Prostho Plus

by Piers Anthony

  Dillingham contemplated it with awe. The tooth stood about twelve feet high, counting only the distance it projected from the spongy gingival tissue. Much more would be below, of course.

  "I see," he said, able to think of nothing more pertinent at the moment. He looked at the bag in his hand, that contained an assortment of needle-pointed probes, several ounces of instant amalgam, and sundry additional staples. In the sub was a portable drill with a heavy-duty needle attachment that could excavate a cavity a full inch deep.

  Well, they had described it as a "big" toothache. He just hadn't been alert.

  The Enens brought forth a light extensible ladder and leaned it against the tooth. They set his drill and transcoders beside it. "Summon us when you're finished," their parting message said.

  Dillingham felt automatically for the electronic signal in his pocket. If he lost that, he might never get out of here! By the time he was satisfied, the amphibian was gone.

  He was alone in the mouth of a monster.

  Well, he'd been in awkward situations before. He tried once again to close his mind to the horrors that lurked about him and ascended the ladder, holding his lantern aloft.

  The occlusal surface was about ten feet in diameter. It was slightly concave and worn smooth. In the centre was a dark trench about two feet wide and over a yard long. This was obviously the source of the irritation. He walked over to it and looked down. A putrid stench sent him gasping back. Yes—this was the cavity! It seemed to range from a foot in depth at the edges to four feet in the centre.

  "That," he observed aloud, "is a case of dental caries for the record book." The English/Enen transcoder printed a stick. He turned it off, irritated.

  Unfortunately, he had no record book. All he possessed was a useless bag of implements and a smarting nose. But there was nothing for it but to explore the magnitude of the decay. It probably extended literally within the pulp, so that the total infected area was considerably larger than that visible from above. What showed here was merely a vertical fissure, newly formed. He would have to check directly.

  He forced himself to breath regularly, though his stomach danced in protest. He stepped down into the cavity.

  The muck was ankle-deep and the miasma overpowering. He summoned the sick dregs of his willpower and squatted to poke into the bottom with one finger. Under the slime, the surface was like packed earth. He was probably still inches from the material of the living tooth; these were merely layers of crushed and spoiling food.

  He recalled long-ago jokes about eating apple-compote, pronouncing the word with an internal S. Compost. It was not a joke any more.

  He located a dryer area and scuffed it with one shoe. Some dark flakes turned up, but nothing significant. He wound up and drove his toe into the wall as hard as he could.

  There was a thunderous roar. He clapped his hands to his ears as the air pressure increased explosively. His foot slipped and he fell into the reeking centre-section of the trench.

  An avalanche of muck descended on him. Above, hundreds of tons of flesh and bone and gristle crashed down imperiously, seemingly ready to crush every particle of matter within its compass into further compost.

  The jaws were closing.

  Dillingham found himself face down in sickening garbage, his ears ringing from the atmospheric compression and his body quivering from the mechanical one. The lantern, miraculously, was undamaged and bright, and his limbs were sound. He sat up, brushed some of the sludge from face and arms, and grabbed for the slippery light.

  He was trapped between clenched jaws—inside the cavity.

  Frantically he activated the signal. After an interminable period that he endured in mortal fear of suffocation, the ponderous upper jaw lifted. He scrambled out, dripping.

  The bag of implements was now a thin layer of colour on the surface of the tooth. "Perfect occlusal," he murmured professionally, while shaking in reaction to the realization that his fall had narrowly saved him from a similar fate.

  The ladder was gone. Anxious to remove himself from the dangerous biting surface as quickly as possible, he prepared to jump—and saw a gigantic mass of tentacles reaching for his portable drill near the base of the tooth. Each tentacle appeared to be thirty feet long, and as strong and sinuous as a python's tail.

  The biting surface no longer seemed like such a bad place. Dillingham remained where he was and watched the drill being carried into the darkness of the mouth's centre.

  In a few more minutes the amphibian vehicle appeared. The Enen driver emerged, chewed a stick, presented it. Dillingham reached for the transcoder—and discovered that it was the wrong one. All he had now was the Gleep interpreter.

