When Grace still looked uneasily convinced, Bodger laid his hand atop hers on the coverlet, and said, "There's too much detail to it to explain fully; Lloyd, if he's quizzed the Brain as I told him, will fill you in. The fact of the matter is—and you can believe this or not, Grace—my insides are rotten with radiation. The iron in my blood, the insulin, the lymph—everything is highly Roentgenic. And it's perfectly safe unless I get riled, and my adrenals start my system spoiling for a fight. The increased flow of everything, the resultant tension—Well, it lets the deadly parts of my system cover more ground, irradiate more cells at a higher rate than the cells can throw the radiation off, and even by the time I get the gel down—it's pretty nauseating stuff to take—another few inches of my innards are poisoned. If enough of me gets it—I have had it."
"How can you be so calm?"
Bodger smiled at her, quite fondly, and patted her hand. "Because I'm old, Grace. Older than you might suspect. I've lived in the Hive for more years than I care to think about. The Hive is good, but as of not so many years back, it has served its purpose. Listen—If anything goes wrong, and I do poison myself with my own rage, there's something you should know."
"Please, Mr. Bodger, I'm sure you'll be fine if you just—"
"I'm not so sure," he interrupted. "And Lloyd will need one point of information that only I can give him. I'll tell it to you, just in case." He held up his hand to stop any further disclaimers from Grace, and said, "Tell him that the Plan is in the hospital, the main hospital. I put it there for safekeeping a long, long time ago. It would become radioactive, of course, but the Plan was useless until all radiation outside the Hive was gone, anyhow. Besides, radiation preserves things; I'm proof of that. Tell him it's in the safe in the administrator's office. The combination's the same as Lloyd's Voteplate number. I saw to that when it was issued."
"Mr. Bodger—!" Grace said, nearly in tears. "I don't understand any of this! What Plan!? What radiation outside the Hive!? It doesn't make sense—"
"Lloyd will understand."
"But even if he does," she said, "he doesn't have his Voteplate anymore...."
"Doesn't?" Bodger said, frowning, then his face cleared. "Even so, he must know the number by heart, I should think. Anyway, it's in the files in my office.... But I don't quite understand—Why doesn't he have it? He had it when I passed out, didn't he?"