"I"ve been thinking," said Henry quietly. "I could take a long pipe and run it at an angle to the roots. I could force concrete through the pipe and seal it off below ground. When it collapsed, the rose wouldn"t grow back."
The woman asked doubtfully, "Could you?"
"I think so. Of course I"d have to experiment to get the right kind of concrete."
"But what would we do with the hole it left?" There was a faint tremor of hope.
"We could haul away the slime," he said. "It would stop smelling after a while. We might even be able to use it for fertilizer."
"But there"s still the hole."
"It would fill with water after the next rain. We could raise ducks in it."
"White ducks?"
"If you like."
The woman was silent. "If you think we can do it, then we"ll try," she said. "We"ll go back to our farm and forget about Earth."
Henry was silent, too. "They"re kind of pretty, even if they do smell bad," he said after a long interval. "Maybe I could pump a different kind of cement, real thin, directly into the stem. It might travel up into the flower instead of down."
"And make them into stone roses," enthused the woman. "Mud roses into stone. I"d like that--a few of them--to remind us of what our farm was like when we came to it." She wasn"t sniffling.
They had their own problems, decided Jadiver, and their own solution, which, in their ignorance, might actually work. He"d been like that when he first came to Venus, expecting great things. With him it had been different. He was an engineer, not a farmer, and he didn"t want to be a farmer. There was nothing on Venus for him.
He couldn"t stay much longer on Venus in any capacity. Earth was out of the question. Mars? If he could escape capture in the months that followed and then manage to get pa.s.sage on a ship. It wasn"t hopeless, but his chances weren"t high.
The puzzling thing was why the police wanted him so badly. He was an accessory to a crime--several of them, in fact. But even if they regarded him as a criminal, they couldn"t consider him an important one.
And yet they were staging a manhunt. He hated to think of the number of policemen looking for him. There must be a reason for it.
He had a few days left, possibly less. In that time, he would have to get off the planet or shed the circuit. Without drastic extensive surgery, there was not much hope he could peel off the circuit.
Unless--
He had received a message from someone self-identified as a friend. And that friend knew about the circuit and claimed to be willing to help.
He kept seeing gray eyes and a strong, sad, indifferent face, even in his sleep.
He awakened later than he intended. Since daylight was safest for him, that was a serious error. He wasted no time in regret, but went immediately to the mirror. Under the makeup, his face was dirty and sweating. He didn"t dare to remove the disguise for an instant, since to do so would be to expose himself to the instrument. He sprayed on a new face, altering the facial characteristics as best he could. His clothing, too, had to stay on. He roughed it up a bit, adding a year"s wear to it.
For what it was worth, he didn"t look quite the same as yesterday.
Seedier and older. It was a process he couldn"t keep extending indefinitely. He would not have to, of course. One way or the other, it would be decided soon.
He shredded the bag and his extra clothing, tossing them into the disposal chute. No use giving the police something to paw over, to deduce from it what they could. The tiny spray gun he kept, and the tube of makeup. He might need them once more.
It was close to noon when he left the room. There were lots of people on the streets and only a few policemen. Again he had an advantage.
He found a pay screen and began the search. Doctor Doumya Filone wasn"t listed with the police and that seemed strange. A moment"s reflection showed that it wasn"t. If she were officially connected, she might not show the sympathy she had.
Neither was she listed on the staff of the emergency hospital in which he"d been a patient. He had a number through which he could reach her, but he resisted an impulse to use it. It was certain the police wouldn"t confine their efforts to the instrument check. They knew he had that number and they"d have someone on it, tracing everyone who called her.
Noon pa.s.sed and his stomach called attention to it. He hadn"t eaten since yesterday. He took a short break, ate hurriedly, and resumed the search.
Doumya Filone was difficult to find. It was getting late and he had ascertained she wasn"t on the staff of any hospital not listed for private practice.
He finally located her almost by accident. She had an office with Medical Research Incorporated. That was the only thing registered under her name.
Evening came early to Venus, as it always did under the ma.s.sive cloud formations. He got off the air cab a few blocks from his destination and walked the rest of the way.
Inside the building, he paused in the lobby and found her office.
Luckily it was in a back wing. He wandered through the corridors, got lost once, and found the route again. The building was almost empty by this time.
Her name was on the door. Dr. Doumya Filone. Research Neurological Systems, whatever that meant. There was a light in the office, a dim one. He eased the door open. It wasn"t locked, which meant, he hadn"t tripped an alarm.
No one was inside. He looked around. There was another door in back. He walked over to it. It didn"t lead to a laboratory, as he expected.
Instead, there were living quarters. A peculiar way to conduct research.
The autobath was humming quietly. He sat down facing it and waited. She came out in a few minutes, hair disarranged, damp around her forehead.
She didn"t see him at first.
"Well," she said coolly, staring at him. There was no question that she recognized him through the disguise. She slipped quickly into a robe that, whatever it did for her modesty, subtracted nothing from the view.
He wished he was less tired and could appreciate it.
She found a cigarette and lighted it. "You"re pretty good, you know."
"Yeah." But not good enough, he thought.
"Why are you here?" she asked. She was nervous.
"You know," he said. She had promised him help once before. Now let her deliver. But she had to volunteer.
"I know." She looked down at her hands, long skilled hands. "I put in the circuit. But I didn"t choose you."
He began to understand part of it. The "Medical Research" business was just a cover. The real work was done at the police emergency hospital.
That was why she had no laboratory. And the raw material--
"Who did choose me?"
"The police. I have to take what they give me."
There were certain implications in that statement he didn"t like. "Have there been others?"
"Two before you."