“I suppose.” I refused to follow his gaze. “But I’m a medical man.”
“The gun?”
His eyes shifted to my unsnapped holster. I opened my mouth to protest, closed it. I snapped the holster shut.
“This way, gentlemen. The train is waiting.”
I turned to my men. There was a good deal of shoving and grunting and unnice exclamation until the air cushions beneath the nine computer units could be adjusted to move the heavy things up the slatted ramp and across the gaping holes of the dock toward the train that would take us the 120 miles to Yangchun.
“You have a recent victim?” I asked Shukon, as we squeezed between the police and the mob that lined the dock.
“About four hundred and thirty have died within the last twenty-four hours. You may have your choice.”
Somehow, he made me feel like a butcher at a wholesale meat auction. “Just the most recent,” I said.
An old woman broke through the police, threw herself in front of us, babbling swiftly in Chinese. I hoped the rest of the crowd didn’t realize how little control the police really had over them. I looked protectively back to our Duo-component analyzer, confirmed its safety. Shukon gently lifted the old woman and led her behind the police. “Her son,” he said when he returned. “She wants you to cure him. She thinks you can work miracles.”
“We just about can.” I felt I had to be defensive with him.
“Not miracles as large as that. He died yesterday.”
Mentally, I repeated the Hippocratic oath.
At the end of the dock, steps led down to a concrete loading zone, crammed with more people. The train lay a hundred yards away, a black snake. The crowds surged, straining the police barricade. I wished the president had sent the troops first and to hell with the goodwill bit.
Shukon moved first, snapping orders to police and civilians. The people, wild, seemed not to realize that we could not cure them until we had reached Yangchun, searched the ruins, come up with some clues. A boy, perhaps fifteen, crawled between policemen’s legs, grabbed my ankles. Shukon—gentle Shukon—whirled and drove a foot into the boy’s side. Drowned by the roar, there was a faint crunch of breaking ribs. The mayor brought the same foot down on fingers that convulsed like frightened worms.
The boy screamed, blood black under his fingernails, red on his hands.
“The women,” Shukon hissed, “are understood. You are a man!” Then he hurried ahead, leaving me no course but to follow. We boarded the train without further incident, though I was beginning to be impressed with the stoical little mayor.
Two of Shukon’s henchmen brought a body aboard, dropped it in the first seat of the first car. After a few strong words about sanitary precautions, we sprayed the adjoining floor, wall, window, unbolted the seat and tossed it out. The victim, we encased in blown plastic.
“Antiseptics hardly seem to work,” Shukon said. “We’ve tried.”
The sample tray of the specimen analyzer swallowed the corpse, plastic coating and all …
Fifty miles along the track, Orgatany wobbled back through the aisle, black face gleaming with perspiration, looking almost as young as he had when I saved his life during the South African rebellion against U.N. control. He had been a brilliant but uneducated boy then. Now he was a doctor, and a good one. “Walt, we got the final analysis report.”
“And?”
He slumped into the opposite seat. “You won’t like it”
“Try me.”
“The Duo says he didn’t die of any disease.”
I turned angrily to Shukon.
Sincere face, surprised look . . . “I assure you—”
“What did he die of, Bill?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
The lowlands of China flashed by the window.
“The Duo says: ‘no discernible affliction of any nature whatsoever.’ That means nothing.”
“Something is wrong with the Duo.”
Fear of fears, our God has died . . .
Orgatany shifted his weight. “We checked that first thing, Walt. We used one unit to check its mate, then reversed it. Then, unlikely as it may be, we thought maybe both halves were out. We used one of the other units to check the Duo. Everything is tiptop, great, fine, perfect. And maddening.”