I remember lying on my back for quite awhile before I wanted to open
my eyes. I knew I wasn't on the street. The air was warm, and heated,
and I was on a bed, or something like it. My leg was giving me hell
where it had been burned, but I could feel the pressure of a bandage.
I couldn't tell about my hand and face--they felt as if something had
been done about them, too, but I couldn't find out for sure without
looking or touching them, and I didn't want to do that yet.
_Why the hell had Pat jumped me?_ I couldn't figure it.
I opened my eyes, and she was standing over me, a gun dangling from one
hand. I threw a look at my watch, and saw I'd been out a half hour, at
most.
"What the hell--" I began.
She cut me off with a gesture of the gun. "Shut up," she said wearily.
"You'll have plenty of time to start lying later." She grimaced with
tired disgust.
I shook my head, but I knew better than to go on talking. There was
anger working its way into the hurt look in her eyes.
I got up, ignoring the feeling in my calf, and noticed several other
things. I'd been lying on a low couch. My flying boots were unzipped,
so that I couldn't move faster than a shuffle. The coveralls were loose
around my waist where my harness had been.
I pressed my left upper arm against my ribs. As far as I could tell,
they hadn't found my insurance policy--a little singleshot burner
hidden between two of my ribs under a strip of what looked like skin.
There was collodion on my face, and tape on my knuckles.
"Happy?" she asked.
"Uh-huh. I'm Prince Charming, you're Snow White, and, as far as I can
add up, somebody's fresh out of dwarves. What's going on around here,
anyway?"
"You double-crossed me, that's what happened. We made a deal, and
you sold out on it!" She was working herself to boiling mad, clear
through--and that explained why she'd looked at me the way she had.