Chapter 12 TRITON

 

 

The main project required a solid base, with standard gee, available raw materials, a pool of industrial workers, and plenty of safe space for testing. The environment of Uranus was unsuitable; it had no large moons, so that all its gee was centrifugal, and its environmental resources were being strained to maintain its industrial base. Its pool of qualified workers was large, but it seemed easier to move them to a distant site than to put the site in their vicinity. The space around the planet was filled with activity, making it awkward for testing dangerous new systems. Most Uranian nations had distant colonies that they used for such activities.

This was the key to the solution to the problem. There happened to be a quite suitable moon in the Titanian Commonwealth of Planets, and after due hassle the Uranian nations of the Common Market agreed to use this site.

Thus it was that I went with my small party to Triton, the large moon of Neptune. That is, with Spirit, Forta, and Smilo. I hoped we would not soon again be wandering the barrens in space suits.

One might have supposed that the political history of Triton would be similar to that of Neptune. That was not the case. Titania had dominated both in the prior century, but the two were pretty much isolated from each other. Triton was of similar size to the giant moons of the Jupiter system; in fact it seemed much like my planet of origin, Callisto. Of course it was much farther out from the sun, so the light lenses were close to six times the diameter of those of the Jupiter region, and it took four hours for light to reach it from the sun. This made this region less than desirable for human colonization, and both Neptune and Triton had received convicts from Uranus. That, however, was in the past, and today both regions were doing well.

Triton’s surface was cold, but was not made of ice; there were rocks of conventional nature, and indeed, there was mining for that most precious of metals, iron. There was a modest atmosphere of methane, which helped hold in a little heat and made it slightly easier to maintain the city-domes. The huge size of the planet in relation to its population made the enormous light lenses feasible, and it really wasn’t evident, inside the main city of Auck, that this was the System’s most distant outpost of true civilization. It is true that the planet Pluto is farther out from the sun, but Pluto is actually smaller in size than Triton and has only scientific observation stations on it. But this same isolation from the main population centers of the Solar System was what made this region so well fitted for this particular project. If anything went wrong, the disaster would be less. Of course that was not the way it was presented to the residents of Triton; for them it was explained how great the benefits of this massive technological effort would be for the region.

And massive it was! The estimated cost of the main projector was approximately one trillion dollars, and there would be massive subsidiary investments, apart from the inevitable cost overruns. I knew just the man I would have wanted to supervise, but he was on Jupiter, and old, and Jupiter was the one planet from which I could not draw. My reputation as Tyrant facilitated progress elsewhere, but the controlled Jupiter press excluded all mention of me. Which was really too bad on several grounds. Not only did it deprive the citizens of Jupiter of news that would surely interest them, and exclude that planet from the thrust into the future that this project represented, it was also a lamentable step backward. Never during my Tyrancy had there been any restriction on the press or speech. But it was not my business; I was in exile.

But I was in charge here, by the unlikely collusion of the rulers of Saturn and Uranus, and I intended to do the job properly. The Dream had not originated with me, but it had become mine in much the way of a woman, being at first intriguing, then compelling, and finally my life. I knew that this was my final project, and I was satisfied that it be this. What a beautiful thing we were making: the instrument for man’s conquest of the galaxy! So I labored diligently in my fashion, interviewing personnel interminably so as to have the proper infrastructure for the purpose. Spirit was of course organizing that, with Forta very ably assisting; Megan had sent me an extraordinarily capable woman!

I dislike going into tedious detail on routine matters that are in any event available in the public record, so will just say that once again we succeeded in assembling an efficient and massive structure whose personnel were uniformly dedicated to the Dream. Technicians of Saturn and Rising Sun worked with those of the nations of Uranus for the common goal. Saturn was paranoid about the militaristic capacity of Prussia, and not sanguine about that of Gaul, and had never really appreciated the Titanian Empire, but here the effort was cooperative, and friendships were being formed. The scientist of Saturn who had made the theoretical breakthrough for the light drive traveled himself to Triton to participate; I was present with Forta, assisting in translation and facilitating the personal interaction, but there was no problem. The scientific community did not share the political suspicion. The leading Prussian scientist approached the Saturn scientist, pumped his hand in the occidental manner, and exclaimed “Genius!” He referred to the nature -of the breakthrough. I knew that it was going to be all right.

