All My Sins Remembered Read Online Free PDF Page B

don’t, Isaac. A week’s supply would be plenty. Then you’d be stone… cold… dead.”
    “What?”
    “Obesity is a contraindication; at any rate, I never advise it for people over fifty-five. I never take it myself anymore. It would put too much of a strain on the old ticker.”
    My heart is thirty-two years old
, McGavin thought,
and it’s carrying around an extra fifty kilos. Think, think!
    “Is there some less potent drug that’d help me get around in this gravity? I’ve got a lot of work to do.”
    “Hmm… yes, Pandroxin isn’t nearly as dangerous, but it should give you a measure of comfort.” He reached into a drawer and brought out a prescription pad. He scribbled a short note. “Here you go. But stay away from that Gravitol. It would be pure poison to your system.”
    “Thanks. I’ll get it filled tomorrow.”
    “Tonight, if you want. The pharmacy part of the Company store’s open all night now.
    “So… what brings you back to this outlandish place, Isaac? Investigating the change in the Bruuchian death rate?”
    “Not really, or not primarily. I just came to update my book for a new edition. But that
is
one of the things I’ll want to look into. What do you think of the bismuth theory?”
    Willy waved a hand in the air. “Hogwash. I think it’s overwork, pure and simple. The little bastards work hard all day in the mines: then they go home and knock themselves out carving on that tough wood. You don’t have to look any farther than that.”
    “They always have seemed hell-bent on working themselves to death. The males, anyhow. Somehow that seems too pat, though—the ones who don’t work in the mines are always charging around, too. But they aren’t popping off early.”
    The doctor snorted. “Isaac, go down tomorrow and watch them work the mines. It’s a wonder they even last a week down there. The others look lazy compared to the mine workers.”
    “I’ll do that.” How to get the conversation around to the disappearances? “How about the human side of the colony? Changed much since I left?”
    “Not really. Most of us got weaseled into twelve-or twenty-year contracts; same people around, only ten years older. Costs a year’s salary to get back to Terra, and you forfeit that one-hundred-percent retirement if you break your contract—so most of us are sticking it out. Had four people buy their way out; I don’t think you knew any of them.
    “There’s a new Confederación ambassador—like the three before him, nothing for him to do here. But the law says we’ve got to have one—I understand the Diplomatic Corps considers this the least of all possible worlds; being assigned here is either proof of incompetence or punishment for something. It’s punishment for this one, Stu Fitz-Jones; he had the misfortune of being ambassador to Lamarr’s World when the civil war broke out there. Not his fault, of course, it’s just that nobody understood the natives’ internal politics. But they had to hang it on somebody, so here he is. You ought to drop by and talk to him, he’s an interesting fellow. But go in the morning while he’s still a little bit sober.
    “We’ve had six births, half of them legitimate, and eighteen deaths.” Willy frowned. “Rather, fifteen deaths and three disappearances. All the disappearances in the past year. People have been getting careless. Outside the Company city, you might as well be on another planet. But people go out walking alone; prospecting or just getting away from the rest of us. They break a leg or step in a dustpit and it’s all over. Two of the disappearances were brand-new people, probably Confederación agents”—Otto jumped, that was true—“and the other was old Malatesta, the Supervisor of Mines. I think that’s what brought the two agents. They were supposed to be doing mineralogical research, but they didn’t work for the Company. Who could have paid their way? Nobody else can mine on this planet.”
    “Could be a