‘See you around,’ said Gates, as he turned to follow the man in the fur coat to the elevator.
Cavor raised his prosthetic arm — the doctors had told him to try and use it in preference to his real arm — and waved it stiffly in front of him.
‘I hope so,’ he said, with the dismal air of a man who thinks it unlikely that he will survive the night.
II
Dallas stepped wearily into the elevator and told the computer to take him up to the top floor. Moving farther back into the car to accommodate the big man who had followed him inside, he leaned against the glass wall and closed his eyes. The place looked as clinical as it smelled — like the workings of an aluminum engine — but at least it was clean and warm and, he hoped, safe. For a while, anyway.
‘Good evening,’ said Gates.
‘Not so far,’ replied Dallas, mentally checking off the disasters his evening had included: his home abandoned, his employment terminated, his wife and child murdered, his life near forfeit. The only consolation was that things could hardly get any worse. If he hadn’t felt so tired, he would have broken down and wept.
The doors hissed shut and the elevator started its silent ascent.
‘You okay?’ asked Gates.
‘Comparatively speaking, yes.’ Then Dallas shook his head. That was a stupid thing to have said to a man who had the virus — the kind of thing that might draw even more attention to himself than his appearance had probably already attracted. Dallas had no wish to speak to the big man standing beside him; all he wanted to do was close the door to his hyperbaric chamber and collapse into bed, but it seemed important that he should avoid the possibility of giving any offense. ‘What I mean to say is, I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.’
‘You’ll feel better when you’ve had some pure oxygen,’ affirmed Gates.
‘Yes, probably you’re right.’
‘So what pressure did they put you on?’
‘Pressure?’ Dallas shook his head, as he had paid no attention to the explanation given by the hyperbaric attendant in the induction area — it wasn’t as if he needed hyperbaric. ‘Quite low,’ he said, vaguely.
‘As low as six atmospheres?’
‘Something like that, yes.’
‘Are you sure? That seems quite high to me.’
Dallas frowned. The big man seemed to be trying to trip him up for no reason that Dallas could fathom. It was with a sense of deliverance that he saw the elevator doors opening in front of him.
‘Well, this is my floor,’ said Dallas, and he stepped out of the car.
‘Mine too,’ lied Gates; the chamber he shared with Lenina was actually one floor below, on the eleventh.
‘Nice talking to you,’ said Dallas, and headed along the corridor in what he hoped was the direction of his chamber, anxious to be away from his new companion and to avoid any more awkward questions.
‘You know, if you haven’t had hyperbaric before, you should really check on your chamber pressure,’ said Gates, following Dallas. ‘It can be dangerous if you’re not absolutely certain of what you’re doing. Once in a while they have to scrape some poor bastard off the walls when the wrong button gets pushed, or the wrong door gets opened.’
‘Thanks for the advice. I’ll call the hyperbaric attendant as soon as I’m alone in my room.’ He said this last part with greater emphasis, just to make sure the guy got the message.
‘No need for that,’ persisted Gates. ‘I’m pretty much an expert in these things myself. Matter of fact, you’re better off with me doing it. Some of these attendants don’t pay any attention to your blood pressure and your general symptoms. If you have any. How about it? You in here for any lassitude or breathlessness, or just to put your mind at rest?’
‘Please,’ said Dallas. ‘Don’t trouble yourself.’
‘It’s no trouble. Me, I’m not ashamed to say that the therapeutic effects are purely psychological. I’ve had the virus for as long as I can remember and I’ve never even been anemic.’
‘Well good for you,’ said Dallas, who was quickly becoming exasperated with his unwelcome benefactor. ‘Look, really, I can manage on my own.’
Gates shook his head. ‘I can see how you might think that. Someone with your obvious background and privileges. But you’d be wrong. Someone like you is going to need a buddy to help you find your feet in the diseased world. How’d you get it anyway?’
Dallas hesitated outside the steel door of his chamber. He was reluctant to explain himself to this total stranger, but reticence and caution were already giving way to exhaustion. And the man seemed friendly enough, if somewhat obtuse. So where was the harm? A few words from one putative sufferer to another — surely that was what life was like in these places. He would let the guy show him the pressures and then, when he had gone, return them to normal.
‘Unfortunately I had sex with someone who wasn’t aware that she had P2.’
‘Bad luck,’ said Gates.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘But what’s to stop you getting yourself cured? I mean, that’s what autologous blood donation’s all about, isn’t it? I don’t understand. Why don’t you just order up a change of blood from your bank?’
Dallas smiled, grateful to move on to slightly more familiar ground. ‘It’s not quite as simple as that,’ he explained. ‘Not anymore. You see, it can take several days to arrange a bank transfer. Longer if, as in my own case, you’ve already used your deposits as the basis for some extensive financial dealing. Blood futures, mortgages, credit loans, that kind of thing. Some of these dealings have to be secured with the blood one holds on deposit. That means I have to find a way of paying off all my loans before the blood bank will release what I have on deposit for my own phlebotomy. For instance, I’ll probably have to sell my apartment, and that could take a little time. Perhaps several months. So, while all that is going on, I thought I’d check in here. I mean I know I’m not about to enter hemolytic crisis so soon after contracting the virus, but it’s peace of mind, as you said yourself.’
All of this was reasonable enough: The newspapers were always reporting cases involving interruptions in the autologous blood supply caused by strikes, or individual problems resulting from convoluted financial situations much as Dallas had described. Reasonable or not, at the same time he tried to look vaguely embarrassed at his own comparative good fortune, acutely aware that ordering up a supply of whole blood from a bank was not something available to any of the other guests at the Clostridium Hotel. And when the big man met his eye, Dallas shrugged and looked away. He was certain he had given a convincing performance. So he was surprised, alarmed even, at the reaction it produced.
‘Bullshit,’ said Gates.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Dallas shook his head and turned toward the door. ‘I don’t need this.’
‘I don’t know what you’re doing here, mister, but it’s as clear as the whites of your eyes that you’re not P2. For one thing, you’ve got no intention of pressurizing this chamber. And for another, a man who could afford a coat like that could also afford to stay in a crossover hospital. You wouldn’t be the first healthy guy to think he could safely hide out in a place like this for a while, with the bad bloods. Mostly they end up getting themselves vamped.’
‘I don’t have to listen to this crap.’ Dallas reached for the door handle and found his arm held in the big man’s grappling iron of a hand. For a moment he considered producing the gun in his coat pocket and then rejected the idea. The last thing he wanted was another shooting, more trouble. ‘Whoever you are, please just leave me alone.’