“That is more than enough, Master Randolph!” she snapped. “And are not you a very fine one to talk, trusting as you do to the Rooshan female—”
“Oh, Miss Woodburn!” a new voice cut in. “M. Coffield will see you now.”
Turning my head, I saw a pleasant-faced blond young man in white tunic and trousers, apparently a clinical assistant, standing in the doorway to the consulting and examination rooms. I hoped that neither he, nor the receptionist, nor anyone else had overheard Miss Woodburn’s piece of prejudice. She, however, behaved as though she couldn’t possibly care less if Dr. Suttler herself had overheard it. Standing elegantly, she nodded to me and said, “Well, ma’am, it seems that I must wish you good day, with apologies for having to cut short a conversation which I have found hugely edifying. As for you, Master Randolph, I beg you will apply yourself to the study of how properly to comport yourself towards your seniors. And so, ma’am, until next we should chance to meet, I give you a very good day.”
She swept on to her appointment with the pharmacist. Behind her back, the clinical assistant spread a grin and a wink around the waiting room before he closed the door.
“Crazy old bat,” Master Randolph remarked as he settled back down in his beanchair. “My grandpa says they oughta lock ’em all up like they usta do back in the old days.”
“Oh, not all of them!” I said automatically, remembering my employer. “There have been romantic roleplayers all through recorded history, and there have always been some of them who can interact very functionally with regular folks, wherever the regular folks have accepted them. All it takes is to accept them.” Cagey would have said the people to watch out for were the ones who kept their roleplaying bottled up inside, not the ones who let it all out in the open.
“Be a lot safer to lock ’em all up,” grumbled the lad. “‘Rooshan female!’ Dr. Suttler’s one walluva great lady, and old sourkitten Woodsy’s got no business bigotsocking her and calling it parta her own play world, like that was some kinda excuse. Who says it’s even parta her world, anyhoo? She claims she lives in the eighteen-somethings, but ‘Rooshan’ sure sounds like 1950s screentalk to me.”
“Have you been coming to Dr. Suttler very long?” I asked.
“Nooo, not long.” He shook his head. “Just about six months. Just since I fell outa that tree and broke my fooldum wrist. She sure splinted it up five-star right away. Guess which one?” He held out both arms. I guessed the one that looked very marginally thicker. “Nooo!” he informed me proudly, and shook the other one. “See how good Dr. Suttler is, right enough? I’m just about done here now. She just wants to see it every so often, check up on it. We never usta have any regular doc,” he confided. “My grandpa says most times they’re just a wasta money. But I guess maybe we’ll get ourselves one now.”
Wondering, in that case, how his grandpa’s opinion of pharmacists might be any different from his opinion of doctors, I asked, “Have you ever seen Dr. Macumber?”
Master Randolph shrugged. “Just around. Examined me one time Dr. Suttler got called to the hospital alluva sudden. He’s okay. Gave me some new kinda pain pill they’re trying out. Didn’t need any pain pills by then, but no point passing up free samples, is there? Doc Mac’s nowhere near so good as Dr. Suttler, but I guess he’s okay. Did you know one time he saw a dog get eaten by piranha down in South America? Sure wish I could see a piranha. You can’t buy ’em anyplace around here, and they don’t even keep ’em at the aquarium. Wonder what it’d feel like to get eaten by piranha?”
“You would probably,” I said, “want to take a lot of pain pills.”
It was easy to keep him talking, but I had learned pretty well all I was going to learn from him about Sunvale Clinic. Dr. Suttler was a medical saint; Doc Macumber was okay and had seen a dog eaten by piranha; M. Coffield was a consulting-room druggist and therefore had to be a money-grubbing phony, but at least he had enough sense not to make people call him “Doctor,” too, just because he had a phony degree. As for my informant, his full name was Aaron Randolph Randolph and within a few sentences he could always get the conversation back to fish and/or his grandpa’s opinions.
Grandpa Randolph seemed to have negative opinions about everything, usually because it wasn’t the way it used to be back in the twentieth century. Aaron’s own opinions about fish were a relief in that they were always enthusiastically pro.
