[8]
Docchi slumped in the chair, looking the place over with some satisfaction. The medical inventory was proceeding quite well; one by one each preparation was being identified and the local source checked. It wasn't nearly as bad as he had assumed at first; they were nearly self-sufficient.
One of the checkers came in. Docchi recognized her vaguely; he'd seen her around but that was all. He didn't know who she was nor what she did. Unless he was mistaken her arms and legs were her own, a trifle heavy but shapely enough. If there was anything about her that was camouflaged with plastic tissue it was her face—the sullen glamour was an exaggeration of nature and moreover her expression didn't change at all as she came nearer. There must be something with her face that couldn't be corrected surgically and so she'd overcompensated.
"We've got it all done," she said in a flat throaty voice. Glamour there too, in about the same degree.
"What?" he said. "Oh yes, the check of the biologicals. All identified?" He recalled her name, Maureen something or other.
"Everything that people claimed. There was some that no one knew what it was. Useless I suppose, or worse. It ought to be destroyed."
That was a logical assumption any time save now. Medicine was precious and had to be hoarded even if they didn't know what it was. "Save it, Maureen. Sooner or later someone will be in for it."
"They've all been in. You don't know how they rushed here when they learned the dispensary had been ransacked by the guards." She smiled with faint disdain.
He was beginning to doubt whether her expression came out of the cosmetic kit; it was applied with extraordinary skill if it had, flexible enough to allow her to smile without seeming strained. But if it actually was her face it was monotonous. How long could she keep up the glamour? "Don't be condescending, Maureen. Of course they were concerned. There are people who need those preparations to live comfortably, some in order to live at all."