chapter Eight

He awoke to the sound of a door gently closing. He opened his eyes but the room was pitch black; apparently it was the middle of the night. He was about to speak, when he heard an odd noise; scrape clump, scrape clump. The noise was moving towards him. It stopped at the foot of his bed.

His hand was silently searching for the cord to the light‑switch, which he remembered hung somewhere near the left hand side of the bed. He found it and gave it a tug downwards.

A blaze of light suddenly filled the room, and there, standing at the end of the bed, was his assassin.

The assassin was grinning fiendishly and clutching a gun in his right hand. With his left he pointed in a slow, exaggerated manner to his left leg, which was covered in plaster.

Some primordial instinct told Andrew to throw the nearest movable object, hard and fast at the assassin. It is unfortunate that this particular primordial defence mechanism was unable to distinguish between an ideal projectile and an Adviser.

"No!" screamed the Adviser as it was plucked from its column. "Doooooooonnnnnn'ttttt," it pleaded, belatedly, during its short flight between Andrew's hand and the assassin's forehead. The next noises it made were not vocalized. There was a heavy slap and a crack as it struck the assassin's brow, then there was a double clatter as the Adviser, now in two parts, landed on the linoleum floor.

The assassin spent a few moments teetering, then followed the Adviser's example and slumped to the ground at the end of the bed.

Andrew was suffering from conflicting emotions. On the one hand it was a remarkably good shot - in other circumstances he would certainly be one coconut richer by now - , on the other hand, given the choice of missiles (ie telephone, water jug, glass, bed‑pan and the Adviser) he had selected the only one which had claimed to be sentient. It was definitely not the best way to treat your only friend. But if, as Andrew suspected, the Adviser was nothing more than a sophisticated bugging device, then what he had done was a master stroke. However, the overwhelming emotion was one of guilt. He and the Adviser had been through a lot together, this was no way to treat the person, or even thing, which had saved him from being converted into a live‑in telephonist.

He tried to force these less immediate problems from his mind and concentrate on his present situation, which, although it had improved tremendously within the last sixty seconds, would still have to be described as, at best, tricky. Something had to be done with the assassin before he had time to recover.

Andrew eased himself off the bed and, using it for support, managed to drag himself to where the assassin had fallen. The gun was lying on the floor, but Andrew could not reach it while he was standing up. He let his legs slide out, away from the bed, and, using his arms, lowered himself to the ground.

"Ah there you are! You bastard," it was part of the Adviser, which had previously been hidden underneath the bed. "What kind of fart‑assed trick was that? Jesus Christ, I can't believe that even you could be such a shit‑wit. Well, don't just lie there like a frigging corpse, pick me naffing‑well up and see if there's any sodding damage."

Andrew reached under the bed and withdrew the object which had been abusing him. Half of the sphere was still covered in the matt black material, which Andrew could now see was merely a thin metal casing. The other hemisphere was a tangled mass of electronic components which curved to follow the contours of a sphere. Embedded amongst the intricate circuitry was a row of knobs which looked like the tuners on a television set.

"Look, I'm really sorry about throwing you like that. It was a purely automatic reaction. It even took me by surprise. I had no idea I was such a good shot. I can assure you it was nothing personal so calm down, and stop being so foul‑mouthed," said Andrew trying to sound sincere.

"Foul‑bloody‑mouthed?" said the remains of the Adviser.

"Yes, you keep swearing, every other word in fact. I know you're upset, and justifiably so, but this assassin could come to at any second, so I need you thinking clearly and not emotionally."

"You must have buggered up the setting of my freaking expletive control when you pissing‑well threw me. It's the seventh knob from the right, dick‑head."

Andrew selected the seventh knob and turned it slightly to the left, "How's that?"

"Wrong FUCKING way. You moronic-"

Andrew quickly turned the button to the right.

"Female genital," completed the Adviser.

Andrew slotted the remains of the Adviser back on to its column, picked up the gun and stuffed it into the pocket of his pyjamas. He reached up to the hand rail on the end of the bed and with great effort pulled himself back onto the bed.

He took the gun from his pocket and stared at it, wondering at first if he had the guts to use it, and then if he knew how to use it. He vaguely remembered something about safety catches - and wasn't there something which had to be cocked? His only experience with firearms came via the television. From that, he had concluded that it was simply a matter of pointing the gun and pulling the trigger. Of course the success of your shot depended largely on what colour hat you were wearing at the time. For a bad guy to score a hit, he had to aim at his target's back, whereas a good guy didn't have to trouble himself with aiming at all.

"Will this fire if I pull the trigger?" asked Andrew.

"Put that away, and then press the nurse's call button," ordered the Adviser.

"But what if he wakes up?" said Andrew regarding the assassin uneasily.

"Then you'll have to use the gun, but you mustn't let anyone see you with it. Victims aren't allowed to be armed. If you're caught, you'll have to forfeit another turn at being assassin."

Andrew placed the gun on his lap under the bed‑clothes. He reached up to the call button on the wall behind him, and pushed it urgently three times.

Five minutes later the phone rang, Andrew picked up the receiver and held it to his ear.

"Hello. Room 227?" asked a sleepy female voice.

"Uh, I don't know," said Andrew.

"Did you push your button?" said the sleepy, now-irritated female voice.

"Yes I did," admitted Andrew.

