Charles Sheffield - Aftermath

“Right.” She placed one foot into Seth’s cupped hands and scrambled onto their backs. “Though I’m not sure ’good judgment’ applies at all if you wake up a man who killed eighteen people.”

Dana inspected Oliver Guest with the aid of Seth’s little flashlight. His nude body was festooned with monitor cables and sensors and tubes, but after the horror of Desmond Lota’s bloated corpse he looked reassuringly normal. He might have been simply sleeping. True, his skull was hairless, and his skin cool to her touch, but the muscles beneath had atrophied little during his five-year coma. The electronic stimulator apparently worked as advertised.

The spray delivery system worked through skin osmosis, and those attachments were easily removed. So were the twin tubes at the corner of Guest’s closed mouth and the sensor at his left eyeball. The harness that held and rotated Guest’s body ought to be easy, too; she could just undo the straps. The urethral catheter would be straightforward, and the anal peristaltic activator was already uncoupled from the body. Guest was lucky. Had the gamma pulse arrived during the once-a-month period when that device was in the rectum and operating, he would now undoubtedly be dead.

The six IVs were another matter. They entered veins at both elbows, at the hips, above the navel, and on one side of the neck. The skin around the six slender tubes was red and slightly puffy. She wasn’t sure how to remove them to do the least damage.

One of the two backs she was standing on moved a little under her foot. “How’s it goin’ up there?” Seth said from his head-down position below her. “You makin’ progress?”

“I’m going as fast as I can. I don’t want to kill him.”

“That’s all very well.” It was Art, wheezy and muffled. “But you’re damn near killing us. You should have taken your boots off.”

“A bit late to tell me. Hang in there.” Dana made her decision. She had hesitated because she wasn’t sure what to do. Waiting added no information. She unstrapped the harness and opened it, then pulled out the urethral catheter. It seemed to come out forever, but maybe that was normal for a man. Oliver Guest would probably scream the next time he had to pee. From everything she had heard, he deserved that and worse.

The IVs gave the most cause for concern. She tugged delicately at the one in his left elbow vein, and it didn’t move.

No time for niceties. She yanked harder until it came free.

Blood? She bent low. A few drops but nothing to worry about. They would wipe him later, once he was off the drawer.

She removed the other IVs, wincing a bit when the tube in his navel came out snaking and bloodied for a foot and a half. Where had it been connected, and what did it deliver or remove?

Oliver Guest should be able to tell her, he was a doctor. But first he had to survive and waken from the coma. Was there any change in the infinitesimal rise and fall of the chest? She couldn’t see one, though in principle the process of awakening had already begun.

Dana eased the body to the edge of the drawer until she was afraid to bring it farther. She looked down. “He’s in position. Hold tight, I’m coming off. Be ready to catch him — he might slip.”

She shouldn’t have said that. Art and Seth straightened at once and reached up to steady Guest’s body and make sure it didn’t fall. Dana’s feet slid off their backs. She tried to protect the flashlight, dropped it, and landed on the metal floor on her tailbone with a jolt that rattled her teeth.

“Shit!” She rubbed at her backside. “What did you do that for?”

They ignored her complaints. “Never mind your ass,” Seth said. “Get that flashlight goin’, an’ stand in between us an’ shine it up. I got the shoulders, Art got the legs, but we can’t see what we’re doin’. If we have problems, grab his middle an’ steady him as we bring him down.”

It was easy to give orders, but if Dana worked the flashlight crank she had no hands free. Something had to give.

“Take a good look where you want your holds to be. And then be ready to bring him down in the dark.”

Dana worked the light to its brightest beam, keeping it going until Art and Seth were sure of their holds. She looked where her own grip on the body should be, stuck the flashlight quickly into her pocket, and reached up fast as the light faded.

Even with three people it was an effort. Oliver Guest was a big man, and Dana felt as if at least half his weight fell on her. She braced herself, tightened her jaw, and lowered him as slowly and carefully as she could to the floor.

“He’s down.” Art’s voice came out of the darkness, beside her on the floor. “But where the devil is the flashlight? I can’t find it.”

“It’s in my pocket. Wait a second.”

By the time Dana had the beam working again, Seth had already removed his jacket and was opening his shoulder bag. “You wearing two pairs of pants?” he said to Art.

“Yes.”

“I’m not, and I got no spares. You’ll have to come through with that. I’m givin’ up my jacket an’ a shirt. We have to keep him warm, and he has to be able to travel. How about shoes?”

“I’ve got these boots, the ones I’m wearing now, and a pair of regular shoes in my bag.”

“Can he have your shoes?”

Art bent to examine Oliver Guest’s feet. “They’ll never fit him — his feet are too big. But he can have the boots. They were borrowed and they’re like boats on me.”

“An’ I have socks, plenty of ’em. Hey, that’s good.” Art had pulled a candle from his bag, lit it, and placed it on the floor. “Now we can manage without the flashlight,” Seth went on. “Can you get these onto him?”

He handed a pair of underpants to Dana. She moved to the bony feet and slipped the clothing over, pushing it carefully up the long legs. The calves and thighs were as hairless as the head, some side effect of the somnol or maybe of the long sleep itself. She felt awkward tucking in sex organs so she could pull the underpants up to his waist. His genitals were those of an adult male, but pink and hairless as a baby’s. His belly, unless it was her imagination, had warmed a few degrees since she had pulled out the IV.

Art and Seth had been busy on the upper body. Oliver Guest was now dressed in a shirt, sweater, and a jacket a size too small. Art was working the hands with their long, thick fingers into a pair of black gloves. They moved him to the tiers of body drawers and propped him up there before tackling pants, socks, and shoes.

“Ain’t he a beauty?” Seth said. “How’d you like to find this under your bed one dark night?”

Oliver Guest’s eyes were slitted open and the skin around them had an odd yellowish tinge. That, together with the bald bulging skull and the complete lack of eyebrows, suggested some evil idol from an ancient temple, brooding in the yellow glow of a worshiper’s single candle.

“Come on, Doctor G.,” Seth said. “Can you hear me yet? Guess not, but we hafta do this. You’ll lose too much heat without it.”

He was holding a green cloth cap with earflaps. He placed it on Guest’s head and pulled carefully down until it was only an inch above the narrow eyes. Seth lifted an eyelid and peered at the pupil behind. “Gettin’ a reflex reaction to light. He’s comin’ along.”

The other two were busy at the lower end. Working together they eased Art’s spare pair of trousers onto Guest’s legs and up to his middle.

“Too short,” Art said. “He’s at least three inches taller than me. But it won’t matter once we get socks and boots on. They’ll come more than high enough to cover him.”

“Quick as you can,” said Seth. “Then we done our best. The rest is up to him.”