Текст книги "Woman on the Edge of Time"

Автор книги: Marge Piercy

Соавторы: Marge Piercy
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

The wine was strong, fiery, with a heady perfume of grape. The jugs were gallons marked “Egenblick of Cayuga Fortified After Dinner Wine,” and they passed around plenty of jugs. Enough to get everyone well drunk, she thought, noticing there were many other jugs waiting. In fact, the tension did seem to be lightening. People were chatting quietly, blowing noses, wiping tears, and putting handkerchiefs away, hugging and talking more. Bolivar sat down and cried in short but lessening spasms. His spine had relaxed. His face was crinkled. His head lay on the thigh of Crazy Horse.

Erzulia said something to the three musicians with Diana, and they began playing a different kind of tune, bittersweet, sweet and sour, it ran. Erzulia and Diana sang together, their voices turning and crossing in the air like swallows. Diana’s voice was deeper, Erzulia’s sweeter and more piercing. They twined and separated in easy counterpoint in the song Connie remembered from the nursery:

“Nobody knows

how it flows

as it goes.

Nobody goes

where it rose

as it flows.”

That lullaby. Everybody began to sing it, they all seemed to know it. It made a slow wave of soft singing over which the voices of Erzulia and Diana rose and dipped.

“Nobody knows

how it chose

how it grows … .”

The children joined in, swaying back and forth as they sang words that seemed familiar to all, from babyhood, from mothering and caring for the young. The flute skipped off in a dance of its own high over the voices, and Erzulia and Diana fell back to listen. Other instruments joined in here and there in the hall. The improvising rose in intensity, trailed off, seemed to stop, and then began again in a guitar or recorder.

Finally the song dwindled. Barbarossa spoke thoughtfully. “The holi Jackrabbit made that warmed me most was the one for green equinox, with all the speeded‑up plant growth. For days after I kept remembering the little sprouts wriggling out of the seeds, the tulips unfolding, shutting, opening, shutting. It was funny and beautiful at once. Those images kept coming back when I was working and I’d smile. It gave me a good connected feeling.”

“The smile on the faces of kores,the youth and maidens, the archaic smile. Jackrabbit was … moved by that smile,” Bolivar mused. He had stopped crying. His face was soft. He leaned on Bee, his head lolling like a sleepy child. “Was my sabbatical and Jackrabbit had not yet settled down. We went to Greece for threemonth. Person was fifteen, more like a cricket than a rabbit. Skinny. Person could eat and eat and nothing would show. Was spring–end of March. Wildflowers everyplace. Crete was velvet to us. We worked on reforesting, we stayed with shepherds, and Jackrabbit was sketching everybody and giving the drawings away. I remember vermilion poppies under gray‑green olives, young and black kids that wanted their foreheads rubbed where the horns were going to come through. Dittany growing wild. The pigment factory where we stayed a week, doing odd jobs. We were in love with Minoan wall paintings. An outbuilding at Minos had ridiculous imaginative birds on the murals. Marvelous. Pure velvet. We decided we too would invent unlikely creatures in holies we were even then starting to plan … We decided to build a house, such a house as that one at Minos. A distance away from the others and with a view of the mountains and vineyards. Painted all over and open to the sun.”

Bolivar smiled weakly. “A few days later we were traveling by donkey up near Dicty, when we saw those birds. They’re called hoopoes in English. There they were, exactly the birds in the Minoan guesthouse. A pinkish brown with black and white striped wings and tail like flying zebras, just flashing at you as they undulate ever so slowly, fluttering across clearings. On their heads an Indian‑chief headdress of brown‑and black‑tipped feathers stands straight up when they want it to. We laughed so hard we fell off the donkeys. And they fluttered away slowly and tantalizingly, rebuking us for not having believed in them. Pooh! Pooh! they cried at us. Ah, the imagination of those ancient Cretans, Jackrabbit said, and for years that was a catch phrase between us … .”

He sighed, shrugging. “We saw the work of a holist in Agios Nicolaus who fluttered us. Something … fluid about per work. A top spectacler with eight students studying there. I could see Jackrabbit was tempted. That obsessed me jealous, for I viewed myself as Jackrabbit’s teacher as well as lover. I bound more jealous yet when Jackrabbit coupled with per. I had believed, I’d wished, that Jackrabbit would also be drawn only to the male body–so that we’d be alike … . I remember those months so vividly, day by day. We were never closer. Yet the differences stuck out. Always I wanted Jackrabbit to be more like me than person was … . That must have been a strength of your friending, Luciente, that you didn’t want per to be like you. That was almost unique for Jackrabbit.”

