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ordeal, but they'd whipped it out and put it on nutrient pumps as soon as they
got their hands on it. By the time it was ready to be transplanted into me it
had had its allergenic nature tamed and was as good as any liver ever was-good
enough, anyway, to keep me alive.
They kept me sedated most of the time. The quacks woke me up every couple of
hours to give me another bout of feedback training on how to monitor my
hepatic flows-they said there was no point giving me a new liver if I didn't
know how to use it-and other people kept waking me up to ask me questions, but
it was all dreamlike. I didn't much want to be awake just then. Being awake
was all sickness and pain and nagging, and I could have wished for the old
days back again-when they just would have knocked me out with anesthesia until
they were through-except, of course, that in the old days I would have died.
But by the fourth day I hardly hurt at all-well, except when I moved. And they
were letting me take my fluids by mouth instead of the other way.
I realized I was going to be alive for a while. That was very good news, and,
once I believed it, I began to take more interest in what was going on.
The Quackery was in its spring mood, which I appreciated. Of course, there's
no such thing as a season in the Spindle, but the quacks get all sentimental
about tradition and ties with the Mother Planet, so they create seasons for
themselves. The current one was made by scenes of fleecy white clouds playing
across the wall panels, and the air from the ventilator ducts smelled of lilac
and green leaves.
"Happy spring," I said to Dr. Morius while he was examining me.
"Shut up," he said to me. He shifted a couple of the needles that pincushioned
my abdomen, watching the readings on the telltales. "Urn," he muttered.
"I'm glad you think so," I said.
He disregarded my remark. Dr. Morius doesn't like humorous conversation unless
it comes from him. He pursed his lips and pulled out a couple of the needles.
"Well, let's see, Waithers. We've taken out the splenovenal shunt. Your new
liver is functioning well-no sign of rejection-but you're not flushing wastes
through as fast as you ought to. You'll have to work on that. We've got your
ion levels back up to something like a human being, and most of your tissues
have a little moisture in them again.
Altogether," he said, scratching his head in thought, "yes, in general, I
would say you're alive. So I think probably the operation was a success."
"That's very witty," I said.
"You've got some people waiting for you," he went on. "Vastra's Third and your
lady friend. They brought you some clothes."
That interested me. "Does that mean I'm getting out?" I asked.
"Like right now," he told me. "They'll have to keep you in bed awhile, but
your rent's run out. We need the space for paying customers."
Now, one of the advantages of having clean blood in my brains instead of the
poisonous soup it had been living on was that I could begin to think
reasonably clearly.
So I knew right away that good old comical Dr. Morius was making another of
his little jokes. "Paying customers." I wouldn't have been there if I hadn't
been a paying patient. Though I couldn't imagine what my bills were being paid
with, I was willing to keep my curiosity in check until I was outside the
Quackery.
That didn't take long. The quacks packed me in wetsheets, and Dorrie and the
Third of Vastra's House rolled me through the Spindle to Sub Vastra's place.
Dorrie was pale and tired still-the last couple of weeks hadn't been much of a
vacation for either of us- but needing nothing more than a little rest, she
said. Sub's First had kicked some of the kids out of a cubicle and cleared it
out for us, and his Third fussed over both of us, feeding us up on lamb broth
and that flat hard bread they like, before tucking us in for a good long rest.
There was only the one bed, but Dorrie didn't seem to mind. Anyway, at that
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
point the question was academic. Later on, not so academic. After a couple of
days of that I was on my feet and as good as I ever was.
By then I found out who had paid my bill at the Quackery.
For about a minute I had hoped it was me-quickly filthy rich from the
priceless spoils of our tunnel-but I knew that was an illusion. The tunnel had
been right on the military reservation. Nobody was ever going to own anything
in it but the military.
If we'd been hale and hearty we could have gotten around that, with a little
inventive lying. We could have carted some of the things off to another tunnel
and declared them, and almost certainly we would have gotten away with it ...
but not the way we were. We'd been a lot too near dead to conceal anything.
So the military had taken it all.
Still, they'd showed something I never had suspected. They did have a kind of
a heart. Atrophied and flinty, yes, but a heart. They'd gone into the dig
while I was still getting glucose enemas in my sleep, and they'd been pleased
with what they'd found. They decided to pay me a kind of finder's fee. Not
much, to be sure. But enough to save my life. Enough to meet the Quackery's
bill for ~ll their carpentry on me, and even enough left over to put some in
the bank and pay the back rent on my own place, so Dorrie and I could move in
when Vastra's House decided we were well enough to be on our own.
Of course, they hadn't had to pay for the transplant liver itself. That hadn't
cost anything at all.
For a while it bothered me that the military wouldn't say what they'd found. I
did my best to find out. I even tried to get Sergeant Littleknees drunk so I
could worm it out of her, when she came to the Spindle on furlough. That
didn't work. Dorrie was right there, and how drunk can you get one girl when [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]