Finally I got away.
I went and wrote the nastiest burning letter I could possibly write! To Zanco. They owed me thirty thousand credits and were trying to gyp me out of it! Not only that, I told them they had denied me the opportunity to buy gold with it! Villains!
And only then did I feel better. The Blixo had arrived. I foolishly thought my troubles were over. They were just beginning!
Chapter 4
My gold had arrived so I was sleeping peacefully in the dawn.
Karagoz was shaking my shoulder violently.
"Sultan Bey!" he was saying. "Come quick. Maybe riot!"
I got out of bed, got on some pants and boots and a turtleneck sweater. I went tearing out after Karagoz.
Faht Bey was in a car by the gate. He was holding the door open. It was barely light enough to see his face but what I saw was ashen.
"The hospital!" he said and the driver raced toward it.
"They've been gathering since before dawn. They heard the hospital would be opened today."
"Who?"
"The mothers."
"Why?"
"Because of the sign."
I said, "That doesn't sound like much trouble to me."
"No?" he said. "If we lose the support of mothers in this district our supply of birth certificates will dry up! So be careful how you handle them."
"Me handle them?" I said. "What about the rest of the Apparatus here? Isn't that your job?"
"It's your hospital. You didn't clear it with the Officer's Council."
"I have to do everything!" I wailed.
"And be careful how you handle the picket line," he said.
"What picket line?"
"The local doctors and their assistants."
When we arrived at the hospital, there was a huge mob. They were mostly mothers and children. They were standing there docilely the way Turkish people do. They are a very docile people, particularly just before they explode. They are obedient to the will of Allah. But Allah apparently wants holy wars at the first chance.
I pushed my way through them. There was a lot of coughing. Tuberculosis is endemic in Turkey. Eyes turned my way. Diseased eyes. Trachoma is also endemic in Turkey. There was the occasional twisted limb and the inevitable sores.
The hospital was surrounded by mounds of raw earth—it had not been landscaped. But the building itself was imposing—spreading and low. It was approached by some broad steps and a wide walk and a big front door.
A huge white board was nearby. It had a red crescent moon on it. On most of Earth they use a red cross on ambulances and such, but in Turkey it's a crescent, the symbol of rebirth.
There was another big sign. It said:
WORLD UNITED CHARITIES MERCY AND
BENEVOLENT HOSPITAL
Mudlick Construction Company
I could see nothing wrong with this. What riot? Faht Bey always exaggerates so.
I went up the broad steps, pushing through the crowd standing on them. I collided with the picket line!
"Stop!" said an overbearing man carrying a placard.
"Anyone crossing this picket line is an enemy of the Turkish national pride." He pointed at the placards they were carrying.
The crude placards said:
UNFAIR TO ORGANIZED MEDICINE!
NO SCABS! DOWN WITH CHARITY!
The doctors and assistants carrying them looked very tough.
There was a pedestal on the flat place at the top of the steps. Probably it was for a statue not yet arrived. Faht Bey was pushing at me from behind to get up on the pedestal. I had no choice. I mounted up.
What a sea of faces!
What a lot of coughs and sick eyes.
What a lot of limbs and other ailments being held up!
I knew the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of Turkey was very active against disease. Also the Ministry of Labor. Also a lot of philanthropic organizations. But handling Turkey was a big job. I hadn't realized there were so many sick people about. Riffraff.
I opened my mouth. I was going to tell them all to go home. I didn't get a chance.
The big doctor on the picket line shouted, "I was trained in the United States. I know how doctoring must be run. THERE MUST BE NO FREE CLINIC!"
Instantly, the picket line closed against the bottom of the pedestal and began to hit me with their placards and sticks!
I dodged, I ducked, I tried to defend myself.
The others in the picket line began to chant, hitting at me to keep time, "NO FREE CLINIC! NO FREE CLINIC!"
I screamed, "Of course there will be no free clinic!"
The crowd went into instant action. They had mud clods! The air was suddenly dark with them! They were throwing the mud at ME!
The doctors let up first. The huge one turned to the crowd. "You see! There will be no free clinic!"
Instantly, the crowd began to throw at both me and the doctors! The jeers rose to a savage roar.
"Where are the security troops?" I screamed at Faht Bey.
He was cowering at the far end of the steps. "It's your hospital!" he shouted above the din.
A mud clod hit me in the face!
It knocked me off the pedestal!
The blood started to pour out of my nose!
Suddenly, a tall, gawky figure in a white coat leaped up on the pedestal, holding up his arms. It was Prahd Bittlestiffender!
The crowd stopped throwing to see what he would say.
In purist, scholarly Turkish, Prahd bellowed, "Fellow citizens! Fellow Turks! I come before you today to issue the clarion call to freedom! It is time, due time, that we, the children of Allah, rose as one and cast from off our necks the iron heel of the foreign oppressor!"
My nose was bleeding so much, I thought I would bleed to death. There must be cold water in that hospital. I scrabbled backwards to the door. I got into a hall.
Prahd's voice carried. "A United Turkey facing outward against her rapacious enemies..." I was too far away to hear more.
I got into a bathroom, closed the door and found cold water. I sat on a toilet seat and held wet toilet paper against the back of my neck.
