Paul stood speechless. The priest shrugged and continued toward the lighted doorway.
"Father, wait…"
"Yes?"
"I-I am a little tired. The room… I mean, will you show me where to get transportation tomorrow?"
"Certainly."
Before midnight, the party had returned to the hospital. Paul lay on a comfortable mattress for the first time in weeks, sleepless, and staring at the moonlight on the sill. Somewhere downstairs, Willie was lying unconscious in an operating room, while the surgeon tried to repair the torn tendon. Paul had ridden back with them in the ambulance, sitting a few feet from the stretcher, avoiding her sometimes wandering arms, and listening to her delirious moaning.
Now he felt his skin crawling with belated hypochondria.
What a fool he had been-touching the rope, the boat, the wheelbarrow, riding in the ambulance. There were a thousand ways he could have picked up a few stray microorganisms lingering from a dermie's touch. And now he lay here in this nest of disease…
But strange-it was the most peaceful, the sanest place he'd seen in months. The religious orders simply accepted the plague-with masochistic complacency perhaps-but calmly. A cross, or a penance, or something. But no, they seemed to accept it almost gladly. Nothing peculiar about that. All der-mies went wild-eyed with happiness about the "lovely desire" they possessed. The priests weren't wild-eyed
Neither was normal man equipped with socially shaped sexual desire. Sublimation?
"Peace," he muttered, and went to sleep.
A knocking at the door awoke him at dawn. He grunted at it disgustedly and sat up in bed. The door, which he had forgotten to lock, swung open, A chubby nun with a breakfast tray started into the room. She saw his face, then stopped. She closed her eyes, wrinkled her nose, and framed a silent prayer with her lips. Then she backed slowly out.
"I'm sorry, sir!" she quavered through the door, "I-I knew there was a patient in here, but I didn't know… you weren't a hyper. Forgive me."
He heard her scurrying away down the hall. Somehow, he began to feel safe. But wasn't that exactly what they wanted him to feel? He realized suddenly that he was trapped. He had left the shotgun in the emergency room. What was he- guest or captive? Months of fleeing from the gray terror had left him suspicious.
Soon he would find out. He arose and began dressing. Before he finished, Mendelhaus came. He did not enter, but stood in the hallway beyond the door. He smiled a faint greeting, and said, "So you're Paul?"
He felt heat rising in his face. "She's awake, then?" he asked gruffly.
The priest nodded. "Want to see her?"
"No, I've got to be going."
"It would do her good."
He coughed angrily. Why did the black-cassocked dermie have to put it that way? "Well it wouldn't do me any good!" he snarled. "I've been around too many gray-leather hides already!"
Mendelhaus shrugged, but his eyes bore a hint of contempt. "As you wish. You may leave by the outside stairway- to avoid disturbing the sisters."
"To avoid being touched, you mean!"
"No one will touch you."
Paul finished dressing in silence. The reversal of attitudes disturbed him. He resented the seeming "tolerance" that was being extended him. It was like asylum inmates being "tolerant" of the psychiatrist.
"I'm ready!" he growled.
Mendelhaus led him down the corridor and out onto a sunlit balcony. They descended a stone stairway while the priest talked over his shoulder.
"She's still not fully rational, and there's some fever. It wouldn't be anything to worry about two years ago, but now we're out of most of the latest drugs. If sulfa won't hold the infection, we'll have to amputate, of course. We should know in two or three days."
He paused and looked back at Paul, who had stopped on the stairway. "Coming?"
"Where is she?" Paul asked weakly. "I'll see her."
The priest frowned. "You don't have to, son. I'm sorry if I implied any obligation on your part. Really, you've done enough. I gather that you saved her life. Very few nonhypers would do a thing like that. I-"
"Where is she?" he snapped angrily.
The priest nodded. "Downstairs. Come on."
As they re-entered the building on the ground floor, the priest cupped his hands to his mouth and called out, "Non-hyper coming! Plug your noses, or get out of the way! Avoid circumstances of temptation!"
When they moved along the corridor, it was Paul who felt like the leper. Mendelhaus led him into the third room.
Willie saw him enter and hid her gray hands beneath the sheet. She smiled faintly, tried to sit up, and failed. Williamson and a nun-nurse who had both been standing by the bedside turned to leave the room. Mendelhaus followed them out and closed the door.
There was a long, painful pause. Willie tried to grin. He shuffled his feet.
"They've got me in a cast," she said conversationally.
"You'll be all right," he said hastily. "It won't be, long before you'll be up. Galveston's a good place for you. They're all dermies here."
She clenched her eyes tightly shut, "God! God! I hope I never hear that word again. After last night… that old woman in the rocking chair… I stayed there alt alone… and the wind'd start the chair rocking. Ooh!" She looked at him with abnormally bright eyes. "I'd rather die than touch anybody now…after seeing that. Somebody touched her, didn't they, Paul? That's why she did it, wasn't it?"
He squirmed and backed toward the door. "Willie… I'm sorry for what I said. I mean-"
"Don't worry, Paul! I wouldn't touch you now." She clenched her hands and brought them up before her face, to stare at them with glittering hate. "I loathe myself!" she hissed.
What was it Mendelhaus had said, about the dermie going insane because of being an outcast rather than because of the plague? But she wouldn't be an outcast here. Only among nonhypers, like himself…"
"Get well quick, Willie," he muttered, then hurriedly slipped out into the corridor. She called his name twice, then fell silent.
"That was quick," murmured Mendelhaus, glancing at his pale face.
"Where can I get a car?"
The priest rubbed his chin. "I was just speaking td Brother Matthew about that. Uh… how would you like to have a small yacht instead?"
Paul caught his breath, A yacht would mean access to the seas, and to an island. A yacht was the perfect solution. He stammered gratefully,
"Good," said Mendelhaus. "There's a small craft in dry dock down at the basin. It was apparently left there because there weren't any dock crews around to get her afloat again. I took the liberty of asking Brother Matthew to find some men and get her in the water."
"Dermies?"
"Of course. The boat will be fumigated, but it isn't really necessary. The infection dies out in a few hours. It'll take a while, of course, to get the boat ready. Tomorrow… next day, maybe. Bottom's cracked; it'll need some patching."
Paul's smile weakened. More delay. Two more days of living in the gray shadow. Was the priest really to be trusted?
Why should he even provide the boat? The jaws of an invisible trap, slowly closing.
Mendelhaus saw his doubt, "If you'd rather leave now, you're free to do so. We're really not going to as much trouble as it might seem. There are several yachts at the dock; Brother Matthew's been preparing to clean one or two up for our own use. And we might as well let you have one. They've been deserted by their owners. And… well… you helped the girl when nobody else would have done so. Consider the boat as our way of returning the favor, eh?"
A yacht. The open sea. A semitropical island, uninhabited, on the brink of the Caribbean. And a woman, of course- chosen from among the many who would be willing to share such an escape. Peculiarjy, he glanced at Willie's door. It was too bad about her. But she'd get along okay. The yacht"… if he were only certain of Mendelhaus' intentions…
The priest began frowning at Paul's hesitation. "Well?"
"I don't want to put you to any trouble-"