As the construction proceeded and the personnel meshed, my position became more token than legitimate; the project could proceed without me. I remained on Triton mainly as a symbol; the planets were contributing to the project of the Tyrant, for the benefit of mankind, not for the aggrandizement of any individual nation or philosophy of government. That was what made it work. That and Spirit’s constant adjustments, eliminating inefficiency wherever it threatened.

I was hardly aware of the diminishing need for my participation, before Forta took up the slack. I had taken Smilo for a stroll around the premises of the enormous new dome that had been cultured and lifted as a bubble from the deep atmosphere of Neptune, and set entire into the ground of Triton. I used the leash, because the tiger understood that this meant that no one was to be attacked, and the personnel had become accustomed to his presence. In fact, someone had fashioned a mascot, a model of a saber-tooth tiger, with the legend Smile, O Tyger. There were posters depicting a gigantic tiger’s paw reaching for the stars. A sports organization had even formed, termed the Tiger’s League. So I enjoyed these excursions, and so did Smilo. There are worse things than being a mascot, as both of us understood.

But when I returned to our suite this day, Spirit was out. A woman stood awaiting me. She was dark-skinned and had fairly short black hair, and her body was lanky. Her face carried a somewhat challenging expression.

“Emerald,” I breathed, recognizing her. Of course it was Forta in mask and costume, but it was also my Navy wife Emerald, as she had been at about age twenty-five. Emerald had been something special. Of course all my women are special, but she more so than usual. She was a tactical genius, whose career had been stifled by Navy prejudice against Blacks and women, until she joined me. Then she had taken over my body and my career with equivalent dispatch and success. I believe that physically she was the least endowed of my women, having a rather boyish figure, but she may have been the most effective lover. We had separated for career reasons, not from any personal disaffection, and indeed our careers had continued. I had in due course become the Tyrant of Jupiter, and she the Admiral of the Jupiter Navy. I had appointed her to that position, and she had brought the support of the Navy to my position at the crucial moment. In a sense, our marriage had never stopped; there was no way I would ever act against her interests, or she against mine.

Standing there, gazing at her, I experienced an abrupt and powerful surge of nostalgia and desire. Emerald in the contemporary frame was about sixty-four, getting somewhat plump, and long married to another officer, but the Emerald of my memory was exactly this young figure.

I remembered the first time I had approached her, only to solicit her participation in my Navy project, and she had demanded sex and then agreed to be my wife. I hadn’t asked her to marry me. But her intellect and determination had swept aside my hesitancy, and never to my regret. While it is true that a man normally prefers an acquiescent woman, he can also appreciate a dominating one. Women come in all types, and all are wonderful in their fashions.

“Well, get it on, Worry,” she said abruptly, her voice exactly as I remembered it. Perhaps my memory was even guided by Forta’s interpretation, because when I had been memory-washed, my Navy experience had been the last to return to me, and even a decade later I could encounter lapses. But she had used my private Navy nickname, Worry, too, which lent further authority to the emulation. That was from my song, “Worried Man Blues.” She certainly did her homework, and I appreciate that.

She strode up to me, reached up, caught my head between her hands, hauled it down, and planted a decisive kiss on my mouth. And I swear, that was an authentic Emerald kiss. Juana had been ever reticent; Emerald was as thorough a change as could be imagined, and I was amazed again that both parts could be so aptly played by one who could have known neither at these ages.

She disengaged with equivalent abruptness, grasped my arm, and hauled me along to the bedroom. “Do I have to do everything for you?” she snapped. Abashed and delighted, I removed my clothing while she stripped hers. In moments we both were naked, and she remained exactly as I remembered her, her breasts small, her hips narrow, her body slender throughout but dynamic.

She shoved me back on the bed, then leaped atop me, forcing my knees apart with the type of expertise found in judo so that she could get in between them. Her very flesh seemed to move independently, rubbing against my belly and legs. Her breasts pressed hotly against my chest as her thighs closed about my member, bringing it urgently alive. “Bet I can polish you off within three minutes,” she said challengingly as she manipulated my anatomy with the flexure of muscles I had hardly remembered existed.

