The Widow Tayl's hand fished for the robe and got it back. A sybarite statue at the edge of the heart-shaped pool was leering as water poured from his mouth. He looked like he had seen all this before.
She had her robe back on now, laughing prettily as she adjusted it.
The Widow Tayl was not bad-looking: she was about thirty-five, a blond with smoky blue eyes. Her lips were too slack. She had two big warts on her face. Under the robe her breasts could be seen as far too sagging, but there was nothing slack in the way her eyes were now devouring me.
She bade me sit down by the side of the heart-shaped pool and a servant who was smirking brought a tray of drinks.
I explained, while we sipped sparklewater, that I had been bribed – she would understand that – to perform a service for a Lord whose name must not be mentioned.
He had a son who HATED women and there would be no heirs unless something was done. Oh, she surely could understand that something had to be done about that!And I explained that a secret doctor was going to perform a secret operation on this secret young man that would alter his attitude toward women. She thought this was an emphatically patriotic action and the place was, as always, at my disposal.
That wasn't all that was at my disposal. We inspected the three rooms of the "hospital." We paused by the bed where her late husband had had his throat so expertly cut.
"You must lie down and see how soft it is," said the Widow Tayl.
I felt my hair shoot up with alarm as I heard her continue. "You will never find a bed so serviceable!" Her naked foot was hooked behind my heel as I tried to go backwards.
Tayl's robe hit the floor.
My right boot hit the far wall and fell with a thud.
A standing lamp began to reel.
A table of instruments was shaking and every instrument on it clattered.
The lamp crashed on the floor.
The double window blew open inward with a terrific blast of wind.
The outer door looked solid. I got to it and put my hand on it to steady myself. I was totally shot.
The sybarite looked like he was laughing as he sprayed out water into the pool.
You have to be careful who you blackmail.
An hour later, flying away from the place, though jaded, I was still cheerful. I had my objective. It even had its potentials: supposing Heller got tangled with the Widow Tayl, Krak discovered it and killed Heller. Lovely thought.
The driver had not failed to notice my disarrayed clothes. He said, "Is that the route I'm going to get rich on? Or did you pay her in counterfeits?" My, he was insolent these days. Couldn't he admit, even to himself, that my personal charm and good looks had anything to do with it? "But she looks like she'd grab anything," he went on.
"Land near a bookstore!" I ordered. I had to keep my mind concentrated on this project. It was intricate.
In the bookstore I browsed around the technical section. I found a book by Professor Gyrant Slahb called Cells I Have Knownand sure enough, there was his picture on the back of it! I covertly tore it off the book, sauntered around a bit more and then we were aloft again, hovering.
I got out of the bag the things I needed and using the mirror, working back and forth between the picture and my face, applied the techniques of Apparatus School "Visual Deception 21-24, Advanced Age." With the false wrinkle skin, it was easy.
I turned to the driver and showed him my face and the picture. "How's that?"
"Hey, that's quite an improvement," he said. He really was storing up some owed cuffs!
I shed my uniform and donned the "wise, old scientist" pants and overgarment. Very convincing.
I pulled out the portable scriber. They are handy rigs. They have a paper feed from the bottom and they use different types. I didn't have to spend much time forging this contract: I would be dealing with somebody very unschooled in administration, who had no access to computer consoles.
The driver was shortly heading for Slum City. Some public-spirited, pompous (bleep) had once tried to build a whole hospital complex "for the poor." It was a sprawling ruin, eighty acres in extent. All around its outskirts were small "professional buildings" where doctors completed ruining the cases the hospital had botched. There are lots of parking places, most of them empty, for who wants to get wrecked even at the low prices of Slum City? But there was enough traffic for it to obscure one more airbus.
We parked some distance away from the wanted address. I hobbled to it, heavily leaning on my cane.
The office of DOCTOR PRAHD BITTLESTIF-FENDER, as the sign said, was in the rattiest of a series of dilapidations. You had to go around fifty garbage cans, assorted dead animals and up three fire escapes to get to it – an obstacle course which patients would have to run: natural selection – it was easy to cure anyone who could make it to the office.
There was no waiting room. There was no nurse. There was just a brand-new diploma. Perfect. As I stepped further in, I thought the place was empty until a pile of newssheets moved on the couch. It was new Doctor Bittlestiffender. He also livedhere!
I sank tiredly down on a stool. I really was a bit weary after the Widow Tayl. The effect was somewhat spoiled by the stool trying to tip over.
Young Doctor Bittlestiffender stood up. He was a tall young fellow, long-boned, almost gawky. He had a remarkably pale head of hair that stood up at all angles like bleached straw. His eyes, bright green, were eager and professional. Women might consider him handsome, but he looked gaunt, half-starved; that very clean operating coat he wore was obviously stolen from the hospital and, from the absence of others in the place, was probably the only indoor clothes he had. Good, good, better, better. My luck was holding.
I ignored his professional greeting. I said, in a quavering, aged voice, "Young man, you probably have never heard of me. I am Professor Gyrant Slahb." The effect was dramatic. His eyes popped. He almost came to attention and saluted.
I drew out the false identoplate and shakily extended it. "As I am unknown to you, please look at this so you can be sure." He did look at it. But he was stammering. "But . . . but . . . P . . . Professor! I am honored! I . . . I first got interested in cellology reading your nursery texts! Er . . . oh ..." He rushed to his desk and opened a bottom drawer and got out two jolt canisters. He rushed over to a culture heater and looked anxiously for a flask that was empty. He dropped the canisters in his effort. Two flasks fell and broke.
"I came to find," I quavered, "if you were competent in your profession." He forgot about the jolt. He raced to a cabinet and slammed open some drawers. He drew out a stack of papers, saw they were the wrong ones, dropped them, found the right ones and, stumbling on a broken floorboard, got them into my lap rather suddenly.
"I . . . I am not like this," he said. "You have startled me. I . . . er . . . I haven't eaten for two days!" Oh, was my luck in! But not all luck. It was knowing your field. That's the way these new graduates are. After ten years of study and five years of doing the work the hospital doctors should have been doing, they are turned out to starve in the glory of total, private, administrative and financial independence. For which they have had not the faintest training: what senior cellologist wants competition? Yet they grind out thousands of them every year.
I looked at what he had offered. It was a schedule of difficult operations with the statistical results. Ninety-nine and a half percent successful! That was high! It's usually thirty percent. No wonder the older independents didn't favor him!
But the hospital examiners had not spared the adjectives in his examinations. They practically recommended him as fit to alter the cells of the Emperor! There were even fifty cases of introducing foreign objects along nerves to regulate vision and hearing!