The flesh in the furnace

ritual, and fell into bed with his clothes on. There was a faint smell of urine, and he remembered his soiled pants. But he was too tired to get up and drop them into the sonic cleaner in the wall. The smell and his exhaustion, coupled with his inability to join the puppets or Pertos made him feel more lonely and desperate than he had ever felt before in his life. Even so, he slept.
        
        Jenny was laughing, dodging from tree to tree. She wore a slouch hat and carried a gun made of plastic that shot sponge pellets at him. She was the spy, she said, though he did not know what a spy was. It was his job, she said, to capture her.
        They were running, laughing, hiding from each other, jumping out to scare each other, running more.
        And then…
        And then he caught her, caught the spy, before she could shoot him, like he was supposed to do…
        Only… only she had bled… and died… shooting him with those sponge-rubber pellets… alternately begging for help… get help… run for help… tell them… about help..
        But he couldn't do it. He was scared of what they would do to him. Other spies might come and try to kill him for getting their spy.
        And then she was quiet, dead. And he got rid of her and went home and when they asked him where she was, where the spy was, he told them a story, because there had to be a story, but it was a broken story and he knew they wouldn't believe him, would send spies… and he would be killed and would bleed like Jenny and would… would… die…
        He woke up to some loud noise. He sat up after a while, after the dream was all gone, and he listened to see if he could hear it again. He could not. He went to sleep again.
        In the morning, when be opened his door, he found Pertos Godelhausser lying on the corridor floor, all bloody and unconscious. Down the hall there was a trail of blood to show how the old man had crawled all this way for help. Sebastian felt a momentary wash of overwhelming incompetency that he had not provided help. He was desperately sorting through his shattered mind for a plan, for something to do with the body, when Pertos raised his head and asked for help. He wasn't dead yet! Sebastian bent to the old man. "What?"
        "My room. The autodoc. I couldn't get into it myself."
        Sebastian did not understand what the autodoc was until Pertos explained it was the same machine that had fixed his broken leg. And since the idiot remembered that so clearly, he could now operate, if only by routine. `With Pertos directing him, he managed to get the retreival tray out of the autodoc, and he lifted Pertos onto it with ease. After an embarrassing and interminable clumsiness, he worked the security belt through its clamps across the puppet master's chest. He shoved the tray into the wall slot from which he had withdrawn it. The machine swallowed Pertos smoothly and began making diagnostic sounds as if it were digesting him.
        Exhausted, the idiot sank into a chair and watched the wall, unable to understand why Pertos should be bloody and what the old man might have done to cause such a disaster.
        After a while, he ate.
        He thought about Bitty Belina.
        For a time, he almost forgot that the puppet master was in the autodoc. When be rose to go look for Pertos, he remembered and felt sheepish and sat down to wait a while longer.
        Time seemed to pass slowly.
        In the adjoining room, puppets were giggling…
        
        Pertos had a huge appetite when he was released by the computerized physician some four hours later. He was healed; the scars were gone. He had lost six pounds as the sutodoc had forced his body to contribute to the accelerated healing processes by burning some of its stored fat. He ordered several steaming meals from the central grocery delivery bank, and the plastic containers of hot food slipped from the pneumatic tubes into the delivery receptacle. He spread these out on the table, opened them and devoured the contents with an enthusiasm he felt for few things these days.
        Sebastian watched him, curious but asking no questions.
        "Better," Pertos said when he had finished half the food, before him and was toying with his glass of wine now more than with fork and spoon.
        "What?" Sebastian asked, taking the old man's breach of silence as a cue for his own inquisitiveness.
        "Heritage Leaguers. They came on me by