Mission: Earth "The Enemy Within" (25 page)

Nurse Bildirjin held my head very steady with her fingernails. "Maybe it's not a good idea to go around interrupting things right in the middle," she said. "Maybe doing it once was okay but when it happens twice, it starts looking intentional. Young girls have tender feelings!"

Prahd was putting some blood in a test tube and warming up a catalyzer. Things buzzed and metal pans clattered. Burners were hissing.

He came back over. He had a little spade sort of instrument. I couldn't see.

FLASH! Pain went through me like a javelin. Worse!

He backed up. He had taken a little piece of skull!

He put it in a test tube. He put the test tube in the catalyzer. Burners sizzled. So did my skull!

"Did you ever do it halfway?" said Nurse Bildirjin. "Did you ever do it halfway and then have to stop?"

I couldn't feel her fingernails. My skull hurt too much.

Prahd now had a drill. He started it up.

YEEOW! The noise of it going into my skull was almost as bad as the living agony! The room spun!

"It was going all so nice," said Nurse Bildirjin. "Nice and slow and even. Making it last. Oh, it was good!"

Prahd had the drill going sideways. I fainted.

When I came to, Nurse Bildirjin said, "It was the first one for the night. I had been looking forward to it all day. I could feel it clear to the top of my head! And then my father came in!"

I tried to tell her, "Nurse Bildirjin, I am not your father. That is an Elektra complex. You have a secret passion for your father and it expresses itself in hate." But the gag was in my mouth.

Prahd was holding the lead box. "Please verify the object."

She let my head go for an instant. It was the object. I nodded sufferingly.

He took it in some tweezers and dropped it in a solution. He fished it out. She grabbed my head again. Her knees dug.

YEEOW! YEEOW! YEEOW! He had put it in my skull none too gently.

"You ever get stopped halfway through?" said Nurse Bildirjin. "Just when it is going wonderful?"

He was taking a mass of bone cells out of the test tube he had catalyzed. Like a plasterer, he was pasting it into the hole he had made.

At every touch it felt like he was yanking on every nerve!

"You see," said Nurse Bildirjin, "I am a young girl. I am just starting out. All this is new and wonderful to me. I had heard, but I never knew it could be so good, so good, so good!"

He was tugging scalp down now. It hurt like blazes. Stung!

"You should be very careful of young girls who have never had any before," said Nurse Bildirjin. "It is their most delightful time of life!"

Prahd was smearing something around the edges of the scalp wound. It was agony at every stroke!

"You don't stop young girls halfway," said Nurse Bildirjin. "You go right on and let them finish! Young girls have tender feelings, and don't you forget it!"

Prahd had a light he was shining on my skull. It was so hot I could hear my hair sizzling.

He stepped back. "You can let him up now, Nurse Bildirjin," he said professionally.

She got off me. I hurt so bad elsewhere, I didn't even feel her knees gouging me, leaving bruises.

She picked up a lancet, apparently just to have it handy in case she had any afterthoughts. She undid my throat strap so I could breath again. She unfastened the rest.

"Well," said Prahd. "You're bugged. Does my pay start now?"

I got the roll of bandage out of my mouth. "Get out of here!" I yelled.

They were very obedient. As she left, Nurse Bildirjin was already unbuttoning her uniform. She was looking adoringly up at Prahd.

"Oh, I just love practicing medicine, don't you, doctor? It's SO stimulating!"

I got off the table somehow. The room was spinning.

I didn't know if I'd been (bleeped) or operated on!

The taxi driver woke up as I approached the cab. He stared at me. In a shocked tone, he said, "Gee, did that swarthy Sicilian catch up with you?"

I made him drive me to the barracks: I couldn't confront more whining by Faht Bey. I went through the hangar. The guard officer said, "A gang beat up on you?"

I went up the tunnel to my secret room. I fumbled through the closet entrance to my bedroom.

I collapsed. I didn't really go to sleep—I just went unconscious.

The following morning I awoke very late. My sweater collar had blood on it. My hair was caked. It called for extreme measures. I took a shower. I was surprised when I found my head didn't gush further blood. I was even more surprised when I touched the spot: it almost killed me.

