Partnership (25 page)

"Who'll pay?" Qualia Benton demanded in the fret-ful, shrill tone to be expected from an old soak whose nerves were jangling for just one more drink.

"Doctor's interested in your case," said the little black-haired one, Moss. "She wants to run some special tests. On the clinic, if Veteran's Aid won't cover it 194

Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Batt

You could get into the next issue of the Medical Research Journal."

"I'm honored," said Qualia Benton politely. She let the men transfer her to a wheelchair and rode quiedy down the long silent corridors of Summerlands clinic, watching the myriad reflections of herself and the aides in the polished tiles of floor and walls and ceiling, ready for the slightest move that would warn her it was time to act It won't happen in the halls. They'll move when Tm in a room alone, she told herself. But what if they expected her to count on that, and took her by surprise in one of these long empty hallways? She dared not relax.

Even when they wheeled her into a room with two beds, the one nearest the window already occupied, she was tense with expectation.

"Here now, you said I was getting a private room!"

she whined. Qualia Benton would whine; what's more, she would be suspicious and distrustful like most recovering addicts, almost paranoid. God knew, it wasn't hard to fake that part

"Might as well be private," said the one called Moss.

"He won't bother you much. Will you, Varian?"

The patient in the other bed nodded and shook his head alternately, smiling with a loose, open-lipped grin that chilled her spirits. Blissto addict. Or worse... if there is anything worse ? And they're maintaining hm in that condition, instead of trying to break the addiction. That's criminal!

Qualia Benton, chronic alcoholic, too woozy to take proper care of her own prostheses and replacement organs, wouldn't care about somebody else's problems. She said nothing.

The aides helped her into the free bed.

"Here you go," said the small black-haired man cheerfully. He slapped a sum pad downwards; she recoiled but could not quite escape the stinging contact against her shoulder. 'Just a litde relaxation med before the tests," he said.

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"Don't wanna relax," she muttered. The thickness in her speech was natural. She was suddenly finding it hard to think. Something was infiltrating her bloodstream, something soft as a cloud and warm as sunshine, floating her away to the Isles of the Blest —

bless—bliss — Blissto! That was it!

The man in the other bed — was he really a Blissto addict, or had he been drugged in the same manner?

Foolish, foolish not to have anticipated this. Once the aides had caught her out of bed and snooping where she had no business, she should have known her time at the clinic was limited.

She set her will to resisting the power of the drug.

And not only her will. One thing about being underestimated, being seen as an old lush without die sense to care for her own artificial organs: Dr. Hezra-Fong hadn't, apparently, run any serious tests on those hyperchip-enhanced organs. The Blissto was carrying her away; but if she could only gain an hour or two, afi might yet be well.

Did she have that hour's grace? No way to tell; she could only watch and wait, and that not very effectively. The hard hospital pillow beneath her head was soft as a Denebian flufftuff. Her left hand still rested against the smooth hard prosthesis, but she could barely feel the permaskin; the Blissto was interposing a fluffy cloud of blissful illusion between her and reality.

Doctor wants to run some tests ... Was that truly all this meant? Surely not So important a person as Dr. Hezra-Fong, assistant director of Summer-lands, wouldn't go to all this trouble to prove that an old lush was faking dis-ability. There had to be more going on here.

By late afternoon Sev noticed that the same two aides kept walking through the public visiting rooms.

They were both rather striking in their appearance —

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one a burly, blue-chinned man with a lumbering walk, the other neat and quick and given to slicking down his black hair with short nervous strokes. And they would have looked more natural at a portside bar than in a luxury medical clinic.

Sev reckoned he was supposed to notice them and to be scared off. That was annoying. The doddering old CenDip widow he was talking to had finally mentioned a patient named Varian Alexander, a Blissto addict. That could be an alias for Valden Alien Hopkirk; the information that Alexander had just been moved to a semi-private room supported the theory.

He was ready to get back to Nancia and check out the records on this Alexander, and he hated like hell to let these two petty thugs think they'd frightened him.

"You will not start anything with those two," Nancia instructed him when he muttered his complaints into the contact button. "They're minor. You get back and watch Caleb. I'll send Forister to take care of our friend Hopkirk."

