Interface (26 page)

Maybe these were simple problems, easy to fix. He emerged
from the autopsy room still wearing his rubber gloves, smeared
with blood and gray matter. If this was just going to take a minute,
there was no point in getting ungloved and then regloving later.
"First things first," he said, and led Zeldo toward the room that, as
of this morning, Mr. Scatflinger now had all to himself.

As he approached the door, the sound of WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA grew louder.

No. It couldn't be.

He opened the door. Half of his staff was gathered around the
bed.

Mr. Scatflinger, who had been unable to do anything except he in bed since his accident, was now sitting bolt upright in bed.

He had been totally aphasic as well, unable to make a sound. But
now he was saying, "WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA" as
loudly as he could.

Everyone was looking at Dr. Radhakrishnan to see how he was
going to react.

"Well," he said to his staff, "I think one can make the case that
being able to say 'WUBBA WUBBA' is better than not being able
to say anything at all, and that, at least in a limited sense, we have
done Mr. Scatflinger here a great service."

"Excuse me! Are you the gentleman in charge?" someone said.
It was a lady's voice. Not just a female voice, but really a
lady's
voice.

Dr. Radhakrishnan turned around slowly, half-paralyzed by an
unexplainable sense of fear and loathing. The odor of lavender and
roses was quite strong now.

He was looking directly into a bosom of Himalayan proportions,
stoutly contained in some kind of undergarment and covered with a
flowery print dress. His gaze traveled from the bottom to the top of
the bosom, changing focus the whole way, and then encountered
a soft, pale, yet sturdy neck. Above that was a face.

It was a nice English lady's face, but too big. It was like looking
at the young Victoria through a big Fresnel lens. And on top, where
custom would dictate some kind of a tightly curled, chemically
induced permanent wave, was something altogether out of place, a
short, simple, straight, and maybe just a big shaggy kind of haircut.
Certainly not an ugly way to wear one's hair, but just a little bit out
of keeping with the social stature that was implied by her accent.

"Madam," he said, "I am Dr. Radhakrishnan." He extended his
hand.

"Lady Wilburdon. How do you do," she said, shaking it.

"Oh, god," Zeldo said, and ran away, gagging audibly.

A gasp came from the staff. Dr. Radhakrishnan felt the back of
his neck get hot. He was tired, he was stressed, and he had forgotten
about the gloves. This Lady Wilburdon creature now had Mr.
Easyrider's brains all over her hand.

There was brief moment of utter despair as he tried to think of a
way to draw this fact to her attention without making the breach
of etiquette even worse than it already was.

"Oh, it's really quite all right," she said, fluttering her bloody
hand dismissively. "I worked in the refugee camps of Kurdistan for
a month, at the height of the insurrection, so a bit of a mess does
not trouble me at all. And I wouldn't dream of having you interrupt
your work just to shake hands with an interloper."

Dr. Radhakrishnan was looking around uneasily, hoping to make
eye contact with someone who knew who this lady was, why she
was here, how she had gotten in past all of those Sikh commandos at the front gate, all of those .50-caliber machine-gun nests.

Behind her he could see another woman, a smaller, auntish lady,
conversing with Mr. Salvador. Mr. Salvador kept glancing at the
backside of Lady Wilburdon; he wanted to be here, not there, but
clearly was having trouble extricating himself from polite small talk
with this other woman.

WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA . . .

"You are
...
a guest of Mr. Salvador?" he said.

"Yes. My secretary, Miss Chapman, and I were passing through
Delhi on an inspection tour and we thought we would pop in and
see how Bucky's project was coming along."

"Bucky?"

"Yes. Bucky. Buckminster Salvador."

"His name is Bucky?"

"Buckminster. The boys at school used to call him B.M. for
short, but we suppressed that. It was uncouth and cruel."

"School?"

"The Lady Wilburdon School for Spoiled boys in Newcastle
upon Tyne."

"I didn't know there was such a thing as a school for spoiled
boys," Dr. Radhakrishnan said numbly.

"Oh, yes. There are a lot of them in England, you know. And
all of their parents are desperate for an environment that will give
them structure
..."

"That's quite enough," Mr. Salvador said, interrupting. Dr. Radhakrishnan was shocked to see the look on his face; suddenly he was pale and sweating. His mask of total aplomb had been
shattered, he was rolling his eyes, clearly out of control.

"Quite enough of what, Bucky?" Lady Wilburdon said, locking
eyes with Mr. Salvador, who looked very short standing next to
her.

"Quite enough of having you stand around in this unpleasant place when I should be treating you to a lavish dinner along
Connaught Circus!" Mr. Salvador improvised. He was close to coming completely unhinged.

WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA . . .
"Oh, but I can go into some restaurant and order a meal
whenever I please. It's not every day I get the opportunity to tour
an advanced neurological research facility," Lady Wilburdon said.

"Tour?" Dr. Radhakrishnan said.

She seemed taken aback. "Yes. Well, I thought, as long as I was
here
..."

"Naturally you can have a look around, Lady Wilburdon," Mr.
Salvador said, shooting Dr. Radhakrishnan a panicky warning look.
Clearly, resistance was out of the question.

Suddenly Lady Wilburdon was looking past Dr. Radhakrishnan, over his shoulder, and a completely new expression had come over
her face. It was a wonderful, sweet, lovely, maternal expression,
like a mother greeting her children home from school.

