An Interview with Dr. Lambshead
Dr. Cisco: What else was left out?
Dr. Lambshead: Don’t get me started. But I must say something about those absurd reminiscences.
Dr. Cisco: (hurt) I wrote one of those.
Dr. Lambshead: Oh, yours was completely accurate. You included an account of your hallucinations, but there’s no harm in that.
Dr. Cisco: I… what?!
Dr. Lambshead: I’m speaking of all the other essays. Look at this. It’s a travesty. The Kakaram head plant is well secured by Dr. Thomas’s papers, but the man has spent too much time too high in the Andes. I was never there! I cataloged his specimens, yes, but I never went there! Didn’t he keep a journal? Just handling those specimens was quite sufficiently gruesome. And here’s a spurious account by Dr. Xue-Chu Wang—a total fabrication. I never coexisted with myself at three different ages. Where does Dr. Schaller find these people? Would I do a thing like that? I ask you.
Dr. Cisco: At least they finally saw reason with regard to Dr. Edsel-Ivan’s thing. There’d be no end of explanations if that screed of scurl had seen the light—and I might add it took me three solid days on the Bell telephone to convince Roberta to pull it.
Dr. Lambshead: Rather!—Wait, I dismember—which one was that?
Dr. Cisco: The Moroccan Prosthetic Prostate.
Dr. Lambshead: Hm! Quite! Quite!
Dr. Cisco: What about Dr. Pollack’s entry?
Dr. Lambshead: Oh yes. I forgot about that one.
Dr. Cisco: Was she hallucinating as well?
Dr. Lambshead: I fail to understand why Rachel would reveal details of our private lives.
Dr. Cisco: (smirking) I can’t for the life of me imagine what could have motivated Dr. Pollack to cause you such embarrassment. It’s a deep enigma, Thackery.
Dr. Lambshead: All women are enigmas.
Dr. Cisco: After Dr. Pollack comes Dr. Bishop.
Dr. Lambshead: Queenie Bishop. Remember her? Tiny woman? Head like a sparrow? Used to run the hemostat black market in Rangoon? Her niece is carrying on with her research program.
Dr. Cisco: Ah. That’s heartwarming.
Dr. Lambshead: Not if you’ve seen the research.
Dr. Cisco: And after Dr. Bishop comes Dr. Chapman.
Dr. Lambshead: That man tries my patience. This business about his eidetic memory. It’s farcical. The man has no memory at all! Have you ever gone into a grocery with him? He never knows which cart is his!
Dr. Cisco: Perhaps the most outrageous essay of the lot is Dr. Calder’s.
Dr. Lambshead: That steaming heap of psychosexual horse patootie, I won’t even dignify with a comment.
Dr. Cisco: No comment at all?
Dr. Lambshead: None.
Dr. Cisco: Dr. Wexler?
Dr. Lambshead: Never speak that name to me again, Dr. Cisco. You know I have serious hypertension. I can’t afford to get angry.
Dr. Cisco: Speaking of which, have you read the reviews of the new edition?
Dr. Lambshead: Only the British ones. Their tone disturbs me. Has there been any intelligent commentary on your side of the pond?
Dr. Cisco: No, but a number of pundits have embarrassed themselves grievously. But of all the quacking rout who presume to criticize our genius work, I am particularly struck—and I must say this—by those who, in what I can only characterize as the most benighted denial imaginable, attempt to discredit the Guide in its entirety out of hand. Their criticism is so frankly incompetent that many dismiss the Guide without a single medical argument.
Dr. Lambshead: As I understand it—not that I’ve been paying much attention—some of these self-proclaimed critics aren’t even bloody doctors. It’s damned galling, is what it is.
Dr. Cisco: Well, it’s not merely that they’re unqualified. That’s bad enough. What’s worse is that many seem to have the idea that the Guide is some sort of preposterous fantasy or—I don’t know—a prank. What does one make of such people?