I half expected the mob, at any moment, to tear down the door and rip me limb from limb. But my nose and precious blood came first.
At long last, the bleeding stopped.
It was awfully quiet outside. Had the security guards arrived and shot them all?
I risked a peek. I was looking into a big waiting room. There were lines of mothers there, all quiet, all orderly.
Tables had been set up.
The local doctors were working around the tables, doing the various things doctors do. They seemed very cheerful as they handled people one by one. I didn't see any money being passed over by the mothers. I couldn't understand it.
Afraid that I would be seen and pelted again, I crept down a hall.
A hand on my shoulder. I jumped.
"I was just coming to find you." It was young Doctor Prahd Bittlestiffender. He led me into a small operating room. He began to examine my nose.
"What did you do?" I said. "What was that speech?"
"That was a speech made by Kemal Ataturk at the beginning of the revolution," said Prahd.
Ah, Kemal Ataturk. The Turks worshipped him. They'd recognized the speech and so they'd stopped to listen.
"Ouch," I said. He was probing up into my nose.
"Hold still, please."
"What about the free clinic?" I said, shuddering at the idea of the expense.
"Oh," said Prahd, putting a probe in deeper, "I told them it was all free."
"Ouch," I said.
"I told them it was, after all, their hospital, so they ought to volunteer and fix up the grounds and act as nurses and things. They thought that was wonderful."
"Ouch," I said. "But those doctors?"
"I appointed them all part-time staff to serve a couple hours a day at high salary."
"Ouch," I said. And not because he'd stabbed
me. This hospital was suddenly a liability, not a profit! "Where do you think you got authority to do that?"
"Last night, you told me I was in charge of the hospital," said Prahd. "So I did exactly what I knew you would want me to do, Officer Gris. Cure the sick. Help the poor and needy. Better relations with the tribes of this primitive outpost. I admire you for your broad grasp of interstellar relations. Does my salary start now?"
"Oh, my Gods!" I said.
"I can speak Italian, too," he said persuasively.
"How do I know you can cure anybody?" I snarled. "Your test has just begun! It is just barely possible you will get paid when this hospital starts to make money. Real money!" He was jabbing harder at my nose. "Ouch!"
Chapter 5
Because my sweater was all clogged up with mud, Prahd took a white coat he'd brought and put it on me. "I want to show you the place because it has problems," he said.
I bristled. How could it have problems? I had designed it myself. Spent a long time at it, too.
I followed him out. The lines were moving in the main room and it seemed peaceful.
We went down a hall. An operating room, equipment not fully set up. Interview rooms not wholly set up. Then a lot of doors. Wards. A vast number of them. I started to go in one.
"No," said Prahd. "It's full."
"That many patients already?"
"No, no. All these ward rooms and all these private rooms are full of equipment and stores. The base crew and I worked all night. We didn't get further than changing the labels and moving it over here. There's enough equipment and supplies here to operate several hospitals and operate them for years. That's what I wanted to show you. We've got no room for patients. It's all in use for storage space. I need another building just to store things! And a big refrigerated room when I start to build up cultures and cell banks."
He didn't know. I pressed a panel. A stairway was revealed. I took him down to the basement.
It was a whole hospital complex in itself. It had innumerable private rooms as well.
He was amazed. "What's this? A secret hospital under a hospital!"
"Precisely," I said. And I told him about the master plan of changing the identity of wanted men and gangsters.
"They look like prison cells," he said.
"That's to make them feel at home," I said. "Can you do it?"
"Oh, no difficulty with that. It's just that the upstairs hospital should run, too."
"That's for cover," I said.
"That still doesn't solve the storage space, Officer Gris. Nor the refrigeration. It will be all the more necessary because of the increased cultures I will have to make, changing fingerprints and larynxes and so on."
I could see he was being mulish. We went back upstairs to where he had established his office. And a nice office it was. The phone was in and connected. I phoned Mudlick Construction Company and was shortly talking to the contractor.
"I think we had a financial transaction that was not complete," I said.
"There was a cost overrun," he said. "I will need a huge storage addition and a refrigeration building," I said.
"There was no cost overrun," he said, "if it comes to another half a million U.S."
My Gods, this hospital was expensive! "Same terms," I said. "Same terms," he said.
"Make the plans with the man in charge," I said, "and get started on it." "You're rich," he said.
"You better not get too rich," I said. "There's an awful lot of mud around here." I hung up. But oh, well—charity hospitals had their good points. My rip-off would now be half a million, U.S.
I got ready to leave. My nose was still hurting. "Just tell the Mudlick people what you want when they come and get them started on it. I've got other things to do." Prahd was making no effort to get up. "Don't you want to hear the news from Voltar?" he said. "I know how you have the welfare of your country at heart." People will be chatty and social. I sat back down. "Everything on Voltar is fine," said Prahd. "The weather was nice. All the flowering shrubs were doing beautifully." I knew he was talking about the Widow Tayl's place. I was wary.
"You know that I had some work going on the Widow Tayl," he said. "I'm sure you'll be happy to know it was all concluded successfully before the Blixo left."