“Make it three hours!” I pleaded.

“That’s inefficient.” She proceeded to the culmination, her hands all over my body, and sure enough, despite my best intentions, I found myself climaxing within her in just about three minutes.

I found I couldn’t leave it there. I’m seldom satisfied with things exactly as they are; I need to know the causes and effects and underlying truths. So as she made to get up and leave, I held her. “You have had your will of me,” I said. “Now talk to me.”

“That’s not the Navy way, Worry,” she said. “We have a ship to run.”

Which was exactly what the real Emerald would have said, in fact had said, more than once. Emerald had never been my creature; I had been hers. In private. In public she had always deferred to me, in the manner of all my women. Sometimes I had suspected that it was a conspiracy between them, to manage me; if so, it had been successful. It has been said of me that I was always a man for the women; there is more than one way that truth can be taken. But Emerald had needed no conspiracy to handle me. I remember when Spirit walked in on us in bed one morning and ripped off the sheet to get us up, exposing us both naked. Then the other officers, male and female, had trooped in for a staff meeting. Emerald had retaliated by spreading her legs before Spirit’s husband and inquiring whether there was anything there that his wife hadn’t shown him. One seldom sees a man blush like that.

“Penny for your thoughts, Hope,” Emerald said, pausing. After all, today there was not a ship to run.

“Just wondering whether there was anything there Spirit hadn’t shown him,” I said.

She laughed. “No. She showed him more than I had to show.” She cupped her left breast with her left hand, as if weighing it.

“Give me that!” I said, taking the breast in my own hand.

“Watch your step, Worry, or I’ll have to do you again.”

She was so absolutely like the original! I grabbed her and hugged her and kissed her, overwhelmed by her aptness in the role.

“Damn,” she muttered as if to herself. “He’s calling my bluff.” She took hold of me where it counted. Sure enough, I was coming alive again. I was amazed; I had thought the days of my consecutive arousals were past. “Well, in the interest of scientific investigation . . .” she said, and proceeded to work on me again.

“It was a joke,” I protested insincerely.

“Not any more,” she said, taking me in. Those internal muscles of hers began to work, and she deep-kissed me simultaneously, her tongue mimicking the action below. It took much longer, this time, for indeed I was not forty years younger, but the process and the culmination were sheer delight. Indeed, my second climax seemed longer and stronger than the first, though perhaps I deceive myself in this. Subjectivity can be wonderful stuff.

Again she made to depart, but again I held her. “You bring me such memories, you’re so skilled,” I said. “How did you learn all this?”

“I study my trade,” she said.

Evidently so! I reached to touch her mask. “I can hardly believe ...”

She drew back. “You must play fair,” she murmured.

I sighed. “I have never known a woman like you.”

“Surely true,” she agreed, and now she left. Soon she was back at her secretarial work, in her own guise, as if nothing had happened.

I have covered this episode in rather more detail than I might otherwise have done, because it was the last time in my life that I was able to perform consecutively. That may be a matter of no consequence to a woman, but to a man it can be significant. It seemed, in its fashion, to signal the misfortune to come.

Emerald was with me each time thereafter, just as Juana had been with me on Uranus. I seemed to be reliving my early years. I wondered how she would manage my next bride, who had been of an entirely different configuration, physically and emotionally. But I could wait for that; having Emerald with me like this seemed, in an almost tangible way, to be restoring my youth.

It was illusion. Before long I felt every decade of my age. In fact, I felt more than my age.

It was Emerald who realized. She had approached me in her fashion, which was aggressively, and stripped me, but I was slow in responding. I felt awful. “Hope, you’re ill!” she exclaimed.

“Can’t be,” I muttered. “No diseases here.”

“No contagious diseases,” she corrected me. “Stand up, let me look at you; I’ve had some medic experience.”

She had had more than that! Wearily, swaying, I stood naked before her. I winced as my feet took the weight; my big toes hurt.

“Your legs are swollen, your color’s bad,” she said. “Hope, I think you’ve got gout.”

“Got what?”

