Gavein’s phone call took place the following day. The quality of the sound was good enough for him to recognize her voice. Both had been warned to avoid certain subjects.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I hardly ever get up from the armchair. Anabel helps when I wash. I’ve been nicer to her.”
“And the operation?”
“The preparation for it is dragging out. Dr. Nott sends different powders. I take everything. I miss you. Lorraine wanted to borrow Nest of Worlds, but I said no, because you told me you planned to read it through when you got back.”
“So Dr. Nott hasn’t actually scheduled the operation?”
“Things have changed. They’re giving me medicine for my nerves, after what happened to Zef and Laila. It was horrible to look at… like a butcher’s shop…”
Ra Mahleiné was cut off.
52
First thing in the morning, they began prepping him for the radio tomography. This time the cart that Aurelia brought in was electric. She gave him an injection. She was the youngest nurse. Efficient and calm, she had a sweet though empty face, short gray hair, a bulbous nose, and a voice that was too high.
Her face widened, then narrowed, and the black bands on her nurse’s cap rippled.
“I feel like I’m on a turntable,” he said.
“I administered a sedative, to put you in a better mood. Dr. Barth’s orders.”
“Then let’s be off. Dr. Throzz’s orders are a ride down the hall, wheels first and the rear bringing up the rear.”
“It will pass in a minute. You’ll just be sleepy.”
In the radio tomography room, even the usual cold that came from the white tiles was not unpleasant. The smells were different here, not hospital smells: high-tech, electronic. The main piece of furniture in the room was the two-meter torus of the electromagnet, with an impressive console whose various indicators, monitors, and lights winked cheerfully at Gavein.
Behind a desk stood a man in a white coat buttoned in the back. He squinted over his glasses. He had a big head.
“Please move yourself onto this,” he said, pointing to a gurney that could be wheeled inside the magnet.
Gavein obediently rolled from one cart to the other. He was getting out of shape, he felt, from not enough activity. But the DS hospital’s rules didn’t allow exercise. A technician held the probe, which was encased in plastic insulation and connected by cable to the machine. Gavein looked out a window and saw a row of faces observing him through the glass. The faces were formed from the parts of the window frame, from the clouds, but sometimes they simply swam out of the blue sky. The moment he thought of the sky as blue, it began to change. Briefly, it was a blue bird that looked in at him.
Dr. Barth appeared. Gavein had never liked that sly face and slimy manner. The face seemed twice as sly now, the manner twice as slimy. When Aurelia breathed in, her bosom moved forward and her bottom retreated; when she breathed out, those parts of the body returned to their proper places.
“How is it going, Lee?” asked Dr. Barth.
“Fine. I’m upping the transformer so we can see fifteen centimeters inside.”
“When do we begin? I want to call Siskin.”
“In a few minutes.”
Dr. Barth picked up the receiver, but something peculiar happened to Lee: He yelled, then he was flapping like a fish out of water. He was trying to say something but was unable to, because his jaw chattered in syncopation. Dr. Barth shouted something into the phone, Aurelia stood frozen in place, and Gavein watched as one watches actors on a stage. He wanted to applaud and cry, “Encore!” Lee, jerking, slid from the chair to the floor and kept jerking. Aurelia screamed that she couldn’t disconnect the machine, while Dr. Barth screamed that she shouldn’t touch Lee. Birds looked in through the window off and on. Some of them gave Gavein a knowing nod. After a time, strange people wearing green uniforms came in. Gavein dozed off as Nurse Nylund carted him back to his room. He wondered as he fell asleep why Aurelia wasn’t pushing him.
Later he learned that all these things had actually happened. Lee had been electrocuted by a high-tension line, failing to notice the break in the plastic around the probe. His hand grasped the spot, and he received the current for several minutes. With an alternating current that changed polarity several times a second in irregular intervals, his heart didn’t have a chance.
53
Weak aftershocks continued over the next two days. The rift widened. A temporary bridge of aluminum was thrown up across it. Study was renewed on the David Throzz Effect, the name now given to the phenomenon of correlated deaths. It was admitted that so far all attempts to explain the effect had failed dismally. Only Colonel Medved’s group had anything to show for its labor: the fact that for every death in Davabel there was either an “unquestionable” or “highly probable” connection to the person of Gavein. The tally every day showed zero in all other columns, and the total grew.
Gavein was not permitted to call Ra Mahleiné again. The deal he had made with the DS was for one conversation only. There should not have been this delay. Saalstein, Ezzir, and even Dr. Barth assured him that telephone contact was made with his wife every day and that she was all right. Because the investigation into the murders of Zef and Laila was ongoing, the content of their conversations with Ra Mahleiné had to be kept secret. Gavein didn’t believe them but didn’t argue. He waited. He had been at the Division of Science three weeks now.
They’ll slice me open like a pig for the good of humanity, he thought. The surgery would reveal nothing, he was sure.
Siskin promised that the incisions would heal in two weeks, so the prospect of going home was not that distant. The radio tomography was abandoned: no one could be found to administer it.
In the company of Saalstein and Dr. Barth, Gavein ate a full and delicious breakfast. Dr. Barth personally took his blood pressure, asked him how he felt. All three of them knew that the DS had been getting nowhere. Gavein expressed surprise that they were allowing him to eat before the operation. Dr. Barth said that they would not be entering his stomach or intestines, so food was not counterindicated. He would have no appetite afterward, so why not stock up now? Gavein asked that Ra Mahleiné not be called until after his operation. Saalstein said he would see to that.
That afternoon Aurelia took him to the hospital shower. He went on foot, barefoot, because they wanted him to exert himself a little. Perhaps to reduce the chance of his getting a hospital infection. Unfortunately Aurelia hadn’t brought slippers. He left his blue hospital gown in the dressing room and proceeded to the preoperation room. They would be opening him up in several places. A kind of autopsy, except that he would be living through it. After he laid down on the gurney and was covered with a sheet, Aurelia came back and gave him an injection.
Doped up and defenseless again, he thought bitterly. A humiliating ritual.
“Another sedative?” he asked.
“That’s given in your rear end, in the muscle,” she answered with a smile. “This goes directly in the vein. Dr. Barth’s orders.”
Dr. Barth himself came in, with Siskin, several doctors Gavein didn’t know, Saalstein, Ezzir, and even General Thompson.
What do they think to find inside me, the sons of bitches? he thought. It’s in his hand, not in his vital organs, that Death holds the scythe.
“He received the medication?” asked Dr. Barth.