Dr. Bloodmoney Read Online Free PDF Page A

George or I grasped how ill he was … he merely seemed depressed.
    Right this moment she could imagine Bruno with a prescription for some pill which stimulated the cortex or suppressed the diencephalon; in any case the modern Western equivalent for contemporary Chinese herbal medicine would be in action, altering the metabolism of Bruno’s brain, clearing away the delusions like so many cobwebs. And all would be well again; she and George and Bruno would be together again with their West Marin Baroque Recorder Consort, playing Bach and Handel in the evenings … it would be like old times. Two wooden Black Forest (genuine) recorders and, then herself at the piano. The house full of baroque music and the smell of home-baked bread, and a bottle of Buena Vista wine from the oldest winery in California…
    On the television screen Walt Dangerfield was wise-cracking in his adult way, a sort of Voltaire and Will Rogers combined. “Oh yeah,” he was saying to a lady reporter who wore a funny large hat. “We expect to uncover a lot of strange life forms on Mars.” And he eyed her hat, as if saying, “There’s one now, I think.” And again, the reporters all laughed. “I think it moved,” Dangerfield said, indicating the hat to his quiet, cool-eyed wife. “It’s coming for us, honey.”
    He really loves her, Bonny realized, watching the two of them. I wonder if George ever felt toward me the way Walt Dangerfield feels toward his wife; I doubt it, frankly. If he did, he never would have allowed me to have those two therapeutic abortions. She felt even more sad, now, and she got up and walked away from the TV set, her back to it.
    They ought to send George to Mars, she thought with bitterness. Or better yet, send us all, George and me and the Dangerfields; George can have an affair with Lydia Dangerfield—if he’s able—and I can bed down with Walt; I’d be a fair to adequate partner in the great adventure. Why not?
    I wish something would happen, she said to herself. I wish Bruno would call and say Doctor Stockstill had cured him, or I wish Dangerfield would suddenly back out of going, or the Chinese would start World War Three, or George would really hand the school board back that awful contract as he’s been saying he’s going to. Something, anyhow. Maybe, she thought, I ought to get out my potter’s wheel and pot; back to so-called creativity, or anal play or whatever it is. I could make a lewd pot. Design it, fire it in Violet Clatt’s kiln, sell it down in San Anselmo at Creative Artworks, Inc., that society ladies’ place that rejected my welded jewelry last year. I know they’d accept a lewd pot if it was a good lewd pot.

    At Modern TV, a small crowd had collected in the front of the store to watch the large stereo color TV set, the Dangerfields’ flight being shown to all Americans everywhere, in their homes and at their places of work. Stuart McConchie stood with his arms folded, back of the crowd, also watching.
    “The ghost of John L. Lewis,” Walt Dangerfield was saying in his dry way, “would appreciate the true meaning of portal to portal pay … if it hadn’t been for him, they’d probably be paying me about five dollars to make this trip, on the grounds that my job doesn’t actually begin until I get there.” He had a sobered expression, now; it was almost time for him and Lydia to enter the cubicle of the ship. “Just remember this … if something happens to us, if we get lost, don’t come out looking for us. Stay home and I’m sure Lydia and I will turn up somewhere.”
    “Good luck,” the reporters were murmuring, as officials and technicians of NASA appeared and began bundling the Dangerfields off, out of view of the TV cameras.
    “Won’t be long,” Stuart said to Lightheiser, who now stood beside him, also watching.
    “He’s a sap to go,” Lightheiser said, chewing on a toothpick. “He’ll never come back; they make no bones about that.”
    “Why should he want to come