She looked through the open doorway at the tortured form of the man on
the bed, and made her decision. Wrapping the towel she held tightly
about one fist, she hammered and punched at the surface of the mirror.
The fifth blow sent an erratic craze through the glass, and the sixth
burst it into a shower of gleaming fragments, leaving a raggedly round
hole when she withdrew her hand from the towel, then tugged the towel
itself free from where it had snagged on the broken ends. Behind the
gaping hole, the side of a glass jar showed, and Grace reached gingerly
through the sharp teeth of the opening and withdrew it.
* * * * *
There was no label on the bottle, hence no information regarding proper
dosage. Grace would have to guess at that.
Very little of the powder remained in the jar. Grace made a decision
and removed the cap. She ran the tap for a moment, then let a volume
of water equal to the powder's run into the jar. She sloshed it about
a bit, saw that it was dissolving into a greyish thick substance, then
brought it back to Bodger.
Lifting his head with one hand, she tilted the jar to his lips, and let
a small amount of the viscous liquid dribble into his mouth. When she
saw he was swallowing it without choking, she gave him a little more,
and then again some more, feeding him the solution in slow doses until
it was all gone. Then she laid his head back upon the coverlet and put
the empty jar on the nightstand, and took up her anxious vigil where
she had left off.
After five minutes or so, she was pleased to see a slow return of color
into Bodger's sallow cheeks, and his breathing became less labored. She
hurried to the bathroom for another towel, and returned and started
dabbing the wetness from his forehead, neck and temples. Bodger's
eyelids crinkled up tight, suddenly, and then he flicked them wide open.
"Grace--?" he said. "What--"
Memory returned to him, then, and he sat up, staring wildly about him.
"Where's Stanton? Where's Lloyd?" he demanded, his voice still showing
his siege of weakness. "What happened?"
Grace told him swiftly all she knew, and Bodger finally sank back on
the bed with a sigh. "Good," he said. "I'm glad Lloyd's gone to the
Brain. It's time it happened. Now, maybe--I can find some peace."
"You'll be all right, Mr. Bodger," Grace said. "I gave you your
medicine already. I had to break your mirror to get at it, I'm sorry to
say."
Bodger smiled wearily, and shook his head. "It doesn't matter anymore.
The secrecy, I mean. It was the last dose of the medicine, anyhow. The
next time I lose control, I've had it."
"I don't follow you, Mr. Bodger," Grace said, a part of her mind
wondering if he were really being coherent. "You were hit with a
Snapper Beam. I don't know why you're not dead right this minute."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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