Payment in Blood

Chapter 10: The Fraying of the Fabric

Riptos awoke to the feeling of Elena shaking him gently, a raw pain spreading through his stomach in protest to the 24-hour fast he had to take before surgery. He looked around the room until he saw Elena kneeling beside his bed, and smiled weakly.

“Good morning, Rippy,” said Elena, rubbing the back of Riptos's head. “How are you feeling?”

“Like someone kicked me in the gut. Nil by mouth sucks.” As the confusion and stupor of waking up faded, his vision focused, and he sat up, naked except for the gold ring in his left ear. “I could eat a whole grocery store right now, but I guess choking on my own puke on the operating table isn't worth it.”

“Don't worry, you've only got a few more hours before your surgery. Your legs will be working again, and everything's going to be fine.

“Assuming the surgery doesn't go wrong, and the incisions don't get infected, and I don't need months of rehab to figure out how to make my body work again, and...”

“Don't do this, Riptos. It's not good for you to brood like this. It will just make you more depressed.” Elena put her arm around Riptos. “Everything is going to be all right. Trust me.”

Riptos said nothing, unable to reconcile the mixed feelings circulating in his mind. The world just seemed a grimmer, darker place than it used to, and even the prospect of the back surgery that would give him his mobility back seemed less appealing. “I don't know, Elena,” he finally managed. “I can't look forward to anything anymore.”

“Maybe a bath will cheer you up,” said Elena as she disconnected Riptos's catheter and and brought his wheelchair over to the bedside. Riptos used his arms to pull himself into the chair, while Elena held the chair steady so it didn't roll away and dump her husband onto the floor. She then wheeled him into the bathroom and turned on the water in the tub.

Riptos tried to bring his spirits up by thinking about what would happen after his surgery—being able to walk again, find a job, and finally return to civilian life in earnest for the first time in more than two decades. Somehow, even this didn't seem very exciting. The navy had been the framework he had built his entire adult life around, the institution he had been ready to die for if necessary, the only career he had ever known. Trying to coast by on his college degree was impossible, as he'd be unable to demonstrate any knowledge to back up the degree, which he had received two decades ago and done virtually nothing with. Besides, the doctors promised only an “eighty percent” restoration of function below the waist. Would that mean that he'd feel his legs but not his feet? Or that he would only be able to hold his bowels eighty percent of the time? Or that he would have a twenty percent chance of falling with every step? Or that sex would only feel eighty percent as good? It was the midlife crisis from hell.

Riptos was so deep in thought that he had not even noticed that Elena had picked him up until he felt the hot water around his stomach as she lowered him into the tub. His eyes, which had been mostly closed while he was ruminating on his future, snapped open, and he looked down at his legs and feet. It was extremely unsettling sitting in a bathtub, as he could feel the water, but not the bottom of the tub. For a period of time after he was sent home after his injury, Elena had to give him sponge baths because he would feel like he was about to drown until he eventually became used to the sensation.

“Are you all right?” said Elena. “You don't seem to be talkative today.”

“I guess I have a lot on my mind. I always have a lot on my mind.” Riptos began to wash his arms, as Elena scrubbed his back. He had no idea how he would deal with the slow, gnawing agony of waiting several hours for the surgery, but at least he could take comfort in the fact that it would come that day.

--

“Congratulations, plebe pukes, you have passed basic certification for the P18 service pistol. You now can kind of sort of shoot straight, but not really,” said Warrant Officer Ivanov as he handed Velcro patches for the cadets to place on their uniforms. “Somehow even Crow manages to hit a watermelon once in a while. Maybe he's just lucky or something.” With that, Ivanov tossed one of the patches into Adrian's hand.

The warrant officer reached into a wooden crate and produced an unloaded assault rifle, holding it up In front of the cadets. “How many of you candy-assed, obese, footsore homosexuals have ever handled a rifle before? If your daddy ever let you shoot one, raise your hand.”

