Ramsey Campbell
Long before they finished hauling the tube out of him, Beal was as close to prayer as he had ever ventured. When he was able to use his mouth at last, he had to swallow more than once before he could ask “What’s the verdict?”
“Doctor will tell you,” the assistant said and kept her face neutral while she saw him to a scrawny plastic seat in the waiting area. A receptionist illuminated with tattoos was saying “All right there?” to anyone who strayed near her counter, and Beal glanced at every newcomer in the hope if not the dread that they were coming for him. At first he didn’t look again at the man who sidled into his row, but when the seated fellow turned towards him Beal met his eyes. “You’re…” the man said.
“Jack Beal.” More out of resentment than interest Beal said “And you’re.”
“Benny Fender.” As if he shouldn’t need to add the information Fender said “The Apothecary.”
It was a pub, not his profession. Beal would have recognised him sooner if an untypical toothy grin hadn’t done its best to broaden Fender’s cramped face. Some new experience had pinkened its skin, as if Fender had touched up a monochrome sketch of himself. “What are you in for?” he said.
“Nothing I’d care to talk about in public.” As Fender loosed a laugh like an indulgence of a tasteless joke Beal said “And you, what’s brought you here?”
“Megameta did.”
“I don’t believe I know them.”
“It’s time people did.” Fender had more words and more enthusiasm to offer than his habitual complaints about the world. “They’d never have to come to hospital again once they had the chip,” he said. “Notill, it’s called. The name tells you all you need to know.”
“Are you saying you’ve got one?”
“I’ve had mine all right. You could too.” He stopped short of fingering the back of his head. “Don’t do that,” he muttered before raising his voice. “Just a habit, that. You won’t even know where you’ve been done.”
“What’s involved?”
“In and out in half an hour or less,” Fender said and stretched his grin wider. “You, not the chip. You won’t feel them do it, but you can wave goodbye to every illness.”
“Then why have I never heard of them? I mean, why aren’t they better known?”
“They just want word of mouth till they get bigger. We’re only meant to tell people we know.”
Beal thought this overstated their acquaintance, but had to ask “How much did the procedure set you back?”
“It doesn’t cost a penny. They operate inside the system.”
“So where can I read up on them? They’re online, I suppose.”
“They’re not. I told you, you get recommended, and then you have to be referred by your doctor.”
As Beal reflected that the facility was bound to be discussed online a nurse called “Jack Beal.”
“I’ve got him here.” Not much less loudly Fender told Beal “Remember, Megameta. Notill.”
The nurse stared after him as he headed for the exit, and then she murmured “Trying to do us out of a job?”
“I’d never want to do that to anyone.”
“Better know what you do want,” she said and turned her back to make him follow.
Her code on a wall pad let them into a corridor where every door displayed a name. Halfway down, a Megameta logo caught Beal’s eye. Though the letters were almost as white as the door, they stood out somehow. The nurse scowled at them on her way to ushering him into the next room. “Jack Beal, doctor,” she said and left them.
“Have yourself a seat, Jack. I’m Don Spall.”
Beal thought him too young to be so bald, without even eyebrows to compensate. Face and pate looked scrubbed hygienically smooth. Perhaps his manner was designed to deny his age if his watchful grey eyes weren’t persuasive enough. “I have to tell you,” he said, “the news isn’t altogether positive.”
Until that moment Beal had managed to avoid acknowledging how fervently he’d hoped the opposite. “What is it, then?”
“There’s some cancer. To be clear, a few. I’ve every reason to suppose they should respond.”
“To chemo, you’re saying.”
“At this stage I favour surgery, Jack. A procedure like the one you’ve just had, with instruments, of course.”
Having swallowed, Beal found the breath to ask “What’s the alternative?”
“None I’d recommend, and my colleagues wouldn’t either.”
Beal’s desperation found a voice. “What about Megameta?”
The doctor’s gaze grew so keen it blotted out any expression. “What do you know about them?”
“One of their patients was saying they cure you of everything.”
“Are you thinking of putting yourself forward?”