"Hello, sir, and how do you do? I am so sorry for intruding."

She was looking at Mr. Scatflinger.

Mr. Scatflinger was looking right back at her. Staring her straight
in the eye. There was even a hint of a smile on his face. "Wubba
wubba," he said.

"Very well, thank you. Perhaps Dr. Radhakrishnan would be so
good as to introduce us?"

"Yes. Lady Wilburdon, this is, uh, Mr. Banerjee. Mr. Banerjee,
Lady Wilburdon."

"It's so nice to make your acquaintance."

"Wubba wubba wubba."

Mr. Salvador was taking advantage of this break in the con
versation to sit on the edge of an empty bed and clamp one hand
over his face.

"I take it that Mr. Banerjee will soon be undergoing this
miraculous new surgical procedure that Bucky was telling me
about."

"Wubba wubba wubba."

"Actually, he has already undergone it," Dr. Radhakrishnan said.
No point in dissembling.

She was just a trifle taken aback. "I see."

"Before the operation he could not sit up in bed or speak. Now,
as you see, he can sit up for prolonged periods,
 
and he has
developed the ability to say 'wubba wubba.' " "Wubba wubba wubba," Mr. Scatflinger said.
"Do you suppose that, as time goes on, he will develop the
ability to say other sorts of things?"

"Absolutely. You see, the implant has not been patterned yet.
There is a powerful computer inside his head. But right now, the
connections are scrambled. The computer has no program. We will
have to train him to speak over a period of weeks or months."

"I see. So after the operation, there is a prolonged period of
rehabilitation." "Exactly."

"And the new facility you are building will have such facilities,
which, as I notice, are lacking here."
"Precisely."

"Wubba wubba wubba wubba," Mr. Scatflinger said.
"It was so nice to have met you, Mr. Banerjee," Lady Wilburdon
said, "and I wish you the best of luck in the course of your
therapy." She stepped back out of Mr. Scatflinger's room, which
obliged Dr. Radhakrishnan to follow her. "We have high hopes for him," he said.

"I am sure that you do," Lady Wilburdon said. "But I see that
another one of your patients has not been as fortunate."

She was looking over at Mr. Easyrider, sprawled out on a bloody
table with his brains spilling out of his head, the cup of his skull
upended next to him.

Mr. Salvador was still collecting his wits, which had been blown
all over the Indo-Gangetic plain. Dr. Radhakrishnan had to handle
this himself.

The woman had to be important. He had never heard of her, but
with some people, you could just tell that they were important.

"The name of Lady Wilburdon is famous throughout the
world," he said.

"I am the seventh person to bear that title," she said, "and by far
the least distinguished."

"You evidently travel quite a bit, inspecting things."

"Hundreds of institutions throughout the world, yes."
Then you will appreciate, perhaps better than anyone, that the
patients who come into this place are often in very grave condition."
"I see that very clearly."

"It is not unusual for them to pass away while they are under our
care."

"Yes," Lady Wilburdon said, "but this poor gentleman passed
away after you performed the operation, did he not?"

"Ha, ha!" Dr. Radhakrishnan said. "You are astonishingly per
ceptive." No point in denying it, now. "How could you possibly
have known that?" Maybe this woman had deeper connections
than he had supposed.

"I am not an anatomical expert," Lady Wilburdon said, "but as
I cast my eye over the gentleman, I see that you have sawed off the top of his head and extracted a large gray sort of thing that I take to
be his brain."

"Of course, you are right."

"And I have taken the liberty of assuming that the distinguished
director of this institute would not bother personally to perform a
detailed autopsy on a patient who had expired of causes that were
merely incidental."

"Infection," Dr. Radhakrishnan said. "His surgical wounds
became infected with a nosocomial microbe, which is to say, a bug
that he picked up in the hospital."

"I am familiar with the terminology," Lady Wilburdon said, and
exchanged an amused look with her female companion.

Finally Mr. Salvador had recovered sufficiently to weigh in.

"Infections are always a terrible problem in brain surgery," he said.

"That
  
is
  
why
  
we
  
operate
  
out
  
of these
  
buildings,"
  
Dr.
Radhakrishnan lied. "Because they are not hospitals per se, the
chance of nosocomial infections is greatly reduced."

"But we still must perform all of the surgical procedures at
AIIMS," Mr. Salvador said.

"And this is where he picked up the fatal organism," Dr.
Radhakrishnan concluded. He and Mr. Salvador exchanged a triumphal look, trying to shore each other up.

"Then I shall be extremely careful to wash up," Lady Wilburdon
said, looking at her bloody hand, "now that I too have been
infected with this very deadly pathogen."

"Yes. We should all probably do that," Dr. Radhakrishnan
said, "before we spread the infection to Mr. Singh or any of the
other patients." This phase of the lying process was known as
backfilling.

The backfilling process continued as Dr. Radhakrishnan and
Lady Wilburdon scrubbed themselves in the sink that had been set
up at one end of the building. Mr. Salvador and the lady's com
panion, Miss Chapman, washed their hands too, for good measure,
to ensure that the fatal infection did not spread through the ward. Lady Wilburdon obviously knew a thing or two about washing up
and threw herself into the process at a frighteningly vigorous pitch,
running a stiff plastic brush back and forth under her fingernails
with the speed of an automatic paint shaker, spraying a fountain of pink suds into the air. She scrubbed herself all the way to elbows, like a surgeon.