“What was the technicality?”
“Test for alcohol. I’d had exactly one drink-a stirrup cup, one small glass of wine-six hours before, which was two hours before we left Mars. Orders are no drinks eight hours before blast-off, and I hadn’t drunk anything for longer than that, except that one drink. And it had nothing to do with the accident-nobody feels one glass of wine six hours after. But they, used it to save themselves what I had coming.”
“And after that?”
“After that I got kicked around a while until I started in to do my share of the kicking.”
“That wouldn’t have been very long,” she said. It wasn’t a question and he didn’t answer it.
She said, “I know what crimes they know you committed-without having been able to prove it. I’ll say you confessed to them.”
Crag shrugged. “Tell them what you like.”
“Why do you hate women so much?”
“Is that personal curiosity? Or does it have to go in your report?”
She smiled. “As a matter of fact, both.”
“I was married at the time I lost my job and my hand and my license. To a girl with hair like yours. Married only a few months and mad about her. Do I have to draw a diagram of what she did to me?”
She said soberly, “I can guess.”
“You should be able to. You’re more beautiful than she. And more evil.”
Her face flamed and for a moment he thought she was going to strike him. But training told, and in seconds she was smiling again.
She said, “Not evil, Crag. Just ruthless, like you. I try to get what I want. But we’re not psyching me, and it’s time to end this now. Close your eyes and pretend to be unconscious.”
He did. He heard her walk to the wall and throw the switch that shut off the machine. She came back and reconnected the terminal behind his shoulder, and still he kept his eves closed.
He’d half-expected it, but it jarred him when it came. It was a kiss that should have wakened a statue, but outwardly he took it with complete passiveness. He kept his own lips still.
And he hated her the more because the kiss brought to life in him things he’d thought were dead. And he knew that he’d hate her forever and probably kill her when he saw her again if, now, she laughed.
But she didn’t laugh, or even speak. She left the room very quietly.
CHAPTER FOUR
New Life
A FEW minutes later the guards came. Only two of them this time; they weren’t afraid of him now. They unstrapped him from the chair and carried him somewhere on a stretcher and rolled him off onto a bed.
When he was pretty sure that at least half an hour had gone by, he opened his eyes and looked around as though dazed. But the acting had been unnecessary; he was alone in a room. A few minutes later a nurse’ looked in and found him sitting up.
She came on into the room. “How are you feeling, sir?”
Crag shook his head. He said, “I feel all right, but I can’t seem to remember anything. Who I am, or how I got here-wherever here is.”
She smiled at him and sat down on the chair beside the bed. “You’ve just had the equivalent of an attack of amnesia. That’s all I’m supposed to tell you. But as soon as you feel equal to it, we’ll send you to a man who will explain everything to you, and help you. Meanwhile, there’s nothing for you to worry about. When you feel able to leave, come to the desk in the hall and I’ll give you the address and money to get there.”
Crag swung his feet off the bed. “I can go now,” he said. But he made his voice sound uncertain.
“Please lie down and rest a while first. There’s no hurry.”
She went out, and Crag lay back down, obediently. He let another half hour pass and then went out into the corridor and to the desk. The nurse looked up at him and handed him a card and a ten-credit note. She said, “Please go to that address before you do anything else. Judge Olliver has a job for you and he will explain about your amnesia and tell you as much as it is necessary for you to know about your past.”
He thanked her and went out, alert to watch his temper if any incident were staged to test him. But none was, although he was, he felt sure, watched to see whether he headed immediately for the atocab stand just outside the building and gave the address he’d been handed on the card-an address he already knew but pretended to read off the card to the cabby.
Twenty minutes later he walked up to the guard at Olliver’s front door and asked if he might see the Judge. “Your name Crag?”
He almost said yes before he thought. “Sounds silly,” he said, “but I don’t know my name. I was sent here to find out.”
The guard nodded and let him in. “He’s waiting for you,” he said. “Second door down the hall.”
Crag entered the small room in which he’d talked to Olliver and Evadne the evening before. Only Oliver was ” there now, at the desk.
“Everything go all right?” he asked.
Crag threw himself into a chair. “Perfect,” he said, “except for two beatings up that weren’t on the menu.”
“You should feel it’s worth that to be free, Crag. And now-you’re still interested in earning that million?”
“Yes. But the price has gone up.”
Olliver frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean besides that I want you to do a spot of research downtown and get me twelve names, and addresses for each. The six guards who put me in a cell last night and the six-they were different ones-who put me back in the cell after the trial this morning.”
Olliver stared at him a moment and then laughed. He said, “All right, but not till after the job is over. Then if you’re fool enough to want to look them up, it’s your business, not mine.”
“Which gets us to the job. Where is it, what is it, how long will it take.”
“It’s on Mars. We’re going there in four days; I can’t get away any sooner than that. I told you what it is-a job of burglary, but not a simple one. How long it takes depends on you; I imagine you’ll need some preparation, but if you can’t do it in a few weeks, you can’t do it at all.”
“Fair enough,” Crag said. “But if I’ve got that long to wait, how about an advance?”
“Again on a condition, Crag. I don’t want you to get into any trouble before you’ve done the job. I want you to stay here. You can send out for anything you want.”
Crag’s short nod got him a thousand credits.
He needed sleep, having got none the night before because of pain from the first, and worst, beating. And every muscle in his body still ached.
But before he even tried to sleep he sent out for Martian tot, and drank himself into insensibility.
He slept, then, until late afternoon of the next day. When he woke, he drank the rest of the liquor and then went downstairs, not quite steady on his feet and with his eyes bloodshot and bleary. But under control, mentally.
And it was probably well that he was, for in the downstairs hallway, he encountered Evadne for the first time since his return to Olliver’s. She glanced at him and took in his condition, then passed him without speaking and with a look of cold contempt that-well, if he hadn’t been under control mentally.
The next day he was sober, and stayed that way. He told himself he hated Evadne too much to let her see him otherwise. And after that he spent most of his time reading. He had breakfast and lunch alone, but ate dinner with Olliver and Evadne, and spent part of the evening with them.