“Even the enterics?”
Jo nodded. “Every single one in the body. The patient is then reinfected with his everyday, nonpathogenic bacteria and sent on his way, cured.”
“But why do you need a contract?” Old Pete asked. “I’m sure some hotshot botanist could grow his own hassa.”
“It’s been done already,” Jo said. “But no one has had the slightest bit of luck in getting the rust to grow. It seems to be highly sensitive … and it grows wild on Lentem.”
Old Pete shook his head in wonder. “I’m proud of you, Jo. In two moves you’ve put two IBA accounts into the top of their respective fields.”
“And countered deBloise in the process,” she added,
“I still don’t see how,” Old Pete mused. He watched his young female companion closely. He had thought it unfortunate when he had learned that Josephine Finch had taken administrative control of IBA.
Her stock holdings entitled her to it, but she had seemed such a girlish thing when he had retired. She was a woman now and more like her grandfather than Old Pete had imagined anyone could ever be; she had his take-command attitude, his coolness, his decisiveness, his ability to deal practically with abstract situations. Yet her femininity was ever apparent and, somehow, enhanced by these qualities. IBA had been in her hands for five years now and was flourishing. Old Pete wished he were about fifty years younger.
His reverie was interrupted by their arrival at the hospital. There they learned that Larry had nothing physically wrong with him. All tests had come up negative.
“About the only thing I can suggest,” the doctor told Jo as they stood beside Larry’s bed, “is that this may be a psychogenic coma. It almost seems as if the mind induced this state upon itself but for what reason I can’t imagine.”
“Protection?” Jo suggested.
“Possibly, but from what?”
“That remains to be seen,” Jo muttered.
Later, when the doctor had gone and Old Pete was out attending to hotel accommodations, Jo sat alone in the darkened room and watched Larry Easly’s peaceful face. She fervently hoped that Larry’s prognosis was as favorable as the doctor had indicated. And she wasn’t thinking of the secret now sealed within him.
Three years of close association had formed a close bond between the two of them, a bond that might well grow into something more if they would only momentarily slow the pace of their individual lives. Larry was stopped in his tracks now; maybe if Jo decelerated a little …
There was a noise behind her and Jo turned to see five cloaked figures filing through the door.
Wrinkled, blue-gray faces peered out from their hoods. Vanek. Jo’s feelings toward the Vanek were ambivalent. She couldn’t believe that they had killed her father, yet there was the fact of their confession to the crime. She waited for them to speak.
“We came to see the daughter of Junior Finch, our friend,” said one.
“How do you know who I am?” Jo said, springing to her feet. She had carefully hidden her identity on this trip, even to the point of using an account listed under a phony name to pay for Larry’s medical care.
“Vanek eyes are everywhere,” came the enigmatic reply.
“What do you want here?” she asked.
“We wished to pay you homage,” said the speaker. The five Vaneks bowed toward her.
“Wheels within wheels, bendreth,” they chorused. Then, in complete silence, they filed out.
Jo hesitated a moment, then rushed to the door and peered out. The Vaneks were gone. She flagged a nurse who was rounding the corner to her left.
“Where did those five Vaneks go?” she asked.
The nurse smiled. “Did you say five Vaneks? Dear, I’ve worked in this hospital for nearly ten years and I’ve never seen one Vanek set foot inside this building. They have their own medicine, you know.”
“I guess I was mistaken,” Jo lied after the slightest pause and closed the door again. Jebinose was proving to be a very strange planet.
On Jo’s order, a small psi-shielding device was placed in Easly’s room and hidden under the bed.
She didn’t know exactly what had happened before but was quite sure there had been an attempt on Larry’s life and she wanted to be prepared in the event the assassin returned to finish the job. A psi shield might be the reason Larry was alive now and she wanted to take no chances.
The doctor returned and told her that the latest test results indicated a progressive shallowing of the coma; Easly was expected to regain consciousness within the next six or eight hours.
Jo placed a call to Old Pete. She stood at the window and stared at the last rays of sunset as she waited for the connection. Old Pete’s face appeared on the screen.
“I’m staying here tonight,” she told him. “I’ll call you as soon as there’s something to call about.”
Old Pete nodded from his hotel room. “O.K. I’ll be there first thing in the morning.”
Jo broke the connection and sat down beside the bed. She sat there with her thoughts and didn’t bother to turn on the room lights as night crept in. Consequently, she was startled when the night nurse popped in and threw the switch.
“Just checking up on him,” she said with a pleasant smile. She walked over to the vital signs indicator on the bed, glanced at the readings and nodded. “He’s coming along fine,” she said and departed.
The door opened again a few hours later. It was an orderly, a short, balding man in white.
“You’ll have to step out a minute, Miss, while I prepare him for some final tests,” he said in a rasping voice. “Sorry, but that’s the rule.”
Jo stood up. “Going to finish the job you bungled in the call booth?” she said through tight lips.
The orderly turned on her with blazing eyes. “Who are you?”
“I’m the person who was on the other end of that subspace call when you tried to kill him,” Jo told him. “I saw you on the screen.”
Calmer now, Proska nodded. “So it seems I made two mistakes last night: not only did I forget about the psi shield on the booth but I carelessly got in range of the pick-up, too.” He shook his head. “Not as careful as I used to be. But I’ll tie up all the loose ends tonight. But before I do, tell me about this man.
What was he after?”
Jo hesitated, not sure of what to do. There was a little red button on the visiphone for instant contact with the police. A single push would bring them immediately. She wanted to see this man in the hands of the police-although how they’d handle him was beyond her-but more than that, she wanted information. He obviously planned to kill her along with Larry so it might not be too difficult to get him to open up. Then she’d press that button.
“He’s a detective I sent here to get some information on Elson deBloise,” Jo said.
“What kind of information?” “Something that might be of political use,” she replied.
Proska’s eyes gleamed. “Blackmail, perhaps?”
“Perhaps.”
“We thought it might be something like that. He had an interview with deBloise, then he was seen hovering over my house, then he went to Danzer and spent a long time talking to a Vanek. We didn’t like that; and then the speed with which he headed for the spaceport convinced us that he knew something, something dangerous.” He moved toward the bed. “But now it doesn’t matter what he knows.”
Jo reached for the red button on the visiphone but never made it. Her vision blurred as nausea and vertigo swept over her. She found herself sprawled flat on her back on the floor.
Proska’s teeth were clenched. “That was a futile move! I sensed a psi shield the moment I entered the room but your detective’s condition should be proof enough that a shield only dulls my powers.” He stopped speaking suddenly and eyed Jo as she slumped on the floor, eyed her sprawled legs, the curves of her body accentuated by the clingsuit.