THE M.D. A Horror Story

by Thomas M. Disch

  But there were some matters beyond Ms. Bright’s scope, some forms of trouble for which her years of experience working for the McKinleys were of little use. State Senator Lester Burton was one such form of trouble. Politeness was no use against him; though he came from one of the poorest counties in the state and dressed deplorably, Senator Burton could be as polite as Ms. Bright at her politest and yet not yield an inch. He had also made it clear that he was not to be deflected from his purpose by being offered a position on the board that would administer the project whose development he was hindering, lucrative though such a position might be.

  “He is just bound and determined to spoil the entire project,” Ms. Bright had lamented to Ben, in their regular Wednesday morning meeting. “I’ve pointed out all the long-run benefits that Onamia itself stands to gain. The facilities that will be built, the employment opportunities, the health benefits for those who choose not to relocate.”

  “Not to mention the benefit to the thousands who will be treated there.”

  “I’ve been over every detail. I’ve shown him the lovely scale model that the architects built with the teeny little pine trees. I’ve shown him the actuarial projections over a five- and ten-year period, and he actually spent half an hour reading the text while I twiddled my thumbs. Then he wanted a photocopy! But he wasn’t willing to make a single concession. He insists that he is going to bring the matter up at the next session of the legislature, and he means to call a press conference before then.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “To keep Northwestern out of Onamia.”

  “He lives there?”

  “He was born there, and he’s been holding onto the building the drugstore is in.”

  “I trust we’ve made a reasonable offer? At this point we can afford to be generous.”

  “Our people have offered him twice the building and the business’s market value, and firm guarantees that it will continue to operate as a pharmacy. That was his first concern. He said he didn’t want Onamia becoming another ghost town. That was when he thought Northwestern was going to be building a mall outside of town. Then he started doing title searches. Basically that’s what he’s done for a living most of his life. A small-town lawyer.”

  “With a seat in the state legislature,” Ben pointed out.

  “That doesn’t seem to make much difference. I’ve had Lucille Borg, who represents the greater Mille Lacs Lake area in the state house, approach him and explain what a really good thing for Onamia and the whole region the development could be. She probably told him more than she should have. Because after he talked with her, he got interested in MedSec, and now he has this whole theory about everything we’re doing, and I really can’t cope with the man. I’m sorry.”

  “So, what is to be done, do you think?”

  Ms. Bright took a deep, bosom-lifting breath. “He says he wants to talk with Dr. Michaels. About what, I asked him. About his real estate investments, is what he answered. I told him Dr. Michaels is too busy but that he could talk to you, and he said ‘That’s too bad,’ and started walking out the door. I’ll tell you, if I were not a Christian woman, I would have liked to—” She made a claw of her false fingernails and made a cute growling sound.

  Ben nodded agreement. “Sometimes it’s hard to love our enemies.”

  “I realize that Dr. Michaels hates to be bothered with business details. But this goes beyond details. This could undermine the whole Onamia project.”

  “We can’t let that happen. I’m sure William will agree to see the man and smooth his feathers.”

  “I hate to take him away from his real work.”

  “Tell Stan to set up an appointment ASAP.”

  Ms. Bright touched her gold chain and gave a little bow of fealty. She knew the problem posed by Senator Burton would be taken care of once Dr. Michaels turned his attention to it.

  “He has,” she often said of him, “a magic touch.”

  60

  William at that moment was in his office but not at work, unless it is that the play of creative spirits is their true work. He was playing with a favorite piece of software, a flight simulator, and just stoned enough that the graphics on the monitor seemed realer than real. The white clouds in the blue sky shredded into fractal geometries at their edges, abraded by a western wind, their dissolution in sync somehow with the CD on the player, Scott Ross playing Scarlatti. He dipped the nose of the imaginary biplane (and dipped his own to a line of coke), and in a moment the clouds parted, and he spiraled downward to the dark airfield with a spacy feeling that the plane’s extended wings were his own. A perfect three-point landing. “Exit plane,” he commanded, and found himself at once in the airport lobby, which was neither more nor less generic than any other airport lobby. There was an IBM news kiosk with that morning’s genuine headlines scrolling across the screens (the software had windows open to the MDS data bank, CompuServe, and a pager). Armed security guards in green uniforms stood beside the main exit, above which a banner proclaimed WELCOME TO THE GREEN HILLS OF WYOMIA.

  He felt the warm sag of happy relief that comes at the first instant of surrender to a favorite sitcom or the fizzing water of a hot tub. He was home in his own private Wonderland, his Tara, his alternate universe, where anyone he met was the projection and reflection of his own imagination.

  He went to retrieve his suitcase from the slowly revolving luggage carousel. The suitcase was filled with a jumble of paraphernalia that had proved useful over the years in coping with the perils and puzzles of Wyomia: knives, scalpels, forceps, tweezers, rope, glue, blowtorches, antibiotics, and placebos. And at the bottom of the bag, wrapped in a silk handkerchief, his most potent resource, a caduceus, whose potency was not limited to the imaginary realm encoded in the program’s software, but which could share, like a rechargeable battery, some small portion of the total zap available to its original, which William still kept in the Obstschmecker attic and brought to his Medical Defense Systems office only when the icon in the software program needed to be reenergized.

