"
"Why, that's incredible!" the Reverend Zilker burst out, and Joe
Kivelson was saying: "Steve Ravick isn't any woman...."
"Least of all one who died fourteen years ago," Bish agreed. "But the
fingerprints were hers. A pauper, dying in a public ward of a big
hospital. And a man who has to change his identity, and who has small,
woman-sized hands. And a crooked hospital staff surgeon. You get the
picture now?"
"They're doing the same thing on Tom's back, right here," I told Joe.
"Only you can't grow fingerprints by carniculture, the way you can
human tissue for grafting. They had to have palm and finger surfaces
from a pair of real human hands. A pauper, dying in a free-treatment
ward, her body shoved into a mass-energy converter." Then I thought
of something else. "That showoff trick of his, crushing out cigarettes
in his palm," I said.
Bish nodded commendingly. "Exactly. He'd have about as much sensation
in his palms as I'd have wearing thick leather gloves. I'd noticed
that.
"Well, six months going, and a couple of months waiting on reports
from other planets, and six months coming, and so on, it wasn't until
the _Peenemuende_ got in from Terra, the last time, that I got final
confirmation. Dr. Watson, you'll recall."
"Who, you perceived, had been in Afghanistan," I mentioned, trying to
salvage something. Showing off. The one I was trying to impress was
Walt Boyd.
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