“Don’t you think the phymechs are quite capable of handling any such, Dr. Bergman?”

There was an air of expectancy in his voice … waiting for Bergman to say the wrong thing. That’s what you’d like, wouldn’t you, Calkins? That’s what you want! His thoughts spun sidewise, madly.

“I suppose so … yes, I know they are. It was, well, it’s difficult to remember I’m a doctor, not doing any work for so long and all, and …”

“That’s about enough, Bergman!” snapped Calkins. “The government subsidized the phymechs, and they use taxpayers’ money to keep them serviced and saving lives. They have a finer record than any human …”

Bergman broke in sharply. “But they haven’t been fully tested or …”

Calkins stared him into silence, replied, “If you want to remain on the payroll, remain in the hospital, Dr. Bergman, even as an assistant, you’d better tone down and watch yourself, Bergman. We have our eyes on you.”

“But I …”

“I said that’s enough, Bergman!” Turning to Murray Thomas he added violently, “And I’d watch who I keep company with, Thomas, if I were you. That’s all. Good evening.” He strode off lightly, almost jauntily, arrogance in each step, leaving Bergman huddled in a corner of the booth, staring wild-eyed at his hands.

“Rotten lousy appointee!” snarled Thomas softly. “If it weren’t for his connections with the secretary of medicine, he’d be in the same boat with us. The lousy bastard.”

“I — I guess I’d better be getting home,” mumbled Bergman, sliding out of the booth. A sudden blast from the juke shivered him, and he regained his focus on Thomas with difficulty. “Thelma’s probably waiting dinner for me.”

“Thanks … thanks for having a drink with me, Murray. I’ll see you at washup tomorrow.” He ran a finger down the front of his jumper, sealing the suit; he pulled up his collar, sealing the suit to the neck.

A fine spray of rain — scheduled for this time by Weatherex — was dotting the huge transparent front of the lounge, and Bergman stared at it, engrossed for an instant, as though seeing something deeper in the rain.

He drew a handful of octagonal plastic chits from his pouch, dropped them into the pay slot on his side of the table, and started away. The machine registered an overpayment, but he did not bother to collect the surplus coins.

He paused, turned for a moment. Then, “Thanks … Murray …” and he was gone into the rain.

Poor slob , thought Dr. Murray Thomas, an ache beginning to build within him for things he could not name. Just can’t adjust. He knew he couldn’t hold it, but he dialed another drink. He regretted it while doing it, but that ache had to be avoided at all costs. The drink was a double.

Chapter four

That night was hell. Hell with the torture of memories past and present. He knew he had been acting like a fool, that he was just another stupid man who could not accept what was to be.

But there was more, and it pervaded his thoughts, his dreams. He had been a coward in front of Calkins. He felt strongly — God! More than merely strongly! — yet he had backed down. After making an ass of himself at the operation, the day of old Fritz Kohlbenschlagg’s death, he had backed down. He had run away from his problem.

Now, all the years that he had lived by the Oath were wasted. His life seemed to be a failure. He had struggled desperately to get where he was, and now that he was there … he was nowhere. He had run away.

It was the first time since he had been very young that he had felt that way. He lay on the bed, the formkling sheet rumpled half on the floor at the foot of the bed. Thelma lay silent in the other hush-bunk, the blanker keeping her snores from disturbing him. And the memories slid by slowly.

He could still remember the time a friend had fallen into a cistern near a deserted house — before the dome — and fear had prevented his descending to save his playmate. The boy had drowned, and ten-year-old Stuart Bergman had fostered a guilt of that failure he had carried ever since. It had, he sometimes thought, been one of the factors that had contributed to his decision to become a doctor.

Now again, years later, he was helpless and trembling in the spider’s mesh of a situation in which he could not move to do what he knew was right. He did not know why he was so set against them — Murray’s analogy of the scalpel was perfectly valid — but something sensed but unnamed in his guts told him he was right. This was unnatural, damnable, that humans were worked over by machines.

It somehow — irrationally — seemed a plan of the Devil. He had heard people call the machines the Devil’s Playthings. Perhaps they were right. He lay on his bed, sweating.

Feeling incomplete, feeling filthy, feeling contaminated by his own inadequacy, and his cowardice before Calkins.

He screwed his face up in agony, in self-castigation, shutting his eyes tight, till the nerves running through his temples throbbed.

Then he placed the blame where it really belonged.

Why was he suffering? Why was his once-full life so suddenly empty and framed by worthlessness? Fear. Fear of what? Why was he afraid? Because the phymechs had taken over.

Again. The same answer. And in his mind, his purpose resolved, solidified.

He had to get the phymechs discredited; had to find some reason for them to be thrown out. But how? How?

They were better. In all ways. Weren’t they?

Three days later, as he assisted a phymech on his scheduled operating assignment, the answer came to Bergman as horribly as he might have wished. It came in the form of a practical demonstration, and he was never to forget it.

The patient had been involved in a thresher accident on one of the group-farms. The sucker-mouth thresher had whipped him off his feet, and dragged him in, feet first. He had saved himself from being completely chewed to bits by placing his hands around the mouth of the thresher, and others had rushed in to drag him free before his grip loosened.

He had fainted from pain, and luckily, for the sucker-mouth had ground off both his legs just below the knees. When they wheeled him before Bergman — with his oxygen-mask and tube in hand — and the phymech — with instruments already clasped in nine of its thirteen magnetic tips — the man was covered with a sheet.

Bergman’s transparent face-mask quivered as he drew back the sheet, exposing the man. They had bound up the stumps, and cauter-halted the bleeding … but the patient was as badly off as Bergman had ever seen an injured man.

It will be close all the way. Thank God, in this case, the phymech is fast and efficient. No human could save this one in time.

So intent was he on watching the phymech’s technique, so engrossed was he at the snicker and gleam of the instruments being whipped from their cubicles in the phymech’s storage-bin chest, he failed to adjust the anaesthesia-cone properly. Bergman watched the intricate play of the phymech’s tentacles, as they telescoped out and back from the small holes in each shoulder-globe. He watched the tortured flesh being stripped back to allow free play for the sutures. The faint hiss of the imperfectly fitted cone reached him too late.

The patient sat up, suddenly.

Straight up, with hands rigid to the table. His eyes opened, and he stared down at the ripped and bloodied stumps where his legs had been.

His screams echoed back from the operating room walls.

“Oh, I wanna die, I wanna die, I wanna die …” Over and over his hysterical screams beat at Bergman’s consciousness. The phymech automatically moved to leach off the rising panic in the patient, but it was too late. The patient fainted, and almost instantly the cardio showed a dip. The spark was going out.

The phymech ignored it; there was nothing it could do about it. Organically the man was being handled efficiently. The trouble was emotional … where the phymech never went.