I nodded. "It's right there in black and white. They're trying to save his life. He has radiation poisoning. He was a war casualty. It's standard medical practice in cases like his to put them in suspension for a while, until the level of radioactivity dies down and they can safely be revived. Now what do you say?"
She merely stared at me.
I pressed on persuasively: "Rena, I don't mean to call your beliefs superstitions or anything like that. Please understand me. You have your own cultural heritage and—well, I know that it looks as though he is some kind of 'undead,' or however you put it, in your folk stories. I know there are legends of vampires and zombies and so on, but—"
She was actually laughing. "You're thinking of Central Europe, Tom, not Naples. And anyway—" she was laughing only with her eyes now—"I do not believe that the legends say that vampires are produced by intravenous injections of chlorpromazine and pethidine in a lytic solution—which is, I believe, the current technique at the clinics."
I flared peevishly: "Damn it, don't you want him saved?"
The laughter was gone. She gently touched my hand. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be a shrew and that remark wasn't kind. Must we discuss it?"
"Yes!"
"Very well." She faced me, chin out and fierce. "My father does not have radiation poisoning, Tom."
"He does."
"He does not! He is a prisoner, not a patient. He loved Naples. That's why he was put to sleep—for fifty years, or a hundred, until everything he knew and loved grows away from him and nobody cares what he has to say any more. They won't kill him—they don't have to! They just want him out of the way, because he sees the Company for what it is."