“He said my doctor has to do that.” The encouragement Spall’s question seemed to offer let Beal add “If you don’t mind, I’d like to ask her.”
“I can refer you if you’re certain that’s your choice.”
“Then it is.”
“Wait here for me.” The doctor shut the door behind him, so that Beal barely heard his voice in the next room. The words and the higher ones were indistinguishable, but they sent Spall quickly back. “Go through,” he said. “She’ll be with you once she’s changed.”
The Megameta room resembled a sketch of an office. A pair of chairs, plump expensive leather relatives of the seats next door, faced each other across a rudimentary white desk on which a computer screen kept its back to Beal. Certificates and tributes decorated the walls, and he was quitting his chair to examine them when a woman bustled into the room. “Jack,” she enthused, delivering a large handshake. “Paula Sandown.”
Her voice was deeper than he’d heard through the wall. If her shoulder-length blonde hair didn’t guarantee her gender, lipstick and eye makeup did the job. “So who told you about us?” she seemed eager to learn.
“Just someone I see at the pub.”
“I hope you know their name.”
“Benny Fender.”
“That jolly chap. Well, we should thank him. You’re as eligible as he was.”
“You know what I’ve been diagnosed with.”
“We know you inside out, Jack. You won’t be like that much longer. Our implant fixes everything it finds, and then it keeps you in condition.”
“Can I ask where you put it in?” Beal touched the back of his head. “Round here?”
“That’s a trade secret, I’m afraid. Don’t worry, you’ll never know where.”
A fierce flare of pain in his guts persuaded Beal the information didn’t matter. “When could you book me in?”
“Let me see what we have for you.” She laid a finger on her lips as if silencing herself while she consulted the screen. “We can fit you in,” she eventually said, “early next year.”
This felt like a threat of intensified pain. “That long,” Beal said.
“Recommendations have been on the increase. Let me have one more look,” she said, then offered him a laugh. “Well, aren’t you glad you asked. I can tell you we’ve just had a cancellation.”
“How soon would that be?”
“Now,” she said, only to qualify it with a chortle. “Not quite this very moment. As soon as the theatre’s ready for you if you’re happy to proceed.”
“More than.”
“Let me print out your consent and you can sign it while you’re waiting.” Seconds later she handed him the sheet on a clipboard. “We’ll find you where your friend did,” she said.
“Not too bad at all,” Beal felt happy to tell the receptionist. He was expecting to fill in his details, but the form already held them all. I hereby authorise Megameta LLC to furnish me with a Notill implant. He’d scarcely signed when a nurse escorted him back into the corridor, where she stowed his belongings in a tall tin locker. “Jack Beal for the procedure,” she announced as they reached the far end of the corridor.
Beyond the door was mostly white: the walls and ceiling, the caps and gowns and masks of the three figures waiting by the table laid with a sheet for him. He couldn’t tell which blank mask said “Lie down whenever you’re ready, Jack.”
As soon as the back of his head touched the table a bunch of lights on a stem stooped towards his face. Someone slid his left sleeve to his elbow, and another figure with an erased face loomed above him. The clustered light was so relentless that he had to squint to see the surgeon’s eyes, which were intensely grey. Had he seen them before? For that matter, what had the Megameta representative’s eyes looked like if you ignored the distractions of her makeup? “Hang on,” Beal blurted, “could I just—”
His mouth stayed uselessly ajar while he searched for words. He only knew he felt rushed into a decision he should have had more time to consider. “What are you trying to say, Jack?” said the nurse who had released his arm.
“Can I have a think before you start?”
“You’re already fitted. You’re all done.”
Beal sat up, which felt like folding himself on a hinge newly oiled. There was no sign of the surgeon. “How long have I been in here?”
“You were under half an hour.”
“I don’t even remember getting the anaesthetic.”
“The chip will have reset you when Dr Poulsown put it in,” said the nurse who might not just have been holding his arm. “You won’t have lost anything you’ll miss.”
“Careful stepping down,” her colleague said, “but you should be fine. Just in case you need to call, we’ll give you a number.”
“Call about what?”
