YEEOW! The noise of it going into my skull was almost as bad as the living agony! The room spun!
"It was going all so nice," said Nurse Bildirjin. "Nice and slow and even. Making it last. Oh, it was good!"
Prahd had the drill going sideways. I fainted.
When I came to, Nurse Bildirjin said, "It was the first one for the night. I had been looking forward to it all day. I could feel it clear to the top of my head! And then my father came in!"
I tried to tell her, "Nurse Bildirjin, I am not your father. That is an Elektra complex. You have a secret passion for your father and it expresses itself in hate." But the gag was in my mouth.
Prahd was holding the lead box. "Please verify the object."
She let my head go for an instant. It was the object. I nodded sufferingly.
He took it in some tweezers and dropped it in a solution. He fished it out. She grabbed my head again. Her knees dug.
YEEOW! YEEOW! YEEOW! He had put it in my skull none too gently.
"You ever get stopped halfway through?" said Nurse Bildirjin. "Just when it is going wonderful?"
He was taking a mass of bone cells out of the test tube he had catalyzed. Like a plasterer, he was pasting it into the hole he had made.
At every touch it felt like he was yanking on every nerve!
"You see," said Nurse Bildirjin, "I am a young girl. I am just starting out. All this is new and wonderful to me. I had heard, but I never knew it could be so good, so good, so good!"
He was tugging scalp down now. It hurt like blazes. Stung!
"You should be very careful of young girls who have never had any before," said Nurse Bildirjin. "It is their most delightful time of life!"
Prahd was smearing something around the edges of the scalp wound. It was agony at every stroke!
"You don't stop young girls halfway," said Nurse Bildirjin. "You go right on and let them finish! Young girls have tender feelings, and don't you forget it!"
Prahd had a light he was shining on my skull. It was so hot I could hear my hair sizzling.
He stepped back. "You can let him up now, Nurse Bildirjin," he said professionally.
She got off me. I hurt so bad elsewhere, I didn't even feel her knees gouging me, leaving bruises.
She picked up a lancet, apparently just to have it handy in case she had any afterthoughts. She undid my throat strap so I could breath again. She unfastened the rest.
"Well," said Prahd. "You're bugged. Does my pay start now?"
I got the roll of bandage out of my mouth. "Get out of here!" I yelled.
They were very obedient. As she left, Nurse Bildirjin was already unbuttoning her uniform. She was looking adoringly up at Prahd.
"Oh, I just love practicing medicine, don't you, doctor? It's SO stimulating!"
I got off the table somehow. The room was spinning.
I didn't know if I'd been (bleeped) or operated on!
The taxi driver woke up as I approached the cab. He stared at me. In a shocked tone, he said, "Gee, did that swarthy Sicilian catch up with you?"
I made him drive me to the barracks: I couldn't confront more whining by Faht Bey. I went through the hangar. The guard officer said, "A gang beat up on you?"
I went up the tunnel to my secret room. I fumbled through the closet entrance to my bedroom.
I collapsed. I didn't really go to sleep—I just went unconscious.
The following morning I awoke very late. My sweater collar had blood on it. My hair was caked. It called for extreme measures. I took a shower. I was surprised when I found my head didn't gush further blood. I was even more surprised when I touched the spot: it almost killed me.
However, getting into a shirt I didn't have to pull over my head, I began to savor what I had accomplished. None of the hypnohelmets would work on me. There would be no more nightmares complete with Manco spike-tailed Devils. I was safe from Krak. And nobody on this planet was safe from me. It was a nice feeling.
The waiter brought me in some hot kahve sade– without sugar. I drank it in sips between great gulps of water. That is the proper way to drink it, though I seldom did it. But the wounded get thirsty. I ignored utterly the baklava sweet pastry.
As the waiter seemed to have gotten in and out without being blown apart by a double-barrelled leopard, I tiptoed across the patio to the yard door: I wanted to plan from where I would get a guard to shoot the paralysis dart at the intruder. I put my eye to the peephole.
My Gods!
Utanc was just leaving in her BMW.
And sitting right beside her in the front seat, chummy as you please, was GUNSALMO SILVA!
The car vanished from the gate.
I stepped out into the yard.
Karagoz was helping the gardener plant a flower bed. I beckoned and then pointed mutely at the gate—I was speechless.
"Oh, him?" said Karagoz. "He was waiting for you."
I nodded numbly.
Karagoz said, "There were some strange men in town the last couple days. They scared Utanc. So this morning she hired Silva as a bodyguard."
Worse and worse! Not only was he gunning for me, he was stealing my darling dancing girl! And who knows but what they'd both plot against me!
It was a good thing I had it all planned out with the hypnohelmets.
Karagoz said, "He's broke, you know. The American consul took away all the cash he got off the dead gangster—said it was a consular fee. We been feeding him."
Even the staff were in league on this!
I started to go to the gate. Then I realized that I stupidly had come out here unarmed. I turned to go back to my room.
There was a rush and a roar!
Utanc slammed the BMW into the yard!
It stopped in its usual place in a scream of tires.
I froze.
I looked at the car like a snake-fixated bird.
This was the end.
Gunsalmo Silva was getting out. He had the leopard in his hand.
Utanc, hooded, cloaked and veiled, swept by me without even a flick of eyes in my direction, as though I didn't exist. She had obviously written me off. In a moment her room door slammed behind her and the metal bars clanged into place.
Silva was just standing there, half in and half out of the car. He was looking at me.
I have never felt quite so naked. No gun to draw. And he would have plenty of time to shoot me before I could draw it if I had one. And he was Apparatus hypnotrained now, capable of anything.
He was walking toward me slowly, leopard in hand. He was squat, muscular, very Sicilian, terrible. He was frowning.
He stopped five feet from me. He raised the leopard. He scratched his head with the muzzle.
"Now, where the (bleep) have I seen you before?" he said.
I said nothing.
He frowned harder. Then his face brightened up to a dark cloud. "Oh, I know. It's that God (bleeped) nightmare I get. You're the guy in it! I'm standing there in a barn full of flying saucers!"
Silva looked me up and down and nodded. "Well, that clears that up. Can we go some place private and sit down? It's kind of public here."
Tricky. Just what you'd expect after Apparatus training. He didn't want the execution to be public.
My bedroom was closer to my guns.
I found my voice. "Come with me," I said and led the way to the bedroom. Then I got even more clever. "You want something to drink first? Some Scotch?"
"Never touch it," he said. "God (bleep) ulcers."
Well, try again, my old professors used to say. If you're not dead yet, there's always a slim chance you won't be right away.
I got him into my bedroom. I sat him down in a chair. I toyed with the idea of going in the secret room and stepping on the floor plate with a twist, which would assemble the whole crew in the hangar. Then I thought, they'd be in the hangar, not here where they are needed.
I tried a ploy. I said, "I understand Utanc hired you as a bodyguard."
"Yeah," he grunted.