Four hands were raised. Adrian did not raise his, as the firearms training was his first experience of any sort with weapons. Ivanov was now walking down the line of recruits, handing them rifles. He shoved one into Adrian's hands so roughly that Adrian almost fell backwards.

“This, kiddies, is the AR9S carbine, the short-barreled pussy version of the AR9 assault rifles that the infantry, who are ten times the men you butt-monkeys will ever be, use to shoot aliens, humans, and anyone else we happen to be at war with. As worthless officer-candidate fairies, you will not be held to the same rifle marksmanship standards that real men are, but you will be expected to be halfway competent at using this weapon.

“The AR9S has better penetration and generally hurts things more than the P18, but it has a lot more recoil. You will actually need to display at least half the strength of a drunken couch potato to fire it accurately.” Warrant Officer Ivanov produced a magazine and shoved it into his weapon. “The AR96 uses 6.5x45mm assault rifle ammunition, with 30 rounds in a single magazine. At full auto, this will run out very quickly. Life is not a movie, and you cannot hold down the fucking trigger and expect to actually kill someone.

“You see this little switch next to the handgrip? This is the fire mode selector, and you flick it with your thumb into one of four positions. The top is the safety position, which keeps it from firing. If you are not about to shoot it, this is where the switch should be, so you don't accidentally shoot yourself or one of your buddies. The next one down is single shot, which does pretty much what the name says. The third one is a three-round burst, which is good for defeating body armor and killing hard-assed motherfuckers, as long as you can handle the recoil, which, if you look anything like Crow over here, you probably can't. The fourth is full auto, which is a hell of a lot less useful than it sounds because you're about as likely to hit something as you are to go to heaven when you die—not very likely at all. It has its uses, but those will be dealt with when you show me that you can handle firing one bullet at a time.

“Anyway, don't fuck with that switch yet, because I'm about to hand you some ammo for target practice and show you how to hold the weapon in a way that will not tear your skinny little arms out of their sockets before I let you shoot it.”

Adrian inserted the magazine into the chamber of his rifle and watched as Ivanov corrected people's posture and stance. He looked up as the warrant officer finally came over to him.

“You think you can shoot a rifle, little man?” sneered Ivanov.

“Yes, sir.” Adrian imitated the way he had seen Ivanov hold the rifle as best he could.

“Get your elbow out! Barrel up! Feet further apart! Shoot like that and you'll fall on your ass!”

Adrian quickly adjusted his grip on the weapon, following Ivanov's instructions. Every motion he made caused Ivanov to yell at him. Finally, Ivanov appeared to be satisfied with him.

“That's close enough. Don't fucking move, stay in that exact position until I tell you otherwise.”

After finishing going down the line of recruits, Ivanov pointed to the corresponding line of watermelons, placed somewhat further away than they were on the pistol range. “Now it's time to shoot something. Aim at your watermelon, set your weapon to single shot, and fire three times, just like in pistol training.”

Adrian did as he was instructed, aligning the sights of his rifle onto the melon and firing his first shot. The bullet missed the watermelon only by a slim margin, slamming into one of the middle rings of the bullseye, but the recoil was tremendous. Adrian's second shot missed the target completely, and his grip gave out. He quickly brought the gun back up again, but his posture was off, and the shot not only missed, but the stock struck his shoulder hard enough to bruise it.

“Another fan-fucking-tastic performance by Crow,” said Ivanov. “Were you born this fucked up, or did you eat paint and sniff nail polish to achieve your current level of total incompetence?” Ivanov took the rifle from Adrian, shouldered it, and fired three rounds of his own, disintegrating the melon and producing three holes in the bullseye dot. “That's what I want to see. You have six weeks to get two rounds in the bullseye. Now try it again.”

