The Sardonyx Net Part 52

"Why?"

Dana did not know what to answer. He didn't know. "I just couldn't leave him," he said finally.

"That's because you're a moral cretin," said A-Rae, with sacerdotal satisfaction, and kicked him a third time.

Dana moved just swiftly enough to catch most of it on his shoulder. Then he rose, despite the flare of pain from his side, and put his thumbs into A- Rae's throat. The woman with the stunner swore and shouted, and the big man came through the open door and pulled him off.

A-Rae was breathing hard. "You son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h," he said, and behind his anger Dana saw a look that he knew very well on another face, a look of pleasure at a victim's helplessness.

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.d," he said, "you're like him, that's why you hate him!"

A-Rae ignored the comment. He said to the big man, "He hurt me, Elon.

Make him feel it."

"Sure," said the man genially, and thrust his thumbs into Dana's neck.

Suddenly, Dana could not breathe. He tried to clap at Elon's ears; a knee slammed into the small of his back. Then he was dropped to the concrete floor.

A-Rae gave the order to tie him, and the big man knelt and trussed him with his hands behind his back and a slip-knot around his neck.

A-Rae prodded him with one foot. "There," he said. "That's tamed you."

Dana shook his head and tried to stand. A-Rae grinned and tripped him. Dana twisted so that he would land on his side, not his head. "Tie his feet, too."

Elon obeyed, las.h.i.+ng the cords tightly around Dana's ankles. A-Rae hunkered down beside him and pa.s.sed a hand lightly over his face. Suddenly he seized a lock of hair and yanked. Tears came to Dana's eyes. He jerked his head free.

"He's lively," said the big man admiringly.

"Yes," said A-Rae. "Tell me, Dana Ikoro, where is Rhani Yago?"

"What?" Dana said. "What d'you mean, where is she? When I left, she was at the estate."

"She isn't there now."

"Then I don't know where she is."

"Guess," said A-Rae. Dana swallowed. All three were watching him avidly.

Cold sweat began to run down his sides.

"Wherever Zed is," he suggested.

A-Rae sighed. "Zed Yago's in the Clinic, being guarded by the Net crew as if he were a gold mine. Try again." He put a thumb on Dana's closed left eye- lid.

"I don't know," Dana said. He tried to keep his voice steady, decided it didn't matter and that he couldn't control it anyway, and let it shake. The Kyneth House, he thought, and did not say it. His bladder hurt.... A-Rae took the thumb away.

Through the thud of his heartbeat Dana heard A-Rae say to the others, "She could be in the Clinic under another name. Can we check that?"

The woman said, "Fallon is checking the hotel registers. Maybe Sindic can do it. What about him?" She gestured toward Dana with the stun gun. The big man said, "_I_ think he knows." He put a great, spatulate thumb on Dana's right eyelid, pressing hard.... Dana leaned away from it until he touched the wall and could go no further. The pressure made yellow moire patterns behind the lid, and it hurt.

"Enough!" A-Rae said. The thumb lifted.

Dana blinked. Through a clearing haze he saw A-Rae stand, circle the small room, and come to stand beside him, over him, like a magistrate to judgment. His eyes no longer looked wild. "He'll tell us," he said. "We've got days before they find us. Days." The big man nodded as if he had heard a p.r.o.nouncement of some subtle wisdom.

"What'll I do with him?" he said.

"Keep him tied. And give him a blanket. We've got other things to do; we can deal with him later." The woman holstered the stun gun. Elon sighed and walked out, to return a moment later with a blanket which he tossed over Dana's helpless form.

"Days," he said. He and the woman marched out. She went first. A-Rae hesitated. He licked his lips.

"Days," A-Rae said. He did not sound pleased. He sounded frightened. He went out. Curling his wrists upward behind his back, Dana rolled and wriggled until he was sitting. There was a way to get out of this cord configuration, he knew, but it only worked if you were double-jointed in both shoulders, and he was not. The cords, he guessed, were probably apton and nylon and would not break or fray. But they could be cut, if the angle was right and the edge was sharp.... Slowly, Dana began to crawl over the floor, looking for a sharp implement. He did not expect to find one but it was better than waiting to discover what A-Rae had in store for him next.

He did not find one, and when he stopped moving, his throat was raw from the rasp of the cord.

The fourth afternoon after the destruction of the Yago Net, Ja Narayan wandered into Zed Yago's room at the Clinic. He was jaunty. "Bored?" he said to Zed. "Want your hands back? Silly of you to burn them in the first place, you know."

"I know," Zed said. He left the chair by the window and moved to the bed.

"How are you feeling?"

