Tactics of Mistake (36 page)

There was no more.

After what seemed many centuries of nothingness, he drifted back to fuzzy consciousness to find himself lying on a bed. A young commandant wearing medical insignia was just finishing a broad bandage across his upper chest, and behind the commandant stood Melissa and Mondar.

“I'm not dead… then?” he asked, hearing the words come out in a whisper so weak it was ridiculous.

“Dow used the wrong weapon on you, Cletus,” said Mondar. “Darts that trigger a state of physical shock and collapse are all right for killing ordinary men, but not one like you, who's trained his physiological processes to obey his will automatically. You're going to live—isn't he, Doctor?”

“Absolutely.” The medical commandant straightened up and stepped back from the bedside. “He should have died on his feet within the first minute and a half after he was hit. When he got past that point, there was no place for his system to go but toward recovery.”

He handed a hypospray arm band to Melissa. “See that he does a lot of sleeping,” he said. “Come on, Outbond.”

The figures of the two men moved out from Cletus's field of vision. He heard a door close at a little distance. Melissa sat down in the chair the doctor had occupied and began to strap the hypospray around Cletus's sleeveless right arm.

“You don't have to do that,” he whispered to her. “You can go now, to Earth or anywhere you want. It's all over.”

“Don't talk,” she said. “It's all nonsense, anyway. If I'd wanted to go, I'd have gone right after you made me marry you. I could have dreamed up some excuse—to explain it to Dad. You know he'd believe anything I told him.”

He stared at her. “Then why didn't—”

“Because you told me you loved me,” she said. “That was all I wanted to know.”

He rolled his head a little, weakly and negatively, on the pillow. “I said—”

She finished strapping the hypospray on his wrist and bent down and kissed him, stopping the words on his lips.

“You idiot!” she said, fiercely and tenderly. “You magnificent, genius-idiot! Do you think I paid any attention to what you
said
?”