“I’m taking a chance,” said Doctor Vomact, “in giving you this much leeway. I’d have it done if I were in your position. It’s pretty bad down there.”
Mercer looked at the full, broad face. He did not trust the comfortable smile. Perhaps this was a trick to increase his punishment. The cruelty of the Emperor was proverbial. Look at what he had done to the widow of his predecessor, the Dowager Lady Da. She was younger than the Emperor himself, and he had sent her to a place worse than death. If he had been sentenced to Shayol, why was this doctor trying to interfere with the rules? Maybe the doctor himself had been conditioned, and did not know what he was offering.
Doctor Vomact read Mercer’s face. “All right. You refuse. You want to take your mind down with you. It’s all right with me. I don’t have you on my conscience. I suppose you’ll refuse the next offer too. Do you want me to take your eyes out before you go down? You’ll be much more comfortable without vision. I know that, from the voices that we record for the warning broadcasts. I can sear the optic nerves so that there will be no chance of your getting vision again.”
Mercer rocked back and forth. The fiery pain had become a universal itch, but the soreness of his spirit was greater than the discomfort of his skin.
“You refuse that, too?” said the doctor. “I suppose so,” said Mercer.
“Then all I have to do is to get ready. You can have the cap for a while, if you want.”.
Mercer said, “Before I put the cap on, can you tell me what happens down there?”
“Some of it,” said the doctor. “There is an attendant. He is a man, but not a human being. He is a homunculus fashioned out of cattle material. He is intelligent and very conscientious. You specimens are turned loose on the surface of Shayol. The dromozoa are a special life-form there. When they settle in your body, B’dikkat — that’s the attendant — carves them out with an anesthetic and sends them up here. We freeze the tissue cultures, and they are compatible with almost any kind of oxygen-based life. Half the surgical repair you see in the whole universe comes out of buds that we ship from here. Shayol is a very healthy place, so far as survival is concerned. You won’t die.”
“You mean,” said Mercer, “that I am getting perpetual punishment.”
“I didn’t say that,” said Doctor Vomact. “Or if I did, I was wrong. You won’t die soon. I don’t know how long you will live down there. Remember, no matter how uncomfortable you get, the samples which B’dikkat sends up will help thousands of people in all the inhabited worlds. Now take the cap.”
“I’d rather talk,” said Mercer. “It may be my last chance.”
The doctor looked at him strangely. “If you can stand that pain, go ahead and talk.”
“Can I commit suicide down there?”
“I don’t know,” said the doctor. “It’s never happened. And to judge by the voices, you’d think they wanted to.”
“Has anybody ever come back from Shayol?”
“Not since it was put off limits about four hundred years ago.”
“Can I talk to other people down there?”
“Yes,” said the doctor.
“Who punishes me down there?”
“Nobody does, you fool,” cried Doctor Vomact. “It’s not punishment. People don’t like it down on Shayol, and it’s better, I guess, to get convicts instead of volunteers. But there isn’t anybody against you at all.”
“No jailers?” asked Mercer, with a whine in his voice.
“No jailers, no rules, no prohibitions. Just Shayol, and B’dikkat to take care of you. Do you still want your mind and your eyes?”
“I’ll keep them,” said Mercer. “I’ve gone this far and I might as well go the rest of the way.”
“Then let me put the cap on you for your second dose,” said Doctor Vomact.
The doctor adjusted the cap just as lightly and delicately as had the nurse; he was quicker about it. There was no sign of his picking out another cap for himself.
The inrush of pleasure was like a wild intoxication. His burning skin receded into distance. The doctor was near in space, but even the doctor did not matter. Mercer was not afraid of Shayol. The pulsation of happiness out of his brain was too great to leave room for fear or pain.
Doctor Vomact was holding out his hand.
Mercer wondered why, and then realized that the wonderful, kindly cap-giving man was offering to shake hands. He lifted his own. It was heavy, but his arm was happy, too.
They shook hands. It was curious, thought Mercer, to feel the handshake beyond the double level of cerebral pleasure and dermal pain.
“Goodbye, Mr. Mercer,” said the doctor. “Goodbye and a good goodnight… “
The ferry satellite was a hospitable place. The hundreds of hours that followed were like a long, weird dream.
Twice again the young nurse sneaked into his bedroom with him when he was being given the cap and had a cap with him. There were baths which calloused his whole body. Under strong local anesthetics, his teeth were taken out and stainless steel took their place. There were irradiations under blazing lights which took away the pain of his skin. There were special treatments for his fingernails and toenails. Gradually they ‘changed into formidable claws; he found himself stropping them on the aluminum bed one night and saw that they left deep marks.
His mind never became completely clear.
Sometimes he thought that he was home with his mother, that he was little again, and in pain. Other times, under the cap, he laughed in his bed to think that people were sent to this place for punishment when it was all so terribly much fun. There were no trials, no questions, no judges. Food was good, but he did not think about it much; the cap was better. Even when he was awake, he was drowsy.
At last, with the cap on him, they put him into an adiabatic pod — a one-body missile which could be dropped from the ferry to the planet below. He was all closed in, except for his face.
Doctor Vomact seemed to swim into the room. “You are strong, Mercer,” the doctor shouted, “you are very strong! Can you hear me?”
Mercer nodded.
“We wish you well, Mercer. No matter what happens, remember you are helping other people up here.”
“Can I take the cap with me?” said Mercer.
For an answer, Doctor Vomact removed the cap himself. Two men closed the lid of the pod, leaving Mercer in total darkness. His mind started to clear, and he panicked against his wrappings.
There was the roar of thunder and the taste of blood.
The next thing that Mercer knew, he was in a cool, cool room, much chillier than the bedrooms and operating rooms of the satellite. Someone was lifting him gently onto a table.
He opened his eyes.
An enormous face, four times the size of any human face Mercer had ever seen, was looking down at him. Huge brown eyes, cowlike in their gentle inoffensiveness, moved back and forth as the big face examined Mercer’s wrappings. The face was that of a handsome man of middle years, clean-shaven, hair chestnut-brown, with sensual, full lips and gigantic but healthy yellow teeth exposed in a half-smile. The face saw Mercer’s eyes open, and spoke with a deep friendly roar.
“I’m your best friend. My name is B’dikkat, but you don’t have to use that here. Just call me Friend, and I will always help you.”
“I hurt,” said Mercer.
“Of course you do. You hurt all over. That’s a big drop,” said B’dikkat.
“Can I have a cap, please,” begged Mercer. It was not a question; it was a demand; Mercer felt that his private inward eternity depended on it.
B’dikkat laughed. “I haven’t any caps down here. I might use them myself. Or so they think. I have other things, much better. No fear, fellow, I’ll fix you up.”