“Everybody’s different. I’m not saying you will.” As he followed her along the corridor she dodged into the Megameta office, reappearing too swiftly for Beal to see anyone beyond the door she shut. “There you are,” she said as she might have rewarded a child for braving an operation, and handed him a card.
“If you could give me some idea what to expect—”
“I’ve said why I can’t.” Having seen Beal out of the corridor, she called “Mary Marsden.”
The young woman made a visible though apparently not painful effort to correct her stoop so as to look Beal in the eye. “Have they done you?”
“Can you tell?” When she shook her head he felt bound to say “No need to be anxious. You won’t even know where they’ve put your chip.”
“Do I look anxious?” As the door closed behind the women she said with an amalgam of shame and triumph “I’m going to be fixed.”
The rush hour was stuffing all the buses. Beal thought standing in the aisle so soon after surgery might be a task, but he was able to join in the sluggish dance the careless driver choreographed. Along Beal’s suburban street leafless trees were feeling for the February wind. His three rooms kept out most of it, though the window crammed between the shower stall and the toilet let draughts seize him by the neck. He bought fish and chips from Cod Be With You up the road, but his appetite fell short halfway through dinner. Should he make another sortie into War and Peace? The concave spine of the obese paperback on the shelf resembled a reproachful vertical frown. Instead he gave the boxed set of a television crime serial another chance, but two hours of it left him as confused as ever. Everything felt indefinably delayed in reaching him. He returned the disc to its tattered sleeve, then crossed the room to bed.
A sense of wrongness wakened him. The tone of Mary Marsden’s parting remark had caught up with him, and the darkness felt like his perplexity rendered visible. The dark wouldn’t be so total if his eyes weren’t shut, and why should he hesitate to open them? He widened them and felt them swell up from the sockets before floating like miniature balloons out of his head.
As he sucked in a breath like a gasp in reverse it seemed to suck his eyes back in. He dug his fingers into the mattress while he lay on his back, staring at the dimness until it convinced him he was seeing as he should. Surely the illusion had been the tail end of a dream. All the same, he was afraid to sleep in case the nightmare was waiting for him, and when he found he’d drifted off he had to force himself to open his eyes. If they trembled in their sockets before settling down, that had to be nervousness, and soon he was on his way to work.
The local branch of Frugish occupied a unit in the Buybuy retail park. When Beal left the staffroom, having shed a third of his girth in the shape of his padded coat, a supermarket supervisor accosted him. “Did they find out what your trouble was?”
“They did and it’s dealt with.”
“Nothing too serious, then.”
“Cancer.”
As if he’d tricked her Delia objected “What do you mean, it’s been dealt with?”
“They give you an implant that cures everything you’ve got.”
“It sounds too good to be true.” Before he could react she said “I’m glad for you. Management were saying if you had to take much time off you might need to find another job.”
“But they were saying just the other week nobody knows my section better. What sort of job?”
“Up to you to find out. Not one here.” As Beal felt his lips part in search of words she said “Anyway, you’ve told me there’s no need to worry. Better start tagging your shelves. You’ve a new offer starting tomorrow.”
The wine section already swarmed with yellow tags. Three for two, buy three and get the cheapest free, three selected bottles for the price of two – none of these should be confused, although quite a few customers were, some blaming Beal. Now there would be discount throughout the Frugitipple range: Share a Shiraz, Yay Cabernet, Not Merely Merlot… Beal was slipping the shiraz discount tag into the transparent slot on the edge of the shelf when his fingers began to squirm.
They hardly felt like fingers. He could have thought his hands had sprouted worms. As they recoiled he had a sense of flinching from himself. His eyes bulged ominously as he gazed at the fingers, struggling to let the sight quell his panic. Although he could feel them swelling and rippling, the way worms burrowed into earth, they appeared just to be shaking with the effort to fend off the sensation. “Not happening,” he muttered and covered his mouth with the squirming objects, clamping them together to hold them still as a customer stared at him.
