“Gung. We’ll flog him in the computer complex.” She yanked a pad out of her toolbox and scribbled. “M’bantu! Here! Take this prescription to Upjohn and bring the ampul to the computer center at Union Carbide. Don’t let anybody mug you. Costs a fortune.”
“I will transport it in a cleft stick.”
She smacked him lovingly. “You black bastard. Tell Upjohn to bill me.”
“May I ask in what name, Borgia?”
“Damnation. Who am I now? Oh, yes. Cipolla. Dr. Renata Cipolla. Go, baby.”
“Renata Onion!” I exclaimed in disbelief.
“Why not? What are you, some kind of antisemite? Edison! Here! Fixed that door yet? Never mind. I’ll need you to rig a sterilizer for me. Also an oxygen mask. You’ll come with me and bring your toolbox.”
“Sterilizer?” Fee whispered. “Oxygen?”
“I may have to transect and do a coronary massage. Nemo! Nemo!” No answer. She tramped to the drawing room where he was in the pool playing with Laura. All the goldfish were gone and I wouldn’t doubt that he may have eaten a few himself, just to be friendly, you understand. Borgia rapped on the perspex until he stuck his head above water. “We’re leaving. Get out of that and guard the house. Door’s a shambles. Shut up, Ed. Use force to repel force but don’t kill anybody. Just hold them. They may need medical attention. R. Let’s move it out.”
She and Edison picked up their toolboxes. As Fee and I walked Cochise out of the house I looked down into the cellar. Scented Song was sleeping peacefully on Sabu’s back. I wanted to ask her to move over.
4
No trouble getting into the center; yes, doctor, no, doctor, certainly, doctor; the sleepwalker made a perfect front. There was a crowd in the center; some bright heads playing Prime against the Extro (and losing), and Spangland’s popular broadcast serial, The Rover Girls. We chased the kids but we couldn’t chase the broadcast. Serious Dick, fun-loving Tom, and sturdy-hearted Sam are now cadets at the Pentagon Military Academy (after their transsex operations in Denmark) and are buying pot, poppers, googies, hash, and uglies as refreshments for an orgy to celebrate Serious Dick’s election as Porno Procurement officer of his company.
“I can’t understand why this place isn’t insulated like yours,” Borgia complained.
“It is, but the broadcasts sneak in on the high-voltage lines,” I explained. “Ignore them. What do I do with the Chief?”
“Flat on the floor, face up. Ed, start putting together the sterilizer and oxygen mask while we’re waiting for M’bantu. Forage in the stock rooms for materials. Improvise. Go.”
Of course, the center was open for business, as was the entire university. In the first place, a computer is never turned off. In the second place, everything these days is operating on a twenty-four-hour basis. How else can you get some work out of a jillion deserving welfare cases unless you schedule twelve two-hour shifts?
You all know what a computer complex looks like — the hardware standing like a reunion of grandfather clocks, the satellite computers standing around them. The only difference with the Extro is that the satellites need satellites to feed them. You have to go through channels to get to the boss and he’s rather abrupt. His business is to take a small question which nobody can answer, move it around through his infinity of bits, and then come out with a curt answer.
The Rover Girls were in a jam. Their father has been missing for a year. Ms. Stanhope, widowed mother of Serious Dick’s sweetheart, Bruce, is being romanced off her feet by the wicked Josiah Crabtree, teacher at the Pentagon. Crabtree is really after Ms. Stanhope’s fabulously rich acid farm. He also favors a Pentagon cadet, the bully, Dan Baxter, who hates the Rover Girls. The rotten Crabtree and Baxter were honks, naturally.
Edison and M’bantu (senza cleft stick) pulled in at the same time. Ed had two heads pushing a skid loaded with gear; oxygen tank, sterilizer, plumbing, and accessories. Don’t bother to ask how he dragooned the bods into helping him or how he liberated the necessaries; the entire Group has the overpowering habit. It’s not deliberate, we just scare the Shorties. The mere fact of youth is beauty; the mere fact of longevity is authority.
