worked, understanding only a few of their words, but knowing with a terrifying clarity that something was very wrong. At last, when he could stand it no longer without screaming, he pulled the door quietly shut, and crept back up to his room.
George Hamlin, who was, indeed, a doctor as well as the director of the Academy, glanced around at the other members of his surgical team and wished their masks were transparent. He would have liked particularly to be able to read Louise Bowen’s expression right now. Of all his staff, he knew that only Bowen was likely to object to what he had done. The others, whatever roles they performed for the subjects at the Academy, were all doctors who shared not only his medical skills, but his devotion to research. But Bowen was different. She had never, as long as she had been part of Hamlin’s team, been able to develop the proper scientific objectivity. Indeed, had it not been for the importance of keeping the project a secret for the time being, he would have fired her long ago. For the moment, though, he would simply have to tolerate her. “All right,” he said softly. “I think that’s about it.”
The operation had taken nearly three hours. During that time an anesthetist had stood by, ready to move in should Peter Williams have shown signs of regaining consciousness. But Peter had not; throughout his ordeal, he had remained in the coma that had come over him at the time of his fall.
George Hamlin had begun working on Peter at ten o’clock, narrating his findings and his procedures as he went.
“The scalp is healing; all bleeding has stopped. Clear signs of osteoregeneration.”
He had carefully picked pieces of bone from Peter’s head, dropping them into a jar of saline solution that stood at his elbow. He worked quickly and expertly, and in moments the wound was cleaned.
Beneath the hole in Peter’s skull a badly damaged brain had lain exposed.
“Jesus,” someone whispered. “It’s a mess.”
But Hamlin had ignored the interruption and begun cutting at the cortical material, removing the damaged tissue. That, too, had gone into a bottle of saline solution.
“The damage doesn’t seem to have gone too deep,” Harry Garner, Hamlin’s senior assistant had commented, “Are there any signs of regeneration?”
“Not yet.” Hamlin’s manner, as always, had been curt. He was making up his mind what to do next, and it was at that moment, as he had stared down into the gaping hole filled with living matter, that the part of him that was devoted to pure research took over.
The scalpel flashed downward, slicing deep into the cerebral cortex, cutting inward and downward through the occipital lobe until the cerebellum was exposed. Behind him he heard a gasp and wasn’t surprised when Louise Bowen’s voice penetrated his concentration with the words that had so terrified Randy Corliss.
“What are you doing? You’ll kill him.”
“I won’t kill him,” Hamlin had replied coldly. “If he was going to die, he already would have.”
And now, an hour later, the operation completed, Peter Williams lay in a coma, his face placid, his breathing slow and steady, his vital signs strong.
But inside his head, part of his brain was gone. Hamlin had cut a core through the occipital lobe and the cerebellum, penetrating deep into the medulla oblongata.
The wound was still open.
“Do you want us to close for you?” Garner asked.
“I don’t want it closed at all. Put him in the lab and watch him twenty-four hours a day.”
“He’ll never survive twenty-four hours,” someone said quietly.
“We won’t know that until tomorrow, will we?” Hamlin replied. “I want this subject watched. If there’s any sign of regeneration in the brain—and I think you all know I mean unusual regeneration—I want to know about it immediately.”
“And if he wakes up?” Louise Bowen asked.
Hamlin faced her. His expression was impassive, but his eyes glinted coldly in the bright lights of the operating room. “If he wakes up,” he said, “I trust you’ll ask him how he feels. In fact,” he added, “it would be interesting to find out if he still feels anything at all.” And then George Hamlin was gone, leaving his associates to do whatever was necessary to facilitate the survival of Peter Williams.
For Hamlin himself, Peter Williams as a person had never existed.
He was simply one more subject, Number 0168. And the subject was apparently a failure. Perhaps he would have better results with the new one, Number 0263. What was his name?