"Excuse me! Are you the gentleman in charge?" someone said. It was a lady's voice. Not just a female voice, but really a lady's voice.

Dr. Radhakrishnan turned around slowly, half-paralyzed by an unexplainable sense of fear and loathing. The odor of lavender and roses was quite strong now.

He was looking directly into a bosom of Himalayan proportions, stoutly contained in some kind of undergarment and covered with a flowery print dress. His gaze traveled from the bottom to the top of the bosom, changing focus the whole way, and then encountered a soft, pale, yet sturdy neck. Above that was a face.

It was a nice English lady's face, but too big. It was like looking at the young Victoria through a big Fresnel lens. And on top, where custom would dictate some kind of a tightly curled, chemically induced permanent wave, was something altogether out of place, a short, simple, straight, and maybe just a big shaggy kind of haircut. Certainly not an ugly way to wear one's hair, but just a little bit out of keeping with the social stature that was implied by her accent.

"Madam," he said, "I am Dr. Radhakrishnan." He extended his hand.

"Lady Wilburdon. How do you do," she said, shaking it.

"Oh, god," Zeldo said, and ran away, gagging audibly.

A gasp came from the staff. Dr. Radhakrishnan felt the back of his neck get hot. He was tired, he was stressed, and he had forgotten about the gloves. This Lady Wilburdon creature now had Mr. Easyrider's brains all over her hand.

There was brief moment of utter despair as he tried to think of a way to draw this fact to her attention without making the breach of etiquette even worse than it already was.

"Oh, it's really quite all right," she said, fluttering her bloody hand dismissively. "I worked in the refugee camps of Kurdistan for a month, at the height of the insurrection, so a bit of a mess does not trouble me at all. And I wouldn't dream of having you interrupt your work just to shake hands with an interloper."

Dr. Radhakrishnan was looking around uneasily, hoping to make eye contact with someone who knew who this lady was, why she was here, how she had gotten in past all of those Sikh commandos at the front gate, all of those .50-caliber machine-gun nests.

Behind her he could see another woman, a smaller, auntish lady, conversing with Mr. Salvador. Mr. Salvador kept glancing at the backside of Lady Wilburdon; he wanted to be here, not there, but clearly was having trouble extricating himself from polite small talk with this other woman.

WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA...

"You are ... a guest of Mr. Salvador?" he said.

"Yes. My secretary, Miss Chapman, and I were passing through Delhi on an inspection tour and we thought we would pop in and see how Bucky's project was coming along."

"Bucky?"

"Yes. Bucky. Buckminster Salvador."

"His name is Bucky?"

"Buckminster. The boys at school used to call him B.M. for short, but we suppressed that. It was uncouth and cruel."

"School?"

"The Lady Wilburdon School for Spoiled boys in Newcastle upon Tyne."

"I didn't know there was such a thing as a school for spoiled boys," Dr. Radhakrishnan said numbly.

"Oh, yes. There are a lot of them in England, you know. And all of their parents are desperate for an environment that will give them structure ..."

"That's quite enough," Mr. Salvador said, interrupting. Dr. Radhakrishnan was shocked to see the look on his face; suddenly he was pale and sweating. His mask of total aplomb had been shattered, he was rolling his eyes, clearly out of control.

"Quite enough of what, Bucky?" Lady Wilburdon said, locking eyes with Mr. Salvador, who looked very short standing next to her.

"Quite enough of having you stand around in this unpleasant place when I should be treating you to a lavish dinner along Connaught Circus!" Mr. Salvador improvised. He was close to coming completely unhinged.

WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA WUBBA... "Oh, but I can go into some restaurant and order a meal whenever I please. It's not every day I get the opportunity to tour an advanced neurological research facility," Lady Wilburdon said.

"Tour?" Dr. Radhakrishnan said.

She seemed taken aback. "Yes. Well, I thought, as long as I was here ..."

"Naturally you can have a look around, Lady Wilburdon," Mr. Salvador said, shooting Dr. Radhakrishnan a panicky warning look. Clearly, resistance was out of the question.

Suddenly Lady Wilburdon was looking past Dr. Radhakrishnan, over his shoulder, and a completely new expression had come over her face. It was a wonderful, sweet, lovely, maternal expression, like a mother greeting her children home from school.

"Hello, sir, and how do you do? I am so sorry for intruding."

She was looking at Mr. Scatflinger.

Mr. Scatflinger was looking right back at her. Staring her straight in the eye. There was even a hint of a smile on his face. "Wubba wubba," he said.

"Very well, thank you. Perhaps Dr. Radhakrishnan would be so good as to introduce us?"

"Yes. Lady Wilburdon, this is, uh, Mr. Banerjee. Mr. Banerjee, Lady Wilburdon."

"It's so nice to make your acquaintance."

"Wubba wubba wubba."

Mr. Salvador was taking advantage of this break in the con­versation to sit on the edge of an empty bed and clamp one hand over his face.

"I take it that Mr. Banerjee will soon be undergoing this miraculous new surgical procedure that Bucky was telling me about."

"Wubba wubba wubba."

"Actually, he has already undergone it," Dr. Radhakrishnan said. No point in dissembling.

She was just a trifle taken aback. "I see."

"Before the operation he could not sit up in bed or speak. Now, as you see, he can sit up for prolonged periods, and he has developed the ability to say 'wubba wubba.' " "Wubba wubba wubba," Mr. Scatflinger said. "Do you suppose that, as time goes on, he will develop the ability to say other sorts of things?"

"Absolutely. You see, the implant has not been patterned yet. There is a powerful computer inside his head. But right now, the connections are scrambled. The computer has no program. We will have to train him to speak over a period of weeks or months."

"I see. So after the operation, there is a prolonged period of rehabilitation." "Exactly."

"And the new facility you are building will have such facilities, which, as I notice, are lacking here." "Precisely."

"Wubba wubba wubba wubba," Mr. Scatflinger said. "It was so nice to have met you, Mr. Banerjee," Lady Wilburdon said, "and I wish you the best of luck in the course of your therapy." She stepped back out of Mr. Scatflinger's room, which obliged Dr. Radhakrishnan to follow her. "We have high hopes for him," he said.

"I am sure that you do," Lady Wilburdon said. "But I see that another one of your patients has not been as fortunate."

She was looking over at Mr. Easyrider, sprawled out on a bloody table with his brains spilling out of his head, the cup of his skull upended next to him.

Mr. Salvador was still collecting his wits, which had been blown all over the Indo-Gangetic plain. Dr. Radhakrishnan had to handle this himself.

The woman had to be important. He had never heard of her, but with some people, you could just tell that they were important.

"The name of Lady Wilburdon is famous throughout the world," he said.

"I am the seventh person to bear that title," she said, "and by far the least distinguished."

"You evidently travel quite a bit, inspecting things."

"Hundreds of institutions throughout the world, yes." Then you will appreciate, perhaps better than anyone, that the patients who come into this place are often in very grave condition." "I see that very clearly."

"It is not unusual for them to pass away while they are under our care."

"Yes," Lady Wilburdon said, "but this poor gentleman passed away after you performed the operation, did he not?"