The doctor placed his thin fingers together, bowing. He whispered daintily.

"Ten years from now you may expect a—ah—little trouble. It will commence one year from now. Unobtrusively. Here or there a slight gastric upset, a cardiac disturbance, a minor intra-irritation of the lung sacs. Occasionally, a headache. A sallowness to the complexion, an earache, perhaps."

Crossley began to sweat. He held onto his knees.

The doctor continued, slowly, pleased with himself.

"Then, as the years pass, a small flicker, like bird wings, of the heart. A pain, as if stabbed in the groin. A twitching of the peritoneum. A hot sweating, late of nights, drenching your bedclothes. Insomnia. Night after night, cigarette after cigarette, headache after headache."

"That'll do," said Crossley bleakly.

"No, no." The doctor waved his hypodermic. "I'm not finished. Temporary blindness. I almost forgot that. Yes, temporary blindness. Fuzzy lights in your head. Voices. Paralysis of the lower limbs. Then, your heart, in one last explosion, lasting ten days, will beat itself into a bruised pulp. And you'll die, exactly—" he consulted a mental calendar, "—ten years, five months and fourteen days from today."

The silence in the room was touched only by Crossley's ragged breathing. He tried to lift himself, shivered, fell back.

"Best of all, there will be no evidence of what we have done to you," said Krauss. "Certain hormones and molecular impurities were put into your body. No analysis now or after death would reveal them. Your health will simply fail. We will not be held responsible. Clever, is it not?"

The doctor said, "You may go now. Now that we have fixed you, like a time-bomb, to die later, you are free to go. We would not want to kill you here, that would make us responsible. But, ten years from now, in another place, how can that be due to us?"

The phone. "Your wife, Herr Krauss."

My hair is falling out!

"Now, now, be patient, my wife."

My skin is yellowing! Do something!

 Prev. P 12/16 next