However, getting into a shirt I didn't have to pull over my head, I began to savor what I had accomplished. None of the hypnohelmets would work on me. There would be no more nightmares complete with Manco spike-tailed Devils. I was safe from Krak. And nobody on this planet was safe from me. It was a nice feeling.

The waiter brought me in some hot kahve sade– without sugar. I drank it in sips between great gulps of water. That is the proper way to drink it, though I seldom did it. But the wounded get thirsty. I ignored utterly the baklava sweet pastry.

As the waiter seemed to have gotten in and out without being blown apart by a double-barrelled leopard, I tiptoed across the patio to the yard door: I wanted to plan from where I would get a guard to shoot the paralysis dart at the intruder. I put my eye to the peephole.

My Gods!

Utanc was just leaving in her BMW.

And sitting right beside her in the front seat, chummy as you please, was GUNSALMO SILVA!

The car vanished from the gate.

I stepped out into the yard.

Karagoz was helping the gardener plant a flower bed. I beckoned and then pointed mutely at the gate—I was speechless.

"Oh, him?" said Karagoz. "He was waiting for you."

I nodded numbly.

Karagoz said, "There were some strange men in town the last couple days. They scared Utanc. So this morning she hired Silva as a bodyguard."

Worse and worse! Not only was he gunning for me, he was stealing my darling dancing girl! And who knows but what they'd both plot against me!

It was a good thing I had it all planned out with the hypnohelmets.

Karagoz said, "He's broke, you know. The American consul took away all the cash he got off the dead gangster—said it was a consular fee. We been feeding him."

Even the staff were in league on this!

I started to go to the gate. Then I realized that I stupidly had come out here unarmed. I turned to go back to my room.

There was a rush and a roar!

Utanc slammed the BMW into the yard!

It stopped in its usual place in a scream of tires.

I froze.

I looked at the car like a snake-fixated bird.

This was the end.

Gunsalmo Silva was getting out. He had the leopard in his hand.

Utanc, hooded, cloaked and veiled, swept by me without even a flick of eyes in my direction, as though I didn't exist. She had obviously written me off. In a moment her room door slammed behind her and the metal bars clanged into place.

Silva was just standing there, half in and half out of the car. He was looking at me.

I have never felt quite so naked. No gun to draw. And he would have plenty of time to shoot me before I could draw it if I had one. And he was Apparatus hypnotrained now, capable of anything.

He was walking toward me slowly, leopard in hand. He was squat, muscular, very Sicilian, terrible. He was frowning.

He stopped five feet from me. He raised the leopard. He scratched his head with the muzzle.

"Now, where the (bleep) have I seen you before?" he said.

I said nothing.

He frowned harder. Then his face brightened up to a dark cloud. "Oh, I know. It's that God (bleeped) nightmare I get. You're the guy in it! I'm standing there in a barn full of flying saucers!"

Silva looked me up and down and nodded. "Well, that clears that up. Can we go some place private and sit down? It's kind of public here."

Tricky. Just what you'd expect after Apparatus training. He didn't want the execution to be public.

My bedroom was closer to my guns.

I found my voice. "Come with me," I said and led the way to the bedroom. Then I got even more clever. "You want something to drink first? Some Scotch?"

"Never touch it," he said. "God (bleep) ulcers."

Well, try again, my old professors used to say. If you're not dead yet, there's always a slim chance you won't be right away.

I got him into my bedroom. I sat him down in a chair. I toyed with the idea of going in the secret room and stepping on the floor plate with a twist, which would assemble the whole crew in the hangar. Then I thought, they'd be in the hangar, not here where they are needed.

I tried a ploy. I said, "I understand Utanc hired you as a bodyguard."

"Yeah," he grunted.

"This is pretty wild country. Are you qualified? How'd you kill Tavilnasty?"

He gave a short, barking laugh. "Child's play. When them two (bleepers) took me to that God (bleeped) room I come to and I said, 'This is a setup for a God (bleeped) hit.' You get me? That's what I said—'A setup for a God (bleeped) hit.' You unnerstan' me?"

I understood him. This was his threat to me.

"So, when they put me in the God (bleeped) bed, I said, 'Some God (bleeped) (bleeper) is going to be in here in a couple minutes to rub me out.' So soon as these (bleepers) left, I just balled up the blankets like it was a body and rolled under the bed. Child's play.