"And who," Sev inquired sweetly, "will guard Fassa?"

Nancia assaulted his eardrums with a burst of static that attracted the attention of two other visitors. Glancing doubtfully at the artificial Capella fern beside Sev, they moved to the other side of the room and seated themselves well away from the strange, dour young man and his talking plant.

"You're attracting attention," Sev said sweetly. "Better let me handle this in my own way."

"Don't blame me if you end up in a recycler," Nancia grumbled in an undertone. "And don't expect me to send Forister to fish you out of trouble, either. After all, as you pointed out, somebody has to guard Fassa."

"I don't," said Sev loudly and clearly, "need anybody to get me out of trouble."

The other visitors whispered among themselves and somebody giggled. Sev felt his face turning red. Two PARTNERSHIP

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shapes materialized at his elbows, one large and lumbering, one darting in quick as a hummingbird.

"Forgetting your meds again, sonny?" asked the small one in a kindly, concerned voice. He turned towards the other visitors in the room. "Sorry about the disturbance. He hears voices. Should improve with therapeu — ahh!"

Sev drove one fist into the small man's chin and wheeled to confront the big one. A hand like a small boulder descended on his head. The room whirled around him. An old lady screamed. He saw something sharp in the rock-like hand. Shoidd have guessed. The danger is never where you're looking. The hand came down for a second time, like an earthquake or an avalanche, vast, implacable, and as Sev twisted away the needle slid into flesh, quiet as a whisper, smooth as sleep.

When she heard the sounds of the fracas in the public waiting rooms, Alpha slipped into the semi-private room she'd assigned to Hopkirk and the snoopy derelict. Damn Baynes and Moss! Couldn't they handle a minor surveillance task without starting a fight? There must be something about Blissto that permanently destroyed the brain cells.

Oh, well, at least the disturbance in the waiting room would draw everybody's attention; there'd be no inconvenient witnesses to her actions here. Not that she expected to be here long enough for any problems to develop. Hopkirk was grinning in his usual loose-lipped, amiable way, and the derelict Benton was limp against her pillow in a Blissto dream. Better take care of her first; she knew Hopkirk was too sedated to give trouble.

As she pushed up the old lush's sleeve to apply the stimpad, Alpha wondered whether Qualia Benton were really a snoop, or just a brain-damaged bag lady who'd had the bad luck to stumble into private places at the wrong time. Not that it made much difference.

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She wouldn't be answering any questions now.

The stimpad slapped down on chill, firm flesh. The array of needles clicked but did not sink in. Alpha felt a moment's cold apprehension. Something is turong here.

Something is very wrong.

And Qualia Benton's dark eyes were wide open, watching her with amusement.

"The right arm prosthesis is real lifelike," she said cheerfully, "but you won't get stimpad needles through the plastiskin. And now — oh, no, dear. 1

wouldn't do that. I really wouldn't."

From under the bedclothes she had produced an ugly, snub-nosed needier. Where did thai came from? The old bitch isn't wearing anything but a hospital gown.

"Whatever you had in that stimpad, die charge is wasted now," Qualia Benton informed her in that same cheerful tone. "There should be just enough left for a lab on Central to analyze. Please don't try to throw it away; I'll want to put it in an evidence bag for the trial."

"Trial," Alpha croaked. "Evidence bag." She backed up a step, frozen with horror, while her intended victim swung one real leg and one permalloy prosthesis out of bed, fussily straightened her gown, and produced a plastic bag from under the pillow.

"Just drop it in here, dear, and don't make any sudden moves. You wouldn't want to startle a poor nervous old woman. This needier is set on wide spray, and it's loaded with ParaVen. I don't really want to paralyze you," she said thoughtfully, "but if necessary ..."

Two more backward steps brought Alpha to the door. She dropped and rolled into the corridor, momentarily out of range of the needier. "Baynesl Moss!" she shrieked. "32-A, patient out of control, CodeZ,stat!"

