Eric Flint: Ring of Fire III

Morris snorted. “That she’s not a doctor.”

“Well neither am I!” Tom protested, feeling extremely uneasy.

“But Tomas, you are ein Doktor,” Magda corrected him. “Universitat of Padua makes you vun.”

She insisted on speaking English in the presence of notable up-timers like the Roths, instead of the Amideutsch she was more comfortable with. Her speech was comprehensible enough, though, if a bit garbled and heavily accented.

“I am Frau Doktor now,” she added proudly. “I haf married a Doktor! Papa is so pleased!”

Tom groaned. Although being granted the title of “Doctor” by the university in Padua had added considerably to his social status, by his own estimation, given the general level of knowledge among the down-timers, it was pretty much the equivalent of buying your doctorate from a diploma mill, or being ordained as a High Priest of Zen Druidism.

“All hail the tree that is not there,” he muttered. Magda looked puzzled, but Gerry jumped on what he’d said.

“See, now that is exactly why you’re what Edith needs right now!” he exclaimed. “You know all that New Age crap! Shoot, I think Lothlorien Commune probably had one of every crackpot out there, given some of the stories you’ve told me!”

“But I don’t believe that New Age crap!” Tom protested feebly.

Gerry merely fixed him with a stern gaze that looked remarkably like the one his father used to nail him with when he didn’t want to mow the lawn. “You can come up with some mystical sounding garbage that will let you do some kind of tests, and if you can do that, you can probably figure out what’s wrong with him. And then you can figure out how to wrap the treatment in more mumbo-jumbo that will ensure he actually follows what’s been prescribed.”

Gerry wasn’t backing down, but neither was Tom. “I’d have to go back to Grantville. I’d need to dig into the stuff in the commune library. All the way back to Grantville, then dig through all those boxes of books in storage.” He nailed Gerry with the same look. “I’d take months.”

“No, you don’t,” Gerry replied, just as stubbornly. “You don’t have to convince another believer that you know what you’re talking about. You just have to convince Wallenstein enough that he’ll take whatever meds he’s advised to take-or whatever it is Edith and Doc think he needs to do. You just have to give him something that sounds plausible so he’ll stop listening to the astrologers. And now he’s listening to Gribbleflotz too, since he showed up in Prague.”

“But why me?” That was what he didn’t get.

“Because you’re the only living hippy in Grantville,” said Roth. “Logic and science aren’t going to work on Wallenstein. We need something as kooky as Kirlian auras, and you’re our expert on crazy religions.”

What made him the expert? He was almost agnostic, for crying out loud! He’d seen so many flakes with religion come and go at Lothlorien that-well, he was only sure of one thing. God was probably laughing Her socks off at humankind. “Did you see what they came up with this week? Holy Me!”

“I spent the Harmonic Convergence in bed,” he reminded them, sinking a little into the chair and hoping that Magda would not ask “and with whom?” “I didn’t do Channeling. I refused to have my Chak-”

He stopped.

“You haf thought of something!” Magda exclaimed. “I am being know that face you are being make!” She clasped her hands together gleefully.

Tom groaned. “It’s quackery,” he said.

“ Ja, und? ” Magda dismissed that with a wave of her graceful little hand.

“It’s-I don’t remember a lot of it-”

“So you make it up. Or you borrow from other stuff.” Gerry was just as dismissive. Judith and Morris leaned forward.

Tom sighed. “Chakras,” he said, reluctantly. “I’m going to go to hell for this, I just know it.”

Judith and Morris looked at each other. “I vaguely recollect something about chakras-isn’t that some acupuncture thing?” she asked, worriedly. “Wallenstein will believe in a lot of nonsense, but I am fairly sure he won’t sit there and be made into a pincushion.”

Tom shook his head. “No, I mean, some acupuncturists used the whole chakra thing as another explanation for their stuff, but, no, acupuncture is Chinese and chakra healing is Indian. There’s supposed to be seven energy vortices up your spine, each one a different color. And that’s why I’m going to hell.”

Gerry tilted his head to the side. “I don’t get it-”

“Colors. Energy colors, aura colors. It works with the Kirlian aura nonsense. Which is why I’m going to hell. I’m not going to convince him to stop listening to Gribbleflotz. Edith tells me the Kirlian stuff is actually an improvement over the crap the astrologers were feeding Wallenstein. I’m just going to convince him that Gribbleflotz is right. In fact, I am probably going to end up giving Gribbleflotz even more ideas.”

“Does it matter?” Morris demanded. “For God’s sake, Tom, even if we were only talking about extending a man’s life, here, I’d put up with Gribbleflotz! But it’s not just that, we need to keep Wallenstein alive to protect his son for as long as possible, we’re extending the stability of the region and the relationship we have with-”

“I know, I know,” Tom interrupted, rubbing his temples. “Dammit, I hate politics. I really hate down-timer politics. They can get you killed.”

“Not dis time, Tomas,” Magda said, reaching out and patting his hand comfortingly. “Dis time ve make life, not var.”

Tom might be “Doctor Thomas Stone of the University of Padua,” but if he was going to convince Wallenstein to talk to him-and get diagnosed and treated by him-he was going to have to look the part. The part being-he was going to have to look the way a seventeenth-century Bohemian thought a Tibetan guru would look.

Which was to say…colorful. As if he was his own best customer at the dye works. It started with a turban the size of a small country house, moved down through a caftan and floor-length vest with a wide sash, and ended with bright red felt boots.

“I look ridiculous,” he grumbled, adjusting his turban. It was huge, and centered with an enormous brooch. He had the feeling that he looked just like Johnny Carson playing the phony fortuneteller, Carnac the Magnificent.

“ Nein, nein, you look ausgezeichnet!” Magda replied, her eyes dancing. “So impressive!”

“Your mouth says ‘no’ but your face says ‘yes,’ ” he muttered.

At least he could take comfort in the fact that if he looked ludicrous, his assistant looked worse.

He’d decided early on that if he was going to be able to pull this off, he was going to need some help, and it wasn’t going to be Edith, devoted to the royal family though she might be. It had taken his assistant five days on fast horses to get here, and he hadn’t been happy about his costume, but-well, he was a reservist in the State of Thuringia-Franconia’s National Guard, and he was under orders. The orders had come from Ed Piazza himself, the SoTF’s president.

“Are you ready yet?” Tom called into the next room.

“I hate you, Stoner,” came the growled reply.

Tom sighed. “Look, I’m doing the best that I can. It could be worse.”

“I’d like to know how.” George Mundell shuffled into the room, glowering. “First off, I am never going to get this crap off my skin. It’s gonna have to wear off.”

“You look like George Hamilton.”

“I look like Al Jolson in blackface.” George bared his teeth in a grimace that did look startlingly white in his walnut-tanned face. “But I wouldn’t mind that so much if I wasn’t wearing clown shoes, I Dream of Jeanie’s vest, my grandma’s curler-turban, enough Mardi Gras beads for an entire float, and M.C. Hammer’s pants.”