Prostho Plus (7 page)

Dillingham shared his host's confusion. "Weren't advance arrangements made? Didn't they know what you were there for?"

"They knew. The arrangements were made—and cancelled after my arrival. They never told me why."

"Maybe they changed their minds about the cultural exchange, and didn't want to admit it."

"Then why did they hire another diplomat after I left, an amphibian yet(!) and allow him to complete the entire programme?"

Why, indeed. "That's typical? I mean, the same thing has happened on other planets?"

Too many others. They just seem to lose interest, while other free-lancers make the reputation and commissions that should have gone to me. If I didn't know better, I'd suspect a conspiracy."

"Do you know better? A situation like that—"

"That also is my business. I can spot corrupt politics as quickly as you can spot a rotten tooth."

"But there must be some reason." Dillingham tried to think of something plausible, but nothing occurred to him. "Let's isolate the, er, area of infection. Exactly when did Gulp's attitude change?"

Trach considered. "All the signals were positive at first. They sent an honour guard to meet me when I landed, and I was provided with the most elegant accommodation. I interviewed the monarch the very next day. He was quite cordial, and I was sure success was in my grasp."

"But—?"

"But nothing. That was the only appointment I had. They left me alone, and put me off when I tried to inquire. I know the brush-off when I get hit over the snout with it."

"But are you
sure
there was no—"

"There was no foul play. No animosity. They simply changed their minds, and wouldn't tell me why. Most frustrating, for a professional."

Something clicked at last in Dillingham's mind. "May I have a look at your teeth?"

"My teeth?" Trach was surprised, but did not remark on the apparent change of subject. "I have no trouble with them. When one row wears down, another takes its place. Even decay presents no problem as you mammals know it. Any damaged tooth falls out promptly and a new one grows."

But he obliged the whim of the Earthman. Dillingham was astonished as he looked. Trach's flat bill contained myriads of proportionately tiny teeth. They extended in rows along the sides of his mouth, and extra teeth decorated the upper and lower palates.

"About two thousand," Trach said. "I'm not sure of the exact count because several rows have already worn away, and some haven't erupted yet."

"You use all these just to chew greenchomp?" The stuff looked like cabbage, but he suspected it had the consistency of asbestos.

"As many as I need. We're herbivorous, like most civilized species."

Dillingham let that pass. He'd have to try some of that greenchomp, assuming his feeble twenty-eight teeth could dent it. It was probably nutritious, and could hardly be worse than the pseudomeat extruded from modified Gleep sweat glands. Why an ocean creature had ever had to sweat—

He brought his mind back to the problem. "How do you clean your teeth after a meal?"

"We employ a chemical mouthwash that dissolves vegetable matter in seconds," Trach said. "Though as I said, it doesn't really matter. Our teeth are—"

"May I see some of that?"

Trach was embarrassed. "The synthesizer provides it also—but mine is on the blink in that area. I can't get it fixed until I return to Trachos. But that's merely an inconvenience. I could give you the formula—"

Dillingham nodded. "More than an inconvenience, I'm afraid. You shouldn't go so long without cleaning your mouth."

"But I told you it can't hurt my teeth. They—"

"That isn't precisely what I meant."

"Oh? What
do
you mean?"

Dillingham was acutely embarrassed to sound so much like an Earthly TV commercial. "Trach, you have halitosis."

The dinosaur looked at him, perplexed. "I don't understand."

"You have BAD BREATH!"

"But my breathing is not affected..."

Dillingham tried again. "If I were a diplomat like you, I'd find some way, some gentle, discreet way, to tell you. As it is, all I can say is that your breath stinks of greenchomp. Particles of the stuff are wedged between your teeth. You have a lot of teeth, and it's pretty strong."

"But greenchomp smells good. Does it bother you?"

"No. It's like freshly cut grass or curing hay. But then, I'm not a civilized, sensitive-nosed herbivore."

"You mean—?"

"I mean. How does my breath smell to you?"

Trach sniffed. "Faintly of carrion. But I'm accustomed to foreign stenches."