Running feet pounded down the corridor and PARTNERSHIP

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Alpha dosed her eyes in momentary relief. That heavy tread had to belong to Baynes. Let this crazy snoop of a woman waste her needier charge on the aides — then Alpha would spirit her away to the violent ward. She promised herself a long and entertaining series of experiments on the bitch, once they got that damned needier away from her.

"Stop right there," the old woman called in a voice too clear for her apparent age. "I am a legally con-stituted representative of Central Worlds Internal Investigation. Any attack on my person is treason, punishable by law. You're under arrest"

"The hell I am," countered a voice that most certainly did not belong to the thick-witted Baynes. Alpha looked up and saw that Bryley man, the one she'd sent Baynes and Moss to take care of. "Fm the Central Worlds rep here, and you're under arrest. What have you done to my witness?"

"The guy in the next bed?" For the first time, the Benton woman sounded uncertain. "He's not going to be a lot of good to you. Too blissed-out to know his own name. But you're welcome to him, if you want him. I expect she was going to kill him next, after she took care of me."

"Kill? You?" Now Bryley sounded equally confused.

From her crouching position, Alpha saw the Benton woman bend and fumble along the side of her leg prosthesis. A crack opened and she drew out a thin holographic strip that shimmered with rainbow colors in the hallway lights. So that's where she hid the needier....

"General Micaya Questar-Benn," the woman introduced herself. She was standing straighter now, without the hunch and the bent leg that had made her look so small and helpless before. "Undercover assignment for Central, checking out the suspiciously high death rate on the charity side of Summerlands. My colleague Forister Armontillado-y-Medoc should be 200

Atme McCaffrey &f Margaret Bail

somewhere around; he can vouch for me. And you?"

"Sevareid Bryley-Sorensen, on temporary assignment to investigate fraud in a Bahati construction company." He looked down at Alpha; she had a dizzy-ing glimpse of blue eyes and an expression as if the cat had dragged in something better left in a back alley. "I think our cases may be connected. I was here to collect Valden Alien Hopkirk, witness to a case of criminal Net interference by one of the del Parma girl's friends.

Apparently this 'lady1 is another of the gang; she's been concealing the witness and — from what you say

— keeping him too doped up to testify. You think she was going to kill him?"

"We'll have to wait until that stimpad in her hand has been analyzed for drug traces," General Questar-Benn said mildly, "but I certainly don't think she was dispensing routine meds. Fortunately, she slapped the stimpad on my upper-arm prosthesis. I think I was supposed to be too drugged to notice her; one of those thugs she uses for aides dosed me with Blissto, or something like it, about an hour ago."

Alpha slowly uncurled herself and stood up. If she was lost, she'd go with that much dignity. She was half a head taller than this Sev Bryley; it helped, a litde, to look down on him.

"So what are you," she demanded, "a robot?

Nobody's immune to Seduc — Blissto," she caught herself. No reason to give away information.

General Questar-Benn chuckled. "No, dear girl, I'm not quite as badly off as the Tin Woodman. The valves may be helped along by hyperchips, but I still have a heart — something that appears to have been left out of your makeup. But the fiver and kidneys are replacements, and last year I had a new hyperchip-enhanced blood filtering function installed so that I could monitor my own internal prostheses. If you'd shown up right after your goon drugged me, I might PARTNERSHIP

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have been in trouble. But an hour was more than enough time to filter the drug out of my bloodstream."

Alpha glowered at her and Bryley impartially. "And what about you?" she demanded of Bryley. "You looked like a man, but I guess you're another fucking cyborg freak."

"I am a man," Bryley said mildly. "I'm also fast —

and I learned Capellan hand fighting in the war. Your big thug tripped over his own feet — with a litde help

— and slapped himself with the stimpad he was aiming at me. I don't know what was in it; perhaps you'd like to tell me whether he'll survive the experience? As for the litde one, he collided with one of those big ceramic pots you've got decorating the waiting room. He'll have one hell of a headache when he wakes up, but he'll be in perfectly good shape to testify against you."

"No, he won't," Alpha snapped. "You don't know as much as you think you do! The man's addicted to —

something you won't be able to supply. Without his next fix, he'll die in agony before the week's out!"