He said only, "Sure." True, the fetid aroma from the hemp fields was billowing all around us, but he knew as well as I that it was not the smell that was bothering me.
In a few moments, as we were locking the bags of money into the office safe, red-crossed vehicles bearing the Company insignia appeared in the street outside, and medics began tending to the victims. Each one got a shot of something—an antidote to the sleep-gas from the expediters' guns, I guessed—and was loaded unceremoniously into the ambulances.
Hammond appeared beside me. "Ready for business?" he asked. "They'll be back any minute now, the ones that can still walk. We'll be paying off until midnight, the way it looks."
I said, "Sure. That—that gas doesn't hurt them any, does it? I mean, after they go to the hospital they'll be all right, won't they?"
Hammond, twirling a pencil in his fingers, stared broodingly at the motionless body of one policyholder. He was a well-dressed man of fifty or so, with a reddish mustache, unusual in that area, and shattered rimless glasses. Not at all the type I would expect to see in a street fight; probably, I thought, a typical innocent bystander.
Hammond said absently, "Oh, sure. They'll be all right. Never know what hit them." There was a tiny sharp crack and the two halves of the pencil fell to the floor. He looked at it in surprise. "Come on, Wills. Let's get to work."
III
Of course I still believed in the Company.
But all the same, it was the first time since I went to work for the Company that I had even had to ask myself that question.