“I don’t understand.”
“Edward, the evidence is overwhelming. I was thinking about the fat. They could increase my brown cells, fix up my metabolism. My eating habits have changed. But they haven’t got around to my brain yet.” He tapped his head. “They understand all the glandular stuff. Old-home week. But they don’t have the
Edward felt Vergil’s pulse and checked his reflexes. “I think we’d better get those samples and call it quits for the evening.”
“And I didn’t want them getting into my skin. That really scared me. Couple of nights, my skin started to crawl, and I decided to take some action. I bought a quartz lamp. I wanted to keep them under control, just in case, you know? What if they crossed the blood-brain barrier and found out about
“Give you skin cancer, too,” Edward said, falling into Vergil’s terse manner of speech.
“I’ve not worried. They’ll take care of it. Like police.”
“Okay,” Edward said, holding up both hands in a gesture of resignation. “I’ve examined you. You’ve told me a story I cannot accept. What do you want me to do?”
“I’m not as nonchalant as I seem. I’m worried, Edward. I’d like to find a better way to control them before they find out about my brain. I mean, think of it. They’re in the billions by now, more if they’re converting other kinds of cells. Maybe trillions. Each cluster smart. I’m probably the smartest thing on the planet, and they haven’t begun to get their act together. I don’t want them to take over.” He laughed unpleasantly. “Steal my soul, you know? So think of some treatment to block them. Maybe we can starve the little buggers. Just think on it. And give me a call.”
He reached into his pants pocket and handed Edward a slip of paper with his address and phone number. Then he went to the keyboard and erased the image in the frame dumping the memory of the examination. “Just you. Nobody else for now. And please…hurry.”
It was one o’clock in the morning when Vergil walked out of the examination room. The samples had been taken. In the main lobby, Vergil shook hands with Edward. Vergil’s palm was damp, nervous. “Be careful with the specimens,” he said. “Don’t ingest anything.”
Edward watched Vergil cross the parking lot and get into his Volvo. Then he turned slowly and went back to the Frankenstein Wing. He poured a cc of Vergil’s blood into an ampoule, and several cc’s of urine into another, inserting both into the hospital’s tissue, specimen and serum analyzer. He would have the results in the morning, available on his office VDT. The stool sample would require manual work, but that could wait; right now he felt like one of the undead. It was two o’clock.
He pulled out a cot, shut off the lights and lay down without undressing. He hated sleeping in the hospital. When Gail woke up in the morning, she would find a message on the answerphone—a message, but no explanation. He wondered what he would tell her.
“I’ll just say it was good ol’ Vergil,” he murmured.
CHAPTER TEN
Edward shaved with an old straight razor kept in his desk drawer for just such emergencies, examined himself in the mirror of the doctor’s dressing room and rubbed his cheek critically. He had used the straight razor regularly in his student years, an affectation; since then the occasions had been seldom and his face showed it: three nicks patched with tissue paper and styptic pencil. He glanced at his watch. The batteries were running low and the display was dim. He shook it angrily and the display became crystal-clear: 6:30 A.M. Gail would be up and about, preparing for school.
He slipped two quarters into the pay phone in the doctor’s lounge and fumbled with the pencils and pens in his coat pocket.
“Hello?”
“Gail, Edward I love you and I’m sorry.”
“A disembodied voice on the phone awaited me. It might have been my husband.” She had a fine phone voice, one he had always admired. He had first asked her out, sight unseen, after hearing her on a phone at the house of a mutual friend.
“Yes, well—”
“Also, Vergil Ulam called a few minutes ago. He sounded anxious. I haven’t talked to him in years.”
“Did you tell him—”
“You were still at the hospital. Of course. Your shift is at eight today?”
“Same as yesterday. Two hours with premeds in the lab and six on call.”
“Mrs. Burdett called, also. She swears little Tony or Antoinette is whistling. She can hear him/her.”
“And your diagnosis?” Edward asked, grinning.
“Gas.”
“High-pressure, I’d say,” Edward added.
“Steam, must be,” Gail said. They laughed and Edward felt the morning assume reality. Last night’s mist of fantasy lifted and he was on the phone with his wife, making jokes about musical fetuses. That was normal. That was living.
“I’m going to take you out tonight,” he said. “Another Heisenberg dinner.”
“What’s that?”
“Uncertainty,” Edward said crisply. “We know where we are going, but not what we are going to eat. Or vice versa.”
“Sounds wonderful. Which car?”
“The Quantum, of course.”
“Oh, Lord. We just had the speedometer fixed.”
“And the steering went out?”
“Shh! It’s still working. We’re cheating.”
“Are you mad at me?”
Gail hmphed. “Vergil better see you during office hours today. Why is he seeing you, anyway? Sex-change?” The thought made her giggle and start to cough. He could picture her turning the phone away and waving at the air as if to clear it. “’Scuse. Really, Edward. Why?”
“Confidential, my love. I’m not sure I know, anyway. Maybe later.”
“Got to go. Six?”
“Maybe five-thirty.”
“I’ll still be critiquing videos.”
“I’ll sweep you away.”
“Delicious Edward.”
He cupped the receiver and smooched indelicately before hanging up. Then, rubbing his cheek to ball up and remove the tissue paper, he walked to the elevator and rode up to the Frankenstein Wing.
The analyzer was still clinking merrily, running hundreds of samples bottle by bottle through the tests. Edward sat down to its terminal and called up Vergil’s results. Columns and numbers appeared on the screen. The suggested diagnosis was unusually vague. Anomalies appeared in highlighted red type.
DIAG (???)
If the spleen and lymph nodes show enlargement, then:
ReDIAG:
