Prostho Plus

by Piers Anthony

  He placed this in the miniature annealing oven and waited for the slow heat to act.

  "You're burning it up!" Oyster protested.

  "By no means. It is necessary to make the gold cohesive, for better service. You see—"

  "Hot," Oyster said. So much for helpful explanations. He could have employed noncohesive metal, but this was a lesser technique that did not appeal to him.

  At length he had suitable ropes of gold for the slow, delicate task of building up the restoration inside the cavity. The first layer was down; once he malleted it into place—

  The elevator burst asunder. A second oyster charged into the operatory waving a translucent tube. "Villain!" it exclaimed. "What are you doing to my grandfather?"

  Dillingham was taken aback. "Your grandfather? I'm trying to make him comfortable until—"

  The newcomer would have none of it. "You're torturing him. My poor, dear, long-suffering grandfather! Monster! How could you?"

  "But I'm only—"

  Young Oyster levelled the tube at him. Its end was solid, but Dillingham knew it was a genuine weapon. "Get away from my grandfather. I saw you hammering spikes into his venerable teeth, you sadist! I'm taking him home!"

  Dillingham did not move. He considered this a stance of necessity, not courage. "Not until I complete this work. I can't let him go out like this, with the excavation exposed."

  "Beast! Pervert! Humanoid!" the youngster screamed. "I'll volatize you!"

  Searing light beamed from the solid tube. The metal mallet in Dillingham's hand melted and dripped to the floor.

  He leaped for the oyster and grappled for the weapon. The giant shell clamped shut on his hand as they fell to the floor. He struggled to right himself, but discovered that the creature had withdrawn all its appendages and now was nothing more than a two-hundred-pound clam—with Dillingham's left hand firmly pinioned.

  "Assaulter of innocents!" the youngster squeaked from within the shell. "Unprovoked attacker! Get your foul paw out of my ear!"

  "Friend, I'll be glad to do that—as soon as you let go," he gasped. What a situation for a dentist!

  "Help! Butchery! Genocide!"

  Dillingham finally found his footing and hauled on his arm. The shell tilted and lifted from the floor, but gradually let go of the trapped hand. He quickly sat on the shell to prevent it from opening again and surveyed the damage.

  Blood trickled from multiple scratches along the wrist, and his hand smarted strenuously, but there was no serious wound.

  "Let my grandson go!" the old oyster screamed now. "You have no right to muzzle him like that! This is a free planet!"

  Dillingham marvelled once more at the translator's original description of the species. These just did not seem to be reasonable creatures. He stood up quickly and took the fallen tube.

  "Look, gentlemen—I'm very sorry if I have misunderstood your conventions, but I must insist that the young person leave."

  Young Oyster peeped out of his shell. "Unwholesome creature! Eater of sea-life! How dare you make demands of us?"

  Dillingham pointed the tube at him. He had no idea how to fire it, but hoped the creature could be bluffed. "Please leave at once. I will release your grandfather as soon as the work is done."

  The youngster focused on the weapon and obeyed, grumbling. Dillingham touched the elevator lock the moment he was gone.

  The oldster was back in the chair. Somehow the seat adjustment had changed, so that this was now a basket-like receptacle, obviously more comfortable for this patient. "You are more of a being than you appear," Oyster remarked. "I was never able to handle that juvenile so efficiently."

  Dillingham contemplated the droplets of metal splattered on the floor. That heat-beam had been entirely too close—and deadly. His hands began to shake in delayed reaction. He was not a man of violence, and his own quick action had surprised him. The stress of recent events had certainly got to him, he thought ruefully.

  "But he's a good lad, really," Oyster continued. "A trifle impetuous—but he inherited that from me. I hope you won't report this little misunderstanding."

  He hadn't thought of that, but of course it was his duty to make a complete report on the melee and the reason for it. Valuable equipment might have been damaged, not to mention the risk to his own welfare. "I'm afraid I must," he said.

  "But they are horribly strict!" the oldster protested. "They will throw him into a foul salty cesspool! They'll boil him in vinegar every hour! His children will be stigmatized!"

  "I can't take the law into my own hands." But of course he already had. "The court—or whatever it is here—must decide. I must make an accurate report."

  "He was only looking out for his ancestor. That's very important to our culture. He's a good—"

  The Oyster paused as Dillingham nodded negatively. His shell quivered, and the soft flesh within turned yellow.

  Dillingham was alarmed. "Sir—are you well?"

  The translator spoke on its own initiative. "The Oyster shows the symptoms of severe emotional shock. His health will be endangered unless immediate relief is available."

  All he needed was a dying galactic on top of everything else! "How can I help him?" The shell was gradually sagging closed with an insidious suggestiveness.

  "The negative emotional stimulus must be alleviated," the translator said. "At his age, such disturbances are—"

  Dillingham took one more look at the visibly putrefying creature. "All right!" he shouted desperately. "I'll withhold my report!"

  The collapse ceased. "You won't tell anyone?" the oldster inquired from the murky depths. "No matter what?"

  "No one." Dillingham was not at all happy, but saw no other way out. Better silence than a dead patient.