“Ah, Bolivar!” Luciente stirred as if shaking herself. “We each loved Jackrabbit and had great richness and great pleasure and now how we ring with pain. What more could we have asked? Except that it last! But what we had …”

The wine went round, the makings of joints began to be passed, marijuana and several other weeds they smoked, the trays with delicate papers and carved pipes. One of the healers was playing the flute again and Diana sang. Luciente was leaned propped sideways against Diana, humming with them. The pressure of her grief was gradually softening. Connie could feel Luciente’s pain flowing like a stream rather than a waterfall smashing on her.

Some of the children had fallen asleep. Occasionally an adult or an older child would carry out a sleeper or lead one stumbling home. More than a few adults had dozed off where they sat, stretched out on the floor unashamed. From time to time a song would start, someone would say a poem, someone would rise with a memory.

“I remember one feast day–maybe it was Haymarket Martyrs or Halloween? Jackrabbit helped me design a flimsy that was all dream. I was a luna moth, pale green with yellow veins and a margin of lavender, with plumy antennae … .” Luxembourg spoke.

“Up among the grapevines

someone is playing the flute

and the song

calls my name.

Among clusters of grapes

half hidden by leaves

like palms beckoning,

someone waits whose mouth

is sweet as ripe grapes,

whose touch makes me bleed

like ripe purple grapes

in the press.

I am in bed with somebody else.

I was too jumpy.

I’m caught with the wrong person,

the whole night to crawl through

long as a tunnel to France.

All over the hillside lovers couple.

Here I am stuck

with the wrong one

while up among the grapevines

you call my name.”

The songs, the poems were more cheerful: love songs, drinking songs, work songs, poems about sailing and fanning, political sallies, topical songs she could not follow. Little cakes were passed. More people fell asleep and some went home. Erzulia and Been were singing in another language, accompanied by drums and the laughter of those who understood the words.

When silence settled again, Luciente spoke gently. “I met Jackrabbit through Diana. Jackrabbit had retreated to the madhouse at Treefrog. I came to visit Diana, who kept teasing me and wouldn’t sleep with me. Although Jackrabbit was staying in our village, I hadn’t got to know per well. All I had noticed was that person kept changing names, and that bumped me a little. Jackrabbit had gone down but by the time I came visiting, was integrated again … . Diana had a moon dance, on the grass there. It was green moon, the moon after the green equinox, and at first I was comping jealous, Diana was fused with per mems and only watching me. And then I wasn’t jealous.”

“Was not like the first time person went mad,” Diana said in her beautiful husky voice, stroking Luciente’s hair off her forehead. “Not a complete going down. Basically Jackrabbit had come to feel taken over by Bolivar. Wanted to work with you,” Diana said to Bolivar, “but also to work alone. To be freer to grow as a person. You knew so much, you have traveled so much, you had worked out your own style, made a reputation. Jackrabbit felt as if per own work and visions were disappearing into yours–perhaps what was happening at Agios Nicolaus too. Jackrabbit lacked a center. Instead was an enormous uprush of vision and great hunger for experience. Balancing came from others. Needed someone to balance you. I also felt Luciente had been wholly sensible too long.” She tugged Luciente’s hair.

“Yet we both saw through your plotting,” Luciente said with sulky dignity.

“What good did it do you? My plotting was healing, old friend.”

Luciente leaned her cheek into Diana’s shoulder. “It would have happened anyhow, when Jackrabbit came back to the village, but then it would have been shorter … . Person died well. That’s a good death, a useful one. Just … too soon!”

A bass voice was singing softly:

“I am dreaming of a baby

floating among others

like a trout in a stream.

I am dreaming of a baby

whose huge eyes

close over secret promises.

I am dreaming of a baby

who drifts in the throbbing

heart of the brooder

growing every day

more beautiful,

closer to me.”

“Sun up,” Erzulia said, and signaled for the doors to be flung open. “We have to give our loved friend to the earth. The day here now. This wake over.”

Slowly the hall stirred like a dog rousing, shaking. People wakened each other. The cups, the glasses, the jugs, empty and partly empty and still full, were carried off.

“Whoever wants a membrance from Jackrabbit, come and take one. Family and sweet friends first,” Erzulia called. Quietly they gathered over the small circle of objects. Luciente took a worn book. “Jackrabbit used to say these. Every poem reminds me of times and times gone.”

Bolivar took the ring with the yellow stone. “I had a crafter make this when Jackrabbit turned fifteen.”

