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, much 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.
I tried to think of something even more vicious I could do. But actually what was happening was really quite enough.
It was a beautiful day after all.
PART ELEVEN
Chapter 3
About noon, wiping his hands on a bloodstained disposable coat, Dr. Prahd Bittlestiffender came out of the hospital. But he did not come over to where I sat at the pool. He went walking along one of the curving rock paths that wound artfully under the blooming trees.
Well, I thought, he just wants to stretch. He hadn’t been two hours on that operation; he had been more than three and a half! Long-legged and a bit too tall, he went ambling along on a zigzag sort of course, looking down. Maybe the operation had been a failure, maybe he’d put an electric knife in too deep and killed Heller: an intriguing thought. As I considered it, it seemed to have more and more merit.
Coming back along the path, the young doctor suddenly stooped over and picked something up. Then he went over to where a naked wood nymph posed erotically in stone. He took a small hammer from an inside pocket and started hammering something against the wood nymph’s metal base. What in Hells was he up to? Trying to bring the wood nymph to life by rhythmic pounding? We had one too many nymphs around here already!
At last he began to wander over toward me again. He took a little spin drill and a pair of tweezers out of his inside pocket and was holding something and buffing it, wandering closer, humming. The spin drill was going screech, screech, screech; very hard on the nerves.
Near my chair, he stopped. He put the spin drill away and got out a vial of blood. With the tweezers, he immersed something in the blood and then put the vial away. What in Hells kind of hocus-pocus was this? He had me on tenterhooks to find out what had happened in the operation.
He took out a small, gold-plated, circular box. It looked like one of those which females carry perfume pats in. Then I realized it was probably part of the Zanco delivery. Firms specialize in fancy little cases that they hand out to doctors as presents for female patients: sure enough, it had an engraved Zanco on the cover.
Young Dr. Prahd popped it open and with great care, laid whatever he held in his tweezers into it, puffed up the interior padding and wiped the blood off the tweezers on it.
He held it out to me very proudly. He was like some long-legged cub animal, waiting for somebody to say, “Good barker,” and give it a pat on the muzzle. There was a microscopic bit of stone lying amidst the bloodstains.
“The piece of the arrowhead,” said young Dr. Prahd.
“You didn’t get this out of his head. I saw you pick it up, right over there.” Then suddenly it dawned on me what he was doing. Hey, there was hope for this boy. He was going to give it to Heller as the convincer. But I had no idea of letting this young fool get a good opinion of himself. Compliments are the destroyer of the race: they end striving. He could slide right out from under my thumb! I dismissed the box with a wave of my hand. “It took you long enough.” I glanced at my watch. “Two hours is not three
hours and forty-five minutes.”
He looked a little crestfallen. “Well, you see, I didn’t have the patient yesterday. I could have taken the basic cells then. I had to take cells of his dermis and epidermis as well as his bone. It took half an hour to get them into a sterile base and catalyze them so as to get cell supplies to use.
“Somebody had given him one of those crude vaccinations as a child and that had to be repaired so there was no scar. Then, besides the white scar in his shoulder, I had to repair an area of blastgun burn on his back.
“Then he’d caught a finger sometime or other and the nail was slightly crooked and I had not prepared nail cells so I had to get a catalyst growth tube going for those. . . .”
He was driving me up the tree with all this. “Come on, come on, what about the respondo-mitter and the audio-respondo-mitter?”
“Well, there really had been a small crack in the front bone. Those Fleet doctors are not careful enough. It had regrown by itself with no professional attention. It had filled itself with soft bone tissue and that all had to be scraped out. He must be from Manco. Their bones are quite hard and tough. I blunted a drill. . . .”
He must have seen my impatience. He rushed on. “It made a perfect cavity for the two items. And, of course, they had to be treated and the bone cells conditioned so as not to reject them. They have tiny microscopic antennas and these have to be slotted in between the molecular cell bone joints.”
“What about that sore place he had on his eyebrow?” I demanded, thinking he might have put them into a tender spot that would require a later operation that would discover the two bugs.
He seemed puzzled. Then he remembered. “Oh, there was no tender spot. That was my fingernail.”
He saw how impatient I was getting. He rushed on. “They are in there, they will never be detected. The scars are all gone. I think I passed my test very well.”
I snorted. “There was a young trainee my uncle . . .”
“I thought Professor Slahb was your great-uncle?”
“I also have an uncle that’s a cellologist,” I said determinedly.