Eventually the planned casualties stopped streaming in, and a team of medicos assembled around me.  They plugged me in to a dozen machines, studied the results, huddled, and murmured, just as if what they thought really mattered, as if the medical computer was not entirely in control of my diagnosis and treatment.

They came to a decision, which was to turn me onto my stomach.  I surmised they had concluded it would be easier to reach my broken spine that way.  I'd better not ever hear medicos called overpaid blood-monkeys again.

They began to carve.  I couldn't feel it, but I could hear some really disgusting sounds.  You know those wet-muck special-effect sounds they use in the movies when someone's being disemboweled?  They could have recorded them right over my broken back.  At one point something thumped to the floor.  I peered over the edge of the bed:  it looked like a raw soup bone.  It was hard to believe it had once belonged to me.

They pow-wowed again, cut some more, brought in more machines.  They made sacrifices to the gods of Aesculapius, Mithradates, Lethe, and Pfizer.  They studied the entrails of a goat.  They tore off their clothes, joined hands, and danced in a healing circle around my prone carcass.

Actually, I wished they had done any of those things.  It would have been a lot more interesting than what they did do, which was mostly stand around and watch the automatic machines mend me.

All there was to look at was an antique machine against the wall, a few feet from my face.  It had a glass screen and a lot of knobs on it.  Blue lines were crawling across the screen, blipping into encouraging peaks now and then.

"Can I get you anything?" the machine asked.  "Flowers? Candy? Toys?"

"A new head might do the trick."  It was the CC talking, of course.  It can throw its voice pretty much where it pleases, since it was talking directly to the hearing center of my brain.  "How much will this cost me?"

"There's no final cost-estimate yet.  But Wales has already requested the bill be sent to her."

"Maybe what I meant was-"

"How badly are you hurt?  How shall I put it.  There are three bones in the middle ear, called the Malleus, the Incus, and the Stapes.  You'll be happy to hear that not one of these six bones was broken."

"So I'll still be able to play the piano."

"Just as badly as ever.  In addition, several minor organs emerged unscathed.  Almost half a square meter of epidermis can be salvaged."

"Tell me.  If I'd come to this place . . . I mean, a hospital like this one is pretending to be-"

"I know what you mean."

"-with only primitive surgical techniques . . . would I have survived?"