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appeared to them that otherwise you'd go to jail. May I ask what is the last thing you remember
clearly?"
Art closed his eyes. His head throbbed. "Coming out into the street, in front of the Family Planning
building. There was some kind of demonstration, or riot ... but why should I have gone to jail?"
The doctor shrugged and gave a tiny smile. "I don't know that you would have. Some of the Young
Virgins on the scene evidently mistook you for one of their own casualties and brought you here. Some of
them think that if a person gets clobbered in the street he must be a good guy, and anyone who's a good
guy is automatically in danger of being thrown in jail."
He approached Art again, and with the aid of a tiny light looked closely into his eyes.
"How am I doing, doctor?"
"Not bad, not bad. Rest. It's important that you take it easy for a while. Don't worry about a thing. I'll be
back in a bit."
When the door had closed behind the doctor Art lived in silence for a while with the pain in his head,
alternately opening and closing his eyes. Somewhere in the distance the faulty computer terminal clacked
away again. The room had one small window with bright daylight coming in around the edges of a closed
shade. This was some Young Virgins' refuge, then. But he was not back in the Diana Arms; at least,
Rita's room had looked very little like this one.
The door opened and a girl in a long, opaque sweater came in, bringing him a cup of something warm
and chocolately to drink, and Art was abruptly conscious of being entirely naked beneath the bedsheet.
"Medicine?" he asked, while routinely starting to put a hand up under the bottom of her sweater.
"No." She gave him a cool smile and turned away, so that his hand slid free. "Just a drink. Thought you
might like some."
She went out again right away. The stuff in the cup tasted good. Soon he might try getting up. He
wondered if his clothes, and his watch and his money, were in the plastic wardrobe, and he wondered
what time of day it was. About the time he had finished the drink, sipping 'slowly, the doctor was back.
He looked in Art's eyes again with his little light and then pulled up a chair and sat. "Art, I took the liberty
of going through your wallet while you were unconscious. Just to see if there was a record of anything,
diabetes or allergies or so forth, that might bear on your medical condition."
"No doubt I owe you thanks for taking care of me. And you found out my name. I didn't catch yours." . .
No answer.
"I suppose now I had better get up and put on my clothes and leave."
"I don't want to scare you, Art, but before you go walking out on the street I must insist we take some
X-rays. I hope .to be able to make them downstairs here in just a few minutes. If X-rays show no skull
fracture we can drive you home right away, take you anywhere in the city you want to go. If they do
show a fracture we are going to have to somehow arrange to move you on a stretcher to a hospital."
"I see. Or maybe I don't."
"The point is that your presence puts us here in something of an awkward position. If you do have a
fracture, we can't simply call an ambulance to come and get you. And for your own good I wouldn't want
you riding folded down and blindfolded in the back seat of a car."
"I know how that works," Art muttered, feeling a little sick.
"Beg your pardon?"
"Nothing. Evidently I'm in some kind of a  secret hideout."
The doctor looked relieved. "I'm glad you understand. It's quite important to a number of us here that the
location of this house be kept a secret. And we've realized by now that you're no sympathizer of ours.
Nevertheless we wish you well. We don't want to to make you feel you're being held a prisoner. As
soon as the X-ray film I need arrives, which I hope will be any minute now, we'll take a couple of
pictures and then you'll be on your way."
Art relaxed wearily in the bed. "All right, all right. I guess you know what you're doing."
"I'm really glad you're being understanding about this, Art. I feel a personal responsibility in this matter.
For your being in the Family Planning office to begin with, I mean."
Art looked at him, trying to puzzle it out.
"You see, I'm Rita's midwifer."
* * *
A couple of sturdy male Young Virgins came along shortly, pushing a regular hospital cart. They got Art's
clothes out of the wardrobe he noticed the strap of his watch sticking out of a pocket, and also the faint
bulge of a billfold that had evidently been scrupulously replaced and helped him put on his codpiece
and loaded him onto the cart beneath an opaque sheet. Meanwhile, of course, he was demanding again
and again to be told where his wife was.
"She's not here, not in this building," the doctor, kept answering him calmly. "The parturition will be quite
soon. She's well. And she's worried about you more precisely, as I interpret what she says, she's
worried about whether you'll want her back when she has her third child."
It took Art a moment to understand. "You mean she thinks I might divorce her? But that's foolish, how
would that help? It wouldn't help her or the children, and it certainly wouldn't help me." He lay on his
back with his head on a low pillow as the two husky Virgins propelled the cart out of the room and along
a rambling hallway, through what appeared to be an ancient house of mansion size, or else perhaps the
rundown dormitory of some private school. Not at all like the Diana Arms. "Sure, I hope she doesn't
have a third baby when she comes back. But even if she does, I most certainly want her. So, you're the
one who's doing it. How can you interfere in people's lives like this? How much are you being paid?"
The doctor was walking beside the cart, now and then going ahead or falling behind when the way
became too narrow. "I'm not getting a dollar from Rita or anyone in her family. If she's paid out money it
must be going to the doctor who referred her to me, or to someone else along the line. In a clandestine
business like this you're always going to get some people going into it for the money."
"And you?"
"For the good of my immortal soul. That's how I see it. That I have an inescapable moral duty to do what
I am doing here."
The cart rolled into a small, old-looking elevator. The two orderlies remained behind as the doors closed
and the elevator started down with Art still lying on the cart and the doctor standing beside it.
"You don't inspire a great deal of confidence, doctor. If you are a doctor, really. If you're not you'd
better keep your hands off my wife."
"I assure you I am an obstetrician. And you'll be glad to hear that I haven't lost a mother in some years of
practice." The slow descent of the elevator stopped and the doors slid open. "I haven't lost anyone to a
head injury, either. But then yours is about the first I've treated since I was an intern." And with that the
cart was rolling again.
The opaque sheet came over Art's face in two thicknesses as they left the elevator. The voice of his
captor said: "I'm covering your eyes up here, so you won't be able later to identify or locate this house."
Art only grunted. He felt the cart jolt lightly over a threshold, and then there came a whiff of outside air,
summer-warm and fragrant, but he stoically refused to look or listen or sniff for clues. Once before he
had been granted knowledge that secretive guides were trying to withhold from him, and knowledge had
done him no good at all. This game was hopeless, for him at any rate, and he was about ready to give it
up. Not to accept that his opponents were in the right, but to admit that they had him beaten. The law
and the bulk of society were on his back but he could not call them in. When you went into the endgame
a rock down and your clock running out, maybe you had better resign and save some mental energy for
the next game. There would be a lot of tough games to play against the world when Rita came home [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]