He wasn’t there, though.
I squeezed into the crawl-through with Dorrie, locked us both through, and we waited.
I felt a scratching on my helmet and discovered Dorrie was plugging into my jack. “Audee, I’m really very tired,” she told me. It didn’t sound like a complaint, only a factual report of something she thought I probably should know about.
“You might as well go to sleep,” I told her. “I’ll keep watch. Cochenour will be here pretty soon, and I’ll wake you up.”
I suppose she took my advice, because she lowered herself down, pausing to let me take her talk line out of my helmet jack. Then she stretched out next to the tie-down clips and left me to think in peace.
I wasn’t grateful. I wasn’t enjoying what I was beginning to think.
Still Cochenour didn’t come.
I tried to think through the significance of that. Of course, there could have been lots of reasons for a delay. He could’ve gotten lost. He could have been challenged by the military. He could have crashed the airbody. But there was a much nastier possibility, and it seemed to make more sense than all of them.
The time dial told me he was nearly five hours late, and the life-support meters told me that we were right up against the “empty” line for power, near it for air, and well past it for water. If we hadn’t had the remaining tunnel gases to breathe for a few hours, saving the air in our tanks, we would have been dead by now.
Cochenour couldn’t have known that we would find breathable air in the Heechee tunnel. He must believe that we were dead.
The man hadn’t lied about himself. He had told me he was a bad loser.
So he had decided not to lose.
In spite of my fuzzy brain, I could understand what had gone on in his. When push came to shove the bastard in him won out. He had worked out an endgame maneuver that would pull a win out of all his defeats.
I could visualize him, as clearly as though I were in the airbody with him. Watching his clocks as our lives ticked away. Cooking himself an elegant little lunch. Playing the rest of the Tchaikovsky ballet music, maybe, while he waited for us to get through dying.
It wasn’t a really frightening thought to me. I was close enough to being dead anyway for the difference to be pretty much of a technicality . . . and tired enough of being trapped in that foul heat-suit to accept almost any deliverance, even the final one.
But I wasn’t the only person affected here.
The girl was also involved. The one tiny little rational thought that stayed in my half poisoned brain was that it was just unfair for Cochenour to let us both die. Me, yes, all right; I could see that from his point of view I was easily expendable. Her, no.
I realized I ought to do something, and after considering what that might be for a while I beat on her suit until she moved a little. After some talk through the phone jacks I managed to make her understand she had to go back down into the tunnel, where at least she could breathe.
Then I got ready for Cochenour’s return.
There were two things he didn’t know. He didn’t know we’d found any breathable air, and he didn’t know we could tap the drill batteries for additional power. In all the freaked-out fury of my head, I was still capable of that much consecutive thought. I could surprise him—if he didn’t stay away too much longer, anyway. I could stay alive for a few hours yet and then, when he came to find us dead and see what prize we had won for him, he would find me waiting.
And so he did.
It must have been a terrible shock to him when he entered the crawl-through to the igloo with the monkey wrench in his hand, leaned over me, and found I was still alive and able to move, when he had expected only a well-done roast of meat.
If I had had any doubt about his intentions it was resolved when he swung immediately at my helmet. Age, busted leg, and surprise didn’t slow his reflexes a bit. But he had to change position to get a good swing in the cramped space inside the crawl-through, and, being not only alive but pretty nearly conscious, I managed to roll away in time. And I already had the drill ready to go in my arms.
The drill caught him right in the chest.
I couldn’t see his face, but I can guess at his expression. After that, it was only a matter of doing five or six impossible things at once. Things like getting Dorrie up out of the tunnel and into the airbody. Like getting myself in after her, and sealing up and setting a course. All those impossible things . . . and one more, that was harder than any of them, but very important to me. Dorrie didn’t know why I insisted on bringing Cochenour’s body back. I think she thought it was a kind gesture of reverence to the dead on my part, but I didn’t straighten her out just then.
I just about totaled the airbody when we landed, but we were suited up and strapped in, and when the ground crews came out from the Spindle to investigate Dorrie and I were still alive.
XIII
They had to patch me and rehydrate me for three days before they could even think about putting my new liver in. It was a wonder it had survived its ordeal, but they’d whipped it out and put it on nutrient pumps as soon as they got their hands on it. By the time it was ready to be transplanted into me it had had its allergenic nature tamed and was as good as any liver ever was—good enough, anyway, to keep me alive.
They kept me sedated most of the time. The quacks woke me up every couple of hours to give me another bout of feedback training on how to monitor my hepatic flows—they said there was no point giving me a new liver if I didn’t know how to use it—and other people kept waking me up to ask me questions, but it was all dreamlike. I didn’t much want to be awake just then. Being awake was all sickness and pain and nagging, and I could have wished for the old days back again—when they just would have knocked me out with anesthesia until they were through—except, of course, that in the old days I would have died.
But by the fourth day I hardly hurt at all—well, except when I moved. And they were letting me take my fluids by mouth instead of the other way.
I realized I was going to be alive for a while. That was very good news, and, once I believed it, I began to take more interest in what was going on.
The Quackery was in its spring mood, which I appreciated. Of course, there’s no such thing as a season in the Spindle, but the quacks get all sentimental about tradition and ties with the Mother Planet, so they create seasons for themselves. The current one was made by scenes of fleecy white clouds playing across the wall panels, and the air from the ventilator ducts smelled of lilac and green leaves.
“Happy spring,” I said to Dr. Morius while he was examining me.
“Shut up,” he said to me. He shifted a couple of the needles that pincushioned my abdomen, watching the readings on the telltales. “Urn,” he muttered.
“I’m glad you think so,” I said. He disregarded my remark. Dr. Morius doesn’t like humorous conversation unless it comes from him. He pursed his lips and pulled out a couple of the needles.
“Well, let’s see, Walthers. We’ve taken out the splenovenal shunt. Your new liver is functioning well—no sign of rejection—but you’re not flushing wastes through as fast as you ought to. You’ll have to work on that. We’ve got your ion levels back up to something like a human being, and most of your tissues have a little moisture in them again. Altogether,” he said, scratching his head in thought, “yes, in general, I would say you’re alive. So I think probably the operation was a success.”
“That’s very witty,” I said.