by Vance, Jack
Hetzel smilingly shook his head. “I am not the faddist you apparently believe me to be.”
“As you wish. I believe that you have a question to put to me?”
“True, in connection with a certain Faurence Woxonoy, who now calls himself Dr. Faurence Dacre. I am anxious to locate him.”
“You are not alone,” said Dr. Aartemus. “Over the years I have had several similar inquiries.” He leaned back in his chair. “Normally our rules are rigid; we tend to discretion, if for no other reason than self-protection. We never recommend any of our graduates, although we cheerfully provide information as to those who have failed their courses. The case of Faurence Woxonoy, or Dacre, if you prefer, is different. He was a brilliant student with a genuinely innovative mind; still, he failed certain of his courses and was not graduated.”
“Indeed! But he practices medicine without a qualm. Is this proper?”
“It is realistic. The Gaean Reach comprises countless communities; each must apply its own standards. A graduate of Podmarsh School of Medicine at Sek Sek on Wicker would not be allowed to treat a case of hiccups here on Gietersmond. On the other hand, though Faurence Dacre failed here at Narghuys, he went forth superbly equipped to practice anywhere across the Reach.”
“In that case, why was he not graduated?”
“To state the matter succinctly, he cheated. I—better to say, we—discredited him for deficiencies of the personality rather than those of technique. He had no need to cheat. He merely took exception to certain of my remarks and set himself to demonstrate that he could achieve honors in my class without performing any of my assignments. I watched him the whole of the term; after all, I am not a stupid man. I bided my time, because I recognized that a small setback, a small reprimand, would make no impression on him. All term he falsified his work, by a variety of ingenious means. I was more experienced and more ingenious. On the last day I spoke to the class, which incidentally was a very good class; I had been forced to send only five persons down for further work. ‘I congratulate you,’ I told them. ‘All have done excellent work. Except one. That one is Faurence Woxonoy who, for reasons best known to himself, has cheated consistently throughout the term.’ I now exhibited on the demonstration screen the various incidents which I had recorded. The class of course was greatly amused. Halfway through my demonstration Woxonoy rose to his feet and left the room.”
Hetzel grunted. “After that what happened to him?”
“I have no sure knowledge. I heard that he had gone to work in the Southern Torpeltines, at a place called Masmodo.” Dr. Aartemus spoke into a mesh. “Who has the practice at Masmodo, on Jamus Amaha?”
A voice came back. “Dr. Leuvil, now retired. The nearest active practitioner would be at Kroust.”
“Thank you.” Dr. Aartemus returned to Hetzel. “Jamus Amaha is the wildest area of the planet—only half-civilized, really.”
Hetzel reflected a moment. “Perhaps, sir, you would do me the favor of calling Dr. Leuvil, to inquire after Dr. Dacre.”
Dr. Aartemus raised his eyes to the ceiling, then shrugged. He worked buttons on his communicator but elicited only a set of fretful buzzing sounds. A woman at last appeared on the screen. “Masmodo operator.”
“I am trying to raise Dr. Leuvil,” said Aartemus. “I have had no success whatever.”
“Dr. Leuvil is retired; he no longer answers the communicator. Try Dr. Winke on Doubtful Island.”
“One moment. Can you get a message to Dr. Leuvil? Please notify him that Dr. Aartemus at Narghuys is waiting to speak to him.”
The operator grudgingly acknowledged that such a process was possible. “Just a moment, if you please.”
Five minutes later the screen crackled and flared; amidst slowly expanding sets of green halations appeared the face of a blonde young woman in a limp nurse’s uniform. Her face was round and peevishly pretty, if somewhat fleshy. “Who is calling? Doctor who?”
“Dr. Aartemus, of Narghuys Medical Sciences. I’d like a word with Dr. Leuvil.”
“Is he expecting a call from you?”
“I think not; however—”
“You are an old friend?”
“I think not; however—”
“Then Dr. Leuvil will not speak with you.”
“Surely this is most surly of him! I am a colleague—neither a bill collector nor a charity patient!”
“I’m sorry, Doctor. My orders have been made very clear to me.”
