Chapter 1
Well, well,” said Heller as we flew in. “Pausch Hills suburbs. An improvement over the operating rooms of Spiteos.”
Ske was taking a low approach to the Widow Tayl’s estate. “Oh, yes, indeed. I knew what I was doing when I persuaded you. You were very wise to come along. Everything will be just lovely. Nothing but the best.” And I pointed out the sign on the gate:
SACRED MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
PRESERVED IN MEMORY
OF MY BELOVED HUSBAND
Too bad, I thought to myself, that we can’t bury you the same way. “A specialist doctor, the top of his profession, will take wonderful care of you.” You crew-corrupting (bleepard). I smiled. We landed. “Well, here we are and out you get.”
Prahd was standing way over outside the miniature hospital door. He had a surgical, aseptic mask on. He was holding a glittering pair of forceps in his hand. The sun flashed on the polished metal as he opened and closed them.
Heller jumped down out of the airbus. He took a deep breath of the fragrant, blossom-laden air and stretched. Then he started across the lawn and past the swimming bath toward Bittlestiffender. I could hardly contain my glee: he had taken the bait; I had him!
Over under the blossoming trees, I had not seen the Widow Tayl. She was standing there in the shadows. She had not moved forward. She was just standing there. Her mouth was half open, her eyes round. She was holding one hand to her breast as though finding it hard to breathe. I thought to myself that she was, unfortunately, really developing a case on me. Adoration fixation, they call it: the inexplicable attraction of the female for a virile and handsome male. I regretted having this effect on women at the moment. I had other business in mind. I hastened to keep up with Heller.
“Dr. Bittlestiffender,” I said. “Here is your . . . patient.” I had almost said “meat.”
I had already briefed young Dr. Prahd Bittlestiffender. But he was a little nervous. Why not? He thought his world would collapse if he failed with this case. He nodded, snap-snipping the instrument in his hand convulsively. He led the way hurriedly inside. Heller took a brief tour around the room. “Well, well. All the latest and the newest.”
“Now, if you will just remove your clothes and lie down on this operating table,” said young Dr. Prahd, “we can get on with it.”
“I hope so,” said Heller. “I’ve got a lot of things to do at the ship. We’re sailing very soon, so . . .”
His ignorance of espionage and security was awful! He’d be telling Bittlestiffender his life history and right name next! I cut him off. “Then the sooner you do what the doctor says, the quicker it will be over.”
Heller kicked off his shoes and peeled. He lay down on the operating table.
“Hm,” said the young Dr. Prahd, “you are certainly extremely well built. And equipped.”
It startled me. I glanced to see if there was amour in this young doctor’s eyes. But there wasn’t. He was just being matter-of-fact professional. And it was true, unfortunately, what he said of Heller. He was a very muscular, well-proportioned athlete and he was very well equipped. I realized Prahd was building patient empathy. Then I realized the compliment had made me a little cross. Other people are well built and equipped, too. Well, not really.
“Doctor,” I said, “I want to call your attention to certain deadly identifying marks. Quite disfiguring. And a total catastrophe in our line of work.”
Prahd was looking and looking. He couldn’t see any. And the dumb (bleepard) was about to say so when I firmly pointed at the tiny white scar Lombar’s paralysis dagger had made. “That,” I said, leaving no room for dispute, “must be taken care of!”
I pointed at the end of the right eyebrow. “And there is the dead giveaway. Stands out like a glaring boil!”
Young Dr. Prahd peered and peered and finally saw the faint scar tissue. He shocked me by saying, “He certainly heals well. It would take a magnifying . . .”
“That,” I said hurriedly—my Gods, this doctor was stupid, for I had drilled him well—“is the remains of a bone-deep wound. It was the result of a skull-shattering blow from a primitive stone arrowhead!”
Prahd blinked. “A stone arrowhead?” Then both he and Heller had no better sense, at this crucial moment, than to laugh. Heller told the story to him. It seemed they weren’t even fighting the primitives and Heller had been curious as to how they held their stockade wall up—it seemed to be floating two feet off the ground—and, as a precaution as he approached it, had drawn his blastgun and a little kid had shot him with a stone-headed arrow. For the life of me, I couldn’t see what was so funny about it. Further, I judged he must tell the story differently every time he had a new audience. It didn’t make sense. If he had a blastgun in his hand, he could easily have killed the little kid first. So he was lying.
But before I could get this silly situation under control, young Dr. Prahd had picked up a machine that had a viewplate and was putting it under Heller’s head. Prahd looked at the screen. I looked at the screen. I couldn’t see anything but the outline of some skull bones.
Then young Dr. Prahd said, “Well, I’ll be blasted! Was this treated?”
Heller shrugged. “Wasn’t much to treat. We mostly laughed about it. The doctor just put some tape on it.”
“Ah,” said young Dr. Prahd. “He should have been sent before the doctor’s review board!” He was very serious.
