Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [220]
"We'll have to wait until that stimpad in her hand has been analyzed for drug traces," General Questar-Benn said mildly, "but I certainly don't think she was dispensing routine meds. Fortunately, she slapped the stimpad on my upper-arm prosthesis. I think I was supposed to be too drugged to notice her; one of those thugs she uses for aides dosed me with Blissto, or something like it, about an hour ago."
Alpha slowly uncurled herself and stood up. If she was lost, she'd go with that much dignity. She was half a head taller than this Sev Bryley; it helped, a little, to look down on him.
"So what are you," she demanded, "a robot? Nobody's immune to Seduc—Blissto," she caught herself. No reason to give away information.
General Questar-Benn chuckled. "No, dear girl, I'm not quite as badly off as the Tin Woodman. The valves may be helped along by hyperchips, but I still have a heart—something that appears to have been left out of your makeup. But the liver and kidneys are replacements, and last year I had a new hyperchip-enhanced blood filtering function installed so that I could monitor my own internal prostheses. If you'd shown up right after your goon drugged me, I might have been in trouble. But an hour was more than enough time to filter the drug out of my bloodstream."
Alpha glowered at her and Bryley impartially. "And what about you?" she demanded of Bryley. "You looked like a man, but I guess you're another fucking cyborg freak."
"I am a man," Bryley said mildly. "I'm also fast—and I learned Capellan hand fighting in the war. Your big thug tripped over his own feet—with a little help—and slapped himself with the stimpad he was aiming at me. I don't know what was in it; perhaps you'd like to tell me whether he'll survive the experience? As for the little one, he collided with one of those big ceramic pots you've got decorating the waiting room. He'll have one hell of a headache when he wakes up, but he'll be in perfectly good shape to testify against you."
"No, he won't," Alpha snapped. "You don't know as much as you think you do! The man's addicted to—something you won't be able to supply. Without his next fix, he'll die in agony before the week's out!"
Bryley raised one eyebrow. "Then," he said cheerfully, "we'd better make sure to get his testimony on datahedron before he dies, hadn't we? Thanks for the warning."
CHAPTER TWELVE
"Hospitals!" General Questar-Benn made the word sound like an expletive. "No offense, Thalmark, but those damn gowns are just a plot to make patients helpless and submissive. Thanks for bringing my uniform, Bryley."
"I have a feeling it would take more than that to make you submissive, General," Galena Thalmark said with a slight inclination of her head.
Sev and Micaya had met in what used to be Alpha bint Hezra-Fong's office, now occupied by the administrative assistant who'd first alerted Central Worlds to the surprising death rate in Summerlands' charity wards. This morning Galena Thalmark looked ten years younger than the harried, overweight woman who'd greeted Micaya and smuggled her into the wards in the disguise of the alcoholic "Qualia Benton."
"I can't express my thanks to you both," she said, pushing dark curly hair away from her round face, "so I won't try. General Questar-Benn, you have my sincerest apologies for the dangers you experienced."
"Part of the job," said Micaya.
"All the same, we should have been more alert. I should have had staff I could trust watching you at all times," said Galena.
Micaya nodded without further comment. She was favorably impressed by Galena's quick command of the situation, even more impressed by the fact that the young woman had taken full responsibility for problems which were hardly of her making. It wasn't her fault that the aging director of Summerlands had left more and more