"Size has nothing to do with it."
"No, my wife has been dead a long time. Months."
"Months?" The doctor snapped those weeks away with his fingers. "It could be years. Centuries. It's all mathematics, my boy. I need only one fragment of the body and my computers can compute what the rest of it was like and recreate it. It's infallible. Naturally there is a degree of risk involved."
"Infallible risk, yes," Linton murmured. "Could you go to work right away?"
"First, I must follow an ancient medical practice. I must bleed you."
Linton grasped the situation immediately. "You mean you want money. You realize I've just got out of an institution...."
"I've often been in institutions myself, for alcoholism, narcotics addiction and more."
"What a wonderful professional career," Linton said, when he couldn't care less.
"Oh, yes—yes, indeed. But I didn't come out broke."
"Neither did I," Linton said hastily. "I invested in shifty stocks, faltering bonds, and while I was away they sank to rock bottom."