him checked out, every last detail. In my opinion we'll never find anyone better qualified."
"But if he's as committed to Earth Foundation as he makes out, perhaps he won't want to."
"All the more reason for him to accept, I'd say."
"Why? Because of the 'challenge'?" Ingrid Van Dorn used the word with scorn. "A man like Chase has more challenges than he can cope with already."
Prothero reached into the water and took her hand. It was like a pale water lily in his broad palm. "If Chase is the kind of guy I think he is, he'll want to do it. An opportunity like this? Sure, he'll jump at it."
She gave him a quick sideways smile. "I guess I'm scared." An uncharacteristic admission for her. "We've talked about it for so long, thought about it, and now we have to make the decision. We're burning our bridges ... or at least you are. If your government finds out fi
Prothero's face tightened. "My government is up to its neck in bacteriological herbicides. The old, old games. Like a kid fooling around with matches in a house that's burning to the ground." Then it spilled out of him like venom. "I've had all that, Ingrid. ASP can go screw itself, and the generals, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff! They all have a vested interest in keeping the billions of dollars flooding in to perpetuate global conflict, and they'll never change. They can't. It's like asking a blind man to paint a sunset. We have to do it without them--against them. It's the only way."
"Screw them before they screw up the world," Ingrid said. She pouted at him through the rising steam. "What are you smiling at?"
Prothero couldn't stop grinning. "It sounds funny, an expression like 'screw up,' in a Swedish accent."
"So! You think I'm funny, huh?" She pulled her hand free with ladylike hauteur and slid down until the water lapped her chin.
"That's right, madam, I do," Prothero said, eyeing her narrowly. "Not to mention incredibly sexy. Come here."
With both hands he scooped into the water, wetting the sleeves of his bathrobe up to the elbows, and pulled her up under the arms until they were both standing, his bathrobe open, her wet breasts pressing spongily against his hairy chest. He stooped and picked her up in his arms, a hot wet desirable woman, faintly steaming.
Prothero frowned. "Just one logistical handicap." "Oh?"
"Glasses. Fogged. Can't see my way to the bedroom."
"No logistical handicap at all," said the UN secretary-general huskily. She unhooked his glasses and flipped them over her shoulder. They landed in the lavender-scented water with a plop.
For a reason Dr. Ruth Patton had never been able to figure out, from 6:00 p.m. onward was the busiest admissions period of the twenty-four-hour schedule. People collapsed on the streets and were ferried in by ambulance or staggered in themselves to receive treatment at the Manhattan Emergency Hospital in the dilapidated eight-story building on East Sixty-eighth Street that had once housed the Cornell School of Medicine.
The admissions department resembled a battlefield casualty clearing station. Anoxia and pollution cases were sprawled on chairs or laid out on stretchers on the floor, so tightly packed that there was barely enough room to move among them. There was little more she could do except make an instant diagnosis, classifying them as terminal--requiring hospitalization--or short stay. In the latter case they were given a whiff of oxygen, drugs to clear their bronchial tubes, and sent on their way. Orderlies followed her, sorting out the patients according to the red or blue stickers on the soles of their shoes.
Then it was on to the wards.
The unwritten policy of the hospital was not to give anyone over the age of fifty-five a bed. Better to save the life of a younger person than waste bed space on someone whose life expectancy was only a few years at best. Ruth hated the policy. More than once she had been reprimanded for admitting a patient above the "death line." She had even falsified the records, subtracting five and sometimes ten years from the patient's age and slipping him through the net.
Fred Walsh, aged sixty-three, had slipped through. He lay shrouded in a plastic oxygen tent, a small wiry man with spiky gray hair and watery brown eyes, who from the day he arrived had not uttered one word of complaint. He had the native New Yorker's caustically laconic wit, honed to a fine art by a lifetime spent as a cutter in the Manhattan rag trade. Ruth didn't know why she had admitted Fred when she had rejected hundreds of others--some just as bad as he, some younger. Yet a week ago she had written "Walsh, Frederick Charles; Male; Caucasian; age 52" on the pink admissions sheet after an examination lasting no more than a minute.
In her heart of hearts she suspected a reason. Fred reminded her of Grandpa Patton, the same slight body that was nevertheless as tough as old boots. She remembered her grandfather with much affection; he had taught her to ride in the summer vacations back in Columbus, Ohio, a million years ago.
Ethically it was wrong, of course, she knew that. But was it any less ethical than turning people out onto the streets on the basis of an arbitrary death line? Didn't Fred Walsh deserve at least the same chance as the thousands of others who sought refuge and help in these hopelessly overcrowded wards staffed by doctors and nurses working ceaselessly to save as many lives as possible, be they black, white, yellow, brown, young, or old?
"Hey, you're looking better today," she told him brightly, which wasn't an outright lie. Indeed there was a spot of color in his sagging cheeks and his lips were noticeably less blue. "How're you feeling, Fred?"
"Reminds ... me ... of ... my .. . honey . . . moon." Even with oxygen he had to draw a deep breath between each word.
Ruth smiled. "How's that, Fred?"
"Flat... on ... my .. . back . . . and . . . shorta . . . breath." He winked at her through the plastic sheet, his narrow chest rising and falling, the air wheezing and bubbling through his furred tubes. Second-stage anoxia with pneumogastric complications. An operation was out of the question; anyway it was too late. In one respect Fred was lucky. Many anoxic patients suffered a sharp decline in their mental processes, became confused and incoherent due to the reduction of oxygen-rich blood circulating through the brain. Premature senile dementia set in, turning them into cabbages.
Ruth inserted her arms into the plastic sleeves that gave access into the tent; self-sealing collars gripped her wrists. "Tell me when you feel anything," she said, pricking his toes and the soles of his feet with a surgical needle. Loss of sensation in the extremities was one of the first indications that the anoxia was getting worse.
Fred lay passively, not responding. The needle had reached his lower calf before he twitched.
"You feel that?"
He nodded. "Try . . . lower . . . down. My . . . feet ... are . . . cold."
"We'll do that tomorrow," Ruth said cheerfully. "Around here we take our time." She took hold of his hand, which felt like clammy wax, and pricked his fingers and palm.
"My . . . old . . . lady . . . came . . . yester . . . day." He paused, wheezing. "Asks. . . how . . . long . . . this. . . vacation . . . lasts."
"Well, some time yet, Fred. Why, what's she planning to do, run off with the mailman?" Ruth tried his other hand. No response there either. She pulled her arms free and dropped the needle into the bin. "Say, how do you feel about being moved to another hospital? There's a clinic in Maryland where they could take better care of you. It's a special treatment center with all the latest facilities. I think I can fix you up with a place. How about it?"
"Hopeless . . . case . . . huh?" His moist brown eyes were fixed intently on her face.
"Hell, no, I wouldn't bullshit you, Fred." Ruth lowered her voice conspiratorially. "The temptation's getting to be too strong for me. You're driving me crazy with lust. I've got to get you out of here before I disgrace myself. This thing is bigger than both of us."