Gris makes it to the hospital's secret basement with the two tied-up boys in tow, and summons Dr. Prahd Bittlestiffender, who happily has not been called out of bed with his underage nurse. When Gris reveals that he has a job for him, Prahd complains that he isn't set up for plastic surgery yet. Instead he's been using the facilities to engineer a contagious but benign microorganism that targets and consumes Chlamydia trachomatis, then supplies its host with vitamins.
Prahd also has plans to eradicate infant mortality, make all women bear triplets, and intends to mitigate the obvious consequences of the above with another benign microorganism that would allow its host to much more efficiently break down nutrients. He's also thought of a way to quintuple the planet's grain yields and hopes to eradicate tuberculosis later.
So... I guess Prahd's been pretty busy when he wasn't being a sex offender. Maybe I should give the guy a second chance. Nobody's perfect, after all; Thomas Jefferson was a slaveowner, and wasn't Einstein a cannibal or something?
Gris shoots down these attempts at humanitarian science with the excuse that the U.S. would lose a fortune in exported grain revenue (sorry, I'm not interested enough to look up records of U.S. grain exports during the 1980's to check this), though he's more concerned with the fact that no dead babies means no easy birth certificates for the Apparatus to appropriate. Because God forbid the intelligence agency that employs master forgers have them fake some birth certificates, or use its undue influence with the Turkish government to abuse some official documents.
No, Gris insists that criminals are Prahd's best market, and on that note unbundles the two "vicious" patients he hauled in, advising the doctor to lock them up tight and hire some security. Yeah, you do not want to see what one of those kids can do with a powder ball. His orders are for Prahd to use the magical science of "cellology" to turn the boys into simulacrums of Rudolph Valentino and James Cagney respectively, or more accurately young versions of the same. After a good half-page of haggling about when his pay starts, Prahd reveals that this transformative mix of surgery and gene therapy will take a week. Gris reluctantly agrees to start paying his employee if he does a perfect job of it.
So there we have it. More delays, more time wasted, more chapters with the plot left sitting in the driveway, engine idling, honking its horn in annoyance because the antagonist isn't ready yet.
All this because Gris doesn't want Utanc behind when he goes to New York to deal with the protagonist but Utanc hates him so Gris hopes to make her love him again by kidnapping her boy servants and sending them to get plastic surgery so they resemble the 1930's Hollywood stars she inexplicably is obsessed about.
Just sit back for a moment and appreciate how utterly nonsensical this book is.
Back to Chapter Five
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