The Sky Is Falling | Page 8

worse. In fact, I guess it was worse--once I get
used to looking like this, I think I'll get to like it. But seeing it was a heck of a thing to
take for a sick man."
Nema said sharply, "Are you sick?"

"Well--I guess not."
"Then why say you are? You shouldn't be; I told you we've entered the House of
Sagittarius now. You can't be sick in your own sign. Don't you understand even that
much elementary science?"
Hanson didn't get a chance to answer. Ser Perth was suddenly in the doorway, dressed in
a different type of robe. This was short and somehow conservative--it had a sincere,
executive look about it. The man seemed changed in other ways, too. But Dave wasn't
concerned about that. He was growing tired of the way people suddenly appeared out of
nowhere. Maybe they all wore rubber-soled shoes or practiced sneaking about; it was a
silly way for grown people to act.
"Come with me, Dave Hanson," Ser Perth ordered, without wasting words. He spoke in a
clipped manner now.
Dave followed, grumbling in his mind. It was even sillier than their sneaking about for
them to expect him to start running around before they bothered to check the condition of
a man fresh out of his death bed. In any of the hospitals he had known, there would have
been hours or days of X-rays and blood tests and temperature taking before he would be
released. These people simply decided a man was well and ordered him out.
To do them justice, however, he had to admit that they seemed to be right. He had never
felt better. The twaddle about Sagittarius would have to be cleared up sometime, but
meanwhile he was in pretty good shape. Sagittarius, as he remembered it, was supposed
to be one of the signs of the Zodiac. Bertha had been something of a sucker for astrology
and had found he was born under that sign before she agreed to their little good-by party.
He snorted to himself. It had done her a heck of a lot of good, which was to be expected
of such nonsense.
They passed down a dim corridor and Ser Perth turned in at a door. Inside there was a
single-chair barber shop, with a barber who might also have come from some
movie-casting office. He had the proper wavy black hair and rat-tailed comb stuck into a
slightly dirty off-white jacket. He also had the half-obsequious, half-insulting manner
Dave had found most people expected from their barbers. While he shaved and trimmed
Dave, he made insultingly solicitous comments about Dave's skin needing a massage,
suggested a tonic for thinning hair and practically insisted on a singe. Ser Perth watched
with a mixture of intentness and amusement. The barber trimmed the tufts from over
Dave's ears and clipped the hair in his nose, while a tray was pushed up and a slatternly
blonde began giving him a manicure.
He began noticing that she carefully dumped his fingernail parings into a small jar. A few
moments later, he found the barber also using a jar to collect the hair and shaving stubble.
Ser Perth was also interested in that, it seemed, since his eyes followed that part of the
operation. Dave frowned, and then relaxed. After all, this was a hospital barber shop, and
they probably had some rigid rules about sanitation, though he hadn't seen much other
evidence of such care.

The barber finally removed the cloth with a snap and bowed. "Come again, sir," he said.
Ser Perth stood up and motioned for Dave to follow. He turned to look in a mirror, and
caught sight of the barber handing the bottles and jars of waste hair and nail clippings to a
girl. He saw only her back, but it looked like Nema.
Something stirred in his mind then. He'd read something somewhere about hair clippings
and nail parings being used for some strange purpose. And there'd been something about
spittle. But they hadn't collected that. Or had they? He'd been unconscious long enough
for them to have gathered any amount they wanted. It all had something to do with some
kind of mumbo-jumbo, and....
Ser Perth had led him through the same door by which they'd entered--but not into the
same hallway. Dave's mind dropped the other thoughts as he tried to cope with the
realization that this was another corridor. It was brightly lit, and there was a scarlet carpet
on the floor. Also, it was a short hall, requiring only a few steps before they came to a
bigger door, elaborately enscrolled. Ser Perth bent before it, and the door opened silently
while he and Dave entered.
The room was large and sparsely furnished. Sitting cross-legged on a