Prostho Plus (5 page)

The casting was the most spectacular stage. Dillingham had decided to use gold, though worried that its high specific gravity would overbalance the Gleep jaw. It was impossible under present conditions to arrange for a gold-plated, matching-density filling, and he was not familiar enough with other metals to be sure they could be adapted to his purpose. The expansion coefficient of his investment matched that of gold exactly, for example; anything else would solidify into the wrong size because of contraction while cooling.

Gold, at any rate, was nothing to the muck-a-muck. Gleeps refined it through their gills, extracting it from the surrounding water in any quantity required.

The crucible arrived: a self-propelled boiler-like affair. They piled hundred-pound ingots of precise gold alloy into the hopper, while the volcanic innards of the crucible rumbled and belched and melted everything to rich bright liquid.

A line of Enens carried the smaller investments, which were shaped inside exactly like the original impressions, to the spigot and held them with tongs while the fluid fortune poured in. These were carefully deposited in the vat, now filled with cold water.

The last cast, of course, was the colossal vat-shaped one. This was simply propped up under the spigot while the tired crew kept feeding in ingots.

By the time this cast had been poured, twenty-four tons of gold had been used in all.

While the largest chunk was being hauled to the ocean inside the forepart of the mouth, Dillingham broke open the smaller investments and laid out the casts according to his chart of the cavity. He gave each a minimum of finishing; on so gross a scale, it could hardly make much difference.

The finished casts weighed more than twenty times as much as the original impressions had, and even the smallest ones were distinctly awkward to manoeuvre into place. He marked them, checked off their positions on his chart, and had the Enens ferry them up with the derrick. At the other end, he manhandled each into its proper place, verified its fit and position, and withdrew it to paint it with cement. No part of this filling could come loose in action.

Once again the branching cavern lost its projections, this time permanently, as each segment was secured and severed from its projecting sprue. He kept the sprues—the handles of gold, the shape of the original plastic handles—on until the end, because otherwise there would have been no purchase on the weighty casts. He had to retain some means to move them.

The derrick lowered the crevice-piece into the cavity. Two Enens pried it in with power crowbars. Dillingham stood by and squirted cement over the mass as it slid reluctantly into the hole.

It was necessary to attach a heavy weight to the derrick-hook and swing it repeatedly against the four-ton cast in order to tamp it in all the way.

At last it was time for the major assembly. Nineteen tons of gold descended-slowly into the hole while they dumped quarts of liquid cement into a pool below. The cast touched bottom and settled into place, while the cement bubbled up around the edges and overflowed.

They danced a little jig on top of the finished filling—just to tamp it in properly, Dillingham told himself, for he considered himself to be too sedate to dance. He wished that a fraction of its value in Earth-terms could be credited to his account. The job was over.

"A commendable performance," the high muck-a-muck said. "My son is frisking about in his pen like a regular tadpole and eating well."

Dillingham remembered what he had seen during the walk along the occlusal surfaces. "I'm afraid he won't be frisking long. In another year or two he'll be feeling half a dozen other caries. Decay is rampant."

"You mean this will happen again?" The tentacles waved so violently that the transcoder stuttered.

Dillingham decided to take the fish by the tail. "Are you still trying to tell me that no member of your species has suffered dental caries before this time?"

"Never."

This still did not make sense. "Does your son's diet differ in any important respect from yours, or from that of other Gleeptads?"

"My son is a prince!"

"Meaning that he can eat whatever he wants, whether it is good for him or not?"

The Gleep paused. "He gets so upset if he doesn't have his way. He's only a baby—hardly three centuries old."

Dillingham was getting used to differing standards. "Do you feed him delicacies—refined foods?"

"Naturally. Nothing but the best. I wish we had been able to afford such galactic imports when I was a tad!"

Dillingham sighed. "Muck-a-muck, my people also had perfect teeth—until they began consuming sweets and overly refined foods. Then dental caries became the most common disease among them. You're going to have to curb your child's appetite."

"I couldn't." He could almost read the agitation of the tentacles without benefit of translation. "Doctor, he'd throw a terrible tantrum."

