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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Alternate Plan, by Gerry Maddren
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Alternate Plan
+
+Author: Gerry Maddren
+
+Release Date: March 9, 2008 [EBook #24792]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ALTERNATE PLAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ALTERNATE PLAN
+
+By GERRY MADDREN
+
+
+ _The operation was a very serious one and Bart Neely
+ was willing to put himself into Dr. Morton's hands.
+ But if things turned out badly, Bart was going to
+ teach them a lesson. He was going to refuse to die._
+
+
+Bart Neely was fighting the hypo. They'd slipped that over on him. Now
+he had to struggle to keep his brain ready for plan B. The alternate
+plan. He nodded feebly at his reflection in the mirror over the white
+enamel dresser. This throat-trouble wasn't going to lick him. He lay
+back on the cool white pillow. Medical men always thought theirs was the
+final answer; well, psychologists like himself knew there was a broader
+view of man than the anatomical. There was a vast region of energy at
+man's disposal; the switch to turn it on, located in the brain.
+
+Rubber-soled shoes squished across the bare floor as Dr. Jonas Morton
+came into Bart's room. His hair was hidden by a sterile cap, his arms
+bare to well above the elbows.
+
+Looks like a damned butcher, thought Bart.
+
+"Bart, I want you to reconsider the anesthetic. I think you ought to be
+out for this one, completely out." The doctor's voice became a shade
+less professional. "I don't tell you how to run your perception
+experiments, I think you ought to let me judge what's best in the
+surgical area."
+
+"No," Bart whispered hoarsely. It was hell squeezing the words out.
+Lifting his voice these days was harder than lifting a half-ton truck.
+"Must be conscious, able to decide." Jonas had to lean down to catch all
+the words. "Not going to let you take my voice while I'm unconscious ...
+helpless ..."
+
+Dr. Morton shook his head. "You're the boss."
+
+"How soon?"
+
+"Twenty minutes." The professional tone became pronounced again. "Your
+wife's outside waiting to see you. Don't get emotional, I don't want
+your endocrine system in an uproar." The doctor stepped out into the
+corridor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Emotional. He mustn't think about it. He might weaken, consent to linger
+on, an invalid, just to be with Vivian a few extra years. Extra years of
+indignities calculated to twist the man-woman relationship into an ugly
+distortion. How romantic it would be, he and Vivian locked in an
+embrace, the silky softness of her hair falling across his arm, the
+pressure of her fingers on his back. And then, instead of placing his
+mouth against her ear and whispering the familiar intimacies, he would
+switch on the light, disengage himself so that he could whip out a pad
+and pencil and ...
+
+His heart skipped at the sound pattern of high heels on the corridor.
+Vivian, Vivian. Her perfume pricked his senses and it took effort to
+shut out the emotional response. "Remember the need for an alternate
+plan," he reminded himself fiercely and then looked up into his wife's
+clear green eyes. Without a word she bent down and lay her face next to
+his. He was struck with the warmth of her. He gently pushed her head
+away. "Vi." (My Lord, his eyes were wet ... what a schoolboy
+performance!) "Vi, you know I don't want to go on here ... if radical
+surgery is necessary. I want you to remember me as a whole man, not
+a ... dummy."
+
+"Bart, oh Bart." There was a frown of apprehension on her forehead. She
+sighed heavily and whispered, "Can it make so much difference when I
+love you Bart?"
+
+"But don't you see, Vi? It may not be Bart Neely they wheel back here
+after the operation." He motioned for her to bend closer for the sound
+of his voice was becoming weaker. "In my field I've seen a lot of crazy
+reactions to loss of basic ability. Personality reversals brought about
+by loss of hearing, impotency, or even the inability to bear a child."
+He stroked the back of her hand with his finger. "Bart Neely without a
+voice-box might be a stranger. I'm not sure you'd like him. I don't
+think I'd even like him."
+
+An intern backed into the room followed by a gurney. Bart shot a look at
+Vi. "This is plan A."
+
+Vi's eyebrows arched in a question.
+
+"Exploration and ..." he paused; the nurse tucked a dark gray blanket
+all around him. He raised his thin white hand and crossed two fingers ...
+"and we hope, a negative biopsy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was no pain. Whatever the anesthetist had worked out was doing
+nicely. The overhead light, however, was giving him a headache and the
+operating room was damned cold. Jonas and Holsclaw weren't talking
+much, and what they did say wasn't loud enough for Bart to get. He
+studied their faces. "I'll know by their faces," he assured himself,
+"and if it's widespread malignancy I'll proceed with plan B."
+
+The sweat was heavy on Jonas' forehead. The sterile mask hid his nose
+and mouth, but his eyes, behind the lenses of his glasses, looked moist
+and tired. The surgeon's gloved fingers manipulated, probed, cut.
+Finally, he turned to a waiting nurse.
+
+"Get this analyzed right away." That was it, the tissue ... was it
+cancerous or not? The atmosphere grew heavy. Bart watched the second
+hand on the large wall-clock swing slowly around its perimeter, and then
+around again and again. The nurse reentered and spoke softly to the
+doctor. The two doctors whispered, explaining to each other with hand
+motions what they were going to do.