He couldn’t afford to be caught having difficulties. He glared at his hands until his eyes stung to convince himself his fingers were functioning as they should, however much he felt them imitating grubs. While he was able to insert all the tags that way, he didn’t trust it to help him replenish the shelves. Desperation suggested a ruse. He was transferring wine from a trolleyful of cases, pinning one bottle at a time between his palms, when Delia came over. “Why are you doing it like that?”
“It’s easier for me just now.”
“And a lot slower. Is it to do with your operation?”
“Maybe temporarily. Honestly, not worth mentioning.”
“I do hope not,” Delia said and left him a dissatisfied look.
The warning lingered when he took his break. Alone in the staffroom, he took out the Megameta card. Had it faded overnight, or had he lost the angle that made the details legible? The only pen in the room was a fractured ballpoint bandaged with parcel tape, and he tried to blame it for hindering his fingers while he inked the details on the card – the Megameta logo and a mobile number, but no address. His unaccustomed clumsiness left him afraid of mistyping digits until the number appeared on the phone screen.
“Press one to recommend a client. Press two for finance. Press three for follow-ups…” Jabbing that digit with a fingertip that felt gelatinous brought him the same bright brisk female voice. “We are experiencing a high volume of calls at present. You may prefer to call back later.” He didn’t, and five minutes of a Mozart concerto for synthesiser or at least a few reiterated bars of it rewarded him with a voice unnecessarily like the one he’d already heard. “Megameta, how can we help?”
“Can I speak to someone about a condition?”
“Which of our conditions will that be?”
“No, it’s one I’ve got. I’m a patient of yours.”
“We don’t have those. We only have successes.” The response sounded as automatic as the recorded messages had. “You’re not from the media,” she said, having dimmed her brightness.
“I’ve told you what I am. You gave me the treatment yesterday.”
“And what was the concern?”
“If you must know, it was cancer.”
“You won’t have that any more.” Just as briskly she said “I was asking why you felt you had to call this number.”
“My body…” His mind seemed reluctant to grasp his state. “It feels wrong,” he succeeded in saying.
“You’ll have to be specific if I’m to help.”
“My hands.” More of an effort was required to add “My eyes. It feels as if they’re, they’re getting away from me.”
“That’s quite common.”
If this was meant as reassurance, it only enraged him. “Why didn’t someone say?”
“We wouldn’t have wanted to bias you.”
His anger let out just one word. “Bias.”
“If you’re expecting something to happen you may think it has. I’m hearing you say your body feels different.”
“That’s putting it politely.”
“It’ll be adjusting while your implant beds in. What you say you feel isn’t really happening, is it?”
“I hope to God not.”
“See if you can live with it till it goes away. Or ask your friends to confirm it isn’t happening. They should be able to tell you what’s real and what isn’t. But if all that fails, you know where we are.”
“Now you mention it, I don’t. Where are you exactly?”
“Where you just found us. At the other end of your phone.”
He could always find them at the hospital, and so he said only “Had I better give you my details?”
“We have them all, Jack.” Her voice regained more enthusiasm as she said “We’ll know if you call again.”
He couldn’t risk betraying his state to any of his colleagues, but perhaps there was a solution out there in the shop – the security mirror that reflected the wine aisle, demonstrating that his fingers were behaving as they should. Its objectivity helped him fend off the sense that they’d grown boneless, so that he managed to pick up bottles one-handed. When Delia loitered to watch him he was able to hope her silence denoted approval.
That night’s dinner came from Nothing Bizza Pizza. Half the contents of the steaming carton would do for tomorrow. His mind fell short not just of Tolstoy but the year’s bestselling comic novel. Another bid to grasp the first hours of the crime serial felt like straining to retrieve a memory, as if depending on the supermarket mirror had detached his perceptions. He went to bed in case that solved whatever problem he had.
When he woke in the depths of the dark he knew something was amiss. If it was outside, let it go away without involving him. Or was part of him outside him? While lying on his back he couldn’t tell, and he made himself raise his head. He didn’t need to recapture his eyes after all – that wasn’t why he clutched at the mattress so hard his arms shook. He’d left the back of his head on the pillow.
