to scrotum, hoping the alcohol would burn off any remaining contamination. It stung like hell, but it
didn't ease his mind much.
He dialed the number of the city VD clinic and asked for a printout on gonorrhea. He read it
completely. This didn't ease his mind, either.
He had to take three happy-pills to get to sleep. And he dreamed... not happily.
He dreamed that five days had passed and the tip of his penis became inflamed. It was red and tender,
at first causing irregular erections, then actual pain. When he urinated there was such intense smarting
that he could not tolerate more than a few drops at a time—but there seemed to be gallons in his
bladder, and they had to pour out. Then pus choked the conduit, popping out in grisly lumps when the
frothing urine finally blasted its way through. The agony was hellish. There was brown blood in it
now.
The pus lasted for three months, causing him to stand at the toilet for half an hour at a time without
performing, then soiling his pants when he walked away with bursting bladder. He wet his bed at
night, hardly noticing because of the other agony, and his constantly soaked buttocks and scrotum
began to feel raw, too. He couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't work because of the viper's nest of pain
in his groin. Then the inflammation began to spread.
It covered his bladder and his kidneys and his rectum, making every facet of elimination a continual
torture. It invaded his prostate, his testes, his epididymis, rendering him sterile several times over, the
hard way. Then it advanced to his mouth, interfering with eating, and his bones and joints, giving him
arthritis. It infiltrated the lining of his body cavity and the valves of his heart. It poisoned his blood. It
infected his eyes, making him painfully blind. Finally it penetrated to the membranes lining his spinal
cord and the brain itself, and he knew he felt the onset of paralysis and insanity.
About then he woke up in sweat so copious he could not be certain it wasn't urine, and remembered
that gonorrhea was not the worst of the venereal diseases.
It was Monday, the beginning of his four-day working week. Prior was a parking lot surveyor—the
reason he had been so put out about being ticketed himself. He used a laser theodolite to resurvey
parking lots and make sure their dimensions were within tolerance. Unscrupulous operators—and that
meant all of them—tried to shave the size of individual spaces and the access lanes, and could get ugly
when called to account. The worse the offense, the uglier they got. Some threatened him, not realizing
that one of the spare lenses he carried was in fact a laser pistol. Some offered him money, not realizing
that his theodolite was irrevocably bugged; they were soon out of business, and he was permitted to
keep the money as a gratuity for his cooperation. He liked getting bribed, except when they used
counterfeit bills. Others sent attractive young sexy parking attendants to reason with him in some
remarkably convenient bedroom-like office—not realizing that his penis was less than four inches
long, erect, and he was sensitive about exposing it before strangers. As his bastard boss well knew; that
was why Prior had been hired over more qualified applicants for the position. Some liabilities tended
to make men honest...
All week, as he measured and noted and punched out deficiency reports and accepted bribes and
fended off solicitous sex-pots, his mind was on his penis. It probably required the deficiency report,
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