The Tin Man

pick up all their hospital bills.”

Patrick shook his head. “It’s a nightmare,” he said, his voice reflecting his anger and frustration. “A goddamn nightmare. I thought for sure they were involved in the shootout.” Apparently Masters heard something in Patrick’s tone that made him flash back to the previous day, because he looked worried, even scared. Patrick noticed. He gave Jon a nod, a silent “I’m okay. Don’t worry.”

Paul noticed too. “Everything okay, bro?” came a voice. “You sound pissed off enough to kill someone.”

Stunned, Patrick stared at his brother. “Paul? Was that you?”

“Damn straight!” Paul smiled proudly.

Patrick’s face glowed with wonder. “The electronic larynx works! You did it, Jon! How does it work?”

“Sensors in the trachea attached to the muscles that normally control the vocal cords activate lasers that duplicate the actions of the vocal cords,” Masters explained. “The laser pickups activate an electronic voice-box that translates the vibrations of laser light into speech-pattern sounds, then broadcasts the sounds through the throat, mouth, and nasal passages. We can very nearly duplicate Paul’s natural voice because the sound still emanates from his mouth, just like normal speech. Fitting the hardware was the easy part-it’s tuning the system to closely match his natural voice that’s been hard.”

“Incredible,” said Patrick. “Just incredible. Congratulations!”

“I wish Dr Heinrich were here to hear this,” Paul said. As he spoke, the technician put a device up to his throat and made some fine adjustments. The results were even more startling-Paul’s voice, although obviously artificial, sounded remarkably lifelike, like a medium-quality tape recording of his natural voice. “Dr Masters said you had an accident yesterday?”

Patrick kept his eyes averted. “Another experiment that didn’t go as well as we wanted,” he said. Paul didn’t press; he could see they weren’t volunteering more. But when Patrick looked up, he found his brother staring at him, and knew he had sensed what he needed to know.

While the technician went on working on the electronic larynx, a nurse brought in a stack of mail. In the first weeks after the shootout, letters had come in by the bagful; they had only recently dwindled down to a handful a day. The letter on top had been delivered by messenger, the nurse said, and Paul signaled Patrick to read it for him. Patrick’s mouth dropped open. All eyes were on him. The technician stopped his adjustments. “Patrick? What is it?” Paul asked.

“It’s from the department-the personnel office,” Patrick said blankly. “Paul… you’ve been retired.”

“Retired?”

“It says they considered light duty, but after consulting with the doctors, your injuries have been considered too serious. You will receive full pay and benefits for two months after you leave the hospital, then go on full medical retirement. Full medical and survivors’ benefits, half your base salary tax-free for life. Your personal gear has been sent to your home.”

Paul fell back against the pillow. “They cleaned out my locker already?” he exclaimed. “I only used it once!” He turned his head away, fighting back tears. “Man, I can’t believe this. Not in person or even by phone-they sent me a letter telling me I’m out.”

The room was silent for a long time. Then Masters broke the strain: “This is good, Paul, because now we have time to work on the second phase. The next project, if you’re ready for it, is to start work on your shoulder and arm. I don’t think we’ll be able to do much here. We should consider transferring you to our facility in San Diego.” Paul said nothing. “Problem, Paul?” Masters asked.

“I don’t know,” Paul said. “Leaving Sacramento, getting a…” He moved his good right arm, then glanced at the emptiness to his left.

“It’s a little intimidating, I know,” Jon said. “But check this out.” He reached into his briefcase, withdrew a videocassette, inserted it into the VCR in the television set, and closed the curtain over the door panel so no one in the corridor could peer in. “It’s yours if you want it.”

What they saw on the screen astounded them. It was a human arm, or at least it looked and moved like one- but it was mounted on a metal stand. It was extraordinary in its detail, with a realistic human shape, dark hair on the forearm, a normal-looking hand with healthily pink fingernails. As they watched, the arm reached down and picked up a pen sitting on an adjacent desk, held it between the thumb and fingers, and began to “write” in midair.

