Four hours later, Ruth Berenici Truck, rising late after a lonely night — turning the other, unscarred cheek to face the world as she opened the door — found him on her doorstep. Where else should he be, now? He was curled up tight round his wound or the Centauri Device, and snow was in the hollows beneath his cheekbones.
He looked up at her with a pain so intense as to wake every echo of her own and said distinctly, 'No more. I'm full up. I'm hurt, Ruth. Can we come in?'
'All you have to do is be born,' he said later, trying to explain himself. And when she showed no sign of understanding (because you have to be crazy to live in the general rather than the particular). 'I can feel them in me. All us losers are Centaurans.'
Ruth Berenici sighed. She took away the chlorhexidene aerosol, the sulfanilamide powder, and the fouled dressings. 'What do I have to do to get in there?' she called from the kitchen. Reappearing in the connecting doorway, slightly stooped, arms folded across her stomach: 'Die?' She went and frowned over the Centauri Device, continued almost absently, 'Is there a place for the living in your cosy little colony?'
'Ruth.'
'I'm sorry. Truck, what is this thing?'
'Whatever you see.' He laughed, coughed. 'It's an operator of entropy.'
Outside, it was afternoon: gray. Clouds raced through the sky. He was propped up on his side on the bed, where he'd been since she manhandled him in (floppy and apologetic, nothing new).
The cough went on and on, like a paper-shredder working in his chest cavity. She had plugged the hole, but the bolt was still in there: deflected downward by a rib, it had passed through the bottom of one lung and lodged in the upper part of his abdomen, where it could be seen pressing up against the scarred plastic of his Opener window (looking at which for the first time, Ruth had merely compressed her lips and shaken her head — just another funny hat). As the last of the morphine wore off, the pain was becoming unbearable. He wondered idly if the ghosts in his head could feel it, too.
'They're late,' he said presently, watching the twilight creep out of the high corners of the room.
He waited the afternoon away, immobile, his sunken eyes following Ruth Berenici as she moved restlessly round the room. He was trying to find ways of apologizing to her for being himself — even now, when they both so desperately needed him to be something else.
He slept a little. When he raved, she held him down; when he woke moaning, 'You could go to a hospital,' she begged. 'They're all using me!' he screamed. Use and owe: was it the only language? 'Don't cry, Ruth.' He rolled onto his back, stared fearfully at the ceiling; dropped off again, to relive Pater's fatal flight, the Cowper furnace, the Central Bunker — to enumerate all the coffins he had already occupied.
'John!'
Pigs squealed in some dream, wriggling in comical flabby fear from under the knife, like mad Grishkin in a bunker: but the squeal he woke to was of brakes, and in the street outside. Half a dozen armored vehicles had arrived beneath Ruth Berenices window — doors slammed, turbines raced up and down their power curves then died abruptly.
'John!'
Both ends of the street were sealed off. From down in the hallway came a curious muffled thud as a small explosive charge knocked the outside door off its hinges. The stairwell rang with falling debris, then footsteps. A two-hundred-watt amplifier truck began to broadcast garbled Martian commands into the night
'John!'
At first, he didn't realize what was happening. He struggled up out of the abattoir with his mouth hot and gummy. Worked his tongue round it, blinking at the ceiling, where streetlight made an asymmetric screen. Ruth's dark figure bent over him, caught at his shoulders. 'John!' He shook his head. It wouldn't clear. Then, on the second flight of stairs, someone manufactured an illusion of resistance from the shadows — fired off his Chambers gun.
'IWG!' yelled Truck. 'Christ!'
He clawed at Ruth's hands and flung her away from him. He threw himself off the bed and rolled across the floor, scooping the Centauri Device up as he went Ruth was sobbing softly somewhere off by the window, and all around him the hinterland seemed to be full of sirens: faint, distant, of impersonal intent; rising and falling on the compass wind like an anxiety on the edge of reflection.
With sweat pouring into his eyes and his teeth chattering, he dragged himself to where he could set his back against a wall and face the door. Ruth looked desperately down into the street. 'Truck?' she pleaded. He was on the edge of a dark hole. 'Ruth, I — ' They were on the landing outside, kicking lumps out of the wall while they waited for an order. 'Ruth — ' It was too late for any of that.
He bit his lips.
The door caved in.
'I promised we'd meet again, sonny,' said Alice Gaw complacently.
She stood in the doorway, squat and brutal, dust and fumes from the explosion downstairs drifting up the stairwell to settle on the landing behind her. She seemed preoccupied. 'God, what a leprotic hole this place is.' She was back in the black short skirt of her WA uniform, stomach sagging over the leather belt that held her holster up.
She studied the room amusedly for a moment, then sauntered in and stepped aside: Fleet policemen hurried past her and began to go methodically through it, breaking up the furniture with careful efficiency. Truck coughed dismally, the paper-shredder at work in his lung again. Now it had happened, he felt curiously remote. The General looked him over, chuckled.
'I see they made a bit of a mess of you in Gottingen.' She shook her head. 'Was it worth it? You might have started a real war this time. If it hurts, I'll get a quack in as soon as we've got tills little business over with.'
'Don't bother, General. Ill survive.'
She ignored him, absently watching the Fleet men as they tore up some loose boards. 'Look sharp, you lot,' she chided them, 'or I'll do it myself. You haven't got all day.' Her features went lax. Still looking away from him: 'I'm not sure you will, Truck. And I don't have all that much time here myself,' Her one eye focused on him suddenly. 'Frankly, you've made it a shade difficult for me with the people I answer to. They're sending me over to the Strip to sort out the cock-up you caused there — '
She ran a hand through her hair. Her attention wandered. 'Truck, my love, why haven't you introduced us?'
And she smiled over at Ruth Berenici.
— who, emerging from whatever personal nightmare found its expression in the street below only to find herself in a more public one, cried, 'Who are you? How can you just burst in here like this -! Animal!'
Alice Gaw cocked her head to one side like a small deformed bird. 'My, my,' she said. She planted herself, feet apart, in front of Ruth and stared up at her with an expression of chilly intimacy. 'Look, lovie,' she began evenly, 'I like you. I liked you on sight. If I hadn't, I might have resented that.'
She reached out lazily and captured Ruth's lower jaw in one hard hand. She tutted sympathetically.
'That's a nasty scar. No, don't be shy. Let's have a look at it.'
And, with the muscles of her forearm trembling slightly, she forced Ruth's marred profile into the light.
'You know, that really is nasty,' she mused. 'Look duckie,' she murmured confidentially, 'I'll tell you what: I'm fifty-six years old, and I've been on my feet all bloody night long. Just you keep on the right side of me, and I'll keep on the right side of you. Hm?'