“Yes, sir.” Adrian raised his rifle again, watching as a custodial worker replaced the watermelon. His shoulder ached as he brought the rifle's stock up against it, but weeks of military physical training had greatly dulled his sensitivity to pain. Pain was a natural consequence of just about everything involving PT and drills, and he was learning to live with it. Brutal exercise regimes, withholding food for up to 12 hours at a time (and they would surely starve him for longer periods later), and stress-inducing drill exercises were all geared towards making him capable of performing his duties in the face of anything short of crippling injury or death, and, although it was not stated officially, he was also certain that it would make him prepared for basic training as an enlisted man were he to fail in his studies. Officer training corps cadets who flunked out were given the choice of either completing their terms of service as enlisted personnel in the same field, or taking on financial debts that could be ruinous if they had been in the corps long enough.

Adrian sighted down the iron sights and fired. The bullet grazed the watermelon, blasting a chunk off of one side and penetrating the target through the ring surrounding the bullseye, but the others were still far off the mark. Well, at least it's an improvement, he thought.


He looked over to the left to see Ivanov harassing a cadet who had missed the target with all three shots. He found comfort in the fact that he was not alone in being humiliated and tormented by the warrant officer, and then guilt in finding any positive feelings from seeing such things happen to other people, and then fear when he caught the warrant officer's eye.

“What are you looking at, Crow?” said Ivanov as he walked over to Adrian. “What kind of bullshit are you up to now?”

“I was just waiting for them to bring a new watermelon, sir, I don't mean to be...”

Ivanov grabbed Adrian by the collar and leaned in close enough for the young cadet to smell his breath.“When I give you something to do, Crow, I expect you to pay all of your fucking attention to doing it! If you are waiting, you fucking wait, asshole. You do not just go eavesdropping on people just because you are bored. Give me twenty-five push-ups! Now!”

“Yes, sir!” Adrian threw himself flat and began to perform the push-ups, Ivanov placing a foot on his back for extra resistance. He sweated underneath his winter uniform, and his arms ached with every push.

“Let this be a lesson to all you lazy, grab-ass, inattentive slackers who think they can air their fucking heels on my watch!” Ivanov roared. “I—don't—like—slackers! If you play grab-ass, I will kick said ass until your fucking anus bleeds!” At the count of 25, Ivanov took his foot off of Adrian's back. “So, Crow, have you learned your lesson?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Good. Your melon is ready. Get up and pick up your rifle, and don't let me catch you fucking around again!” Ivanov walked off to his customary surveying position at one end of the row of cadets.

Adrian readied his rifle to shoot once again, despite the pain and exhaustion. He was already working far beyond the limits he had when he first came in. As brutish as Ivanov was, his methods did work. Adrian could feel himself, day after day, gradually becoming physically and mentally tougher. He was unlikely to ever see a true war zone, but the Navy was, slowly but surely, making him ready for one. Eventually, he would have less PT and more classwork, and the physical component would be more about retention and practice rather than instruction. But the Navy's overall focus was clear—every man, from basic seaman to Lord Admiral, was a soldier first.

--

“Well, here you are,” said the nurse as she picked Riptos up off the gurney and placed him in the bed where he would wait for surgery. “I'll be back in around half an hour once the operating room is ready.”

Riptos surveyed his new surroundings. The rooms in this hospital had a sort of cheap motel look to them, with wood-veneered furniture (a knock with his knuckles confirmed that the nightstand next to his bed was made of steel beneath the veneer), table lamps (they were bolted to the nightstands), ceiling lights with only some of the fluorescent tubes illuminated (he was certain the third position on the three-point switches on the wall was the one that cranked them up to the usual retina-searing hospital brightness), and shades of beige everywhere. The bed even managed to be just slightly comfortable, and the covers weren't scratchy. It wasn't luxurious by any means, but he appreciated the effort at actually giving the hospital some hospitality, if only in certain parts of it.