"Right. You're a diplomat, so you've schooled yourself to ignore the crudities of the creatures you meet. But suppose you were a protected, royal-born creature, trained to notice the tiniest deviation from etiquette. Suppose your diet while herbivorous, did not happen to be greenchomp. Sup—"

Trach slammed his tail explosively against the floor, interrupting him. "Suppose I met an alien who breathed sheer miasma into my delicate nostrils—"

"Yes. What would you say to him?"

"Nothing, of course. It wouldn't be—"

"Diplomatic?"

Trach paced the deck in a frenzy of mortification. "How horrible? No wonder they wouldn't talk to me more than once. And worse—they may have assumed that all Trachodons smell that way. That I was typical. That would foul up every representative from my world." He gnashed his teeth impressively.

"So maybe you'd better dash home and replace your synthesizer before going on to Electrolus?"

Trach slapped his webbed hands together. "I can't. I'd have to admit my reason for delaying Electrolus. They'd never let me off-world again, after such a colossal blunder."

"You're going to have to clean your mouth somehow, then, and thoroughly. The greenchomp must be removed. Unless the Electrolytes can't smell very well?"

"They can distinguish differing grades of clear glass—by odour. At twenty paces upwind."

Dillingham sighed. The image of the radium mines loomed larger in his mind. "I don't suppose you could get them to repair your synthesizer before—?"

"They're not mechanically inclined."

The two lapsed into interstellar gloom.

Dillingham racked his brain for some solution to their mutual problem. It was ironic that a dentist couldn't come up with a simple way to clean teeth. The synthesizer, like so many of the ship's utilities, functioned erratically, and they were afraid to risk pushing it into a complete breakdown that would cut off even their greenchomp supply. Other chemicals besides Trach's original mouthwash might have done the job, but they were no easier to produce. Mechanical cleansing was also out of the question. A toothbrush—to clean two thousand teeth packed in like magnified sandpaper? Possibly a thorough scaling accompanied by copious rinsing with water would do the job—but it was obvious that this procedure would consume so much time, particularly as performed by Trach's webbed fingers, that the dinosaur would have to eat again before the job could be finished.

A blast of water from a pressure nozzle? Too splashy, and it still required time and care to get the wedged particles. Trach's skills were verbal, not manipulative—and what would he do at a public banquet?

What was needed was a simple but effective method to clean all the teeth in a few seconds. Agreed. But what?

"Is there any place you could obtain a temporary supply of your usual mouthwash? Enough to tide you over this one assignment?"

Trach twitched his tail reflectively. "The dental university might have it in stock. But they'd be sure to make a report to Trachos, and—"

"Dental university?" Dillingham found himself interested for another reason. "On a galactic scale?"

"Certainly. There's a university for every subject. Transportation, Communication, Medicine, Music, Dentistry—"

"Would this one—Dentistry—happen to have a school of Prosthodontics?"

"I'm sure it would. These universities are big outfits. Each one has a planet-grant, and students from all over the galaxy attend. Their standards are exceedingly strict—but there is no finer training. Graduates are set up for life. Had I been eligible to attend the University of Diplomacy—"

"Fascinating," Dillingham whispered. He would have to think about this. Meanwhile the immediate problem remained: instant cleansing of two thousand teeth.

He thought of something. "Trach, what can the synthesizer produce besides greenchomp? Without risking a breakdown, that is?"

"Oh, it turns out a number of mundane things. Several foodstuffs, yellow paint, mattress-stuffing, aromatic glue—"

"Mattress-stuffing?"

"For the acceleration couches. Sometimes they—"

"I see. How does it do on plastic foam?"

"I see no reason why it couldn't produce that. Of course the machine may not agree, but we can try." ,

"Fine. I want soft foam that solidifies in two or three minutes to a firm but flexible texture. Non-toxic. Try for that."

Trach obeyed, though there was obviously some question in his mind. After several tries he found a setting that produced a villainous purple goo that approximated the specifications.

"Now run a gallon of fresh foam and pack it into your mouth while it is soft. Chew on it a little, but don't swallow any."

Trach was alarmed. "In my
mouth
? What did I ever do to
you
? The stuff will harden—"

"It certainly will. Uh, you
can
breathe through your nose?"

