I Will Fear No Evil Read Online Free

opinion about the brain. In transplant cases there are almost always at least two doctors in no way connected with the operation and probably a coroner as well. Not because the Supreme Court requires it—in fact only a few of the fifty-four states have legislated in re thanatotic requirements—but—”
    “Just a moment, Mr. Salomon—that odd word. My typewriter has placed a query after it.” Eunice kept her hand over the “Hold” light.
    “How. did your typer spell it?”
    “T-H-A-N-A-T-O-T-I-C.”
    “Smart machine. It’s the technical adjective referring to death. From the Greek god Thanatos, Death.”
    “Half a second while I tell it so.” Eunice touched the “Memory” switch with her other hand, whispered briefly, then said, “It feels better if I reassure it at once. Go ahead.” She lifted her hand from the “Hold” light.
    “Eunice, are you under the impression that that machine is alive?”
    She blushed, then touched “Erase” and covered “Hold.” “No, Mr. Salomon. But it does behave better with me than with any other operator. It can get downright sulky if it doesn’t like the way it is handled.”
    “I can testify to that,” Smith agreed. “If Eunice takes a day off, her relief had better fetch her own gadgets, or fall back on shorthand. Listen, dear, knock off the chatter. Talk with Jake about the care and feeding of machines some other time; great-grandfather wants to go to bed.”
    “Yes, sir.” She lifted her hand.
    “Johann, I was saying that in transplant cases the medical profession has set up tight rules or customs, both to protect themselves from criminal and civil actions and also, I am sure, to forestall restrictive legislation. They have to get that heart out while it’s still alive and nevertheless protect themselves from indictments for murder, cum multimillion-dollar damage suits. So they spread the responsibility thin and back each other up.”
    “Yes,” agreed Smith. “Jake, you haven’t told me a thing I didn’t know—but you have relieved my mind by confirming facts and law. Now I know it can be done. Okay, I want a healthy body between ages twenty and forty, still warm, heart still working and no other damage too difficult to repair . . . but with the brain legally dead, dead, dead . I want to buy that cadaver and have this brain—mine—transplanted into it.”
    Eunice held perfectly still. Jake blinked. “When do you want this body? Later today?”
    “Oh, next Wednesday ought to be soon enough. Garcia says he can keep me going”
    “I suggest later today. And get you a new brain at the same time—that one has quit functioning.”
    “Knock it off, Jake; I’m serious. My body is falling to pieces. But my mind is clear and my memory isn’t bad—ask me yesterday’s closing prices on every stock we are interested in. I can still do logarithmic calculations without tables; I check myself every day. Because I know how far gone I am. Look at me—worth so many megabucks that it’s silly to count them. But with a body held together with Scotch tape and string—I ought to be in a museum.
    “Now all my life I’ve heard ‘You can’t take it with you.’ Well, eight months ago when they tied me down with all this undignified plumbing and wiring, having nothing better to do I started thinking about that old saw. I decided that, if I couldn’t take it with me, I wasn’t going to go!”
    “Humph! ‘You’ll go when the wagon comes.’ ”
    “Perhaps. But I’m going to spend as much as necessary of that silly stack of dollars to try to beat the game. Will you help?”
    “Johann, if you were talking about a routine heart transplant, I would say ‘Good luck and God bless you!’ But a brain transplant—have you any idea what that entails?”
    “No, and neither do you. But I know more about it than you do; I’ve had endless time to read up. No need to tell me that no successful transplant of a human brain has ever been made; I know it. No need to