Had it fallen loose or sagged like dough? He let go of the mattress, having realised his fingers were working as they should, but it took a good deal more effort and determination to reach behind his head. His scalp was where it ought to be, but he couldn’t judge how soft his skull had grown. Whichever section of his head he laid on the pillow felt capable of staying there if he turned over, and there was no more sleep for him.
Earlier than dawn he strove to rouse himself with the coldest shower he could bear. At the supermarket Delia was waiting to scrutinise him. “Better today?” she hoped or warned him.
“I will be.” In case she found his intention too remote he declared “I am.”
He did his best to concentrate on finding space for a Frugitipple consignment – Really Pouilly, Not Too Shabby Chablis, Shine On Chenin… Since his fingers had returned to normal, he didn’t need the mirror. Whenever he had to climb his stumpy ladder he avoided glancing at the bulbous image, where the sight of his head swelling under glass made him feel his skull was being tugged bigger on its elongated neck. “Not happening,” he muttered until he saw customers peering at him, and then he knew he had to make a call.
The unrelenting trills had counted off at least five minutes of his break by the time a voice he thought he recognised said “Megameta.”
“You told me yesterday to call if there were any complications. My name—”
“I’m seeing all about you, Jack. You’ll want finance, will you?”
“I just want to be put right. I’m not looking for compensation.”
“I should think not.” With no lessening of briskness she said “I’ll pass you over now.”
Mozart was back, though the trapped scrap of a tune resembled a ringtone that had lifted some of his notes. Having given Beal more than ample time to appreciate the performance, a man said “Plans.”
Beal had none beyond repeating “My name—”
“I’ve got you here in front of me, Jack. Just confirm your details for me.” Once the protracted process was done the man said “What were you looking to obtain today?”
“Whatever you need to do for me. Your operation’s made it so I can’t work properly. If it carries on like this I could lose my job.”
“We’ll have to see that doesn’t happen, won’t we?” Quite as much like a doctor projecting his bedside manner at a distance the man said “We can offer you corrective treatment and any follow-up you need.”
“That sounds right. What’s involved?”
“It depends which plan you go for. Up front is the most inexpensive, but may I assume you’d rather pay in instalments?”
“Pay what?”
“Outright would be one hundred thousand, if you’re able to raise the amount. Instalments add up to more, depending how far you spread them.”
Beal’s lips were testing a variety of grimaces. “Nobody mentioned any of this,” they managed to pronounce.
“Maybe they were hoping your surgery would be satisfactory for you.”
“I should have figured out they didn’t mean free is free, should I?”
“Don’t despair yet, Jack. You haven’t heard our alternative.”
“To what?” Beal demanded through an aching grin.
“If you successfully refer a client to us we’ll waive all your payments.”
Beal’s words felt jagged in his mouth. “So that’s why he sent me to you.”
“You’ll appreciate we can’t discuss our other clients, Jack. Do you want to have a think about your options?”
“I’ll be thinking all right,” Beal retorted, though his mind was fixed on Fender. His eagerness to confront the fellow made his skin feel impatient to squirm off the flesh.
When he tramped clammy-footed to the Apothecary that evening he found his drinking acquaintances at a table by the bar, beyond which a vintage chemist’s jars had gathered among the downturned bottles of spirits. Just now the reference to bygone medication felt like a mirthless joke about the modernity of Megameta. The beery trio were competing at ailments, a contest Ricko might have meant to win with a cough he’d brought in, having stepped out the back for a cigarette. “Get your round while you’re up, Jack,” he spluttered. “I’ll have my usual.”
Once Beal had set down the quartet of tankards and himself he said “Has anyone seen the character who’s always complaining?”
Ger took so large a gulp of dull dun ale that Beal would have been unsurprised to see him bulge. “There’s a few of those.”
“The one who never has a smile for anything,” Beal said and was enraged to realise why that had changed. “He calls himself Benny Fender.”
Wilf took a drink that rivalled Ger’s, and a suffusion climbed his neck as if he was visibly filling up. “Then I expect that’s his name.”
“Can you all keep an eye out for him?”