  The night was well advanced when he finished with Oyster and sent him home. He had forfeited his study period and, by the time he was able to relax, his sleep as well. He would have to brave the examination without preparation.

  It was every bit as bad as he had anticipated. His mind was dull from lack of sleep and his basic fund of information was meagre indeed on the galactic scale. The questions would have been quite difficult even if he had been fully prepared. There were entire categories he had to skip because they concerned specialized procedures buried in his unread review texts. If only he had had time to prepare!

  The other were having trouble too. He could see their humped over their tables, or under them, depending on physiology, scribbling notes as they figured ratios and tolerances and indices of material properties. Even Treetrunk looked hard-pressed. If Treetrunk, with a galactic library of dental information filed in his celluloid brain, could wilt with the effort, how could a poor humanoid from a backward planet hope to succeed?

  But he carried on to the discouraging end, knowing that his score would damn him but determined to do his best whatever the situation. It seemed increasingly ridiculous, but he still wanted to be admitted to the university. The thought of deserting this stupendous reservoir of information and technique was appalling.

  During the afternoon break he collapsed on his bunk and slept. One day remained, one final trial: the interrogation by the Admissions Advisory Council. This, he understood, was the roughest gauntlet of all; more applicants were rejected on the basis of this interview than from both other tests combined.

  An outcry woke him in the evening. "The probabilities are being posted!" Pincushion honked, prodding him with a spine that was not, despite its appearance, sharp.

  "Mine's twenty-one per cent, not a penny more," Dillingham muttered sleepily. "Low—too low."

  "The revised probs!" Pincushion said. "Based on the test scores. The warning buzzer just sounded."

  Dillingham snapped alert. He remembered now: no results were posted for the field and written exams. Instead the original estimates of acceptance were modified in the light of individual data. This provided unlikely applicants with an opportunity to bow out before submitting themselves to the indignity of a negative recomme
ndation by the AA Council. It also undoubtedly simplified the work of that body by cutting down on the number of interviewees.

  They clustered in a tense semi-circle around the main translator. The results would be given in descending order. Dillingham wondered why more privacy in such matters wasn't provided, but assumed that the University had its reasons. Possibly the constant comparisons encouraged better effort, or weeded out the quitters that much sooner.

  "Anteater," the speaker said. It paused. "Ninety-six per cent."

  Anteater twitched his nose in relief. "I must have guessed right on those stress formulations," he said. "I knew I was in trouble on those computations."

  Treetrunk—eighty-five per cent." Treetrunk almost uprooted himself with glee. "A twenty-five per cent increase! I must have maxed the written portion after all!"

  "Robot—sixty-five per cent." The robotoid took the news impassively.

  The remaining three fidgeted, knowing that their scores had to be lower.

  "Pincushion—fifty per cent." The creature congratulated himself on an even chance, though he had obviously hoped to do better.

  "Electrolyte—twenty-three per cent." The rocklike individual rolled towards his compartment. "I was afraid of that. I'm going home."

  The rest watched Dillingham sympathetically, anticipating the worst. It came. "Earthman—three per cent," the speaker said plainly.

  The last reasonable hope was gone. The odds were thirty to one against him, and his faith in miracles was small. The others scattered, embarrassed for him, while Dillingham stood rigid.

  He had known he was in trouble—but this! To be given, on the basis of thorough testing, practically no chance of admission...

  He was forty-one years old. He felt like crying.

  The Admissions Advisory Council was alien even by the standard he had learned in the galaxy. There were only three members—but as soon as this occurred to him, he realized that this would be only the fraction of the Council assigned to his case. There were probably hundreds of interviews going on at this moment, as thousands of applicants were processed.

  One member was a honeycomb of gelatinous tissue suspended on a trellislike framework. The second was a mass of purple sponge. The third was an undulating something confined within a tank: a water-breather, assuming that liquid was water. Assuming that it breathed.

  The speaker set in the wall of the tank came to life. This was evidently the spokesman, if any were required. "We do not interview many with so low a probability of admission as student," Tank said. "Why did you persist?"

  Why indeed? Well, he had nothing further to lose by forthrightness. "I still want to enter the University. There is still a chance."

  "Your examination results are hardly conducive," Tank said, and it was amazing how much scorn could be infused into the tone of the mechanical translation. "While your field exercises were fair, your written effort was incompetent. You appear to be ignorant of all but the most primitive and limited aspects of prosthodontistry. Why should you wish to undertake training for which your capacity is plainly insufficient?"

  "Most of the questions of the second examination struck me as relating to basic information, rather than to individual potential," Dillingham said woodenly. "If I had that information already, I would not stand in need of the training I came here to learn."

  "An intriguing attitude. We expect, nevertheless, a certain minimum background. Otherwise our curriculum may be wastefully diluted."

  For this Dillingham had no answer. Obviously the ranking specialists of the galaxy should not be used for elementary instruction. He understood the point—yet something in him would not capitulate. There had to be more to this hearing than an automatic decision on the basis of tests whose results could be distorted by participant co-operation (cheating) on the one hand, and circumstantial denial of study-time on the other. Why have an advisory board, if that were all?