+
+This is it. Bart was certain. Well, he'd fool the hell out of the
+know-it-all doctors. He closed his eyes and thought. The years he had
+spent sharpening his perception, his ability to transfer his thoughts,
+were just the groundwork for this greatest experiment of all. He had
+transferred thought waves in all forms to all corners of this world with
+the highest percentage of accuracy. Now Plan B, the alternate plan, was
+to transfer himself! He was willing himself out of his own body. He
+could feel the perspiration trickle down his arms with the effort. It
+had to work. He had to cheat them out of their mutilation. No, he
+couldn't fail. He strained against the confines of his body, burdening
+his brain with thought, and suddenly he was free. Bart wanted to shriek
+with laughter. He'd outwitted them. There stood gray-faced Jonas working
+over that shell, not even realizing that it was an empty body. It was
+like a television play or something; everyone clustered around a poor
+stiff on the operating table, repeating the litany of the saw-bones.
+"Scalpel ... sponge ... clamps ..."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bart mentally chuckled and fluttered himself upwards; above the
+square-shaped hospital with its rows of tiny windows. Beyond the
+polluted air of the city. Up and up, until there was nothing to look
+back on. Nothing.
+
+Now Bart perceived something ahead. It appeared to be a body of land. It
+looked marvelously appealing, dark greens, bright yellows, and all the
+shades in between. He hurried forward, eager to explore what lay ahead.
+But as he drew closer, becoming more excited over its possibilities, he
+struck a cold hard surface which repelled him. It was like glass and
+through it Bart could see a poorly defined figure some distance away.
+Bart was intrigued. This was a mental barrier thrown up by the fellow on
+the other side. Well, he'd give the guy some competition. Bart
+concentrated on cracking the wall, building a visual picture of the
+break-through in his mind.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It's useless. You can't enter here."
+
+"Why do you oppose me?" Bart tested the unseen wall, but found no
+weakness in its structure.
+
+"We don't care for your sort."
+
+"Is that so. And how have you classified me?"
+
+"As a coward. A suicide. A man of meager resources."
+
+"I'm nothing of the kind. In the first place, I did not commit suicide."
+Bart wished he could kick at the invisible wall. "I willed myself away
+from an imperfect shell. I severed the mind from the body."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because I had cancer of the larynx, and I'd never have been able to
+talk again. I'd be less than a man."
+
+"You are less than a man now." There was a long period of no exchange.
+Bart decided he had not made himself clear. "I didn't want to live
+without being able to communicate with other men and women."
+
+"Communicate. Communicate. There are a million ways to communicate.
+Michelangelo communicated, Bach, Beethoven, yes, Elvis Presley
+communicates. Hemingway, Martha Graham, actors, dancers, even a baby
+communicates!"
+
+"But speech ..."
+
+"Speech is the least dependable method of all. Few people can explain
+their love, their pain, their innermost feelings in words. And often a
+man speaks his thoughts, and having spoken them, finds he really thinks
+the opposite. No, this is second-rate expression and my opinion of you
+has not been altered by your feeble argument."
+
+The other fellow's thoughts came over the wall, pounding against Bart's
+sub-conscious. "You consider yourself a man of great intelligence," it
+went on, "but your lack of imagination makes you less than mediocre. And
+as for your mind-power, well, you see you cannot cross my mental
+barrier."
+
+"That's not entirely conclusive. There may be a catalyst here in this
+area which works in conjunction with your thought-processes and not
+mine. You're familiar with conditions here, while I only know the
+earth."
+
+"You are hardly a challenge to me. However, to satisfy you that you have
+practically no control, let us make a test on your home ground."
+
+"All right. You propose the test."
+
+"Let us see ... if you can re-enter your former body while I am willing
+you to stay here, on the other side of that wall."
+
+"Ahah. You're trying to trick me."
+
+"I knew before I proposed my plan you would make exactly that excuse in
+order to escape my challenge. Even in excuses you lacked imagination."
+
+"Okay, it's a deal." Bart was mad. "Start concentrating. I'll show you
+the power of my mind, both now and after I resume that shell." Bart was
+furious. He tried to leave the place by the wall. He seemed stuck. There
+were waves like laughter vibrating against the glass. Bart strained and
+saw that he had come away a little. He tried again and again. There was
+a little more distance gained. He tried to build the picture of the
+operating-room in his mind and while he was doing this a flash of Vivian
+exploded his mind. With that quick image, he felt himself free to drift
+downward.
+
+There indeed was the hospital. Bart hurried to the operating-room,
+hovering near the ceiling light, watching the operating team below.
+
+"He's gone, doctor." The anesthetist looked at Jonas. "Respiration's
+stopped altogether."
+
+_No_, thought Bart. _Don't close me out now._
+
+"Let's open the chest and massage the heart."
+
+_Yes. Yes._
+
+"I think it's futile, doctor."
+
+"We can try."
+
+_Good old Jonas._ Bart floated to the table and forced himself into the
+shell which lay white and unmoving under the penetrating light from
+above. It wasn't easy, Bart tried to move the heavy hand, but it was
+quite numb.
+
+"Not a thing. Might as well quit."
+
+_Holsclaw's in a hurry. Damn him._
+
+"I'll massage a little longer."
+
+Bart pushed at the leaden eyelid. No go. _Come on, come on._ He felt a
+convulsive chill, a throbbing in his head.
+
+"I'm getting a pulse." Jonas' voice was excited.
+
+Bart knew there was a searing pain in his throat, but shutting it out of
+his consciousness was the steady, thumping beat of his own heart.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    This etext was produced from _Amazing Science Fiction Stories_
+    September 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+    the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling
+    and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Alternate Plan, by Gerry Maddren
+
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