“We only have it on seven-day appro,” Lyla said insnugging the Nix into position around her hips. “If it’s that keen to stay in a crummy hole like this, let it do the work. Besides, what possessed you to stack a heap of expiring books on its tray? Expect it to take kindly to being used as a garbage-disposer?”
“Matter of urgent necessity,” Dan muttered. “The drains overloaded again.”
“Oh, no!” Balanced on one leg to slip her toes into the first Schoo, Lyla stared at him in dismay.
“It’s all right-the toilets are still working. But I didn’t want to risk blocking them too by dumping down a load of books, did I?”
“Talk about hardening of the arteries,” Lyla sighed, recalling a favorite metaphor from Xavier Conroy’s The Senile City. “When it’s not the sewers it’s the streets, and when it’s not the streets it’s the comweb. I’ll go check our slot anyway. You never know; there might be something interesting.”
She moved to the door and began to strain against the handle of the winch to lift clear the hundred-kilo deadfall block that closed it against intruders overnight.
“Put your yash on,” Dan said, stepping into a pair of green breeches and belting them tight around his waist.
“Hell, I’m only going to the comweb!”
“Put it on, I said. You’re insured for a quarter-million tealeaves and it says in the policy that you have to.”
“It’s all right for you to talk,” Lyla countered mu”You don’t have to wear the horrible thing.” But she reached obediently for the yash where it hung on its peg adjacent to the door.
Making to slip it over her head, she checked. “Say-uh-I won’t have to wear this at the hospital, will I? It’d be awfully hampering while I’m thrashing around.”
“No, not while you’re actually performing. Come to think of it, though.” Dan bit his lip, eying her doubt”The patients are segregated at the Ginsberg, and the sight of you like that might not be a good thing. Got anything less revealing?”
“I don’t think so. All my February clothes have exby now, and the March ones are getting pretty shabby. And of course in April I went over to trans-parents.”
“Skip it, then,” Dan shrugged. “If they insist, you can ask for something at their expense, can’t you? Like a dress, maybe. How long is it since you last had a dress-was it in November?”
“Yes, the one I bought to go home and see my folks at Thanksgiving. But it was cold then, and right now it’s sweltering. Oh, I guess I could put up with it in a good cause. Provided they pay for it-dresses are horexpensive this season.” She ducked into the yash and opened the door. Having made sure with a cautious glance in each direction that the corridor was deserted, she added, “I won’t lock it-I’ll only be a moment”
“The name is Harry Madison, not Mad Harrison!”
“I’m sorry?” the computerized desketary said, with exactly the right interrogative inflection; it was one of IBM’s ultra-advanced models with fully personalized vocal communication, and abode by articles of faith in its mechanical existence. One of them stated that hosstaff alone in a room who uttered audible words desired a reply. This did not apply to patients. To endesketaries and other automatics to distinguish them the latter were compelled to wear oversuits with a metal thread woven criss-cross on back and chest.
“Not important,” Dr. James Reedeth said wearily, and clamped his jaw so tightly shut he heard the singing tension of the muscles. Silently now after that careless peaking into speech: He was committed for a reason, damn it, by experts whose judgment is at least as sharp as mine! He’s not even one of my own patients. So what makes me take such an interest in his case-subconscious resentment at the presence of a knee in an otherwise all-blank hospital? I don’t believe it. But it’s completely pointless to keep coming up with the sane answer.
For the latest of so many times he would not have dared to count them if he’d been able to, he found himwondering what had driven him into this Minotaur-haunted labyrinth. Was it in order to become a doctor, whom men might consult re death.?