A Woman a Day

  “I’ll tell Mrs. Palsson.”

  “Do so at once,” said Leif. “I’ll take care of Mrs. Dannto from here on. You’re through with the case.” Despairingly, Trausti said, “But she’s dead!”

  “Perhaps. Close the door as you go out.”

  Leif pulled the sheet back all the way to expose the naked and broken form of Halla Dannto. He sank his index finger in the wound on her solar plexus. It sank full length without resistance. That wound alone was enough to have killed her instantly.

  Both Trausti and Palsson had seen her. What would they think? More important, what would they do, when they heard that Mrs. Dannto was convalescing from nothing more serious than a few broken bones, a slightly gashed solar plexus, and shock?

  He cursed the Cold War Corps and its cell idea, where one man often hadn’t the slightest hint of the overall plan and worked in the dark to carry out his particular segment. Here he was, a colonel of the March Republic CWC, originator of the plot that would probably send the Haijac Union to oblivion. And yet he wasn’t allowed to catch more than a glimmering of the workings of his own campaign!

  It was the price he must pay for working in the enemy’s midst. If he’d allowed the brass to put him behind a desk down in Marscy, he could have seen the war as a whole; he’d been directing it. But since he insisted he wanted to work in Paris, where the danger was, he’d been sent there. Youthful folly! That was twelve years ago. He’d been twenty-two and had just been handed his surgeon’s license and a second lieutenant’s buttons. Now, big-bottomed fourstars with not half his brains were telling him what to do! Those modest thoughts raced through his head as he ran his hands over the once firm and vibrant flesh. Trausti was right. The X-ray had indicated something very strange, something that might or might not be connected with Project Moth and Rust. He suspected it was. Whether or not it was, he meant to find out what the foreign objects in her body were.

  Two knocks sounded at the door. A pause. Three knocks.

  Ava.

  He opened the door. Ava entered the room. Ava was short and dark-haired and clad in a white uniform with a white collar and a skirt that fell to the ankles. Ava had long wavy hair which was braided and coiled on top of the head and eyes so large, liquid and soft they looked as if a speck of dust lighting on them would sink into their depths.

  Ava said, in a husky voice, “What’s going on, Leif?”

  He told her what had happened.

  Ava said, “What do you intend to do with her body?”

  “I’d like to find out what the CWC is doing behind our backs,” he said. “That is, if it is the CWC that’s doing this.”

  “You misunderstand me,” said Ava. “Should you be dissecting her now? You said the orders were to cremate her body as fast as possible, and no questions asked.”

  He shrugged and said, “As a surgeon, I’d give my coccyx to see what those growths really are.”

  “You’ll lose more than your coccyx if the Jacks find out who you are. Or, for that matter, if General Itskowitz finds out you’re not following orders.”

  He laughed big and booming.

  “Little watchdog, I do believe you’d turn me in to him. My own wife.”

  “Cut it,” Ava said. “We’re wasting time.”

  “You’re right.” Leif covered the corpse again but the cloth fell around her curves to reveal a shape obviously feminine. He was forced to turn her on her side and throw another sheet from the bed over her, crumpling it somewhat to hide the form beneath it as much as he could.

  “Our problem is to get her down to the PM without anybody knowing whose corpse it is,” he said. “Anyone die on this floor recently?”

  Ava nodded.

  Leif said, “Don’t use the QB. You’d better go to the desk and look through the book yourself. If you call to ask about recent deaths, somebody might get suspicious.” Ava nodded and left the room. Leif took out his pliers, which had a screwdriver on one end, and unscrewed the

  QB box. It took his practised hand only a moment to loosen the wire and make the box inoperative. He didn’t want anybody to be able to look into the room and see what was going on.