  Chagrined, he fiddled with it. At least he could set it to play back whatever the Gleep prince might have said. Perhaps there had been meaning in that roar...

  There had been. "OUCH!" the machine exclaimed.

  The next few hours were complicated. Dillingham now had to speak to the Enens via the Gleep muck-a-muck (after the episode in the cavity, he regretted this nomenclature acutely), who had been summoned for a diagnostic conference. This was accomplished by setting up shop in the creature's communications department.

  The compartment was actually an offshoot from the Gleep lung, deep inside the body. It was a huge internal air space with sensitive tentacles bunching from the walls. This was the manner in which the dominant species of this landless planet had developed fast-moving appendages whose manipulation led eventually to tools and intelligence. An entire technology had developed—inside the great bodies.

  "So you see," he said. "I have to have an anaesthetic that will do the job, and canned air to breathe while I'm working, and a power drill that will handle up to an eighteen inch depth of rock. Also a sledgehammer and a dozen wedges. And a derrick and the following quantities of—" He went on to make a startling list of supplies.

  The transcoder sprouted half a dozen tentacles as he talked and waved them in a dizzying semaphore. After a moment a group of the wall tentacles waved back. "It shall be accomplished," the muck-a-muck's reply came.

  Dillingham wondered what visual signal had projected the "ouch" back in the patient's mouth. Then it came to him: the tentacles that had absconded with his drill and perhaps fragments of his other transcoder were extensions of the creature's tongue! Naturally they talked.

  "One other thing: while you're procuring my equipment, I'd like to see a diagram of the internal structure of your molars."

  "Structure?" The tentacles were agitated.

  "The pattern of enamel, dentin and pulp, or whatever passes for it in your system. A schematic drawing would do nicely. Or a sagittal section showing both the nerves and the bony socket. That tooth is still quite sensitive, which means the nerve is alive. I wouldn't want to damage it unnecessarily."

  "We have no such diagrams."

  Dillingham was shocked. "Don't you know the anatomy of your teeth? How have you repaired them before?"

  "We have never had trouble with them before. We have no dentists. That is why we summoned you."

  He paced the living floor of the chamber, amazed. How was it possible for such intelligent and powerful creatures to remain so ignorant of matters vital to their well-being? Never had trouble before? That cavity had obviously been festering for many years.

  Yet he had faced similar ignorance daily during his Earthly practice. "I'll be working blind, in that case," he said at last. "You must understand that while I'll naturally do my best, I can not guarantee to save the tooth."

  "We understand," the Gleep muck-a-muck replied contritely.

  Back on the tooth (after a stern warning to Junior to keep those jaws apart no matter how uncomfortable things might become), equipped with face mask, respirator, elbow-length gloves and hip boots, Dillingham began the hardest labour of his life. It was not intellectually demanding or particularly intricate—just hard. He was vaporizing the contaminated walls of the cavity with the beam of a thirty-pound laser drill, and in
half an hour his arms were dead tired.

  There was lateral extension of the infection. He had to wedge himself into a rotting, diminishing cavern, wielding the beam at arm's length before him. He had to twist the generator sidewise to penetrate every branching side pocket, all the while frankly terrified lest the beam slip and touch part of his body. He was playing with fire—a fiery beam that could slice off his arm and puff it into vapour in one careless sweep.

  At least, he thought sweatily, he wasn't going to have to use the sledgehammer here. When he ordered the drill he had expected a mechanical one similar to those pistons used to break up pavement on Earth. To the Gleep, however, a drill was a tapered laser beam. This was indeed far superior to what he had had in mind. Deadly but serendipitous.

  Backbreaking hours later it was done. Sterile walls of dentin lined the cavity on every side. Yet this was only the beginning.

  Dillingham, after a short nap right there in the now-aseptic cavity, roused himself to make careful measurements. He had to be certain that every alley was widest at the opening, and that none were too sharply twisted. Wherever the measurements were unsatisfactory, he drilled away healthy material until the desired configuration had been achieved. He also adjusted the beam for "Polish" and wiped away the roughnesses.