Meanwhile, time passed. Sixteen thirty came and went. Somebody came out of the consulting-room area, joined the person who was watching the fire video, and they went out together. One M. Greeley was called to see Dr. Macumber, got up from in front of the animations screen, and disappeared into the consulting-room area. M. Randolph and I talked about fish and Grandpa’s opinions. Sixteen forty-five came and went. M. Greeley came out of the consulting-room area looking relieved, joined the person who had been left in front of the animations screen, and they went out together, talking about where to have dinner. The receptionist, M. Kareem, walked over and switched the now-unwatched animations screen off. I remembered Miss Woodburn and remarked that she seemed to be taking a long time consulting a pharmacist; M. Randolph replied, “Yeah, they’re both phonies. They can playact at each other longer than an old movie. The old bat loves it, and I don’t guess he gets that many real patients of his own, mainly just spends most of his time filling prescriptions the real docs give their patients. Or maybe she went out the back way. She sometimes does.”
Sixteen fifty-five came and went. Somebody else came out of the consulting-room area and left alone, looking sober. Seventeen hundred came and went. A second clinical assistant, a brightfaced young woman, came out and said happily, “M. Randolph for Dr. Suttler, M. Marlene for Dr. Macumber. How are you today, Aaron?”
We both got up; and Aaron started telling her that he had found a Paradise Fish just like Norbert for his tank at home, when the door burst open and several people rushed in together, one in the lead and three more right behind, two of them supporting the third between them.
With a sinking shock, I saw that the one they were supporting was Cagey. Her face was white, and her right arm was dripping blood.
Chapter 5
I caught myself just in time. My instinct was to rush to her—she was as capable of having had a real accident while staging her fit as of having changed her plan and staged an accident. But her orders had been clear that we were not to recognize each other anywhere near Sunvale Clinic, and there were more than enough people crowding around her already, shouting emergency at the receptionist and clinical assistant.
A man in medical green lab coat appeared in the doorway behind the assistant. “Now, then,” he said, courteously nudging her aside to let him past into the waiting room, “what do we have going on here?”
Cagey seemed to be in shock, but the people who had rushed her in were all talking at once. I caught a garbled explanation about broken glass that made me feel a little faint myself.
The man in the green lab coat held up his hand. He was no more than medium height, only a few centimeters taller than the young woman assistant; but he was middleaged, with silvering temples, and he had a wonderfully calm, cheerful, almost chirpy air of control. “I think,” he pronounced, “that what our young M. here needs most
in these next few minutes is a little peace and quiet, hmmm? Good, good, very good,” he went on, as they quieted down. “Well now, let’s have a peek at the damage first, explanations can wait. ... mmm ... My, my, yes! Lovely little harvest of splinters here, isn’t it? Yes, yes, look at ’em all in there glinting back at us. No major arteries sliced, anyway, so the only immediate danger is trauma. No problem there, you all got her to us right in time. Of course, we want to get all this glass out without wasting too much time, don’t we? Job for Dr. Suttler, I’d say. You agree, Linda?” he asked the assistant. It seemed a rhetorical question.
“Hey! Doc Mac!” sang out Master Randolph. As the man in
the green coat looked at him, the boy went on, “I was just gonna say—I’m waiting to see Dr. Suttler, and I don’t mind waiting awhile longer.”
I thought that Dr. Macumber glanced from young Randolph to me and back again before going on: “Thank you, Aaron, that’s right generous. Either of us would be fully qualified to handle this kind of thing, you all understand, but it’s more nearly Dr. Suttler’s specialty than mine. Accidents more her line, infections more mine. All right, Linda, let’s get this poor lady in to Dr. Suttler.”
The assistant came forward, collected Cagey from the group who had brought her, and spirited her into the back rooms with gentle speed. Seeing how coolly and competently the Sunvale people were handling it, I started relaxing inside. They hadn’t even mentioned red tape; they seemed to consider it perfectly natural to treat emergencies first and file the necessary records later.
After all, I didn’t yet agree with Cagey that there had ever been any foul play about Rob’s death to be investigated; I was going along with all this because she was my employer and because, if Rob had died of Carmine’s, I wanted to have a medical check run on me in any case.
