Controclass="underline" "What are you counting? Report!"
Sanger's automatic responses were laid bare. "Down from twenny."
Controclass="underline" "Why are you doing it?"
"Doc'or's orders."
Physician: "Another few seconds; keep counting." He pinched the flesh around the scar, hard. She did not flinch.
Controclass="underline" "What doctor, S? Report!"
"Sixteen — dunno 'is name."
"What is the doctor doing, S? Report!"
A final tatter of conscious resistance; then, "Cut'n you out — of me."
She was taking an infernally long time to go under, thought the physician. At least he could make his preliminary horsehoe incision, laying the skin back and clamping it. He did so.
Control stepped up its audio power. "So, are you under sedation?"
"Uh-huh." She tried to nod. The doctor cursed, held her head still.
As loud and as sweet as any transmission Control would ever make: "We can help you, S. Just tell us: is someone removing your critic?"
Help, or the promise of help, glimmered faintly in the corridors of semiconsciousness. She murmured what could have been an affirmative, "Um-hmm." Her head did not move. Her entire body became limp.
The physician adjusted his rotary tool, aligned the saw blade so that it would not spit debris into his face, flicked the switch and lowered the spinning steel teeth against the dull gleam of mastoid bone. "Won't be long now," he soothed.
It was, in fact, almost instantaneous.
CHAPTER 36
The critic's detonation inside armoring bone was not as loud as the rotary saw, a muffled meaty resonance that erupted under the whining saw blade as if the physician had cut into a pressurized cartridge. A gout of flesh and bone splinters flew outward in a hideous spray, and the body of Marbrye Sanger gave one convulsive throe. Straps parted; the physician found himself hurled to the floor.
Wiping his face, using his rage to overmaster his nausea, the doctor stood again to survey what had moments before been a lovely woman in desperate need. He rolled her body over, saw the gaping wound; knew even as he checked for vital signs that no human body could survive such internal assault.
Never again would she harbor desperation — or fulfillment.
The physician turned and caught the horrified gaze of the priest, and somehow this fleeting contact fanned the guttering flame of his spirit. Approaching the unconscious Quantrill he growled, "If ever we had any doubts about where our government is headed, good Father Klein, — well, I offer Exhibit A." He swept his arm outward as if offering aid to the lifeless body that lay splashed with blood and hard sunlight below the window.
Father Klein cleared his throat several times before he could speak. "Some things I have never doubted.
But I don't know what to do."
"Take a blowtorch to every bloodstain you can find, and help me get this youngster to the Masonics," the doctor replied. "We've got some tracks to cover, Klein. These Search & Rescue people don't screw around."
CHAPTER 37
On her next trip to the San Rafael lab complex, Eve displayed gaity like a semaphore. Chabrier, essentially a sensitive man, waited patiently to learn the invisible message that underlay her overt signals.
Their drug business concluded, both retired to his lower-level chambers to transact their pleasures.
Though plenty of IEE's drugs were handy, it was Eve's pleasure to draw on the Ember of Venus for the stuff they shared. Luxuriating in her second rush within the hour, Eve plucked at the hairy mat on Chabrier's belly and sighed, "Sometimes I envy you, Marengo."
A snort was his Gallic answer.
"I mean it. Tucked away out here, controlling your own priorities, — not like that fucking madhouse at IEE."
If Chabrier had owned antennae they would have vibrated like a tuning fork; real trouble at her level, or Mills's, must inevitably have its effect on Chabrier. In feigned lazy indifference he said, "With you and the formidable Monsieur Mills at the helm? Surely you exaggerate."
Eve's turn to snort. "If we weren't controlling the media, my man, the leadoff lines alone would boggle your brains."
Chabrier recalled an old Chinese curse. "We live in interesting times," he said. "But perhaps they would not interest me."
Eve could not resist the bait. "Two weeks ago it might've been, 'Government Assassins Executed While Escaping'. According to Mills it was a damned close thing; if forensics cops hadn't identified bits of hair and bone on an ore crusher, they'd still be looking for the man." She smiled to think of Quantrill's body in a condition that no woman would crave, macerated and consumed by the system. "I met him once, you know."
"A one-day news sensation, perhaps."
"Sensation you want? You got it: 'President Young Loses Marbles." Mills tells me the Lion of Zion is about three liters low on his mental dipstick, fueling himself on booze and pussy and due for a major overhaul." She searched Chabrier's face for a sign. If that news didn't faze him, he was either wasted on her alkaloids or singularly unimpressable.
Dealing as he did with Chinese on a daily basis, Chabrier found her American slang barely scrutable and donated a show of concern. "I gather that IEE is, ah, deeply in the President's debt."
"Call it a mutual aid society. Mills is trying to diversify. Whatever a gaga president pulls down with him, IEE can maintain a stranglehold on Streamlined America."
Chabrier's smile was bleak. "As Krupp did in Germany, eh?"
Since media history is inextricable from political history, Eve boasted a modest understanding of the German firm's tactics. "Only Krupp didn't get into dude ranches, with gambling and thrill rides so big they make the Disney ruins look like backyard sandpiles by comparison. Matter of fact, I'm scheduled to look over a hell of a big ranch very soon. I'll miss you while I'm down there but it's my first ride on a delta, so it won't be entirely boring."
Chabrier's gaze was speared on a needlelike sparkle from the great jewel that hung at her throat. "I shall be with you in proxy," he said, brushing the Ember with a fingertip. Far better, he thought, for this great vache to stave off boredom with drugs than to take up some alliance with another man of a desperation equaling his own.
Eve lay back, took the amulet by its chain, let it swing above their heads where they could revel in its lightshow. "Krupp didn't have a shot at this, either," she said dreamily. "The scaled-up synthesizer is IEE's real hole-card, Marengo. I'd hate to think what would happen to you if it turned out to be a deuce."
This time her jargon was impenetrable. When she explained, Chabrier could only shrug. "To envy me, ma cherie, is to envy a man walking a tightrope over an abyss."
"I hope your progress reports to Mills don't sound that pessimistic."
"I am not a fool," he grumbled.
For perhaps thirty seconds she studied his sad countenance. Eve could not know that Chabrier's maternal grandmother in Amiens had left him a behavioral legacy, having slept with a Nazi officer to avoid a concentration camp. Yet Eve began to sense that her lover needed her for more than sexual favors. She could view this revelation as a wedge cut from her sexuality, or as a buttress added to her power. As always, she chose the pleasant alternative.
"My sweet monkeyfuck, do you think I'd let any harm come to you?"
"I think," he said slowly, "that you would not learn of it until too late to help." He knew better than to ask her for an avenue of escape. She must stumble upon the notion herself.
But Eve did not need to stumble. Her fertile imagination had long since created scenarios in which she stashed her gentle gorilla in some Mexican villa with an acre of palms waving overhead and a three-acre waterbed undulating underfoot. The problem was, Chabrier had far more potential to please her by a breakthrough which could make her awesomely rich, than he did as purely sexual outlet. Chabrier was clearly a multipurpose tool.