“Does he?” Ursala’s face didn’t change at all. Her voice was quiet and calm. “Might we know too, do you think?”
“No. You might not.”
“Surely it would help me to—”
“Just do your work, doctor. No more prevarications, please.”
Ursala let out a long, hard breath. “Very well then. Since you’ve ruled out further testing, I’ve no choice but to begin. Stanley, I’d like you to take off your shirt and lie down on the table.”
“Why don’t you take it off yourself?” Stanley said. “Make it part of the foreplay.”
Paul give a bellow and punched the wall. There was a sound like ice cracking on a lake, and under that a muffled boom like a stick coming down on a split drumhead. The air filled with dust from the broke plaster. When it cleared, we all seen the dull grey metal that was underneath the plaster. Paul’s punch had made a deep dent in it.
It had also broke his hand somewhat. There wasn’t no skin on his knuckles any more. What was inside had the red-brown shine of copper. A thin juice the colour of Summer ale oozed down between the fingers of his tight-clenched fist. “This will go off much better if you do as you’re told,” he told Stanley between bared teeth.
“Like most things then,” Stanley said. His mouth twisted up on one side, like one half of him was smiling and the other half was not.
He hauled his shirt up over his head, shrugged his arms out of it and throwed it down on the floor. The table was high and it wasn’t easy for him to climb up onto it. Cup and me tried to boost him up, but Stanley pulled away from us and done it his own self.
He pressed his hands against the hard, cold metal. “Mmm,” he said. “Comfy.”
Ursala looked over at Lorraine. “If we had a couch, or even a cushion…”
“You don’t,” Paul said. “Carry on.”
Ursala bent down and picked Stanley’s shirt up off the floor. She folded it over on itself and set it down on the table. “Lie your head on this,” she told Stanley. He done it without a word.
Ursala touched the keys of the dagnostic. Three long wires come coiling slowly out of it. She put one on the side of Stanley’s forehead, one on his chest and one on his stomach. The wires lay against his skin for a moment or two, then sunk right into it so their ends was inside of him. It was not the first time I seen this, but still it made me want to look away.
Next Ursala reached inside the dagnostic’s cupboard and took out a hypo like the ones she give to Cup for her hormones. She stuck the needle end of it in Stanley’s shoulder, near his neck, and pressed on the handle with her thumb so the clear stuff in the bottle went into him.
“What’s that?” Lorraine asked.
“A cocktail of amino acids – prepping Stanley’s system for the retro-amylase. Also a strong painkiller.” She dropped the hypo back into the dagnostic with a grimace like she had smelled something bad and was disgusted. “It’s going to be hard to work if he’s screaming,” she said.
She turned to Stanley again. “I want you to tell me how this feels,” she said. “If it hurts, I’ll stop.”
“You won’t stop,” Paul said, “unless we—”
“I’ll stop, and give you a top-up injection,” Ursala said over him. “And wait for it to take effect before we carry on. I want you to feel like you’re in control of this, Stanley.”
Stanley didn’t make no answer to that, but he give a short laugh.
Ursala tapped at the keys again. The lights on the dagnostic danced. Stanley gasped and stiffened.
“Pain?”
“No. I was just surprised. It’s fine.”
“We can wait, if you’re—”
“I said it’s fine.”
“Okay, then. Cup, Koli, I’d like you to take a hold of Stanley’s arms.”
We made to do it. Stanley slapped our hands away. “To Hell with that,” he said, all angry. “I don’t hold hands with the likes of them. Or the likes of you.”
“Your mother and father will have to do it then. It’s possible you might convulse. If you do, I don’t want you to fall off the bench.”
Paul stepped forward, but Lorraine stopped him with a gesture. “He won’t move.”
Ursala glared. “This isn’t some test of his manhood and resolution.”
“Of course it is. Everything is.”
They stared at each other a while longer. Ursala give in at last, without no more words being said, and went back to the dagnostic’s controls. She stayed there for what felt like a very long time. The lights moved across the front face of the dagnostic, quick and then slow, going through the same patterns ever and again. Stanley stiffened and then relaxed, stiffened and then relaxed. His eyes was open, then they was closed, then he opened them again. All kinds of expressions went across his face, and none of them was good to look at.
“How are you doing, Stanley?” Ursala asked, with her eyes still on the dagnostic’s lights.
“I’m fine.”
And again. “How’s it going over there?”
“Great. Fine.”
And a third time. “Are you okay, Stanley?”
Stanley’s eyes rolled into his head for a second so only the whites of them was showing. When they come back, they was wide and startled. “Actually,” he said, in a kind of a half-whisper, “I think I need to—”
He didn’t get to finish the word. Of a sudden, he sit up straight as an arrow and throwed up everything that was in his stomach. It didn’t come all at once but in four or five jets, the first one shooting straight out across the table, the rest a whole lot weaker but just as plentiful. Some of the vomit went on Lorraine, who didn’t seem to notice, but most poured down Stanley’s face onto his bare chest and stomach.
Lorraine come in quick to see that he was okay. She put one arm across his shoulders and the other on his fouled chest, holding him upright while a few more shakes went through him. By and by, he quieted, and his head sunk onto her breast, but she didn’t let him lie down again.
Ursala shut down the dagnostic so all the lights went off at once. She fixed her eyes on Lorraine over the top of Stanley’s slumped head. “Over to you then,” she said. “You mentioned something about letting us go once we were done. I’m sure you’ll want to make good on that promise.”
Lorraine looked surprised. “The procedure is finished?”
“Yes,”
“You said it would be painful.”
“And you said Stanley would take it without complaining. It seems we were both right.”
“If the job is done—” Paul gun to say, but Lorraine quieted him with a look. She lifted Stanley down off the table, setting him on his feet. He just about stayed upright, but he was tilting to one side and another like a spinning top that’s slowing and about to fall. If Lorraine’s hand wasn’t steadying him, he would not of been able to stand. “There’s only one way to find out if it’s done,” she said. “Give me his shirt.”
Paul give her the shirt and she put it on Stanley, slipping his arms inside the sleeves as if he had five Summers on him instead of fifteen. He didn’t even seem to know it was happening. His eyes was dull and troubled. The front of his shirt darkened as the vomit that had spilled down his chest soaked through the fabric.