The audience leaned forward. They had always felt that both the patient and doctor were better off without employing anesthesia. The physician could determine the patient's reactions much more accurately and quickly if his responses were not dulled.
"Doctor X, I presume?" Goodbody said as he awoke.
"What!" said the nurse, Mrs. Fell.
"A nightmare. I thought my arms and legs had been cut off. Oh!"
"You'll get used to that," the nurse said. "Anytime you need anything, just press that plate with your nose. Don't be bashful. Doctor Grossfleisch said I was to wait on you hand and foot. I mean..."
"I'm not only a basket case but a crazy basket case," he said. "I'm sure that I've been certified insane, haven't I?"
"Well," Mrs. Fell said, "who knows what insane means! One man's looniness is another man's religion. I mean, one man's schizophrenia is another man's manic- depressiveness. Well, you know what I mean!"
It was no use telling her his story, but he had to. "Don't just dismiss what I'm about to tell you as the ravings of a maniac. Think about it for a long time; look around you. See if what I say doesn't make sense, even if it seems a topsyturvy sense."
He had one advantage. She was a nurse, and all nurses, by the time they were graduated, loathed doctors. She would be ready to believe the worst about them.
"Every medical doctor takes the oath of Hippocrates. But, before he swears in public, he takes a private, a most arcane, oath. And that oath is much more ancient than that of Hippocrates, who, after all, died in 377 B.C., comparatively recently.
"The first witch doctor of the Old Stone Age may have given that oath to the second witch doctor. Who knows? But it is recorded, in a place where you will never see it, that the first doctor of the civilized world, the first doctor of the most ancient city-state, that of Sumer, predecessor even of old Egypt, swore in the second doctor.
"The Sumerian oath -- scratch my nose, will you, my dear? -- required that a medical doctor must never, under any circumstances, reveal anything at all about the true nature of doctors or of the true origin of diseases."
Mrs. Fell listened with only a few interruptions. Then she said, "Doctor Goodbody! Are you seriously trying to tell me that diseases would not exist if it were not for doctors? That doctors manufacture diseases and spread them around? That if it weren't for doctors, we'd all be one hundred percent healthy? That they pick and choose laymen to infect and to cure so they can get good reputations and make money and dampen everybody's suspicions by... by... that's ridiculous!"
The sweat tickled his nose, but he ignored it. "Yes, Mrs. Fell, that's true! And, rarely, but it does happen, a doctor can't take being guilty of mass murder anymore, and he breaks down and tries to tell the truth! And then he's hauled off, declared insane by his colleagues, or dies during an operation, or gets sick and dies, or just disappears!"
"And why weren't you killed?"
"I told you! I saved our glorious leader, the Grand Exalted Iatrogenic Sumerian. They promised me my life, and we don't lie to each other, just to laymen! But they made sure I couldn't escape, and they didn't cut my tongue out because they're sadistic! They get a charge out of me telling my story here, because who's going to believe me, a patient in a puzzle factory? Yes, Mrs. Fell, don't look so shocked! A booby hatch, a nut house! I'm a loony, right? Isn't that what you believe?"
She patted the top of his head. "There, there! I believe you! I'll see what I can do. Only..."
"Yes?"
"My husband is a doctor, and if I thought for one moment that he was in a secret organization...!"
"Don't ask him!" Goodbody said. "Don't say a word to any doctor! Do you want to come down with cancer or infectious hepatitis or have a coronary thrombosis? Or catch a brand-new disease? They invent a new one now and then, just to relieve the boredom, you know!"
It was no use. Mrs. Fell was just going along with him to soothe him.
And that night he was carried into the depths beneath the huge old house, where torches flickered and cold gray stones sweat and little drums beat and shrill goat horns blew and doctors with painted faces and red robes and black feathers and rattling gourds and thrumming bullroarers administered the Sumerian oath to the graduating class, 1970, of Johns Hopkins. And they led each young initiate before him and pointed out what would happen if he betrayed his profession.
Only Who Can Make A Tree?
A Polytropical Paramyth
"You'll have to admit that Serendipitous Laboratories cleared away the smog," Dr. Kerls said.
Bobbing, he danced, the toe of his left shoe striking the floor and seeming to catch and pull him backward. He was a very short, middle-aged, and fat chemist. The top of his head looked like the back of a hog, and his voice was high and thin.
"Smog, shmog!" Dr. van Skant said. He snorted as if he had a noseful of nitrogen oxide. "What kind of pollution problem you think a few trillion moths produce, eh? Godalmighty, they're still bulldozing them off the freeways. And I had to stop twice to clean them out of my exhaust pipe! Twice! God-almighty!"
Kerls grinned and bobbed his head and rubbed his hands together.
"Except for being a failure, the experiment was a success, you'll have to admit that."
The Federal inspector-scientist did not reply. He looked around the huge laboratory. Tubes and retorts were bubbling, booping, and beeping. Colored liquids were racing up and down and around transparent plastic and glass pipes. A control panel was pulsing with lights and squeaking and pinging. Tapes were running this way and that. Generators were hurling wormy sparks back and forth, like robot baseball players warming up before a game.
Two white-coated men were pouring chemicals into tubes, and the tubes were throwing off frosty, evil-smelling, evil-looking clouds.
"Where in hell is the table?" van Skant snarled. He was a very tall and hugepaunched man with glasses and a thick blond moustache, and he spoke from behind, or through, a big green cigar at all times.
"What table?" Dr. Kerls said squeakily. He cringed.
"The table with the sheet under which is the monster waiting for the lightning stroke to bring it to life, you nitwit!"
Kerls laughed nervously. "Oh, you're joking! It is impressive, ain't it?"
"Should be," van Skant growled. "You jerks set it up just to impress me."
Kerls looked around helplessly.
Dr. Lorenzo smiled and waved at van Skant. He was very short and thin and had a bald forehead with a great Einsteinian foliage of hair behind the baldness to compensate.
Dr. Mough, very short, stern-faced, his hair cut in stylish bangs across his forehead, grimaced at Kerls.
"You jest, of course?" Kerls said. He danced backward while he cracked his knuckles to the tune of The Pirates of Penzance overture.
"Does this place hire nothing but psychotics?" van Skant said.
"Serendipitous Laboratories hires nothing but the best," Kerls said.
Van Skant stopped and stared. Dr. Lorenzo had poured the contents of a tall beaker into a rubber boot, and Dr. Mough, holding the top of the boot shut, was shaking it.
"I think they're testing out a new type of vulcanizer," Kerls said.
Mough set the boot upright on the floor, and he and Lorenzo stepped back.