clusters in a halo around him. The brightest of these is called G73 by Life. Quarble is quite vain about all of that.
“Doc!”
“All right,” I said, hurrying.
I cast one final glance in a reflective field to check my appearance. I AM handsome. Life knows me as M31, the famous Andromeda galaxy. The Life unit Al-Sufi was aware of me about ad 905. Had I been aware of him at the time, he would be but a few drifting molecules of scorched gas now. I owe him, I really do. I owe all of Life. They have HACKED me off!
But I am a looker, I am.
The Life unit and famous astronomer William Hershel wrote this of me in 1785:
“…undoubtedly the nearest of all the great nebulae… The brightest part of it approaches to the resolvable nebulosity, and begins to shew a faint red colour; which, from many observations on the colour of and magnitude of nebulae… There is a very considerable, broad, pretty faint, small nebula [MHO] near it; my Sister [Caroline] discovered it August 27, 1783, with a Newtonian 2-feet sweeper. It shews the same faint colour with the great one, and is, no doubt, in the neighbourhood of it…”
Yes, Quarble is always horning in, bumbling about and getting in the way.
“Doc! Doc! Doc!”
“Where is the patient, dear Quarble?” I asked politely, now in the mode of the highly respected physician that I was until Life tripped me up and left me looking foolish. For THAT, they shall PAY!
He throws his perception but a short way.
“Where?” I ask, seeing only our neighbor, the odd one. Mostly we just ignore him, but I hear he has been highly successful in his field, something to do with confections, nothing healthy that I would consume, but many a galaxy likes a bit of sweet nebulosity now and again.
“Him? You’re kidding!”
“Yep, yep, yep, no, no, no,” Quarble affirmed.
I sighed. Never ask Quarble more than one question at a time.
As to the neighbor, I’ve never liked the guy, never had much to do with him. But a patient’s a patient and I did swear an oath of healing so very long ago. I projected a smiling and confident perception to him. Better I should have turned and expanded away at best speed. But how was I to know the extent of the infection that still racks his body?
“May I help you?” I ask.
He replied with a torrent of ailments and symptoms, a few of which I sensed as legitimate and… disconcerting. Especially the constant migraines he was now suffering. It was all too familiar and all too ominous.
“Say ‘ahh,’” I said, pushing a quick view field into his mass.
“Ugh!” escaped from me involuntarily. Not the most reassuring manner for a healer to project, but I had never seen an infestation so horribly progressed as showed on my instrument. Inside him swarmed, teemed, slid, slithered Life in incredible numbers. Only a blur of activity on the rudimentary examination device I was using, but enough to cause me great concern.
I swatted Quarble’s nosy perception away and reached out to assemble more powerful diagnostic and treatment fields. No time to waste in an emergency case like this! The guy should have come to me sooner, a LOT sooner. Well, it was going to be nasty, but I always won.… At least, at one time, I always won. Cursed LIFE!
As my talented and nimble manipulative fields prepared the drastic but necessary medical procedures, I examined the patient visually. From the outside, he looks healthy enough, a handsome enough spiral galaxy. No signs of the rot within. He’s larger than normal, almost a giant. In fact, almost as large as I am and I’m the largest galaxy in this neighborhood.
I spared a glance to one of my instruments. Yes, a healthy male, about 15 billion years old. Good star count —somewhere around 200 billion to 400 billion at first guess, the instrument will refine that shortly as the processing completes.
“Is he a goner, Doc? Dead? A dead one?”
“SHUT UP, you idiot!” I said, but the patient is in too much pain to pay attention to Quarble. Quarble has all the finesse of an imploding black hole, but he’s cheaper than hiring a trained nurse.
I pushed my manipulators harder, feeling a real sense of urgency now, but continued the look over. All these observations give a physician the data needed for effective treatment of an infection. Usually they do, anyway.
“What does it mean, Doc? Is he sick, is that what it says?”
I abstractedly brushed Quarble’s perception away from the log and thought about what other descriptive facts to add.
“DOCTOR?” the patient said, moaning.
“Just a moment, I’m preparing a procedure that will help you. Nothing to worry about.”
See, doctors he to patients.
“Will it hurt, Doctor?”
Of course it will, it will hurt like hell. He’s too far gone for anything that would not hurt. “No, not a bit,” I said. See above comment about lies. “Er… you might feel a slight sting, just a tiny bit of discomfort,” I modified, feeling just a little guilty because I was planning on unleashing several hundred supernovas within his body. No half measures when Life is so virulently established. He’s going to be spewing fire from all orifices!
Too bad. Like I’ve already said, he’s not a bad looking guy—not as handsome as me, but so few are. I examine his spiral arms and look inside his body again. A normally hale and hearty mix of interstellar matter, diffuse nebulae, and young stars. Good growth patterns with open star clusters emerging from this matter. But he’s been partaking a bit too much of his own confectionery. His bulge component is rife with old stars and fatty globular clusters; very concentrated toward his center.
I see some supernovae have occurred in the past; spectacular events to Life units, but nothing unusual here in frequency or magnitude—just one of the ways our bodies have of keeping infection down. But… speaking of spectacular… I was planning and preparing to give THESE Life units something to REALLY gawk at. In the few brief moments left to them, that is.
“You sure it won’t hurt?” the patient asked again, nervously.
“No, no—not a bit,” I lied.
The instrumentation had gathered vast amounts of data now, giving me all the information needed to proceed. Even the Life units’ many communications among themselves were analyzed and interpreted and a comprehensive history presented. All absurdly simple— killing infection, after all, is not brain surgery.
Still, this case was very advanced and the patient not at all likely to survive it. “About payment,” I said.
The necessary transaction was concluded, the patient desperate and making no demur at my exorbitant rate. It’s the very best time to ask for your fee—wait until after the cure and they haggle or fail to survive, which is the ultimate negotiating ploy.
Quarble and I continued, perceiving all the data now spread across the perception-rendering screen on one of my force terminals, expanded out to the size of a galaxy itself. Every bit of datum required there for our instant reference. Well, at least I understood it—you never knew with Quarble, but he did surprise me at times.
“Bad, Doc, bad,” he actually whispered. “Worse, the worst I’ve ever seen.
“Yes,” I said just as quietly, “in fact, I’ve only seen or heard of one case with a greater infection.”
“Who? Who?”
“In a body we dissected in medical school. Already long dead, of course, and the Life that caused it, too. But you could see how it ravaged her before she succumbed. Nasty little buggers, Life!”
“Fast, fast, Doc. Hard to stomp them!”
Quarble, as usual, was stating the obvious.
As I flexed my manipulator fields and prepared for surgical entry into the patient, I reflected on the real problem we face in fighting infection, speed! Life is quick. The time scales they operate on are far more compressed
