He nodded. "Nor do I, Weels. Take me then to your Defoe." His face
wrinkled in an expression of fury and fear. "Die I can, if I must, but
I do not wish to starve. It is good to be able to grow a leg, but do
you understand that the leg must come from somewhere? I cannot make
it out of air, Weels--I must eat. When I am in my home at Naples, I
eat five, six, eight times a day; it is the way my body must have it.
So if Defoe wishes to kill me, we will let him, but I must leave here
_now_."
I shook my head. "Please understand me, Zorchi--I can't even do that
for you. I can't have anybody asking me what I was doing down in this
level." I hesitated only briefly; then, realizing that I was already in
so deeply that secrecy no longer mattered, I told him about Benedetto
dell'Angela, and the riot that failed, and my promise.
His reaction was incredulity. "You did not know, Weels? The arms and
legs of the Company do not know what thoughts pass through its brain?
Truly, the Company is a wonderful thing! Even the peasants know this
much--the Company will do anything it must."
"I admit I never guessed. Now what?"
"That is up to you, Weels. If you try to take the two of us out, it
endangers you. It is for you to decide."
So, of course, I could decide only one way.
I hid the hypodermic behind one of the bodies in Bay 100; it was no
longer useful to me. I persuaded Zorchi to lie quietly in one of the
tiers near Benedetto, slammed the heavy door to Bay 100, and heard the
locks snap. That was the crossing of the Rubicon. You could open that
door easily enough from inside--that was to protect any personnel who
might be caught in there. But only Defoe and a couple of others could
open it from without, and the hypodermic was now as far out of reach as
the Moon.
I opened Benedetto dell'Angela's face mask and shaved him, then sealed
it again. I found another suspendee of about the same build, made
sure the man was not radioactive, and transferred them. I switched
tags: Benedetto dell'Angela was now Elio Barletteria. Then I walked
unsteadily to the ramp, picked up the intercom and ordered the medical
officer in charge to come down.
* * * * *
It was not Dr. Lawton who came, fortunately, but one of his helpers who
had seen me before. I pointed to the pseudo-Barletteria. "I want this
man revived."
He sputtered, "You--you can't just take a suspendee out of his trance,
Mr. Wills. It's a violation of medical ethics! These men are _sick_.
They--"
"They'll be sicker still if we don't get some information from this
one," I said grimly. "Are you going to obey Mr. Defoe's orders or not?"
He sputtered some more, but he gave in. His orderlies took Benedetto
to the receiving station at the foot of the vault; one of them stood by
while the doctor worriedly went through his routine. I sat and smoked,
watching the procedure.
It was simple enough. One injection, a little chafing of the hands
and feet by the bored orderly while the doctor glowered and I stonily
refused to answer his questions, and a lot of waiting. And then the
"casualty" stirred and moaned.
All the stand-by apparatus was there--the oxygen tent and the pulmotor
and the heart stimulator and so on. But none of it was needed.
I said: "Fine, Doctor. Now send the orderly to have an ambulance
standing by at the main entrance, and make out an exit pass for this
casualty."
"No!" the doctor shouted. "This is against every rule, Mr. Wills. I
insist on calling Dr. Lawton--"
"By all means," I said. "But there isn't much time. Make out the pass
and get the ambulance, and we'll clear it with Dr. Lawton on the way
out." He was all ready to say no again when I added: "This is by direct
order of Mr. Defoe. Are you questioning his orders?"
He wasn't--not as long as I was going to clear it with Dr. Lawton.
He did as I asked. One of the advantages of the Company's rigid
regulations was that it was hard to enforce strict security on its
personnel. If you didn't tell the staff that they were working
for something needing covering up, you couldn't expect them to be
constantly on guard.
When the orderly was gone and the doctor had scrawled out the pass, I
said cordially, "Thank you, Doctor. Now would you like to know what all
the fuss was about?"
"I certainly would," he snapped. "If you think--"
"I'm sorry," I apologized. "Come over here and take a look at this man."
* * * * *
I juggled the radiation counter in my hand as he stalked over. "Take a
look at his eyes," I invited.
"Are you trying to tell me that this is a dangerously radioactive case?
I warn you, Mr. Wills--"
"No, no," I said. "See for yourself. Look at the right eye, just beside
the nose."
He bent over the awakening body, searchingly.
I clonked him with the radiation counter on the back of the head. They
must have retired that particular counter from service after that; it
wasn't likely to be very accurate any more.
The orderly found me bending over the doctor's body and calling for
help. He bent, too, and he got the same treatment. Benedetto by then
was awake; he listened to me and didn't ask questions. The blessings of
dealing with conspirators--it was not necessary to explain things more
than once.
And so, with a correctly uniformed orderly, who happened to be
Benedetto dell'Angela, pushing the stretcher, and with myself
displaying a properly made out pass to the expediter at the door, we
rolled the sham-unconscious body of Luigi Zorchi out to a waiting
ambulance.
I felt my pulse hammering as we passed the expediter at the door.
I had thrown my coat over the place where legs should have been on
"Barletteria," and Benedetto's old plastic cocoon, into which we had
squeezed Zorchi, concealed most of him.
* * * * *
I needn't have worried. The expediter not only wasn't suspicious, he
wasn't even interested.
Benedetto and I lifted Zorchi into the ambulance. Benedetto climbed
in after him and closed the doors, and I went to the front. "You're
dismissed," I told the driver. "I'll drive."
As soon as we were out of sight of the clinic, I found a phone, got
Rena at the hotel, told her to meet me under the marquee. In five
minutes, she was beside me and we were heading for the roads to the
north.
"You win," I told her. "Your father's in back--along with somebody
else. Now what? Do we just try to get lost in the hills somewhere?"
"No, Tom," she said breathlessly. "I--I have made arrangements." She
giggled. "I walked around the square and around, until someone came up
to me. You do not know how many gentlemen came before that! But then
one of my--friends showed up, to see if I was all right, and I arranged
it. We go up the Rome highway two miles and there will be a truck."
"Fine," I said, stepping on the gas. "Now do you want to climb back and
tell your father--"
I stopped in the middle of the word. Rena peered at me. "Tom," she
asked anxiously, "is something wrong?"
I swallowed, staring after a disappearing limousine in the rear-view
mirror. "I--hope not," I said. "But your friends had better be there,
because we don't have much time. I saw Defoe in the back of that
limousine."