Everything was carried away except the letters and personal papers, which were placed under the blanket by Erzulia. Then Bee, Bolivar, Barbarossa, and Luciente got ready to carry the body. People were going off to work if they could keep awake, or to sleep if they couldn’t. About thirty people fell into the procession to the grave.

The bell was tolling again over Mattapoisett. They walked slowly through the paths of the village, with Diana’s friends playing a death march. The leaves were just beginning to turn, the maples reddening and one young sapling already vermilion as if dipped in bright blood. It would be a clear day. The air was chilly. Dew wet the stones, making Connie’s feet slip. Chrysanthemums and asters glowed along the walks. Frost had not come here yet Red and green tomatoes still weighed down the tall vines. Pumpkins planted along the edge of gardens grew out into the grass or climbed the corn. Sojourner fell in beside her, asking if she might lean on her arm, as she was weary from the long night. Slowly they ambled well back in the procession.

A deep and narrow grave gaped on the edge of the woods. They gathered around it and used ropes to lower Jackrabbit, with his papers and blanket, down into the hole. As they made to lower him, Erzulia adjusted the blanket to cover the face. The body reached bottom with a soft thud that sent a shiver through Connie. A few, Luciente, Bolivar, Crazy Horse, began to weep again softly, but Connie could sense they were about wept out.

“Friends, we mourn for our comrade Jackrabbit, who died defending us. ‘Only in us do the dead live. Water flows downhill through us. The sun cools in our bones. We are joined with all living in one singing web of energy. In us live the dead who made us. In us live the children unborn. Breathing each other’s air, drinking each other’s water, eating each other’s flesh, we grow like a tree from the earth.’ Cast in the dirt and go. We must work on till we give our bodies back. Goodbye, Jackrabbit.” Erzulia took up a shovel and cast in a load of dirt. Then she passed the shovel to Bee.

Each in turn said goodbye and cast in the dirt, then walked back toward the village. Standing with its root ball in burlap, a young sassafras tree waited to go into the grave. After the others had finished the ritual casting of soil, Erzulia remained with two volunteers to finish the grave. Luciente, who had waited to one side for Connie, slipped her arm through hers, leaning on her as they walked.

“Now we go to the brooder,” she said. Connie could feel the slack of her grief. It remained. A pain that would wear itself down slowly. But the first refusal was over. She would live with the pain and live her life. Connie too felt loosened, weary but released, lighter than air but heavy through all her limbs with fatigue. She felt as if she had cried out years of grief.

Bee, Barbarossa, Otter, Sojourner, Hawk, and Bolivar too were waiting already outside the brooder. Then they all entered in groups of four through the double sets of doors. Sacco‑Vanzetti was waiting for them.

“We come to ask that a new baby be begun, to replace Jackrabbit, who is dead and buried,” Bee said.

“I have news for you.” Sacco‑Vanzetti sputtered excitement, trying to speak with dignity. “I have great news. That is, grasp, the council met. Decided to honor Jackrabbit. That genetic chance will be born again.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Luciente spoke. “We thank the council. Though we will never know where or who, we know some part of Jackrabbit lives.”

After they had returned to the sun slanting bright over the fields, the huts, the yellow hump of the brooder, she asked Luciente, “What was that? I don’t understand.”

“What? … Oh, the decision.” Luciente swayed slightly. “Very rarely that is done. When somebody dies young who was unusually talented, as a kind of living memorial their exact genetic mix is given to a new baby. You never know where. Nobody knows. Records are not kept. We know nurture counts more heavily than genetics once you’ve weeded out the negative genes, but still it is a memorial. It eases the mind strangely to know that a baby Jackrabbit will again be born somewhere, nine months from now.”

“I suppose …”

“I am too weary to send more, Connie, my sweetness. I must sleep. So must you.” Luciente embraced her. “Let go.”

She felt herself slowly sinking into her bed. A nurse was sitting beside her and as soon as her eyelids fluttered, the nurse called out. “She’s coming around. Quick, tell Dr. Morgan. He’s sleeping down the hall.”

Her ability to stay in the future amazed her. They had been trying to rouse her since the evening before. This time, locked into Luciente, she had not even felt them. She watched the fuss through narrowed eyes. They were scared. She could feel Dr. Morgan’s fear whining like a saw blade cutting wood. What they had stuffed into her head was experimental and they did not want a death.