Heller had stopped laughing.
Young Dr. Prahd put his finger just in toward the eyebrow on the wound. “Does that hurt?”
“Ouch,” said Heller.
“I thought so!” Prahd drew an X on the spot with a purple pen. He drew back and turned the machine off and put it on another bench. Then he stood back and shook his head at Heller. “Had that doctor taken the proper steps, he would have seen what I just saw!”
I gaped. I hadn’t seen anything on the screen.
Young Dr. Prahd looked grave. “My dear fellow, I don’t like to tell you this. Now don’t be unduly alarmed for you are in competent hands. But in another two years at the outside, had it not come to my attention, the creeping penetration syndrome would have resulted in prefrontal lobe incision with the usual consequences of internal cerebral shield suppuration.”
What the Hells was this stupid doctor up to?
“Hey,” said Heller, “physical doctoring is not in my line. You’ll have to put that in plain Voltarian.”
Prahd took Heller’s hand in his own in a comforting gesture. “I have to tell you—now don’t leap up and run away—that the tip of that stone arrowhead is still in there!”
I finally got it! Wow, this young Dr. Prahd was a very sharp boy. No wonder the older practitioners didn’t want him around as competition! A real con artist! Worthy of the finest traditions of the Apparatus!
“Hold it,” said Heller. “I haven’t got time to let you fool around with that now! I’ve got to get going on a mission!”
Young Dr. Prahd said, “Mission physical clearance refused. Officer Gris, please inform your superiors that said subject cannot be certified for physical readiness.”
“Why?” demanded Heller, trying to sit up.
Prahd said, “If the inevitable consequences of a foreign body gradually eating its way into the brain were to occur after I passed you, resulting in mission failure as it would, the Board of Examiners could revoke my certificates. So, I cannot pass you. You cannot go.”
Thank heavens, Krak had already worked on him. Heller started to get mad. “You don’t understand! I’ve got to complete this mission!”
Prahd was just putting his tools away.
“How long would it take to remove it?” demanded Heller.
Prahd shrugged. “It’s not a big job, even if it is vital. Two hours. Another four or five to recover from the anesthesia.”
“Oh, no,” said Heller. “I promised . . . well, I promised somebody not to let myself be put under around . . . around certain people.”
“Oh, Jet,”
I said. “Don’t you trust your friends?” But I had thought of all this. I knew that Krak would have a fit if she found Heller had been put into a general anesthesia. She had feared somebody would really cut him up or maybe do a hypnotic implant. I had worked it all out.
I picked up a case from a table from right where I had left it. I handed it to Heller. “That is a security recorder. Lockable. I give it to you. You set your own combination on it. You lock it to your own wrist. Nobody can interfere with it or change it but you. It will start recording. It will keep right on recording until you wake up. It will take both sound and picture of what is happening. Examine it.”
He did so. There were no tricks in it. The metal case was totally impenetrable once it was locked. Only he would know the numbers and be able to open it and get at the recording strip.
Heller sighed. In a weary voice, he said, “Which wrist do I put it on?”
I had won! I had won! But I preserved my grave mien. “Left wrist, as the doctor will be working on the right side. We can lay your hand on this little wheeltable and it will just sit there and record everything. Then you, at your leisure, can review it.” I knew the Countess Krak would review it!
He thought of some numbers, committed them silently to memory, set the lock, put it on his wrist and laid his hand and the recorder on the table. He adjusted the position so it would show what was happening.
The recorder was running. I said to Prahd, “I feel a little queasy. Have you got something?”
He handed me a pill.
Heller was watching in a rather bored way as the doctor began to get out knives and forceps and probes and wheel things about.
Prahd was chattering along soothingly. “It’s the small things in life that are annoying. You would just never think that a tiny bit of stone could do much real damage.” Etc., etc. On and on.
Finally Prahd wheeled a portable anesthetic gas machine into place. He said to me, “Could you hold this?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “The sight of blood makes me quite ill lately for some reason.”
Prahd shrugged, turned up the oxygen and turned on the sleep gas. He put the mask over the other part of Heller’s face. Heller began to inhale it. The needle on a meter clamped to the back of Heller’s skull registered Unconscious.
The young doctor picked up a scalpel.
I said, suddenly, “Oh, my Gods, I’m going to be sick at my stomach!”
I rushed headlong from the room, making heaving sounds.
Still groaning, I paused in the hall and letting the heaving sounds diminish gradually, reached down and pulled the string I had planted there yesterday. It pulled the wheeltable on which the recorder was resting back just enough to let the hand and wrist fall off, as though naturally, and drop below sight level of the bed. It would look as if he had moved his own arm. The recorder would now have sound but only the side of the bed for a picture.
I let my groaning die out in volume further as I tiptoed outside.