“Very well then. Please ask Dr. Leuvil if he knows the whereabouts of Dr. Faurence Dacre, or Dr. Faurence Woxonoy, as he might have called himself?”
The nurse gave a mincing little laugh. “I am certain that he will discuss Dr. Dacre with neither you nor anyone else.”
“Do you yourself know Dr. Dacre?”
“Yes indeed.”
“Can you tell me where he is now?”
The nurse shook her head. “I couldn’t even guess.”
“I thank you for your assistance.” Dr. Aartemus dulled his screen, swung around toward Hetzel. “So there you have it. I can do no more.”
“Dr. Aartemus, I am most grateful to you.”
Chapter IX
To travel from Narghuys to Masmodo on Jamus Amaha entailed far more difficulty than the journey from Diestl to Narghuys. Hetzel rode south by airship to Jonder at the head of the Great Fish River; he then boarded a local connector which stopped at every small community along the Malabar Littoral, and which finally discharged him at Cape Jaun, and thence to Paunt on Kletterer Island by ocean skimmer.
Away to the west, over the horizon and far beyond, extended the Torpeltines, a series of rocky hulks and spires, each surrounded by a fringe of beach and a few hundred yards of gangee, sprugge, magenta tea, cardenil bush, and coconut palms, these latter imported by an unknown number of stages from Old Earth. Few of the Torpeltines were inhabited by man. About half had been declared reserves for the indigenous Flamboyards; others lacked all inducement to human presence, since the sea harbored sea scrags, war eel, shatterbone and antler fish, while raptap, sword fly, corkscrew ticks and saltators infested the beaches.
At Paunt, Hetzel rented an air-car and flew five hundred miles down the chain of Torpeltines to Jamus Amaha. Masmodo, the principal settlement of the island, included a hotel, three taverns, several stores and warehouses, a small hospital or dispensary, several official offices, a boatyard, and a number of scattered residences. Rickety docks extended into the harbor, angling and dog-legging; to these docks were moored fishing boats. Enormous black sneezewood trees shaded the streets and lined the waterfront.
Hetzel landed his airboat behind the post office and secured lodging at the Great Western Hotel. The time was early afternoon. Jingkens Star, halfway down the blue purple sky, glared on the sand streets, extracted a rank resinous odor from the paper-thin sneezewood shags, gleamed and flickered along the sluggish swells which eased under the docks.
From the verandah of the hotel Hetzel surveyed the long main thoroughfare: from the waterfront, past the municipal offices facing the hotel, up the slope to the dispensary and Dr. Leuvil’s cottage nearby.
After ten minutes of reflection Hetzel walked down to the docks. A few men tinkered with their fishing gear, others squatted on short crooked legs, looking out across the harbor. An unlovely lot, thought Hetzel: squat and dumpy with narrow foreheads, heavy chins and jaws, protruding noses, pendulous ears. These were Arsh, whose forebears, escaping the Corrective Institute on Sanctissimus Island, had taken refuge in the Jamus Amaha jungles. After centuries of isolation the Arsh had become a small but definite racial singularity.*
Hetzel walked out along one of the creaking docks, to Dongg’s Tavern at the seaward end. The interior was cool and capacious; the waterweed canes of which the walls were woven allowed a filigree of Jingkens’ light to sift across the plank floors. Three Arsh, wearing only loose crotch wraps and curl-brimmed hats with tall concave-conical peaks, crouched together drinking beer from huge pots. They swung slantwi
se glances over their shoulders, which somehow seemed like sneers; then they turned and continued their guttural conversation.
Hetzel took a seat and the barmaid presently came forward: a young blonde woman, large hipped and well fleshed, her face not so much hard as impervious.
“Sir, what’s your wish?”
“Something cool and easy. What would you suggest?”
“We make a nice punch, with rum, cabinche, tartlip juice, and lemon squash.”
“Exactly right.”
With stately mien the barmaid served a greenish yellow mixture which Hetzel found pleasantly astringent. “Very nice,” he told the barmaid.
She returned a frigid nod. Her face was round, like Dr. Leuvil’s nurse; not too long ago she might also have been pretty.
Hetzel asked: “Is the weather always this warm at Masmodo?”