“It’s amazing,” Paul said. “It looks so-so real.”

“It took three months of work just to get the mechanics down to pick up a pen,” Masters said proudly. “Almost two years of research and development. It contains over three hundred individual microhydraulic actuators ranging in size from twenty-five millimeters in diameter to less than two millimeters. The joints and fittings-the artificial cartilage and tendons-are fibersteel. The arm, hand, and fingers have a much greater range of motion than normal appendages, but it would take a conscious act to make it perform unnaturally. Same with physical strength. The actuators are hydraulic, so they’re many times more powerful than human muscles, but we didn’t design the system to give you superhuman strength.”

Masters went on with more of the arm’s features until he realized Paul was staring into space. He shut off the TV, rewound his tape, took it out of the VCR, and put it back in his briefcase. “Maybe you want to think about it some more,” he said, nodding to the technician to wind up his adjustments. “Give me a call when you’re ready to talk. See you later.”

When they were gone, the two brothers sat in silence. Patrick saw the tears in Paul’s eyes. “It’s going to be all right, bro,” he said.

“What is happening to me?” Paul asked, his electronically synthesized voice a startling reflection of the sadness in his heart. “I don’t feel human anymore.” He looked at his older brother and added, “And you… you don’t feel human either. What is happening to us?”

“Paul, all you have to worry about is getting well,” Patrick said. “Everything else is…”

“Don’t give me that bullshit, Patrick!” Paul exploded. “You’ve been treating me like your kid brother for too long now. You don’t have to protect me or spare me any grief. You told me everything was going to be okay when Dad died; you told me everything was going to be okay when you left Sacramento and I hardly ever saw you again; and I get my arm and my throat shot to shit and you’re still telling me everything’s going to be okay. Everything is still a secret with you, Patrick. I can feel the pain you’re feeling, bro, but you’re still shutting me out.”

His face turned dark. “I am turning out to be the thing I most hate, Patrick. I am turning into a machine! I have lasers for vocal cords, microchips for a larynx, and now Jon wants to give me hydraulic actuators for muscles and fibersteel for bones. I am turning into the thing I hate most in the world.”

He scanned Patrick’s face with a strange mixture of sadness and pity, and went on: “But the worst part, bro, is that I feel like I’m in danger of turning into you. I feel like my soul is being replaced by a machine. And the only thing I get from you is, ‘Don’t worry. Accept it. Everything will be all right.’

“I’m scared, dammit! I’m scared because I’m turning into a damned contraption, a collection of composites and microchips, and when I reach out to you for support and guidance and love, all I sense is another machine, an even more terrible machine, sucking me down even more.” He stopped, waiting for his brother to speak, but there was only silence. “Talk to me, goddamn you! Talk to me or get the hell out.”

“Paul, I can’t talk about it,” Patrick said. “It’s all…”

“Don’t tell me ‘It’s classified’ or ‘It’s top-secret’ or any of that nonsense,” Paul shot back. “Something is driving us apart. We want to be together, connected, supportive, but we can’t. We’re both hurting. I know what hurt me, Patrick. What in hell has hurt you?” He closed his eyes, fiercely trying to establish the psychic connection that had once bound the brothers tightly together through vast differences in time and distance. Then he shook his head in resignation. “All I get from you is a ghost, Patrick, a gray ghost. Talk to me, Patrick! What happened? What’s going on?”

There was still no reply. Paul threw his head back on the pillow. “God, first my real family splits up; and then my new family, the police department, kicks me out. Now you’re pushing me away. Happy fucking New Year!”

It would have felt so good, Patrick thought, so right, to tell Paul everything. Not only about bugging the SID offices, or trying to find Mullins in the Bobby John Club, or about his failure with the Ultimate Soldier project. Everything, going way back: starting with Brad Elliott and Dreamland, the secret bombing missions, the top-secret projects, all the times the world almost went to war and his role in preventing it.

But most of all, he wanted to tell Paul about the people, all those souls he’d encountered, good and bad, over