Says it makes the sisters giggle.”
The other man chuckled quietly and started to reply. But his voice broke off suddenly.
The footsteps stopped a dozen feet from Paul’s hiding place.
Paul, peering through the hedge, saw a pair of brown-robed monks standing on the sidewalk. They were looking around suspiciously.
“Brother Thomas, do you smell—”
“Aye, I smell it.”
Paul changed his position slightly, so as to keep the gun pointed toward the pair of plague-stricken monastics.
They stood in embarrassed silence, peering into the darkness, and shuffling their feet uneasily.
One of them suddenly pinched his nose between thumb and forefinger.
His companion followed suit.
“Blessed be God,” quavered one.
“Blessed be His Holy Name,” answered the other.
“Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.”
“Blessed be…”
Gathering their robes high about their shins, the two monks turned and scurried away, muttering the Litany of the Divine Praises as they went.
Paul stood up and stared after them in amazement.
The sight of dermies running from a potential victim was almost beyond belief.
He questioned his young guide. Still holding the handkerchief against his bleeding face, the boy hung his head.
“Bishop made a ruling against touching nonhypers,” he explained miserably. “Says it’s a sin, unless the non-hyper submits of his own free will.
Says even then it’s wrong, except in the ordinary ways that people come in contact with each other. Calls it fleshly desire, and all that.”
“Then why did you try to do it?”
“I ain’t so religious.”
“Well, sonny, you better get religious until we come to the hospital.
Now, let’s go.”
They marched on down Broadway encountering no other pedestrians.
Twenty minutes later, they were standing in the shadows before a hulking brick building, some of whose windows were yellow with lamplight.
Moonlight bathed the Statue of a woman standing on a ledge over the entrance, indicating to Paul that this was the hospital.
“All right, boy.
You go in and send out a dermie doctor.
Tell him somebody wants to see him, but if you say I’m not a dermie, I’ll come in and kill you. Now move.
And don’t come back. Stay to get your face fixed.”
The youth stumbled toward the entrance.
Paul sat in the shadow of a tree, where he could see twenty yards in all directions and guard himself against approach.
Soon a black-clad priest came out of the emergency entrance, stopped on the sidewalk, and glanced around.
“Over here!” Paul hissed from across the street.
The priest advanced uncertainly.
In the center of the road he stopped again, and held his nose.
“Y-you’re a nonhyper,” he said, almost accusingly.
“That’s right, and I’ve got a gun, so don’t try anything.”
“What’s wrong?
Are you sick?
The lad said—”
“There’s a dermie girl down the island.
She’s been shot.
Tendon behind her heel is cut clean through.
You’re going to help her.”
“Of course, but…” The priest paused.
“You?
A non-hyper? Helping a so-called dermie?”
His voice went high with amazement.