I stared.
The sliver he had cut off was lead!
"Sultan," he said in a low and menacing voice, "that bar is just lead painted with gilt paint! Are you trying to put us off?"
I couldn't believe it!
I checked it myself. Just lead with a coat of gilt paint on it.
The creditors instantly started grabbing rugs out of the house!
"Wait! Wait!" I cried.
I struggled back to my secret room.
I began to open boxes and lift out bars. Nine cases. Seventeen more fifty-pound bars. Eight hundred and fifty more pounds of lifting. A frantic knife cutting slivers!
They were all lead with a gilt coat of paint! But it had been real gold before I had left for New York! I had checked it!
Aching and battered, the bandages on my hands coming apart, I regained the lawn.
Not only did they have piles of rugs and furniture stacking up, they were now also herding the domestic staff out. They began to put ankle cuffs on them and connect them together on a long chain. One hulking brute cried, "They'll bring a good price in the slave markets of Arabia!"
"Wait! Wait!" I begged. "I will pay you! It's just that I have a slight headache."
The taxi driver was still there. I leaped into his cab. I would still save the old homestead. "Mudlick Construction Company!" I cried, "And to Hells with the camels!"
At great cost to my bruises from the bumps, we went careening back to Afyon. With screaming brakes we skidded to a stop at Mudlick.
I rushed in. The manager said, "I've been expecting you." He went right over to the safe, opened it and took out stacks of U.S. dollar bank notes. It was really painful to see those going into a sack and know I would never be able to caress them.
A quarter of a million dollars! My half of the kickback on that construction cost. I signed the receipt.
We went tearing back to the villa.
In agony from the bumps, I got out of the smoking taxi.
I stalked into the yard.
They had waited. The rugs were still piled up. The staff, in leg irons, was still standing there.
Triumphantly, I threw the sack of bank notes at them.
They all tore it apart and began to count it.
Then the Dunner's Club man cried, "There's only a quarter of a million dollars here!" He turned his back on it. He got a piece of paper from an aide. He waved it. "Here is my order for foreclosure! Get a padlock on those gates!"
"Wait! Wait!" I screamed. "I will pay! I will pay!" Ye Gods, how much were those bills?
I turned to the taxi again. "To Faht Bey's office!" I would save the old homestead in spite of Hells!
With engine roaring and my bruises shrieking, we braked in front of the International Agricultural Training Center for Peasants. I went reeling into the Base Commander's office.
Faht Bey looked at me. "I've been expecting you," he said, a deadly look on his fat face.
"Give me a million dollars!" I said.
"Can't do it!" he said.
I was astonished. "Look," I said. "I started this hospital project. You have two hundred gangsters coming in here to get their faces remodelled. At $100,000 each, that's $20,000,000! The buildings only cost a million. You got $19,000,000 clear! What do you mean, you can't? Look at that profit!"
"Little enough to compensate for all the damage you do. Besides, the demand for drugs from Lombar Hisst is out of sight in tonnage. We're barely making both ends meet."
"I'm in trouble!" I wailed.
"When weren't you?" said Faht Bey. "But I have a proposition for you. If you will agree to certain terms, you can have a quarter of a million."
"The terms?" I begged.
"When the credit card bills began to come in, I made up my mind and wrote it all out for you to sign. Here it is."
I read it:
I, Soltan Gris, hereby swear and affirm to stop grafting, chiselling and embezzling monies from the Earth Base Treasury. I will demand not one more cent after this final payoff and I will absolutely undertake to place no more contracts for construction so I can get a kickback from the contractors as I have been doing.
Sign, Sworn, Attested, Witnessed.
I was desperate. But this was horrible!
Faht Bey said, "If you refuse to sign it, I will simply let those credit card people tear you to pieces."
He had the quarter of a million in stacks, right there.
I signed! He got his wife and the security guard to witness it.
Stuffing the packets of bank notes in a handy sack, I regained the cab. We went scorching back to the villa.
I staggered out of the taxi. I made my way to the waiting mob. I flung the bag at them.
