Chapter XVI

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.

Dr. Lawton appeared. He commanded coldly: "Take your clothes off."

I think that was the most humiliating moment of all.

It was, of course, only a medical formality. I knew that the suspendees had to be nude in their racks. But the very impersonality of the proceeding made it ugly. Reluctantly I began to undress, as did Rena, silent and withdrawn, and Zorchi, sputtering anger and threats. My whole body was a mass of redness; in a few hours the red would turn to purple and black, where the hoses of the expediters had caressed me.

Or did a suspendee bruise? Probably not. But it was small satisfaction.

Lawton was looking smug; no doubt he had insisted on the privilege of putting us under himself after I'd blamed him for Zorchi's escape. I couldn't blame him; I would have returned the favor with great joy.

Well, I had wanted to reach Millen Carmody, and Defoe was granting my wish. We might even lie on adjacent racks in Bay 100. After what I'd told Defoe, we should rate such reserved space!

Lawton approached with the hypospray, and a pair of expediters grabbed my arms. He said: "I want to leave one thought with you, Wills. Maybe it will give you some comfort." His smirk told me that it certainly would not. "Only Defoe and I can open Bay 100," he reminded me. "I don't think either of us will; and I expect you will stay there a long, long time."

He experimentally squirted a faint mist from the tip of the hypospray and nodded satisfaction. He went on: "The suspension is effective for a long time--several hundred years, perhaps. But not forever. In time the enzymes of the body begin to digest the body itself." He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I don't know if the sleeping brain knows it is pain or not. If it does, you'll know what it feels like to dissolve in your own gutwash...."

He smiled. "Good night," he crooned, and bent over my arm.

The spray from the end of the hypo felt chilly, but not at all painful. It was as though I had been touched with ice; the cold clung, and spread.

I was vaguely conscious of being dumped on one of the surgical tables, even more vaguely aware of seeing Rena slumping across another.

The light in the room yellowed, flickered and went out.

I thought I heard Rena's voice....

Then I heard nothing. And I saw nothing. And I felt nothing, except the penetrating cold, and then even the cold was gone.