The telephone on his desk began to ring. Azarin swept up the receiver. “Polkovnik Azarin,” he growled.

“Tovarishch Polkovnik — ” It was one of his staff assistants. Azarin recognized the voice and fumbled for the name. He found it.

“Well, Yung?”

“There has been an explosion in the American scientist’s laboratory.”

“Get men in there. Get the American.”

“They are already on their way. What shall we do next?”

“Next? Bring him here. No — one moment. An explosion, you say? Take him to the military hospital.”

“Yes, sir. I very much hope he is alive, because this, of course, is the opportunity we have been waiting for.”

“Is it? Go give your orders.”

Azarin dropped the receiver on its cradle. This was bad. This was the worst possible thing. If Martino was dead, or so badly damaged as to be useless for weeks, Novoya Moskva would become intolerable.

2

As soon as his car had come to a stop in front of the hospital, Azarin jumped out and climbed quickly up the steps. He marched through the main doors and strode into the lobby, where a doctor was waiting for him.

“Colonel Azarin?” the wiry little doctor asked, bowing slightly from the waist. “I am Medical Doctor Kothu. You will forgive me — I do not speak your language fluently.”

“I do well enough in yours,” Azarin said pleasantly, anticipating the gratifying surprise on the little man’s face. When it came, it made him even more well disposed toward the doctor. “Now then — where is the man?”

“This way, please.” Kothu bowed again and led the way to the elevator. A brief smile touched Azarin’s face as he followed him. It always gave him pleasure when simple-looking Anastas Azarin proved to be as learned as anyone who had spent years in the universities. It was something to be proud of, too, that he had learned the language while burning leeches off his legs in a jungle swamp, instead of out of some professor’s book.

“How badly is the man injured?” he asked Kothu as they stepped out into another hall.

“Very badly. He was dead for a few moments.”

Azarin jerked his head toward the doctor.

Kothu nodded with a certain pride of his own. “He died in the ambulance. Fortunately, death is no longer permanent, under certain circumstances.” He led Azarin to a plate glass window set in the wall of a white-tiled room. Inside, still wearing the torn remnants of his clothes, incredibly bloodied, a man lay in the midst of a welter of apparatus.

“He is quite safe now,” Kothu explained. “You see the autojector there, pumping his blood, and the artificial kidney that purifies it. On this side are the artificial lungs.” The machines were bunched together haphazardly, where they had quickly been brought from their usual positions against the walls. Doctors and nurses were clustered around them, carefully supervising their workings, and other doctors were busy on the man himself, clamping torn blood vessels and applying compression to his armless left shoulder. As Azarin watched, orderlies began shifting the machines into systematic order. The emergency was over. Things were assuming a routine. A nurse glanced at her watch, looked over at a rack where a bottle was draining of whole blood, and substituted a fresh one.

Azarin scowled to hide his nervousness. He was having a certain amount of difficulty in keeping his glance on the monstrous scene. A man, after all, was made with his insides decently hidden under his skin. To look at a man, you did not see the slimy organs doing their revolting work of keeping him alive and real. To see a man like this, ripped open, with mysteriously knowledgeable, yes — frightening — men like this Kothu pushing and pulling at the moist things that stuffed the smooth and handsome skin…

Azarin risked a sidelong glance at the little brown doctor. Kothu could do these abominable things just as easily to him. Anastas Azarin could lie there like that, hideously exposed, with men like this Kothu desecrating him at his pleasure.

“That’s very good,” Azarin barked, “but he’s useless to me. Or can he speak?”

Kothu shook his head. “His head is crushed, and he has lost a number of sensory organs. But this is only emergency equipment, such as you will find in any accident ward. Inside of two months, he’ll be as good as new.”

“Two months?”

“Colonel Azarin, I ask you to look at what lies on that table and is barely a man.”

“Yes — yes, of course, I’m lucky to have him at all. He can’t be moved, I suppose? To the great hospital in Novoya Moskva, for example?”

“It would kill him.”

Azarin nodded. Well, with every bad, some good. There would be no question, now, of Martino being taken away from him. It would be Anastas Azarin who did it — Anastas Azarin who tore the honey from the tree.

“Very well — do your best. And quickly.”

“Of course, Colonel.”

“If there is anything you need, come to me. I will give it to you.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.”

“There’s nothing to thank me for. I want this man. You will do your best work to see that I get him.”

“Yes, Colonel.” Medical Doctor Kothu bowed slightly from the waist. Azarin nodded and walked away, down the hall to the elevator, his booted feet thudding against the floor.

Downstairs, he found Yung just driving up with a squad of SIB soldiers. Azarin gave detailed instructions for a guard, and ordered the accident floor of the hospital sealed off. Already, he was busy thinking of ways this story might be spreading. The ambulance crew had to be kept quiet, the hospital personnel might talk, and even some of the patients here might have gathered an idea of what was going on. All these leaks had to be plugged. Azarin went back to his car, conscious of how complex his work was, how much ability a man needed to do it properly, and of how, inevitably, the American, Rogers, would sooner or later bring it all to nothing.

Five weeks went by. Five weeks during which Azarin was unable to accomplish anything, and of which Martino knew nothing.

3

Every time Martino tried to focus his eyes, something whirred very softly in his frontal sinuses. He tried to understand that, but he felt very weak and boneless, and the sensation was so disconcerting that he was awake for an hour before he could see.

For that hour he lay motionless, listening, and noticing that his ears, too, were not serving him properly. Sounds advanced and receded much too quickly; were suddenly here and then there. His face ached slightly as each new vibration struck his ears, almost as if it were resonating to the sounds he heard.

There was some kind of apparatus in his mouth. His tongue felt the hard sleekness of metal, and the slipperiness of plastic. A splint, he thought. My jaw’s broken. He tried it, and it worked very well. It must be some kind of traction splint, he thought.

Whatever it was, it kept his teeth from meeting. When he closed his jaws, he felt only pressure and resistance, instead of the mesh and grind of teeth coming together.

The sheets felt hot and rough, and his chest was constricted. The bandaging felt lumpy across his back. His right shoulder was painful when he tried to move it, but it moved. He opened and closed the fingers of his right hand. Good. He tried his left arm. Nothing. Bad.

He lay quietly for a while, and at the end of it he had accepted the fact that his arm was gone. He was right-handed, after all, and if the arm was the only thing, he was lucky. He set about testing, elevating his hips cautiously, flexing his thighs and calves, curling his toes. No paralysis.

He had been lucky, and now he felt much better. He tried his eyes again, and though the whirring came and jarred him, he kept focus this time. He looked up and saw a blue ceiling, with a blue light burning in its center. The light bothered him, and after a moment he realized he wasn’t blinking, so he blinked deliberately. The ceiling and the light turned yellow.