Tom is weak, but he recovers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d thought I\u2019d cut off half your face,\u201d Bertram says, \u201cand put it over mine. But it turns out I\u2019m almost as bad at being awful as I am at being good.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s amazing, sir,\u201d says Tom. \u201cYou must\u2019ve shot all snake-eyes in the great craps game that is life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHa,\u201d says Bertram. He shrugs it off. He goes out to stare at the endless surf.<\/p>\n
The NHS does not cover hospital bills for recuperation facilities on private islands, even for complications arising from having ophidian DNA unexpectedly swiffed off of one\u2019s genome or having half of a golden face. Eventually the debts become staggering and a coalition of savory health care interests and unsavory criminal bank-lords confiscate Bertram\u2019s island with a mercenary fleet.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re welcome to stay, Tom,\u201d says chief doctor Miriam Clepper, but he shakes his head.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d just run endless experiments on me to better understand the nature of humanity\u2019s ophidian successors,\u201d sighs Tom.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s so,\u201d admits Dr. Clepper. \u201cBut we\u2019ve got cake!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tom is weak, but he recovers. \u201cI\u2019d thought I\u2019d cut off half your face,\u201d Bertram says, \u201cand put it over mine. But it turns out I\u2019m almost as bad at being awful as I am at being good.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s amazing, sir,\u201d says Tom. \u201cYou must\u2019ve shot all snake-eyes in the great craps game that is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"series":[5],"class_list":["post-4258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stomping-the-world-round-chapter-5","series-stwr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Gold-from-a-Wolf.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4258"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6298,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4258\/revisions\/6298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4258"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=4258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}