They pounced on it. They tore it apart. They counted it.
"Aha!" said the American Oppress man. "He has covered the first month of bills!"
They agreed. They got the shackles off the staff. They brushed them off. They put the rugs and furniture back in place.
I was reeling. I had saved the old homestead. But at what a terrible sacrifice! And it and I would both be swept away again in just a few weeks when the rest of the bills came in!
But that wasn't what caused me to collapse.
When they had everything in order again, the whole mob came over to me. They were fawning.
"Ah, Sultan Bey," said Dunner's Club. "I speak for all of us. You have met your first month's bills. You have proven your credit beyond any doubt. We are waiving any limit we thought we might have to impose. Feel free to charge whatever you like, any amount you like, anywhere in the whole world!"
The others raised a cheer.
What an awful, awful sentiment!
I fainted dead away!
Chapter 3
I came to, lying in the yard, right where I had collapsed. The staff had pretty well cleaned things up. They were walking around, even stepping over me.
I became afraid they would sweep me into one of their trash bags. I was far too weak to resist.
Suddenly, I recognized how really sick I was. I knew I had to get to the hospital while I still had the ability to move somewhat.
The taxi driver wasn't there.
An old Chevy station wagon was in the yard. I crawled over to it on my hands and knees. They used to keep a spare key under the mat. With enormous strain, I lifted up the corner of the floor covering.
The key!
I hauled myself up by the steering column. I somehow got under the wheel.
It started!
Oh, Gods, if I could just hold out until I got to the hospital!
A camel driver saw me coming. I was driving awfully slow. He saw who was behind the wheel. He got his beasts off the road quick. Lucky for me: the camels might have attacked me.
Going five miles an hour, concentrating on every yard of advance, I finally saw the sign ahead:
WORLD UNITED CHARITIES
MERCY AND BENEVOLENT
HOSPITAL
It looked much bigger. The warehouses were up and a new wing had been added.
I was distracted by the fact that it was all landscaped! A couple of peasant women were doing winter trim on rose bushes. They screamed at me when a wheel inadvertently went off the drive slightly and made a furrow in their lawn. I couldn't understand the commotion: cold weather had turned the grass brown.
Distracted, I hadn't seen a little Fiat move around me and sneak into the parking place toward which I was headed. It was bright red and at the last instant I saw that it was opening its door.
CRASH!
The door hit the side of the Chevy.
The curb stopped me. I somehow managed to shut off the ignition.
Somebody was getting out of the Fiat. A voice! "What in the name of Allah are you doing, you crosseyed camel! My car, my poor car!" In the rearview side mirror, somebody was bending down stroking at a dent. That somebody promptly stood up and came storming to the side of the Chevy. "My new Fiat! You wrecked my brand-new Fiat!"
It was Nurse
Bildirjin!
She was alongside my door. She looked. She saw who it was! Fury contorted her face! "So you're back, you (bleepard)!"
It wasn't a very friendly welcome to the portals of Mercy and Benevolence even if its principal business was the altering of the I.D. of gangsters.
"I'm dying," I managed to get out.
"Really?" she said. It changed her whole demeanor. "You wouldn't fool me, would you?" She turned and ran like the quail she was named after, straight into the hospital yelling gaily, "Hey, Doc! You got to come out! Sultan is outside actually dying! Hurray, hurray!"
It did produce a certain commotion. A lot of women with children rushed from the waiting room and formed a staring ring, laughing and chattering excitedly.
At length, Dr. Prahd Bittlestiffender pushed his way through the cheering throng. He was followed by a couple of orderlies pushing a cart with a corpse bag on it.
"Cadavers are usually delivered at the mortuary entrance," said Prahd in reproof. "Can't you drive around there?"
"I'm too weak," I said sadly. "Doctor, just this once, be kind. You've got to help me. I am a survivor of the battle of New York. I am a victim of red pepper, Miss Agnes, mustard, truncheons, taxi cabs and snakes. I have crawled back home with final last words: Cancel my credit cards before the U.S. Army Signal Corps finds Bury!"