In the bed across from him lay a frighteningly emaciated wolf boy with pure white fur that was so thin the pink of his skin showed through—a cancer patient, almost certainly. The child looked to be around twelve, and he was awake, but barely—his eyes were open and occasionally the pupils would move slightly. “Hey,” said Riptos as he propped himself up with his elbows, the sedatives making him too weak to sit up.

“Mama tells me not to talk to strangers,” said the boy, not moving or even looking at Riptos. An intravenous catheter line protruded from the jugular vein in his neck. One of the two ends of the line was hooked to a bag of fluids, and the other to a machine containing several vials of what Riptos presumed were chemotherapy drugs and other drugs that mitigated the chemotherapy side effects.

“Well, your mother isn't here, and I'm no threat to you as I'm paralyzed from the waist down and can't move my legs.” Riptos smiled gently, trying not to appear intimidating in any manner. “I'm here for surgery on my back, and I just thought you looked lonely.”

“I'm always lonely,” said the boy. “I've been here for over a year.”

“Does your family visit you often?”

“No. Not since the doctor said I have only six weeks to live.”

“That's terrible,” said Riptos. “They just left you here to die?”

“Everybody dies.”

“People shouldn't die as children,” said Riptos. “It's not fair for someone to face death so early.”

“Life's not fair.”

“Maybe it isn't, but what your parents did to you is not fair, and they chose to do it. That's rerprehensible.”

“What's reprehensible mean?”

“Wrong Immoral. Evil.”

“I don't think it's evil. I'm going to die anyway.”

“May I ask what you're suffering from?”

“Leukemia. It's spreading now. It's in my bones.”

“I'm sorry. I wish there was something I could do for you.”

“Will you ever get better?”

“The surgery is a new treatment. They're putting some electronics into my back that will reconnect my spinal cord. Hopefully I'll be able to walk again.” Riptos did not know whether to be amazed or appalled at the boy's attitude. On the one hand, he seemed to have no fear of his condition or his inevitable demise, but on the other, he was not only accepting it, but waiting for it. There was something incredibly perverse to him about looking forward to dying of a terrible disease. It was like a sick travesty of courage.

“How did you break your back?”

“I was a pilot in the Navy. During the war with Earth, I had to eject from my fighter, but it exploded before my pod could get far enough away and a piece of the compartment came down and broke my spine. I've been paralyzed ever since.” It wasn't entirely truthful, as Riptos had not mentioned his daredevil ramming attack on the Earth flagship, and the fact that it was the explosion of the capital ship, not his fighter, that injured him (as he had ejected before impact), but he didn't feel like boasting about singlehandedly destroying a major capital ship to a suffering child.

“You look old for a soldier.”

“I'm forty-two, and was in the Navy for around twenty years. If I had made it out of that battle uninjured, I still would've had only three years of service left before I hit retirement age and would have to resign anyway. Maybe what I've been through after being paralyzed makes me look a bit older than I really am.”

“Do you really get to see all these different planets in the military, like they say in the ads?”

“I've only seen planets besides Mobius from orbit. An infantryman in wartime might see quite a few, but I think touring the galaxy would not very fun when people are shooting at you.”

“It looks like the only new place I'm going to see is heaven.”

Riptos was not religious, but decided to humor the little kid. “Well, when I pass away, I'll make sure to ask you where the best places to have a drink are.”

To hear a real, genuine laugh from this doomed child was both beautiful and almost heartbreaking for Riptos. Here was a child, waiting for his own death, laughing at a joke. Riptos was waiting for pretty much the exact opposite and he doubted he could manage something like that. “Sometimes I envy children,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because even with everything that you have on your shoulders, you still don't have to deal with some of the things I or another disabled grown-up might. Right now I can't make money for or properly take care of my own kids. My wife does some part-time stuff, but there are bills we can't pay and things we can't do that we used to. When you're gone, you won't leave behind people who need you to survive.”

“So what happens when you can't pay the bills?”

