The Godmakers

Chapter Nine

At the I-A medical center, the oval crechepod containing Orne’s flesh dangled from ceiling hooks in a private room.

There were humming sounds in the dim, watery green of the room, and rhythmic chuggings, sighings, clackings. Occasionally, a door opened quietly and a white-clad figure would enter, check the graph tapes on the crechepod’s instruments, examine the vital connections, then depart.

In the medical euphemism, Orne was lingering.

He became a major conversation piece at the interns’ rest breaks: “That agent who was hurt on Sheleb, he’s still with us. Man, they must build those guys different from the rest of us!… Yeah. I heard he only has about one-eighth of his insides—liver, kidneys, stomach, all gone… Lay you odds he doesn’t last out the month… Look at what old sure-thing Tavish wants to bet on!”

On the morning of his eighty-eighth day in the crechepod, the day nurse entered Orne’s room for her first routine check. She lifted the inspection hood, looked down at him. The day nurse was a tall, lean-faced professional who had learned to meet miracles and failures with equal lack of expression. She was just here to observe. The daily routine with the dying (or already dead) I-A operative had lulled her into a state of psychological unpreparedness for anything but closing out the records.

Any day now, poor guy, she thought.

Orne opened his only remaining eye and she gasped as he said in a low whisper: “Did they clobber those dames on Sheleb?”

“Yes, sir!” the day nurse blurted. “They really did, sir!”

“Another damn mess,” Orne said. He closed his eye. His breathing-simulation deepened and heart-demand increased.

The nurse rang frantically for the doctors.