“Most of the year, except during rains.”
The nurse, Hetzel decided, was definitely more attractive than the barmaid, whose billows were perilously close to sheer fat, even allowing for the difference of perhaps five years in age. “Are you a native of these parts?” he asked.
The barmaid merely gave him a sour smirk, and turned away to serve another customer. Hetzel meditatively consumed the punch, then, choosing his time, ordered a second of the same. “And have one yourself.”
“Thanks, I don’t drink.”
In due course the rum punch was served. Hetzel asked: “What’s to be done around here for amusement?”
“Sit here, drink, listen to the waves. Sometimes the Arsh tell nasty stories or kill each other. That’s about the lot.”
“At least if you get sick there’s a hospital handy. Who’s the doctor?”
“Doctor’s retired; he won’t take cases anymore.”
“Oh? I thought I saw a nurse go into the cottage. She looked just a bit like you.”
“‘Nurse’?” The barmaid raised near-invisible eyebrows at Hetzel’s lack of perception. “She just takes care of things. Nurses her father, I suppose you’d say. Do you really think she looks like me?” The last was a scornful challenge.
“Not really, except that she’s blonde. You’ve got character and style, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Hmf. I’m wasting it here.”
“Why not have a drink?”
“I can’t touch the stuff; I come all over blotches.”
“We can’t have that!” said Hetzel with fulsome emphasis. “By the way, when I looked in the Masmodo directory, I noticed the name of another doctor. It might have been an old directory.” Hetzel glanced at the barmaid questioningly.
“Likely it was.” She turned away.
Hetzel returned to the hotel verandah, put on his macrospectacles and sat watching the hospital. Halfway through the afternoon the “nurse”—if such she were—stepped out upon the verandah to confer with the driver of a grocer’s wagon. Half an hour later a stooped man came slowly out upon an upper terrace and seated himself in the shade of an umbrella. Under a curl-brimmed tall-peaked Arsh hat Hetzel saw damp locks of gray hair, a pallid complexion, a long drooping nose. Once he looked directly into a pair of milky gray eyes. Dr. Leuvil—if this were he—peered this way and that across the landscape. Hetzel suspected that his eyesight was not entirely keen.
Hetzel removed his macrospectacles, stepped down from the verandah, and ambled up toward the doctor’s cottage. The doctor either would or would not see him; there was no particular reason for subtlety or delay.
The doctor would not see Hetzel. Upon Hetzel’s approach the doctor rose to his feet, shook his head in displeasure, and groped his way back into the cottage. When Hetzel rang the doorbell a small panel opened and the nurse looked out. “Doctor Leuvil is retired. He no longer takes patients.”
“I am not a patient,” said Hetzel. “I want only a few facts in regard to his former associate, Dr. Dacre.”
“Dr. Leuvil will see no one, sir.”
“Just take him the message. I will wait.”
The nurse closed the panel and presently returned. “He does not wish to discuss Dr. Dacre.”
“Tell him that Dr. Dacre has got himself into trouble and that his information may have an important bearing upon the matter.”
The nurse shook her head and her blonde corkscrew ringlets bobbed and bounced. “I won’t tell him because the message would only upset him. He definitely will not discuss Dr. Dacre; it would make him sick.” She started to close the panel; Hetzel held it open. “Really; is he in all that bad condition?”
The nurse suddenly smiled; dimples appeared in her round face. Hetzel thought her quite charming. “He thinks he is; isn’t that the same thing after all?”
“I don’t know,” said Hetzel. “Please give him my message and ask him to think it over. I will come back tomorrow.”
“You need not bother.” The panel closed.
Odd, thought Hetzel. He returned to the hotel, and from the verandah watched Jingkens Star settle into the Mondial Ocean.
