Free The Dancers of Noyo by Margaret St. Clair

do."
     
                  He pulled the cork from the bottle. Under Bennet's direction, he got a couple of glasses from the cupboard. He poured, his back to Bennet. "Here," he said. He handed him one of the glasses. "... To your happiness."
     
                  They drank. "Yes, I am happy," Bennet replied musingly. "I was never so happy in my life as I am now. I didn't feel like this when I had bone-melt before. I had a low fever, and I was badly frightened. But this time I'm happy. It doesn't matter that it's only going to last three days."
     
                  "You're sure about the timing?" O'Hare asked. "You had an arrest of the disease before."
     
                  "Yes, I'm sure. There's too much organic damage by now for me to recover. And I don't want to recover, anyhow. I'm too happy this way."
     
                  "So you're beyond any fear of death," O'Hare said. "Could anything—I don't know quite how to put it — break your mood?"
     
                  "Certainly. Ugly surroundings. Any sort of unpleasantness or struggle. Anger above all. Anger would probably cut short zum of my precious days ... This wine's not zo good as I remembered it."
     
                  "Sorry," O'Hare said. "Perhaps it gets better toward the bottom of the bottle. They often do." He poured more wine into Bennet's glass.
     
                  Bennet drank. O'Hare was watching him steadily. "Why're you looking at me zo ?" he asked pettishly. "You ought to go 'way."
     
                  "I will later. Not just now," O'Hare said.
     
                  "Not ...? I'm getting sleepy."
     
                  "Of course, of course," O'Hare answered soothingly.
     
                  "Of course?" Bennet stared at the other man, fingering his lips. He tried to get up from his chair. "You've fooled me," he said with weak passion. "The wine was doped. You —"
     
                  "What else could I do?" O'Hare answered. "I wanted the tissue sample. It won't hurt you any. You'll only be out six or eight hours."
     
                  "Six or eight hours! Half a day! So much of my precious time!" Bennet was torn between slumber, rage, and weeping. He tried to tell himself that he would waken again, that he would still have two and a half days left of his precious dying.
     
                  In vain, in vain. Rage swamped him, and the more he tried to fight it off, the more the crack in his euphoria widened. Terror was pouring in, the black terror of the icy waters of death.
     
                  O'Hare bent over him. With his last strength, Bennet tried to spit in his face.
     
    -
     

Chapter VII
     
                  My chest felt damp. I tried to raise my hand to blot at it, and couldn't. I was bound too tightly in the funeral cerements. Well, the grave is a chrysalis for the moth of immortal life. No wonder I was held fast.
     
                  The wetness kept on. I was still Bennet, but I managed to get one eye open. Gift-of-God was bending over me, weeping bitterly. Her wretched little face looked like dried orange peel, but the water of grief was dripping off it. "Don't be dead, Tham ," she was saying, " pleathe , pleathe , Tham , don't be dead! I can't thtand it if you're dead."
     
                  " ... Not," I managed. My tongue was dry and thick in my mouth.
     
                  Her small rough face lit up. " Ooooh ," she said, "you're really OK?" She smiled uncertainly, sniffled, and wiped her nose on the back of her wrist.
     
                  I managed an assenting, "Gluck," in the back of my throat.
     
                  "Then lithen , Tham . They'll be here in a minute to tetht you. Pretend to be thtoned . Don't jump or let on when they thtick you. You jutht be thonzked . Be thtoned