Charles Sheffield - The Feynman Saltation

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2024-11-24 0 0 35.28KB 14 页 5.9玖币
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THE FEYNMAN SALTATION
Charles Sheffield
The worm in the apple; the crab in the walnut. Colin Trantham was adding fine black bristles to the
crab’s jointed legs when the nurse called him into the office.
He glanced at his watch as he entered. “An hour and a quarter the first time. Forty minutes the second.
Now he sees me in nine minutes. Are you trying to tell me something?”
The nurse did not reply, and Dr. James Wollaston, a pudgy fifty-year-old with a small mouth and the face
of a petulant baby, did not smile. He gestured to a chair, and waited until Trantham was seated on the
other side of his desk.
“Let me dispose of the main point, then we can chat.” Wollaston was totally lacking in bedside manner,
which was one of the reasons that Colin Trantham liked him. “We have one more test result to come, but
there’s little doubt as to what it will show. You have a tumor in your left occipital lobe. That’s the bad
news. The good news is that it’s quite operable.”
“Quite?”
“Sorry. Completely operable. We should get the whole thing.” He stared at Trantham. “You don’t seem
surprised by this.”
Colin pushed the drawing across the table: the beautifully detailed little crab, sitting in one end of the
shelled walnut. “I’m not an idiot. I’ve been reading and thinking cancer for weeks. I suppose it’s too
much to hope it might be benign?”
“I’m afraid so. It is malignant. But it appears to be primary site. There are no other signs of tumors
anywhere in your body.”
“Wonderful. So I only have canceronce .” Trantham folded the drawing and tucked it away in his jacket
breast pocket. “Am I supposed to be pleased?”
Wollaston did not answer. He was consulting a desk calendar and comparing it with a typed sheet.
“Friday is the twenty-third. I would like you in the night before, so we can operate early.”
“I was supposed to go to Toronto this weekend. I have to sign a contract for a set of interior murals.”
“Postpone it.”
“Good. I was afraid you’d say cancel.”
“Postpone it for four weeks.” Wollaston was pulling another folder from the side drawer of his desk. “I
propose to get you Hugo Hemsley. He and I have already talked. He’s the best surgeon east of the
Rockies, but he has his little ways. He’ll want to know every symptom you’ve had from day one before
he’ll pick up a scalpel. How’s the headache?”
The neurologist’s calm was damping Colin’s internal hysteria. “About the same. Worst in the morning.”
“That is typical. Your first symptom was colored lights across your field of vision, sixty-three days ago.
Describe that to me . . .”
The muffled thump on the door was perfunctory, a relic of the days when Colin Trantham had a live-in
girlfriend. Julia Trantham entered with a case in one hand and a loaded paper bag held to her chest with
the other, pushing the door open with her foot and backing through.
“Grab this before I drop it.” She turned and nodded down at the bag. “Bought it before I thought to ask.
You allowed to drink?”
“I didn’t ask, either.” Colin examined the label on the bottle. “Moving up in the world. You don’t get a
Grands Echézeaux of this vintage for less than sixty bucks.”
“Seventy-two plus tax. When did you memorize the wine catalog?”
“I’m feeling bright these days. When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his
mind wonderfully.”
“No points for that. Everybody quotes Johnson.” Julia Trantham pulled the cork and sniffed it, while her
brother was reaching up into the cabinet for two eight-ounce glasses.
“You’re late.” Colin Trantham placed the thin-stemmed goblets on the table and watched as Julia
poured, a thin stream of dark red wine. His sister’s face was calm, but the tremor in her hand was not.
“The plane was on time. You went to see Wollaston, didn’t you, before you came here?”
“You’re too smart for your own good. I did.”
“What did you find out?”
Julia Trantham took a deep breath. Colin had always been able to see through her lies; it would be a
mistake to try one now. “It’s a glioblastoma. A neuroglia cell tumor. And it’s Type Four. Which means—
“I know what it means. As malignant as you can get.”
Colin Trantham picked up his glass, emptied it in four gulps, and walked over to stand at the sink and
stare out of the kitchen window. “Christ. You still have the knack of getting the truth out of people, don’t
you? I had my little interview with Dr. Hemsley, but he didn’t get as honest as that. He talkedprocedure .
Day after tomorrow he saws open my skull, digs in between the hemispheres, and cuts out a lump of my
brain as big as a tennis ball. Local anesthetic—he wants me conscious while he operates.”
“Probably wants you to hold tools for him. Like helping to change a car tire. Sounds minor.”
“Minor forhim . He gets five thousand bucks for a morning’s work. And it’s nothis brain.”
“Minor operation equals operation on somebody else.”
“One point for that. Wish it weren’tmy brain, either. It’s my second favorite organ.”
“No points—that’s Woody Allen inSleeper . You’re all quotes today.”
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