Sarah knelt to the unconscious form, stemmed the bleeding from his jugular with a finger. His eyes were fully rolled back, and he was seizing from blood loss and shock. He had probably five minutes, maybe less.

“We’ve got to get him downstairs,” Miri said. She tossed the gun aside.

Miriam carried his shoulders, Sarah his feet. They took him to the lift in the front hall, squeezed in with him while Leo raced ahead on the stairs. She had the examination table dressed with a sheet by the time they reached the surgery.

He was in deep shock now. “This is going to be a problem,” Sarah said. She slapped a pressure bandage on his neck. The flow had dropped by two-thirds. His blood pressure must be almost nothing. “I’m losing him.”

Miriam burst into tears, threw herself on him.

“Get her off,” Sarah said to Leo.

But when Leo touched her, she threw back her head and howled with an agony beyond anything Sarah had heard from her or anybody ever. She’d never seen her like this, crazy with grief, her emotions like an exploding volcano.

“Leo, have you ever assisted in a surgery?”

“God no.”

Sarah took Miri’s shoulders. “Miri, can you hear me? Miri!”

Slowly, by what looked like tormented inches, a more sane expression returned to her face. “You did not have the right to take him.” Her eyes flashed with a ruler’s pride. “You did not have the right!”

“Please forgive me,” Sarah said.

“Then save him! Save him!”

Sarah stabilized the neck wound, then got them to turn him over on his stomach. The entry point of the bullet was below the heart. If the artery was intact, he might have a chance. She couldn’t type his blood, there was no time, so she had to go with O+. She told Leo, “Get me six pints of blood from the fridge. Miri, set him up.” While they worked, she went to the cupboard and took out her instruments. She had a complete surgery here, even an extractor for bullets. She had once promised Miri, “If I can get you here, I can fix it, no matter what may befall you.”

There was an X-ray machine, but there was no way they could move him to the table now. There was no time. “Scalpel,” Sarah said as she swabbed the entry wound with Betadine. A glance told her that Miri had set the blood properly.

If he was really a Keeper of some unknown kind, she was flying almost totally blind. In Sarah’s own veins, Miriam’s blood functioned like a separate organ. It flowed with Sarah’s natural blood, but did not mix with it. It could not. Sarah could not even begin to guess what was going on in this man.