He remembered the pain of his Blood Banner initiation. This was worse.
He pushed into "A" block. This was Blaikley's kingdom. There was a washroom just past reception.
The duty guard—a Good Ole Boy (Good Ole Girl?) called Serafina—forced him to take a plastic tagbadge, and logged him in. His hands couldn't work the catch, and she had to pin it on for him. It was as if acid were eating into his skin. Finally, he was officially able to enter the facility.
Serafina smirked. She obviously thought he needed desperately to urinate.
He blundered into the washroom, and ran a cold tap, filling a basin. As he stood at the washstand, waiting for the bowl to fill, looking at the floor, a scorpion scuttled out from the waterpipes. It was a freak, with two tails. He crushed it under his shoe. The work blocks were supposed to be kept clean of that sort of vermin. It was most unhygienic, irregular. He would upbraid Blaikley severely.
The pain was rising up his spine now, as if the vertebrae were being displaced.
He plunged his hands into the water, and scrubbed viciously. Flakes of skin came away.
He looked up at the mirror, feeling some relief from the pain. His face shocked him. He could see the bones of his skull shifting, dislocating. A trickle of blood crept from one nostril. His jaw shifted from side to side. This was agony.
He realized he was screaming. The sink overflowed, and water cascaded around him. He looked at his hand, and saw the new skin that had risen where he had scratched the old away. It was rougher, greener…
There were people around him, dragging him away from the stand. Someone twisted the taps.
Dr Blaikley had hold of him. He felt her soft body pressed close to him. She was holding his arms at his side while someone else squirted an air bubble out of a hypodermic syringe.
She wasn't joking lewdly now. She was treating him as dispassionately as she did her animal subjects.
But why was she loosening his belt?
He tried to protest, but he couldn't get the words out through his clenched jaws. He could taste his own blood.
Two assistants had him now, and Dr Blaikley was tugging his pants down. He thrashed his legs, and she pulled his jockey shorts to his knees.
Merciful heavens, was the crazy woman trying to rape him?
"Just a little prick," she said, "with a needle."
The assistants turned him round, and bent him over a sink. His spinal column was a fiery mass of pain.
He felt the needle sink into his buttock, and heard Dr Blaikley say, "Got him."
The pain vanished instantly, but so did all other feeling. Still fully conscious, he was unable to move a muscle. He sagged, and someone mercifully pulled his underwear and pants up.
"Shame," said Dr Blaikley. "Still, it's not the size of your pencil, it's how you write your name."
They took him out of the washroom, and there was a gurney waiting for him.
He lay flat, looking up at the white ceiling. A fan was turning up there.
'It's happening fast," someone said. "His metabolism must differ from the others."
"He's not a proper subject," Dr Blaikley snapped. "He's GenTech brass. The fecal matter just collided with the ventilation system."
He was being trundled down a corridor.
"Hiroshi," said Dr Blaikley, looming into his field of vision and talking straight at his face. "You've had a turn. We've seen these symptoms before. There's nothing to worry about. We can help you."
Her hair was hanging into his face. He could smell her lemon shampoo.
"You're going to be just fine."
Then she turned away to someone else and said, under her breath but loud enough for him to hear, "God, I hope the Nip swallows that shit."
He was being wheeled deeper into "A" block.
"Get Visser, and tell him what's happened," Blaikley said. Fans and overhead lights passed. His head rolled from side to side. He fought to get control of his neck muscles, but couldn't
His head flopped. He realized he was hearing things again. The same sounds that had been getting into his dreams recently. They were like the keening cries of swamp birds. Primordial noises.
There was an animal smell. He had never toured this part of the compound. It was not his field.
Like one of his snails, he snatched a breath that would have to last a long time. His chest wasn't rising properly, as if the dope they'd shot into him had paralyzed his lungs.
"He'll come out of it soon."
"Then freaking hurry up, Misty. I like having two hands and big teats."
The gurney stopped, and he was transferred to a cot. It was just a mattress over an iron frame. Things were stuck into his arm, and he heard the steady beeping of a vital signs monitor.
Dr Blaikley peered into his eyes, pulling the lids back. Her sweet breath was on his face. Her heavy breasts brushed his chest.
"Hurry up, Misty," she said to someone.
His hand was working now. He raised it, and caught Blaikley's skirt, just above her thigh. He felt the warm meat of her hip.
She flinched, and Shiba thought he could see something strange in her expression. It was most un-Mary Louise Blaikley-like. It could have been pity.
She took his hand between thumb and forefinger and put it on his chest, touching it as little as possible as if it were a dead rat. Or a diseased one.
There was a clanking, and Dr Blaikley and the others were gone. The pain was creeping back, and he could move his limbs slightly. His hand stung where Dr Blaikley had touched him.
His lungs expanded, and he tore another breath from the air, feeling the fires raging inside his chest.
There were sprouts of pain all along his jaws now.
He sat up, and realized he was not in an infirmary room. He was in a cage.
IV
"You've messed with the Good Ole Boys one time too many, guitar man."
Robert E. Lee Chamberlain was going to fulfil a longstanding ambition by killing him, Elvis realized. But first he was going to make a long, boring speech about it.
Elvis looked around. The indentees were sat down on the ground, their chains between them. Good Ole Boys with guns chewed toothpicks, and tried to look cool behind their Sterlings.
Krokodil was just standing, a little away from the car, her hands out where everybody could see them.
"Got any songs you wanna sing, guitar man?"
Chamberlain was pointing his automatic. The girl he had shot earlier wasn't crying any more, just pressing her ragged ear flat against her head. It was about time they had a slave revolt down here in Georgia.
"How about 'John Brown's Body,' massah?"
Chamberlain sneered, and shot the ground by Elvis's feet. He raised a divot. Elvis wished he hadn't flinched, but knew he had. He had the feeling he'd be seeing Jesse Garon pretty soon.
"How d'you feel without your nigra buddies to help you out, guitar man?"
Elvis didn't say anything. Chamberlain had taken a severe humiliation back in Memphis thanks to Gandy, Big Bill and the Dollman. This wasn't going to be over until the Good Ole Boy thought he had paid the Op back for that.
"I've got orders to put you out of the game, guitar man. Orders from Judgement Q. Harbottle himself."
"The big man?"
Chamberlain grinned. "Yeah. The big man. You should be flattered. Usually, Judgement has better things to do than bother with pissant solos who screw up field Ops. You've been a regular 'skeeter, bitin' and botherin' us. But he says we gotta make an example of you."
He waved at the indentees.
"You'll be real pleased to know that after we do the business on you and your lady friend, we're gonna let these nigras go free as birds."
Chains chinked as the indentees shifted. They knew better than to trust Chamberlain.
"The important thing is not that you get a .45 headache, but that these coloured boys see you check out. You've got quite a rep with the swamp trash. They reckon you're some kind of a hee-ro. But with your brains shot out through your greasy hair, I reckon you'll jus' be another piece of dead shee-it. These nigras will spread the word that the guitar man got blown away, and the Good Ole Boys won't get so much rebelliousness from the 'denties. Killin' you is gonna accomplish a lot of things…"