Lansing took a plushlined metal case from an inside pocket and removed from it a filled syringe, complete with needle.
"This won't hurt," he said in a sneering imitation of a doctor. "But it'll end your independence like a barbed wire fence."
Ollie began to sweat. "I've heard of those zombie-shots too," he said. He looked wildly around, then controlled himself and gestured almost calmly toward the sky, land, and water visible through the cabin's plastic walls.
"Maybe you can put the needle away for a while," he suggested. "I'm not going to walk out on you right now."
Lansing smiled and complied. "You may keep your health a long time yet," he said urbanely. "If you're sensible, we might even find steady work for you."
Ollie suppressed a shudder.
Lansing tuned in a Western on the physeo. Soon the odor of sage and horse-sweat filled the cabin.
Ollie watched avidly. He hadn't seen enough physeo to be bored with it.
There was a mouth watering camp supper scene, with pleasant odors of broiling beef and burning wood; and a stirring moonlit love scene with a wholesome girl who smelled of soap and starch, and only faintly of cosmetics.
But then came the climactic chase, a combined stampede, stage-coach race, and Indian fight. So much alkali dust poured from the physeo that Ollie got a fit of coughing.