Piers Anthony - Prostho Plus

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Prostho Plus by Piers AnthonyPiers Anthony
Prostho Plus
CHAPTER ONE
Dr. Dillingham was forty-one years old: a conservative, successful
twentieth-century bachelor prosthodontist. His acquaintances thought him
unimaginative; his patients thought he overcharged; his pretty assistant was
secretly in love with him. He was, in short, a typical dentist with a secure
future.
As pride goeth before a fall, so may the typical go before the atypical.
Dillingham was not pleased to see Mrs. Nostrand so early in the morning. She was
overweight, her arches were fallen, her veins varicose, her manner insufferable.
She seemed to be afflicted with most of the maladies imagined by man, with a
single remarkable exception: she had virtually perfect teeth.
He wondered why she had chosen to inflict herself upon him. Possibly it was
because every other dentist in the area had already informed her that however
common prosthetic restorations might be, they were dictated by the requirements
of health, not fashion.
"Mrs. Nostrand," he began, knowing it was useless, "no ethical practitioner is
going to replace a healthy tooth with a substitute. Our purpose is to restore
the mouth, as far as possible, to its original state of health. You should be
gratified that you have no need of such service."
"But all my friends have genuine gold inlays!"
Dillingham controlled his temper. "I assure you, Mrs. Nostrand, they're not as
good as nature's original dentin and enamel."
"Mrs. Jones paid four thousand dollars for hers," she said enviously.
He turned away to conceal his disgust. Had it come to this? A running contest to
see whose mouth could carry the most pointless wealth...
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Nostrand," he said with finality.
She stalked out, furious. He almost wished she had needed the work. It might
have been easier to do it than to educate her.
Old Joe Krumpet, a too-regular client, was next. He was seventy and his teeth
seemed to antedate the rest of his body: extremely old and worn.
"'Nother blowout, Doc," he said cheerily. "Just put a patch on her and turn me
loose."
Dillingham looked into Joe's mouth. It was sheer carnage. He wondered how the
man could stray one bite from a liquid diet. There was hardly a disaster in the
manual his teeth hadn't succumbed to over the years.
"Joe, that tooth will have to come out. There isn't enough of the original
structure left to make it functional, and further deterioration could affect
your—"
"Nope. None of that fancy stuff. Just plug her up so she don't hurt no more.
She'll las' as long as I do."
He had a point there, unfortunately. Dillingham repaired the damage as well as
he could, not even attempting to lecture the patient on oral hygiene. Joe
Krumpet brought in his teeth for repair much as he would his vintage automobile.
Who was a mere dentist to inject aesthetic complexities into his simple
framework?
He finished with ten minutes to spare before the next appointment and retreated
to his laboratory for a break. It was going to be one of those days: college
kids who stuffed their mouths with sugar and looked blank at the mention of a
toothbrush; businessmen who "hadn't time" to undertake precautionary hygienic
measures; women so afraid of pain that they screamed when he brushed a healthy
tooth with the mirror. All of them carelessly throwing away the priceless
heritage of good teeth in their youth, heedless of the far more expensive and
less comfortable substitutes necessitated in later life.
He was suddenly sick of it. Not of the work itself, but of the intolerable
neglect he saw daily. So much of what he did would never be necessary if only
people cared!
The radio was giving the routine details of another interplanetary space probe.
Well, if there were other civilized creatures out there, surely they would long
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since have learned to preserve their natural assets! He visualized a baby
bug-eyed monster smiling for the camera: "Look ma—no cavities for six
generations!" Assuming bug-eyed monsters had teeth...
He rose and returned to the operatory, knowing that efficient Miss Galland would
have the third patient properly prepared. At least he was spared the
interminable details. Sure enough, there was a figure in the chair. As pride
before the fall—
Dillingham put on his professional smile, washed his hands, and plucked a bright
metal sealer from the tray. This was a new patient, and— He stared.