"I've been better." He was tired. It was difficult to sleep with his hands always either propped in front of him, lying by his sides, or extended over his head.

"Should read," said Ja. He sauntered around the room, in no special hurry, and as if by accident ended up at Zed's side. "Play games."

"I've tried," Zed said. He had invited the Net crew in for endless rounds of the six or seven varieties of dice games they knew ... But he loathed games, and loathed more not being able to hold the dice. It enraged him not to be able to use his hands to do even the simplest thing. The water dispenser and the bookviewer could be connected to foot controls, but some things he could not do with his feet. That morning, a letter from Rhani had arrived, telling him that she had left Dur House and where she was. He had had to ask Hal Ku to open it.

And he itched, as if sand had gotten under his skin. Boredom and confinement were infuriating but the itch was torment, the more so because he knew it to be imaginary. He was bathed every morning. He hated that too, being handled like a child. Hal had learned after the first day to do it quickly and without saying anything.

Ja sent a technician for a sterile instrument tray. "How do they feel?"

he said.

Zed said, "They don't feel like anything."

"Good." The technician returned. "Put it down, open it, and go away," Ja said. The technician obeyed, clearly disappointed. The wrists of the sterile gloves sat open in the dispenser: Ja fit his fingers into them and pushed. The gloves squeezed over his hands. He withdrew them from the dispenser and wiggled his fingers...."Perfect fit," he said, though the extruded gloves were always a perfect fit, that was how they were made. "Right hand, please," the surgeon said, lifting forceps from the tray. Zed braced his right elbow against his knee. His right hand bobbed in the air like a layered white balloon. "Hold it still." The forceps plucked the bandages off and dropped them in the disposal.

Beneath the gauze were more layers of regenerative gel.

"If you hadn't shown up," Zed murmured, "I was getting ready to take this stuff off with my teeth."

Narayan chuckled. "Very poor technique," he said. He picked at the edge of the hardened gel with the forceps. "There's one," he said, peeling a strip of gel away, "there's two -- " He chanted the count. When he was done, the strips of gel dangled from Zed's wrist like the rind of a peeled fruit.

The hand still looked like a construct, something made, not flesh, and it still had no fingers. Reparative paint, a thick, membranous substance, covered the ungainly lump. The paint gleamed like tarnished silver. Ja picked up a sponge from the tray and dabbed at the crusted paint. Slowly the paint dissolved, dripped, and fell off. Fingers began to emerge from the lump. They looked red, grotesque, ugly...."Looks good," Ja said. He sponged off the last flake of paint. "Waggle your fingers," he commanded.

Zed tried. He felt a tingling in the wrist. Then the fingers moved.

"Response time one point three seconds," Ja said. "That's quite common. Left hand, please."

As Ja picked away at the left-hand bandages, Zed tried moving his right hand. He had seen the effect before in cases of limb replacement or tissue match: no matter how expert the surgeon -- and Ja Narayan was very good, indeed -- it took a certain time before the original and the new neural pathways synched. The response lag would lessen and finally disappear, he knew. He was more concerned about the numbness. He wiggled the fingers, turned the hand at the wrist, searching for a way to waken feeling in the restored digits.

Ja finally freed the left hand from its wrappings. "Move it," he said.

Zed moved the fingers. "The synaptic lag appears less, don't you agree?"

"What do you think?" Zed asked.

"I think you should stop taking up a bed," said Ja.

"How much can I use them?"

"It depends what you plan to do with them," said the surgeon. "Don't lift anything heavy, and don't try to do anything precise. Get some gloves without tips to protect them."

"That's a good idea," said Zed. He closed his eyes and tried to pour his senses into his hands, to reawaken the nerves. Nothing happened. He opened his eyes.

Ja said "Try the claws." Zed licked his lips. The claws would not extend unless the fingers were slightly crooked: he curved them. Ja prompted him. "Keep the hand extended and make a fist."

"I remember." The instructions sounded contradictory but were not. Zed imagined as he tensed that he could feel the neural impulse traveling down his arms.

The claws slid out.

They were impressive: about two and a half centimeters long, metal, gleaming, sharp as a scalpel. Zed turned his hands in the air, admiring them. He relaxed the tension; they retracted. "Thanks, Ja," he said. "They're exactly what I wanted."

Ja gazed at his handiwork as if he had never seen it before. "Not bad,"

he said. "What're you going to do with them?"

"Climb mountains," Zed said. "And -- other things."

"Put a gel layer on them before you go out," Ja advised.

"When can I ...?" "Climb mountains? Come back here in three weeks. It'll be at least that long before the meld takes, maybe longer."

"Can I scratch?" Zed said. "Can I bathe?"

