Egan looked at him for several moments, silent, then she nodded. She was beginning to understand, she thought. His grim harshness was real, but it concealed equally real concern for the woman he represented. "As you say, Captain. Be sure Captain Cortin will have the best care I can give her."
This time Odeon stood to bow and answer, formally. "My thanks, Doctor Egan. When may I see her?"
"Tomorrow afternoon," Egan replied. "I have her scheduled for surgery—whichever procedure you decided on—at 0800. I assure you she will be given only those drugs which are absolutely necessary."
"My thanks again, Doctor." Odeon gave her a sketchy salute. "If you'll excuse me, I have to pick up some forms." At her nod he left, grateful for her last assurance. It was almost a hundred years since the Final War—not the nuclear holocaust the prewars had dreaded; there had been only a few atomics used, and most of those were relatively clean neutron bombs. The primary weapons had been biological; it was their devastation that had wiped out over fifty percent of the Kingdoms' population, and the passage of time hadn't removed the remainder's sudden overwhelming aversion to "unnatural substances" imposed on the body. Drugs were used, sparingly, by doctors—and not so sparingly by Enforcement Service Inquisitors.
The next morning Odeon woke at dawn as he usually did, but instead of rising at once, he rolled onto his back and laced hands behind his head.
Joanie. She hadn't been beautiful when he first met her, so she never had been. That suited him well enough; he didn't like the prewar standard of beauty that still prevailed in many places. Beauties were too fragile, didn't have the strength of a real woman the way Joanie did. Tall skinniness was fine in a paid-woman, but Joanie's compactness was better. Stronger and more suitable for an Enforcement officer or a mother, anyway— He pushed that thought aside. Joanie might be able to stay in Enforcement, but she'd never be a mother.
He tried to remember her as she had been, 165 centimeters and maybe 59 kilos, mostly muscle, of vigorous womanhood. But it'd hurt to see her lying broken and bloody on the hospital floor, her short dark hair stiff with drying blood; he couldn't get that image out of his mind, so he made himself study it instead, trying to bring out anything he hadn't consciously noted then.
There wasn't much. The hospital hadn't been all that different from other Brothers of Freedom raid points, except in being a hospital, its occupants even more helpless than most. The only oddity was that they hadn't made sure of the woman they'd marked. Possibly Rascal and his locals had arrived before they were able to.
Odeon grinned wolfishly at that thought. Joanie was alive, and she wanted revenge. That kind of personal motivation wasn't really necessary, but in going after terrorists like the Brothers it didn't hurt; some of the things necessary in anti-terrorist sweeps were hard to stomach. And the Brothers were the worst of the terrorists, as well as the most wide-spread; they had units in every one of the Systems, while most groups were restricted to one or two.