The face upon the headrest was an alien. It was humanoid, but only vaguely so. A
great flat forehead dropped down to widely spaced yet narrow eyes, and the nose
was a triple slit. The mouth was closed, set off oddly by thin purple lips.
Before he could substitute a more appropriate expression for the frozen smile on
his own face, there was a noise. He looked up to see a second creature fiddling
with the locking mechanism of the door. The humanoid must have been standing
behind the panel, waiting for him to enter. The features were similar to those
of the reclining creature, but all Dillingham noticed at the moment was the
visible hand. It was grey, and the fingers appeared to be double-jointed.
Dillingham tried to think of a clever remark that would dispose of the
situation, but his mind remained awkwardly blank. What conceivable explanation
could account for...?
"Gentlemen, there must be some mistake. I'm a dentist, not a plastic surgeon."
Neither creature laughed. The one at the door straightened up and faced him
silently.
Obviously he was the victim of an elaborate hoax. Nothing on Earth resembled
these creatures. Someone at the local college must have set up this masquerade,
fitting grotesque masks of that realistic flexible variety over their normal
features. This was one of those disruptive pranks, funny only to the
perpetrators. An initiation ritual. But how had they got past Miss Galland?
"Boys, I have a crowded schedule. Now that you've had your fun—"
The one in the chair opened his mouth.
Dillingham dropped the sealer to the floor. No mask could function as smoothly
as this, yet the mouth was beyond credulity. The orifice was bone-dry and
tongueless, and the teeth—
It was his business to know the normal and abnormal extremes of human oral
anatomy. This far overreached them—but it was without doubt a genuinely
functioning mouth, in a genuine functioning alien face. Since it was real, and
no Earthly jaw contained dentures like these—
He decided not to ask questions whose answers might well be beyond his
comprehension. This was no joke, and this was no longer a conventional problem.
For some reason two aliens—extraterrestrial aliens, for all he knew—had come to
his office to demand some service.
One sat expectantly in the chair. It could hardly be an accident. Why did anyone
come to a dentist?
Somebody had a toothache.
The alien was not properly proportioned for the human recliner, but a few
adjustments sufficed. Dillingham toyed with his instruments, wondering whether
these creatures were dangerous. He couldn't afford to take a chance—
"Dr. Dillingham," a voice called from the hall. The standing alien jumped, and
something appeared in one hand. These two hadn't uttered a syllable so far, but
they seemed to hear well enough.
"Dr. Dillingham!" the voice repeated more urgently, and the knob turned. It was
Miss Galland. "Are you in there? The door seems to be locked—"
The guard lifted his hand. He held a small object resembling a glass prism. He
pointed it towards the door.
Dillingham didn't wait to find out what the prism was for. "I'm busy at the
moment," he shouted, putting enough irritation into his voice so that she would
realize it was important. "Something has come up. Please reschedule my next
appointment."
Her soft heels retreated, and the alien lowered the prism. Perhaps there had
been no danger—but it did seem best to keep the girl out of it until he could be
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sure. The aliens certainly seemed to mean business.
Did they use speech at all? The single glance he had had into the oral cavity
gave him serious doubt that articulation as men knew it was possible. Still,
there had to be some means of communication...
Dillingham returned his attention to his patient. He seemed to be committed now,
though of course he could not actually work on such a jaw. The mouth opened
again and he surveyed it more thoroughly. It was a fascinating experience.
Four broad incisors lined the front section of the lower jaw, matched by five
molars in the upper. This, at least, was what the teeth would have been called
had they occupied a human mouth.
Biters opposed to grinders? Five to four? What unearthly diet did this creature
exist upon? The overall problem of the alien presence became subordinate to the
professional one. With dentition like this, how could he even guess at the
normal state of the mouth? How would he detect the problem? And, granted a
correct diagnosis, how could he ameliorate the condition? He knew nothing of the
metabolism; he might kill the alien simply by applying a local anaesthetic. The
creature might bleed to death from a single scratch—if it had blood. Nothing
could be taken for granted.