"Couple minutes later I'll be God (bleeped) if I wasn't right. The (bleeper) comes quiet in through the window. He walks over cat-foot to the God (bleeped) bed. He's got a God (bleeped) stiletto in his hand. He's also got this leopard in a holster inside his God (bleeped) left leg.

"He jams the stiletto into the God (bleeped) roll of blankets like he's God (bleeped) upset. So I just reached out and grabbed the God (bleeped) leopard off his God (bleeped) leg.

"Before he could bend down to see what was under the God (bleeped) bed, I blew his God (bleeped) left leg off. And then he fell down, so I blew his crotch apart.

"He wasn't so God (bleeped) interested in killing anybody then, so I got out from under the God (bleeped) bed. I seen he had a crappy .38 Saturday night special so I took it and though it was a awful God (bleeped) risk to shoot the God (bleeped) thing—they blow up—I put a bullet in the blankets and wiped the God (bleeped) gun off and put it back in his God (bleeped) hand that had stopped twitchin'.

"I frisked him for his God (bleeped) money and I found four extra loads. So I dumped the leopard and the loads for it in the God (bleeped) toilet trap.

"The God (bleeped) police come. They thought the guy had tried to use a bomb and it had gone off too God (bleeped) quick. But seein' I was American they put me in the jug.

"Like a God (bleeped) fool, I yelled for the God (bleeped) American consul and he come down the next day and demanded they give me life but they said to hell with you, go (bleep) yourself. And that's the last God (bleeped) time I ever call for an American consul. He took all my dough.

"So I went back to the hotel the next day and fished this leopard out of the toilet trap." He sat pensive for a moment. "I dimly remember in a nightmare I was calling for an American consul. I'm a dumb (bleepard). But I somehow feel I'm a lot smarter about business these days. I seem to know what to do just like that. Which brings us to you."

"Just a minute," I said. "You seem to be qualified. But this is pretty wild country. If. you're going to be a bodyguard, you'll need this."

I had left a hypnohelmet out. I picked it up. I put it on his head and turned the switch. The front light glowed brightly.

I waited.

He just sat there.

I waited for his eyes to glaze and close.

He just sat there.

Bright awake!

"Hell," he said, "I don't need no helmet." He reached up and took it off. "It don't look bulletproof anyway." He put it on his lap.

My Gods! It wasn't working! The helmet wasn't working!

I reached over and took it away. I was thinking awfully fast. I had a hypnotrained Apparatus hit man sitting right here!

"I got this strange idea," he said, "that I'm supposed to see the God (bleeped) head man in Turkey, and people tell me you are it. I got this God (bleeped) fool notion that you got something for me to do."

My pent breath wheezed out. So that was what they had told him under hypnosis after he'd been hypnotrained!

"This dame you got here—what's her name, Utanc? Funny name. Anyway, she offered me a job. But I don't think it's what I'm supposed to do and I don't think it's permanent.

"Just a few minutes ago, we started up the God (bleeped) road for town. And she told me how scared she'd been with all the non-Turks in town last couple days but she didn't want no hassle with heaters. And then she me..."

"Wait a minute," I said. "You don't talk Turkish." "Oh, I know. God (bleeped) lousy language. Her English has got a funny accent."

Oh, the darling had been studying English. Maybe to please me! I saw her with lots of textbooks being carried in. How sweet of her.

"She's God (bleeped) hard to unnerstan' sometimes. She uses too many God (bleep) big words. But anyway we're driving up the road to town just a while ago and she wants to know who I thought these birds was. She didn't call them birds. She said... oh yes. She said 'foreign intruders.' And I knew, of course, and I told her those God (bleeped) (bleepards) was the American consul from Ankara and three, four other CIA men. And bang, she turns right around—one hell of a U-turn—and she come back here. I don't think she thinks she's safe." Well, of course, she didn't. Poor little wild desert girl. "And she must have changed her mind," he continued. " 'Cause first she's talkin' about no God (bleeped) hassle and then she wants to know how much hits cost. Women!" he added disgustedly. "Always changin' their (bleeping) minds!"