Pheola had a couple more sneaky sessions with Norty Baskins in the
data-processing center, but for most of the time, she told me, she
wandered around the part of the building the Lodge had retained for
its own uses, meeting Psi's of various powers and more or less soaking
up the flavor of life in the Manhattan Chapter. In the evenings we
found a new place for dinner each night, and then came back to her
place or mine to practice with the weights. Pheola would never be the
bruiser that I was--so very few are--but she worked her grip up to
several grams, which is quite respectable.
By that time I felt she was ready for a course of sprouts in the human
heart. I used my drag at the hospital to bring her over with me for a
cram course. We had a plastic model of a heart there, about four times
life size, that was built in demountable layers for lecture and
demonstration purposes. By the end of the second week, Pheola was able
to work her sense of perception around inside my heart, based on what
she had learned from the model, in surprisingly good shape.
"I guess you are in good health, Lefty," she told me late one night in
her apartment. "Your valves feel just like the model, and your
arteries are clear and good. I'm so glad for you."
"Clean living," I assured her. "And careful choice of grandparents.
Now, my fat and sassy friend," I said. "I want some of your
witchcraft." That fat part was something of a joke, for she would
always be lean and rangy. But Pheola had put on a good ten pounds
since we had first met. The weight was going to some rather pleasant
spots to observe, and outside of her mess of buck teeth, she wasn't
turning out to be such a bad-looking chicken. For one thing, she had
race-horse legs, and that's never bad.
"Witchcraft, Lefty?" she said, getting up to go into her kitchen to
pour some more coffee.
"You said Maragon was going to have a heart attack," I reminded her as
I followed her in to where the cooking was done. "O.K., my skinny PC.
How soon? Exactly when?"
[Illustration]
She stopped pouring, set the percolator down and looked at me
solemnly. "In two weeks, about."
"Hm-m-m," I said. "But it won't kill him?"
She picked up her cup and led me back to the sofa, sitting down before
she answered me. "Not exactly," she said. "I don't want to talk about
it."
That's what all the witches say when you try to get them to do any
life-lining. "Have you told me all that you know?" I demanded.
Then she did a funny thing. She got up, went to the chest against the
wall where her purse lay, and got out her glasses, racking them up on
her long thin nose. She looked at me closely. "No, not all I know. And
I don't aim to," she said. She made no move to come back to sit with
me.
"I'm sorry," I said, "but this is Lodge business. I know that you're
not a member yet, but you soon will be, and you might as well learn
right now that you are subject to Lodge discipline. Tell me what you
know."
"No!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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