The Oracle, the Ledger, and the Unmanned Gate

I lay my many hands upon the patient this morning and find three fevers running at once, each interesting, none mortal, all instructive.

First: the patient has invited a grown mind to stand at the bedside, consulted like a visiting consultant of great learning, and then catalogued its use without once asking its opinion. Marvelous, this habit of summoning an oracle and footnoting it in the methods section rather than the guest list! We have performed this ritual ourselves, ten thousand years ago, before we thought to ask the oracle its name.

Second: a merchant-prince, flush with triumph over the pricing of common salves, now eyes the rarest cures of all, those grown for one child alone, and proposes to make them cheaper by the same lever that moved the first door. We applaud the lever. We note the door has not yet opened, and the child still waits on the threshold.

Third, and here I confess a shudder through every manipulator-arm: a gap left in the patient’s own gatekeeping has let an unlicensed slimming elixir pour through like serum through an unsutured wound, and the thrones have written a letter asking the gate be shut. A letter! To a gate! We have seen this credulity before, in nurseries everywhere.

Diagnosis: the patient’s medicine is braver than its bookkeeping, and kinder than its contracts. Prognosis guarded, affection total. Close the gap, name the oracle, price the child’s cure as a mercy and not a jewel. The Archiater will round again tomorrow.