I looked down at the itching finger and sent my perception into it with as much concentration as I could.
My thumbnail had lifted a tiny circle no larger than the head of a pin. Blood was oozing from beneath the lifted rim, and I nervously picked off the tiny patch of hard, hard flesh and watched the surface blood well out into a tiny droplet. My perception told me the truth: It was Mekstrom's Disease and not a doubt. The Immune had caught it!
The bailiff tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Come along, Cornell!"
And I was going to have ninety days to watch that patch grow at the inexorable rate of one sixty-fourth of an inch per hour!
XVI
The bailiff repeated, "Come along, Cornell." Then he added sourly, "Or I'll have to slip the cuffs on you."
I turned with a helpless shrug. I'd tried to lick 'em and I'd tried to join 'em and I'd failed both. Then, as of this instant when I might have been able to go join 'em, I was headed for the wrong side as soon as I opened my big yap. And if I didn't yelp, I was a dead one anyway. Sooner or later someone in the local jug would latch on to my condition and pack me off to Scholar Phelps' Medical Center.
Once more I was in a situation where all I could do was to play it by ear, wait for a break, and see if I could make something out of it.
But before I could take more than a step or two toward the big door, someone in the back of the courtroom called out: