Chapter III

Dawn turned the great dome a delicate pink, but the chilled layer of smog within gave the jagged forms of the city a bluish cast. Cold, distorted roofs swept past them as the street escalator bore them down the interior hill. A tiny figure walked with bowed head beside a glint of water in the gray courtyard behind a kidney shaped roof.

"Look sire, it is Konrad. Perhaps he cannot sleep because he knows death is at his shoulder too. From here I could loose my kauri and before the guards awake--"

"No. I'm going to speak with him."

"But sire, if you enter his garden that would give him an excuse to kill you for trespass."

"He wouldn't risk the unfavorable publicity. That is why he is dealing through The Assassin."

When they reached the fog-snaked street that led to Konrad's, Taen found his voice in a rush of complaints. He even forgot to say, "sire."

"You are doing this all wrong. Treating The Assassin is craziness. What will it do except bring your death if you fail? Your wife is already doomed. The Assassin's bargain is made. And Konrad, he won't speak with you. He'll order his machines to shoot you. Go home and be with your wife while there is time."

But Jeff reached for the iron handle. Konrad's door swung in, as an electric eye buzzed in the wall, revealing a small metal-lined vestibule with slots in its low ceiling, for gunfire or for gas. A recorded voice rasped: "The master is not at home."

"I wish to see Konrad," Jeff shouted in a loud clear voice that set hidden mechanisms buzzing frantically.

As they droned into silence, Konrad's face, appearing drawn and strangely aged, flashed on the visa-screen.

"Go away Jeff, or I shall call the Security Guards."

"Why don't you kill me, not Kit," Jeff shouted.

At this Konrad's eyes opened huge and bright. Then they squinted again and a tiny smile rippled across his lips. "I don't know what you're talking about."

The screen blanked out and the stinging odor of chlorine began to flood the vestibule, a hint to depart, for the door was still open.

Not until they reached the spiked gate of the doctor's house did either speak.

"Sire, in my helpless anger I underestimated your wisdom. Now I see that giving The Assassin sight, if you succeed, will surely cause him to give your wife a most painless death in his gratitude, and of course he will withhold his skars until the operation is--Look sire," Taen interrupted himself, "that man at the corner, he turns his face away, Konrad's spy. Shall I--"

But Jeff was gone to find his wife.

As he held her tightly so she would not see his face he told her the truth; she had the note in her hand; she had guessed it anyway, what little she had not already known. But she didn't begin to cry until he came to the eye operation.

"Don't do that, Jeff. Since I've known you you've never done any complicated eye operations. Even the man with the ripped cornea, you sent him on the rocket back to Earth. If that murderer doesn't see, he'll kill you too. You've got so much to live for."

"Not without you, dimples. Show me your smile. That's doctor's orders. There, that's the way." Jeff forced a grin across his face. "Your hubby's subtler than he looks. Taen's underestimated me and so have you. I may not have performed this operation, but when I was an intern at Johns Hopkins I witnessed several. We'll give The Assassin sight, but by a somewhat roundabout method with rather surprising consequences. Your hubby may look dumb, but he can think more than a couple of moves ahead."

"Taen," he called, then to Kit: "Now you take good care of that son of mine. We're going to have a lot of fun watching him grow into a man."

"Pardon me sire."

"Taen, have you anyone you can absolutely trust?"

"No sire."

"Garth?" The bulky jungle man who had been leaning quietly against the pillar nodded.

"Sire, I have a brother."

"Does he closely resemble you?"

"It is said, sire, that he does not."

"Good. Take 20,000 credits from the safe behind Kit's portrait and give them to him. Tell him that when The Assassin's party reaches my house he must go to the Body Bank and purchase all the eyes--I think there are eleven pair--all they have in stock. Now he must let it slip to the attendants while he waits for the eyes to be capsuled that he was sent by Konrad. And when he is outside again, he must go to the river, open the capsules and throw the eyes far out into the water."

"Sire!"

"Do you understand?"

"Yes sire."

"Taen, you will assist me as usual. I won't need you for this, Kit. Taen will be pretty enough for this patient. So you can catch up on your knitting. Right now I'm going to study up on the nervous systems of mountain men." As he pulled open one of the drawers of the capacious files in his study he called to Taen: "Sterilize and lay out the instruments as if we were going to do a Class 9 operation. I'll add anything else I'll need later."

