Pheola had a couple more sneaky sessions with Norty Baskins in the data-processing center, but for most of the time, she told me, she wandered around the part of the building the Lodge had retained for its own uses, meeting Psi's of various powers and more or less soaking up the flavor of life in the Manhattan Chapter. In the evenings we found a new place for dinner each night, and then came back to her place or mine to practice with the weights. Pheola would never be the bruiser that I was—so very few are—but she worked her grip up to several grams, which is quite respectable.
By that time I felt she was ready for a course of sprouts in the human heart. I used my drag at the hospital to bring her over with me for a cram course. We had a plastic model of a heart there, about four times life size, that was built in demountable layers for lecture and demonstration purposes. By the end of the second week, Pheola was able to work her sense of perception around inside my heart, based on what she had learned from the model, in surprisingly good shape.
"I guess you are in good health, Lefty," she told me late one night in her apartment. "Your valves feel just like the model, and your arteries are clear and good. I'm so glad for you."
"Clean living," I assured her. "And careful choice of grandparents. Now, my fat and sassy friend," I said. "I want some of your witchcraft." That fat part was something of a joke, for she would always be lean and rangy. But Pheola had put on a good ten pounds since we had first met. The weight was going to some rather pleasant spots to observe, and outside of her mess of buck teeth, she wasn't turning out to be such a bad-looking chicken. For one thing, she had race-horse legs, and that's never bad.
"Witchcraft, Lefty?" she said, getting up to go into her kitchen to pour some more coffee.
"You said Maragon was going to have a heart attack," I reminded her as I followed her in to where the cooking was done. "O.K., my skinny PC. How soon? Exactly when?"
She stopped pouring, set the percolator down and looked at me solemnly. "In two weeks, about."
"Hm-m-m," I said. "But it won't kill him?"
She picked up her cup and led me back to the sofa, sitting down before she answered me. "Not exactly," she said. "I don't want to talk about it."