The standing alien seemed impassive, but remained against the door, prism
levelled. Suppose this were the captain of an alien vessel, and the patient a
valued officer or crewman? It was convenient to think of these two as such,
whatever the truth might be. Perhaps they had been on an exploratory cruise and
had had difficulties that prevented an immediate return. Possibly their medical
specialist had been incapacitated.
Whatever his reasons, the captain had seen fit to trust his man to the care of
the nearest presumably competent specialist, rather than postpone the matter or
handle it extemporaneously. The fact that the specialist happened to be of
another world didn't seem to make enough difference to rule out the procedure.
There was food for thought here. Obviously the welfare of the individual was
paramount, in the captain's society, surmounting even the formidable barriers
between separate alien cultures. The individual who would trust a creature he
had never seen before—an Earth dentist—to handle so precise and intimate a
matter as the repair of an oral breakdown...
That individual was either an absolute fool, or had enormous confidence in his
control over the situation.
Dillingham glanced again at the captain. He did not have the aspect of a fool,
and the prism glittered.
Yet the thing was impossible. The threat of a weapon could not create knowledge
where none existed. It could not grant a human being the power to operate on
alien metabolism.
The captain moved, gesturing with the prism. Dillingham immediately busied
himself with the impossible.
The mouth was a paradox. There were no cuspids, no matched sets. Instead there
were regular patterns of planed surfaces that could serve no conceivable
masticatory purpose. The white units were obviously teeth of some kind, and firm
pink gum tissue clothed the base of each unit, but the manner of the jaws
application was a tantalizing riddle.
Dillingham felt as though he were in a surrealist dream. Despite the intricacies
of their derivation—teeth had first been formed from modified scales of the lip,
countless millions of years ago on Earth—he knew them to be straightforward
tools. They were required for any creature who cut, tore, crushed or ground its
food, unless it specialized into some substitute, as birds had. There was no
point in having teeth at all unless they acted in one or more of these ways, and
cynical Nature neither evolved nor maintained superfluous organs. This alien's
teeth had to be functional, even if that function remained a riddle to the
dentist.
How was he to define the problem? He saw no evidence of decay or abrasion. Every
surface gleamed cleanly white. While he was hardly in a position to make an
accurate diagnosis, all the evidence suggested health.
He tapped an incisor experimentally. It was solid. All the teeth were firm and
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without blemish. Why, then, had this patient come?
Dillingham set down his instruments and stood back. "I can't help you," he said,
trying to ignore the pointing prism and hoping his tone would put the message
across.
The crewman closed his mouth, stood up, and went to the door. The captain handed
over the prism and approached. Dillingham waited, uncertainly.
The captain took the chair and opened his mouth. Had they gone to all this
trouble for a routine checkup?
Dillingham shrugged, washed his hands again, and brought out a sterile set of
instruments. There didn't seem to be much he could do except oblige their whim.
They were aliens, and it could be dangerous to cross them. He looked into the
captain's mouth.
Suddenly it all came clear.
The crewman's mouth had been a healthy one. This mouth was not. The same
peculiar pairings were present, the same oddly-angled occlusals—but several of
the back teeth on the left side had badly ravaged lingual surfaces.
The visitors had anticipated one of his difficulties, so had shown him the
healthy set first, as a model. Now he did have some idea what was wrong,
"Dr. Dillingham!"
The crewman whirled to aim the prism at Miss Galland's voice. Had half an hour
passed so rapidly? "Emergency!" Dillingham called to her. "I'll be tied up all
afternoon. Handle it as well as you can."
"Yes, Doctor," she replied with only the slightest hint of disapproval. His
present procedure was at best highly irregular; with a real emergency, he should
have brought her into the operatory to help. Miss Galland was a highly competent
dental assistant, but he tended to use her more and more as a receptionist
because she made a much better impression on recalcitrant patients than he did.
