The girl with the injured ankle!
She’s not in her bed!
She’s gone!”
“Willie!” Paul gasped.
A small nun with a candle scurried up and panted to recover her breath for a moment.
“She’s gone, Father.
I was on night duty.
I heard the shot, and I went to see if it disturbed her.
She wasn’t there!”
The priest grumbled incredulously.
“How could she get out?
She can’t walk with that cast.”
“Crutches, Father.
We told her she could get up in a few days.
While she was still irrational, she kept saying they were going to amputate her leg.
We brought the crutches in to prove she’d be up soon.
It’s my fault, Father.
I should have—”
“Never mind!
Search the building for her.”
Paul dried his wet skin and faced the priest angrily.
“What can I do to disinfect myself?” he demanded.
Mendelhaus called out into the hallway where a crowd had gathered.
“Someone please get Doctor Seevers.”
“I’m here, preacher,” grunted the scientist.
The monastics parted ranks to make way for his short chubby body.
He grinned amusedly at Paul.
“So, you decided to make your home here after all, eh?”
Paul croaked an insult at him.
“Have you got any effective—”
“Disinfectants?
Afraid not.
Nitric acid will do the trick on one or two local spots.
Where were you touched?”
“I don’t know.
I was asleep.”
Seevers’ grin widened.
“Well, you can’t take a bath in nitric acid.
We’ll try something else, but I doubt if it’ll work for a direct touch.”
“That oil—”
“Uh-uh!
That’ll do for exposure-weakened parasites you might pick up by handling an object that’s been touched.
But with skin to skin contact, the bugs’re pretty stout little rascals.
Come on downstairs, though, we’ll make a pass at it.”
Paul followed him quickly down the corridor.
Behind him, a soft voice was murmuring:
“I just can’t understand why nonhypers are so…” Mendelhaus said something to Seevers, blotting out the voice.
Paul chafed at the thought that they might consider him cowardly.
But with the herds fleeing northward, cowardice was the social norm.
And after a year’s flight, Paul had accepted the norm as the only possible way to fight.