"Oh, I don't think we need to go to the expense of burying you. But speaking of credit cards, when does my pay start?"
"Must we talk about money?" I wept. "Please help me, Doctor. I am in agony!"
Prahd had them stuff me in the corpse bag and soon we were in his operating room. He pushed the male attendants out and bolted the door.
It was with shock that I realized I was alone with Prahd and Nurse Bildirjin!
In a very businesslike fashion, they stripped off my clothes. They laid me out on an operating table. Nurse Bildirjin busied herself with strapping down my wrists and ankles. It was all too reminiscent of recent traumatic experiences.
"What are you going to do?" I begged. "No gas! Don't put me out."
"Relax," said Prahd. "We are simply here in our professional capacity." He was looking at me. "My, my, what a mess!"
Nurse Bildirjin said hopefully, "What were you in? A train wreck combined with an airplane crash? All cut and black and blue. Doc, maybe he wandered into a sausage factory and they mistook him properly for a pig."
"What are these pits on your stomach?" said Prahd. "The ones with the black bits at the bottom?"
I looked down at my stomach. "Powder grains," I said. "Black powder."
"Well, well," said Prahd. "Very uncosmetic. They will have to come out. Get on it, Nurse Bildirjin, if you please."
"Really?" she said with delight. "Isn't that surgical, doctor?"
"No, no," said Prahd. "Very minor compared to the rest of this."
She efficiently got some instruments and a pan and began to take out the first black grain.
YOW!
"Now, the rest of this is more important," said Prahd. He began to pass a scope over my body. "Hah! Three cracked ribs. One chipped pelvis bone. Numerous blood blisters..."
He was taking notes. Nurse Bildirjin had some huge pliers. "I think this will be faster!" She dug in and closed them.
YEEE-OW!
"That's one. Now for the next."
"How many are there?" said Prahd.
"Oh, maybe two or three hundred," said Nurse Bildirjin.
"Do you have to make such big holes?" I screamed.
"Oh, yes," she said. "I might leave some. Very unsightly." She was digging for the next one. My Gods, this was far worse than the original blast! "Doctor, in your professional opinion," she said conversationally as she worked, "don't you think he is a bit dinky?"
Prahd nodded. "Yes, I would say an inch is below average. Well, well! What is this? What is this? A crushed testicle!"
"That was when I was a boy!" I said. "YEE-OW! Please, Nurse Bildirjin, not such big bites! Those powder grains are awfully small. A farmer kicked me for drowning all his breeding animals. It was a school vacation job and I was just trying to see if they could swim. He was a very.. .YEEEEE-OWWWW!"
"Well, that may have been done when you were a boy," said Prahd. "But now the other testicle seems to be in bad shape, too. That must be an awfully tough town, New York. And especially hard on testicles."
"It is, it is," I said. "The primitives are... YEEEE-EEEE-OWWWWWWWWW!... real (bleep) breakers."
"I really think I had better put you under general gas," said Prahd. "There's hours and hours of surgery and cellular handling here. And Nurse Bildirjin seems to be working very slowly today."
"I think this would go along faster," she said, "if I just burned them out. See, when this electric probe touches one in the pan here, it explodes." It went Zzzt! and smoke rose. "Now I will just go over here and turn on some pop music...."
That was all it took. I fainted.
Chapter 4
I awoke.
I couldn't see!
I had no sense of body weight!
In fact, I didn't have any sense at all!
Maybe I was dead!
I blinked my eyes. Yes, I could feel myself blinking my eyes.
Maybe they had thrown the rest of my body away. Maybe I was just a head!
Gods knew what a Voltarian cellologist would do. After all, I had known Doctor Crobe and how he loved to make human freaks. Maybe I was some sort of monster now. Maybe I looked like a cat or an octopus or Miss Pinch.