  He signalled the Enen sub and indicated by gestures that it was time for the tank of supercolloid. And he resolved that next time he stepped off-planet, he would bring a trunk-ful of spare transcoders. He had problems enough without translation difficulties! At least he had been able to make clear that they had to send a scout back to the home planet to pick up the bulk supplies.

  Supercolloid was a substance developed by the ingenious Enens in response to his exorbitant specifications of several months before. He had once entertained the notion that if he were slightly unreasonable, they would ship him back to Earth. Instead they had met the specifications exactly and increased his assessed value because he was such a sophisticated practitioner. This neatly added years to his projected term of captivity. After that he became more careful. But the substance remained a prosthodontist's dream.

  Supercolloid was a fluid stored under pressure that set rapidly when released. It held its shape indefinitely without measurable distortion, yet was as flexible as rubber. It was ideal for difficult impressions, since it could yield while being removed and spring immediately back to the proper shape. This saved time and reduced error. At 1300 degrees Fahrenheit it melted suddenly into the thin, transparent fluid again. This was its most important property.

  Dillingham was about to make a very large cast. To begin the complex procedure, he had to fill every crevice of the cavity with colloid. Since the volume of the excavation came to forty cubic feet, and supercolloid weighed fifty pounds per cubic foot when set, he needed a good two thousand pounds.

  A full ton—to fill a single cavity. "Think big," he told himself.

  He set up the tank and hauled the long hose into the pit. Once more he crawled head-first into the lateral expansion, no longer requiring the face mask. He aimed the nozzle without fear and squirted the foamy green liquid into the farthest off-shoot, making certain that no air spaces remained. He backed off a few feet and filled the other crevices, but left the main section open.

  In half an hour the lateral branch had been simplified considerably. It was now a deep, flat crack without offshoots. Dillingham put away the nozzles and crawled in with selected knives and brushes. He cut away projecting colloid, leaving each filling flush with the main crevice wall, and painted purple fixative over each surface.

  Satisfied at last, he trotted out the colloid hose again and started the pump. This time he opened the nozzle to full aperture and filled the main crevice, backing away as the foam threatened to engulf him. He certainly didn't want to become part of the filling! Soon all of the space was full. He smoothed the green wall facing the main cavity and painted it in the same manner as the off-shoots.

  Now he was ready for the big one. So far he had used up about eight cubic feet of colloid, but the gaping centre pit would require over thirty feet. He removed the nozzle entirely and let the tank heave itself out.

  "Turn it off!" he yelled to the Enen by the pump as green foam bulged gently over the rim. One ton of supercolloid filled the tooth, and he was ready to carve it down and insert the special plastic loop in the centre.

  The foam continued to pump. "I said TURN IT OFF!" he cried again. Then he remembered that he had no transcoder for Enen. They could not comprehend him.

  He flipped the hose away from the filling and aimed it over the edge of the tooth. He had no way to cut off the flow himself, since he had removed the nozzle. There could not be much left in the tank.

  A rivulet of green coursed down the tooth and over the pink gum tissue, travelling towards the squid-like tongue. The tentacles reached out, grasping the foam as it solidified. They soon became festooned in green.

  Dillingham laughed—but not for long. There was a steam-whistle sigh followed by a violent tremor of the entire jaw. "I'm going to... sneeze," the Gleep transcoder said, sounding fuzzy. The colloid was interfering with the articulation of the tongue and triggering a reflex.

  A sneeze! Suddenly Dillingham realized what that would mean to him and the Enen crew.

  "Get under cover!" he shouted at the Enens below, again forgetting that they couldn't comprehend the warning. But they had already grasped the significance of the tremors, and were piling into the sub frantically.

  "Hey—wait for me!" But he was too late. The air howled past with the titanic intake of breath. There was a terrible pause.