“Inflammation of the joints, retention of waste fluids,” she said. “Symptom of loss of kidney function. We saw it on Mercury, and the other inner planets. It used to be thought a rich man’s disease, but conditions in some modern areas have brought it to the poor, too.”

“How can I have kidney failure?” I demanded querulously.

“That I would like to know. Let me get you dressed. I’m taking you to the hospital.”

“But I can’t let it be known I’m sick,” I protested.

She considered. “Yes, that is true. Let me get in touch with Spirit.” She set me on the bed and went to the other room. I lay there in a funk.

Before I knew it, Spirit was there, and Forta was in her natural state. Such was my condition, I didn’t even regret the loss of what had promised to be an exciting afternoon liaison. “I’ll bring a doctor here,” Spirit said. “No one must know.”

Then the doctor was there. He checked me with his instruments and nodded gravely. “Dialysis,” he said.

“What?” I asked stupidly.

“Your kidney function is down to less than five percent,” the doctor informed me. “Acute renal failure. We can tide you over with dialysis while we work out a course of long-term treatment.”

“But what is dialysis?” I asked.

“Very simply: blood cleaning. We have to arrange to do the job that your kidneys are not doing.”

“We don’t want the public to know the Tyrant is sick,” Spirit said. “If he goes to the hospital-“

“But that’s where we are equipped for this,” the doctor protested. “We need to set up a loop-“

“A what?” Spirit asked. This business was new to both of us; neither Spirit nor I was equipped to handle it.

“A connection between an artery and a vein that we can use to tap into the blood supply,” the doctor explained patiently. “We have to run it through the dialysis machine for several hours.”

“Several hours!” Spirit exclaimed. “Why so long?”

The doctor seemed almost to sigh, but he explained. “The blood supply can be run through the machine fairly expeditiously,” he said. “But that is only part of the problem. The wastes that the kidneys normally remove from the blood have built up in the tissues of the body. Thus the blood must be cleaned and recirculated so that the tissues can discharge their wastes into it, which in turn can be removed by the machine. This process cannot be hurried. The living kidneys normally operate continuously, but it is not convenient to have the machine do this. So we use it perhaps three hours at a time, every two or three days, until either kidney function is restored or a kidney transplant occurs. Now, this man must be treated promptly; those wastes are not doing his body any good.”

I visualized my bloodstream as a river clogged with garbage, a veritable sewer, now that the treatment center had broken down. “I’ll take the dialysis,” I said with resignation.

“But the publicity-“ Spirit said.

The doctor protested, but I was not just any patient; I was the Tyrant. News of my illness would spread across the System at light speed, literally, and the project would suffer, for I was its unifying symbol. In the end they had to bring the equipment and surgeon to our suite. It was necessary to give Smilo a pacification pill, for we were not sure how he would react if he saw and smelled a doctor cutting into my flesh and taking my blood.

I don’t remember much of the initial surgery; they put me out with a general anesthetic. My system resists all intrusions, but requires a while to organize for any one, so I was unconscious this time. When I woke, I had the loop: plastic tubes inserted into my left arm in two places, through which my red blood circulated, passing from artery to vein via the loop.

I inquired groggily when the dialysis was going to be, because I felt awful. That was when I learned that it had already been done. They had kept me sedated for six hours, and run through the whole process.

“Then why do I feel worse than before?” I demanded, properly irritated.

“That’s normal,” the doctor reassured me. “Tomorrow you’ll feel better.”

“Normal to feel worse after treatment than before it?”

“Dialysis is rough on the system.”

Evidently so. But it was done, and I could relax. I settled into a somewhat drugged slumber.

Next day, sure enough, I did feel better. More correctly, less bad. I got up to go to the bathroom, swayed dizzily, and realized that I really didn’t need to go. No kidney function meant no urine.

Forta appeared. “Let me help you,” she said quickly, catching my arm as I swayed.

“Send me Emerald,” I said grumpily.

“You aren’t in condition for that, Tyrant!” she protested.

“For sex, no. For comfort, yes.”

“How about Juana, then?”

I considered. I discovered that though Juana was certainly the comforting type, I was not ready to retreat to her time. Once I started retreating, where would it end? But I certainly wasn’t ready for the next, Roulette, who was as highly potent in sex appeal as any woman could be. Emerald, aggressive as she could be, could also be understanding. “I’ll stand pat.”