She really deserved to see this astonishing set of teeth—but he still did not
dare expose her to the mercies of such questionable aliens.
Meanwhile, he knew that the problems entailed by his unexplained cancellations
would be tactfully handled.
He probed the first of the damaged teeth: the second bicuspid, for want of
anything resembling a properly descriptive term. The captain jumped; no doubt
about its sensitivity. It looked as though some potent acid had eaten into the
surfaces and stripped away the enamel and much of the softer dentin beneath
(again applying human terms to the un-human). It had been a recent accident;
there was no sign of subsidiary decay. But the present condition was obviously
uncomfortable and probably quite painful, and certainly constituted a hazard to
health.
Dillingham observed that the buccal surfaces had also been etched. Only an
X-ray, that he could not risk on the alien flesh, could establish possible
penetration of the pulp. This was a rough case.
It might be possible for him to repair the damage, or at least cover it with a
protective cast—but only if he could anaesthetize the jaw. Novocain was out of
the question; any drug might be fatal.
The whole thing was ridiculous. "This is as far as I go," Dillingham said
firmly. "I hate to leave you in pain, but my ignorance could kill you. I'm
sorry." He crossed his arms and stood back.
When they saw that he was not going to proceed, the crewman levelled the prism
at him again. The Captain stopped that with a gesture. He stood up and recovered
the instrument. He made sure he had Dillingham's attention, then aimed it at the
wall and flicked a finger.
A spot appeared on the wall. Smoke curled up.
The captain made an adjustment and aimed again. This time a portion of the wall
exploded, leaving a charred hole.
He returned it to the first setting and pointed it at Dillingham. The message
was clear enough.
But what would be their reaction if he botched it? Should he violate his
professional ethics under duress? Dillingham shook his head, sweating. Perhaps
they were bluffing.—
"Dr. Dillingham!"
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Oh, no! Miss Galland had come back.
The captain nodded to the crewman, who whirled to unlock the door.
"Judy! Get away!"
"Doctor! What are you—"
Then the door was open and the crewman charged out. Judy Galland screamed.
Dillingham lunged at the captain, but the officer was ready. The beam from the
prism stabbed savagely into his leg. Dillingham fell, clutching at the wound.
When the pain abated, he found Miss Galland standing beside him, her dark hair
disarranged. The crewman had the prism again, and was covering them both.
"Doctor! Are you hurt?"
It was just like her to overlook the incredible in favour of the commonplace.
She was not the fainting type, fortunately. He inspected his leg.
"Just a burn. It was set on low." He stood up.
The captain resumed his seat. The crewman aimed the prism at the girl.
So much for resistance. The show would go on.
"I don't think they mean any harm, Doctor," Miss Galland said. "They must be
desperate." No hysterics from her; she had adapted to the situation far more
readily than he.
Dillingham approached the patient. He had to quiet the shivering of his hand as
he held a probe. Aliens, heat-beams—this was hardly the ordinary fare of a
dentist.
But the problem of anaesthesia remained. Massive excavation would be required,
and no patient could sit still for that without a deadened jaw. He studied the
situation, perplexed, noting that the crewman had put away the prism.
The captain produced a small jar of greenish ointment. It seemed that this
contingency had been anticipated. These creatures were not stupid.
Dillingham touched his finger to the substance. There was a slight prickly
sensation, but nothing else. The captain gestured to his mouth.
Dillingham scooped out a fingerful and smeared it carefully along the gingival
surfaces surrounding the affected teeth. The colour darkened.
The captain closed his mouth. "How do they chew?" Miss Galland inquired, as
though this were a routine operation. She had assumed her role of assistant
naturally.
He shrugged. "The moment they take their eyes off you, slip away. We can't be
sure of their motives."
She nodded as the captain reopened his mouth. "I think they're doing just what
we would do, if we had trouble on some other world."
