“Graubard?” Charlie asked.
“That’s right. To make sure he can mount the scaffold without assistance.”
“What if Hilleboe-”
“She’ll be out for another half-hour. I’ll send Jarvil down, just in case.” She hurried out the door.
“The scaffold.. .” I hadn’t given that any thought. “How the hell are we going to execute him? We can’t do it indoors: morale. Firing squad would be pretty grisly.”
“Chuck him out the airlock. You don’t owe him any ceremony.”
“You’re probably right. I wasn’t thinking about him.” I wondered whether Charlie had ever seen the body of a person who’d died that way. “Maybe we ought to just stuff him into the recycler. He’d wind up there eventually.”
Charlie laughed. “That’s the spirit.”
“We’d have to trim him up a little bit. Door’s not very wide.” Charlie had a few suggestions as to how to get around that. Jarvil came in and more-or-less ignored us.
Suddenly the infirmary door banged open. A patient on a cart; Diana rushing alongside pressing on the man’s chest, while a private pushed. Two other privates were following, but hung back at the door. “Over by the wall,” she ordered.
It was Graubard. “Tried to kill himself,” Diana said, but that was pretty obvious. “Heart stopped.” He’d made a noose out of his belt; it was still banging limply around his neck.
There were two big electrodes with rubber handles hanging on the wall. Diana snatched them with one hand while she ripped his tunic open with the other. “Get your hands off the cart!” She held the electrodes apart, kicked a switch, and pressed them down onto his chest. They made a low hum while his body trembled and flopped. Smell of burning flesh.
Diana was shaking her head. “Get ready to crack him,” she said to Jarvil. “Get Doris down here.” The body was gurgling, but it was a mechanical sound, like plumbing.
She kicked off the power and let the electrodes drop, pulled a ring off her finger and crossed to stick her arms in the sterilizer. Jarvil started to rub an evil-smelling fluid over the man’s chest.
There was a small red mark between the two electrode burns. It took me a moment to recognize what it was. Jarvil wiped it away. I stepped closer and checked Graubard’s neck.
“Get out of the way, William, you aren’t sterile.” Diana felt his collarbone, measured down a little ways and made an incision straight down to the bottom of his breastbone. Blood welled out and Jarvil handed her an instrument that looked like big chrome-plated bolt-cutters. I looked away but couldn’t help hearing the thing crunch through his ribs. She asked for retractors and sponges and so on while I wandered back to where I’d been sitting. With the corner of my eye I saw her working away inside his thorax, massaging his heart directly.
Charlie looked the way I felt. He called out weakly, “Hey, don’t knock yourself out, Diana.” She didn’t answer. Jarvil had wheeled up the artificial heart and was holding out two tubes. Diana picked up a scalpel and I looked away again.
He was still dead a half-hour later. They turned off the machine and threw a sheet over him. Diana washed the blood off her arms and said, “Got to change. Back in a minute.”
I got up and walked to her billet, next door. Had to know.
I raised my hand to knock but it was suddenly hurting like there was a line of fire drawn across it. I rapped with my left and she opened the door immediately.
“What-oh, you want something for your hand.” She was half-dressed, unself-conscious. “Ask Jarvil.”
“No, that’s not it. What happened, Diana?”
“Oh. Well,” she pulled a tunic over her head and her voice was muffled. “It was my fault, I guess. I left him alone for a minute.”
“And he tried to hang himself.”
“That’s right.” She sat on the bed and offered me the chair. “I went off to the head and he was dead by the time I got back. I’d already sent Jarvil away because I didn’t want Hilleboe to be unsupervised for too long.”
“But, Diana. . . there’s no mark on his neck. No bruise, nothing.”