Forta shrugged. She helped me sit on the bed, then left the room. In a moment Emerald returned. “You asked for it, sir, you got it,” she said. “Remember Mondy?” I asked. “That’s later.”

“But the potential to understand, to nurture, had to exist before,” I said. “He was a badly disturbed man, but you helped him. Will help him. Help me now.”

“Listen, Worry, you’ve taken an injury. It’s not fatal, and probably not permanent. A few days, and your kidneys will resume their function, and you’ll be off the loop. So all you need to do is rest and plan ahead.”

She made absolute sense, and I needed that. But I needed more. “Just hold me,” I said.

She pushed me gently back to lie on the bed, and she lay beside me, and put her arms around me as well as was feasible, and drew my head in to the hollow of her neck, and there we lay. “You’re a good woman,” I said. “You’re a good man,” she replied.

I drifted back to sleep, and when I woke she remained, sleeping beside me. I lifted my head, feeling better, and gazed at her face. I was tempted to remove the mask, but felt it would be somehow like abusing her. Instead I lowered my head and kissed her lips.

She woke, startled, and I laughed. “Fear not, damsel; I have not deprived you of your virtue,” I said. “You’re feeling better,” she stated. “To sleep in the arms of a good woman-that’s good medicine.”

“So it seems,” she agreed.

I felt better all day, but on the following day I began to degrade, as the wastes accumulated in my blood and tissues. I was due for another dialysis treatment, as my kidneys still had not recovered their function.

The doctor arrived with a dialysis nurse. He checked my loop. He shook his head. “Some clotting,” he said. “I see no clot,” I said.

He smiled briefly. “You are thinking of external clots, which are hard knots of blood. Internal clots are long strings attaching to the irritation. When they break off and travel through the bloodstream, they can cause trouble elsewhere. That is not something we feel sanguine about.” He smiled again, indicating humor. The term sanguine referred to blood; that was the pun.

“Where do they travel?” I inquired, morbidly interested.

“It can be anywhere. Sometimes they can exist for some time without causing harm. But if they snag in the lungs, or the brain-“

“Get rid of the clot,” I said.

“We’ll use heparin,” he said. “That in effect thins down the blood so as to avoid clotting in the machine. It should eliminate the problem. After the treatment we’ll neutralize the heparin. There should be no problem, as long as we remain on top of it.”

“Stay on top of it,” I agreed.

The nurse proceeded to the dialysis. This seemed to be a complicated process in detail, but she knew what she was doing. Soon my blood was coursing through the machine. I felt a little faint, but realized that this was probably psychological; the machine, the nurse assured me, used only a fraction of the amount of blood that the early models did. In any event, it would all be returned to me.

The principle of dialysis, I learned, was to run the blood through filters and osmotic solutions, so that the wastes passed out through the cellophane membrane while nutrients passed in. It was possible to feed a person through dialysis, or to medicate him, in addition to purifying his blood. The machine was not and could not be the equal of the natural kidney function, but the treatments would keep me alive and healthy until my own kidneys recovered.

This time I was conscious during the dialysis. I saw my blood flow through the tube in my arm into the machine, and the return flow to my vein. In the early days, the doctor explained, so much blood had to enter the machine for processing that the patient might lose consciousness or go into shock. But today only a relatively small amount of blood was used, only about a cup, and the treatment was so thorough that in only a few seconds that blood was back in the body, completely restored. The machines had originated as big as bureaus, but this one was only about thirty centimeters long. The blood went in one end and came out the other, refreshed. But the actual time of dialysis could not be cut, because the limitation was that of my body, not the machine. They could not pump the blood through faster than my blood vessels could handle it.

Now the doctor questioned me, trying to ascertain the source of my malady. “The kidneys don’t simply shut down out of perversity,” he said. “There had to have been poisoning or illness to cause this reaction. Until this point we have been concerned merely with pulling you through, but we don’t want to finish without having a clear notion of cause.”

I wanted to know the cause too! “I have always been healthy,” I said. “The only problems I have ever had have been from injury or torture or poison.”