From the three people, two women and a man, who had brought Cagey to the clinic, Dr. Macumber sorted out the one who seemed to know most about it—the owner of the shop where it happened, as I gathered then and verified afterward—turned her over to give the receptionist what details she could for the forms, cheerfully reassured the other two that they could go, and at last stepped in my direction.
“Now, then,” he said happily. “M. ... Tomlinson, isn’t it? I see they have it down here as ‘Marlene.’ Same mistake I made yesterday, if I recall.”
“I’m a little oldfashioned that way, Doctor,” I replied. “I prefer to go by my family name socially. That’s why my registered final name is really more like an oldfashioned middle name, you see.”
“Ah, yes!” He nodded eagerly. “‘Sylvia Marlene Tomlinson,’ it would have been last century. Lovely, lovely! Yes, M. Tomlinson, you’ll find me an oldfashioned kind of rogue myself. Actually, they’d given me the mater’s family name for an oldfashioned middle name to begin with, so the new system left my birth certificate name the same as it always was. Didn’t even have to claim the option for folks born before Twenty-oh-seven. But come on back, come on back to my offices and let’s check you out, put your mind at rest as soon as we can.”
He kept up the happy banter all the way along the back corridor, which was lined on both sides with doors, most of them shut. Behind one of them, Dr. Raisa Suttler must already be busy with my employer; behind another, I assumed, Miss Woodburn would
still be consulting Mr. Coffield, unless she had already left by the back way out. Dr. Macumber stepped along too briskly for me to read the doorplates, let alone try to listen for voices that I probably couldn’t have heard anyway, thanks to the building’s excellent soundproofing.
Dr. Macumber’s offices were laid out on the new plan, a consulting room adjoining an examination room. The consulting room had maplewood furniture, aquamarine cushions and carpeting, and holographic wallpaper showing a tropical rain forest. Even the computer was set in a real wood cabinet.
Settling me in an armchair and himself in another one across the desk from me, he went on chitchatting about names, weather patterns, how well the Marltown Live Performances Center was doing this year, and so on for almost ten minutes. He was what my mother would have called a “Keeblerish” elf of a man, and I felt so much at ease with him that eventually I asked a question I might never have asked any other doctor: why he was taking so long to get around to examining me, or at least questioning me about the medical problem I’d come to him with.
“Oh, this is the cooling-off interval,” he answered candidly. “Think of it as a kind of airlock. We always have to allow everybody a few minutes for the vital signs to settle down again. You might be amazed how even a simple little stroll from the waiting room to here can raise a body’s pulse and blood pressure and suchlike. Keep this confidential, now,” he added, lowering his voice, “when I tell you that most of us old sawbones like to leave our patients cooling their heels alone for five, maybe ten minutes back here. Makes us look busy, important. Me, I’d rather get to know my people a little better.”
A few moments later, he began taking my blood pressure, listening to my heartbeat, and asking me questions about my relationship with Rob. Since it had never reached what they call “intimacy,” my examination didn’t involve disrobing; but it did eventually involve moving into the examination room for various electrograph and infrascreen readings. And, of course, a blood test, for which Dr. Macumber drew almost a full needleful and put half of it into an instanalysis unit.
As he fed all the datatapes into his medical computer and stood watching the screen, I thought he sucked his lips and looked grave. My nervousness welling up again, I said, “Dr. Macumber, is it ...?”
“No, no, as far as I can tell at this stage, nothing,” he assured me with a smile. “Nothing to worry about. Your white blood cell count seems just a tad on the high side. Not nearly high enough to give us anything to worry about, I don’t think. Nope.” He shook his head. “Everything else checking out five-star, I’d just send you on home telling you that if you didn’t hear from us within twenty-four hours—our chance to play with the rest of your samples, you see, we’re a state-of-the-art little institution that can analyze its own samples, no chance of any mixups in the Big Labs—then you should just give us a thought when choosing where to take your next regular checkup. But with Carmine’s ...” He gave a careless little shrug that failed to quite reassure me. “We’re dealing here, you understand, with something that’s still in the heavy research stages,” he went on, turning to a softly gleaming metal cabinet in the examination room. “By the way, Tomlinson’s a pretty famous name in world ecosystem preservation. Parker T. Tomlinson ...”
