Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2, May 2013 by Resnick Mike et al

Author:Resnick, Mike, et al. [Resnick, Mike, et al.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Phoenix Pick
Published: 2013-04-22T12:00:00+00:00

THE FEYNMAN SALTATION

by Charles Sheffield

The worm in the apple; the crab in the walnut…Colin Trantham was adding fine black bristles to the crab’s jointed legs when the nurse called him into the office.

He glanced at his watch as he entered. “An hour and a quarter the first time. Forty minutes the second. Now he sees me in nine minutes. Are you trying to tell me something?”

The nurse did not reply, and Dr. James Wollaston, a pudgy fifty-year-old with a small mouth and the face of a petulant baby, did not smile. He gestured to a chair, and waited until Trantham was seated on the other side of his desk.

“Let me dispose of the main point, then we can chat.” Wollaston was totally lacking in bedside manner, which was one of the reasons that Colin Trantham liked him. “We have one more test result to come, but there’s little doubt as to what it will show. You have a tumor in your left occipital lobe. That’s the bad news. The good news is that it’s quite operable.”

“Quite?”

“Sorry. Completely operable. We should get the whole thing.” He stared at Trantham. “You don’t seem surprised by this.”

Colin pushed the drawing across the table: the beautifully detailed little crab, sitting in one end of the shelled walnut. “I’m not an idiot. I’ve been reading and thinking cancer for weeks. I suppose it’s too much to hope it might be benign?”

“I’m afraid not. It is malignant. But it appears to be a primary site. There are no other signs of tumors anywhere in your body.”

“Wonderful. So I only have cancer once.” Trantham folded the drawing and tucked it away in his jacket breast pocket. “Am I supposed to be pleased?”

Wollaston did not answer. He was consulting a desk calendar and comparing it with a typed sheet. “Friday is the twenty-third. I would like you in the night before, so we can operate early.”

“I was supposed to go to Toronto this weekend. I have to sign a contract for a set of interior murals.”

“Postpone it.”

“Good. I was afraid you’d say cancel.”

“Postpone it for four weeks.” Wollaston was pulling another folder from the side drawer of his desk. “I propose to get you Hugo Hemsley. He and I have already talked. He’s the best surgeon east of the Rockies, but he has his little ways. He’ll want to know every symptom you’ve had from day one before he’ll pick up a scalpel. How’s the headache?”

The neurologist’s calm was damping Colin’s internal hysteria. “About the same. Worst in the morning.”

“That is typical. Your first symptom was colored lights across your field of vision, sixty-three days ago. Describe that to me....”

***

The muffled thump on the door was perfunctory, a relic of the days when Colin Trantham had a live-in girlfriend. Julia Trantham entered with a case in one hand and a loaded paper bag held to her chest with the other, pushing the door open with her foot and backing through.

“Grab this before I drop it.” She turned and nodded down at the bag.

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