“Those could do it,” he said with a small, grim smile. “Injury in the past less likely perhaps, but-torture?”

I explained about my session as a prisoner of my political opponent, just before I became Tyrant. I had been made to feel pain by a nerve stimulator, and had been memory-washed.

The doctor shook his head. “I think not, in that case. But what of poison?”

“Food contamination, actually,” I said. “Enemies in Saturn managed to feed me contaminated yeast. I suffered some liver and kidney damage-“ I broke off, realizing what I had said.

The doctor nodded. He questioned me closely about the episode. “That would seem to account for it,” he concluded. “I’m surprised they didn’t require you to come in for regular examinations, to forestall this very occurrence.”

“But that was over three years ago!” I said, not wanting to admit that they had required that, but that I had disobeyed. “I recovered, and have had no trouble since.”

“I fear this is bad news,” the doctor said. “I had assumed that this was a case of acute nephritis, but it may be chronic.”

“Acute what?”

“Each of your kidneys has on the order of one million tiny units, called nephrons, that process the blood in parallel. There is more than one type of nephron, but for our purpose we may assume they are all identical. Each does a complete job of cleaning the blood it handles; this is no assembly line. Essentially, the nephron filters out the solids and processes the fluids of the blood, where the wastes are. It recovers from that fluid all the useful ingredients, and allows the rest to pass on out of the system: the urine. What affects one nephron is likely to affect them all, and when the nephron shuts down, your body has no way to eliminate its waste products. So blood urea nitrogen builds up-we call it BUN-and-“

“I understand,” I said, not caring to get that technical. “So when there is trouble with the nephron, that’s nephritis.”

“Correct,” he said. “And I am a nephrologist, a doctor specializing in these matters.”

“But why is an acute case to be preferred over a chronic case? Is it milder?”

“No, the opposite is apt to be the case. Acute nephritis can take you out in days, if untreated, while you can go for years without even being aware of chronic nephritis. The acute condition can occur as the result of some temporary insult to the tissue, such as poisoning; once the poison clears, the nephrons recover, and you have no further trouble. This may have happened when you suffered the food poisoning. But sometimes the damage is limited, and the shutdown is only partial, or only a percentage of the nephrons are affected. Since the body has an enormous overcapacity, you can lose as much as ninety percent of your nephrons, and suffer no ill effects; the remaining ten percent do the whole job. But beyond that, it can get awkward. At five percent capacity, you do feel it, and below that-“

“You mean, an acute case could have knocked out ninety-five percent for a week, but a chronic case may have been working up to it for three years, and I only felt it when the critical level of damage was reached?”

“Exactly. Now, this is not a diagnosis. We shall have to do a biopsy for that. But I believe we should not delay on that.”

“A biopsy?”

“We take a sample of the kidney tissue and analyze it in the laboratory. Then we can tell the state of the nephrons.”

“Better do it,” I agreed. “But if this is chronic instead of acute, does it mean there’s no cure?”

“It means we’ll have to schedule you for transplant,” he said. “Your kidneys are marvels of accommodation, but once they’re gone, they’re gone. Fortunately, modern immunosuppressive techniques make kidney transplant feasible in the vast majority of cases. Thanks to your support, Tyrant, we have a fully competent transplant facility here on Triton. We shall have you functioning normally again, never fear.”

I glanced across at Spirit, who had remained mute throughout. It was possible that we knew something the doctor didn’t.

The nurse concluded the dialysis. Thanks to my discussion with the doctor, the hours had passed without notice. They cleaned up the equipment and put it away, and restored my loop to its normal loop configuration, and gave me the neutralizer to the heparin employed to prevent clotting during treatment. Smilo came up, and I stroked his massive head. “Don’t chew on that loop,” I cautioned him. I had been afraid at one point that the odor of blood would unhinge his equilibrium, but he was a well-fed tiger, and he knew the smell of my blood and would not attack me. Henceforth he would not be sedated during my treatments.

But some hours later I got up to get something to eat- my diet was temporarily severely restricted, to prevent avoidable accumulation of wastes or fluid-and passed out without warning. The next thing I knew, the doctor was back. Evidently he had done something to restore me. “What happened?” I asked.

