26

At the end of an eternal silence lasting the space of three heartbeats, she absorbed the words and was able to react. To herself she said, colouring the concepts with grey despair: Oh, God — poor stupid Rudi! And aloud, more fiercely, she said, “Then why did you say you were a doctor if you aren’t one?”

“But I am, of a kind. And things aren’t quite as bad as you’re imagining. Do you know you’re a receptive telepathist ?”

“A what?” Coming on top of the shock of seeing Rudi weltering in his pool of blood and undigested liquor, the information was at first meaningless. Howson sensed a shield of incomprehension and subconscious denial, and hammered at it.

“I’m telling you, you can read people’s minds. And my doctorate happens to be in curative telepathy. Got that ? Good! Now there’s one person in this room who knows — perhaps—what Rudi Allef needs to heal him. And that’s Rudi Allef.”

She tried to interrupt, but he rushed on, abandoning the use of slow words. Instead, he slammed whole blocks of associated concepts into her mind directly.

Deep in Rudi’s brain, as in all ordinary people’s, there’s what we all call body image — a master plan the body uses lor its major repairs. I’m going after it. You’ll have to take instructions from me and carry them out because my hands are too clumsy for delicate work. Don’t try to think for yourself — let go.

And with that, he simultaneously reached deep into Rudi’s failing mind and took over control of Clara’s hands.

She struggled, but gamely tried to overcome her instinctive resistance, and within a minute he was able to make her lift back Rudi’s shoulders so they could see the gashed opening in his belly.

The sight shocked her so much Howson momentarily lost control; he spared a valuable few seconds to reassure her and then continued his exploration of Rudi’s body image.

So many of his nerves were reporting damage and pain that he could not at first distinguish between them. He decreased his sensitivity, but that only resulted in a vague blur.

He sat down on a chair and steeled himself. Then he began again.

This time it was as if the nerves were reporting their agony directly to himself, from his own body lying torn and ruined. But none of that must be relayed to Clara, for it would render her incapable of assisting him. He had to absorb and master the pain within himself…

All right, now. What first? Stop the leakage of blood before the activity of the brain wasted completely away. Something — clips? Hair-clips? Didn’t women usually have such things?

Clara had some in a bowl only a foot from her shoulder. She seized them and furiously began to clip the open ends of the major bloodvessels. The weakening of the brain diminished, remained steady at an irreducible trickle.

All right. Tut back the displaced intestines, so.

Covered with blood, Clara’s hands seized the grey-blue living guts and settled them tenderly in place; pushed at torn mesenteries and got them back roughly where they belonged. With each action came a reduction of the pain and damage reports battering at Howson. By the time she had completed the replacement of the vital organs he was able to open his eyes. He had not realized they were shut.

“An ordinary needle and thread,” he said huskily, and she got them; she left bloody hand-prints on the table, on the door-handle, everywhere. “Stitch the stomach wall together,” he directed, and she did, clumsily by surgical standards, but well enough. “Now the skin itself; now wash your hands, wash the skin, get a clean piece of cloth to dress it—”

Rudi’s mind blazed up as he returned to consciousness for an instant, unexpectedly; Howson gritted his teeth and slapped the ego back into oblivion. Rough-and-ready treatment — but then, so much damage had already been done to Rudi’s personality, a little more would make no difference.

What counted was that the tiny flicker of life smouldered on. It would last until a blood transfusion; then they could repair the damage properly. Meantime, Howson had achieved all he could ask: survival.

It had taken exactly five minutes.

Now there would be the ambulance, and police, with questions. He couldn’t remember if attempted suicide was still a crime here; in some places, he had a vague idea, the antique Christian attitude endured…

Clara came back from putting away the needle and thread, and stood gazing down at her handiwork. “Why did he have to try and kill himself?” she said half-angrily, and Howson shook his head. He felt as tired as if he had walked a thousand miles, but he must not let weariness claim him.

“He didn’t try to kill himself,” he said. “It was an accident. It was stupid, but not suicidal. Part of a joke that went too far.”

She sensed what lay behind that, in his mind, and nodded without his needing to explain further, but he had to explain when the ambulance arrived, and again when the police came, and after it all he was so exhausted he sat down in the nearest chair and went to sleep.

When he awoke, he was for a long time puzzled as to where he could be. He lay on his back between sheets, a pillow comfortably under his head. But the bed didn’t have that slight ingenious bias which had been built into his own bed at Ulan Bator and which favoured his back so subtly. More, the light played on the too-high ceiling in the wrong manner-

He came fully awake and turned on his side, and saw that Clara, wrapped in a plaid blanket, was dozing uneasily in the room’s one arm-chair.

She sensed his awakening and blinked her eyes open. She didn’t say anything for a few moments. Then she smiled.

“Feeling all right?” she asked banally. “You were so fast asleep you didn’t even notice when I put you to bed.”

“You what?”

“Did you expect me to put you on the floor?” She got to her feet, unwrapped the blanket, and stretched. She was wearing the same clothes she had had on during the party.

“ I’d have been all right in the chair where I was !”

“Oh, shut up!” she said almost angrily. “You deserved the bed more than I did, by Christ. I don’t want to argue about it, anyway. Feel capable of breakfast ?”

Howson sat up. He found she had taken off his shoes and jacket and left him otherwise fully dressed, so he pushed aside the bedclothes and got his feet to the floor. “Well, you know — you know, I think I do.”

She brought cereal and coffee and opened a can of fruit juice, and they sat eating off their knees on the edge of the unmade bed.

“What I want to know,” she said after a while, “is how you managed to fob everyone off with that phony story about an accident.”

Howson grunted. “If there’s one thing a projective telepathist can do convincingly, it’s tell a lie. I could make the average man believe the sun was out at midnight with no difficulty. I ought really to have fixed the same idea in the skulls of tile other people who were here, for the sake of consistency, instead of ordering them off the premises. But I was so worried in case their presence distracted me…Oh, what the hell ? None of them actually saw him do it.”

He put aside the bowl from which he had been eating. “I should have asked you before. How do you feel about being a telepathist yourself ?”

The green eyes held a hint of uncertainty. “Then you meant what you said ? I tried to — to receive something from you last night, after the police had gone, and nothing happened, so I guessed you’d just spun me a yarn to boost my confidence. Or something,” she finished lamely.

“You were probably too exhausted. I did mean what I said, of course. Tell me something: how did you know what Rudi had done ?”