"Did you ever stop to think," said Cletus, quietly, when she finished, "that perhaps he's found tradition all over again on the Dorsai?"
"Tradition? The Dorsai?" Scorn put a jagged edge on her voice. "A world full of a collection of ex-soldiers gambling their lives in other people's little wars for hardly more pay than a tool programmer gets! You can find tradition in that?"
"Tradition to come," said Cletus. "I think Eachan sees into the future further than you do, Melissa."
"What do I care about the future?" She was on her feet now, looking down at him where he lay in the bed. "I want him happy. He can take care of anyone but himself. I have to take care of him. When I was a little girl and my mother died she asked me - me - to be sure and take care of him. And I will."
She whirled about and went toward the door. "And he's all I'm going to take care of," she cried, stopping and turning again at the door. "If you think I'm going to take care of you, too, you've got another think coming! So go ahead, gamble yourself twice over on some high principle or another, when you could be settling down and doing some real good, writing and working, person to person, the way you're built to do!"
She went out. The door was too well engineered to slam behind her, but that was all that saved it from slamming.
Cletus lay back against his pillows and gazed at the empty, white and unresponsive wall opposite. The hospital room felt emptier than it had ever felt before.
He had still one more visitor, however, before the day was out. This was Dow deCastries, preceded into Cletus' hospital room by Wefer Linet.
"Look who I've got with me, Cletus!" said Wefer, cheerfully. "I ran into the secretary here at the Officers' Club, where he was having lunch with some of the Exotics, and he told me to bring you his congratulations for abstract military excellence - as opposed to anything affecting the Neuland-Bakhalla situation. I asked him why he didn't come along and give you the congratulations himself. And here he is!"
He stepped aside and back, letting Dow come forward. Behind the taller man's back Wefer winked broadly at Cletus. "Got to run an errand here in the hospital," said Wefer. "Back in a minute."
He ducked out of the room, closing the door behind him. Dow looked at Cletus.
"Did you have to use Wefer as an excuse?" Cletus asked.
"He was convenient." Dow shrugged, dismissing the matter. "My congratulations, of course."
"Of course," said Cletus. "Thank you. Sit down, why don't you?"
"I prefer standing," said Dow. "They tell me you're going off to bury yourself on the Dorsai now. You'll be getting down to the writing of your books then?"
"Not just yet," said Cletus.
Dow raised his eyebrows. "There's something else for you to do?"
"There're half a dozen worlds and a few billion people to be freed first," said Cletus.
"Free them?" Dow smiled. "From the Coalition?"
"From Earth."
Dow shook his head. His smile became ironic. "I wish you luck," he said. "All this, in order to write a few volumes?"
Cletus said nothing. He sat upright in his bed, as if waiting. Dow's smile went away.
"You're quite right," Dow said, in a different tone, though Cletus still had not spoken. "Time is growing short, and I'm headed back to Earth this afternoon. Perhaps I'll see you there - say in six months?"
"I'm afraid not," said Cletus. "But I expect I'll see you out here - among the new worlds. Say, inside two years?"
Dow's black eyes grew cold. "You badly misunderstand me, Cletus," he said. "I was never built to be a follower."
"Neither was I," said Cletus.
"Yes," said Dow, slowly, "I see. We probably will meet after all then" - his smile returned, suddenly and thinly - "at Phillippi."
"There never was any other place we could meet," said Cletus.
"I believe you're right. Fair enough," said Dow. He stepped backward and opened the door. "I'll wish you a good recovery with that leg of yours."
"And you, a safe trip to Earth," said Cletus.
Dow turned and went out. Several minutes later the door opened again and Wefer's head appeared in the opening.
"DeCastries gone?" Wefer asked. "He didn't talk long at all then."
"We said what we had to say," answered Cletus. "There wasn't much point in his staying, once we'd done that."
17
Three days later, Mondar made his reappearance at Cletus' bedside. "Well, Cletus," he said, sitting down in the chair by the bed, "I've spent most of my time since I saw you last going into your situation with other members of our group who've had more experience with certain aspects of what you suggested than I have. All together we worked out a pattern of behavior that looks as if it might give the greatest possible encouragement to the miracle you're after. The main question seemed to be whether it would be better for you to be ultimately acquainted with the physiology of your knees, and the process of tissue growth and regrowth, or whether it would be better for you to have as little knowledge of it as possible."
"What was the decision?" Cletus asked.
"We decided it would be best if you knew as little as possible," Mondar said. "The point is, the stimulus for what's going to be essentially an abnormal body reaction has to come from a very primitive level of the organism - you being the organism."
"You don't want me visualizing what's going on then?" "Just the opposite," answered Mondar. "You should remove your concern with the regrowth process as completely as possible from any symbolic area. Your determination to achieve regrowth must be channeled downward into the instinctive level. To achieve that channeling you're going to need practice, and so we worked up a set of exercises that I'm going to teach you to do over the next two weeks. I'll come here and work with you daily until you can do the exercises by yourself. Then I'll observe until I think you've got complete control in the necessary areas. Then we'll recommend the symbolic operation, in which the genetic pattern of your right knee will be transferred in the form of a few cells of tissue of flesh and bone to the area of the left knee, where we want regrowth to take place."
"Good," said Cletus. "When do you want to start the exercises?"
"Right now, if you like," answered Mondar. "We start out by getting off the topic of your knees entirely and into some completely different area. Any suggestions for a topic?"
"The best one in the universe," Cletus answered. "I was intending to talk to you about it anyway. I'd like to borrow two million IMU's."
Mondar gazed at him for a second, then smiled. "I'm afraid I don't have that much with me," he said. "After all, out here away from Earth two million International Monetary Units are rather more scarce than they are back on Earth. Are you very urgent about your need for them?"
"Urgent and absolutely serious," replied Cletus. "I'd like you to talk to your fellow Exotics here in Bakhalla - and anywhere else, if necessary. I'm not wrong, am I, in thinking your organization could lend me that kind of money if you thought it was worthwhile?"