Piers Anthony
Prostho Plus
A TOM ASSOCIATES BOOK
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resmblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
PROSTHO PLUS
Copyright© 1973 by Piers Anthony
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
First Tor printing: June 1986
A Tor Book
Published by TomDoherty Associates
49 West 24 Street
New York, N.Y. 10010
Cover art by Do Maitz
ISBN: 0-812-53116-7
CAN. ED.: 0-812-53117-5
Printed in the United States
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Contents
COPYRIGHT
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Dr. Dillingham was forty-one years old: a conservative, successful twentieth-century bachelor prosthodontist. His acquaintances thought him unimaginative; his patients thought he overcharged; his pretty assistant was secretly in love with him. He was, in short, a typical dentist with a secure future.
As pride goeth before a fall, so may the typical go before the atypical.
Dillingham was not pleased to see Mrs. Nostrand so early in the morning. She was overweight, her arches were fallen, her veins varicose, her manner insufferable. She seemed to be afflicted with most of the maladies imagined by man, with a single remarkable exception: she had virtually perfect teeth.
He wondered why she had chosen to inflict herself upon him. Possibly it was because every other dentist in the area had already informed her that however common prosthetic restorations might be, they were dictated by the requirements of health, not fashion.
"Mrs. Nostrand," he began, knowing it was useless, "no ethical practitioner is going to replace a healthy tooth with a substitute. Our purpose is to restore the mouth, as far as possible, to its original state of health. You should be gratified that you have no need of such service."
"But all my friends have genuine gold inlays!"
Dillingham controlled his temper. "I assure you, Mrs. Nostrand, they're not as good as nature's original dentin and enamel."
"Mrs. Jones paid four thousand dollars for hers," she said enviously.
He turned away to conceal his disgust. Had it come to this? A running contest to see whose mouth could carry the most pointless wealth...
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Nostrand," he said with finality.
She stalked out, furious. He almost wished she had needed the work. It might have been easier to do it than to educate her.
Old Joe Krumpet, a too-regular client, was next. He was seventy and his teeth seemed to antedate the rest of his body: extremely old and worn.
"'Nother blowout, Doc," he said cheerily. "Just put a patch on her and turn me loose."
Dillingham looked into Joe's mouth. It was sheer carnage. He wondered how the man could stray one bite from a liquid diet. There was hardly a disaster in the manual his teeth hadn't succumbed to over the years.
"Joe, that tooth will have to come out. There isn't enough of the original structure left to make it functional, and further deterioration could affect your—"
"Nope. None of that fancy stuff. Just plug her up so she don't hurt no more. She'll las' as long as I do."
He had a point there, unfortunately. Dillingham repaired the damage as well as he could, not even attempting to lecture the patient on oral hygiene. Joe Krumpet brought in his teeth for repair much as he would his vintage automobile. Who was a mere dentist to inject aesthetic complexities into his simple framework?
He finished with ten minutes to spare before the next appointment and retreated to his laboratory for a break. It was going to be one of those days: college kids who stuffed their mouths with sugar and looked blank at the mention of a toothbrush; businessmen who "hadn't time" to undertake precautionary hygienic measures; women so afraid of pain that they screamed when he brushed a healthy tooth with the mirror. All of them carelessly throwing away the priceless heritage of good teeth in their youth, heedless of the far more expensive and less comfortable substitutes necessitated in later life.
He was suddenly sick of it. Not of the work itself, but of the intolerable neglect he saw daily. So much of what he did would never be necessary if only people cared!
The radio was giving the routine details of another interplanetary space probe. Well, if there were other civilized creatures out there, surely they would long since have learned to preserve their natural assets! He visualized a baby bug-eyed monster smiling for the camera: "Look ma—no cavities for six generations!" Assuming bug-eyed monsters had teeth...
He rose and returned to the operatory, knowing that efficient Miss Galland would have the third patient properly prepared. At least he was spared the interminable details. Sure enough, there was a figure in the chair. As pride before the fall—
Dillingham put on his professional smile, washed his hands, and plucked a bright metal sealer from the tray. This was a new patient, and— He stared.
The face upon the headrest was an alien. It was humanoid, but only vaguely so. A great flat forehead dropped down to widely spaced yet narrow eyes, and the nose was a triple slit. The mouth was closed, set off oddly by thin purple lips.
Before he could substitute a more appropriate expression for the frozen smile on his own face, there was a noise. He looked up to see a second creature fiddling with the locking mechanism of the door. The humanoid must have been standing behind the panel, waiting for him to enter. The features were similar to those of the reclining creature, but all Dillingham noticed at the moment was the visible hand. It was grey, and the fingers appeared to be double-jointed.
Dillingham tried to think of a clever remark that would dispose of the situation, but his mind remained awkwardly blank. What conceivable explanation could account for...?
"Gentlemen, there must be some mistake. I'm a dentist, not a plastic surgeon."
