Pohl, Frederik - The Gateway Trip

And so he did.

It must have been a terrible shock to him when he entered the crawl-through to the igloo with the monkey wrench in his hand, leaned over me, and found I was still alive and able to move, when he had expected only a well-done roast of meat.

If I had had any doubt about his intentions it was resolved when he swung immediately at my helmet. Age, busted leg, and surprise didn't slow his reflexes a bit. But he had to change position to get a good swing in the cramped space inside the crawl-through, and, being not only alive but pretty nearly conscious, I managed to roll away in time. And I already had the drill ready to go in my arms.

The drill caught him right in the chest.

I couldn't see his face, but I can guess at his expression.

After that, it was only a matter of doing five or six impossible things at once. Things like getting Dorrie up out of the tunnel and into the airbody. Like getting myself in after her, and sealing up and setting a course. All those impossible things ... and one more, that was harder than any of them, but very important to me. Dorrie didn't know why I insisted on bringing Cochenour's body back. I think she thought it was a kind gesture of reverence to the dead on my part, but I didn't straighten her out just then.

I just about totaled the airbody when we landed, but we were suited up and strapped in, and when the ground crews came out from the Spindle to investigate Dorrie and I were still alive.

xiii

They had to patch me and rehydrate me for three days before they could even think about putting my new liver in. It was a wonder it had survived its ordeal, but they'd whipped it out and put it on nutrient pumps as soon as they got their hands on it. By the time it was ready to be transplanted into me it had had its allergenic nature tamed and was as good as any liver ever was-good enough, anyway, to keep me alive.

They kept me sedated most of the time. The quacks woke me up every couple of hours to give me another bout of feedback training on how to monitor my hepatic flows-they said there was no point giving me a new liver if I didn't know how to use it-and other people kept waking me up to ask me questions, but it was all dreamlike. I didn't much want to be awake just then. Being awake was all sickness and pain and nagging, and I could have wished for the old days back again-when they just would have knocked me out with anesthesia until they were through-except, of course, that in the old days I would have died.

But by the fourth day I hardly hurt at all-well, except when I moved. And they were letting me take my fluids by mouth instead of the other way.

I realized I was going to be alive for a while. That was very good news, and, once I believed it, I began to take more interest in what was going on.

The Quackery was in its spring mood, which I appreciated. Of course, there's no such thing as a season in the Spindle, but the quacks get all sentimental about tradition and ties with the Mother Planet, so they create seasons for themselves. The current one was made by scenes of fleecy white clouds playing across the wall panels, and the air from the ventilator ducts smelled of lilac and green leaves.

"Happy spring," I said to Dr. Morius while he was examining me.

"Shut up," he said to me. He shifted a couple of the needles that pincushioned my abdomen, watching the readings on the telltales. "Urn," he muttered.

"I'm glad you think so," I said.

He disregarded my remark. Dr. Morius doesn't like humorous

conversation unless it comes from him. He pursed his lips and pulled out a couple of the needles. "Well, let's see, Waithers. We've taken out the splenovenal shunt. Your new liver is functioning well-no sign of rejection-but you're not flushing wastes through as fast as you ought to. You'll have to work on that. We've got your ion levels back up to something like a human being, and most of your tissues have a little moisture in them again. Altogether," he said, scratching his head in thought, "yes, in general, I would say you're alive. So I think probably the operation was a success."

"That's very witty," I said.

"You've got some people waiting for you," he went on. "Vastra's Third and your lady friend. They brought you some clothes."

That interested me. "Does that mean I'm getting out?" I asked.

"Like right now," he told me. "They'll have to keep you in bed awhile, but your rent's run out. We need the space for paying customers."

Now, one of the advantages of having clean blood in my brains instead of the poisonous soup it had been living on was that I could begin to think reasonably clearly.

So I knew right away that good old comical Dr. Morius was making another of his little jokes. "Paying customers." I wouldn't have been there if I hadn't been a paying patient. Though I couldn't imagine what my bills were being paid with, I was willing to keep my curiosity in check until I was outside the Quackery.

That didn't take long. The quacks packed me in wetsheets, and Dorrie and the Third of Vastra's House rolled me through the Spindle to Sub Vastra's place. Dorrie was pale and tired still-the last couple of weeks hadn't been much of a vacation for either of us-but needing nothing more than a little rest, she said. Sub's First had kicked some of the kids out of a cubicle and cleared it out for us, and his Third fussed over both of us, feeding us up on lamb broth and that flat hard bread they like, before tucking us in for a good long rest. There was only the one bed, but Dorrie didn't seem to mind. Anyway, at that point the question was academic. Later on,

not so academic. After a couple of days of that I was on my feet and as good as I ever was.

By then I found out who had paid my bill at the Quackery.

For about a minute I had hoped it was me-quickly filthy rich from the priceless spoils of our tunnel-but I knew that was an illusion. The tunnel had been right on the military reservation. Nobody was ever going to own anything in it but the military.

If we'd been hale and hearty we could have gotten around that, with a little inventive lying. We could have carted some of the things off to another tunnel and declared them, and almost certainly we would have gotten away with it ... but not the way we were. We'd been a lot too near dead to conceal anything.

So the military had taken it all.

Still, they'd showed something I never had suspected. They did have a kind of a heart. Atrophied and flinty, yes, but a heart. They'd gone into the dig while I was still getting glucose enemas in my sleep, and they'd been pleased with what they'd found. They decided to pay me a kind of finder's fee. Not much, to be sure. But enough to save my life. Enough to meet the Quackery's bill for ll their carpentry on me, and even enough left over to put some in the bank and pay the back rent on my own place, so Dorrie and I could move in when Vastra's House decided we were well enough to be on our own.

Of course, they hadn't had to pay for the transplant liver itself. That hadn't cost anything at all.

For a while it bothered me that the military wouldn't say what they'd found. I did my best to find out. I even tried to get Sergeant Littleknees drunk so I could worm it out of her, when she came to the Spindle on furlough. That didn't work. Dorrie was right there, and how drunk can you get one girl when another girl is right there watching you? Probably Amanda Littleknees didn't know, anyhow. Probably nobody did except a few specialists.

But it had to be something big, because of the cash award, and most of all because they didn't prosecute us for trespassing on the

military reservation. And so we get along all right, the two of us. Or the three of us.

Dorrie turned out to be really good at selling imitation prayer fans and fire-pearls to the Terry tourists, especially when her pregnancy began to show. We were both kind of celebrities, of course. She kept us in eating money until the high season started, and by then I had found out that my status as a famous tunnel discoverer was worth something, so I parlayed it into a cash loan and a new airbody. We're doing pretty well, for tunnel-rats. I've promised I'll marry her if our kid turns out to be a boy, but as a matter of fact I'm going to do it anyway. She was a great help at the dig.