"I mean the first time."
"Castro, I could break every finger in both your hands. Now where's Polly? Is she dead?"
"Would I talk if you did?"
There was hesitation. Then two arms converged on his right hand. Jesus Pietro yelped with the pain and reached with clawed fingers for a pair of eyes...
He was halfway through a stack of reports when agony bit into his hand. He found two fingers of his right hand bent back at right angles to the palm. With his teeth clenched hard on a scream, Jesus Pietro turned on the intercom. "Get me the doctor."
"What's wrong?"
"Just get me the--" His eyes caught a flash of movement. Someone in the office with him!
"You're right," said a voice. "I can't torture anything out of YOU."
Faint, fading memories told him not to look up. He said, "You."
"Go fly a bicycle."
"Matthew Keller?"
Silence.
"Answer me, damn you! How did you get back?"
Two hands slapped together on Jesus Pietro's right hand. His whole face clamped down on the scream, and Jesus Pietro snatched up his stunner and looked wildly for a target.
He looked up again when the doctor entered.
"No point in replacing them," said the doctor. "They're only dislocated." And he deadened Jesus Pietro's arm, set the fingers, and sprinted them. "How the Mist Demons did you do it?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know? You dislocated two fingers, and you can't quite recall?"
"Get off my back. I said I can't remember what happened to my hand. But I think that infernal ghost, Matthew Keller, must have had something to do with it."
The doctor gave him a very peculiar look. And left.
Jesus Pietro looked ruefully at his right arm, sprinted and dangling from a sling. Oh, fine. And he genuinely couldn't remember anything about it.
Which was why he kept thinking about Matthew Keller.
But why did he keep thinking about Polly Tournquist?
It was time and past time for the next phase of her treatment. But surely she could wait? Of course she could.
He tried his coffee. Too cool. He poured it back into the pot and started fresh.
His arm felt like dead meat.
Why did he keep thinking about Polly Tournquist?
"Phut!" He stood up clumsily, because of his bound arm. "Miss Lauessen," he told the intercom, "get me two guards. I'm going over to the Planck."
"Will do."
He was reaching for the stunner on his desk when something caught his eye. It was the dossier for Matthew Keller, senior. A crude drawing defaced its yellow cover.
Two open arcs, joined, in black ink. Three small closed loops beneath.
The bleeding heart. It certainly hadn't been there before.
Jesus Pietro opened the folder. He could smell his own fear, and feel it, in the cool perspiration that soaked his shirt. As if he'd been afraid for hours.
Front and side views. Blue eyes, yellow hair, skin beginning to puff-out with age...
Something stirred somewhere in Jesus Pietro's mind. For just a moment the face in the folder became younger. Its expression changed slightly, so that it seemed both frightened and angry. There was blood soaking into its collar, and a piece freshly bitten from its ear.
"Your guards are here, sir."
"Thank you," said Jesus Pietro. He took one last look at the dead man and closed the folder. He put the stunner in his pocket before he left.
"I wish we could warn Laney," said Harry Kane. "This changes everything."
"You wouldn't even know what to tell her yet. Here, take this out." Mrs. Hancock put a steaming pitcher of hot cider on a tray, added four mugs.
They were in the kitchen. Hood was in the living room with Millard Parlette. Parlette, leaning on Jay Hood, had managed to stagger into the living room and into an armchair.
It had seemed a good time to call a break.
The wind screamed against black windows. To four conspirators in front of a convincing fire, drinking hot spiced cider against the cold, the living room seemed a haven.
A temporary haven.
"You've been thinking about this longer than we have," said Harry. "We never dreamed the crew might compromise. Just what are you prepared to offer?"
"To start with, amnesty for the Sons of Earth, for you and whoever remains in the vivarium. That comes free. We'll need you. Once the colonists lose faith in the crew, you'll be the only force for law and order in the colony regions."
"That'll be a switch."
"We need to discuss three types of medical care," said Millard Parlette. "Organic transplants, the ramrobot gifts, and minor medical treatment. You already have some access to standard drugs at the medcheck stations. We can expand those. I'm sure we can offer free access to the heartbeasts and liverbeasts and so forth. For a while your colonists will have to come up to the Hospital to get treatment with the ramrobot symbiots, but eventually we can build culture tanks in Gamma and Delta and Eta."
"Very good. What about the organ banks?"
"Right." Millard Parlette wrapped his arms around his narrow rib cage and stared into the fire. "I couldn't plan for that part, because I didn't know just what technological change was coming. What are your ideas?"
"Abolish the organ banks," Mrs. Hancock said firmly.
"Throw away tons of organic transplant material? Dump it on the grass?"
"Yes!"
"Would you also abolish crime? The organ banks are our only way to punish thieves and murderers. There are no prisons on Mount Lookitthat."
"Then build prisons. You've been killing us long enough!"
Parlette shook his head.
Harry Kane intervened. "It wouldn't work. Look, Lydia, I know how you feel, but we couldn't do it. If we dumped all that transplant material out, we'd have the whole Plateau against us. We can't even abolish execution by the organ banks, partly because crime would run rampant without capital punishment, and partly because there are too many crew like Parlette, who need the banks to live. If we did that, we might as well declare war here and now."
Lydia turned appealingly to Hood.
"I pass," said Hood. "I think you're all ignoring something."
Harry said, "Oh?"
"I'm not sure yet. I'll have to wait and see. Keep talking."
"I don't understand," said Lydia. "I don't understand any of you. What have we been fighting for? What have we been dying for? To smash the organ banks!"
"You're overlooking something, Mrs. Hancock," Parlette said gently. "It isn't that the crew wouldn't agree to that, and it isn't that the colonists wouldn't agree to that. They wouldn't, of course. But I won't let you kick in the organ banks."
"No." Lydia's words dripped scorn. "You'd have to die then, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, I would. And you need me."
"Why? What have you got for us besides your influence and your good advice?"
"A small army. I have more than one hundred lineal descendants. They've been prepared for this day for a very long time. Not all of them will follow me, but most will obey my orders without question. They all have hunting weapons."
Lydia sighed, raggedly.
"We'll do our best, Mrs. Hancock. We can't eliminate the organ banks, but we can eliminate the injustice."
"What we'll have to do," said Harry, "is establish a first-come, first-serve basis for what's already in the banks. Whoever gets sick first--you see what I mean. Meanwhile we set up a new code of law, so that a crew stands just as much chance of getting into the banks as a colonist."