A few days later, Baj visited his own NHS Legacy GP, a white-mustachioed internist on Harley Street.
Dr. Peter Bonhomme was an even-tempered pragmatist who had survived the paroxysms of the new monarchy by feigning sentimentality when it came to politics. He always wore an old commemorative House of Windsor badge pin issued to mark Elizabeth II’s death. He was short, round, and strong, and apart from his shaky hands, looked not unlike his pin’s squat, stolid depiction of the Tower of Windsor. He was a kindly man, and Baj considered him a heartening presence if not quite a friend.
Dr. Bonhomme never wasted time. He drew blood, listened to Baj’s chest with a mediscope, and gave him a cloudy plastic cup for urinalysis.
“Right,” he said, with a characteristic firmness. “So how are you doing otherwise?” he asked.
“All is well,” Baj said. He felt anxious to talk, but he couldn’t bring himself to say much. An old indisposition to show weakness held him back. He almost would have felt more comfortable sharing with a social lesser—even Cuthbert.
“I’m all right,” he added. “You know, ‘getting on with it.’ Are you well?”
“I’m glad to be working still.”
“You call this work, on Harley Street?” Dr. Bajwa teased. At one time, such a quip between professionals would have seemed more amusing, he realized. “Sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t resist.”
“No worries, Baj!” said Dr. Bonhomme, grinning, and looking at his mediscope’s floating holographic readout, which plotted a colored ball—in this case red—onto a shoe box–size three-dimensional quadrangle that the doctor analyzed. “We’re lucky to be working at all these days,” he said.
“Yes,” said Baj. Were he to say any more, he knew, the conversation would be edging toward treason. He left it there.
Dr. Bonhomme slid a white ultrasonic camera out of a small plastic case and dimmed the lights. The older doctor smiled gently at Baj for a moment, but then seemed lost in trying to work the camera.
“Hold still now,” he said, “and raise your arms up.” Baj complied. Four faint hums ensued—and it was over.
The aged Dr. Bonhomme could barely hold the heavy camera steady as he guided it onto a wet-titanium gooseneck base. Two lurid blue-white biometric eyes awakened above the lens. He rubbed the top of the camera for a moment, as if petting a baby white shark, and the camera instantaneously projected four-dimensional pathological extrapolations of Baj’s insides on the wall.
Baj looked at white petals of a neoplasm, unfolding on the wall. There it was—a pale flower of death in the right lobe of his lung.
Dr. Bonhomme’s face had fallen. He glanced nervously at Baj.
“But I don’t smoke,” said Baj. “This can’t be.”
There was a pause. Dr. Bonhomme said hoarsely, “We can do a lot these days—even with lungs.” He appeared to collect himself for a moment. He stood up a little taller, then spoke confidently: “Right now. These are but ‘shadows of things to come,’ as they say. But you’re going to need an oncologist. And you might consider a day or two of Nexar—just to destress, right?”
“I don’t use the hoods,” said Baj, in a tone of subdued annoyance, and Dr. Bonhomme nodded.
There was another pause. Dr. Bonhomme nodded and put his hand on his peer’s shoulder.
“Look, I won’t claim to understand how you feel,” he said. “I’d react the same way, honestly.” He switched off the ultrasonic camera, and the screen popped off with a tiny shriek. “But it’s not like the twentieth century, is it? I’m sorry, Baj. But it’s not a death sentence. And just thank bloody god you’re in Legacy.”
“God couldn’t give a fuck about me,” said Baj.
Dr. Bajwa had an incipient lung tumor. Treated, it wasn’t necessarily terminal, he knew, but the five-year survival rate was still only 50 percent. Whole new metastasizing cancers and newly aggressive viral syndromes remained significant medical foes, even in this era of 120-year-plus life spans. The problem was, for the rich, the development of a variety of new, improved, salable BodyMods—especially CoreMods (through which most major organs, apart from brains, could be easily refurbished), and EverConnectors (synthetic, fibrous connective tissue-sleeves)—as well as new cartilage chemotherapies—had long supplanted the search for cures in terms of much research. For everyone else, and especially Indigents, Nexar hoods as well as ordinary intoxicants—even Flōt—made cancer less menacing.