Morgan and Redding muttered long, and Argent, when he dropped by late in the morning, looked glum and edgy. He eyed her, questioned the nurses briskly, frowned and frowned. Redding paced and muttered and then went in with a hypodermic and a local anaesthetic and changed the medication the dialysis bag was leaking into her.

“That ought to settle it,” Redding said cheerfully, but he frowned at her skull as if he would like to take it all apart.

A new watchfulness surrounded her. She was sorry to see that Tina and Sybil were genuinely frightened. Tina nagged her to eat and buzzed between window and door like an angry fly. When Tina was in the day room, Connie tried to give Sybil reassurance.

“All right! You were unconscious for twelve hours! How can that be all right?”

“Sybil, don’t worry! Please. The only thing wrong with me is what they got stuck in my head. And I’m doing what I can to get it out Believe me.”

“They’re frightened.” Sybil’s eyes were somber. “They put off the implants scheduled for Monday, until they figure out what’s happening to you.”

“Good! That’s my first victory. Tina was scheduled for Monday.” With Luciente’s help, she might be able to scare them again. What else could she do? It was the only way she could see to struggle.

SEVENTEEN

Every day for a week she tried to summon Luciente, but without success. Once she felt herself slipping into that other future, till she drew back with horror. Why couldn’t she call Luciente? Since they had implanted the dialytrode, she had not been able to reach over on her own, not to the right future, the one she wanted.

She was more lightly doped and time blurred by less dimly. Tina was caught trying to slip out of the ward in a laundry cart, and put into seclusion for two days. When Tina was let out, dizzy and twitching with drugs, Connie rose shakily and touched her shoulder. “Too bad you didn’t make it,” she whispered. “Try again.”

“I only got four days. I’m scheduled for Monday.”

In the orange and beige patient lounge, Alice sat in front of the TV, smiling in a slack way. She watched whatever moved in front of her. Connie thought that if she crept up to shut the set off, Alice would go on watching the blank screen with that same blank smile. The staff kept telling Alice she would be released soon, but they were cautious because of Skip. Alice ate a lot. She would not start eating until the attendant got her started, but then she methodically ate everything. She was gaining weight.

The next Monday, after they had wheeled out Captain Cream and Tina to be implanted, she cast herself on her bed and flung herself toward Luciente, she did not care how. The going over was rocky. For a time the ward dimmed and yet she did not arrive in the future. She passed out. It was more like fainting than falling asleep. But at last she stood with Luciente’s hands on her shoulders in a small clearing. Outcroppings of gray‑green stone. Pine needles lay everywhere, drifted against the rocks. Luciente wore a brown and green jumpsuit uniform.

“Where are we?”

“Near the front,” Luciente said. “We’ve gone up.”

“Is that why I couldn’t reach you?”

“Communing’s been harder. Something is interfering. Probability static? Temporal vectors are only primitively grasped … . I tried to reach you before we shipped out, but since then I’ve been too jammed.”

“Where’s your kenner?” She stared at a band of pale brown skin on Luciente’s left forearm.

“Back at the foco. We take them off for fear we’ll use them without thinking. They can home on the frequencies. We use these for locator‑talkers.” Luciente touched a small netted egg around her neck. “I myself, I confess, I feel naked without my kenner. It’s part of my body. I only take it off to couple or sleep.”

“Suppose it got lost?”

“I’d lose two‑thirds of my memory … . Marigold at Treefrog had an accident in which both left arm and kenner were destroyed. Arm we could restore but not kenner. Marigold killed perself … . For some it’s only a convenience. For others part of their psyche.”

Bee came pacing along a trail toward them, carrying a piece of equipment on his back. He looked larger than ever here, and unusually alert. His smile still spoke of luxurious calm and sunny energy. “G’light, Pepper and Salt. I forgot to tell you last time I believe you should trade that wig in on a porcupine.”

“It’s beginning to grow out. It kind of itches.” On impulse she took off the tipsy reddish brown wig and showed him her crew cut. She could feel a bald spot at the plug of cement, but the rest of her scalp was growing hair straight up.

Both Bee and Luciente giggled without malice and petted her, exclaiming how stiff and bristly the half‑inch hair felt. She did not mind their teasing because it carried affection and besides, she knew how funny she looked. This ward had a real mirror in the bathroom.

Bee clucked over the plug in her scalp. “This can’t be good. What have they in there?”

“Something to control me. A machine.”

Bee looked wasted with sadness, that expression from the beginning of Jackrabbit’s wake. “We’re all at war. You’re a prisoner of war. May you free yourself.” Gently he hugged her.