I had him! Of course, it wasn’t as good as just plain doing a prefrontal lobotomy, the one the Earth psychiatrists favor; they push a common ice pick up under the eyelids and slash the prefrontal lobes of the brain to hamburger and if the patient does not die at once, he lives on as a vegetable and dies in any case from within two to five years. A highly practical solution to psychosis. But the thought of the Countess Krak restrained me. She would notice.
It is one of the trials of life that one can’t have everything one wants. Still, I could do with what I had. With those optical and aural bugs in place, I would know everything Heller was doing and could block him. He now could not escape me. He was going to be totally at my mercy. Thinking of all the horrible things I had suffered at his hands, I sank into a pleasant euphoria. Justice was about to be done.
PART ELEVEN
Chapter 2
A hand was tugging at my sleeve. It was the Widow Tayl. I came out of my reverie. She was pointing in the direction of a little summerhouse some distance away in the trees.
“There’s something I must show you,” she whispered.
It was all going quietly in the hospital. I could now and then hear a machine move. Two hours, Prahd had said. It would be a long time yet.
Wondering at this power I had over women, I followed the Widow Tayl. I really had no illusions as to what she wanted to show me in the summerhouse.
It was a very pleasant structure, surrounded by flowering trees which drenched the air with perfume. It consisted mainly of a roof and a big, soft pad of bright yellow. A tinkle of music, soft and persuasive, came from the top peak of the ceiling, below which hung an ornate, painted glowplate. It was a secluded spot, safe from prying eyes, ideal for an interchange of secrets and other things.
“WHO was that?” She was still whispering.
I looked at her as she leaned a hand against a pillar. Her mouth was a bit slack, her eyes a trifle glazed. She was having trouble breathing. I looked at her face. I was quite surprised: the warts were gone, only a slight redness remained in the areas where they had been. Her face was quite pretty, really. I looked at her breasts: under her silken robe they were now firm and upright, no longer sagging.
I looked her up and down. I began to feel excited. I walked over to the pad and lay down, smiling at her invitingly. I became aroused, which I had never been before with her.
I expected her as usual to tear and rip at my clothes. She came over to the pad, moving slowly as though in a daze. Still robed, she lay upon it, three feet away from me. On her back and looking dreamily at the ceiling, she put her hands behind her head.
Her eyes, luminous as always, began to grow opaque. Her breath began to quicken. “When I first saw him,” she whispered, “I thought he was some woods God. So strong, so powerful.”
The lamp in the ceiling began to swing and the music took on a throb. “He stepped out of the airbus so smoothly . . . so smoothly . . . so smoothly. . . .”
A huge multipetaled blossom by the door seemed to get larger. “Oh. Oh. Oh. OH!” cried Pratia and the blossom burst like an explosion!
I lay there, fully clothed, propped on my elbow, staring. What the Hells was going on? She wasn’t even touching me!
Her slack mouth panted for a moment. Her eyes began to roll back. “Then he stretched and began to walk.”
A bird peered in, curious. “His feet barely touched the ground,” crooned Pratia. The lamp was swinging as the music reached crescendo. “His toes caressed . . . caressed . . . caressed . . .
“Oh. Oh. Oh. OH!” she cried as her slippers flew up in the air.
I began to frown. I was just lying there unmolested. It puzzled me.
Some birds lit quietly in a nearby tree and her breathing slowed to normal. The music was sedate again.
The lamp was still. “And then he walked past the swimming bath. . . .” The lamp began to swing.
The bird was watching intently. “. . . and his shadow fell across my favorite place . . . favorite place . . . favorite place.
“Oh. Oh. Oh. OH!” she cried as the flock of birds, startled, flew away.
I was beginning to get a bit upset as I looked at her.
The two of us were lying on the pad a yard apart. Her hands were still behind her head. She was breathing a bit hard but it was quieting down. “And then,” she began to whisper at the ceiling, “he stopped and with a heavenly motion he removed . . .”
The bird was really getting intent. “. . . little red cap . . . little red cap . . . little red cap . . .”
Once more the ceiling lamp was swinging and the music was speeding up. “. . . and he put it in . . . he put it in . . . he put it in . . .
“Oh. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!” she cried and the bird flew frantically away.
The lamp exploded into fragments!
Red cap? Lying there, the vision of him and his red cap washed over me.
Hey! This (bleep) was thinking about Heller!
And there I was, completely available, not even being talked to, muc
h less touched!
Oh, it made me angry!
I pushed her aside in disgust. That would show her. I stalked out of the summerhouse. She couldn’t trifle with me this way!
Behind me I heard her starting again. “And then he put it in his pocket. And he stood there a moment and as he started to go in . . . to go in . . . to go in . . .”
I waited to hear no more. I went over to the pool and sat down. Oh, I was cross, I can tell you.
But after a little while, I came out of it. The occasional clink in the hospital was restoring my good spirits. That filthy (bleepard) was getting his! And this was just one more injury he was paying for.