  "We are concerned with certain aspects of your field work," the honeycomb creature said. He spoke by vibrating his tissues in the air, but the voice emerged from his translator. "Why did you neglect particular items?"

  "Do you mean number seventeen? I was unfamiliar with the specimen and therefore could not repair it competently."

  "You refused to work on it merely because it was new to your experience?" Again the towering scorn.

  That did make it sound bad. "No. I would have done something if I had had more evidence of its nature. But the specimen was not complete. I felt that there was insufficient information presented to justify attempted repairs."

  "You could not have hurt an inert model very much. Surely you realized that even an incorrect repair would have brought you a better score than total failure?

  Dillingham had not known that. "I assumed that these specimens stood in lieu of actual patients. I gave them the same consideration I would have given a living, feeling creature. Neglect of a cavity in the tooth of a live patient might lead to the eventual loss of that tooth—but an incorrect repair could have caused more serious damage. Sometimes it is better not to interfere."

  "Explain."

  "When I visited the planet Electrolus I saw that the metallic restorations in native teeth were indirectly interfering with communication, which effect was disastrous to the well-being of the individual. This impressed upon me how dangerous well-meaning ignorance could be, even in so simple a matter as a filling."

  "The chairman of the Dental League of planet Electrolus is a University graduate. Are you accusing him of ignorance?"

  Oh-oh. "Perhaps the problem had not come to his attention," Dillingham said, trying to evade the trap.

  "We will return to that matter at another time," the purple sponge said grimly. Dillingham's reasoning hardly seemed to have impressed this group.

  "You likewise ignored item number thirty-six," Honeycomb said. "Was your logic the same?"

  "Yes. The jaw was so alien to my experience that I could not safely assume that there was anything wrong with it, let alone attempt to fix it. I suppose I was foolish not to fill the labial cavity, in view of your scoring system, but that would have required an assumption I was not equipped to make."

  "How much time did you spend—deciding not to touch the cavity?" Honeycomb inquired sweetly.

  "Half an hour." Pointless to explain that he had gone over every surface of #36 looking for some confirmation that its action was similar to that of any of the jaws with which he was familiar. "If I may inquire now—what was the correct treatment?"

  "None. It was a healthy jaw."

  Dillingham's breath caught. "You mean if I had filled that cavity—what looked like a cavity, I mean—"

  "You would have destroyed our model extragalactic patient's health."

  "Then my decision on #36 helped my examination score!"

  "No. Your decision was based on uncertainty, not on accurate diagnosis. It threw your application into serious question."

  Dillingham shut his mouth and waited for the next thrust.

  "You did not follow instructions on #41," Honeycomb said. "Why?"

  "I felt the instructions were mistaken. The placement of an MOD inlay was unnecessary for the correction of the condition, and foolish in the face of the peril the tooth was already in from gingivitis. Why perform expensive and complicated reconstruction, when untreated gum disease threatens to nullify it soon anyway?"

  "Would that inlay have damaged the function of the tooth in anyway?"

  "Yes, in the sense that no reconstruction can be expected to perform as well as the original. But even if there were no difference, that placement was functionally unnecessary. The expense and discomfort to the patient must also be considered. The dentist owes it to his patient to advise him of—"

  "You are repetitive. Do you place your judgment before that of the University?"

  Trouble again. "I must act on my own best judgment, when I am charged with the responsibility. Perhaps, with University training, I would have been able to make a more informed decision
."

  "Kindly delete the pleading," Honeycomb said.

  Something was certainly wrong somewhere. All his conjectures seemed to go against the intent of this institution. Did its standards, as well as its knowledge, differ so radically from his own? Could all his professional and ethical instincts be wrong?

  "Your performance on the written examination was extremely poor," Sponge said. "Are you naturally stupid, or did you fail to apply yourself properly?"

  "I could have done better if I had studied more."

  "You failed to prepare yourself?"

  Worse and worse. "Yes."

  "You were aware of the importance of the examination?"

  "Yes."

  "You had suitable review texts on hand?"

  "Yes."

  "Yet you did not bother to study them."

  "I wanted to, but—" Then he remembered his promise to the oyster. He could not give his reason for failing to study. If this trio picked up any hint of that episode, it would not relent until everything was exposed. After suffering this much interrogation, he retained no illusions about the likely fate of young Oyster. No wonder the grandfather had been anxious!

  "What is your pretext for such neglect?"

  "I can offer none."

  The colour of the sponge darkened. "We are compelled to view with disfavour an applicant who neither applies himself nor cares to excuse his negligence. This is not the behaviour we expect in our students."

  Dillingham said nothing. His position was hopeless—but he still could not give up until they made his rejection final.

  Tank resumed the dialogue. "You have an interesting record. It is even alarming in some respects. You came originally from planet Earth—one of the aborigine cultures. Why did you desert your tribe?"

  They had unfortunate ways of putting things! "I was contacted by a galactic voyager who required prosthodontic repair. I presumed he picked my name out of the local directory." He described his initial experience with the creatures he had dubbed, facetiously, the North Nebulites, or Enens. Some of that early humour haunted him now.

  "You operated on a totally unfamiliar jaw?" Tank demanded abruptly.