She laughed shortly, disentangling herself. “How can I?”

“Can I give you tactics?” Bee turned her chin back toward him. “There’s always a thing you can deny an oppressor, if only your allegiance. Your belief. Your cooping. Often even with vastly unequal power, you can find or force an opening to fight back. In your time many without power found ways to fight. Till that became a power.”

“But you’re still fighting. It isn’t over yet!”

“How is it ever over?” Luciente waved a hand. “In time the sun goes nova. Big bang. What else? We renew, regenerate. Or die.”

“But you don’t seem to believe really in more–not more people, more things, or even more money.”

Luciente leaned against a pine, her fingers playing with the ridged bark. “Someday the gross repair will be done. The oceans will be balanced, the rivers flow clean, the wetlands and the forests flourish. There’ll be no more enemies. No Them and Us. We can quarrel joyously with each other about important matters of idea and art. The vestiges of old ways will fade. I can’t know that time–any more than you can ultimately know us. We can only know what we can truly imagine. Finally what we see comes from ourselves.”

“Do you think I don’t know you, Luciente?”

“Grasp, as people. I mean you can’t fully comprend our society, any more than I could one a hundred years past us. What new arts will our great‑great‑grandchildren invent? What old arts discover? What musical instruments will they build? What games? What inknowing? What new foods, what styles of cooking? What sciences we can’t imagine? What new way of healing? Will they sail far into our galaxy? Travel on the submicroscopic strata? When each region is ownfed, when reparations are completed, what then? Sometimes … sometimes I want to live forever!” Luciente flung back her head. “But I know I’ll find my death ripe. I’ll want to lay my body down, I myself, and be done. But now I’d like to travel forward into that future as you traveled to us. I know there’s no real point to it Now suffices. Yet I’m very glad to be knowing you, Connie.”

A strange high whistling came through the air, nearer and nearer. Bee and Luciente froze; then they motioned to her and began trotting swiftly in the direction Bee had just come from.

“Fast! Run!” Luciente mouthed at her over her shoulder. Bee dropped back to urge her forward as they ran.

The high penetrating screech grew louder and louder still. It bored through her ears and seemed to whine round and round in her skull. Pain like a drill sang in her marrow. No longer did the pain seem to enter only through her ears; her bones seemed to vibrate at a pitch too high to bear. She was a tuning fork shivering in pain.

“Run, Connie! Run!” Bee urged. “Sonic sweeps kill. The reflectors are over the bridge. Run!”

She tried to keep up, but she could not run as fast. Panting, her sides stabbing, she fell farther and farther behind. They paused to wait Luciente ran back to drag her along. The high drill of the whining shook her. She crumpled to the ground, clawing at her head. “Go on! Save yourself!”

“There. Her eyelids fluttered. She’s coming out of it”

She opened her eyes. The nurse stood over her. An aide bustled off with a message.

“What were you trying to say when you came to?” Nurse Roditis bent close. “Something about going on.”

“I don’t know.” She closed her eyes.

“Were you hallucinating?”

“She doesn’t have a history of hallucination.” Acker was hanging around the foot of her bed.

“That injection worked. Dr. Morgan will be pleased. But I don’t know what they’re going to do if this keeps happening.” Nurse Roditis sounded stem and judgmental. She made tsk‑tsk sounds as she straightened the covers over Connie.

Luciente gripped her arm, pulling her down into the dugout. Behind decorative‑looking screens and small pieces of equipment, some like the one Bee had been carrying on his back, the ground had been scooped out to rock. Her friends were occupying a slight rise over a stream. “Baffles and reflectors,” Luciente explained tersely. “Keep down! They’ll be attacking our line.”

“Where is everyone?”

“We’re on the right flank. The line curves to our left, all the way to the river.”

Otter was cuddled in the dugout next to Connie, examining a bright fallen leaf from one of the maples growing along the stream. Pines stood behind them and a fringe of brilliant maples before. Their red and gold leaves were just starting to fall in drifts on the banks, to float past borne on the rocky stream, to collect in patches of color in eddies and pools.

“How does this touch you?” Otter asked and read off:

“One leaf

webbed gold with fawn

fluttered to my feet

and fragile as a dead moth’s wing

was shattered.”

She looked at Otter in confusion. Otter was dressed in the same mottled jumpsuit, her hair in two long braids. From her broad nose to her glittering slits of eyes she looked proud of herself. Connie asked, “Is it a code message?”

“Code? It’s a poem–a cinquain. You don’t like it?”

“But … how can you write poems about leaves now!”