“They start to pile up, and the bills themselves get bigger because the finance company puts interest on them. When I start working again, I'll have to pay a huge amount of money to get them paid off, and it's going to be really hard for my whole family. I have military benefits which mean I don't have to pay for my medical care and they can't repossess my property like they often do, but it's still going to be tough.”

“My parents set up a foundation to pay for my chemo, and people donate to it.”

“Those are some very kind people. I'm glad to hear that there are people willing to help others like that.” There's another reason to envy kids, Riptos thought, not willing to share this thought with the boy. People have more sympathy for them than for washed-up old men like me.

“Yeah, too bad it's not going to save me no matter how much money they get.”

“How do you deal with knowing that you're about to die? I mean, that must be the most horrible feeling imaginable.”

“Dunno, I guess I just got sick of crying all the time or something. I just...deal with it, I guess.”

“You're a strong boy.”

“Thanks.”

“What's your name?”

“David.”

“Mine is Riptos.”

“Can I meet your kids, Riptos, before the end?”

“I don't think that will be possible. I live a long way from here, and I only came here because this is the only place they're doing the new surgery.”

“Oh. Where are you from?”

“Liberty Gorge, the capital. About two hundred miles to the south.”

Their conversation was interrupted when the nurse that had brought Riptos into the room returned with a gurney. “The OR is ready, Mr. Calavera,” she said as she placed him on the gurney.

Riptos looked over at David. “I'm off for surgery. Good-bye, kid.”

“Bye,” said David, waving weakly.

Riptos sighed and watched the procession of fluorescent lights pass by overhead as the nurse took him away for surgery. The lighting in the hallways was much brighter than in the patient rooms and the familiar oppressive cleanliness and whiteness was back. The plainness of everything around him and the passage of the lights above him was almost trance-inducing, and the next thing he knew, he was surrounded by doctors in surgical attire, one of whom was lowering a mask onto his face. He had maybe ten seconds to smell the anaesthetic gas before he was fast asleep.

--

Bookshire screwed the top back on his pill bottle as he sat in the break room of the Liberty Gorge General Hospital, hundreds of miles from where Riptos was going under the knife. He felt like he needed the pills more than ever after watching two young men involved in a car accident die in the emergency room. At one point he lost his composure entirely when he imagined Rex as one of those two unfortunate victims. The two of them, just like Rex, had been driving far above the speed limit, and lost their lives due to their own recklessness. It was such a waste for two young people to die from their own stupidity.

Look at the pot talking to the kettle, he thought to himself. They go speeding, I abuse medication. How much difference is there?

Bookshire shoved the thought aside and stood up, only for it to immediately surge back into the forefront of his thoughts. Of course, he knew that what he was doing would catch up with him one day, but somehow he felt like if he told anyone, it would just catch up now instead of later. Would he lose his medical license? His friends? His freedom? So far, it hadn't adversely affected his work. But what would happen when his tolerance started building up? Or he accidentally took too much? And could he really say that is wasn't hampering him with any real certainty?

Bookshire wondered how Riptos was doing. He now felt compelled to give his old friend a call, to check up on him. After all, it couldn't hurt. He took the receiver from the wall and dialed Riptos's house.

Ryudo answered the phone. “Hello, who is it?”

“Hello, this is Bookshire. May I speak to your father, please?”

“Sorry, Dad's not here right now. Maybe you should call back later.”

“Is that so?” Bookshire was quite surprised. Riptos had hardly left the house after his injury, except to go to physical therapy. “Do you know where he is?”

“Mom took him to a hospital out of town for surgery on his back.”

“What kind of surgery?”

“It's some sort of experimental thing, the doctor who is going to perform it told us not to talk about it.”

