Stations of the Tide - Michael Swanwick [41]
“I trust I have not grown so gullible as to consult a doctor,” the bureaucrat said with dignity. “If I want medical attention, I shall employ the qualified machinery or, in extremis, a human with proper biomedical augmentation. But I will not swill down fermented swamp guzzle at the behest of some quasi-literate, uneducated charlatan.”
“Be sensible. The nearest diagnostician is in Green Hill, while Dr. Orphelin is—”
“I am here.”
He paused in the doorway, as if posing for a commemorative hologram: a lean man in a blue jacket of military cut with two rows of gold buttons. Then the worn white path down the middle of the carpet carried him past a rotting vacuum suit propped ornamentally against the bookcase, and he dumped his black bag alongside the divan. His hands were heavily tattooed.
“You have been drugged,” the doctor said briskly, “and a diagnostician cannot help you. The medicinal properties of our native plants are not in its data base. Why should they be? Synthetics can do anything that natural drugs can, and they can be manufactured on the spot. But if you wish to understand what has happened to you, you must go not to one of your loathsome machines but to one such as I who has spent years studying such plants.” He had a lean, ascetic face with high cheekbones and cold eyes. “I am going to examine you now. You are not required to heed a word of what I have to say. However, I insist on your cooperation in the examination.”
The bureaucrat felt foolish. “Oh, very well.”
“Thank you.” Orphelin nodded to Mother Le Marie. “You may leave now.”
The old woman looked startled, then offended. She raised her chin and walked stiffly out. Why won’t you tell your uncle who the father is? someone said, and a young woman’s agonized voice cried, Because them is no father! before it was muffled by the closing door.
Orphelin peeled back the bureaucrat’s eyelids, shone a small light in his ears, took a scraping from inside his mouth, and fed it to a diagnostick. “You should lose some weight,” he remarked. “If you want, I can show you how to balance real and fairy foods in a diet.” The bureaucrat stared stoically at a spray of pink silk roses, brittle and browning at the edges, and said nothing.
At last the examination ended. “Hum. Well, you shan’t be surprised to learn that you’ve taken in some variety of neurotoxin. Could be any of a number of suspects. Did you experience hallucinations or illusions?”
“What’s the difference?”
“An illusion is a misreading of actual sensory data, while a hallucination is seeing something that isn’t there. Tell me what you saw last night. Just”—he held up a hand—“the high points, please. I have neither the time nor the patience for the extended story.”
The bureaucrat told him about the giant women wading in the river.
“Hallucinations. Did you believe in their reality?”
He thought. “No. But they frightened me.”
Orphelin smiled thinly. “You wouldn’t be the first man with a fear of women. Oh be still, that was a joke. What else did you see?”
“I had a long talk with a fox-headed haunt. But that was real.”
The doctor looked at him oddly. “Was it?”
“Oh yes. I’m quite sure of it. He carried me back to the hotel, later.”
Nausea welled up again, and the room took on a heightened clarity and vividness. He could see every thread of fiber on the rug, every frayed fabric end on the divan crawling in his vision. He felt flushed, and the finger that Undine had tattooed burned.
There was a rap on the door.
“Yes?” the bureaucrat said.
Chu stuck her head in and said, “Excuse me, but the autopsy is complete, and we need you to accept the report.”
“Come in here, please,” Orphelin said. “And I’ll need somebody else as well.” Chu glanced at the bureaucrat, and then, when he shrugged, ducked into the hall. She spoke to the guards. The taller one shook his head. “Hold on,” she said. A minute later she returned with Mintouchian in tow. He looked more hound than man, his face puffy and pink, his eyes sad and bloodshot.
“There’s more to this than I had originally thought.” The