  It was somewhat worrying, therefore, to have his luggage delayed, but there were a variety of instructions in the program that might account for a delay. Stan might have summoned him on the hot line (but then his pager would be beeping). Or there might be a news headline of such urgency that UPS had flagged it for the immediate attention of subscribers. He went to the news kiosk to check that possibility and used his mouse to select PRINT. Then NATIONAL. Then TOP STORY. His subjective camera zoomed in on a screen of the news kiosk, and, via the window to CompuServe, the top story of the day appeared: COUNTRY RECKONS MEMORIAL DAY DEATH TOLL.

  There followed a black-bordered list of the latest celebrities to have died from ARVIDS-related causes. Death had assembled a varied cross-section of the rich and famous over the past two weeks: a novelist, the mayor of Sacramento, the head of the nation’s second largest bank, a mass murderer awaiting execution in Arizona, a pop singer, an opera singer, the four-year-old daughter of a TV sitcom star, the president of an Ivy League university, a Catholic archbishop, and the owner of a baseball team. The president had rebuffed critics who objected to flags over the Capitol and White House being flown at half mast, and she defended the surgeon general’s proposal for more intensive random testing in primary schools.

  All that related to the epidemic was in some sense flagged for William’s special attention, but no item in the roster of the recently deceased would have activated an override delay. He switched tracks to state and local news, where the top story concerned the state legislature’s rubber-stamping the governor’s decision that there would be no State Fair again this year (the State Fairgrounds having been converted to a quarantine facility) or for the duration of the health crisis. Counties were being urged to follow the state’s example.

  —It comes full circle, said a familiar voice.

  William turned around and there was the god, in a gray business suit, looking down at him and smiling.

  Willia
m knelt to kiss the hand the god extended. The action of kneeling was not accomplished by any command of keyboard, wand, or mouse. By that act of fealty William had crossed the threshold between simulation and the god’s own realm. He knew that what he saw now—the god’s archaic smile—was not an image formed by the pixels of the computer screen but a phantasm visible only to some inner organ of vision. He knew that the touch of the god’s hand, prompting him to rise to his feet, was an impalpable touch, and that when he seemed to stand, he yet remained seated at his desk in a kind of trance. But he knew this only as we sometimes know, when we are dreaming, that we dream.

  —It was at the State Fair, wasn’t it, where the seed was sown from which all these interesting events have sprung?

  “Of course. I have no secrets to hide from you.” He waited for the god to say more, but he only smiled. Rather than ask a question (invariably, the god would depart when three questions had been asked), William observed, “It has been quite some time since I last saw you.”

  —But not for want of your keeping the channel open. You have been abusing controlled substances rather recklessly of late.

  “Stan has good connections. And I see to it that every gram is guaranteed nonaddictive with no deleterious side effects. Pure euphoria and no hangover, no dimming of the wits—and no sweat.”

  —Twinkies are never good for you, William, but I did not come here to lecture you on personal hygiene.

  He would have to ask. “Why are you here, then?”

  —To warn you of a very imminent danger.

  William bit his lip, unwilling to waste a question on what he was sure would be forthcoming without his asking.

  But the god did not define the danger he was to beware. Instead, he added:

  —And of broader dangers contingent upon the first, dangers from father, brother, and son.

  “My father’s dead.”

  —The same is often said of the gods, but we still exercise a certain influence on the course of events. You’re looking well, I must say. The strain of your work hasn’t etched noticeable furrows in your brow. Even your conscience, what can be seen of it, seems clear. A very trout stream of a conscience. It’s as the Greeks have said: Mens sana in corpore sano. That’s Latin, of course, but the sense is the same: good health breeds tranquillity. Even so, William, I’d advise you to be careful. Within the next few days you will be tempted to use the power of the caduceus in a manner that may have unforeseen and unfortunate results. Therefore, forbear.

  William knew he was being taunted. His conscience was no limpid stream.

  —Further questions? I don’t want to keep you from your magic kingdom. Wyomia awaits you.

  “I have dreams,” he said reluctantly.

  —And?

  “How do I get rid of them?”

  Mercury laughed.—As the physician said to Macbeth, “Therein the patient must minister to himself.” Really, William, that was too easy. Don’t make a face. Would you rather have me tell you to confess your crimes against humanity and take your punishment like a man? The cure for any nightmare is an altered point of view. Learn to enjoy what appalls you.

  “I do.”

  —No, you’ve simply grown numb. It’s an occupational hazard. Over the years most doctors become more cold-blooded than generals. It’s the training: cutting up cadavers, learning to operate all the chemical switches for pleasure and pain, poking about in open wounds, being the first to know the worst. You succumb to the fascination; to do otherwise would be inhuman. But you don’t enjoy your power. Not as I would. Not as a god.

  Before William could frame a reply, his pager began to beep.