Dillingham refrained from inquiring just what type of literature she read during
her off hours. He probed the raw surface that had been so sensitive before. No
reaction.
So far, so good. He felt professional envy for the simplicity of the alien
anaesthetic. Now that he was committed to the job, he would complete it as
competently as he could. His ethical code had been bent by the aliens but not
broken.
It was a full-scale challenge. He would have to replace the missing and damaged
portions of the teeth with onlays, duplicating in gold as precisely as he could
the planes and angles witnessed in the healthy set. While it would have helped
immensely to know the rationale of this strange jaw, it was not essential. How
many centuries had dentists operated by hit or miss, replacing losses with
wooden teeth and faithfully duplicating malocclusals and irregularities? The
best he could hope for would be fifty per cent efficiency—in whatever context it
applied—yet if this stood up until the patient returned to his own world, it
sufficed. There was no perfection.
Would a gold alloy react unfavourably with the alien system? He had to chance
it. Gold was the best medium he had to work with, and another metal would be
less effective and more risky. A good cobalt chromium alloy would be cheaper,
but for really delicate work there was no substitute for gold.
He drilled and polished, adjusting to the old internal convolutions, while Miss
Galland kept the water spray and vacuum in play. He shaped the healthy base of
each tooth into a curve that offered the best foundation. He bored a deep hole
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into each for insertion of the stabilizing platinum-iridium pins. He made a
hydrocolloid impression of the entire lower jaw, since the better part of the
reconstruction would have to take place in the laboratory.
Both aliens started when he used the hydrocolloid, then relaxed uneasily.
Evidently his prosthodontic technique differed from that of their own world.
"Sorry," he said, as much to himself as to them. "Since I am not familiar with
your methods, I am constrained to rely upon my own. I can't rebuild a tooth by
guesswork."
"That's telling them," Miss Galland agreed.
He needed a model of both sides of the jaw because it was bilaterally
symmetrical. A mirror-image reproduction of the right side might reasonably do
for the left. He ignored the upper jaw. He knew nothing of the proper
interaction of these surfaces, so the opposing pattern could only confuse him.
He didn't want human preconceptions to distort the alien pattern.
But his curiosity about the way those incredible teeth functioned was hard to
suppress.
He worked loose the hardened cast. He applied a temporary layer of amalgam, so
that the jaw would not be sensitive when the anaesthetic wore off. Then he had
to explain to the aliens by means of pantomime that this was not the end product
of his endeavours.
Miss Galland brought a plaster model of human dentures, and he pointed to the
cut-away teeth and lifted out the mock reconstructions, then gestured towards
the laboratory. After several repetitions the captain seemed to get the idea.
Dillingham led the way, with captain, Miss Galland and crewman following in that
order. The major portion of the job was coming up.
Patients seldom saw the lab. Few of them were aware of the enormous and precise
labours that went into the simplest inlay, onlay or crown. This time, at least,
he would have an attentive audience for his prosthodontic art.
Dillingham rinsed the impression immediately and immersed it in a two per cent
solution of potassium sulphate while Miss Galland set up the equipment. There
wasn't much else she could do, because special skill was required for the early
stages.
The captain watched the routine with what Dillingham was sure was amazement. The
aliens knew no more about the realities of dentistry than local people did! But
what had they expected? Surely the techniques of North Nebula—to invent a home
for the visitors—had points of similarity. Physical laws applied rigorously,
whatever the language or culture.
He filled the impression with a commercial stone preparation, vibrated out the
bubbles, and inserted the dowels and loops for individual handling of the teeth.
While the die set, he simulated the remaining steps for the captain: the
intricate wax mock-up of the onlay pattern for each tooth; the attachment of the
sprue, so that the pattern and subsequent cast could be handled effectively; the
investment, or formation of a durable impression around the wax pattern;
burnout, to free the investment of wax and leave a clear mould for the liquid
metal; casting (he didn't even try to explain about the problems of expansion
and contraction of gold and cast): and finally the pickling, finishing and
polishing of each unit.
