OCR Text |
Show 75 dent was also said to be fat and bald, with a hearing aid and a right hand disfigured from a planing mill accident in his youth. Lorin couldn't get a good look at the man's right hand without appearing obvious. He looked a little like a derelict, but the derelicts Lorin had seen were rarely this far from the middle of town, and a derelict couldn't have gotten into the factory grounds. Only employees had keys to the office building across the parking lot, and the only other access to the machine shop was a cyclone gate that Lorin had carefully locked after driving through it himself tonight. "I don't guess you have group hospital insurance in case you started spitting blood and had to go to the hospital," the man said. "I guess you've thought about that." "No, but I don't think it's that serious." Lorin tried to breathe shallowly. "Listen, they told me to make sure nobody came out here that didn't work here." "What'11 you do if it is? Bleed your parents white, probably. Let them hook you up to a respirator with a needle in your arm while your father kills himself trying to pay the bill." "It's just a cold," Lorin said. "Or they'll have to put you in the County where they can roll you into the basement and forget you're there. You can freeze to death or get eaten by rats providing you don't cough your guts all over the wall first. Listen, I haven't been sick a day in my life and I'm a damn sight older than I look, but if I was I'd sleep under a damn bus stop in the rain before I'd let them put me in the County. You haven't got any money of your own, I suppose. They can't be paying you much out here." It occurred to Lorin that the president might be planting a surrogate |