Neither creature laughed. The one at the door straightened up and faced him silently.
Obviously he was the victim of an elaborate hoax. Nothing on Earth resembled these creatures. Someone at the local college must have set up this masquerade, fitting grotesque masks of that realistic flexible variety over their normal features. This was one of those disruptive pranks, funny only to the perpetrators. An initiation ritual. But how had they got past Miss Galland?
"Boys, I have a crowded schedule. Now that you've had your fun—"
The one in the chair opened his mouth.
Dillingham dropped the sealer to the floor. No mask could function as smoothly as this, yet the mouth was beyond credulity. The orifice was bone-dry and tongueless, and the teeth—
It was his business to know the normal and abnormal extremes of human oral anatomy. This far overreached them—but it was without doubt a genuinely functioning mouth, in a genuine functioning alien face. Since it was real, and no Earthly jaw contained dentures like these—
He decided not to ask questions whose answers might well be beyond his comprehension. This was no joke, and this was no longer a conventional problem. For some reason two aliens—extraterrestrial aliens, for all he knew—had come to his office to demand some service.
One sat expectantly in the chair. It could hardly be an accident. Why did anyone come to a dentist?
Somebody had a toothache.
The alien was not properly proportioned for the human recliner, but a few ad
justments sufficed. Dillingham toyed with his instruments, wondering whether these creatures were dangerous. He couldn't afford to take a chance—
"Dr. Dillingham," a voice called from the hall. The standing alien jumped, and something appeared in one hand. These two hadn't uttered a syllable so far, but they seemed to hear well enough.
"Dr. Dillingham!" the voice repeated more urgently, and the knob turned. It was Miss Galland. "Are you in there? The door seems to be locked—"
The guard lifted his hand. He held a small object resembling a glass prism. He pointed it towards the door.
Dillingham didn't wait to find out what the prism was for. "I'm busy at the moment," he shouted, putting enough irritation into his voice so that she would realize it was important. "Something has come up. Please reschedule my next appointment."
Her soft heels retreated, and the alien lowered the prism. Perhaps there had been no danger—but it did seem best to keep the girl out of it until he could be sure. The aliens certainly seemed to mean business.
Did they use speech at all? The single glance he had had into the oral cavity gave him serious doubt that articulation as men knew it was possible. Still, there had to be some means of communication...
Dillingham returned his attention to his patient. He seemed to be committed now, though of course he could not actually work on such a jaw. The mouth opened again and he surveyed it more thoroughly. It was a fascinating experience.
Four broad incisors lined the front section of the lower jaw, matched by five molars in the upper. This, at least, was what the teeth would have been called had they occupied a human mouth.
Biters opposed to grinders? Five to four? What unearthly diet did this creature exist upon? The overall problem of the alien presence became subordinate to the professional one. With dentition like this, how could he even guess at the normal state of the mouth? How would he detect the problem? And, granted a correct diagnosis, how could he ameliorate the condition? He knew nothing of the metabolism; he might kill the alien simply by applying a local anaesthetic. The creature might bleed to death from a single scratch—if it had blood. Nothing could be taken for granted.
The standing alien seemed impassive, but remained against the door, prism levelled. Suppose this were the captain of an alien vessel, and the patient a valued officer or crewman? It was convenient to think of these two as such, whatever the truth might be. Perhaps they had been on an exploratory cruise and had had difficulties that prevented an immediate return. Possibly their medical specialist had been incapacitated.
Whatever his reasons, the captain had seen fit to trust his man to the care of the nearest presumably competent specialist, rather than postpone the matter or handle it extemporaneously. The fact that the specialist happened to be of another world didn't seem to make enough difference to rule out the procedure.
There was food for thought here. Obviously the welfare of the individual was paramount, in the captain's society, surmounting even the formidable barriers between separate alien cultures. The individual who would trust a creature he had never seen before—an Earth dentist—to handle so precise and intimate a matter as the repair of an oral breakdown...
That individual was either an absolute fool, or had enormous confidence in his control over the situation.
Dillingham glanced again at the captain. He did not have the aspect of a fool, and the prism glittered.
Yet the thing was impossible. The threat of a weapon could not create knowledge where none existed. It could not grant a human being the power to operate on alien metabolism.
The captain moved, gesturing with the prism. Dillingham immediately busied himself with the impossible.
The mouth was a paradox. There were no cuspids, no matched sets. Instead there were regular patterns of planed surfaces that could serve no conceivable masticatory purpose. The white units were obviously teeth of some kind, and firm pink gum tissue clothed the base of each unit, but the manner of the jaws application was a tantalizing riddle.