“Heparin rebound,” he said curtly.

“Say in layman’s terms?”

“We give you heparin to prevent clotting,” he explained. “But the blood’s ability to clot is an important survival feature; without it you would be hemophiliac, and could suffer internal bleeding. So after the treatment we neutralize the heparin. Unfortunately, sometimes the neutralizer wears off before the heparin is out of the system, so the heparin rebounds when it isn’t wanted. Evidently my error; every human body is unique to itself, and I misjudged your tolerances. I shall see that it doesn’t happen again.”

He was a competent and honest man, and very good with explanations. I had confidence in him. Evidently I had rated the best.

In due course they did the biopsy and confirmed the diagnosis: chronic nephritis. “Actually, glomerulonephritis,” the doctor said. “The glomerulus is the filter at the beginning of the nephron. Your own immune system did you in.”

“How’s that?” I asked, alarmed.

“Your food poisoning evidently had an infective component,” he said. “That is, it came across like a disease, and your immune system fought it. You seem to have an extraordinarily effective immune system. I researched the Saturn records on your prior episode, and discovered that this particular strain was unusually harmful, and you received a double dose. You could have died; some did, from the single dose. But you recovered remarkably. Unfortunately, in some cases the body’s immune system mistakes some of its own tissue for that of the harmful intrusion, and the glomerulus is especially subject to such error. So your system made antibodies against your own glomeruli, and systematically took them out. Now that process is virtually complete. Had your immune system been less vigilant-“

“I have a good immune system,” I agreed glumly. “It can throw off any drug.”

“Well, that is not precisely the way it operates-“

“It’s the way mine works,” I said. “I cannot be addicted. It helped me throw off the mem-wash rapidly enough to save my political career, too.”

He did not debate the issue, but I could see he did not believe this. He departed.

“This is going to interfere with a transplant, too,” Spirit said. “No way your system will tolerate a foreign kidney.”

I nodded glumly. “Maybe the doctor will have an answer.”

The doctor did. “Immunosuppressive therapy,” he said. “Standard procedure for transplantation. We go for the closest possible tissue match, then damp down the immune response.”

“Better test it first,” I warned.

“Naturally.”

He tested it-and my body threw off the immune suppressive drug. This didn’t occur immediately, but the doctor was monitoring my response closely, and very soon realized what was happening. In addition, my body had built up an immunity to the heparin, and clotting was a problem again. They had to change to a different anticoagulant, and establish a loop on a new site. “I have never encountered this before,” the doctor admitted, intrigued.

It was evident that the transplant the doctor had planned on would not be feasible; my immune response could not be permanently suppressed, other than by heroic measures that we agreed were not warranted. “But we can use a synthetic kidney. That’s one grown from neutral tissue in the laboratory, that does not excite the immune response. Unfortunately, it is relatively bulky and clumsy, being three times the size of a normal one. But it will do the job.”

“All the same, better test me for reaction to it,” I said.

He did-and my body rejected it. “This is unique in the annals of medicine!” the doctor exclaimed, almost with admiration. “Your body really can reject inanimate substances!”

I was not as thrilled with this confirmation as he seemed to be. “No synthetic kidney, then.”

He sobered. “I’m afraid not. However, dialysis is not merely a short-term expedient. We can set you up for CAPD-“

“For what?”

“CAPD. Continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis. That employs your own peritoneal membrane, so there is no problem of rejection. The fluid is put into your abdomen, and the blood filters through-“

“And my membrane would heal to cut off what it took to be leakage,” I said grimly. “Can you test for that?”

He ran his tests, and confirmed my suspicion. “This is truly amazing,” he said, evidently thinking of the case history he would write on this that would make him famous. “Your body renders itself impervious to modification by such means.”

“This has been quite useful in the past,” I said. “But it is losing its appeal.”

“Still,” he said with a certain artificial cheer, “regular dialysis can be rendered almost as convenient. We can set up an AV shunt-“

“A what?”

“An arteriovenous shunt. That is, a direct connection between an artery and a vein, using no plastic loop, so there is no clotting problem. This can be tapped into for each dialysis.”

“May not work,” I warned him.

