Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

Gavein was not permitted to call Ra Mahleiné again. The deal he had made with the DS was for one conversation only. There should not have been this delay. Saalstein, Ezzir, and even Dr. Barth assured him that telephone contact was made with his wife every day and that she was all right. Because the investigation into the murders of Zef and Laila was ongoing, the content of their conversations with Ra Mahleiné had to be kept secret. Gavein didn’t believe them but didn’t argue. He waited. He had been at the Division of Science three weeks now.

They’ll slice me open like a pig for the good of humanity, he thought. The surgery would reveal nothing, he was sure.

Siskin promised that the incisions would heal in two weeks, so the prospect of going home was not that distant. The radio tomography was abandoned: no one could be found to administer it.

In the company of Saalstein and Dr. Barth, Gavein ate a full and delicious breakfast. Dr. Barth personally took his blood pressure, asked him how he felt. All three of them knew that the DS had been getting nowhere. Gavein expressed surprise that they were allowing him to eat before the operation. Dr. Barth said that they would not be entering his stomach or intestines, so food was not counterindicated. He would have no appetite afterward, so why not stock up now? Gavein asked that Ra Mahleiné not be called until after his operation. Saalstein said he would see to that.

That afternoon Aurelia took him to the hospital shower. He went on foot, barefoot, because they wanted him to exert himself a little. Perhaps to reduce the chance of his getting a hospital infection. Unfortunately Aurelia hadn’t brought slippers. He left his blue hospital gown in the dressing room and proceeded to the preoperation room. They would be opening him up in several places. A kind of autopsy, except that he would be living through it. After he laid down on the gurney and was covered with a sheet, Aurelia came back and gave him an injection.

Doped up and defenseless again, he thought bitterly. A humiliating ritual.

“Another sedative?” he asked.

“That’s given in your rear end, in the muscle,” she answered with a smile. “This goes directly in the vein. Dr. Barth’s orders.”

Dr. Barth himself came in, with Siskin, several doctors Gavein didn’t know, Saalstein, Ezzir, and even General Thompson.

What do they think to find inside me, the sons of bitches? he thought. It’s in his hand, not in his vital organs, that Death holds the scythe.

“He received the medication?” asked Dr. Barth.

Aurelia nodded.

“Excellent. Let us begin.”

Nylund wheeled in a cart that held a row of ampules and vials.

“Where is Boggs?” asked Thompson. “He wanted to be here too.”

“I told his secretary,” said Dr. Barth. “He’ll be here any minute.”

Someone fixed a basket of encephalograph wires into position over Gavein’s head, and someone else attached EKG electrodes to him.

Dr. Barth prepared another injection. “You left the needle in the vein?” he asked the nurse.

She said yes.

“What’s this?” asked Siskin.

“The first dose. In five minutes I give the next. After another five, the last.”

Slowly he pressed the contents of the syringe into Gavein’s vein. The monitor that recorded Gavein’s life signs started beeping quietly.

Gavein grew lighter, brighter somehow. His surroundings took on color, and things weaved even more than they had with the sedative. Dr. Barth’s nose increased to ludicrous proportions. Thompson’s meaty face gleamed pink and more and more resembled the snout of a pig. Gavein looked at Siskin: the man’s thin face was surrounded by a halo of flame. Making a great effort, Gavein saw that it was only the man’s red hair. By straining his mind and focusing, he could reduce the hallucinations.

“Where are the notes?” Bogg’s voice rang like a bell.

The answer didn’t reach Gavein’s ears.

“The next dose now,” said Dr. Barth, turning to Siskin. As he spoke, his tongue touched and moved the end of his extremely long nose, from left to right and back. Aurelia spread the white wings of her lab coat and took to the air, floating where the wall met the ceiling. The windows expanded and contracted, having assumed the outline of a woman’s lips. The curtains reminded Gavein of Ra Mahleiné’s uneven teeth. He looked more carefully at the fluttering figure in white and found that it wasn’t Aurelia at all but his wife. Ra Mahleiné looked good in a white dress and wings. Gavein felt Dr. Barth tugging with his fingers at a vein. No doubt the physician wanted to stick his nose in, to smell out the secret of why only those who had crossed the path of David Death died.

“He’s received the second dose. Everything is proceeding according to plan. I told you that this was the only way.”

Near the ceiling Gavein saw a dark shape beside Ra Mahleiné. He couldn’t focus on it. Finally he focused. It was himself floating next to her. He was in a black fake-leather jumpsuit with skulls embroidered on it. Each skull had glittering red gems for eyes. On the back of the jacket was the biggest skull, silver, and beneath it two crossed bones.

If I’m looking at myself from the front, how can I see what’s on my back? he wondered.

“His pulse is up, but the responses are all normal.”

His pulse was a small chubby cupid flitting about the room, faster and faster. From Ra Mahleiné’s eyes came yellow sunbeams. Gold in her eyes, he thought, means she’s angry.

“Stop breathing in so greedily, there won’t be air for others,” Ra Mahleiné barked. She was indeed furious. “Washing yourself in the shower, you splashed so much, I couldn’t sleep. You could have done it more quietly.”

Wilcox rushed past, all gray. And bent curiously, like a stork.

“Be careful he doesn’t suck out your veins,” Ra Mahleiné warned. “He’s collecting blood for Brenda, because she slit her wrists and it all came out.”

Wilcox straightened. He was extraordinarily tall and so wide he took up half the room. His face was like a piece of rumpled cloth, the eyes, nose, and mouth painted on.

“I think he’s still conscious,” Wilcox said. “He reacts to light.”

“Yes, senator,” said Dr. Barth, and with his tongue moved the tip of his nose from his left ear to his right. “But after the third dose now, he’ll sleep.”

A turtle rode around the room. On its shell stood little vials of alcohol and fluids: yellow, clear, and reddish. The shell was flat, the legs high, the feet wheels.

“Just don’t go and get a chill,” said Ra Mahleiné, shaking a finger. “They hardly covered you with a sheet.”

Wilcox sucked the blood from his vein.

If it’s for Brenda, Gavein thought, then I guess he can have a little.

Wilcox wiped his mouth with a sleeve and tied the vein in a looped knot.

“And after the third dose?” asked Siskin, whose head bounced on a spring as he looked at Gavein from a height.

The room pulsed and gave off rainbow rings. Inside the rings, as inside the frame of a painting, were Ra Mahleiné, Wilcox, himself in the black jumpsuit, Dr. Barth, Siskin, Thompson, and a white turtle with a cylindrical head.

“The pupils no longer react. He must be out.”

“This time, finally, we should succeed,” stated a hog in the voice of General Thompson. “So much effort, so many victims.”

“His field is narrowing now. When the body is completely without feeling, we give the gas,” hissed Dr. Barth.

“What is his Significant Name?” asked Wilcox. “ Yacrod ? Myzzt ?”

“ Aeriel .”

“So, then, there won’t be an operation?” Wilcox asked further, in the voice of Boggs.