The captain's eyes seemed glazed, though the procedures were elementary. Here in
the lab Dillingham was master, whatever the larger situation.
At last he manipulated the hands of the wall clock to show how many hours would
be required for all this. He assumed that if the Nebulites knew enough about
Earth to locate a specialist when they needed one, they should have mastered
local timekeeping conventions.
The captain was not happy. Had he thought that an onlay was the work of a few
minutes? Probably, like most patients, he hadn't thought about it at all.
Everybody knew dentists spaced out the time between appointments merely to boost
their exorbitant prices! Ha (brother!) ha!
The captain produced what appeared to be a hard plastic rod and chewed it
meditatively on his good side. Dillingham was afraid at first that it was
another weapon, but saw that it was not. Well, every species doubtless had its
vices and mannerisms, and this was certainly better than chewing tobacco or
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gobbling candy.
The patient passed the rod to the crewman, who glanced at it with interest but
did not choose to add any toothmarks of his own. No conversation passed between
them, but abruptly the captain left. The crewman took a seat and kept the prism
ready.
Evidently they did not intend to leave the captives to their own devices while
the onlay was in preparation.
"They don't miss any bets," Miss Galland said ruefully.
Dillingham shrugged and bent to his work. It seemed that the surest way to get
rid of the visitors was to complete the operation. He sawed his die into four
separate segments, one for each damaged tooth, and plunged into the complex
portion of the job. The wax he applied had to be shaped into the exact pattern
of the desired cast. This, not the original tooth, was the actual model. The die
determined the juncture with the living tooth, but the artistry lay in sculpting
the upper surface of the wax into a serviceable and aesthetic duplicate of the
healthy original.
He set the cruder plaster cast of the captain's jaw before him and began the
most difficult construction of his career. It was not an image he had to make,
but a mirror image, and his reflexes were hardly geared to it. Each of the four
patterns would take several hours.
Night fell as he completed the second pattern. A new alien came to replace the
crewman, but there was no chance to escape. They chewed sociably on rods,
exchanged them, and parted.
"Dr. Dillingham!" Miss Galland exclaimed. "That's how they talk! They make marks
like that old-wedge-writing."
It made sense. "Cuneiform," he agreed. That explained what the teeth were for!
But the revelation, while satisfying intellectually, didn't help them to escape.
The new guard was as vigilant as the first.
Night passed. Miss Galland slept on the emergency cot while Dillingham kept
working. They both knew that help was unlikely to come, because the aliens had
shown up on Friday and there would be no appointments for the weekend.
Dillingham lived alone, and Miss Galland's room-mate happened to be on vacation.
The captain had been quite lucky.
Something else occurred to him. "Miss Galland!" She sat up sleepily. "Since
these creatures don't use sound to talk with, they probably don't associate it
with communication at all!"
"Have you stayed up all night, Doctor?" she inquired solicitously, "You must be
tired."
"Listen to me! We can plan our escape, and they won't realize what we're doing.
If I can distract the guard's attention—"
She came alive. "Now I follow you. We could have telephoned long ago, if... but
how can we get him to—"
He explained. They worked it out in detail while he poured thick jel around the
wax and vibrated the cup. She slowly opened the windows, then set up a chair in
front of one and sat down. One agile flip could tumble her into the back lot—if
the guard were off-guard.
The work continued. The guards changed again, and the new one did not realize
that the window was open. Dillingham poured melted gold into the inverted
hollows of the final mould. The alien's attention was taken up by the sight of
the hot metal; he knew that was dangerous.
"Now," Dillingham cried, as he plunged the hot cast into cold water. Steam
puffed up, bringing the guard to his feet—and Miss Galland was gone.
