"They're doing the same thing on Tom's back, right here," I told Joe.
"Only you can't grow fingerprints by carniculture, the way you can
human tissue for grafting. They had to have palm and finger surfaces
from a pair of real human hands. A pauper, dying in a free-treatment
ward, her body shoved into a mass-energy converter." Then I thought
of something else. "That showoff trick of his, crushing out cigarettes
in his palm," I said.
Bish nodded commendingly. "Exactly. He'd have about as much sensation
in his palms as I'd have wearing thick leather gloves. I'd noticed
that.
"Well, six months going, and a couple of months waiting on reports
from other planets, and six months coming, and so on, it wasn't until
the _Peenemünde_ got in from Terra, the last time, that I got final
confirmation. Dr. Watson, you'll recall."
"Who, you perceived, had been in Afghanistan," I mentioned, trying to
salvage something. Showing off. The one I was trying to impress was
Walt Boyd.
"You caught that? Careless of me," Bish chided himself. "What he gave
me was a report that they had finally located a man who had been a
staff surgeon at this hospital on Baldur at the time. He's now doing a
stretch for another piece of malpractice he was unlucky enough to get
caught at later. We will not admit making deals with any criminals, in
jail or out, but he is willing to testify, and is on his way to Terra
now. He can identify pictures of Anton Gerrit as those of the man he
operated on fourteen years ago, and his testimony and Ernestine
Coyón's fingerprints will identify Ravick as that man. With all the
Colonial Constabulary and Army Intelligence people got on Gerrit on
Loki, simple identification will be enough. Gerrit was proven guilty
long ago, and it won't be any trouble, now, to prove that Ravick is
Gerrit."
"Why didn't you arrest him as soon as you got the word from your
friend from Afghanistan?" I wanted to know.
"Good question; I've been asking myself that," Bish said, a trifle
wryly. "If I had, the _Javelin_ wouldn't have been bombed, that wax
wouldn't have been burned, and Tom Kivelson wouldn't have been
injured. What I did was send my friend, who is a Colonial Constabulary
detective, to Gimli, the next planet out. There's a Navy base there,
and always at least a couple of destroyers available. He's coming back
with one of them to pick Gerrit up and take him to Terra. They ought
to be in in about two hundred and fifty hours. I thought it would be
safer all around to let Gerrit run loose till then. There's no place
he could go.
"What I didn't realize, at the time, was what a human H-bomb this man
Murell would turn into. Then everything blew up at once. Finally, I
was left with the choice of helping Gerrit escape from Hunters' Hall
or having him lynched before I could arrest him." He turned to
Kivelson. "In the light of what you knew, I don't blame you for
calling me a dirty traitor."
"But how did I know..." Kivelson began.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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