He tried it, and it did work-for a couple of dialyses. Then the clotting got bad, and when the surgeon checked into it, he discovered that my blood vessels were healing, and the shunt was in the process of being cut out and the normal separate artery and vein bloodflow restored. My body would not tolerate the foreign meddling.

Thus we were reduced to the loop, which even with the anticoagulants was only good for as few as three dialysis sessions before the clotting became too awkward. The clotting was because my body was laboring to heal itself, but it was dangerous, just as my immune system’s attack on my own kidneys had been dangerous to my long-term health. My system was too independent for its own good.

“How long can this continue?” I asked the doctor.

“We are much more efficient at developing sites for dialysis,” he said with assumed cheer. “It is unfortunate that we can not reuse a site once we have finished with it; the scar tissue and the threat of clotting prevent that. But we do far less damage than was done when this technique was new. I’d say you can continue for a decade or more, by which time there could be a breakthrough that would extend it further.”

“But my illness must not be known,” I said. “How long can it continue without showing?”

“You mean, on your arms? You want them free of scar tissue? And your neck? That cuts it in half, approximately.”

Half. Five years. I was sixty-four years old now; that set my limit at sixty-nine. Somehow I had thought I would live forever; now it was clear that this had been overly optimistic.

“I’ll need to travel,” I said. “Can I be dialyzed elsewhere in the System?”

“Why, certainly,” he agreed heartily. “There are dialysis clinics on every planet.”

“Without outsiders knowing?”

“That I can’t say. Each planet has its own regulations.”

“Can I hire your nurse to go with me, so it can be done privately?”

He smiled. “Tyrant, you don’t need to go to such an extreme. We can train you for home dialysis. Designate someone on your staff, and-“

“I’ll do it,” Forta said immediately. “I have had some experience with field medicine; I’m sure I can handle this.”

“It is not hard to learn,” the doctor said. “The process has been greatly simplified since the early days. But it requires serious commitment, because one mistake can be like forgetting to seal your suit before stepping outside the dome.”

“She can handle it,” I said. I knew Spirit would be willing to do it, but Spirit was busy running the show; it was better to leave her free for that.

So Forta trained for dialysis, and in due course she handled the job, three times a week. She learned rapidly and well; her only bad moment in training was when the nurse slipped some dye into the works, and it looked as if the dialysis machine were leaking blood. This might seem like a cruel prank. It was cruel, but a necessary part of the training. Forta took one appalled look at the leak and launched me into the bypass mode so that my blood no longer coursed through the machine. Then, saying nothing to me, she opened the machine to check the tubing. All was in order. Unwilling to accept that, she inspected every aspect of the process closely, and finally located the source of the “leak”: the vial of dye. She made a kind of growl in her throat that set Smilo’s ears perking, and fished out the vial. She resumed the dialysis, and when the nurse made a “routine” check Forta acted as if nothing had happened. This might have been a mistake, because if a genuine leak went unnoticed, disaster could follow. But when the nurse discovered that the vial was gone, she knew, and Forta passed. I had been tuning in to a program on a holo, and hadn’t even realized that anything had happened; I picked this up later. We learned that this was a regular part of such training. Suppose a real leak developed when there was no professional nurse available to set it right? The home dialyzer had to be competent, and to keep her head in the crisis.

There was of course more to my malady than this, but I believe I have covered it sufficiently. I acclimated to the regimen, and learned to cope with the postdialysis depression, which was a physiological thing, and to schedule public appearances when I knew I’d be in my best form. I was now dependent in a literal way on the machine and on Forta, but was able to cope. Between times, Emerald was with me, and yes, I could still make love, though not as frequently or as vigorously as before. Emerald was very good for this, being ready to take the active role, and I valued her support for other reasons than this. So the fact is, this period of my life was not one long depression; it was a series of brief depressions, and a constant challenge to find new and unobtrusive sites to tap into my blood supply. My legs developed an increasing pattern of scar tissue. But Forta was not one to be turned off by scar tissue, and in this devious way I found myself thankful, for the first time, that she was as she was.

Meanwhile, the galactic project grew, and it was evident that it was going to be a success. But we needed more financial and industrial support, and more raw materials. After two years on Triton, it was time for me to travel again.