But before I could get this silly situation under control, young Doctor Prahd had picked up a machine that had a viewplate and was putting it under Heller's head. Prahd looked at the screen. I looked at the screen. I couldn't see anything but the outline of some skull bones.
Then young Doctor Prahd said, "Well, I'll be blasted! Was this treated?" Heller shrugged. "Wasn't much to treat. We mostly laughed about it. The doctor just put some tape on it."
"Ah," said young Doctor Prahd. "He should have been sent before the doctor's review board!" He was very serious.
Heller had stopped laughing.
Young Doctor Prahd put his finger just in toward the eyebrow on the wound. "Does that hurt?"
"Ouch," said Heller.
"I thought so!" Prahd drew an Xon the spot with a purple pen. He drew back and turned the machine off and put it on another bench. Then he stood back and shook his head at Heller. "Had that doctor taken the proper steps, he would have seen what I just saw!" I gaped. I hadn't seen anything on the screen.
Young Doctor Prahd looked grave. "My dear fellow, I don't like to tell you this. Now don't be unduly alarmed for you are in competent hands. But in another two years at the outside, had it not come to my attention, the creeping penetration syndrome would have resulted in prefrontal lobe incision with the usual consequences of internal cerebral shield suppuration." What the Hells was this stupid doctor up to?
"Hey," said Heller, "physical doctoring is not in my line. You'll have to put that in plain Voltarian." Prahd took Heller's hand in his own in a comforting gesture. "I have to tell you – now don't leap up and run away – that the tip of that stone arrowhead is still in there!" I finally got it! Wow, this young Doctor Prahd was a very sharp boy. No wonder the older practitioners didn't want him around as competition! A real con artist! Worthy of the finest traditions of the Apparatus!
"Hold it," said Heller. "I haven't got time to let you fool around with that now! I've got to get going on a mission!" Young Doctor Prahd said, "Mission physical clearance refused. Officer Gris, please inform your superiors that said subject cannot be certified for physical readiness."
"Why?" demanded Heller, trying to sit up.
Prahd said, "If the inevitable consequences of a foreign body gradually eating its way into the brain were to occur after I passed you, resulting in mission failure as it would, the Board of Examiners could revoke my certificates. So, I cannot pass you. You cannot go." Thank heavens, Krak had already worked on him. Heller started to get mad. "You don't understand! I've got to complete this mission!" Prahd was just putting his tools away.
"How long would it take to remove it?" demanded Heller.
Prahd shrugged. "It's not a big job, even if it is vital. Two hours. Another four or five to recover from the anesthesia."
"Oh, no," said Heller. "I promised . . . well, I promised somebody not to let myself be put under around . . . around certain people."
"Oh, Jet," I said. "Don't you trust your friends?" But I had thought of all this. I knew that Krak would have a fit if she found Heller had been put into a general anesthesia. She had feared somebody would really cut him up or maybe do a hypnotic implant. I had worked it all out.
I picked up a case from a table from right where I had left it. I handed it to Heller. "That is a security recorder. Lockable. I give it to you. You set your own combination on it. You lock it to your own wrist. Nobody can interfere with it or change it but you. It will start recording. It will keep right on recording until you wake up. It will take both sound and picture of what is happening. Examine it." He did so. There were no tricks in it. The metal case was totally impenetrable once it was locked. Only he would know the numbers and be able to open it and get at the recording strip.
Heller sighed. In a weary voice, he said, "Which wrist do I put it on." I had won! I had won! But I preserved my grave mien. "Left wrist, as the doctor will be working on the right side. We can lay your hand on this little wheeltable and it will just sit there and record everything. Then you, at your leisure, can review it." I knew the Countess Krak would review it!
He thought of some numbers, committed them silently to memory, set the lock, put it on his wrist and laid his hand and the recorder on the table. He adjusted the position so it would show what was happening.
The recorder was running. I said to Prahd, "I feel a little queasy. Have you got something?" He handed me a pill.
Heller was watching in a rather bored way as the doctor began to get out knives and forceps and probes and wheel things about.
Prahd was chattering along soothingly. "It's the small things in life that are annoying. You would just never think that a tiny bit of stone could do much real damage." Etc. Etc. On and on.
Finally Prahd wheeled a portable anesthetic gas machine into place. He said to me, "Could you hold this?"
"Oh, no," I said. "The sight of blood makes me quite ill lately for some reason." Prahd shrugged, turned up the oxygen and turned on the sleep gas. He put the mask over the other part of Heller's face. Heller began to inhale it. The needle on a meter clamped to the back of Heller's skull registered Unconscious.
The young doctor picked up a scalpel.
I said, suddenly, "Oh, my Gods, I'm going to be sick at my stomach!" I rushed headlong from the room, making heaving sounds.
Still groaning, I paused in the hall and letting the heaving sounds diminish gradually, reached down and pulled the string I had planted there yesterday. It pulled the wheeltable on which the recorder was resting back just enough to let the hand and wrist fall off, as though naturally, and drop below sight level of the bed. It would look as if he had moved his own arm. The recorder would now have sound but only the side of the bed for a picture.
I let my groaning die out in volume further as I tiptoed outside.
I had him! Of course, it wasn't as good as just plain doing a prefrontal lobotomy, the one the Earth psychiatrists favor; they push a common ice pick up under the eyelids and slash the prefrontal lobes of the brain to hamburger and if the patient does not die at once, he lives on as a vegetable and dies in any case from within two to five years. A highly practical solution to psychosis. But the thought of the Countess Krak restrained me. She would notice.
It is one of the trials of life that one can't have everything one wants. Still, I could do with what I had. With those optical and aural bugs in place, I would know everything Heller was doing and could block him. He now could not escape me. He was going to be totally at my mercy. Thinking of all the horrible things I had suffered at his hands, I sank into a pleasant euphoria. Justice was about to be done.
Chapter 2
A hand was tugging at my sleeve. It was the Widow Tayl. I came out of my reverie. She was pointing in the direction of a little summerhouse some distance away in the trees.
"There's something I must show you," she whispered.
It was all going quietly in the hospital. I could now and then hear a machine move. Two hours, Prahd had said. It would be a long time yet.
Wondering at this power I had over women, I followed the Widow Tayl. I really had no illusions as to what she wanted to show me in the summerhouse.
It was a very pleasant structure, surrounded by flowering trees which drenched the air with perfume. It consisted mainly of a roof and a big, soft pad of bright yellow. A tinkle of music, soft and persuasive, came from the top peak of the ceiling, below which hung an ornate, painted glowplate. It was a secluded spot, safe from prying eyes, ideal for an interchange of secrets and other things.