  Dillingham lunged for the mound of colloid and dug his fingers into the thickening substance. "Keep your jaws apart!" he yelled at the Gleep, praying that it could still pick up the message. "KEEP THEM OPEN!"

  The sound of a tornado raged out of its throat. He buried his face in green as the hurricane struck, tearing mercilessly at his body. His arms were wrenched cruelly; his fingers ripped through the infirm colloid, slipping...

  The wind died, leaving him grasping at the edge of the tooth. He had survived it! The jaws had not closed.

  He looked up. The upper molars hung only ten feet above, visible in the light from the charmed lamp hooked somehow to his foot.

  He was past the point of reaction. "Open, please," he called in his best operative manner, willing the transcoder to be still in the vicinity. He peered over the edge.

  There was no sign of the sub. The colloid tank, with its discharging hose, was also gone.

  He took a walk across the neighbouring teeth, looking for whatever there was to see. He was appalled at the amount of decalcification and outright decay in evidence. This Gleep child would shortly be in pain again, unless substantial restorative work were done immediately.

  But in a shallow cavity—one barely a foot deep—he found the transcoder, undamaged. "It's an ill decalcification that bodes nobody good," he murmured, retrieving it.

  The amphibious sub reappeared and disgorged somewhat shaken passengers. Dillingham marched back over the rutted highway and joined them. But the question still nagged at his mind: how could the caries he had observed be reconciled with the muck-a-muck's undoubtedly sincere statement that there had never been dental trouble before? What had changed?

  He carved the green surface into an appropriate pattern and carefully applied his fixative. He was ready for the next step.

  Now the derrick was set up and brought into play. Dillingham guided its dangling hook into the eyelet embedded in the colloid and signalled the Enen operator to lift. The chain went taut; the mass of solidified foam eased grandly out of its socket and hung in the air, an oddly-shaped boulder.

  He turned his attention to the big crevice-filling. He screwed in a corkscrew-eyelet and arranged a pulley so that the derrick could act on it effectively. The purple fixative had prevented the surface of the main impression from attaching to that of the subsidiary one, just as it was also protecting the several small branch
es within.

  There was no particular difficulty. In due course every segment of the colloid impression was marked and laid out in the makeshift laboratory he had set up near the waterline of the Gleep's mouth. They were ready for one more step.

  The tank of prepared investment arrived. This, too, was a special composition. It remained fluid until triggered by an electric jolt, whereupon it solidified instantly. Once solid, it could not be affected by anything short of demolition by sledgehammer.

  Dillingham pumped a quantity into a great temporary vat. He attached a plastic handle to the smallest impression, dipped it into the vat, withdrew it entirely covered by white batter and touched the electrode to it. He handed the abruptly solid object to the nearest Enen and took up the next.

  Restorative procedure on Gleep differed somewhat from established Earthly technique. All it took was a little human imagination and a lot of Enen technology.

  The octopus-tongue approached while he worked. It reached for him. "Get out of here or I'll cram you into the burn-out furnace!" he snapped into the transcoder. The tongue retreated.

  The major section was a problem. It barely fitted into the vat, and a solid foot of it projected over the top. He finally had the derrick lower it until it bumped bottom, then raise it a few inches and hold it steady. He passed out brushes, and he and the Enen crew went to work slopping the goo over the top and around the suspended hook.

  He touched the electrode to the white monster. The derrick lifted the mass, letting the empty vat fall free. Yet another stage was done.

  Two ovens were employed for the burn-out. Each was big enough for a man to stand within. They placed the ends of the plastic rods into special holders and managed to fit all of the smaller units into one oven, fastening them into place by means of a heat-resisting framework. The main chunk sat in the other oven, propped upside-down.

  They sealed the ovens and set the thermostats for 2000 degrees. Dillingham lay down into the empty vat and slept.

  Three hours later burn-out was over. Even supercolloid took time to melt completely when heated in a 1500 pound mass. But now the green liquid had been drained into reservoirs and sealed away, while the smaller quantities of melted plastic were allowed to collect in a disposal vat. The white investments were hollow shells, open only where the plastic rods had projected.