"Pain does not matter now," said Konrad Blutsturz, and his face squeezed up tightly as Ilsa forced the jutting implant into the socket receiver. She threw the tiny switch that powered the arm.
The legs already hummed with that quiet power that caused the short hairs along her arms to rise.
"You're all hooked up," Ilsa said, stepping back. "Are you sure you want to go through with this?"
"Smith will not waste time," said Konracl Blutsturz, hoisting his upper body to a sitting position. His shoulder ached where the implant stressed the bone. "He could be here at any hour. I must be ready for him."
With another effort, he curled the legs, stiff like the forelimbs of a praying mantis, and climbed upright. On his feet, he swayed drunkenly.
"You don't look too steady." Ilsa said doubtfully. "The stabilizers will steady me. Quickly, the blade."
"Here," said Ilsa, carefully carrying the curved sickle with the edge pointed away from her. Konrad Blutsturz held his arm out while she hooked it up.
"I hope it holds," she said.
With his good hand, Konrad Blutsturz forced the blade into the recess of his titanium forearm. It clicked into place. And held.
"Good," he said.
Ilsa looked doubtful. "I still think we could have killed him at Folcroft."
"No. This is better. There is his fear for the safety of his wife. This will be more satisfying. Besides, at Folcroft he had many guards at his command. Here he will have no one."
"Don't you think you should put something on? I mean, your, um, thing is hanging out and everything."
"I am proud of my new body, Ilsa."
"Is it real? I mean, can it-"
"Can it do everything a real one can?" said Konrad Blutsturz. "It is a rubber prosthesis. I can relieve myself standing up now, not sitting like a woman. It is also inflatable,"
"Will it, like, feel like a real one?" Ilsa asked. She couldn't take her eyes off it.
"What difference does it make, my Ilsa?" he asked, advancing on her. "You have never felt a real one inside you."
Ilsa shrank back to the wall of the cabin. The raucous cries of Everglades birds echoed eerily in the swamp outside. The muggy heat filtered in through the windows, which had been sealed for many months.
"Shouldn't we wait?" asked Ilsa in a scared voice. "I mean, I want to and all. You know I do. But right now? You're still weak."
"I have ached for you, Ilsa," said Konrad Blutsturz, crowding her against the wall. "Ever since you were a child, I have ached for you, your smooth skin, your youthful flesh."
"My parents didn't like you."
"They were in my way. Now they are in the past."
"In your way! What do you mean?"
"Foolish girl. They were not murdered by others. I eliminated them. Because I wanted you, because I needed you."
"You!" Ilsa cried, shocked. And even before the tears began, she started to scream and pound her small fists against the bare, scarred chest of the man she had believed in for so many years. "You lied to me! You killed them. Not the Jews, not Smith, you!"
Ilsa stopped screaming when the blue hand took her by the throat and began to squeeze.
When she slipped to the floor, Konrad Blutsturz looked at her still form for a long moment of regret. "Ilsa," he whispered. "I did not mean to hurt you." When she did not answer, he began to inflate himself. Death would not rob him of his prize.
Dr. Harold W. Smith cut power to the airboat. There was an islet ahead, tangled with mangrove growth. The water split in two directions around it. He did not know which way to go.
Smith had rented the boat in Flamingo and sent it across a flat expanse of swamp grass until he had reached the mangrove swamp. The air was heavy, and alligators sunned themselves in the black mire at the edge of the increasing number of islands covered with mangrove and moss-draped trees. Despite the climate, Smith still wore his gray suit, his Dartmouth tie knotted tight at the throat. A briefcase lay at his feet.
Smith chose right and kicked on the great propelling fan which whirred inside a protective cage directly behind the pilot's seat.
A hundred yards ahead, Smith saw the cabin. It looked deserted. Smith cut power and let the flatbottomed boat glide to the hump of an island. An egret flashed by through the close dark trees.
From out of the silent swamp came a voice. A now-familiar voice. Smith tensed.
"There have been four great moments in my life, Dr. Smith," the voice called out.
Smith did not reach for the automatic in his shoulder holster. He did not want to betray the fact that he was armed. Not yet.
"The first great moment was in Berlin, when Hitler himself selected me for the work in America," the voice called.
Smith looked about carefully. The growth was thick. The voice didn't seem to be coming from the cabin. "The second great moment was when I first sat in a wheelchair. You might think, Harold W. Smith, that sitting in a wheelchair is not a moment of celebration, but compared with what I had been through, a wheelchair was glory."
"I prefer to see who I'm speaking to," said Harold Smith.
"The third great moment was achieved when I stood erect for the first time in forty years," the voice of Konrad Blutsturz went on. "But you will see what you have wrought soon enough, Smith."
"Where is my wife?" Smith demanded. He kept his voice under control. But he did not feel under control. He felt rage. "You offered me the chance to say goodbye to her. I claim that right."
"And the fourth great moment lies just before me. It is the instant when I take your throat in my hard left hand and squeeze the life from it. I hope it is a long moment for I have waited very long for it."
A figure emerged from the growth. Smith saw Konrad Blutsturz. His left arm gleamed unnaturally, and as Smith watched, a curved blade of metal snapped out; its glittering blade ran along the back of the blue-colored hand, protruding in a wicked point past the pointed metal fingertips.
Cyborg, thought Smith. Was it possible?
Konra, Blutsturz crushed his way to the mossy bank, and Smith watched the shiny artificial legs sink into the spongy earth almost up to the ankles. And he knew. Somehow, it all linked together, Blutsturz, the nebulizer and Remo and Chiun.
But there was no time for Smith's logical mind to connect all the pieces together, because suddenly Konrad Blutsturz was growing.
Tiny whirrings came from the man-machine's bionic knees. They spun, cranking out unfolding panels of titanium and pushing the leg sections upward.
When Konrad Blutsturz had gained two feet of height, he stepped into the still waters and advanced on Smith's boat like a metallic travesty of a stork.
"My wife," Smith said.
"You will never see her again," said Konrad Blutsturz. And he bared his teeth. It was not a grin. It was something that mixed pleasure and pain.