“No relation, I’m afraid,” I said absently.
“No, I can’t claim any notable ancestors in the conservation movement, either. Great men and women they were, though. Immense debt we owe them, those Conservers. The harvest of medicines coming out of those ecosystems already, M. Tomlinson ... Ah, here we are! Here’re the little babies we want ... Almost a hundred substances identified already, that would’ve been lost, every last one of ’em, if last century’s land developers had had their way.”
“Uh, yes,” I said. “I’ve heard you’re quite a botanical explorer yourself.”
“Ah? How?” He looked gratified, but tried to cover it in a show of modesty. “Hope you didn’t choose Sunvale just because of that little writeup in New Times a couple of years ago. Have to keep my hobby and my profession apart, you see. Strictly two separate spheres.” He chuckled. “Or risk somebody throwing a conflict of interest charge at me.”
“Uh, no,” I replied, forced to think fast. I couldn’t tell him how or why we’d researched his vita, could I? “M. Randolph was telling me about it in the waiting room. About the piranha that ate that poor dog, and…all. I came to you because of Rob ... M. Grove ... you remember.”
“Oh, yes,” he picked the conversation up again as my voice faltered. “Our young M. Aaron Randolph! Who sure as nickels thinks I’m a bit off my feed to be less interested in the fish of those regions than the flora. Yes, looking pretty chipper today, isn’t he? Actually more Dr. Suttler’s patient, even if in theory you’re all of you our common property here at Sunvale Family Clinic.” He chuckled again. He had an infectious chuckle.
“He mentioned you’d seen him once.” Still worried about myself, I was speaking more or less at random; I think I wouldn’t even have remembered most of my words if the recorder hadn’t still been running in my wristwatch. “That you’d given him some kind of free sample pain pill.”
“Mmmm ... yes. Yes, I think I remember that. Umm ... some new kind of tangerated asprik, I think. Manufacturer’s sample, should be available over th
e counter any month now. Don’t think he ever came back to tell me how it worked for him.”
“No, he never took it, I don’t think,” said I. “He told me he didn’t need any more pain killers by then.”
“Ah, yes, that’d explain it. Hardy lad! Well, M. Tomlinson, what I’d like to do here is give you a little caplet now and get you back here twenty-four hours from now for another blood test. What this is, is a special molecular dye they’ve just developed especially for use in Carmine’s testing. Oh, they’re chewable. Flavored, in fact! Let’s see, which would you like—cherry, citron, or spearmint?”
He held three caplets out on his palm: red, orange, and green. Mechanically choosing one at random, I asked, “When shall I take it?”
“The sooner the better, if you want your dinner at a decent hour tomorrow.” He glanced at his watch. “Let’s see, it’s almost eighteen hundred hours now, so if you eat it here, I can check you again at eighteen hundred tomorrow and have you out of here with a relaxed mind in time for dinner and a show.”
I would have said he added the suggestion that I find a new young man to date for that dinner and show; but he couldn’t have, because my watch unit didn’t record it. He must have winked or something to create the impression. I put the caplet in my mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
“Well, how’s the flavor?” he asked eagerly. “Good spearmint taste?”
“Yes. Very minty.”
“Good, good. Y’know,” he remarked, looking for a second at the two colored caplets left in his hand before dropping them back into the jar and screwing the lid on with a faint metallic whisking sound, “sometimes some of these samples look so good I wish I had an excuse to try ’em myself. Well, M. Tomlinson ...”
There the cube’s memory reached full; but, as I recall, nothing else of any importance at all was said, only the usual end-of-visit pleasantries, pattered out in Dr. Macumber’s friendly good humor. A friend to all the world, I remember thinking as he strolled with me back to the reception desk to arrange my appointment for the next day. And, this man is in the right profession, he really loves people, my thoughts added as he juggled somebody else’s appointment to another slot in order to make room for me at eighteen hundred hours.
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 5