Dr. Bloodmoney Read Online Free Page B

just for the sake of the record the enormous preparations made to insure—”
    Blah, Bonny Keller said to herself, and, with a shudder, shut off the TV. I can’t watch, she said to herself.
    On the other hand, what was there to do? Merely sit biting her nails for the next six hours—for the next two weeks, in fact? The only answer would have been not to remember that this was the day the First Couple was being fired off. However, it was too late now not to remember.
    She like to think of them as that, the first couple … like something out of a sentimental, old-time, science-fiction story. Adam and Eve, once over again, except that in actuality Walt Dangerfield was no Adam; he had more the quality of the last, not the first man, with his wry, mordant wit, his halting, almost cynical manner of speech as he faced the reporters. Bonny admired him; Dangerfield was no punk, no crewcut-haired young blond automaton, hacking away at the Air Forces’ newest task. Walt was a real person, and no doubt that was why NASA had selected him. His genes—they were probably stuffed to overflowing with four thousand years of culture, the heritage of mankind built right in. Walt and Lydia would found a Nova Terra … there would be lots of sophisticated little Dangerfields strolling about Mars, declaiming intellectually and yet with that amusing trace of sheer jazziness that Dangerfield had.
    “Think of it as a long freeway,” Dangerfield had once said in an interview, answering a reporter’s query about the hazards of the trip. “A million miles of ten lanes … with no oncoming traffic, no slow trucks. Think of it as being four o’clock in the morning … just your vehicle, no others. So like the guys says, what’s to worry?” And then his good smile.
    Bending, Bonny turned the TV set back on.
    And there, on the screen, was the round, bespectacled face of Walt Dangerfield; he wore his space suit—all but the helmet—and beside him stood Lydia, silent, as Walt answered questions.
    “I hear,” Walt was drawling, with a chewing-movement of his jaw, as if he were masticating the question before answering, “that there’s a LOL in Boise, Idaho who’s worried about me.” He glanced up, as someone in the rear of the room asked something. “A LOL?” Walt said, “Well, —that was the great now-departed Herb Caen’s term for Little Old Ladies … there’s always one of them, everywhere. Probably there’s one on Mars already, and we’ll be living down the street from her. Anyhow, this one in Boise, or so I understand, is a little nervous about Lydia and myself, afraid something might happen to us. So she’s sent us a good luck charm.” He displayed it, holding it clumsily with the big gloved fingers of his suit. The reporters all murmured with amusement. “Nice, isn’t it?” Dangerfield said. “I’ll tell you what it does; it’s good for rheumatism.” The reporters laughted. “In case we get rheumatism while we’re on Mars. Or is it gout? I think it’s gout, she said in her letter.” He glanced at his wife. “Gout, was it?”
    I guess, Bonny thought, they don’t make charms to ward off meteors or radiation. She felt sad, as if a premonition had come over her. Or was it just because this was Bruno Bluthgeld’s day at the psychiatrist’s? Sorrowful thoughts emanating from that fact, thoughts about death and radiation and miscalculation and terrible, unending illness.
    I don’t believe Bruno has become a paranoid schizophrenic, she said to herself. This is only a situation deterioration, and with the proper psychiatric help—a few pills here and there—he’ll be okay. It’s an endocrine disturbance manifesting itself psychically, and they can do wonders with that; it’s not a character defect, a psychotic constitution, unfolding itself in the face of stress.
    But what do I know, she thought gloomily. Bruno had to practically sit there and tell us “they” were poisoning his drinking water before either