Dillingham felt as though he were in a surrealist dream. Despite the intricacies of their derivation—teeth had first been formed from modified scales of the lip, countless millions of years ago on Earth—he knew them to be straightforward tools. They were required for any creature who cut, tore, crushed or ground its food, unless it specialized into some substitute, as birds had. There was no point in having teeth at all unless they acted in one or more of these ways, and cynical Nature neither evolved nor maintained superfluous organs. This alien's teeth had to be functional, even if that function remained a riddle to the dentist.
How was he to define the problem? He saw no evidence of decay or abrasion. Every surface gleamed cleanly white. While he was hardly in a position to make an accurate diagnosis, all the evidence suggested health.
He tapped an incisor experimentally. It was solid. All the teeth were firm and without blemish. Why, then, had this patient come?
Dillingham set down his instruments and stood back. "I can't help you," he said, trying to ignore the pointing prism and hoping his tone would put the message across.
The crewman closed his mouth, stood up, and went to the door. The captain handed over the prism and approached. Dillingham waited, uncertainly.
The captain took the chair and opened his mouth. Had they gone to all this trouble for a routine checkup?
Dillingham shrugged, washed his hands again, and brought out a sterile set of instruments. There didn't seem to be much he could do except oblige their whim. They were aliens, and it could be dangerous to cross them. He looked into the captain's mouth.
Suddenly it all came clear.
The crewman's mouth had been a healthy one. This mouth was not. The same peculiar pairings were present, the same oddly-angled occlusals—but several of the back teeth on the left side had badly ravaged lingual surfaces.
The visitors had anticipated one of his difficulties, so had shown him the healthy set first, as a model. Now he did have some idea what was wrong,
"Dr. Dillingham!"
The crewman whirled to aim the prism at Miss Galland's voice. Had half an hour passed so rapidly? "Emergency!" Dillingham called to her. "I'll be tied up all afternoon. Handle it as well as you can."
"Yes, Doctor," she replied with only the slightest hint of disapproval. His present procedure was at best highly irregular; with a real emergency, he should have brought her into the operatory to help. Miss Galland was a highly competent dental assistant, but he tended to use her more and more as a receptionist because she made a much better impression on recalcitrant patients than he did. She really deserved to see this astonishing set of teeth—but he still did not dare expose her to the mercies of such questionable aliens.
Meanwhile, he knew that the problems entailed by his unexplained cancellations would be tactfully handled.
He probed the first of the damaged teeth: the second bicuspid, for want of anything resembling a properly descriptive term. The captain jumped; no doubt about its sensitivity. It looked as though some potent acid had eaten into the surfaces and stripped away the enamel and much of the softer dentin beneath (again applying human terms to the un-human). It had been a recent accident; there was no sign of subsidiary decay. But the present condition was obviously uncomfortable and probably quite painful, and certainly constituted a hazard to health.
Dillingham observed that the buccal surfaces had also been etched. Only an X-ray, that he could not risk on the alien flesh, could establish possible penetration of the pulp. This was a rough case.
It might be possible for him to repair the damage, or at least cover it with a protective cast—but only if he could anaesthetize the jaw. Novocain was out of the question; any drug might be fatal.
The whole thing was ridiculous. "This is as far as I go," Dillingham said firmly. "I hate to leave you in pain, but my ignorance could kill you. I'm sorry." He crossed his arms and stood back.
When they saw that he was not going to proceed, the crewman levelled the prism at
him again. The Captain stopped that with a gesture. He stood up and recovered the instrument. He made sure he had Dillingham's attention, then aimed it at the wall and flicked a finger.
A spot appeared on the wall. Smoke curled up.
The captain made an adjustment and aimed again. This time a portion of the wall exploded, leaving a charred hole.
He returned it to the first setting and pointed it at Dillingham. The message was clear enough.
But what would be their reaction if he botched it? Should he violate his professional ethics under duress? Dillingham shook his head, sweating. Perhaps they were bluffing.—
"Dr. Dillingham!"
Oh, no! Miss Galland had come back.
The captain nodded to the crewman, who whirled to unlock the door.
"Judy! Get away!"
"Doctor! What are you—"
Then the door was open and the crewman charged out. Judy Galland screamed.
Dillingham lunged at the captain, but the officer was ready. The beam from the prism stabbed savagely into his leg. Dillingham fell, clutching at the wound.
When the pain abated, he found Miss Galland standing beside him, her dark hair disarranged. The crewman had the prism again, and was covering them both.
"Doctor! Are you hurt?"
It was just like her to overlook the incredible in favour of the commonplace. She was not the fainting type, fortunately. He inspected his leg.
"Just a burn. It was set on low." He stood up.
The captain resumed his seat. The crewman aimed the prism at the girl.
So much for resistance. The show would go on.
"I don't think they mean any harm, Doctor," Miss Galland said. "They must be desperate." No hysterics from her; she had adapted to the situation far more readily than he.
Dillingham approached the patient. He had to quiet the shivering of his hand as he held a probe. Aliens, heat-beams—this was hardly the ordinary fare of a dentist.
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