Worse than that: Earth psychologists and psychiatrists teach that all anyone is, is a bunch of cells evolved up the evolutionary track, that the person himself is just what his cells and body make him. There could be no doubt of the validity of their teachings, for one could be shot for not believing them. If Prahd had changed my cells, it followed by Earth psychology that my personality would suffer a total shift! So what new personality would I have? Something sweet and kind—Gods forbid! Or something whining and propitiative, like Izzy— which of course would be even less acceptable.
What had been changed? If I knew Prahd and Nurse Bildirjin, it would be something utterly underhanded and with some ghastly twist!
There was a sort of dim glow around. An eerie light was coming hazily through the slits of something. Gradually I could get a half-seen impression of my immediate environment.
I was in a sort of a long tub, midway between ceiling and floor. Only my head was out. The rest of me was suspended, probably by antigravity coils, in fluid: my body was not touching anything solid.
There were lights burning in the tub, probably emitting some strange wavelength. It was these, escaping through slits, that furnished the dim, greenish glow in the room. Cell catalysts of some kind? I had no real idea.
Accidentally, I moved my eyes to the right.
A window!
Through it I could see the pale sickle of a wintry moon. That was the moon of Earth! I was still on Blito-P3.
I concentrated. Maybe I could estimate how much time had gone by. If it took four and a half hours to come out from under gas—a fact of which I was uncertain—I must have been on that operating table for eight to ten hours! A very long time.
WHAT HAD THEY DONE TO ME?
It seemed to confirm my worst suspicions. A monster! Did I have flippers for feet? Did I now have tentacles for hands? Maybe a beak instead of a nose?
Horrors! What personality changes would follow such shifts?
Oh, Gods, I should never have come near those two fiends!
I had no question at all whether or not it was awful. That followed as the night the day. The only question was about the exact horror design. Dracula? Did I now have long teeth and live only on fresh blood? Would I be able to live with myself comfortably under the dictates of this new personality? I worked my jaws experimentally to see if they were now designed for severing jugular veins.
My face was bandaged right up to the eyes!
WHAT HAD THEY DONE???????????
; I fussed and fumed and fretted through that dark and horrible night.
At least three centuries of worry later, dawn came. Only another century after that, possibly about nine according to the bleak sun through the window, Doctor Prahd Bittlestiffender came in.
I found I could turn my head and speak. "You put me out!"
He smiled. A very bad sign. He began to read meters and gauges around the suspended tub. When he had noted them all down on a chart, he looked at me and said, "I had to. You kept screaming even when you fainted. Nurse Bildirjin couldn't even hear her favorite radio program. It's the Hoochi-Hoochi Boys and Their Electric Cura Irizvas. She's only sixteen, you know, and she's a fan of theirs. They come on every day at..."
I knew the tactic. Trying to get me off the subject and lull my suspicions. "You did something dreadful," I snarled. "You cellologists are all alike!"
"No, no. The work was just very extensive, that's all. You have no idea how bashed up you've let yourself become in that strange career you have. Old, old injuries and wounds. A lot of improperly treated bone breaks. You apparently have not been in the habit of seeking professional care. I even took a coin out of your kidney."
"Aha!" I said. "You did all this just to recover a coin and enrich yourself!"
"No, no. It was only a two-cent piece from the planet Modon. Somebody must have shot it at you. I put it in your wallet so your accounts will balance. But all that aside, it was this last escapade that could have crippled you for the rest of your days. I even had to replace three square feet of skin entirely: it had some of the strangest things in it. In that town you call New York, the one that kept coming up in your screams, you surely must have been running with a rough crowd."
"You didn't do anything else?"
"No, I just put you together."
The day I believe a cellologist won't ever dawn. "You didn't change anything?"
"Well, I had to work on your genitals a bit."
"I knew it!" I screamed. "I knew you'd do something awful if you could put me out!"
"No, no. All I did was normalize things a bit. Purely routine cellological work. Well, bye-bye now. One of the gangsters I fixed doesn't like his new face: says it reminds him of somebody called J. Edgar Hoover. But that isn't odd because that's where I got it from. I need better picture books. I'll get some on my own when my pay starts."