Страница 53 из 56
The Planck had done terrible damage to the Hospital, but the work of rebuilding was well in progress. Parlette had hired a construction firm himself, paying them out of his personal fortune. Eventually he would push a bill through the Council to reimburse him. Now workmen were painting the outer wall of his office, which on Sunday night had been yawning space.
His immediate problem was that half of Implementation wanted to quit.
The events of the previous week had bad a disastrous effect on Implementation morale. Having the Head accused of treason and deposed by force was only part of it. Elaine Mattson and Matthew Keller had done their part, castrating the Hospital with bombs and stealth. The vivarium prisoners had been freed to make slaughter in the Hospital corridors. The destruction of the Planck had affected not just Hospital perso
Now Implementation was faced with a dreadful confusion. All raids on the colony plateaus had been canceled. Known rebels moved freely through the Hospital, and no one could touch them. Their attitude toward the police was rude and contemptuous. Rumor had it that Millard Parlette was drafting new laws to further restrict police power. It didn't help that the rumors were true.
Parlette did what he could. He spoke to every man who wanted to resign. Some he persuaded to stay. As the ranks dwindled, he found new ways to use the men he had left.
At the same time he was dealing with the Plateau's four power blocs.
The Council of the Crew had followed Parlette in the past. With luck and skill and work he would make them follow him again.
The crew as a whole would normally follow the Council. But a colonist revolt, in these days of a weakened, disheartened Implementation, might send them into a full panic; and then the Council would mean nothing.
The Sons of Earth would follow Harry Kane. But Kane was beyond Parlette's control, and he didn't trust Millard Parlette at all.
The nonrebellious majority of colonists would remain nonrebellious if Kane left them alone. But the Sons of Earth, with their privileged knowledge of the ramrobot gifts, could stir them to killing wrath at any time. Would Harry Kane wait for the New Law?
Four power blocs, and Implementation too. Being Head meant an endless maze of details, minor complaints, delivery of reprimands, paperwork, petty internal politics--he could get lost in such a maze and never know it until a screaming colonist army came to storm the Hospital.
It was a wonder he ever got around to Matt Keller.
Matt lived on his back, with his right side encased in concrete and his right leg dangling in space. He was given pills that reduced the pains to permanent, aggravating aches.
The woman in the organ-bank smock examined him from time to time. Matt suspected she saw him as potential organ-bank material, of dubious value. On Wednesday he overheard someone calling her Dr. Be
In the early morning hours, when the sleeping pills were wearing off, or during afternoon naps, he was plagued by nightmares. Again his elbow smashed a nose across a man's face, and again there was the awful shock of terror and triumph. Again he asked the way to the vivarium, turned, and raised his arm to see the skin beaded with bright blood. Again he stood in the organ banks, unable to run, and he woke drenched in perspiration. Or, with a stolen sonic he dropped uniformed men until the remembered sonic backlash turned his arm to wood. He woke, and his right arm had gone to sleep under him.
He thought of his family with nostalgia. He saw Jea
Even the memory of mining worms filled him with nostalgia. They were unpredictable, yes, but compared to Hood or Polly or Laney... at least he could understand mining worms.
His curiosity had been as dead as his right leg. On Wednesday evening it returned with a rush.
Why was the Hospital treating him? If he had been captured, why hadn't he been taken apart already? How had Laney and Kane been allowed to visit him?
He was frantic with impatience. Dr. Be
"I don't understand it myself," she told Matt. "I do know that all the live rebels have been turned loose, and we aren't getting any more organ-bank material. Old Parlette's the Head now, and a lot of his relatives are working here too. Pure crew, working in the Hospital."
"It must be strange to you."
"It's weird. Old Parlette is the only one who knows what's really going on--if he does. Does he?"
Does he? Matt groped at the question. "What makes you think I know?"
"He's given orders that you're to be treated with an excess of tender loving care. He must have some reason, Keller."
"I suppose he must."
When it was obvious that that was all he had to say, she said, "If you've got any more questions, you can ask your friends. They'll be here Saturday. There's another weird thing--all the colonists wandering through the Hospital, and we've got orders not to touch them. I hear some of them are proven rebels."
"I'm one myself."
"I thought you might be."
"After my leg heals, will I be turned loose?"
"I suppose so, from the way you're being treated. It's up to Parlette." Her treatment of him had become curiously ambivalent. By turns he was her inferior, confidant, and patient. "Why don't you ask your friends on Saturday?"
That night they hooked up a sleepmaker at the head of his bed. "Why didn't they do that before?" he asked one of the workmen. "It must be safer than pills."
"You're looking at it wrong," the man told him. "Most of the patients here are crew. You don't think a crew would use a vivarium sleepmaker, do you?"
"Too proud, huh?"
"I told you. They're crew."
There was a listening bug in, the headset.
To Parlette, Matt was part of the paperwork. His was one of the dossiers lying on Jesus Pietro's desk. Its cover was scorched, like the others; but the Head's office, on the second floor, had escaped most of the damage from the Planck's wildfire drive.
Parlette went through all those dossiers and many more. By now he knew that the worst threat to his "New Law" was defection by the Sons of Earth. Only they, with their presumed control over the colonists, could make it work; and only they were beyond his control.
Matthew Keller's dossier was unusual in its skimpiness. There wasn't even a record of his joining the rebel organization. Yet he must belong. Castro's notes implied that Keller had freed the vivarium prisoners. He had been badly hurt invading the Hospital a second time. He must be partly responsible for the Planck disaster. He seemed to be co
Then there was Harry Kane's disproportionate interest in him.
Parlette's first evanescent impulse was to have him die of his injuries. He'd caused too much destruction already. Probably the Planck's library could never be replaced. But getting Harry Kane's trust was far more important.
On Thursday Dr. Be
When Hood had finished talking, Matt smiled and said, "I told you they were little hearts and livers."