For the freak. Kinsman realized as he saw his exoskeleton stacked beside the chair, like some smothering insect waiting to envelop him.
Most of the electronics was medical checkout equipment. Landau used it to test Kinsman's vital systems, shaking his head and frowning unhappily through the brief procedure. As the nurses helped Kinsman into his clothes and then into the braces, he asked the Russian doctor, "Well, Alex, how'm I doing?"
Landau, sitting on a regular chair next to the desk, bit his lower lip as he scanned the readout on the desktop display screen.
"Terribly, if you must know the truth," he answered. "The heart pump cannot sustain you through any physical exertion at all."
The black nurse lifted Kinsman's right leg and clamped 529 the foot brace on while the other—she looked Armenian to Kinsman, maybe Greek—did the same for his left.
"So I won't exert myself," he said lightly. "Who needs to, with such expert help at hand?" He would have patted their heads but his arms felt too heavy and he feared he could not coordinate them properly.
"This is no joking matter," Landau replied grimly.
Kinsman could not even shrug comfortably. "All right, Alex. So I'll sit still and do nothing more strenuous than talk."
"Your heart reacts to emotional stress also, you know."
The nurses bent him forward to hook up the back brace.
"Ummph. But, Alex, I feel a helluva lot better now than I did yesterday. What happened? Did I pass out or what?"
"You collapsed," Landau said. Bitterly, he went on, "And for a reason that I should have foreseen, but was too stupid to. The air you were breathing. It was heavily contami- nated, polluted with carbon monoxide and soot and other filth. Your lungs were strained, which put an additional workload on your heart. You were faced with a serious cardiac insufficiency and you collapsed. The exoskeleton would not permit you to fall, so you hung inside, quite unconscious."
"I had a heart attack?"
Landau shook his head. "No, not what a layman would call a heart attack. Merely an insufficiency of oxygen-carrying blood getting to your brain."
"Like a blackout in a high-gee maneuver."
Landau frowned in concentration for a moment. "I suppose so."
"But I feel okay now."
"You have been sedated and resting in the most comfort- able environment the United Nations could provide. The air in this room is mixed from bottled gases; you are not breathing city air at all, not even filtered city air."
Kinsman laughed as the nurses lifted his arms and clamped the braces on them. "I remember when New Yorkers used to boast that they didn't trust air they couldn't see."
Landau found it totally unfunny.
With the exoskeleton fully hooked up to him. Kinsman got to his feet and tried a few experimental steps across the 530 wide carpeted room. Just like the Tin Woodman. Hope somebody remembered to bring the oilcan.
Landau waved the nurses from the room. Within a few moments a pair of liveried waiters wheeled in breakfast. And right behind them came Hugh Harriman.
"Well!" he snapped with mock indignation. "Sleeping Beauty's finally up and on the job, eh?"
"I think 1 can make it through until naptime," Kinsman said.
"Good." Harriman waited until the waiters had set up the breakfast table and taken the food from the hot and cold sections beneath the white-clothed rolling table. Finally the table was neatly arranged with a variety of dishes and they left as silently as they had come.
