Sight of Proteus Read Online Free PDF Page B

handle a difficult committee."
    "I'd like to." Wolf chose to take him literally. "Provided that you don't mind us staying here to watch the display. One more thing about that liver." His tone was carefully casual. "What about the children who pass the humanity tests but have some sort of physical deformity? You did mention that you use infant organs in children's operations. Are they taken from the ones who fail the tests?"
    "Usually. But what of it?"
    "Well, don't you sometimes grow the organs you need, in an artificial environment, until they're the size you want for the child?"
    "We try to complete any repair work before the children can walk or speak; in fact we begin work right after the humanity tests are over. But you are quite correct, we do sometimes grow an organ that we need from infant to older size, and we do that from humanity-test reject stock. However, it's all done over in Children's Hospital, out on the west side. They have special, child-size feedback machines there. We also prefer to do it there for control reasons. As you very well know, there are heavy penalties for allowing anyone to use a biofeedback machine if they are between two and eighteen years old—except for medical repair work, of course, and that is done under very close scrutiny. We like to get the children away from here completely, to prevent any accidental access here to form-change equipment."
    Morris turned to the display screen and lifted the channel selector. "I suppose that I should admire your persistence, Mr. Wolf, but I assure you that it doesn't lead anywhere. Why, may I ask, do you lay all this emphasis on children?"
    "There was one other thing in the report from Luis Rad-Kato—the medical student. He says that he not only did an ID check on the liver, he did an age test, too. The age he determined was twelve years."
    "Then that proves he doesn't know what he's doing. There are no organs used here from child donors. That work would be done over at Children's Hospital. Your comment to Capman was a good one—you are trying to pursue this whole thing through a dead end. Spend your time on something else, that's my advice."
    While he was speaking, the display screen from Channel Twenty-three came alive. The three men turned to it and fell silent.
    * * *
    "From choice, I wear the form of early middle age."
    Capman, in the few minutes since he had left the Transplant Department, had found the time to remove his hospital uniform and don a business suit. The committee who listened to him were wearing the same colorful apparel, and appeared to be composed largely of businessmen.
    "However," went on Capman, "I am in fact quite old—older than any of you here. Fortunately, I am of long-lived stock, and I hope that I have at least twenty more productive years ahead of me. I am also fortunate enough to be blessed with a retentive memory, which has made my experiences still vivid. It is the benefit of that experience that I wish to offer to you today."
    "On his high horse," said Morris quietly. "He never goes in for that sort of pomposity when he's working in the Hospital. He knows his audience."
    "My exact age is perhaps irrelevant," continued Capman. "but I can remember the days before 'Lucy's In The Water' was one of the children's nursery songs."
    He paused for the predictable stir of surprise from the committee. Larsen turned to Wolf.
    "How long ago was that, Bey?"
    Wolf's expression mirrored his surprise. "If my memory is correct, it is very close to a century. I know it was well over ninety years ago."
    Wolf looked with increased interest at the man on the screen. Capman was old. 'Lucy's In The Water', like 'Ring-a-Ring-a-Rosy' long before it, told of a real event. Not the Black Death, as in the older children's song, but the Lucy massacre, when the Hallucinogenic Freedom League—the Lucies—had dumped drugs into the water supply lines of major cities. Nearly a billion people had died in the chaos that followed, as starvation,