get some more.

"Maybe
you get some more. Maybe you never come out again, and next week some guy on the two-hundredand-fiftieth floor's wearing your balls.

He winced and backed away, and saw that she was near tears again. "Oh, Stan, I hate to think of you in there.

"Why me? You work there!

"That's different, I know I'll be coming out at the end of the day. You-do you know what they do to you in there, when you lose, I mean?

"For Christ's sake, Evanie, of course I know. It's an organ bank. if I lose . . if I lose that's the last I know, right? I just don't wake up the next morning. And they take me apart and heal sick people with my parts, heart here, lungs there, anywhere somebody needs a transplant. What's wrong with that'? He knew he was repeating what the account executive had been saying, all the while he was signing up, but he went on anyway. "My life might save, I don't know, ten or twenty other lives, and that's a fair rate of exchange. And meanwhile I'm off Welfare! I've got a few dollars in my pocket, I can live like a human being-

"Stan, she said, "hold still.

"What are you doing? She had taken something out of her purse, was clipping it to his tunic.

"That's my ID badge, it'll get you past if they don't look at it too closely. Me they know. I'm going to show you what Blue Balls looks like from the inside.

He didn't have the heart for Harry's Place. But neither of them wanted to go back to their dorms, so they wound up in a cramped but not awful hotel room, rented, to the desk clerk's surprise, for the whole night. It had a good- sized bed, if nothing else. At first Stan didn't have the heart for sex, either, or even for talking, but after a while in the gentle dark with Evanie warm and tender beside him, his spirits rose. They screwed and drowsed, whispered and explored each other, and drowsed again.

And when it was nearly time to get up and get out Evanie said, "Stan, I really like you, and you turn me on better than anybody else I ever knew.

"Me, too, Evanie. I wouldn't have believed it. Even here, without the sets, without the forget-it, it's as good as Harry's Place with anybody else.

"Don't
say that, Stan, you didn't let me finish. It's no good, Stan. I'm not going to see you again.

Fist to the solar plexus, when he hadn't been expecting an attack. He got his breath. "Evanie, that doesn't make sense.

"To me it makes sense. Every dollar you spend, it's a piece of your body. What did it cost you for the night, a hundred dollars? That brings you a hundred dollars closer to the time you go back to Blue Balls and take your chances again. I can't stand that, Stan, it'll drive me up the wall if I let it.

"I'm willing to take the chance.

"I'm not! Stan, don't you remember what Ijust showed you? The used-up stiffs with nothing left? You want to be like that? One leg, a head without the eyes or ears, plastic tubing where your gut used to be, pumping along on a heart-lung machine until somebody decides there's not enough left of you to sell and they pull the plug?

Stan winced; he had been devoting a lot of his attention that whole night to trying to forget all that. "They weren't all like that, he protested. "Some of them looked just fine! Like they were only asleep.

"Asleep! Yeah, they keep some going-rare blood types, they just keep them on the machine to make blood to sell, for a while anyway. But they're not asleep. When you do it to a frog you call it 'pithing'; the brain's disconnected, there's nothing there but a vegetable. And even so, you didn't look too close, because they take off all the spare parts they can anyway. What's a blood factory need with a weenie, Stan? But some old guy'll pay plenty of money for it. You think I like it when I feel you inside me like that, thinking that same thing might be in me some other time but with some other guy on the other end of it?

"Oh, hell, Evanie-

"At least you're a man, she said morosely. "You see those pregnant women in the shops? They're making babies for somebody. Of course, they don't feel anything, because they're pithed, too. But I feel. I look at them and think about myself being there, after somebody has reached way up inside me with a light pipe and a flexible forceps and pulled out my own ovum and thrown it away and stuck in some other woman's ovum. And then they fertilize it with sperm from her husband or her boy friend or whoever- She pushed her pillow up and sat higher, looking down at him. "If you're the customer it's okay. You get the baby and you don't have to pay off in morning sickness or looking funny. Just in money. Daddy turns in a sperm sample, Mom picks out a nice-looking breeder female from the photograph album-of course, the picture shows her the way she used to be, not the way she is now. A couple quick squirts on the day shift and nine months later the hulk on the heart-lung machine squeezes out Junior for you.