Dillingham had expected this reaction. He had encountered it many times on Earth. "In that case, you'd better begin training a crew of dentists. Your son will require constant attention."

"But we can't do such work ourselves. We have no suitable appendages, externally."

"Import some dentists, then. You have no acceptable alternative."

The creature signalled a sigh. "You make a convincing case." The tentacles relaxed while it considered. Suddenly they came alive again. "Enen—it seems we need a permanent technician. Will you sell us this one?"

Dillingham gaped, horrified at the thought of all that garbage in the patient's jaw. Surely they couldn't—

"Sell him!" the Enen chief replied angrily. Dillingham wondered how he was able to understand the words, then realized that his transcoder was picking up the Gleep signals translated by the other machine. From Enen to Gleep to English, via paired instruments. Why hadn't he thought of that before?

"This is a human being," the Enen continued indignantly. "A member of an intelligent species dwelling far across the galaxy. He is the only exodontist in this entire sector of space, and a fine upstanding fellow at that. How dare you make such a crass suggestion!"

Bless him! Dillingham had always suspected that his hosts were basically creatures of principle.

"We're prepared to offer a full ton of superlative-grade frumpstiggle..." the muck-a-muck said enticingly.

"A full ton?" The Enens were aghast. Then recovering: "True, the Earthman has taught us practically all he knows. We could probably get along without him now..."

"Now wait a minute!" Dillingham shouted. But the bargaining continued unabated.

After all—what is the value of a man, compared to that of frumpstiggle?

DENTAL ASSISTANT / HYGIENIST / LIGHT BOOKKEEPING QUALIFIED EXPERIENCED UNATTACHED MUST TRAVEL.

Judy Galland read the strange ad again. It had not been placed by any agency she recognized, and there was no telephone number. Just an address in a black neighbourhood. It hardly looked promising—but she was desperate. She shrugged and caught a bus.

She concentrated on the ad as she rode, as though it had further secrets to yield. She was qualified: she was a capable dental assistant with three years' experience in the office of a good dentist, and she was also a hygienist. She knew that few girls were both, and many would not touch the clerical end of it at all. She was single and willing to travel across the world if need be. She was twenty-six years old and looked it. She got along well with people and seldom lost her temper.

So why couldn't she get a job?

The bus jolted heavily over a set of tracks, shaking her loose from this pointless line of thinking. She knew what her problem was: she had worked for Dr. Dillingham, and Dr. Dillingham had disappeared mysteriously. A construction worker might fall off a beam and get killed, and nobody blamed his co-workers. A big-game hunter might get eaten by the game, yet his bearers could find similar employment elsewhere. A politician might get removed from office for malfeasance, while his loyal staff stepped into better positions. But just let one small-town dentist vanish—

She shook her head. That was inaccurate too. It was her own fault: she had tried to tell the truth. Naturally no one had believed her story of weird aliens holding her captive while forcing Dr. Dillingham to work on their astonishing teeth. There had been no substantiating evidence except for the simple fact that he was gone without trace. Now the aura of that wild story hung about her, an albatross, killing any chance she might have had to find other employment in the profession. In this corner of the world, at any rate.

Had she claimed that a mobster had murdered the dentist and sunk him in concrete with shoes of water (or was it the other way round?) she might have been clear. But the truth had ruined her. Aliens from space? Lunacy!

The bus halted at the closest corner to the address. She stepped down regretfully. This was an unfamiliar section of town, ill-kempt and menacing. Beer cans glittered amid the tall weeds of a vacant lot. Down the littered street a drunk spotted her and shambled nearer. The bus blasted its noxious gases at her and shoved off.

Only one structure approximated the address: a cylindrical building several storeys tall and pointed at the top. Its outer wall was shiny metal, and surprisingly modernistic for such a region. Yet the lot had not even been cleared, except for the narrow boardwalk leading to the entrance.

She started to turn back, then. There was something un-subtly wrong about this ad and this address. What possible use could these people have for an experienced dental assistant, etc?

