“You were right. Thank heavens I didn’t give her a larger dose.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. The two neurotoxins may have opposed one another.”
Phelim took another bottle from the medicine chest. “How about belladonna?”
Simeon shook his head emphatically. “Fatal. Atropine stimulates the heart and her pulse is already a hundred and thirty. Hyoscin might work. But I don’t want to take any more risks.” He dropped the wrist. “I think she’ll be all right.”
But Niall, who was aware of the feverish tumult in the girl’s brain, was less confident. Even to share her consciousness at second hand produced a burning sensation of thirst and an irrational longing to plunge into cold water.
Simeon said: “There’s nothing more we can do for now. Let’s go and see how Boyd’s getting on.”
It was a relief to follow him out of the room. It was not until Niall was halfway along the corridor that the burning sensation disappeared.
The large room at the top of the stairs had been recently vacated by the carpenters, and smelled of freshly sawed wood and varnish. The five packing cases from the warehouse now stood against the wall; the floor and two large trestle tables were covered with an assortment of objects, from rolls of bandages and cotton wool to strange items of medical equipment that reminded Niall of things seen in the control room of the white tower.
Boyd was enthusiastically levering the lid off a packing case with a crowbar. He pointed to a large satinwood box on the floor. “That’s an electron microscope. Do you know how many times it can magnify?” Phelim shook his head. “Half a million!” He pointed to a gleaming chromium-plated device on the table. “That’s a comparison microscope.” He touched a button at its base, and a small but powerful light came on, illuminating the slide-holder.
Phelim was astonished. “What made it light up?”
Boyd said scornfully: “A battery, of course. By the twenty-second century they’d invented batteries that could store a thousand volts. How about this?” He picked up a black tube from the table and pushed a button; a powerful beam of light shone on the opposite wall. Boyd pointed it at Phelim’s face, and twisted the base; the light became so blinding that Phelim covered his eyes with his hands. “Isn’t that marvelous? An emergency operating-theatre light. . . And look at this.” He opened a polythene box and took out a flat device with a handle at the center of its base. It was about a foot square, and seemed to be made of cloudy glass.
“What is it?”
“A portable X ray.” He turned to Niall. “Put your hand on the table.”
Niall did as he was told. Boyd held the clouded glass above it, then squeezed a switch. A pale green light illuminated the glass. Niall gazed with astonishment as his flesh disappeared, and he found himself looking at the hand of a skeleton. Boyd chortled with delight, and held the device up against Phelim’s face; Phelim’s head immediately turned into a grinning skull with empty eye sockets. As Phelim started to move away, Boyd said: “Hold still a minute.” Using both hands, he pushed a slide on the handle. Phelim’s head became slowly clothed with flesh — not normal flesh, but a kind of semitransparent jelly in which all the veins and arteries were clearly visible. Inside the skull, it was possible to see the outline of Phelim’s brain. “There, you see, uncle, you were wrong — Phelim has got a brain.” He ducked a playful blow from Phelim.
Niall picked up a gleaming metal tube from the tabletop; it was a foot long and two inches in diameter. It reminded him of the expanding metal rod he had found in the land of Dira. Like the metal rod, it was startlingly heavy for its size. One end was covered with a frosted glass screen, and the control button on its side rested in a graduated slot. When Niall pushed the button upward, the glass was illuminated with a green glow.
He asked Boyd: “What’s this?”
“I’m not sure.” It obviously pained him to admit ignorance. “Some kind of torch?”
Niall shone it on the palm of his hand. To his surprise, the green light produced a pleasant, cool sensation not unlike a breeze. As he pushed the button upwards in its slot, the light intensified, and his hand became increasingly cold. Before the button had reached the halfway mark, his hand felt frozen, as if immersed in icy water. Even when he turned the light away, the flesh remained achingly cold, so that it was difficult to move his fingers. He whistled with pain. “That’s freezing!”
Boyd said: “Ah, now I know what it is. It’s a cold light. They were invented to replace refrigerators.”
Phelim was studying a large sheet of paper. “Yes, it’s here on the inventory — Rykov Dethermalizer or cold light. What’s an otoscope?”
Boyd said: “A thing for looking in your ear.”
“What’s an electrodiagnostic analyzer?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, there should be one in here somewhere. And a Gullstrand apparatus, whatever that is. . .”
Niall was no longer paying attention. As the freezing sensation gradually disappeared from his hand, he was struck by an interesting idea. While the others were bent over the packing case, he slipped out of the room and tiptoed downstairs.
The girl was now in a fever; her cheeks were flushed, and she was breathing in short gasps. Niall placed the cold light gently against her damp forehead, and pushed the switch. As he did so, his consciousness blended with hers, and he felt her shock wave of relief as the sudden coolness invaded her brain. Within thirty seconds, the flood of emergency signals that had overloaded her nervous system had diminished to a trickle, and her breathing was calmer. Yet as he continued to hold the cold light against her forehead, Niall was aware that he was treating only the symptoms, not the cause of the problem. Her nervous system was in shock as a result of the reaction between the spider venom and the snake serum. And after six weeks of hanging upside down in Skorbo’s larder, her vitality was too depleted to cope with the crisis. Even as her heartbeat slowed down, Niall was aware that she lacked the strength to fight off this new invasion of poison that Simeon had introduced into her bloodstream. Trapped in the confused electrical storm of her consciousness, Niall felt completely helpless.
Yet when he was once again looking down at her flushed face, he experienced a surge of anger at this pointless waste of her life. It seemed absurd that there was no way in which he could transfer some of his own excess vitality into her body. On a sudden impulse he switched off the cold light and placed one hand on her forehead and the other on her solar plexus. In doing so, he was consciously imitating the posture he had seen his brother adopt earlier that morning. He recognized immediately that it established a sense of contact between their physical organisms. As his consciousness blended with hers, he instinctively synchronized their vibrations so she could absorb the energy he was trying to give her. A warm sensation flowed down his arms and through his fingertips. And since the sense of contact was still inadequate, he bent over and pressed his mouth against hers. Her lips were dry, so he moistened them with his tongue. And now that contact was fully established, her body responded to the flow of vital energy as parched ground responds to water. It was a curious sensation — allowing his vitality to be sucked into the vortex of her need. It felt as if their sexes had been reversed, and that he had become the female, she the male. Then, just as the strain of the position was beginning to turn into physical discomfort, he felt the power inside her respond to the power that was flowing out of his own body; like waterlogged soil she had taken as much of his vitality as she could absorb. A moment later, he felt her lips move, and knew she was returning to consciousness. As he straightened up, he experienced a sudden dizziness that made him sway on his feet and grip the edge of the table. The darkness passed, and he saw that her eyes were open. He smiled at her, but she stared back blankly, without recognition. Then she sighed deeply and closed her eyes as the weakened spider venom once more plunged her nervous system into a state of paralysis.
When the others came into the room a few minutes later, she was breathing normally and peacefully. Simeon noticed the change immediately.
“Hello, she’s looking much better.” He took her wrist. “Yes, her pulse is back to normal.”
Niall said: “I think your serum must have worked after all.”