Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [217]
Alpha dismissed Baynes and Moss and went back into her private storage room to prepare. "If you want a thing done well, do it yourself," she murmured as she prepared two stimpads, each loaded with a massive overdose of Seductron-B4.
* * *
The woman known as Qualia Benton knew something was wrong when the two aides who were Doctor Hezra-Fong's shadows came to transfer her from the charity side of the clinic. She'd been ready to act then, fingers tensed against the side of her left-leg prosthesis, adrenalin keeping her unnaturally aware of every shadow and change of intonation.
And nothing happened. "You're moving to a private room," the big one called Baynes said.
"Who'll pay?" Qualia Benton demanded in the fretful, shrill tone to be expected from an old soak whose nerves were jangling for just one more drink.
"Doctor's interested in your case," said the little black-haired one, Moss. "She wants to run some special tests. On the clinic, if Veteran's Aid won't cover it. You could get into the next issue of the Medical Research Journal."
"I'm honored," said Qualia Benton politely. She let the men transfer her to a wheelchair and rode quietly down the long silent corridors of Summerlands clinic, watching the myriad reflections of herself and the aides in the polished tiles of floor and walls and ceiling, ready for the slightest move that would warn her it was time to act.
It won't happen in the halls. They'll move when I'm in a room alone, she told herself. But what if they expected her to count on that, and took her by surprise in one of these long empty hallways? She dared not relax.
Even when they wheeled her into a room with two beds, the one nearest the window already occupied, she was tense with expectation.
"Here now, you said I was getting a private room!" she whined. Qualia Benton would whine; what's more, she would be suspicious and distrustful like most recovering addicts, almost paranoid. God knew, it wasn't hard to fake that part.
"Might as well be private," said the one called Moss. "He won't bother you much. Will you, Varian?"
The patient in the other bed nodded and shook his head alternately, smiling with a loose, open-lipped grin that chilled her spirits. Blissto addict. Or worse . . . if there is anything worse? And they're maintaining him in that condition, instead of trying to break the addiction. That's criminal!
Qualia Benton, chronic alcoholic, too woozy to take proper care of her own prostheses and replacement organs, wouldn't care about somebody else's problems. She said nothing.
The aides helped her into the free bed.
"Here you go," said the small black-haired man cheerfully. He slapped a stimpad downwards; she recoiled but could not quite escape the stinging contact against her shoulder. "Just a little relaxation med before the tests," he said.
"Don't wanna relax," she muttered. The thickness in her speech was natural. She was suddenly finding it hard to think. Something was infiltrating her bloodstream, something soft as a cloud and warm as sunshine, floating her away to the Isles of the Blest—bless—bliss—Blissto! That was it!
The man in the other bed—was he really a Blissto addict, or had he been drugged in the same manner? Foolish, foolish not to have anticipated this. Once the aides had caught her out of bed and snooping where she had no business, she should have known her time at the clinic was limited.
She set her will to resisting the power of the drug. And not only her will. One thing about being underestimated, being seen as an old lush without the sense to care for her own artificial organs: Dr. Hezra-Fong hadn't, apparently, run any serious tests on those hyperchip-enhanced organs. The Blissto was carrying her away; but if she could only gain an hour or two, all might yet be well.
Did she have that hour's grace? No way to tell; she could only watch and wait, and that not very effectively. The hard hospital pillow beneath her head was soft as a Denebian flufftuff. Her left hand still rested