Luana Read Online Free PDF

am I, anyway?”
    “Yes, I did say you are all right, and you are. You can’t leave yet because there’s a question or two I’d like to ask you. And you’re in Kenyatta Memorial Hospital. Oh, and before you think to ask, it’s Wednesday.”
    Wednesday. Let’s see . . . Saturday, Sunday . . . Wednesday. “The third, then?”
    Mkristo smiled. “The fourteenth.”
    Barrett swallowed at that. “You mean I’ve been unconscious for two and a half weeks?”
    “Coma’s more like it,” corrected Mkristo, puffing away happily. “Can’t do this unless I’m locked in with a patient. Then they don’t bother me. Administration would kill me. Yes, that’s about right. I had no idea if you’d ever come out of it. Then a few hours ago you started burbling like a hog, and the duty nurse called me.”
    “And if I hadn’t come out of it today?”
    “Then you might have next week. Or next year. Or gotten your gesundheit in the next world. I wonder if you realize how much more likely the latter was? Yours is only the third case of Wanderi ‘jiji’—that’s what we’ve named their poison—that any hospital has gotten its hands on in years. The other two,” he added cheerfully, “never did wake up.”
    Barrett digested this carefully. “Where are my clothes?”
    “In the drawer over there. Pressed and cleaned. Probably cleaner than they’ve been since they were bought, I daresay. I also took the liberty of having your shirt as well as your shoulder sewn up.”
    “Thanks,” said Barrett appreciatively. He did feel fine. Grand, in fact! Yessir, it was time to be off for a vitally needed conference, vital. He experienced only momentary dizziness when he walked to the drawer, and he had to stop and readjust himself only once, when he opened the drawer and bent over it. Then he slipped off the smooth hospital gown and started to dress.
    “I didn’t know they’d developed an antidote to the Wanderi poison.”
    “Now that’s one of the interesting things,” Mkristo began, looking thoughtful. “You see, we haven’t.”
    Barrett paused with his shorts halfway up his legs and looked over at the doctor.
    “Hold on a minute. You say you’ve got no antidote. That stuff’s supposed to be one hundred percent fatal.”
    “Experience proves it,” agreed the doctor. “Nor do I think, from your state and your reactions, that you are a freak immune, either.”
    “Well then, what am I doing,” asked Barrett, “calmly putting my pants on and feeling great?”
    “That’s a very good question,” confessed Mkristo, suddenly staring intently at Barrett. “Suppose you tell me?” Barrett continued to dress, more slowly now, his eyes searching elsewhere.
    “I . . . I can’t. I don’t remember much, and none of it very well.” He paused while slipping the T-shirt over his head, down his arms, and then continued. “I was starting to go under, and then all of a sudden like they seemed to . . . no! No, wait a minute!” he said excitedly. “I do remember! There were two big cats. A panther—black, I’m sure—and a lion, a young male.” He smiled.
    “Must have been a dream, though. They were big. Much too big.”
    “Of course,” agreed Mkristo quietly.
    Barrett started to thread his belt through the pant’s loops. “Oh, and there was a girl, I think. Or was it an ape?” He started filling his pockets. “I honestly don’t remember well at all. One minute there’s a girl, the next a chimp, and then a giant snake, a cobra.” He paused, looked confused, and then brightened. “No, the cobra was separate, and definite.”
    “Cobra?”
    “Yeah . . . a giant, silver cobra, ready to strike. In a mountain valley, at twilight.”
    “That’s all very, very interesting,” Mkristo said appraisingly. “Very interesting. Now let me tell you something,
    “Two weeks ago you appeared at a small village near Mpala. You had two rifles strapped to your back. A poultice of roots and leaves was bound around each of your