"Then you're in room 227, okay?"

"Look, I don't care what bloody room I'm in. I have an emergency here, a matter of life and death. So I suggest you get down here pretty damn quick," said Andrew with a mixture of frustration and desperation in his voice.

"What is the nature of the emergency?" said the unruffled voice on the phone.

"There is a man here trying to kill me!" shrieked Andrew.

"Is he your assassin?"

"Well, yes but-"

"I cannot interfere in Assassin/Victim disputes."

"But he's a sick man; he should be in bed," prompted the Adviser.

Andrew was about to repeat this down the phone when he was interrupted by the nurse.

"Well, in that case ... Is he one of our patients?"

"Oh, yes, definitely."

"All right, then. I'll send someone down to take him back to his room," said the nurse and hung up.

"She heard what you said," said Andrew to the Adviser.

"Yes, I wonder what other damage you've caused," said the Adviser ominously.

At that moment, the assassin began to recover. At first he lay on the ground groaning, while Andrew sat bolt upright, willing the nurse to arrive and clutching the gun under the sheets. After a few seconds the assassin pulled himself to his feet using the end of the bed as Andrew had done. He stood there swaying as if unsure of his balance and then shook his head to pull himself together. He began looking around the floor of the room for the gun. Once he had convinced himself that it was not there he turned to Andrew and said with pleasure, "So you've got the gun, have you? Now you know what that means, don't you?"

"Yes," said Andrew forcefully, "it means that now I'm the assassin." He pulled the gun from under the bed‑clothes and directed it at the assassin's chest.

"No, wait!" cried the assassin. "That's not true; you don't become the assassin until tomorrow, twenty‑four hours after my attempt has failed."

"He's lying - ignore him," said the Adviser.

"Hey, what the hell? I can hear your Adviser! You must have damaged it - don't believe it," said the assassin, his eyes wide with fear.

"Who would you believe - your Adviser or your victim?" said Andrew, raising the gun so that he could look down the sights.

The assassin made a dive for the door and ran straight into the nurse who had just arrived. They fell in a heap on the floor, but not before the nurse had seen the gun in Andrew's hand.

"Third time lucky!" shouted the Adviser, as the nurse led the assassin away down the corridor.

"Don't encourage him," rebuked Andrew.

"You've got to give him his due; he's keen. Not many people would have deliberately broken their own leg. He must really hate you."

"It's not me he hates, it's the person my badge represents, that's who he's trying to kill. Hey, just a moment, doesn't that mean that now my badge is changing, he'll have to find a new victim?"

"No, but it was a nice try. You see the badges work automatically, but the whole Assassin/Victim scheme is organized by the Department of Life and Death. There would be far too much paper work if they had to reassign the roles every time a badge changed. And, besides, the act of changing from a victim to an assassin is sometimes sufficient to change a person's personality, and hence their badge."

"Pity," said Andrew, "were you lying about me being allowed to shoot that guy?"

"Yes."

"You've been doing that a lot recently. Still, I don't think I could have killed him anyway. I think I'm beginning to like him."

"Are you serious? You're talking about a guy who wants to kill you so badly that he's willing to break his own leg rather than delay it for a week!"

"It was just a joke. Where's your sense of humour?"

"Probably stuck in the other half of my body, so, if you want to hear me laughing, I suggest you find it!" said the Adviser gruffly.

"Oh yes, sorry, I'd forgotten all about it."

"You needn't bother if you're planning on using me for your shot‑putt practice again," growled the Adviser.

"Look, I really am sorry, I promise it won't happen again. Besides, there was no harm done. In fact, I've done you a favour - I've dramatically increased your audience."

"Yes that's true," said the Adviser thoughtfully.

After crawling around the floor for ten minutes, Andrew managed to find the other half of the Adviser's casing. He was back on the bed trying to decide how to fit it together again when an idea struck him.

"So the seventh knob controls the way you talk? What do the other nine do?"

"Don't you dare touch those," gasped the Adviser. "If you do, I'll ... I'll never talk to you again!"

"Oh come on, I swear I'll put them all back the way they were," egged Andrew.

"I'm serious about this, Andrew. If you have any gratitude, any gratitude at all, for all the times I've saved your life, you'll just put the back on me and forget the whole idea," said the Adviser, clearly very upset.

"Oh, all right," said Andrew grudgingly, "but you're no fun. I really don't see what harm it could do."

"No, there are a lot of things you don't see," snapped the Adviser.

"You could be right there. One of them is, what the hell are we going to do now?" said Andrew as he clipped the Adviser together.

"In the morning we are going to check into another hospital, one which doesn't have your assassin staying two doors down the corridor. But, in the meantime, we are going to get some sleep."

"We?"

"Sleep is far more than physical rest, you know. The brain uses the time to review the day's events. It decides what information should be kept indefinitely, and what will be needed only in the near future. It does a whole pile of statistical analysis. How often has this event happened before? Is it frequent enough to need an automatic response? If it already has an automatic response, is this response adequate, et cetera, et cetera. And after all that, if it has time, it takes a look at any unresolved problems. So you see, even I, a humble electronic device, can benefit from the effects of a good night's slumber."

Unfortunately Andrew missed most of those points - since his brain was already actively involved in doing them.

"Didn't even turn the bloody light off!" grumbled the Adviser.

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