Suppose the arm worked. Even if somebody saw it, was that what he wanted? If they turned his head back on, what would he do? Demand his rights? Ted had undoubtedly disposed of that issue by now. The attendants were certainly under orders to slide him into a slot, no matter what he said. For his own good, y’know.
Despairing, he stopped his concentration, willed the muscles to go suddenly slack.
And was rewarded with an answering thump.
It had hit the table. It bloody well worked.
He waited. Nothing came to him in the blackness. No attendant came tapping in to correct the mistake.
He was probably alone. Where?
Not already in a slot, or else he wouldn’t be able to think clearly. On a medmon slab, then.
He tried to remember the arrangement. The access terminals were on both sides, mirroring the body. So maybe, if it stretched, the right hand could reach half the input switchings.
He concentrated and brought the arm up again. The hand probably worked; it would’ve been too much trouble to disconnect it while the arm stayed live. Remembering carefully, he lowered the arm, rotating it—
A thump. Someone approaching? No, too close. The arm had fallen.
Balance was going to be hard. He practiced rotating the arm without raising it. No way to know if he was successful, but some moves seemed correct, familiar, while others did not. He worked without feedback, trying to summon up the exact sensation of turning the arm. Dipping it to the side, over the edge. Working the fingers.
He stopped. If he hit the wrong control he could turn off the arm. Without external nerves, there was no way to tell if he was doing the right thing.
Pure gamble. If he had been able to, Nigel would have shrugged. What the hell.
He stabbed with straightened fingers. Nothing.
He fumbled and somehow knew through dull patterns that his fingers were striking the side of the slab. The knowledge came from below, some kind of holistic sensation from the thin nerve nets deep inside him. The body could not be wholly cut up into pieces; information spread, and the mute kidneys and liver and intestines knew in some dim way what went on outside.
A wan answering pressure told him that his fingers had closed on something, were squeezing it. He made the fingers turn.
Nothing happened. Not a knob, then. A button?
He stabbed down. In his sinus cavities he felt slight jolts. He must be smacking the slab hard, to do that. With no feedback there was no way to judge force. He stabbed; a jolt. Again. Again—
A cold tremor ran up his right calf. Pain flooded in. His leg was in spasm. It jerked on the slab, striking the medmon. The sudden rush of sensations startled him. In the heady surge he could hardly tell pain from pleasure.
The leg banged on the slab like a crazed animal. His autonomic system was trying to maintain body temperature by muscle spasms, sucking the energy out of the sugar left in the tissues. A standard reaction; that was one reason why he was shut down.
But he had activated a neural web, that was the point. He stabbed blindly with his fingers again.
A welling coldness in his midsection. Again.
More cold, now in the right foot. Again.
A prickly sensation on his lips, on his cheeks. But not full senses; he could not feel his chest or arms. He started to press another button and then stopped, thinking.
So far he had been lucky. He was opening the sensory nets. Most of his right side was transmitting external data. His leg was jerking less now as he brought it under control.
But if he hit the shutdown button for his right arm next, he was finished. He would lie there helpless until the technicians came back.
Nigel worked the arm back onto the slab. He made it shift awkwardly across his chest. His motor control must extend into his upper chest and shoulders to let him do this, but without any input from there he did not know how much he could make work.
He willed the muscles to lurch to the left. A strange impression of tilting came into him. A tension somewhere. Muscles straining, locked, clenched and reaching, a stretching—More—
A warm hardness on his cheek. His nose pressed against it but he had no sense of smell. The slab top. He had rolled himself partway over.
He felt a gathering, diffuse weariness. The arm muscles were broadcasting to the surrounding body their agony, fed by the buildup of exhausted sugar-bearing molecules.
No time to rest. The muscles would just have to keep working. He willed the arm to reach over the left side of the slab. He could feel nothing, but now he could make no fatal mistake.
He punched down at random, searching. A spike of pain shot through his left side. Behind it came biting cold. Slabs of muscle began shaking violently, sending rippling pain through his left side.
He stabbed down with fingers again. Light poured in on him. He had hit the optical nerve net. A gaudy, rich redness. He realized his eyes were still closed. He opened them. Yellow flooded in. He closed them against the glare and punched down again.
The crisp, chill hospital smell. Another stab.
Sound washed over him. A mechanical clanking, a distant buzz, the whir of air circulators. No voices.
He squinted. He was lying on a white slab, staring up at fluorescent lights. Now that he could see, he got back the rest of his nets quickly.
He reached up toward his neck—and his hand went the other way. He stopped it, moved the fingers tentatively. His arm was coming from above his head, reaching down … but that was impossible. He moved the other arm. It came into his vision the same way, from above.
Something was wrong with him. He closed his eyes. What could make …?
He rolled over partway and looked around the medmon bay. The sign on the door leaped out at him. It was upside down. He reached out, clutched the edge of the slab. It was upside down, too.
That was it. When the eye took light and cast it on the retina, ordinary optics inverted the image. The retinal nerves filtered that signal and set it upright for the brain.
