"Yeah, I'm sick. Where's Miles?"

"He'll be here in a moment. Now let's have your other aim. Push back the sleeve."

I said, "What for?" but I pushed back the sleeve and let her shoot me again. I jumped.

She smiled. "That didn't really hurt, did it?"

"Huh? No, it didn't hurt. What's it for?"

"It will make you sleepy on the ride. Then when we get there you'll wake up."

"Okay. I'd like to sleep. I want to take a long sleep." Then I felt puzzled and looked around. "Where's Pete? Pete was going to sleep with me."

"Pete?" Belle said. "Why, dear, don't you remember? You sent Pete to stay with Ricky. She's going to take care of him."

"Oh yes!" I grinned with relief. I had sent Pete to Ricky; I remembered mailing him. That was good. Ricky loved Pete and she would take good care of him while I was asleep.

They drove me out to the Consolidated Sanctuary at Sawtelle, one that many of the smaller insurance companies used-those that didn't have their own. I slept all the way but came awake at once when Belle spoke to me. Miles stayed in his car and she took me in.

The girl at the desk looked up and said, "Davis?"

"Yes," agreed Belle. "I'm his sister. Is the representative for Master Insurance here?"

"You'll find him down in Treatment Room Nine-they're ready and waiting. You can give the papers to the man from Master." She looked at me with interest. "He's had his physical examination?"

CHAPTER 5

I was complaining to the bartender about the air conditioning; it was turned too high and we were all going to catch cold. "No matter," he assured me. "You won't feel it when you're asleep. Sleep... sleep... soup of the evening, beautiful sleep." He had Belle's face.

"Oh yes!" Belle assured her. "Brother is a therapy-delay case, you know. He's under an opiate... for the pain."

The receptionist clucked sympathetically. "Well, hurry on in then. Through that door and turn left."

In Room Nine there was a man in street clothes and one in white coveralls and a woman in a nurse's uniform. They helped me get undressed and treated me like an idiot child while Belle explained again that I was under a sedative for the pain. Once he had me stripped and up on the table, the man in white massaged my belly, digging his fingers in deeply. "No trouble with this one," he announced. "He's empty."

"He hasn't had anything to eat or drink since yesterday evening," agreed Belle.

"That's fine. Sometimes they come in here stuffed like a Christmas turkey. Some people have no sense."

"True. Very true."

"Uh-huh. Okay, son, clench your fist tight while I get this needle in."

I did and things began to get really hazy. Suddenly I remembered something and tried to sit up. "Where's Pete? I want to see Pete."

Belle took my head and kissed me. "There, there, Buddy! Pete couldn't come, remember? Pete had to stay with Ricky." I quieted down and she said gently to the others, "Our brother Peter has a sick little girl at home."

I dropped off to sleep.

Presently I felt very cold. But I couldn't move to reach the covers.

"How about a warm drink then?" I wanted to know. "A Tom and Jerry? Or a hot buttered bum?"

"You're a bum!" the doctor answered. "Sleeping's too good for him; throw the bum out!"

I tried to hook my feet around the brass rail to stop them. But this bar had no brass rail, which seemed funny, and I was flat on my back, which seemed funnier still, unless they had installed bedside service for people with no feet. I didn't have feet, so how could I hook them under a brass rail? No hands, either. "Look, Maw, no hands!" Pete sat on my chest and wailed.

I was back in basic training... advanced basic, it must have been, for I was at Camp Hale at one of those silly exercises where they throw snow down your neck to make a man of you. I was having to climb the damnedest biggest mountain in all Colorado and it was all ice and I had no feet. Nevertheless, I was carrying the biggest pack anybody ever saw-I remembered that they were trying to find out if GIs could be used instead of pack mules and I had been picked because I was expendable. I wouldn't have made it at all if little Ricky hadn't got behind me and pushed.

The top sergeant turned and he had a face just like Belle's and he was livid with rage. "Come on, you! I can't afford to wait for you. I don't care whether you make it or not... but you can't sleep until you get there."

My no-feet wouldn't take me any farther and I fell down in the snow and it was icy warm and I did fall asleep while little Ricky wailed and begged me not to. But I had to sleep.

I woke up in bed with Belle. She was shaking me and saying, "Wake up, Dan! I can't wait thirty years for you; a girl has to think of her future." I tried to get up and hand her the bags of gold I had under the bed, but she was gone... and anyhow a Hired Girl with her face had picked all the gold up and put it in its tray on top and scurried out of the room. I tried to run after it but I had no feet, no body at all, I discovered. "I ain't got no body, and no body cares for me..." The world consisted of top sergeants and work... so what difference did it make where you worked or how? I let them put the harness back on me and I went back to climbing that icy mountain. It was all white and beautifully rounded and if I could just climb to the rosy tip they would let me sleep, which was what I needed. But I never made it...no hands, no feet, no nothing.

There was a forest fire on the mountain. The snow did not melt, but I could feel the heat in waves beating against me while I kept on struggling. The top sergeant was leaning over me and saying, "Wake up... wake up... wake up."

He no more than got me awake before he wanted me to sleep again. I'm vague about what happened then for a while. Part of the time I was on a table which vibrated under me and there were lights and snaky-looking equipment and lots of people. But when I was fully awake I was in a hospital bed and I felt all right except for that listless half-floating feeling you have after a Turkish bath. I had hands and feet again. But nobody would talk to me and every time I tried to ask a question a nurse would pop something into my mouth. I was massaged quite a lot.

Then one morning I felt fine and got out of bed as soon as I woke up. I felt a little dizzy but that was all. I knew who I was, I knew how I had got there, and I knew that all that other stuff had been dreams.

I knew who had put me there. If Belle had given me orders while I was drugged to forget her shenanigans, either the orders had not taken or thirty years of cold sleep had washed out the hypnotic effect. I was blurry about some details but I knew how they had shanghaied me.

I wasn't especially angry about it. True, it had happened just "yesterday," since yesterday is the day just one sleep behind you-but the sleep had been thirty years long. The feeling cannot be precisely defined, since it is entirely subjective, but, while my memory was sharp for the events of "yesterday," nevertheless my feelings about those events were to things far away. You have seen double images in television of a pitcher making his windup while his picture sits as a ghost on top of a long shot of the whole baseball diamond? Something like that... my conscious recollection was a close-up; my emotional reaction was to something long ago and far away.

I fully intended to look up Belle and Miles and chop them into cat meat, but there was no hurry. Next year would do-right now I was eager to have a look at the year 2000.

But speaking of cat meat, where was Pete? He ought to be around somewhere... unless the poor little beggar hadn't lived through the Sleep.