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RBB [voiceover]: Princess and Ivan loaded me into a black limo, and we headed for the hospital. I remembered the dying cabbie's last words, an attack on socialized medicine, and I prepared myself for a bad experience, but I need not have bothered. The hospital was quiet, clean, up-to-date, and I saw somebody working there whom I had known so long ago that I'd forgotten about him.
DR. EMPIRICAL: Hey, is that you, RBB?
RBB: Yes, pal. How the hell are you?
DR. EMPIRICAL: Thankful as all getout to be the hell away from Crankyland. Why do you still bother?
RBB: I wish I knew.
DR. EMPIRICAL: The lady here asked us to do an emergency tox screen, and we'll have the results in a few minutes. But do you have any ideas?
RBB [voiceover]: I filled him in on what I'd been eating and where I'd been. The moment he realized that I'd been in a doctor's office with strange smells in the air, he snapped his fingers.
DR. EMPIRICAL: I've got it! I saw a journal article just last month, on airborne hallucinogens and psychotropic drugs. Just a minute -- I'll be right back, and if the nurse arrives with the tox screen, make her wait.
RBB [voiceover]: In a moment he was back.
DR. EMPIRICAL: Yep, here it is. The author of the paper is a Canadian, no less, one Dr. Shakesmear --
RBB: Shakesmear?!
DR. EMPIRICAL: Yes, that's the byline, and he cowrote it with a guy who signed himself timleary.
RBB [voiceover]: I sat back on the exam table, strength draining from me. I felt sad and deeply, immensely tired. Shakesmear and timleary. They had been working together, and they still were. We'd been well and truly suckered.
IVAN: Professor, are you all right?
RBB: Ivan, what is it with you? Sometimes you speak perfect English, and sometimes you sound like an extra from the cable-tv biography of Andrei Sakharov.
IVAN: My accent comes and goes, with stress, I think you'd say. Now, no stress, so I can speak like Thomas Brokaw.
RBB: No homeless jokes, Ivan.
IVAN: Of course not. Who do you think I am -- Discord?
RBB: Skip it, pal.
GODMOTHER: Here's the tox screen, Doctor.
DR. EMPIRICAL: Thanks, Nurse. See, Prof? There's the chromatograph reading that indicates precisely the substance that Shakesmear and timleary isolated and reported on in this study for the JOURNAL OF IRREPRODUCIBLE RESULTS. They call it "Squip." Funny name.
RBB [voiceover]: No, it wasn't. I remembered Namagomi-chan telling me about her coelenterates and cephalopods and that word was the sound that an intelligent jellyfish made moving about. Another piece of the puzzle silently clicked into place. Meanwhile, the good doctor was still thinking aloud.
DR. EMPIRICAL: Now that we have a sound theory and supporting data as to what's going on, we can flush that nasty stuff right out of your system. It's really easy -- you'll be surprised. Just use this oxygen tank for about five minutes or so. Take deep, deep breaths, and stay absolutely still and calm. No exertion, now. Just let the oxygen fill your lungs and then breathe it out slowly and completely before each new breath. OK?
RBB: OK. Thanks, Doc. You're almost as good as Doc Rochelle.
DR. EMPIRICAL: How's she doing?
RBB: She just had daughter number three -- and she's still running rings around everyone else in L.A. when it comes to forensics.
DR. EMPIRICAL: I always *did* like her. I'll be back to check up on you.
RBB [voiceover]: As he left, Princess came back from the lounge with a soda. As she was drinking it, I could feel her eyes on me, worried, concerned. It felt good, in a way that reminded me of someone I did not want to think about. So I concentrated on breathing oxygen deeply and exhaling slowly and completely.
IVAN: Five minutes, Professor. How do you feel?
RBB: I feel fine, but I want to wait for Dr. Empirical to come back and give me another tox screen workup.
NURSE GODMOTHER: I can take care of that for you, Professor. Just breathe into this bag. I'll be back in a few minutes.
RBB [voiceover]: As Dr. Empirical had predicted, I had a clean bill of health. It was now nighttime, and Vancouver at night looks like pretty much any other big city, only a bit cleaner because it's Canadian. Princess and Ivan and I headed back to her base of operations in the limousine, and I went back to my best thing -- brooding. It was in Dr. Shakemear's office I'd breathed in the stuff that had drugged me. Hairhead obviously would not want me and Princess to join forces, that was clear. So how did he know that we had? I looked down at the lapel of my blazer, and for the first time I noticed something.
RBB: I'll be good-goddamned.
PRINCESS: Richard, what is it?
RBB [voiceover]: It was a small pin bearing some sort of holistic logo. I looked at it, because I knew that I had never owned it or worn it before today. When jen, the dolly at the office, brushed against me as we were leaving, she must have planted the pin in my lapel.
RBB: Pull over.
PRINCESS: Why?
RBB: Just pull over!
RBB [voiceover]: We did, and I looked around narrowly. Finally I saw what I was looking for -- a bunch of tourists, all of them drunk and disorderly.
roo: I can lick any American in the house!
SLIM_SHADY: I bet you can!
roo: Tryin' to start somethin', mate? Take that!
SLIM_SHADY: OW! That hurt!
PATHETIC_OWL: Shut up, both of you! I want to look at the pretty colors!
grundle: If you were really Canadian, you'd say "pretty colours"!
PATHETIC_OWL: You can't hear a difference in spelling, you moron!
RBB [voiceover]: I walked up to the woman. She was a tall, striking redhead, and I do mean striking, as one of the guys had just discovered. He was lying on the ground, howling in pain, clutching his face where her hand with four outstretched fingers tipped with long, sharp nails, had raked his face.
RBB: Welcome to Canada, dear lady. I hope that you'll accept this handsome cloisonee pin as a token of our hospitality to our friends from the most truly democratic country in the world, Down Under!
roo: Thanks, mate, you're a pretty good guy for one of those pasty pale Canucks. How are you in the sack?
RBB: I'm Jewish.
roo: Ohh, mutilated. Tough luck, mate.
RBB: That's OK, I have consolations. Enjoy your visit.
RBB [voiceover]: I got back into the limousine. At the very least, our adversaries would know that they couldn't keep track of me any longer, and maybe they'd make the mistake of following the Aussie dame and her friends. We headed back to Princess's base of operations, and a glance between us told me that we'd go back to where we were before we had been interrupted.
[...TO BE CONTINUED...]
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