Dillingham finished with a flourish. "How's that for a set of castings!" he
cried. "Not to mention a slick escape," he added as the guard turned to discover
what had happened. "The police will be here within half an hour."
The alien had been tricked, but he was no fool. He wasted no time in a futile
chase after the girl. He pointed the prism at Dillingham, fired one warning beam
that blasted the wall beside him, and gestured towards the door.
Two blocks away they came to an overgrown lot. Hidden within the thick brush was
a shining metal cylinder, large enough to hold several men.
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"Now wait a minute!" Dillingham exclaimed as a port swung open. But already he
was coming to understand that the clever alien captain had anticipated this
situation also, and had come prepared.
The cooling onlays burned his hand. Perhaps the aliens had never intended to let
the Earth-dentist go. If they needed help once, why not again, during the long
voyage in space? He had demonstrated his proficiency, and by his trick to free
Miss Galland he had forfeited any claim to mercy they might have entertained.
The captain meant to have his restorations, and the job would be finished even
if it had to be done en route to—
The where? The North Nebula?
Dr. Dillingham, Earth's first spacefaring prosthodontist, was about to find out.
CHAPTER TWO
The Enen—for Dr. Dillingham preferred the acronym to "North Nebula Humanoid
Species"—rushed up and chewed out a message-stick with machine-like dispatch. He
handed it to Dillingham and stood by anxiously.
This was an alien world, and he was alone among aliens, but this was his
laboratory. He was master, in his restricted fashion, and the Enens treated him
with flattering deference. In fact he felt more like king than captive.
He popped the stick into the hopper of the transcoder. "Emergency," the little
speaker said. "Only you can handle this, Doctor!"
"You'll have to be more specific, Holmes," he said, and watched the transcoder
type this on to another stick. Since the Enens had no spoken language, and he
had not learned to decipher their tooth-dents visually, the transcoder was the
vital link in communication.
The names he applied to the Enens were facetious. These galactics had no names
in their own language, and comprehended his humour in this regard no more than
had his patients on distant Earth. But at least they were industrious folk, and
very clever at physical science. It was surprising that they were so backward in
dentistry.
The Enen read the translation and put it between his teeth for a hurried
footnote. It was amazing, Dillingham thought, how effectively they could flex
their jaws for minute variations in depth and slant. Compared to this, the human
jaw was a clumsy portcullis.
The message went back through the machine. "It's a big toothache that no one can
cure. You must come."
"Oh, come now, Watson," Dillingham said, deeply flattered. "I've been training
your dentists for several months now, and they're experienced and intelligent
specialists. They know their maxillaries from their mandibulars. As a matter of
fact, some of them are a good deal more adept now than I, except in the specific
area of metallic restorations. Surely—"
But the Enen grabbed the stick before any more could be imprinted by the
machine's chattering jaws. "Doctor—this is an alien. It's the son of a high
muck-a-muck of Gleep." The terms, of course, were the ones he had programmed to
indicate any ruling dignitary of any other planet. He wondered whether he would
be well advised to substitute more serious designations before someone caught
on. Tomorrow, perhaps, he would see about it. "You, Doctor, are our only
practising exodontist."
Ah—now it was coming clear. He was a dentist from a far planet, ergo he must
know all about off-world dentition. The Enen's naïve faith was touching. Well,
if this were a job they could not handle, he could at least take a look at it.
The "alien" could hardly have stranger dentition than the Enens had themselves,
and success might represent a handsome credit towards his eventual freedom. It
would certainly be more challenging than drilling his afternoon class in
Applications of Supercolloid.
"I'm pretty busy with that new group of trainees..." he said. This was merely a
dodge to elicit more information, since the Enens tended to omit important
details. Their notions of importance differed here and there from his own.
"The muck-a-muck has offered fifty pounds of frumpstiggle for this one service,"
the Enen replied.
Dillingham whistled, and the transcoder dutifully printed the translation.