Beal was regretting his choice of words and resisting an urge to secure his own eyes in the sockets when Ricko doused his cough with ale to say “There he is now.”
“You mean he was,” Ger said. “Looked in and buggered off.”
Beal’s ale slopped across the table as he struggled out of the chair, which had embedded the tips of its legs in the carpet. By the time he reached the door Fender was halfway across the car park. “Mr Fender,” Beal shouted. “Benny Fender.”
The glare of the towering security lights seemed to sear all expression from Fender’s face. “All better now, Jack?”
“No more than you were.”
“You’ve called them, have you?” Yet more like an accusation Fender said “That didn’t take you long.”
“And just how long did you take?”
“Longer than that. Maybe I’m made of stronger stuff.”
Beal clenched his fists before he could judge whether it was rage that set his fingers writhing. “Your lies got me into this and you can get me out.”
“Nobody’s lied to you. You hear what you want to hear.”
“More like I should have seen what I saw, you having trouble with your head.”
“You’ve had that too.” With equal carelessness Fender said “What are you expecting me to do? I’m no better off moneywise than I should think you are.”
“It’s up to you to make things right, and by—”
“Like you said, you’re no worse off than I was.” As Fender made at speed for the road alongside the car park he called back “You’ve spoken to them, so you know what to do.”
“Wait,” Beal shouted and tried to hurry after him. “You can’t walk away from what you’ve done.”
“You watch me. No point in coming after me now I’m fixed. You need to find someone like we were and I’m telling you, it took me weeks.”
Beal floundered in pursuit, but not far. His moist feet felt swollen to the limit of his shoes, and so softened he thought they might slither out to flop larger on the tarmac. He supported himself on the icy roofs of two parked cars until the sensation shrank. He couldn’t face Ricko and the others after that, and it took him far too long to trudge home when every step felt like a threat of squelchy flabbiness.
Apprehension kept him away from the bed. He sat in his chair with a quilt draped over him. When it persisted in slipping down he grasped it with a fist beneath his chin. He couldn’t judge the hour at which the light he’d left on wakened him. He might have fancied he was in a thinker’s pose if he hadn’t sensed how his fist was propping up his face, which had oozed off the bone to heap itself on his knuckles. In a panic he staggered across the room, nearly sprawling over the quilt, to peer at himself in his bathroom mirror. When at last it persuaded him his face had stayed solid or at least reverted to that state he stumbled back to the chair, but not to sleep.
He was up well before he meant to leave. A shower went some way towards persuading him he was awake. As he lolled in the aisle of a rush-hour bus he felt like a side of meat in a freezer. The tattooed receptionist gave no sign of recognising him. “All right there?” she said.
“I’ll be making sure it is. Can I see somebody from Megameta?”
“Not here, sir.” Without varying the smile she’d raised for him she added “Sorry.”
“I know where they are, and I need a word with them.”
“Not here.”
“Don’t try and tell me that. I’ve seen them. I’ve rung the number they fob you off with, and now I’m going to deal with them face to face.”
“Not here.” The phrase had begun to sound like a reprimand. “If you’d like—”
“I’ve told you what I’d like. What are you, a recording?” Beal’s fingers squirmed deep in his pocket until they succeeded in snagging the Megameta card. “I know you know them,” he said. “They gave me this last time I was here.”
With the barest glance at it she said “You wrote that yourself.”
“That’s another of their tricks, is it?” Beal grew aware of somebody behind him – an excuse to move him on? He twisted around to see a nurse not yet in uniform. “You’ll remember me, won’t you?” he said before he had quite enough breath.
“I don’t believe I do.”
“You said we were putting you out of a job, me and another of your patients.”
“I hope I’d never say any such thing.”
“Not us personally. You meant Megameta.”
Her gaze strayed past him to the receptionist before she said “I’m afraid I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Megameta. They’re hid in there.” Beal struggled to point at the secretive corridor. “You took me to see Dr Spall,” he insisted while his fingers worked like grubs, crumpling the card, “and he sent me to them.”
“Then you’ll need to speak to him.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. Let me at him.”
