It was quick and brutal. Somehow Benedetto had been betrayed; the
expediters had known where he had come from. And that was the end of
that.
They came swarming down on us in waves, at least a hundred of them, to
capture a man, a girl and a cripple--Zorchi's servants had deserted us,
melting into the hemp fields like roaches into a garbage dump. Zorchi
had a little gun, a Beretta; he fired it once and wounded a man.
The rest was short and unpleasant.
They bound us and gagged us and flew us, trussed like game for the
spit, to the clinic. I caught a glimpse of milling mobs outside the
long, low walls as we came down. Then all I could see was the roof of
the copter garage.
We were brought to a tiny room where Defoe sat at a desk. The
Underwriter was smiling. "Hello, Thomas," he said, his eyes studying
the bruise on my cheek. He turned toward Rena consideringly. "So this
is your choice, eh, Thomas?" He studied Rena coolly. "Hardly my type.
Still, by sticking with me, you could have had a harem."
Bound as I was, I started forward. Something hit me in the back at
my first step, driving a hot rush of agony up from my kidneys. Defoe
watched me catch my breath without a change of expression.
"My men are quite alert, Thomas. Please do not try that again. Once is
amusing, but twice would annoy me." He sighed. "I seem to have been
wrong about you, Thomas. Perhaps because I needed someone's help, I
overestimated you. I thought long ago that beneath your conditioning
you had brains. Manning is a machine, good for taking orders. Dr.
Lawton is loyal, but not intelligent. And between loyalty and
intelligence, I'll take brains. Loyalty I can provide for myself." He
nodded gravely at the armed expediters.
Zorchi spat. "Kill us, butcher," he ordered. "It is enough I die
without listening to your foolish babbling."
Defoe considered him. "You interest me, Signore. A surprise, finding
you revived and with Wills. Before we're finished, you must tell me
about that."
I saw Zorchi bristle and open his mouth, but a cold, suddenly
calculating idea made me interrupt. "To get dell'Angela out as an
attendant, I needed a patient for him to wheel. Zorchi had money, and I
_expected_ gratitude when I revived him later. It wasn't hard getting
Lawton's assistant to stack his cocoon near Benedetto's."
"Lawton!" Defoe grimaced, but seemed to accept the story. He smiled
at me suddenly. "I had hopes for you, then. That escape was well
done--simple, direct. A little crude, but a good beginning. You could
have been my number one assistant, Thomas. I thought of that when I
heard of the things you were saying after Marianna died--I thought you
might be awaking."
I licked my lips. "And when you picked me up after Marianna's death,
and bailed me out of jail, you made sure the expediter corps had
information that I was possibly not reliable. You made sure the
information reached the underground, so they would approach me and I
could spy for you. You wanted a patsy!"
The smile was gleaming this time. "Naturally, until you could prove
yourself. And of course, I had you jailed for the things you said
because I wanted it that way. A pity all my efforts were wasted on you,
Thomas. I'm afraid you're not equipped to be a spy."
It took everything I had, but this time I managed to smile back. "On
which side, Defoe? How many spies know you've got Millen Carmody down
in Bay--"
That hit him. But I didn't have time to enjoy it. He made a sudden
gesture, and the expediters moved. This time, when they dragged me
down, it was very bad.
* * * * *
When I came to, I was in another room. Zorchi and Rena were with me,
but not Defoe. It was a preparation chamber, racked with instruments,
furnished with surgical benches.
A telescreen was flickering and blaring unheeded at one end of the
room. I caught a glimpse of scenes of men, women and children standing
in line, going in orderly queues through the medical inspections,
filing into the clinic and its local branch stations for the sleep
drug. The scenes were all in Naples; but they must have been, with
local variations, on every telescreen on the globe.