When he came out to look for his cigarettes he saw Garth. Jeff's Adam's apple jerked nervously as he addressed Garth for there was frighteningly little written about the brain structures of mountain men. What there was indicated major physiological differences from Earthmen. "Garth; take your gas gun and go help Kit with her knitting. If you should hear the mountain men killing us, sneak her out her bedroom window onto the side street. She'll be completely in your care."

Taen blurted: "You could give him sight if you had the eyes from the Body Bank. Garth can't hide her very long at best. I don't understand sire."

"You will. Remember, we're playing this by ear. Things will open up as we go along. I want to see The Assassin's reaction before I decide exactly what will be your part in my next move."

"Even assuming you have a plan, sire, how will The Assassin get past the Security Guards to come here for the operation?"

"That's his worry," Jeff retorted curtly. "Fight his way, bribe his way. He knows what he's doing." Already the young doctor's fingers were stiffening. He was painfully conscious of the aches in his legs and back from the long climb. His head hummed. He needed sleep. Not so good for a delicate operation. He shrugged and went back to his reading.

* * * * *

When The Assassin finally came, he came in style. Jeff heard the firing while the mountain men were still blocks away.

Bursting in, bristling with sten guns, bomb throwers, dripping-beaked skars, they carried the old man in their midst like a sack of tubi.

"The guard who is regularly stationed at the hill gate had been replaced by an idealist," the earless young man panted. "But the master has sent twenty men to the Coliseum to create a diversion that may give us a few hours."

"Even under the best conditions this operation takes six hours," Jeff exclaimed.

As Taen stripped off his filthy robes, The Assassin croaked: "It had better take much less. I have not that many men to throw away."

He snarled as Taen in his haste nicked his blue-veined skull with the razor. And he muttered with senile detachment as he was swabbed with K2X, sheeted and strapped down upon the table. His black eye cavities turned with suspicion, as though they could see, when Jeff's damp hands squeaked into the rubber gloves.

"May the gods lean over your shoulder, sire," Taen whispered.

The two stepped into the glare of germicidal lamps, steel instruments, steel table, glinting knives of light, while the followers of the old man like dark crags lined the wall, a barrier to the door.

"Hypo."

The Assassin's breathing was as thunderous as the air blasting of a skar.

"Crank down the variable reflection viewer."

Desultory gunfire echoed through the dome city as Jeff focused the eyepiece until the scar tissue appeared like two black radishes extending into the gray blur of the forebrain. But when he increased the reflective depth the myelin covering of the optic chiasma glistened whitely. He exhaled with relief. There was still a gateway to the cerebrum.

The Assassin's breathing subsided to a gentle whisper.

"Scalpel."

While the gunshots rattled closer, Jeff cored into the dead tissue with the apparent unconcern of a boy cutting out the eye of a potato. But when he reached tissue of a pinkish tinge he moved with infinite caution.

The doctor was conscious of the huge cables of the efferent nerves that lay beneath his low-powered microscope and of the delicate two-fingered probe that moved among them, guided by control knobs rather than the coarse direct hand of man, testing, searching for life.

A sound so quick it eroded diseased tissue, yet did not harm the living cells, an ultra high frequency vibration that sand-blasted with the molecules of the air for sand, became his tool. It cleared the way where muscles would be soldered with quick-growing hormone and cell solutions. It brought neurons to the surface like the skeletons of dinosaurs and made them wince visibly beneath the microscope. It cut with inhuman precision for it was the extension of a semi-robot who saw with echoes and obeyed Jeff's hands only in the broad, general plan of the operation. It found live muscles and made their striated bodies shorten and lengthen agonizingly like great slugs when it laid them bare. It did all the work in an area less than an inch square.

A copter roared low and someone near the wall dropped a sten gun with a hand-shaking clatter. Straightening quickly, Jeff blinked his eyes and swore at the world in general. Taen nudged his side, then wrote on a pad: "What do you intend to do for eyes?"

Jeff's paw sagged. Lost on his microscopic battleground he had forgotten primary considerations. It took him a moment to remember what they were.

"No eyes, yes. Eyes. Send the earless one to the Body Bank to get them."

"But Garth's brother has thrown them away...."

"Yes, but send for them anyway. The description and order are in my shirt pocket. Also my personal check. Get him started."

Long before the outer door clicked shut Jeff was lost in his microscopic universe, snipping veins and small arteries, lightly sealing them so they could be opened again.