I recall vaguely coming semi-awake once and hearing a voice say, ‘He can take more. His heart is strong.’
I was pleasantly dead for a long time, but finally woke up as if from a long sleep. I was stiff and when I tried to shift in bed my side hurt me. I opened my eyes and looked around; I was in bed in a small, windowless but cheerful room. A sweet-faced young woman in a nurse’s uniform came quickly to my side and felt my pulse.
‘Hello.’
‘Hello,’ she answered. ‘How are we now? Better?’
‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘Is it over? Or is this just a rest?’
‘Quiet,’ she admonished. ‘You are still too weak to talk. But it’s over-you are safe among the brethren.’
‘I was rescued?’
‘Yes. Now be quiet.’ She held up my head and gave me something to drink. I went back to sleep.
It took me days to convalesce and catch up with events. The infirmary in which I woke up was part of a series of subbasements under the basement proper of a department store in New Jerusalem; there was some sort of underground connection between it and the lodge room under the Palace-just where and how I could not say; I was never in it. While conscious, I mean.
Zeb came to see me as soon as I was allowed to have visitors. I tried to raise up in bed. ‘Zeb! Zeb boy-I thought you were dead!’
‘Who? Me?’ He came over and shook my left hand. ‘What made you think that?’
I told him about the dodge the Inquisitor had tried to pull on me. He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t even arrested. Thanks to you, pal. Johnnie, I’ll never call you stupid again. If you hadn’t had that flash of genius to rig your sweater so that I could read the sign in it, they might have pulled us both in and neither one of us have gotten out of it alive. As it was, I went straight to Captain van Eyck. He told me to lie doggo in the lodge room and then planned your rescue.’
I wanted to ask how that had been pulled off but my mind jumped to a more important subject. ‘Zeb, where is Judith? Can’t you find her and bring her to see me? My nurse just smiles and tells me to rest.’
He looked surprised. ‘Didn’t they tell you?’
‘Tell me what? No, I haven’t seen anybody but the nurse and the doctor and they treat me like an idiot. Don’t keep me in suspense, Zeb. Did anything go wrong? She’s all right-isn’t she?’
‘Oh, sure! But she’s in Mexico by now-we got a report by sensitive circuit two days ago.’
In my physical weakness I almost wept. ‘Gone! Why, what a dirty, scabby trick! Why couldn’t they have waited until I was well enough to tell her good-by?’
Zeb said quickly, ‘Hey, look, stupid-no, forget that “stupid”; you aren’t. Look, old man, your calendar is mixed up. She was on her way before you were rescued, before we were even sure you could be rescued. You don’t think the brethren could bring her back just to let you two bill and coo, do you?’
I thought about it and calmed down. It made sense, even though I was bitterly disappointed. He changed the subject. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Oh, pretty good.’
‘They tell me you get that cast off your leg tomorrow.’
‘So? They haven’t told me.’ I twisted, trying to get comfortable. ‘I’m almost more anxious to get shot of this corset, but the doc says I’ll have to wear it for several weeks yet.’
‘How about your hand? Can you bend your fingers?’
I tried it. ‘Fairly well. I may have to write left-handed for a while.’
‘All in all, it looks like you’re too mean to die, old son. By the way, if it’s any consolation to you, the laddy boy who worked on Judith got slightly dead in the raid in which you were rescued.’
‘He was? Well, I’m sorry. I had planned to save him for myself.’
‘No doubt, but you would have had to take your place in line, if he had lived. Lots of people wanted him. Me, for example.’