Should Beal have been less forceful? The nurse strode to the corridor without another word. He was tempted to slip into it while the door was unlocked, but retreated to a seat instead. The receptionist’s phrase had greeted several patients by the time somebody loomed at Beal’s shoulder. If security had come to throw him out he would cling to the plastic seat and make all the row they deserved – but no, the man was Spall. “I understand you were asking for me,” he said.
“You saw me a couple of days ago. Jack Beal.”
“We see quite an amount of people, Jack.” With no increase in recognition the doctor said “What can we do for you today?”
“You referred me to Megameta, so you can take me to them.”
“There must be some mistake. We don’t deal with anyone like that.”
“Why, because you’ve found out what they’re like? Bit late for me and whoever else you sent. You’ve still got to follow up what you were responsible for.”
“What are you saying that is, Jack?”
“This kind of thing.” Beal seized his face in both hands while his fingers were under control and set about yanking his doughy cheeks lower than his chin. “That’s just some of it,” he said as distinctly as his distorted mouth would let him.
He watched the doctor manage not to recoil. “Would you like to make an appointment to see someone?” Spall said.
“I’m seeing you, and I’m telling you you’re liable.”
“Your condition isn’t my field,” the doctor said and backed away to the reception counter. “This lady will make your arrangements for you.”
Why hadn’t he interviewed Beal in his office? Was he hoping his victim would discredit himself in public? Beal kept his seat until the doctor made for the Megameta corridor. As Spall typed the admission code Beal headed for the desk, only to lurch aside. Despite the encumbrance of his bloated soggy feet, he was just in time to sidle swiftly past Spall into the corridor. The doctor grabbed his shoulder, which was so far from solid that Beal was able to squirm free. “Where do you think you’re going?” Spall demanded.
“We both know, don’t we? Make that all of us, Dr Spall and Dr Poulsown and Paula Sandown while you’re at it.” By now Beal was at the Megameta door, where confusion halted him. Instead of the logo the door displayed the solitary word EXAMINATION, and the room contained a sheeted table watched over by a bank of lights. There was still the theatre where they’d operated on him, and he dashed to that end of the corridor. The door was marked X-RAY, and the room beyond confirmed it. As Beal stumbled away – his entire body felt like confusion rendered palpable – the doctor met him. “Please leave immediately,” Spall said, “or I’ll have you shown the door.”
“That’s still here, is it? Where have you hidden it now?”
When the doctor only stared at him Beal stalked unsteadily out of the corridor. Might Megameta be lurking in another one? He couldn’t use the same trick to search it – not today, at any rate. On his way out of the hospital he phoned the Megameta number. “Are you recommending someone to us, Jack?” the relentlessly bright voice said.
“No,” Beal began and was instantly cut off. The next time he phoned he was unable to get through, and that was how he used the day up, all the way to the pub. As he opened the door of the Apothecary he was rewarded by a painful development of Ricko’s hacking cough. Ger looked puffier than ever, and Wilf’s neck had grown more suffused. Beal was buying his round at the bar when Wilf called “What the Christ have you done to yourself?”
He was pointing at the back of Beal’s head. Beal felt his scalp begin to slither backwards off the bone. As he clutched at his skull the mirror showed him his eyes sidling forth on their way to examining the problem, and he grabbed his face with his free hand to squeeze them back in. If he couldn’t feign calm he was done for. “Nothing I can’t get fixed,” he managed to declare.
By the time the barman brought the drinks Beal had regained enough temporary control to carry them to the table. “At least you’ve found something to grin about,” Ger observed as Beal sank onto a chair. “Like your friend.”
Beal knew Fender had been grinning not with mirth or optimism but with determination if not panic. He strove to maintain the expression as Ricko frowned at him. “How are you going to get yourself sorted?”
“It’s the latest treatment. It changes your whole life. They’ve given me the option to nominate a friend as well.” As Ricko coughed while Ger contemplated his bulging stomach and Wilf gave his neck a tender massage, Beal started his prepared speech. “Everyone who’s had it says there’s nothing to it,” he said. “Nothing except good.”