But the reality of her situation turned her about again. The bus was gone, the drunk was almost upon her, she had barely three dollars in her purse and her resources beyond that were scant. She had either to take what offered, or throw away all her training and apply for unspecialized employment. She pictured herself making beds, scrubbing floors, babysitting. Suddenly the nameless ad seemed more promising. She outwalked the drunk and knocked on the cylinder-house door. This was a circular affair arranged to resemble a ship's porthole. Modern architecture never ran out of innovations! After a few seconds it opened, the metal lifting up and out, drawbridge fashion. She took a nervous breath though she was not the nervous type and entered a small bare antechamber.

"Name?" a voice said, startling her. For an instant she had fancied it was Dr. Dillingham speaking, but it was some kind of recorded answering service whose intonation just happened to resemble that familiar voice. Apparently she still was not to know who was her prospective employer.

She answered the routine questions automatically. That voice unnerved her, and enhanced her depression. She had of course never let him know, but her initial respect for Dr. Dillingham's technical and ethical finesse had over the months and years deepened into a considerable appreciation of the man himself, and even—

She became aware that the questions had ceased. An inner panel opened. "You have been accepted, Miss Galland of Earth," the recording said.

A figure stepped through the new doorway.

Judy was not the screaming type. She screamed.

Dr. Dillingham was not in a happy frame of mind. Weeks had passed since he had last seen the light of a sun, breathed unconfined atmosphere, or even walked on land. Now the monstrous sentient swimmer within which he dwelt had deprived him of his transcoder, so that he could no longer make known his complaints.

His compartment was comfortable enough, and no doubt the Gleeps thought that sufficient. It had been outfitted with a bed, a chair, a workbench, selected prosthodontic laboratory paraphernalia and a water-closet—but this did not make it any less a prison. He used his equipment to fashion articles of solid gold, but this was sorry entertainment. He had no company his own size and no journals to relax with.

In an hour he would have to begin the day's labour—a prospect no less appalling for all its familiarity.

There were sounds in the living hallway. A visitor? He jumped up and tidied his smock, anxious to meet whatever oddity might appear. He was sure it would not be human.

The noise stopped. There was a tap on his door.

"Come in!" he called, as much to exercise his voice as in any hope he could be understood. He would be lucky if the visitor could ever
hear
sounds in the human vocal range. The creatures of the galaxy were far removed from Earthly experience.

"Thank you, Doctor," a cultured voice replied. "So glad to find you at home."

Dillingham controlled his surprise. This was probably a transcoder in operation. It was hardly credible that a galactic would happen to speak unaccented English. Unless, somehow, a live
man
had—

The door opened. A dinosaur stood without. Its great head hovered a dozen feet above its powerful webbed hind feet, and its smaller front feet were held before it a little like the attitude of a begging puppy. A muscular tail twitched behind. It wore a modest dinner jacket with a black bow tie.

Dillingham gaped. Such a thing was impossible! This was not Earth, past or present, and even if—

"I beg you pardon," the dinosaur said. "Were you expecting someone else?"

Dillingham relaxed abruptly. "Oh, you're a Galactic. I should have known."

"Would you prefer to have me call at another hour? I did not mean to disturb you inconveniently."

"No, no! Don't go away," Dillingham exclaimed. "Come in, sit down—or whatever you do. I haven't seen a sapient face in three weeks. Not since I was incarcerated here. I mistook you for—never mind. So many crazy things have happened the past few months that I should be acclimatized by now."

The creature settled on the floor and wrapped its tail around its feet. The flat-snouted head was still above Dillingham's level. "Allow me to introduce myself, in that case. I am, if I may make a free rendition in your terms, a diplomat from Trachos. I was asked by the, er, high muck-a-muck of Gleep to talk with you, since there appears to be some misunderstanding. If there is any way I can help—"

Dillingham had adjusted almost automatically to the notion of conversing formally in English with a dinosaur, after the initial shock, but he did have questions. "If you don't mind my asking—how is it you speak my language? Everyone else has to use the transcoder."