He grimaced, looking more satanic than ever. "You have a point," he admitted, "but it isn't a good one. Young people should be afraid of dying." "You're not." "I'm not young. I'm thirty-five, and besides, this is my business. I've been looking at death for eleven years. I'm immune." "I haven't your experience," she admitted, "but I have your attitude." "What's your name?" Kramer said. "Barton, Mary Barton." "Hm-m-m. Well, Mary—I can't turn you down. I need you. But I could wish you had taken some other job." "I'll survive." He looked at her with faint admiration in his greenish eyes. "Perhaps you will," he said. "All right. As to your duties—you will be my assistant, which means you'll be a dishwasher, laboratory technician, secretary, junior pathologist, and coffee maker. I'll help you with all the jobs except the last one. I make lousy coffee." Kramer grinned, his teeth a white flash across the darkness of his face. "You'll be on call twenty-four hours a day, underpaid, overworked, and in constant danger until we lick Thurston's virus. You'll be expected to handle the jobs of three people unless I can get more help—and I doubt that I can. People stay away from here in droves. There's no future in it." Mary smiled wryly. "Literally or figuratively?" she asked. He chuckled. "You have a nice sense of graveyard humor," he said. "It'll help. But don't get careless. Assistants are hard to find." She shook her head. "I won't. While I'm not afraid of dying I don't want to do it. And I have no illusions about the danger. I was briefed quite thoroughly." "They wanted you to work upstairs?" She nodded. "I suppose they need help, too. Thurston's Disease has riddled the medical profession. Just don't forget that this place can be a death trap. One mistake and you've had it. Naturally, we take every precaution, but with a virus no protection is absolute. If you're careless and make errors in procedure, sooner or later one of those submicroscopic protein molecules will get into your system."
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