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 s.h.a.ggy 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, G.o.d," 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sing 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.
"h.e.l.lo, 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 conversation 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 t.i.tle," she said, "and by far the least distinguished."
"You evidently travel quite a bit, inspecting things."
"Hundreds of inst.i.tutions 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 pa.s.s away while they are under our care."
"Yes," Lady Wilburdon said, "but this poor gentleman pa.s.sed away after you performed the operation, did he not?"
"Ha, ha!" Dr. Radhakrishnan said. "You are astonishingly perceptive." 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 a.s.suming that the distinguished director of this inst.i.tute 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 sh.o.r.e each other up.
"Then I shall be extremely careful to wash up," Lady Wilburdon said, looking at her b.l.o.o.d.y 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 companion, 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.
"You must forgive us for handling your visit so awkwardly and discourteously," Mr. Salvador ventured, "as this is the first time that anyone has ever come to visit any of our patients." "Ooh, how terribly sad," said Miss Chapman. "I shall relay news of this situation to the Lady Wilburdon Organisation for the Visitation of Dest.i.tute Invalids here in Delhi," Lady Wilburdon said. "Arrangements can be made-" "Oh, we really couldn"t ask-"
"Emotional factors are terribly important. Loneliness can kill just as surely as nosocomial infections."
"No," Dr. Radhakrishnan said. He had to draw the line somewhere. "You are very generous. But I must rule it out on medical grounds. Later, when we have the permanent facility constructed, perhaps we can arrange for routine visitation."
Mr. Salvador cringed visibly. Lady Wilburdon got just a bit sniffy. "Well," she said, "I count myself fortunate that I was able to come in and have a lovely visit before this very strict policy was imposed."
"As you will understand, we did not have to impose a policy until now."
Mr. Salvador was trying to patch it all up. "But if you can provide me with a forwarding address in England, I will keep you apprised of our progress."
"England?" Lady Wilburdon said. "Oh, no. We shall be here in India for another month at least.""Oh. Well, that"s delightful news. Delightful." "Of course, we will be all over the subcontinent, but sooner or later we always come back to Delhi."
"Then I shall look forward to dinner with you on at least one occasion," Mr. Salvador said weakly.
"When does the next fellow, Mr. Singh, have his operation?" "We have it scheduled for Wednesday."
"Four days from now," Miss Chapman said. She took an oversized appointment calendar, a desktop model, from her tote bag, and opened it up. "Mr. Singh has his brainwork done," she mumbled to herself, penciling it in.
Meanwhile, Lady Wilburdon was reading over her companion"s shoulder. "Tomorrow we leave for Calcutta, to inspect the Lady Wilburdon Inst.i.tute for the Rehabilitation of Syphilitic Lepers." Both men drew sharp breaths.
"Can they be rehabilitated?" Mr. Salvador said. He seemed astonished, verging on slightly amused.
"Syphilitic lepers are easy," Lady Wilburdon said, "compared to spoiled boys."
Mr. Salvador turned red and shut up, leaving Dr. Radhakrishnan all alone to terminate the conversation.
"Feel free to phone when you return to Delhi," he said. "Telephone?"
"Yes. No visitation, remember."
"But Mr. Singh will be having his operation in the new facility, will he not?"
"Oh. Yes, that"s right. It should be ready by then." "So he will recover in the new facility as well." Dr.
Radhakrishnan could only nod.
"See you in a few days," Miss Chapman said, snapping her appointment book shut and beaming at them cheerily. The two women bustled out and climbed into a waiting car.
Mr. Salvador spun on his heel, went straight across to Building 1, and pulled a bottle of gin out of his desk. He and Dr. Radhakrishnan sat down across from each other, wordlessly, and began to drink it, straight, from paper cups. After a minute or two, Zeldo came over and joined them. This was a little troubling in and of itself, because Zeldo was some kind of a puritanical health freak. Drinking straight gin from a paper cup was not his style at all.
"What was that?" Dr. Radhakrishnan finally said, when he and Mr. Salvador, or Bucky, or B.M. as he was called by his school chums, both had a few ounces of ethanol pumping through their systems.
Mr. Salvador threw up his hands. "What could I possibly say to you verbally that would add to the impression you have already received?"
"She knows you."
Mr. Salvador sighed. "My father was Argentine, of German and Italian ancestry. My mother was British.
One of our homes was in England and that is where I went to school. Once or twice a year, she would come seeping through the place to inspect it. She would sit in the back of a cla.s.sroom for a few minutes and watch. Made all the teachers nervous as h.e.l.l. Students too. She even made the custodians nervous."