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'The zoo is out. That's definite.'
`All right, dear. But why are you worried about Foyle being recaptured? It won't have anything to do
with you.'
`Why should you worry about me worrying? I'm asking you to do a job. I'm paying for the job.'
`It'll be expensive, dear, and I'm fond of you. I'm trying to save you money.' `No you're not.'
`Then I'm curious.'
`Then let's say I'm grateful. He helped me; now I'm helping him.'
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Baker smiled cynically. `Then let's help him by giving him a brand new face.'
`No.'
`I thought so. You want his face cleaned up because you're interested in his face.'
`Damn you, Baker, will you do the job or not?'
`It'll cost five thousand.'
`Break that down.'
'A thousand to synthesize the acid. Three thousand for the surgery. And one thousand for -'
`Your curiosity?'
`No, dear.' he smiled again.
`A thousand for the anaesthetist.'
`Why anaesthesia?' Baker reopened the ancient text.
`It looks like a painful operation. You know how they tattoo? They take a needle, dip it in dye, and
hammer it into the skin. To bleach that dye out I'll have to go over his face with a needle, pore by pore,
and hammer in the Indigotin disulphonic. It'll hurt.'
Jisbella's eyes flashed. `Can you do it without the dope?'
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`I can, dear, but Foyle -'
`To hell with Foyle. I'm paying four thousand. No dope, Baker. Let Foyle suffer.'
`Jiz! You don't know what you're letting him in for.'
`I know. Let him suffer.' She laughed so furiously that she startled Baker. `Let his face make him suffer
too.'
Baker's Freak Factory occupied a five-story plant behind the Trenton Rocket pits that had once been an
A.C.W. manufactory of subway cars before jaunting ended the need for urban subways. The rear
windows looked out on the circular mouths of the pits thrusting their anti-grav beams upward, and
Baker's patients could amuse themselves watching the spaceships riding silently up and down the beams,
their portholes blazing, recognition signals blinking, their hulls rippling with St Elmo's fire as the
atmosphere carried off the electrostatic charges built up in outer space.
The basement floor of the factory contained Baker's zoo of anatomical curiosities, natural freaks and
monsters bought, hired, kidnapped, abducted. Baker, like the rest of his world, was passionately
devoted to these unfortunate creatures and spent long hours with them, drinking in the spectacle of their
distortions the way other men saturated themselves with the beauty of art. The middle floors of the plant
contained bedrooms for post-operative patients, laboratories, staff-rooms and kitchens. The top floor
contained the operating theatres.
In one of the latter, a small room usually used for retinal experiments, Baker was at work on Foyle's
face. Under a harsh battery of lamps, he bent over the operating-table working meticulously with a small
steel hammer and a platinum needle. Baker was following the pattern of the old tattooing on Foyle's face,
searching out each minute scar in the skin, and driving the needle into it. Foyle's head was gripped in a
clamp, but his body was unstrapped. His muscles writhed at each tap of the hammer but he never moved
his body. He gripped the sides of the operating-table.
`Control,' he said through his teeth. `You wanted me to learn control, Jiz. I'm practicing.' He winced.
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`Don't move,' Baker ordered.
`I'm playing it for laughs.'
`You're doing all right, son,' Sam Quatt said, looking sick. He glanced sidelong at Jisbella's furious face.
`What do you say, Jiz?'
'He's learning.'
Baker continued dipping and hammering the needle.
`Listen, Sam,' Foyle mumbled, barely audible. `Jiz told me you own a private ship. Crime pays, huh?'
`Yeah. Crime pays. I got a little four-man job. Twin-jet. Kind they call a Saturn Weekender.'
`Why Saturn Weekender?'
`Because a weekend on Saturn would last ninety days. She can carry food and fuel for three months.'
'Just right for me,' Foyle muttered. He writhed and controlled himself. `Sam, I want to rent your ship.'
`What for?' `Something hot.'
`Legitimate?'
`No.'
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`Then it's not for me, son. I've lost my nerve. Jaunting the circuit with you, one step ahead of the cops,
showed me that. I've retired for keeps. All I want is peace.'
'I'll pay fifty thousand. Don't you want fifty thousand? You could spend Sundays counting it.' The needle
hammered remorselessly. Foyle's body was twitching at each impact
`I already got fifty thousand. I get ten times that in cash in a bank in Vienna,' Quatt reached into his
pocket and took out a ring of glittering radioactive keys. `Here's the key for the bank. This is the key to
my place in Joburg. Twenty rooms; twenty acres. This here's the key to my Weekender in Montauk.
You ain't temptin' me, son. I quit while I was ahead. I'm jaunting back to Joburg and live happy for the
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