  —Duty’s calling, William. The god held out his hand to receive William’s fealty.

  But instead of kneeling to kiss the proffered hand, William, partly from pique at having been taunted and partly from habit, typed SAVE.

  The image on the screen shrank to a single glowing mote and disappeared.

  William picked up the phone.

  “It’s the senator from Onamia,” Stan announced. “Ms. Bright says you got to see him. And he says it has to be now. Sorry, Doc. I know you got better things to do.”

  “Send him in, Stan, and I’ll do what I can.”

  61

  Lester Burton, the senator from Onamia, was fat as the mature Marlon Brando, a marvel of obesity, jowled and dewlapped and huffing and puffing, his tan summer suit banded with the broad mottlings of his perspiration, his sagging face and pudgy fingers roseate with the blood his heart strained to supply, his edematous ankles, as he lumbered toward a chair, scarcely flexing. Before the man had said a word, William felt the satisfaction that comes with knowing the answer to a problem the very moment it is posed. Lester Burton was a stroke waiting to happen. Should it come here and now, in William’s office, there would be nothing to wonder at.

  William adopted a tone of formal courtesy. “Senator Burton, how do you do, sir. You’ve chosen some nasty weather to visit MDS. What can I do for you?”

  “I didn’t come here to discuss the weather. I didn’t come here to discuss anything. I came here to tell you you can’t turn Mille Lacs County into a goddamned quarantine ward. You can buy off the rest of the legislature, but you’re not buying me off.”

  “I don’t believe any offer has been made, Senator.”

  “Oh no?” The man’s jawbone tucked in, his lips pursed, and his jowls trembled in an action that may have been experienced inwardly as a smile. “Twenty-five thousand for letting you put my name on the list of the politicians you’ve got in your pocket, that isn’t an offer? That isn’t a bribe?”

  “Perhaps it isn’t enough.” William made the suggestion in a bantering tone, but it was there to be taken up if that was what Lester Burton had in mind.

  It wasn’t. “I hope that was meant to be a joke, Dr. Michaels.”

  “Of course, Senator. And I hope that you don’t mean to imply that the other members of the Community Relations Board have been venal or corrupt in accepting their positions. Mayor Kuula? Representative Borg? Dr. Wempke?”

  “Oh, they’ve been earning their salary, Doctor, no doubt about that. Lucille’s been calling me up two, three times a day, trying to smooth my feathers, and according to Dr. Wimp, you’re another damned Mother Teresa. As for Mayor Kuula, he’s had his hand inside of one cookie jar or another since he got a seat on the school board back in ‘73, and I said so both times he ran against me for my seat in the senate.”

  “So that’s what it is. You have a grudge against Emil Kuula.”

  “Don’t you just wish that’s all it was.”

  “Senator, I can understand your distress at the thought of your hometown becoming a quarantine area. No community can be expected to welcome such a prospect, no matter what the economic incentives may be. Doubtless, some of your constituents are unhappy with the choice of remaining in the development area or moving to equivalent homes elsewhere in the state. No undertaking on this scale can be accomplished without some distress and personal sacrifice. When highways are built, the same thing happens.”

  “But you’re not exactly hurting, are you, Dr. Michaels?”

  “It is the oldest irony of the medical profession that physicians seem to profit from other people’s misfortunes.”

  “You can say that again. This place you got here couldn’t’ve come cheap. I’ll bet just those two marble snakes over the front entrance must’ve cost a million dollars. I’ll bet they’re thirty feet high.”

  “As it happens, Senator, MDS, as a nonprofit organization receiving public funds, was required to spend one percent of its construction budget on public artworks. I’m not responsible for this state’s laws: you are. And by the way, those ‘snakes’ are elements of a caduceus, an ancient symbol of the medical profession.”

  “Snakes are snakes, as far as I’m concerned, but that’s no matter. It’s your so-called nonprofit organization that’s the problem. It seems to me you’ve got yourself a whole lot of profit already, Doc
tor, and if this development scheme for Mille Lacs County gets under way, you’re going to be sitting on top of a medical oil field. That’s what it seems to me.”

  “Senator Burton, if you wish to audit the books of Medical Defense Systems, you’re free to do so. As its director I receive a salary of $750,000—but no share of the money MDS brings in through contributions or service operations. Those moneys aren’t profits—they go back into research. Research uses lots of money, Senator, but until there is a cure for ARVIDS, or a vaccine against it, that money has to be found. And MDS is finding it.”

  “If it was only MDS, Doctor, I wouldn’t be wasting your time, seeing how valuable it is. But there is also an outfit called the MedSec Group that bought up St. Andrew’s Seminary, six years ago when it was shut down, and now it looks like part of the plan you want the state to rubber-stamp calls for this MedSec Group turning the seminary into a medium security prison for prisoners with ARVIDS. And that isn’t any nonprofit operation.”

  “If the state refuses to open its own facility, then the state will have to pay someone who’s willing to do the job for it.”

  “Meaning you.”

  “I own shares in MedSec, that’s true.”