  Chapter 5

  THE YEAR WAS 245 A.R. (After the Revelation) or, in the old chronology, 2700 A.D. It was exactly six hundred and forty years since three-fourths of mankind on Earth had been wiped out during the brief, undeclared war with the rebelling Martian colony. The Earthmen on Mars, who thought of themselves as Martians, had secretly introduced a laboratory-bred virus among Earthmen. This virus caused a virulent form of sickle-cell anemia which in three months had killed six billion people. By good luck or because of unknown factors, the only comparatively large communities left on Earth were in Iceland, Israel, Australia, Hawaii, the Caucasian mountains of Russia, the Indonesian islands, and central Africa. Within a century the descendants of the surviving communities had exploded outwards, seizing all the relatively uninhabited territory and absorbing the local population.

  Isaac Sigmen was born in 2455 A.D. in Montreal, Canada, of an Icelandic father and an American-Caucasian mother. In 1 A.R. he announced the revelation of a scientifically provable religion and his own ability to travel in time. Though mocked and persecuted at first, the Forerunner, as he titled himself, had established such a strong church in fifteen years that he eventually became head of the government of the Republic of America. The Republic included North and South America, the Pacific islands, and Japan, which had been colonized by Englishspeaking peoples from Hawaii and Australia. In another five years his religion had swept the Icelandic Republic, which included Iceland, England, Ireland, and all of northern Europe except the former country of Russia. Russia, Siberia, and northern China were colonized by Georgian-speaking peoples of the nation of the Caucasic

  Federation. In another two years, the Caucasian Federation was converted to Sigmen’s religion. The Haijac Union (from Hawaii, Australia, Iceland, Japan, America, and Caucasia) was formed.

  The other large nations of Earth were the Malay Democracy (Indonesia, India, southeastern Asia, southern China), Bantuland (Africa south of the Sahara Sea), and the Israeli Republic (the former Mediterranean nations and Asia Minor.)

  There was one comparatively small country, which had been formed only fifty years before Leif Barker’s death. This was March, so-called because for centuries it had been a neutral zone between the Israeli Republics and the European frontier of Iceland. Neither country had dared seize it because of retaliation, so the strip had been declared neutral while both negotiated for possession of it. The result had been that for several centuries those liberals who affronted the governments of either of the negotiating parties, criminals, and men v/ho had disliked the policies of their governments, had settled there. In time March came to assume the position Switzerland had once held, a neutral zone where nations could spy and intrigue against each other. Eventually, a government had been formed, and March declared itself an independent nation. March was composed of the former southern France, transalpine Italy, Switzerland, Austria, northern Yugoslavia, and southern Hungary. Its citizens, like those of old Switzerland, spoke four official tongues: English,

  Icelandic, Italic Hebrew, and Lingo, a strange and wonderful mélange of the first three.

  Doctor Leif Barker was typical of a citizen of March. His father was American-Israeli and his mother was Icelandic-Caucasian. He had been born and raised in the city of Marsey (once Marseilles) and earned his M.D. at the University of Ven (once Vienna).

  While at the university, he had conceived the plan for Project Moth and Rust. Fortunately, Leif Barker was able to get somebody high in the March government to listen to his plan and to put it into effect. His uncle was First Consul of the Department of Midi of the Free State of March, a position second only in power to the President. The plan had been initiated, and Leif, after proper training, was sent via the March underground to Paris. There, in the capital city of the West European Sector of the Haijac Union, in ancient Paris, he had worked his way up t
o Chief Surgeon of the Rigorous Mercy Hospital. And to major of the Cold War Corps of the Intelligence Branch of the Free State of March.

  Chapter 6

  By THE TIME Leif had screwed the QB box back on, Ava had returned. “We’re lucky,” Ava said. “A man named Helgi Ingolf died ten minutes ago in 121.”

  “Does he go to PM?”

  “Yes. He died raving and in a straitjacket, so Shant is going to do a head-post. He suspects a brain tumor.”

  “Good. Straitjacket? Ava, take that jacket off Ingolf. Bring it here. And while you’re in Ingolf’s room, call the floor above this and tell them our orderlies are busy and that you want two orderlies down here to wheel Ingolf’s body to PM. Take Ingolf’s tag from his toe—if there is a tag—and bring it here. I’ll tag Halla’s body with his.

  “You’re still carrying that stiletto in your well-padded bra, aren’t you? Carve a J.C. on Ingolf’s chest. We’re going to do a job of confusion again.”

