"Send them in," Howard sighed. Normal y, Terminus's regular constabulary stayed away from the DRC. Normally, Howard thought, he would not get to use that word again any time soon.
No sooner had the greencoat, actually, the fellow was in ordinary clothes, blue breeches and a yellow tunic, come in than the phone chimed.
"Excuse me," Howard said, thinking, everything happens at once. The greencoat nodded.
Howard picked up the phone. An excited voice said in his ear, "This is Butler, at the Terminus Constitution.
I’ve had a report that a sim with AIDS has been taken out of the Disease Research Center, Hello? Is that you, Dr. Howard? Are you there?"
“l'm here," Howard said. No point in breaking the conection. Like the greencoat in his office, this Butler was only the first of many.
Matt was confused. Dealing with people often left him feeling that way, but he had lived in his old home in the tower for a long time, and mostly knew what to expect.
With these new people, he had no idea what was coming next.
Shaking his head, he got out of bed, the third new, strange, not quite comfortable bed he'd had in as many nights, and used the toilet.
He had to strain to make the urine go through his penis, which was stiff with a morning erection. Stiffer than usual, even; he missed the females with whom he'd been living.
He flushed the toilet, sat down on it to comb his red brown hair.
That was another reason he missed the females: there was a big patch on his back that he could not reach. In the towers, sims by twos and threes would speed a lot of time combing each other all over. It was something to do.
He sniffed, and felt his broad nostrils expand with pleasure.
Breakfast was cooking, sausages today, from the smell. He liked sausages.
He went out to the kitchen. The man and woman who had taken him from the tower were there, along with the strange man and woman whose house this was. They we al drinking coffee. They looked up as he came in.
Good morning, he signed.
"Good morning," the people replied, with mouths a hands. "Help yourself," added the woman who lived here. Emily was her name, Matt remembered.
He nodded his thanks. Along with the sausages were sweet rolls and slices of apple. He fil ed his plate, took a glass of water (he did not care for coffee).
Behind him, Emily's mate Isaac whistled and said,' "Certainly nothing wrong with his appetite now."
"We've noticed that," replied Ken, one of the ones who had taken him away. "Hope it won't put you to too much trouble. "
"Don't worry," Isaac said.
Matt sat down at the table and started to eat. Were proud to help keep him out of the DRC, folks, and taking him was a grand gesture. But do you know what you'll do with him in the end?"
"We were thinking of getting him to one of the preserves and setting him loose there," Ken said, "but, " His voice wailed away.
"With the AIDS virus still in him, we can't do that, " Melody finished for him. "Not without spreading AIDS among the wild sims."
People often talked around sims as if they could not understand spoken words because they could not say them. Watt put down his fork so he could sign, Feel good.
"We know you do, Matt," Melody said gently, touching his hand for a moment with her small hairless one. "But no matter how good you feel, you aren't well. The sickness is inside you."
She and Ken had said that before. It made no sense to Matt. If he did not feel sick, how could he be sick? Feel good, he repeated.
He watched the humans roll their eyes and shrug. He shrugged too.
"There's another problem," Ken added. "He'll feel well only as long as we have HIVI for him." He looked down at his hands. "Maybe we should have thought a little longer about that, for his sake."
We did the best we could," Melody said. "He's out now. they can't do any more experimenting on him. He's free, for as long as we can keep him that way."
Matt had heard almost identical talk every day since he left the towers. It was about him, he knew, but it did not fil to connect to him.
Then Isaac said something new: "I don't think we can keep him free. We can keep him away from the doctors, sure, but only he can make himself free."
Dixon scowled; Melody rose abruptly from the table. I'II be taking off soon, I think." Even Matt, who did not use speech himself, could hear the anger in her voice.
He ate another sausage. Free was one of the many words they used that gave him trouble. Ideas like bread or cat or green or jump or sideways were easy enough to deal with. He could even count, though sometimes he had trouble remembering which number went with how many things or whether he had attached a number to each of the things in the group he happened to be counting.
But he could not eat free or see it or do it. The closest he could come to it in his own mind was do whatever I want. Right now he was ful and felt well. He wouldn't have minded coupling, but Ken and Melody had taken him away to from his females and he found human women ugly. Still, he was reasonably content. Did that make him free?
He didn't know.
"Come on, Matt," Melody said. "We have to get moving. We've imposed on these good people quite enough, thats obvious." She walked out of the kitchen.
"Don't take it that way, Melody," Emily said. "Isaac just, "
"Never mind," Ken said, before anyone else could talk. "You put us up for the night, and we're grateful. We all share wanting to make things better for sims, and that's enough, isn't it?"
Nobody said anything. Matt wondered what the answer to the question was. In the towers, people had wanted answers to questions all the time, and were upset when they didn't get them. But Ken and Melody and Isaac and Emily were just leaving this one lying around.
Matt shook his head at the vagaries of people.
Melody came back wearing rubber gloves and Carrying razor and a syringe.
"Give me your arm, Matt," she said Not need, he protested. Feel good.
He had said the same thing back in the towers, and the same success with it: none. "Give me your arm,' Melody repeated. "You want to keep feeling good, don't you?"
He nodded resignedly and held out his right arm. The hair on its underside had been shaved a few days before he left the tower, but it was growing in again. The razor scraped it away, leaving a long, narrow stretch of pinkish skin exposed. Now Melody could see exactly where to put the needle.
Matt's lips skinned back from his teeth in a grimace of pain. The people in the towers were much better at using syringe. They hardly hurt him at all. Finally, the ordeal ras done. Melody left the syringe on the table. "Boil it or put it in a glass ful of bleach before you throw it away," she said to Emily and Isaac. "Make sure you get rid of that virus."
Not sick, nothing wrong, Matt signed, adding a moment latter, But arm hurts.
"We're glad you feel all right," Melody said, smiling in a way.that made her seem more appealing to Matt than she had before, "but the virus is still in your blood. We don't want to take any risk of its spreading."
Matt sighed. The people in the tower had talked that way to, but it made no sense to him. Blood is blood, he signed.
"Never mind," Ken said again. "Let's get going."
Matt accompanied him and Melody out to the horseless out front of Emily's and Isaac's house. Isaac stayed behind.
Emily waved from the porch. The morning sun glinted off a gold front tooth.
Ken started the horseless. He and Melody shared the front seat; Matt had the back to himself. "Springfield?" Ken asked as he pulled out into traffic.
"Springfield," Melody agreed. "I've got the town map here.
We won't need that for a few hours," he said. "All I need worry about now is finding my way to via LXVI eastbound."
Matt listened to the two people with half an ear at best. he watched houses, trees, open spaces go by. That wasn't very interesting, either.