Trach nodded dubiously. At Dillingham's insistence he crammed the foam into his oral orifice. "Tasheshts awrvul!" he muttered around the bubbles. "Hwath a hway to dhye!"

"Now hold it there until it sets."

"Urgh," Trach agreed reluctantly. After a few minutes Dillingham gave the next instructions:

"Now open your mouth carefully... slowly—there. Now lift out the entire mass. Work it loose from the teeth—you may have to knock it a little—it's a foam impression, you see. A little harder. Oh-oh." The cast seemed to have set somewhat more securely than anticipated. Dillingham took his little prosthodontic mallet and tapped at the mass, finally dislodging it. "See all that green stuff embedded in it?" he asked the dinosaur, pointing. "That's the left-over greenchomp, all yanked out at once."

Trach pointed in turn. "See those little white bits also embedded? Those are teeth."

"Oh." He had forgotten how fragile the replaceable teeth were. No real harm had been done, but this was hardly a procedure that could be repeated several times a day. And he could still smell the green breath. "I think I'd better think again."

"Well, it was worth the try." Trach opened a cabinet and withdrew a long-handled instrument. "While you cogitate, I'm going to clean up the ship. We'll be approaching Electrolus in a few hours."

As the disc of the planet came into view on the screen, Dillingham still had no idea how to solve the problem. Idly he watched the dinosaur, a finicky housekeeper, running his cleaner over the control panel. A small attachment enabled him to get at even the daintiest knobs, and the grime vanished readily.

Suddenly the obvious occurred to him. "Trach—is that an ultrasonic instrument?"

The dinosaur paused. "Why yes. The handpiece operates at about 30,000 cycles per second, with a fine water spray. The cavitational action—"

"In other words," Dillingham interrupted excitedly, "the vibration is on an ultrasonic level, and causes microscopic bubbles in the water that burst and scrub off the surface quite effectively. On Earth we use a similar instrument for cleaning teeth."

"For cleaning
teeth?"
Then Trach caught on. "Why of course. I must have used this cleaner a thousand times, and on my most delicate equipment. I'm pretty handy with it, if I do say so myself. I could—"

"You could, with a few hours of instruction, become competent at dental prophylaxis, since you are thoroughly familiar with the mechanism. If you have clean tips you can use for oral work, and a mirror—"

"I can blast out every bit of left-over greenchomp! My breath will be pure, and—oh—oh!" He put aside the instrument, listening.

"It won't be easy the first few times, even so," Dillingham warned. "But at least—"

"Overdrive shiftback!" Trach cried. He leapt for Dillingham.

The ship turned inside out as they were dumped into the corner, but both were smiling.

"But I'm not a dentist!" Judy told the transcoder. "I'm a dental assistant and hygienist and light book-keeper, as you must know." The transcoder typed her words on to a stick in the form of indentations, and the North Nebulite took this. He poked it into the orifice beneath his triple-slit nose and chewed gently.

What jaw-motions constituted reading, as opposed to writing (typing?) she couldn't tell, and she was sure they could read by sight too. They had their own little ways of doing things. In a moment the creature fed the talk-stick back into the transcoder. "You are Dr. Dillingham's assistant. Extremely competent but aloof. We searched for you. We obtained you. This is his laboratory. So assist."

She peered around at the alien paraphernalia. It had been a substantial education, finding out exactly what had happened to Dillingham. Horrible as the purple-lipped, double-jointed North Nebulites—Enens, according to Dillingham's invented information coded into the machine—appeared, they were pleasant enough when understood. The two designated to show her around were Holmes and Watson, though either answered (or failed to answer) to either name. "I never worked in the lab itself. Not that way. I can't make a reconstruction. I'm not allowed to perform dentistry on a patient—not by myself. I assist the dentist while he works. Where is Dr. Dillingham?"

Holmes assimilated the new stick and bit off a reply. The Enens had been cagey about late news on Dillingham, apart from vague assurances that he was doing well. She kept inserting the question in the hope that one of them would slip and give her an answer.

This time it worked. "Dr. Dillingham? We sold him to the high muck-a-muck of Gleep."

Judy started to laugh at the grotesque designation Dillingham had hung on that entity. He must have enjoyed himself hugely as he programmed the transcoder! On Earth he had always been serious.