  “J.C. again?” Ava said.

  “Shib. Hurry.”

  While Ava was gone, Leif examined Halla Dannto more closely. What he found this second time convinced him that he could not allow her body to go into the furnace without a thorough dissection.

  Ava returned with the straitjacket concealed under a blanket.

  “You’re using this so you can conceal the fact she’s a woman?”

  “You’re so clever, honeypot,” he murmured. “Though I doubt if we can really disguise her entirely. Would you be able to strap down the Himalayas?”

  “Leif, sometimes you’re revolting. Have you no respect for the dead?”

  “No,” he said. “If she were alive, she’d get every gram of respect that I’ve got. She’s all woman. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her equal, quick or not. Now, don’t get jealous, dear.”

  Ava sneered, and then both bent to their work.

  They strapped Halla down and covered her again with the sheet.

  “Still a woman. Well, turn her on her side again. And cover that foot so only the tag sticks out,” ordered Leif.

  “Listen, did you get the names of the two orderlies from 200? If they seem too curious, we’ll have to find a basis for unreal thinking on their part and turn them in to the Uzzites. Or arrange an ‘accident’ through Zack.

  “That reminds me. Trausti and Palsson saw the wound in her solar plexus. When her replacement gets here, they’re going to wonder about that.”

  “ Tsawah!”

  “Ah, ah, Ava. No Hebrew. Especially no bad words.”

  “What I said goes for you, too,” Ava said. “I’ll say they’re going to wonder! What’ll we do? We can’t accuse them of sabotage, for then they will talk. There’ve been too many accidents.”

  “What’ll we do with the drunken sailor?” hummed Leif.

  “Doesn’t it worry you?” said Ava.

  “Never worry about me worrying,” replied Leif. “I’m just big and happy-go-lucky. I don’t think they’ll talk. I put the fear of God in them, that is to say, of his earthly representative in Paris, Mrs. Dannto’s husband himself. They know something’s up, but they’re afraid of offending his nibs.”

  “Will it work?”

  “If it doesn’t,” he replied, “then—” He drew his rigid index finger across his throat.

  “Ava, here’s what we do. Those two orderlies will wheel her body to the PM. I’ll go along to make sure they note it’s Ingolf’s tag on the toe. I won’t let them handle the body, because they’d be sure to know it’s female. I’ll tell them to leave the cart in the PM, that Shant wants it that way because he’s got to move the body around for some unknown reasons of his own. They’ll believe that. Everybody thinks the pathologist’s a little unshib anyway. Then I’ll shove the body in the locker.”

  “Who’s unshib now?” Ava cried. “Your orders are to cremate her as fast as possible. And why are you going along instead of me? Won’t the orderlies think that’s peculiar?”

  “I’m going because I want to make sure she’s not cremated,” said Leif. “I couldn’t trust you not to bum her. I’m going to take Halla Dannto apart, and nobody’s going to stop me.

  “As for the orderlies, I’ll tell them Ingolf died of a brain growth, and I’m going to do a fast post. They’ll not question that. I am a cerebral surgeon, remember.”

  “Good God!” said Ava. “You’re jeopardizing twelve years’ work of the CWC just because of your damned curiosity.”

  “Possibly,” he said, half-shutting his eyes.”But I’ve always wormed our way out of jams in the past, haven’t I? And you wouldn’t turn your own husband in, would you?”

  “Damn right I would. I hate your guts!”

  “I love yours,” said Leif, laughing and slapping Ava playfully at the same time.

  Ava’s dark face became filled with hate. “You louse! You try that once again and I’ll slug you.”

  “Temper, temper, little one. How well it becomes you! And how seductive you look. Well, let’s go. Candleman might come here before we get rid of the body.”

  Ava forgot to be angry.

  “Candleman’s coming?”

  “Yes. If Halla’s replacement doesn’t get here soon, she may as well not show at all. And then how do we explain the cremation of Halla?”

  “They must have done a magnificent plastic job on her if she can fool Dannto,” said Ava. “Or maybe she’s a twin.”