“R.” Borgia in control. “Out the heads. Set up, Ed.” She opened her toolbox which didn’t look much different from Edison’s. “Ampul, M’b. We’ll shape up and move it. Fee-5, answer a few questions and then out. His height?”
“Six.”
“Weight?”
“One-eighty.”
“Age?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Condition?”
I broke in. “I’ve seen him in the saddle. Hard and fast.”
“Gung.” Borgia did some delicate loading of a syringe from M’bantu’s ampul. “Ready, Ed?”
“Ready.”
“Out, Fee.”
“I will not out.”
“Out.”
“One good reason why.”
It was a Battle of the Giants. Borgia softened. “This will be horrible to watch, kitten, especially since he’s your guy.”
“I’m not a child anymore.”
Borgia shrugged. “You’re going to be even less of a child after this is over.” She stepped to the Chief and gave him a slow, careful intravenous. “Clock it, Guig.”
“Starting when?”
“I’ll tell you when.”
We waited, not knowing what to expect. Suddenly a ghastly scream was wrenched out of the Chief.
“Now, Guig.”
The scream was compounded by agonized thrashings. Every vent in Sequoya let go; bowels, urine, semen, saliva, sinuses, sweat glands. Fee was alongside me, clinging and gasping. I was breathing heavily myself.
“Synapses breaking connections,” Borgia said in a professional monotone. “He’ll need a bath and clean clothes. Time?”
“Ten seconds.”
“If he lives, that is.” Abruptly, the Chief was still. “Time, Guig?”
“Twenty.”
Borgia got a stethoscope from her bag and examined the Chief. “Time?”
“One minute.”
She nodded. “So far so good. He’s dead.”
“Dead!” Fee cried. “He’s dead?”
“R. Everything’s come to a dead stop. Shut up. I told you to out. We have four minutes before any permanent damage sets in.”
“You have to do something. You—”
“I told you to shut up. His nervous system will make it on its own or else it won’t. Time?”
“One thirty.”
“Ed, promote another coverall and soap and water. He stinks. M’b, hold the door. Nobody in. Move it.” She examined the Chief again. “Nicely dead. Time?”
“One forty-five.”
“Can you move the frame, Fee?”
“Y-yes.”
“Give me the sterilizer temperature reading. Dial on the right.”
“Three hundred.”
“Turn it off. Switch on the left. Time?”
“Two ten.”
Another examination. Edison came hurtling in with a coverall, followed by his faithful slaves lugging a sitz bath of steaming water.
“Strip him and clean him. Don’t move him any more than necessary. Time?”
“Two thirty.”
“If he doesn’t make it at least we’ll have a fresh, well-dressed corpse.”
Borgia’s cool wasn’t fooling me; she was as tight as the rest of us. After we cleaned the Chief we started to dress him, but she stopped us. “I may have to go in. You bods, thanks. Get all the filth out of here. Fee, alcohol in my kit. Jet his chest down to the navel. Move it. Time?”
“Three fifteen.”
“Mask ready, Ed?”
“Ready.”
“It’s going to be close.” After an hour she asked, “Time?”
“Three thirty.”
The door irised open and Jacy pushed past M’b who didn’t dare try to stop him. “Guig! What are you doing to that poor man? For shame!”
“Will you get the hell out of here, Jace. How’d you know, anyway?”
“It’s all over the university that you’re torturing a man in here. It must stop.”
“Go back to bed, Jacy,” Borgia said. “Your stigmata’s showing. Jet my hands, Fee, up to the elbows. Then back off. All of you back. Save the sermonizing, Jacy. We may need it later.” She glared down at Sequoya. “Come on, you sons of bitches, link up!” She gazed around in a fury. “Where the hell are the Rover Girls? I wanted everything to be familiar. Just when you need them — Time?”