After a long time, Chirk let out a fluttering sigh.
She opened her eyes and looked dully about her.
She finally focused on Jonnie. She simply looked at him for quite a while.
Then abruptly Chirk hitched herself up on her elbows and said with some authority, “Jonnie, did you send that library form in like I told you? The home office is going to be pretty cross if it finds you've got an incomplete set of books down here!”
Jonnie heaved a sigh of relief. Part of it was for the practical value of this. Part of it was for Chirk herself.
He was about to answer when she caught sight of her arms. Puzzled, she said, “What am I doing so thin?”
She hitched herself up a little higher. “Why am I so weak?”
“You'll feel stronger when you've had something solid to eat. We have some very good goo-food now. And even some chew-roots."
Her interest was immediate and then faded. "I’ve been here for some time, haven't l, Jonnie?"
“A while,” said Jonnie.
She thought about it. Then she stiffened. “I’ve had lapsin! It 's incurable!” She let out a wail.
“It’s cured,” said Jonnie.
She thought about it. Then another upset took her. “But why didn't they vaporize me? The catrists?"
“I think you'll get well,” said Jonnie. "In fact, I think you'll be healthier than before.”
She thought she understood. “You're sitting there so they won't come in and vaporize me. Jonnie, that's brave and I should thank you, but you can't stop the catrists! They're the law. They're beyond any law! They can do anything they please, even to the emperor. Jonnie, you better get out of here before they come.”
Jonnie looked at her for a while. What a world of terror and cruelty these Psychlos had lived in. He said, "I’m sitting here to tell you the news, Chirk. I fired the catrists.” Well, it was true, wasn't it? Even if he didn't really know what a catrist was, if they'd been on Psychlo, they were fired. Radioactively.
Chirk sat up higher, shedding the dullness. "Oh, Jonnie, that was awfully nice of you!”
She swung her legs to get off the bed. “Where are my clothes? I better get to work or I’ll have another black mark on my record.” She tried to stand.
"I’d take it easy,” said Jonnie. Then, an inspiration. “It’s your day off.”
She sank down on the bed, shaking with weakness and evidently dizzy.
“Oh, that's lucky. will it be all right if I come in tomorrow?”
Jonnie assured her that it was. He went out and found the two females, and perhaps because of his reassociation with Ker, he told them he had an order that exempted Chirk
from being vaporized and that if they harmed her he'd dock their pay and put black marks all over their records and they better go get her some goo-food and chew-root and help her take a bath. They did not misunderstand him. Whatever else he said, he had a palm resting on his belt blast gun. They understood that.
Part XXXII
Chapter 1
With all the weight hanging on the outcome of this project, Jonnie was in no frame of mind to be told that it would be three days before they could be sure they had succeeded with Chirk. MacKendrick said there were dangers of infection, of relapse. He had to observe the reactions before he could proceed.
In vain Jonnie told him that unless they solved Psychlo math, he might find himself back in a conference room with very angry emissaries whose economies had remained stagnant, that he might be pushed into a new demonstration of force. MacKendrick said it wouldn't help to rush it.
And Chirk did not instantly rebound. On the second day she was still in bed, too weak and dizzy to get up. It made Jonnie wonder whether the removal would disturb their sense of balance, even their ability to think.
Other things occurred. Pierre Solens had vanished and it took Jonnie hours to find that he had been seen boarding a plane that had come through, sky-hiking his way back to Europe.
Pattie seemed to have undergone a change. Jonnie was sitting in the old library, impatiently thumbing through books, when he became aware of Pattie. She obviously had something to say. He sat quietly, giving her his attention.
"Jonnie, please tell me the truth. Did Bittie live very long?”
It startled Jonnie, hurled him back to that fatal day. A wave of grief choked him. He could only nod faintly.
“Then he could have been saved,” said Pattie, not accusing, just stating a fact.
Jonnie looked at her. He couldn't talk. Dear God, no! The boy was blasted half in two; his spine was shattered. Nothing could have saved Bittie. Nothing. But he couldn't say that to her.
“Jonnie, if I had known how to be a doctor and if I had been there, he wouldn't have died.” She said it as fact, conviction.
He waited. He couldn't talk.
“When the doctors leave here, I want to go with them,” said Pattie. “I will be very good. I will not bother them. I will go to a school and study real hard and I will learn everything I have to know to be a doctor. Will you help me, Jonnie?"
He couldn't talk. He put his arms around her. After a while he was able to say, “Of course I will, Pattie. You can stay with Aunt Ellen. I will speak to MacKendrick. I will see you have all the money you need.”
She stepped back, her eyes bright with determination. With dignity she said, “Thank you,” and went away.
After a little, he felt a sense of relief for her. He had thought she would never recover. But she had. There was a direction for her to go and she had found a path to travel on, a path that led out of despair and back to the world of the living.
On the following day he had been down in the electrical shop organizing equipment and needing a reference on molecular gun current values. He raced up to the library to get it.
And there was Chirk!
She was sitting at a desk, surrounded with books. "Jonnie," she said, a little severely, “you let this place get in an awful mess. You must learn to put things back when you pull them off the shelves!”
He looked at her. Inside her breathe-mask, her jaws were chomping away on chew-root. Her amber eyes seemed totally clear. She had already put on a bit of weight. “The company is very strict about orderly libraries,” she said. “You must remember that.” She went back to getting volumes in order. Her coordination seemed very exact as she stacked things with sure paw motions. The resulting piles were very even. Not even a tremble.
He was about to go tearing off to spread the news.
"Jonnie," said Chirk, pensively, "I’ve been thinking about mathematics. If you still need me to help you, I’ll try to learn to add and subtract and all that sort of thing. But, Jonnie," and she fixed him with a very questioning stare, “truthfully, why should any intelligent person want to do mathematics? I mean, what use are they, Jonnie?”
Three minutes later an excited Jonnie was telling MacKendrick they could roll.
Chapter 2
They had taken time and worked it all out.
There was always a risk in handling Psychlos, even in just being around them. One rake of a paw's claws could tear one's face off. MacKendrick had actually started on Chirk because there was less danger of it. The worker he had tested earlier had been a risk: the Psychlo had surged up when half-anesthetized, and had it not been for straps, somebody would have gotten hurt. So putting a Psychlo under and operating when that Psychlo was apprehensive, believing perhaps he was about to be killed, was a thing to be avoided.
The younger doctor had been trained, as many general practitioners were, in rudimentary dentistry. He examined a couple of skulls, studying the fangs and back teeth. They were caked with a coating from goo-food which seemed to turn black in time. There were a couple of cavities evident.