  “Possibly,” said Leif. “What I’d like to know is how she could get here so fast. Do they have doubles on tap?”

  “Who knows?” shrugged Ava. “You’d better get Halla out of here.”

  Leif opened the door and looked out. Nobody in the hall.

  “Wheel her out,” he said.

  Just as Ava pushed the cart into the hall, two white-smocked men came around the corner. Leif beckoned to them.

  “Take Ingolfs body to the PM,” he said. “I’ll be down in a second to do a head-post, so I don’t want you to put him on the slab. Just leave him on the cart.”

  He didn’t think he should explain why. They were only orderlies; it would be acting out of his behavior pattern if he were to do so.

  When the two had shoved the cart into the service elevator, Leif said, “Ava, you get Halla’s replacement into bed as soon as she gets here. And if she comes while I’m still in the PM, call me. And tell the 100 orderlies to move Ingolfs body to the PM. I’ll take the tag off Halla’s toe so the 100 men won’t get any funny ideas if they see it.”

  “We’re quite the conspirators,” said Ava. “We’re getting so involved we’re bound to be tripped up.”

  “Act like you’re afraid of nobody,” said Leif. “That’ll get you out of any trouble in this country where everybody’s scared.”

  “Yes, but these people can tell if you’re afraid or not. They can’t smell fear on you, because you’ve got the guts of an angel—or a devil. And I, to be frank, am always sweating with fear.”

  “Ava, you talk too much. But that’s a common failing of women.”

  Ava looked furious. Leif laughed and walked down the hall to the elevator.

  Down in the basement, he met the orderlies as they came from the PM. “Everything shib?” he asked.

  “Shib, abba.”

  He said, “Wait a minute,” and he pulled a pack of Fruitful Times from his pocket.

  “I don’t smoke, of course,” he said, touching the lamech on his chest. “But I carry these for those who do.”

  They lit up, slightly ill-at-ease, yet pleased because he would take time out to talk with them. Leif discussed this and that with them, mainly the increasing rumors about the possibility of Timestop and the Forerunner’s return. Casually, he mentioned Ingolf and his interest in doing a head-post on him. He didn’t have to ask the orderlies their names, for he knew everybody in the huge hospital who had worked there longer than a week. By the time they’d left, he’d convinced them that he was a real man in all senses of the word. And he’d left no doubt in their minds that the body was
Ingolfs. If they were to be questioned later by the Uzzites, they’d swear to it.

  As soon as the orderlies were out of sight, Leif entered the PM. He locked the door, took the sheet off the body, untied the straitjacket and put the jacket in the cremator. Then he wheeled the cart to the slab and there rolled the body over onto the slab. After putting on a smock, face-mask, and surgeon’s gloves, he selected several scalpels and a pair of Mayo scissors from a rack. With the ease of long practice he made the incision in the corpse from the notch at the base of the neck to the pubic symphysis. He peeled the skin and muscles from the breastbone and ribs, and, after clipping the ribs free, he swung the whole up like a drawbridge.

  For a moment, before covering the face of the corpse with the ribs, he looked at her. Even in blue-grey death, the jaw hanging slackly, the face retained a certain beauty.

  He sighed because of the glory that was to be no more, thought of how this flesh had once been warm and pink, how this mouth had laughed and sung and kissed. Then, cursing himself because he had momentarily lost his professional objectivity, he lowered the ribs.

  Swiftly he cut through to his destination.

  He was enraptured by what he saw. No doubt of it! The object detected by the X-ray was no tumorous or cancerous growth; it was a well-organized body which had grown naturally in its present position.

  A well-organized body, he thought. For what purpose? And what did its presence indicate? That Halla was a mutated human being? Or that she was an extra-Terrestrial?

  Ever since Trausti had shown him the X-rays, Leif had had a theory that Halla Dannto was of non-Earth origin. It seemed to him a possibility that the Cold War Corps of March might have contacted hitherto unknown sapients on some just discovered interstellar planet, and were using them in the cold war against the Jacks. The CWC might be utilizing the sapients because they possessed powers or advantages Terrestrials did not have. And the strange organs of Halla were connected with these powers and advantages.