"What? Oh, no, no, that was just my little joke. I'm sure your uncle will never make it necessary actually to do it." She looked at Pinhead thoughtfully-and he was straining one arm through the bars, trying again and again to reach us. "He's had only five milligrams, and for a long-time happy dust addict that's barely enough to make him tempeiy. If I ever do have to put you-or your brother-in with him. I've promised him at least fifteen. I need your advice, dear. You see, I'm about to send your uncle back to Venusberg so that he can catch his ship. Now which do you think would work best with your uncle? To put your brother in there right now, while your uncle watches? He's watching this, you know; he saw you faint-and that couldn't have been better if you had practiced. Or to wait and-"
"My uncle is watching us?"
"Yes, of course. Or to-"
"Uncle Tom!"
"Oh, do keep quiet, Poddy. He can see you but he can't hear you and he can't possibly help you. Hmm- You're such a silly billy that I don't think I want your advice. On your feet, now!"
She walked me back to my cell.
That was only hours ago; it merely seems like years. But it is long enough. Long enough for Poddy to lose her nerve. Look, I don't have to tell this, nobody knows but me. But I've been truthful all through these memoirs and I'll be truthful now: I have made up my mind that as soon as I get a chance to talk with Uncle I will beg him, plead with him, to do anything to keep me from being locked up with a happy-dusted native.
I'm not proud of it. I'm not sure Ill ever be proud of Poddy a~ain. But there it is and you can rub my nose in it. I ye come up against something that frightens me so much I've cracked.
I feel a little better about it to have admitted it baldly. I sort of hope that, when the time comes, I won't whimper and I won~t plead. But I ... just
don't ... know.
And then somebody was shoved in with me and it was Clark!
I jumped up off the bed and threw my arms around him and lifted him right off his feet and was blubbering over him. "Oh, Clarkie! Brother, brother, are you hurt? What did they do to you? Speak to me! Are you deaf?"
Ri~ht in my ear he said, "Cut out the sloppy stuff, Pod.'
So I knew he wasn't too badly hurt, he sounded just like Clark. I repeated, more quietly, "Are you deaf?"
He barely whispered in my ear, "No, but she thinks I am, so we'll go on letting her think so." He untangled himself from me, took a quick look in his bag, then rapidly and very thoroughly went over every bit of the room-giving Titania just wide enough berth to keep her from diving on him.
Then he came back, shoved his face close to mine and said, "Poddy,. can you read lips?"
"No. Why?"
"The hell you can't, you just did."
Well, it wasn't quite true; Clark had barely whispered-and I did find that I was "hearing" him as much from watching his mouth as I was from truly hearing him. This is a very funny thing but Clark says that almost everybody reads lips more than they think they do, and he had noticed it and practiced it and can really read lips-only he never told anybody because sometimes it is most useful.
He had me talk so low that I couldn't hear it myself and he didn't talk much louder. He told me, "Look, Pod, I don't know that Old Lady Grew"-he didn't say "Lady"-"has this room wired. I can't find any changes in it since she had me in it before. But there are at least four places and maybe more where a mike could be. So we keep quiet-because it stands to reason she put us together to hear what we have to say to each other. So talk out loud all you want to... but just static. How scared you are and how dreadful it is that I can't hear anything and such-like noise."
So we did and I moaned and groaned and wept over my poor baby brother and he complained that he couldn t hear a word I was saying and kept asking me to find a pencil and write what I was saying-and in between we really did talk, important talk that Clark didn't want her to hear.
I wanted to know why he wasn't deaf-had he actually been in that tank? "Oh, sure," he told me, "but I wasn't nearly as limp by then as she thought I was, either. I had some paper in my pocket and I chewed it up into pulp and corked my ears." He looked pained. "A twenty-spot note. Most expensive earplugs anybody ever had, I'll bet. Then I wrapped my shirt around my head and ignored it. But stow that and listen."
He was even more vague about how he had managed to get himself trapped. "Okay, okay, so I got
hoaxed. You and Uncle don't look so smart, either- and anyhow, you're responsible."
"I am - not either responsible!" I whispered indignantly.
"If you're not responsible, then you're irresponsible, which is worse. Logic. But forget it, we've got important things to do now. Look, Pod, we're going to crush out of here."
"How?" I glanced up at Titania. She was nursing Ariel but she never took her eyes off us.
Clark followed my glance. "I'll take care of that insect when the time comes, forget it. It has to be soon and it has to be at night."
"Why at night?" I was thinking that this smoggy paradise was bad enough when you could see a little, but in pitch-darkness- "Pod, let that cut in your face heal; you're making a draft. It's got to be while Jojo is locked up."
"Jojo?"
"That set of muscles she has working for her. The
native." -
"Oh, you mean Pinhead."
"Pinhead, Jojo, Albert Einstein. The happy-duster. He serves supper, then he washes the dishes, then she locks him up and gives him his night's ration of dust. Then he stays locked up until he sleeps it off, because she's as scared of him when he's high as anybody else is. So we make our try for it while he is caged-and maybe she'll be asleep, too. With luck the bloke who drives her sky wagon will be away, too; he doesn't always sleep here. But we can't count on it and it has got to be before the Tricorn shapes for Luna. When is that?"
"Twelve-seventeen on the eighth, ship Greenwich."
"Which is?"
"Local? Nine-sixteen Venusberg, Wednesday the twentieth."
"Check," he answered. "On both."
"But why?"
"Shut up." He had taken his slide rule from his bag and was setting it. For the conversion, I assumed, so I asked, "Do you want to know the Venus second for this Terran year?" I was rather proud to have it on the tip of my tongue, like a proper pilot; Mr. Clancy's time hadn't been entirely wasted even though I had never let him get cuddly.
"Nope. I know it." Clark reset the rule, read it and announced, "We both remember both figures the same way and the conversion checks. So check timepieces." We both looked at our wrists. "Mark!"
We agreed, within a few seconds, but that wasn't what I noticed; I was looking at the date hand. "Clark! Today's the nineteenth!"
"Maybe you thought it was Christmas," he said sourly. "And don't yip like that again. I can read you if you don't make a sound."
"But that's tomorrow!" (I did make it soundless.)
"Worse. It's less than seventeen hours from now... and we can't make a move until that brute is locked up. We get just one chance, no more."
"Our Uncle Tom doesn't get to the conference."
Clark shrugged. "Maybe so, maybe not. Whether he decides to go-or sticks around and tries to find us- I couldn't care less."
Clark was being very talkative, for Clark. But at best he grudges words and I didn't understand him. "What do you mean-if he sticks around?"