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Frumpstiggle was neither money nor merchandise. He had never been able to pin
down exactly what it was, but for convenience he thought of it as worth its
exact weight in gold: $35 per ounce, $560 per pound. The Enens did not employ
money as such, but their avid barter for frumpstiggle seemed roughly equivalent.
His commission on fifty pounds would amount to a handsome dividend, and would
bring his return to Earth that much closer.
"Very well, Holmes. Bring in the patient."
The Enen became agitated. "The high muck-a-muck's family can't leave the planet.
You must go to Gleep."
He had half expected something of this sort. The Enens gallivanted from planet
to planet and system to system with dismaying nonchalance. Dillingham had not
yet become accustomed to the several ways in which they far excelled Earth
technology, nor to the abrupt manner of their transactions. True, he owed his
presence here to an oral injury of one of their space captains, who had simply
walked into the nearest dental office for service, liked what he found, and
brought the dentist home. But there was a difference between knowing and
accepting.
Dillingham was in effect the property of the Enens—he who had dreamed only of
conventional retirement in Florida. He was no intrepid spaceman, no seeker of
fortune, and would never have chosen such unsettling galactic intercourse. But
now that the choice had been made for him—
"I'll pack my bag," he said.
Gleep turned out to be a water world. The ship splashed down beside a floating
way station, and they were transferred to a tank-like amphibian vehicle. It
rolled into the tossing ocean and paddled along somewhat below the surface.
Dillingham had read somewhere that intelligent life could not evolve in water,
because of the inhibiting effect of the liquid medium upon the motion of
specialized appendages. Certainly the fish of Earth had never amounted to much.
How could primitive swimmers hope to engage in interstellar commerce?
Evidently that particular theory was erroneous, elsewhere in the galaxy. Still,
he wondered just how the Gleeps had circumvented the rapid-motion barrier. Did
they live in domes under the ocean?
He hoped the patient would not prove to be too alien. Presumably it had
teeth—but that might be the least of the problems. Fortunately he could draw on
whatever knowledge the Enens had, and he had also made sure to bring along a
second transcoder keyed to Gleep. It was awkward to carry two machines, but too
much could be lost in retranslation if he had to get the Gleep complaints
relayed through the Enens.
A monstrous fish-shape loomed beyond the porthole. The thing spied the sub,
advanced, and oped a cavernous maw. "Look out!" Dillingham yelled.
The Enen glanced indifferently at the message-stick and chomped a casual reply.
"Everything is in order, Doctor."
"But a leviathan is about to engulf us!"
"Naturally. That's a Gleep."
Dillingham stared out, stunned. No wonder the citizens couldn't leave the
planet! It was a matter of physics, not social convention.
The vessel was already inside the colossal mouth, and the jaws were closing.
"You—you mean this is the patient?" But he already had his answer. Damn those
little details the Enens forgot to mention. A whale!
The mouth was shut now and the headlight of the sub revealed encompassing
mountains of flexing flesh. The treads touched land—probably the tongue—and took
hold. A minute's climb brought them into a great domed air chamber.
They halted beside what reminded him of the white cliffs of Dover. The hatch
sprang open and the Enens piled out.
None of them seemed concerned about the possibility that the creature might
involuntarily swallow, so Dillingham put that notion as far from his mind as he
was able.
"This is the tooth," the Enen's message said. The driver consulted a map and
pointed to a solid marble boulder.
Dillingham contemplated it with awe. The tooth stood about twelve feet high,
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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
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摘要：

file:///F|/rah/Piers%20Anthony/Anthony,%20Piers%20-%20Prostho%20Plus.txtProsthoPlusbyPiersAnthonyPiersAnthonyProsthoPlusCHAPTERONEDr.Dillinghamwasforty-oneyearsold:aconservative,successfultwentieth-centurybachelorprosthodontist.Hisacquaintancesthoughthimunimaginative;hispatientsthoughtheovercharge...

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