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«Then it's not for me, son. I've lost my nerve. Jaunting the circuit with you, one step ahead of the cops, showed me that. I've retired for keeps. All I want is peace.»
«I'll pay fifty thousand. Don't you want fifty thousand? You could spend Sundays counting it.»
The needle hammered remorselessly. Foyle's body was twitching at each impact.
«I already got fifty thousand. I got ten times that in cash in a bank in Vie
«Let me have the Weekender. You can sit safe in Joburg and collect.»
«Collect when?»
«When I get back.»
«You want my ship on trust and a promise to pay?»
«A guarantee.»
Quatt snorted. «What guarantee?»
«It's a salvage job in the asteroids. Ship named 'Nomad.'»
«What's on the 'Nomad'? What makes the salvage pay off?»
«I don't know.»
«You're lying.»
«I don't know,» Foyle mumbled stubbornly. «But there has to be something valuable. Ask Jiz.»
«Listen,» Quatt said, «I'm going to teach you something. We do business legitimate, see? We don't slash and scalp. We don't hold out. I know what's on your mind. You got something juicy but you don't want to cut anybody else in on it. That's why you're begging for favors . .
Foyle writhed under the needle, but, still gripped in the vice of his possession, was forced to repeat: «I don't know, Sam. Ask Jiz.»
«If you've got an honest deal, make an honest proposition,» Quatt said angrily. «Don't come prowling around like a damned tattooed tiger figuring how to pounce. We're the only friends you got. Don't try to slash and scalp-.»
Quatt was interrupted by a cry torn from Foyle's lips.
«Don't move,» Baker said in an abstracted voice. «When you twitch your face I can't control the needle.» He looked hard and long at Jisbella. Her lips trembled. Suddenly she opened her purse and took out two ~r 500 banknotes. She dropped them alongside the beaker of acid.
«We'll wait outside,» she said.
She fainted in the hall. Quatt dragged her to a chair, and found a nurse who revived her with aromatic ammonia. She began to cry so violently that Quatt was frightened. He dismissed the nurse and hovered until the sobbing subsided.
«What the hell has been going on?» he demanded. «What was that money supposed to mean?»
«It was blood money.»
«For what?»
«I don't want to talk about it.»
«Are you all right?»
«Anything I can do?»
There was a long pause. Then Jisbella asked in a weary voice: «Are you going to make that deal with Gully?»
«Me? No. It sounds like a thousand-to-one shot.»
«There has to be something valuable on the 'Nomad.' Otherwise Dagenham wouldn't have hounded Gully.»
«I'm still not interested. What about you?»
«Me? Not interested either. I don't want any part of Gully Foyle again.»
After another pause, Quatt asked: «Can I go home now?»
«You've had a rough time, haven't you, Sam?»
«I think I died about a thousand times nurse-maidin' that tiger around the circuit.»
«I'm sorry, Sam.»
«I had it coming to me after what I did to you when you were copped in Memphis.»
«Ru
«We always do what's natural, only sometimes we shouldn't do it.»
«I know, Sam. I know.»
«And you spend the rest of your life trying to make up for it. I figure I'm lucky, Jiz. I was able to square it tonight. Can I go home now?»
«Back to Joburg and the happy life?»
«Uh-huh.»
«Don't leave me alone, yet, Sam. I'm ashamed of myself.»
«What for?»
«Cruelty to dumb animals.»
«What's that supposed to mean?»
«Never mind. Hang around a little. Tell me about the happy life. What's so happy about it?»
«Well,» Quatt said reflectively. «It's having everything you wanted when you were a kid. If you can have everything at fifty that you wanted when you were fifteen, you're happy. Now when I was fifteen . . .» And Quart went on and on describing the symbols, ambitions, and frustrations of his boyhood which he was now satisfying until Baker came out of the operating theater.
«Finished?» Jisbella asked eagerly.
«Finished. After I put him under I was able to work faster. They're bandaging his face now. He'll be out in a few minutes.»
«Weak?»
«Naturally.»
«How long before the bandages come off?»
«Six or seven days.»
«His face'll be clean?»
«I thought you weren't interested in his face, dear. It ought to be clean.
I don't think I missed a spot of pigment. You may admire my skill, Jisbella also my sagacity. I'm going to back Foyle's salvage trip.»
«What?» Quatt laughed. «You taking a thousand-to-one gamble, Baker? I thought you were smart.»
«I am. The pain was too much for him and he talked under the anesthesia. There's twenty million in platinum bullion aboard the 'Nomad.'»
«Twenty million!» Sam Quatt's face darkened and he turned on Jisbella. But she was furious too.
«Don't look at me, Sam. I didn't know. He held out on me too. Swore he never knew why Dagenham was hounding him.»
«It was Dagenham who told him,» Baker said. «He let that slip too.»
«I'll kill him,» Jisbella said. «I'll tear him apart with my own two hands and you won't find anything inside his carcass but black rot. He'll be a curio for your zoo, Baker; I wish to God I'd let you have him!»
The door of the operating theater opened and two orderlies wheeled out a trolley on which Foyle lay, twitching slightly. His entire head was one white globe of bandage.
«Is he conscious?» Quatt asked Baker.
«I'll handle this,» Jisbella burst out. «I'll talk to the son of a…Foyle!» Foyle answered faintly through the mask of bandage. As Jisbella drew a furious breath for her onslaught, one wall of the hospital disappeared and there was a clap of thunder that knocked them to their feet. The entire building rocked from repeated explosions, and through the gaps in the walls uniformed men began jaunting in from the streets outside, like rooks swooping into the gut of a battlefield.
«Raid!» Baker shouted. «Raid!»
«Christ Jesus!» Quatt shook.
The uniformed men were swarming all over the building, shouting:
«Foyle! Foyle! Foyle! Foyle!» Baker disappeared with a pop. The attendants jaunted too, deserting the trolley on which Foyle waved his arms and legs feebly, making faint sounds.
«It's a goddamn raid!» Quatt shook Jisbella. «Go, girl! Go!»
«We can't leave Foyle!» Jisbella cried.
«Wake up, girl! Go!»
«We can't run out on him.»
Jisbella seized the trolley and ran it down the corridor. Quatt pounded alongside her. The roaring in the hospital grew louder: «Foyle! Foyle! Foyle!»
«Leave him, for God's sake!» Quart urged. «Let them have him.»
«It's a lobo for us, girl, if they get us.»
«We can't run out on him.»
They skidded around a corner into a shrieking mob of post-operative patients, bird men with fluttering wings, mermaids dragging themselves along the floor like seals, hermaphrodites, giants, pygmies, two-headed twins, centaurs, and a mewling sphinx. They clawed at Jisbella and Quatt in terror.
«Get him off the trolley,» Jisbella yelled.
Quail yanked Foyle off the trolley. Foyle came to his feet and sagged. Jisbella took his arm, and between them Sam and Jiz hauled him through a door into a ward filled with Baker's temporal freaks . . .subjects with accelerated time sense, darting about the ward with the lightning rapidity of humming birds and emitting piercing batlike squeals.