What do you mean you're not supposed to talk about it? Bookshire thought to himself. The whole thing made no sense. Why couldn't Riptos have had the surgery here, where he could be treated by people he was familiar with? Why hadn't Riptos told anyone he needed surgery? And why on earth would Ryudo be keeping it secret? He had to get to the bottom of this. “If you tell me, I promise I won't talk about it to anyone else. Riptos is my friend, and I really want to know what's going on with him,” Bookshire said, trying to pry information out of the boy. Of course, Bookshire would certainly not keep it secret if he thought Riptos was in any danger, but sometimes even a lie could be justified.

“Are you sure you won't tell anyone?”

“Yes.”

“He met up with someone named Nack Cunningham recently who promised to get us into this clinical trial for a surgery where they'll put some sort of computer chip into his back that will bridge his spinal cord and let him walk again. He told us that if we told anyone about it, we and he could get in trouble.”

Bookshire tried to hide his apprehension. He had heard about the clinical trial, and also knew that participants in the trial had signed up many months in advance, before Riptos had even gotten hurt. There was no way he could be in this program legitimately, and this Nack Cunningham sounded like a very suspicious person. “So is he in surgery now?”

“Mom called me about an hour ago and told me they had just brought him into the operating room.”

“I don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to have to talk to you later, OK?”

“All right. Bye.”

“See you some other time.” Bookshire hung the phone up and almost ran out of the break room. As the chief of staff, he was not absolutely required to stay during hours, and he considered this as much of an emergency as any. “Hey, Jonathan,” said Bookshire as he approached Dr. Jonathan Brigham, the doctor who had operated on Rex's broken arm. “I have to go because of an emergency with a close friend of mine. Can you hold down the fort in my absence?”

“Sure thing, Bookshire. When will you be back?”

“Tomorrow.”

“All right, take care. See you tomorrow.”

“Of course. Bye.” Bookshire left the hospital, got into his car, and almost floored the accelerator as he pulled out of the parking lot. Whatever was happening to Riptos, he was going to be involved in it.

--

“Riptos, can you hear me?”

The black hedgehog opened his eyes to find himself in the hospital recovery room. Two IV lines entered veins in his right arm, and electrodes on his chest sent signals to an EKG machine above his bed. A raw, stabbing pain emanated from the incision that the surgery had been performed through, but that paled in comparison to the incredible exhaustion brought on by the lingering effects of anaesthesia. Even breathing seemed to require effort, and lifting his arms off the bed seemed like an impossible challenge. He groaned as he saw a doctor standing over him.

“All right, I'm going to turn your implant on now,” said the doctor, pressing a button on what looked like a very small remote control. The doctor held a pin in his other hand. “Could you tell me if you feel this?” he said as he used it to prick the big toe of Riptos's right foot.

“Ow!” Riptos hissed as a burst of pain shot through his foot, but the grimace on his face soon turned into a smile. “My God,” he muttered. “It works. It works!” He was suddenly aware of his feet, his legs, and the bedding surrounding them. At the moment, he barely had the strength to flex his toes, but he didn't have much strength anywhere else, either. “So how long will it be until I'm back on my feet?”

“It could be quite a while. Just because the nerve connections are working again doesn't mean you'll just be able to get up and walk. Muscles that are not used waste away, and synapses in your brain that are not used are disconnected. You will probably have to have therapy to retrain your mind and body.”

“Shit.” Riptos looked away and sighed. “Just when I thought I was done with this whole ordeal.”

“I know it must be hard for you to hear that you still have a long way left to go, but healing takes time. You can't just lose all function in your lower body, and then restore the connection and get up as if nothing has happened. If you don't use it, you lose it, and now you have to get it back. It's not going to be quick, and it's not going to be easy, but there's no other choice. If it makes you depressed, I could find a psychiatrist to help you.”

“No thanks, I already have enough therapy on my plate. I'm pathetic.”

The doctor scratched Riptos between the ears. “Don't be so hard on yourself. There are many other people who have to go through the same things that you are experiencing, and it doesn't make them pathetic. There's someone here to see you. Maybe you'd like to talk to him.”

“Who is he?”