Lights went on in the hotel restaurant; Hetzel went in for his evening meal. The waitress was frankly overweight. Her skin was pale; a profusion of blonde curls hung over her massive shoulders. Her cheeks were round; her bosom bulged, her haunches distended the cerise fabric of her pantaloons; all quivered and surged as she moved about her duties. Where the barmaid at Dongg’s Tavern displayed a hard and bitter cynicism and the nurse at Dr. Leuvil’s cottage a chilly aloofness, the waitress seemed affable and uncalculating. She advised Hetzel in regard to the sparse menu and suggested that instead of the mousy beer he test the more palatable sublume cider, whose potency was not to be despised. When Hetzel suggested that she herself take a quart of the cider, or whatever she preferred, she agreed upon the instant. Five minutes later, when the last diner had been served, she settled herself with a grunt of comfort into a chair beside Hetzel and drank down the cider with zest. Hetzel immediately called for two more quarts. “You drink with rare appreciation,” said Hetzel. “It is a trait of which I approve.”
The waitress turned her head toward the kitchen. “Freitzke! Freshen the tables! I am talking business with this gentleman!”
An adolescent girl, blonde and already overendowed with feminine attributes, sullenly began to order the restaurant.
“Your sister?” asked Hetzel.
“She is my sister indeed. Look at the little fool; will she never learn? Freitzke, serve from the right, clear from the left!”
“What difference does it make?” grumbled Freitzke. “There is no one at the tables.”
“You must practice; how else will you learn?” The waitress turned back to Hetzel. “Poor Freitzke! We are a left-handed family: father, mother—now dead alas!—and all the girls, but Freitzke also thinks with her left hand. Nonetheless a dear good person, if inclined to fits of unreasonable sulking.”
“The barmaid at Dongg’s is also related?”
“Another sister.”
“Then there is Dr. Leuvil’s housekeeper, or would she be his nurse?”
“That scheming minx! She also is a sister. It is like mathematics. Five years of age separate each from the next. First there is I, Ottile; then Impie at Dongg’s; then Zerpette, at the cottage, and Freitzke, in the kitchen. But we are not at all close. It is something in the blood. Our father is now a recluse and will tolerate only Zerpette, who of course hopes to gain his wealth when he dies.”
“No doubt you remember Dr. Dacre.”
Ottile uttered a coarse laugh. “How could I not remember him? He seduced my innocence! He swore that the love of Faurence and Ottile would become as renowned as the bonds between Prince Wortimer and the Silk Fairy, or if I preferred, that between Macellino Brunt and Cora Besong. Never had I heard a man speak in such rhapsodies! I told him, ‘Take me! Introduce me to these famous ardors!’ But his duties interfered. He and my father never made a good pair. Father was cautious; Faurence was daring. Father would apply a salve; Faurence would thrust the patient into one of his expensive machine
s and perform a remarkable operation. ‘Soothe!’ was my father’s watchword. ‘Cut!’ cried Faurence. They were together four years and then had a terrible quarrel. Faurence was sent packing, but my father kept all of Faurence’s wonderful machines to pay for the money Faurence owed him. I heard the news and sorrowfully went to pack my clothes: I was at that time attached to my father and I did not want to leave Masmodo. I brought my luggage out to the street and stood waiting, dressed in my best. At last Impie came running to tell me that Faurence had left without me.”
“What an awkward situation!”
“True. Faurence was really a cad.”
“Where did he go next?”
“He went to try his luck on Skalkemond. Even I could have advised against this, for the Skalks above all are proper and orderly. Everything must be done just so, and this is not at all Faurence’s way. Before two years had passed he caused a great scandal and was expelled from Skalkemond. So then, what should he do but return here, all pride and audacity! I reminded him of our holy love, but he would hear nothing of it; unfortunately I had gained a bit of weight. Faurence approached my father to buy back his machines, for half their value, and Father refused to listen; so what did Faurence do but open a new practice, and who should he select for his nurse and confidante? Not me, but Impie! It seems as if she’d always had her eye on him, the drogbattie! Ah well, she’s no better off now than I.”
Hetzel saw that a comment would be in order. “Worse, I should say. At least you have retained your dignity!”
Ottile nodded with a vigor that set the blonde curls shaking. “Her surroundings are sordid; I, at least, deal with gentlemen.”
Hetzel suggested that a taste or two of sublume brandy might sit well with the cider; Ottile endorsed the proposal.
Hetzel said thoughtfully: “I must say that conditions at Masmodo would hardly seem to justify the presence of two medical men.”