Otter’s brows wrinkled. “How not? We’re close to death. Then it’s natural to write poems, no? And we fall like leaves … .”

“Here they come,” Luciente said calmly, and they all settled into alert poses with their weapons.

The ground shook violently under her, yet she heard no explosion. In effect, nothing seemed to cause what was happening, yet the ground shook again and she felt sick. Again the ground shook and a tree split and toppled in front of them. Other trees were falling, while a boulder crashed from its perch and rolled fifty feet to lodge in a small basin. Cones pelted them as the birds fled crying terror, the jays shouting Thief, Thief as they flew. To their right someone screamed.

Then she saw the enemy coming: tall figures entirely encased in seamless metallic uniforms, clanking with heavy metal and wearing helmets that enclosed their heads. They dodged from tree to boulder, from boulder to bush on the other side of the stream.

“Hold your fire,” Luciente whispered.

She found she was gripping something like a gun, although it was aimed by peering through a scope and focusing her eyes. Nervously she practiced with it. It responded quickly but she could not quite get the knack of stopping it. She was supposed to lock it in position somehow before she looked away from the target, but she kept stopping it too late.

More and more metal figures flitted clumsily through the trees, getting ready to attack in force across the water. “Hold your fire,” Luciente whispered again emphatically. “Pick off the ones that get through the barrage.” The she added in the tone of a prayer, “Forgive me, if you are living and I kill you.”

Bee and Otter mumbled a similar prayer, before Otter whispered, “Do you suppose any of them are people?”

The troops were massing in the far woods, preparing to break cover. More and more moved up into position. Finally they came clanking out, running pell‑mell in waves down the shallow embankment to jump the small stream. Silently they came, except for the clanking of their metal parts. They did not scream or whoop.

Suddenly she was standing in the living room of the apartment where she had lived with Martin. Hot. Sweat ran down her back and collected under her breasts. The air was so thick and sulfurous she began to cough. She was frightened, her stomach ached with fear. Why? Martin was down there somewhere. Yes, in the street he was barricaded behind turned‑over cars, throwing bottles and rocks at the police. The riot police, the TPF, armed with rifles and shotguns and pistols and tear gas canisters and gas grenades, came clanking down the street, stiff and mechanical. But their voices bouncing off the houses were course with the joy of fury: Motherfuckin cocksuckin nigger spics!

She stood at the window watching, clutching herself across the breasts in her flower print summer dress. Martin was out there somewhere, screaming helpless rage and about to be murdered, as the police gunned down a fourteen‑year‑old they said had stolen a car, starting this riot. Then one of the police had turned and, seeing her at the window, raised his gun and shot right at her. The window shattered inward. In terror she screamed and fell to the floor among the breaking glass. For two days she had picked bits of glass out of her arms. But he had missed her. They had missed Martin too that time.

“I think she’s coming to, Doctor.”

“Patty, did you get hold of Redding? Get on it Find him.”

“Doctor, his secretary says he’s on the way over.”

“If we lose this implantation, it won’t look good,” Dr. Morgan muttered. “When did she say he left?”

“Ten minutes ago, Doctor.”

“Did she say he was driving straight uptown?”

“She didn’t say, Doctor.”

“And you didn’t ask,” he said with sour satisfaction, glad to find somebody to blame for something. “What about Dr. Argent?”

“I couldn’t get hold of him, Doctor. He’s guest lecturer this morning at Dr. Sanderman’s pathology class. His secretary expects him in his office around eleven‑thirty.”

“She expects! Why doesn’t she trot her … self over there and give him the message. You call her back and tell her to step on it. She can speak to him as soon as he finishes the lecture. These women are too lazy to get off their chairs and stop powdering their noses. You tell her to hand‑deliver that message to Argent.”

Nurse Roditis cleared her throat. “Doctor, should I do something about an operating room downtown?”

“That has to be Redding’s decision … . Where is he? I bet he stopped with one of those university types for coffee. He drinks coffee all day long, it’s a medical miracle he has kidneys left. I drink it by the gallon when I’m around him. If I keep it up, I’ll end up with ulcers like his. Where the bleeding hell is he?”

“If you do want to operate, she had breakfast this morning, but she hasn’t taken anything since.” Nurse Roditis popped a thermometer under Connie’s tongue. “Now don’t bite down, that’s a good girl.”

Hawk gripped the controls of the floater. Luciente hunched poised at the forward weapon and Connie was in the backseat with another weapon, mounted so that it could swivel through one hundred eighty degrees in any plane.