"Evanie-

"So I can't take it, Stan. If we had some real money, you know, enough for six months or so. . . if you had a job. . . But that's not the way it is. My job won't keep us both, it barely keeps me off Welfare. I don't want to go back to living on the fortieth floor.

"I don't want you to do that.

"And I know you can't get a job. Stan, I'm not blaming you. I'm just telling you what I can take, and this is past it.

"How did you get the job, Evanie?

"I laid the right people, what did you think?

"Oh. He scratched uncomfortably. "Do you suppose I-

"Who are you going to screw, Mr. Medway? Any of the account execs, male
or
female? They don't need you, Stan. No offense. You're a real great guy, you know I think you are. But that was just luck, and a section chief who liked young chicks, and it won't happen again in a million years. Those guys in the upper brackets at Blue Balls, they don't just get salaries, they get a commission- for keeping you on the hook, Stan, for making sure you come in and take your bottle of fluid every week. They go to school for that, psychology, salesmanship; once they've got the degree they're set for life, and they can buy whatever they want. Even you, if they wanted you bad enough, a lot cheaper than putting you on the payroll. So this is it, Stan. I hope I never see you again, especially at work.

He kept the room an extra day, the hell with the expense, and got a decent sleep, and followed it up with a shower, clean clothes from the slot machines, and the best meal he could find that didn't take more than half an hour to eat. Half an hour was as long as he was sure his courage would hold out; and then he took the transit elevator up to the Blue Balls office. "I want to talk to Medway, he told the receptionist.

"Mr. Medway? I'm afraid he's with a client just now, but one of our other account executives...

"Medway. Tell him he's got a live one.

When Mr. Medway appeared, it took him a moment to recognize Stan. "Oh, the one who was looking for the girl. Didn't she work out? You want to pick another?

"No, Mr. Medway, I want to make a deal. I want to take twenty bottles, one after another. I walk out of here with twenty thousand dollars or you get to keep the bod.

Medway sank back behind his desk, thumbs in his armpits, looking at Stan. "You're a real gambler, he said admiringly. "But you can't do that. It'd kill you. Twenty is an overdose.

"I'll take that chance, Medway. I want the money. I want to take it and he hesitated "...all right, I want to take it and go to school and train for your job. I want real money, Medway.

"Wow, said Medway softly. "I have to say I admire your spirit. Well, you can't do it the way you say, but TransParts is willing to roll the dice with any of its clients, any stakes, just so it's a fair shot. How about this. You get your choice of two bottles. One puts you to sleep for the night, the other. . . that's a fifty-fifty chance, and what you get if you win is twenty-five thousand dollars. Or if you're really hot, you can take the long shot. The same fifty bottles as always. Only this time only one of them is just a sleeping pill. All the other forty-nine are too-bad- Charlie. That's a forty-nine-to-one shot, according to the arithmetic, but TransParts is willing to absorb the difference, so if you win that one, you walk away with fifty thou. You can even get a hundred to one if you want it, or a thousand. You name it. We'll set it up, just so the arithmetic works out.

A thousand to one! My God, a million dollars! But to have only one chance in a thousand of surviving. If I take the twenty-five, he said.

"Good bet, nodded Medway. "When?

"Right now.

Medway punched a combination into his desk top and stood up. "Come on, they'll have it ready for you by the time we get there. And so they did, the standard room with its single bed and vase of flowers, and on the sideboard the little tray of bottles; but this time there were only two on it.

You could spend the whole night arguing which is which, Stan thought grayly, and reached out for the nearer. He flipped off the top and drank it down. "Might as well get a good night's sleep, he said, turning toward the bed. "So long, Medway.

He didn't look around as the account executive went out, and so he didn't see that someone had come in, until she said, "I really liked you, Stan. I mean it.

He turned around, feet tingling in his pants legs. "Evanie!

"Go ahead, Stan, get into bed. You'll be feeling it in a minute.

"I know. And he was, the same warm whirling that he had felt every other time. That was good. But not really good, he thought, the killer dose would feel the same going down, he just wouldn't ever wake up. He tried a pleasantry. "I thought maybe you were coming to... to. .

The words got harder and harder to get out, but she knew what he meant. "Not this time, sweetie," she said, drawing the cover over him. "I just came in because I wanted to tell you two things."

"Wh-" He couldn't even finish the "-at."

"That I really liked you. And that it wasn't anything personal, Stan. You see, I get a commission too."