Life Blood---XXIII---Page No 76

The monitor's picture was in color, but the predominant hue was brown. Where was this? The OR had to be somewhere in the clinic, but still . . .

The space looked flawlessly sterile, obviously an operating
theater, but it was certainly like none other on earth. The walls
were not white or pale blue; they had the shade of stone and were
decorated with Maya picture writing and bas-reliefs. It was as
though a sacred chapel had been converted into a surgery. I
guessed this was what he meant by "cosmetic changes." A door
was visible on the right side of the screen, and moments later
Alex Goddard strode through, coming in from the hallway.
        So, it must be right next door. God, the place looked ancient
and haunted.

I watched as he walked over to a basin and scrubbed his
hands, then donned a white surgical mask. Next he flipped
various switches on the walls. Finally he put on a second mask
that glistened like some green crystalline material.
        What was that for? Then it hit me. A "jade" mask . . .
        That was something Sarah had mentioned in her ramblings.
 So she must have seen this too. Which meant. . . not everything
she described was just some drug-induced hallucination. The
mask part was very real. . .

Now Marcelina was rolling a steel operating table, bearing a dark-haired Maya woman, through the doorway. The patient
looked like all the others down in Baalum, except that she had a strange expression on her face. She appeared to be tense and very afraid, as her eyes kept darting around the room, then to the "jade" mask Alex Goddard was wearing— most likely papier-
mache covered with shiny green granules.

When she was in position, he walked to the corner and flipped
another switch, whereupon there started the deep droning of a
chant, probably from speakers in the walls, that sounded like
Kekchi Maya.

He bent over her and said something in the same language,
after which Marcelina placed a rubber mask over her nose and
mouth. Her eyes still frightened, the patient uttered a few words,
perhaps a final prayer, then inhaled deeply. As her eyelids

fluttered, he turned and opened what appeared to be some kind of stone tableau, covered by its own bas-relief. It was, I finally
realized, merely painted fiberglass—that was what the whole room was—and inside were CRT monitors designed to display various vital life functions. As Marcelina helped him, he began attaching sensors to the patient's body.

When the woman's eyes had fully closed, he removed his green mask and tossed it into a box.

It's all fake. The room, everything. Just like Baalum. But now he's got Sarah's mind caught in his thrall. I've got to make her understand nothing here is real.

Marcelina was carefully watching the screens, her

apprehension obvious as she fiddled uncertainly with the knobs.
        "Oxygen steady." Her voice was small and uneasy. "EKG
stable."

He immediately stripped away the sheet that had been

covering the patient. Beneath it was an open-sided gown colored in brilliant stripes of red and blue. He pulled it back with absent precision, then turned to Marcelina.

"Shave her and scrub her."

With the woman now under sedation, Marcelina put on her
own surgical garb: She pulled a blue plastic cap over her hair,
then secured a white OR mask over her face. While she was
finishing the preparations, he turned and walked to the far side of
the room, where he abruptly seemed to disappear through the
wall.

What . . . There must be a panel there, a camouflaged door.
        He was gone for a moment, then reappeared carrying a long
 metal tube that looked to be emitting white vapor. He next opened
yet another ersatz stone cabinet to reveal a microscope with a
CRT screen above it. He took out three glass ampules from the
tube—frozen embryos, undoubtedly—and placed them in a
container. When he switched on the microscope, its CRT screen
showed him whatever he needed to know. Interesting. In surgery,
he was coldly efficient, no "human touch." Here he was the
"scientist" Alex Goddard.

Next, Marcelina activated an ultrasound scanner and began
running the wand over the woman's stomach. The screen above
the table showed her uterus and her Fallopian tubes with
flickering clarity.

He'd been readying the embryos, and now he walked over
and carefully inserted a needle into the woman's abdomen—