“Bookshire Draftwood. He's a doctor—he showed me his medical license—and he says he's a friend of yours.”

“He is. Could you bring him in?”

“Of course. Don't worry about trying to walk or anything major right now, we're going to take this one step at a time. I'll see you later.”

“All right. See you, doc.”

Bookshire came in only moments after the other doctor left. “Hey, Riptos,” said Bookshire. “I came as soon as I heard you had gone here for surgery. Are you feeling OK?”

“I feel like shit.” Relief at seeing a familiar face soon turned into mild alarm as Riptos wondered how Bookshire got his information. Nack Cunningham had told him not to inform anyone outside his family of what was going on, and he had obeyed that directive. Although Cunningham seemed nice on the surface, there was something subtly menacing about him, and a menace to his brutish hedgehog companion that was not subtle at all.

Bookshire seemed to hesitate a bit before speaking again. “Riptos, I've heard a bit about this medical trial you're involved in, and it sounds very shady to me. The applicants were selected months ago. How did you get in?”

“Why are you asking me this?” Riptos now knew that Bookshire knew far more than he was supposed to. He knew that what he was involved in was probably illegal, but he felt like the end justified the means.

“Because I care about your safety. I was talking to your son, and what he told me made me very nervous. You're vulnerable, and there are people out there who prey on the vulnerable.”

“What did Ryudo tell you?”

“He told me about the surgery you were having, and what it would do for you, and that I wasn't supposed to tell people about it. He also mentioned a name—Nack Cunningham. I had already known about the clinical trial, so it was obvious something fishy was afoot. Riptos, I think this Nack Cunningham is a criminal.”

“I don't like him either, or that huge bodyguard who's always following him around, but I felt like I had no other choice. Where I was at, life just wasn't worth living anymore, I guess.”

Bookshire looked around to see if no one outside the door. “Riptos, I have a bad feeling about this whole thing. I'm going to research Nack Cunningham. I don't like the sound of this at all.”

“Please don't let the word get out. He says it could hurt his business, and he'd make my family compensate him.”

“I'm not going to say anything to anyone else unless it appears that you are in danger, in which case I will bring Crenshaw into this. And then...Mr. Cunningham's business will be the least of his problems. I cannot guarantee confidentiality. The safety of you and your family is the top priority for me right now, and I will do what I think is necessary to protect you.”

“I admire your good intentions, but I'm not sure if you can help me.” Riptos sighed. “This is scary, Bookshire. I hadn't really thought about it until now.”

“Whether I can help or not, I'll at least try,” said Bookshire as he sat down in a chair next to Riptos's bed. “I have to.”

--

“Dr. Draftwood knows too much,” said Edward Grinberg as he sat in an office with Nack Cunningham. “I sensed his suspicion as he walked in. We should monitor him closely.”

“He is nothing to be worried about,” said Nack. “His knowledge is entirely superficial. Even if he knows my name, it is just one of dozens of others I have used in my life. Remember, he is only a normal. Compared to us, he might as well be blind.”

“Was it not a normal, Crenshaw McCarthy, who tracked down our master all those years ago?”

“Master Sekaro's death was the work of many people, most of them from the MGBA. McCarthy only took the credit as the MGBA is too unpopular. Dr. Draftwood has no links to the MGBA, a handful of dead-end clues, and a naïve compassion for his friend. He is no threat to us.”

“What if he is lucky?”

“You worry too much, Edward. If he somehow manages to get his nose in a place where it doesn't belong, we will make him 'disappear' just like many others before him. Right now, Riptos Calavera is weak, helpless, and ready to do whatever we ask him—pay whatever we ask him.”

“And yet they say crime doesn't pay.” Edward was grinning now.

“Well, lots of sayings are frequently bandied about despite being false. Take most of the Bible, for instance.”

“Let us give thanks to our god—the almighty dollar.”

“I couldn't have said it better myself.”