"You can scratch anything you like," Ja said. "As for bathing, they won't rust, if that's what you mean." Dutifully, Zed smiled. "And they won't extend by accident. The fingertips may feel a little sore."

Zed nodded. "Got it," he said. "Ja, many thanks."

"Wait'll you see my bill," said the surgeon. He took his gloves off, dumped them into the disposal, and left. Zed sighed, and, cautiously, scratched his left arm with his right hand. He could not feel the texture of the skin, nor -- he moved his hand -- the texture of hair, or the fabric of his clothes. No matter, he told himself, discernment would come. Quickly he hunted around the room for his belongings, and found only clothes and Rhani's letter. Everything else -- bookviewer, booktapes, old PINsheets -- belonged to the Clinic.

Haldane Ku walked in. "How do they feel?" he said.

Zed held the lumpy hands for him to see. "It's nice to have the bandages off."

"I'll bet," said the rotund orderly. "You want to leave now, I suppose."

"Yes. I need some protective gel."

Ku went to the supplies cabinet and brought out a tube. Zed extended his hands. Carefully Ku covered them with a thin layer of paint. "How's that?" he said.

Zed flexed the hands, feeling the slight coolness of the gel through the new skin. The sensation delighted him. "Good. Now gloves."

Ku rummaged in the cabinet for a pair of gloves. "Hmm," he said, holding them up, "large enough? No, I think not." He found the next larger size. "Better let me do this." Zed submitted -- for the last time, he told himself -- to the indignity of having someone else a.s.sist him in donning an article of clothing.

"The tips have to come off," he warned.

"Right," said Ku. He procured a pair of shears from the cabinet and nipped the ends of the fingers from the gloves. "Now -- " he tugged the gloves on the rest of the way. The extra layer seemed to increase the anesthetic effect, but Zed told himself that this would not last, that soon the sense of discriminate feeling would come back.

"Thanks," he said to Ku.

The orderly smiled. "Glad you're going home," he said.

"Sorry I was such a bad patient."

"No, you're not," said Ku calmly. "Sorry, I mean. I don't think you could be anything else."

Taken aback, Zed glared at him. But the truth of what the orderly said penetrated and unwillingly, he laughed. "You're right."

"I know. Good day, Senior. Have a pleasant life." Ku smiled, turned his back, and began to strip the bed.

Zed walked into the corridor.

The lounging guards came to attention automatically, and then relaxed. He recognized them vaguely: they were both members of the Net Communications unit.

"How's it going, Commander?" said one of them, the shorter of them. She wore a stun gun on her hip. Zed was surprised that the Clinic had let her display the weapon so openly. She followed his glance and grinned. "It isn't loaded," she said. A stun cylinder flickered between the fingers of her left hand, and vanished. "But this is."

Zed said casually, "Let me see that." She held it out to him, and he gripped it in his right hand. After a moment of stupefaction, she laughed.

"Hey," she said, "the bandages -- gone! You gettin' out of here?"

"I am," said Zed. He dropped the silver cylinder into her left hand. "Hey, Raeka, tell the others," she said to her companion. The tall woman with the communicator on her belt lifted it to her lips. She thumbed the stud and spoke softly. Zed heard his own name. "Where to, Commander?"

"Home -- or, at least, where my sister is," he said.

"Right. We're ready." Raeka thumbed the communicator stud to off and put the device back in her belt.

Zed frowned. He did not want to be escorted around the city as if he were an incompetent or a tourist. "I didn't ask for company," he said.

The two women looked at each other, and then the short one -- whose name, he remembered suddenly, was Barbara -- said, "We know that, Commander. But when we decided to do this, we decided to keep at it until the f.u.c.ker A-Rae's caught.

You want not to see us, we can do that, I think, but we're not s.h.i.+nnyin'.

Sorry."

Despite himself, Zed's fingers began to curl. He recognized the gesture and, alarmed, halted it. What the woman said was fair -- indeed, with the Net gone, the crew was free to do what it liked and technically they were all on leave, certainly not subject to his orders.... After a while his breathing steadied. Neither of the women had moved, but Barbara's little stun pistol glinted in her hand. He wondered if she would have used it. His throat hurt.

He shrugged. "I won't argue," he said. They walked from Recovery to CTD, CTD to Outpatient, Outpatient to the street. At the door of Outpatient, Zed halted. The waiting room, as usual, was filled with people punching computer keyboards, baring their arms to technicians, holding urine samples, reading booktapes or listening to auditors while they waited for someone else to appear from the bowels of the building.... He wondered if he should go back to Surgery and say farewell to the people he had worked with.