Sean McMullen - While the Gate is Open

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While the Gate is Open

by Sean McMullen

other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *

As I was being driven to work today I noticed fresh bullet holes in the walls of a plaza near the

hospital, and glass from a shattered windscreen in the gutter. The scars and detritus of another

assassination attempt. An attempt on the life of someone so junior in the government that it had not even

earned a mention in the morning news. An attempt to kill someone no more important than myself, the

Surgeon General.

"That's not the way to do it, Señor, not the way at all," I whispered to myself as we drove past.

I am not a native of this small republic. I came here for the power and freedom that its violent chaos

provides. By its very nature my research requires a great deal of both.

As the car continued on to the hospital I found myself thinking about my work in Los Angeles, and the

first time that I saw Brian Muir. His eyes and nose were all that was visible amid the white windings of

bandages, and he was heavily sedated. He had been a social worker for some church group, and had

been bailed up by one of his clients, then shot in the mouth as he tried to talk his way out. The

small-calibre, low velocity bullet had bored a freakish path through teeth, cartilage, bone and tissue,

coming to rest in his pituitary gland.

"He has been awake several times since coming out of surgery," said Tyler, the leader of the research

team that employed me. "He displays complete loss of long-term memory assimilation."

He was talking to Franklin, our electronics expert. She merely raised her eyebrows and shrugged, her

usual reaction when shown a difficult problem whose solution she already knew.

"I can duplicate the function of the lost tissue as long as a good enough surgeon is available to get in

there and install the Quantum-Effect Gate," she told Tyler, glancing briefly at me and smiling.

Damn the woman, I thought. I could never tell whether she was praising my abilities or mocking them.

With Tyler there was no doubt. He turned to me for the first time.

"The hospital is happy to have us try our device so long as we do not degrade his condition further.

They have even offered us the services of the surgeon who extracted the bullet. He will require you as an

observer and advisor of course, Dr. Hall."

I knew my place, and I nodded. Even though I had installed such Quantum-Effect Gates in the brains

of dozens of monkeys, and was a fully qualified surgeon, Tyler would not trust me with an installation in a

human patient.

"I've watched a videotape of him extracting the bullet," I said. "He is very good, but there are some

new techniques of nerve interfacing that he would not know. I could-- "

"You could instruct him," Tyler broke in, smiling. "Good. I shall arrange for you to meet him at once."

No more of that now, I thought to myself as I watched the olive-green truck of my armed escort enter

the hospital gates. Here I gave the orders, and here I did what operations I pleased. Many of my

assistants were so ill-educated that they had no idea of what I was doing. The others crossed themselves

and presumably agonised over the relative merits of a well-paying job in this life and the chance of

retribution in the next.

Juarez phoned as I was checking the mail in my office. I paid him the deference due to any current

dictator of a South American republic while still maintaining the firm attitude of a doctor to his patient. He

was not my patient in a medical sense, yet my research has a great bearing on his conduct, and on the

running of this country.

The man is terminally ill, but I have never been told just what disease is responsible. I suspect cancer

or AIDS, but his body's health is not my concern. Apart from being a thief, rake and murderer, the man

is a lapsed Catholic, and the prospect of what the afterlife has in store for him has become an obsession.

It is one thing to philosophically acknowledge that an assassin may strike at any moment, but knowing for

certain that death is only months away is something very different. His religion holds the spectre of eternal

damnation before him, but I have promised him a scientific opinion.

"You are ready for an operation?" he asked anxiously.

"I have done it already, Señor Presidente. A priest injured by a blow from a truncheon during the

demonstration last week. He will die from his injuries the moment that the life-support equipment is

turned off, but I made the operation seem like an heroic attempt to save him. We shall get some excellent

results in tonight's experiment."

"I am sending another man, Dr. Hall. He is strong, healthy, and thinks that he is volunteering for a

project that will earn him a pardon from the death sentence. Your visitor from the US has brought you

another of those Gate devices: install it in him today."

"But that will be murder!" I exclaimed. "When I first proposed this project to you I made it very clear

that I would use only dying patients."

Juarez could not see that I was smiling. For some time now I have suspected that he would break our

agreement.

"Follow my orders," he said firmly. "I will not argue."

"But why the urgency? Why is your subject better than the man I already have prepared?"

"Not better, but worse... and so better. Raone is a convicted murderer, and a habitual rapist. He

enjoys dominating others and inflicting pain. I had a talk to him, incognito of course. He is without doubt

a very bad man."

"I... begin to see," I said slowly. "How long do they say you have now?"

There was a pause at the other end. I wondered if I had gone too far. This was not just any patient,

but a man whose death will have international consequences-- and who could order mine.

"Ten months. There will be a very rapid decline at the end," he admitted reluctantly. "I need to know

as much as I can. When will the operation be done?"

"With a healthy patient, no more than six hours. Your man will be awake by some time this evening."

"And well enough to question?"

"So soon? But yes, I don't see why not."

"Good. I shall arrive at eight o'clock. Have the test set up to start punctually. I want to witness

everything and ask questions this time, not just watch videos later."

I took my time scrubbing up and dressing for the operation, checking all my equipment and instruments

personally. The staff here are the best available in the republic, yet they are so often slack with basic

procedures. Life is cheap here, and the patients who have money fly to the U.S. or Britain for treatment.

There had been no such trouble with Muir's operation, back in Los Angeles. We had the finest

facilities in the world, yet even then it had taken fifteen hours to install Franklin's Quantum-Effect Gate

interface in the patient's damaged brain. Most of that work was through a microscope, and the hospital's

surgeon sensibly deferred to my experience and allowed me to do all of the actual nerve connections. At

the end I reeled away to an empty ward and slept solidly for the next half day.

It was Franklin who woke me. I noticed that she was very well-dressed and her hair was unpinned

and carefully brushed. There was even a trace of makeup on her face. That meant announcements,

interviews, television appearances... all the trappings of success. With uncharacteristic euphoria she told

me that Muir had regained his long term memory assimilation. We were famous.

Or at least Tyler, Franklin and the patient were famous. I had merely helped install the miracle of organ

synthesis and micro-circuitry that was the Gate. Even at that stage, though, I harboured little resentment

for missing out on the credit. For the whole of my life I had been considered to be industrious but

mediocre. My reputation was a steel mould that I could not break, but that did not worry me. I seldom

strained against it. The Gate itself was strapped just above Muir's navel, and a bioflex sheath took the

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