As Taen stripped off his filthy robes, The Assassin croaked: "It had better take much less. I have not that many men to throw away."
He snarled as Taen in his haste nicked his blue-veined skull with the razor. And he muttered with senile detachment as he was swabbed with K2X, sheeted and strapped down upon the table. His black eye cavities turned with suspicion, as though they could see, when Jeff's damp hands squeaked into the rubber gloves.
"May the gods lean over your shoulder, sire," Taen whispered.
The two stepped into the glare of germicidal lamps, steel instruments, steel table, glinting knives of light, while the followers of the old man like dark crags lined the wall, a barrier to the door.
The Assassin's breathing was as thunderous as the air blasting of a skar.
"Crank down the variable reflection viewer."
Desultory gunfire echoed through the dome city as Jeff focused the eyepiece until the scar tissue appeared like two black radishes extending into the gray blur of the forebrain. But when he increased the reflective depth the myelin covering of the optic chiasma glistened whitely. He exhaled with relief. There was still a gateway to the cerebrum.
The Assassin's breathing subsided to a gentle whisper.
While the gunshots rattled closer, Jeff cored into the dead tissue with the apparent unconcern of a boy cutting out the eye of a potato. But when he reached tissue of a pinkish tinge he moved with infinite caution.
The doctor was conscious of the huge cables of the efferent nerves that lay beneath his low-powered microscope and of the delicate two-fingered probe that moved among them, guided by control knobs rather than the coarse direct hand of man, testing, searching for life.
A sound so quick it eroded diseased tissue, yet did not harm the living cells, an ultra high frequency vibration that sand-blasted with the molecules of the air for sand, became his tool. It cleared the way where muscles would be soldered with quick-growing hormone and cell solutions. It brought neurons to the surface like the skeletons of dinosaurs and made them wince visibly beneath the microscope. It cut with inhuman precision for it was the extension of a semi-robot who saw with echoes and obeyed Jeff's hands only in the broad, general plan of the operation. It found live muscles and made their striated bodies shorten and lengthen agonizingly like great slugs when it laid them bare. It did all the work in an area less than an inch square.