It was more suspicion than interest that prompted me to ask, "What work was that?"
"I knew your interest in her place and your obvious concern about her. So I did exactly what you would have wanted me to do, Officer Gris. The problem was nymphomania—an obsession with sex."
Oh Gods, was he ever right!
"So I enlarged her ovaries, as a beginning. She can now have three times as many orgasms as before and much more strongly."
Devils! No man in Pausch Hills would be safe! Thank Heavens I was down here on Earth! But wait, he had used the word beginning. "You did more?"
"Why, of course. As you are part of the famous Gyrant Slahb family, I did not want to be remiss in my professional activities in your employ."
I waited with my eyes getting narrower. Suspicion is a built-in fact in the Apparatus.
"Nymphomania," he said learnedly, "is often caused by sterility. So I checked and, sure enough, there was an ovulation blockage—the ovum could not come down to be fertilized. So I removed the blockage."
Aha. Maybe he had handled the situation. If the Widow Tayl started having babies, maybe it would slow her down.
Prahd was smiling happily, the true professional. "Well, remember the first day I had the honor of meeting you? You had intercourse with her in the house? Well, I took some of your semen..."
"Wait!" I said in sudden alarm, "You'd been having intercourse with her for a day and a half! How do you know it wasn't yours?"
"Oh," he said, waving it away, "it's against the ethics of the profession to use my own." He gave a pitying, professional smile. "What cellologist does not know his own sperm configuration? Easy to tell. Anyway, she was ready to ovulate, even if blocked, so I put one of her ova in a test tube with one of your sperm. And here is the good news: they 'took' very successfully. And so just before I left, I made sure there was nothing else in her womb and I inserted the established embryo."
Horror was going through me in waves. The Widow Tayl! "Does she know whose it is?" I said with dimming hope.
"Oh, yes! She said that as long as it couldn't be Heller's, yours would have to do. She was very happy about it, really. She will be seven weeks along by now. It will be a boy."
I had gone through horror and was into savageness.
"I was so appreciative for all you had done for me," said Prahd, "that I did it all for you. And imagine! It will carry along the line of your great uncle, Gyrant Slahb! It will have the blood of the most famous cellologist on Voltar! Doesn't that make you proud?"
My fists were clenched. "You can't make this stick! There's no evidence I'm the father!"
"Oh, yes," said Prahd. "I filed the medical parental certificate with the authorities. Have no fear you'll lose it. I made very sure you could claim the parentage."
Oh, Gods and Devils! This fellow was a fiend! I surged up. "Why have you done this?"
At last he was intimidated. He began to stammer. "All... all... all r... r... right. There was another reason. Y... y... you said you were going to burn down that b...b...b... beautiful estate! I couldn't bear the... the ... the thought of it. So I knew... knew that if you knew... knew you had a son there, you would not burn it down!"
I slumped back down into the chair. Oh Gods, Devils and Hells. Here he had tied me to the worst nympho on Voltar! Maybe, if she pressed the demand, I would even have to marry her!
Prahd recovered somewhat. "It has its good side. It is a beautiful estate. And she sent you a card."
He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. On one side it had a statue of a naked nymph leering at the viewer while hiding her nakedness in such a way that it was flagrantly displayed. On the other side there was a scrawl. It said:
To Soltan,
Yoo-hoo, wherever you are. I'm just coming great! It's just coming great. Will you be coming soon? I hope so.
Your cuddly Taylsy-Waylsy
Ooooooh
I went home.
I lay down in my bed and wept. It was too bad Prahd was officially dead. Otherwise, I could have killed him on the spot.
Chapter 6
Fate didn't have me on rations that day. It was being very liberal. It was even insisting on me taking all the bad luck I could hold and then some.
Midafternoon, Karagoz came into my bedroom. It seems when there is bad news, he brings it. When it is good news he doesn't even send anybody with it.
"There's a horrible-looking man out on the lawn," he said.
I got up. You can't hide a weapon in a sweater— besides, it was muddy. I changed to a windbreaker and put a Colt Cobra in my pocket. Watchfully, I went out.
It was Jimmy "The Gutter" Tavilnasty. He was playing mumbletypeg with a stiletto.
He turned his pockmarked face to me. He looked at me with his beady black eyes. He said, "You got my man?"
"No gun play around here!" I said in alarm.
He juggled the stiletto. "I never use guns. Why do you think they call me 'The Gutter'?"
He looked all around to make sure we weren't being overheard. He seemed to talk mainly out of the side of his mouth. "I got the guys you want right here." He tapped his pocket. "When you finger my man, you get these."
The candidates for altered identities! With us paying the local doctors to work and telling the world it was all free, this new income was not just good. It was vital!
"You come back in a little while," I said.
"I stay right here until you finger Gunsalmo Silva. We got the latest on it. He was the trigger man on 'Holy Joe' after he became 'Holy Joe' Corleone's bodyguard. He ain't honest. We want Gunsalmo Silva bad. So these names I got is really good. But if the trade is off, say the word and I use you instead. I need practice."
"No, wait! You got me wrong! I just meant it will take a phone call to set it up away from here. You sit right there. I'll have one of my men bring you a shot of something and..."