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"It's mathematically improbable, this phenomenon," he says. "What's California law say about mineral rights in a case like this?"
"You can't stake out a claim!" Van Mesgeluk roars. "My God, this is a human being, not a piece of land!"
More lightning cracks whitely across the opening, and there is a rumble as of a bowling ball on its way to a strike.
"I said it wasn't heat lightning," Van Mesgeluk growls.
Beinschneider is speechless.
"No wonder the E.E.G. machine burned up when we were diagnosing him," Van Mesgeluk says. "There must be several thousand volts, maybe a hundred thousand, playing around down there. But I don't detect much warmth. Is the brain a heat sink?"
"You shouldn't have fired that technician because the machine burned up," Beinschneider says. "It wasn't her fault, after all."
"She jumped out of her apartment window the next day," Nurse Lustig says reproachfully. "I wept like a broken faucet at her funeral. And almost got engaged to the undertaker." Lustig rolls her hips.
"Broke every bone in her body, yet there wasn't a single break in her skin," Van Mesgeluk says. "Remarkable phenomenon."
"She was a human being, not a phenomenon!" Beinschneider says.
"But psychotic," Van Mesgeluk replies. "Besides, that's my line. She was thirty-three years old but hadn't had a period in ten years."
"It was that plastic intrauterine device," Beinschneider says. "It was clogged with dust. Which was bad enough, but the dust was radioactive. All those tests..."
"Yes," the chief surgeon says. "Proof enough of her psychosis. I did the autopsy, you know. It broke my heart to cut into that skin. Beautiful. Like Carrara marble. In fact, I snapped the knife at the first pass. Had to call in an expert from Italy. He had a diamond-tipped chisel. The hospital raised hell about the expense, and Blue Cross refused to pay."
"Maybe she was making a diamond," says Nurse Lustig. "All that tension and nervous energy had to go somewhere."
"I always wondered where the radioactivity came from," Van Mesgeluk says. "Please confine your remarks to the business at hand, Miss Lustig. Leave the medical opinions to your superiors."
He peers into the hole. Somewhere between heaven of skull and earth of brain, on the horizon, lightning flickers.
"Maybe we ought to call in a geologist. Beinschneider, you know anything about electronics?"
"I got a brother-in-law who runs a radio and TV store."
"Good. Hook up a step-down transformer to the probe, please. Wouldn't want to burn up another machine."
"An E.E.G. now?" Beinschneider says. "It'd take too long to get a transformer. My brother-in-law lives clear across town. Besides, he'd charge double if he had to reopen the store at this time of the evening."
"Discharge him, anyway," the chief surgeon says. "Ground the voltage. Very well. We'll get that growth out before it kills him and worry about scientific research later."
He puts on two extra pairs of gloves.
"Do you think he'll grow another?" Nurse Lustig says. "He's not a bad-looking guy. I can tell he'd be simpatico."
"How the hell would I know?" says Van Mesgeluk. "I may be a doctor, but I'm not quite God."
"God who?" says Beinschneider, the orthodox atheist. He drops the ground wire into the hole; blue sparks spurt out. Van Mesgeluk lifts out the diamond with the tongs. Nurse Lustig takes it from him and begins to wash it off with tap water.
"Let's call in your brother-in-law," Van Mesgeluk says. "The jewel merchant, I mean."
"He's in Amsterdam. But I could phone him. However, he'd insist on splitting the fee, you know."
"He doesn't even have a degree!" Van Mesgeluk cries. "But call him. How is he on legal aspects of mineralogy?"
"Not bad. But I don't think he'll come. Actually, the jewel business is just a front. He gets his big bread by smuggling in chocolate-covered LSD drops."
"Is that ethical?"
"It's top-quality Dutch chocolate," Beinschneider says stiffly.
"Sorry. I think I'll put in a plastic window over the hole. We can observe any regrowth."
"Do you think it's psychosomatic in origin?"
"Everything is, even the sex urge. Ask Miss Lustig."
The patient opens his eyes. "I had a dream," he says. "This dirty old man with a long white beard..."
"A typical archetype," Van Mesgeluk says. "Symbol of the wisdom of the unconscious. A warning..."
"...his name was Plato," the patient says. "He was the illegitimate son of Socrates. Plato, the old man, staggers out of a dark cave at one end of which is a bright klieg light. He's holding a huge diamond in his hand; his fingernails are broken and dirty. The old man cries, 'The Ideal is Physical! The Universal is the Specific Concrete! Carbon, actually. Eureka! I'm rich! I'll buy all of Athens, invest in apartment buildings, Great Basin, COMSAT!'
" 'Screw the mind!' the old man screams. 'It's all mine!' "
"Would you care to dream about King Midas?" Van Mesgeluk says.
Nurse Lustig shrieks. A lump of sloppy grayish matter is in her hands.
"The water changed it back into a tumor!"
"Beinschneider, cancel that call to Amsterdam!"
"Maybe he'll have a relapse," Beinschneider says.
Nurse Lustig turns savagely upon the patient. "The engagement's off!"
"I don't think you loved the real me," the patient says, "whoever you are. Anyway, I'm glad you changed your mind. My last wife left me, but we haven't been divorced yet. I got enough trouble without a bigamy charge.
"She took off with my surgeon for parts unknown just after my hemorrhoid operation. I never found out why."
The Sumerian Oath
A Polytropical Paramyth
Caught in the Frozen Foods & Ice Cream aisle, with an assassin coming down from each end, Goodbody leaped upon the top of the grocery cart. With the grace and the flair of Doctor Blood (as played by Errol Fly
Though Goodbody soared with great aplomb and considerable beauty, he knocked over tall boxes of ice cream cones and fell down on the other side into the Home Hardware & Fix-It-Urself Supplies. The cataract of Goodbody and wrenches, pliers, screwdrivers, boxes of nails, double sockets, and picture wire startled women customers and caused one to faint into Pet Foods & Bird Cages.
Goodbody dived under a railing and then galloped along the front of the store toward the Liquor Department. A shout caused him to look behind. The fools had actually pulled out their scalpels; they were indeed desperate. It was possible, however, that they did not mean to kill him inside the supermarket. They might be herding him into the parking lot, where others would net him.
He yanked over a pocketbook stand as he went by, whirling it so that The Valley of The Dolls, The Arrangement, Couples, and Purple Sex Thing from the Fleshpot Planet flew out like the hyperactive fingers of desperately hungry and desperately typing pornographers. The nearest pursuer, waving his scalpel, found that its tip was embedded in So You Want To Be a Brain Surgeon?
How appropriate and how terrible, he thought as he fled through the door. He was the author of that best seller, the royalties of which he could not spend because he might find the AMA agents waiting to pick him up if he picked up the checks.
In the parking lot, almost as bright as day, a car leaped at him. He soared again, performing three entrechats to gain altitude (reminding him of the days when he had entered the operating amphitheater to the applause of famous surgeons and slack-jawed first-year students). He landed between a Chevy and a Caddy and was off. Tires screamed; doors slammed; feet pounded; voices growled.