The Transvection Machine by Edward D. Hoch Read Free Book Online

machine? There’s no chance he was suffering from hemophilia?”
    Dr. Groton’s lips tightened. “None whatsoever. That’s merely a theory Nurse Simmons advanced. We don’t make mistakes like that here.”
    “Was he tested for hemophilia?”
    “Not here, but the New White House physician had made a blood test earlier in the day, you’ll remember. Certainly he would have discovered any evidence of a blood disorder such as hemophilia.”
    “I suppose so,” Jazine admitted. “And that brings us back to the computer.”
    “It does indeed.”
    “I assume you think the computer was responsible?”
    Dr. Groton shrugged. “Either that or human error. Nurse Simmons is very young, after all.”
    “So young that I’m surprised she was entrusted with even routine surgery on someone as important as a cabinet member.”
    “But Mr. Jazine, you don’t understand! It was the machine that was entrusted! The machine has replaced the surgeon. Someday perhaps the machine will replace us all.”
    “Yes,” Jazine said. Groton had become red in the face, and there was nothing to be gained by continued questioning. It was already obvious that the staff of Salk Memorial was not about to accept any portion of the blame for what had happened. The surgical computer was foolproof and faultless, but if it came down to a choice between Salk Memorial and the Federal Medical Center’s computer, it was the machine that would have to be blamed. “Thank you for your time, doctor,” Jazine said, getting to his feet.
    “You’ve completed your investigation?”
    “No, I’ve only begun. But I’ve finished up here for the moment.”
    “Anything else we can do. …”
    “I’ll be back,” Jazine assured him.
    He took a computerized airbus across Washington to the sprawling grounds of the Federal Medical Center. It was quite a different place from the busy hospital world of Salk Memorial. Here, in an atmosphere more like an insurance office than a medical facility, white-coated men worked over reels of computer tape rather than human patients, and the flashing of colored lights was more likely to indicate a terminal malfunction than a medical emergency. It was, by any standards, the largest and most complex computer installation in the country—serving more than ten thousand hospitals and medical research centers.
    Even the man in charge, Professor Ainsworth, was a different breed. His interest in human life seemed almost secondary. He spoke always of the machines—the endless banks of blinking computers performing their daily tasks. “Analysis of new drugs, registration of doctors and nurses, even the diagnosis of illness—all tasks for our machines, Mr. Jazine.”
    “Very interesting.”
    “One hundred years ago, local law enforcement agencies sent fingerprints to the FBI for identification. In much the same manner, hospitals and individual doctors today send medical fingerprints—virus samples, blood tests, symptoms, even hologram portraits of the patients themselves—to us for evaluation. The difference is that while the FBI sometimes took days or weeks to run a fingerprint check, our computers can respond almost instantly to any point in the USAC—or abroad, for that matter.”
    “I’m mainly interested in the computerized operations,” Jazine told him.
    “Ah, yes. Most successful. We do several hundred each week, all programmed in advance by some of the most skillful surgeons who ever lived.”
    “You even perform computer surgery on cabinet members?”
    “I’ll admit that yesterday’s affair was a bit unusual, but after all, the operation was the most routine sort of abdominal surgery. Vander Defoe was the first cabinet member to have computer surgery, but the governor of Oregon had the identical operation last year, performed by computer.”
    Earl Jazine produced the tape he’d taken from the machine at Salk Memorial. “Can you get a readout on this and tell me if it’s authentic?”
    “In a matter of