"I'll be happy to show you around," Pincushion said. "My planet has been sending students here for, well, not a long time, but several centuries. We even have a couple of instructors here, at the lower levels." There was a note of pride in the rendition. "Maybe one of these millennia we'll manage to place a supervisor."
Already Dillingham could imagine the prestige that would carry.
At that moment the elevator-vehicle disgorged another passenger. This was a tall oaklike creature with small leaf-like tentacles fluttering at its sides. The bright University band circled the center mark. It looked at the decorative vines of the apartment and spoke with the whistle of wind through dead branches: "Appalling captivity."
The sound of the translator seemed to bring its attention to the other occupants. "May your probability of acceptance be better than mine," it said by way of greeting. "I am a humble modest branch from Treetrunk (the translator learned quickly) and despite my formidable knowledge of prosthodontica my percentage is a mere sixty."
Somewhere in there had been a honk, so Dillingham knew that simultaneous translations were being performed. This device made the little dual-track transcoders he had used before seem primitive.
"You are more fortunate than I," Pincushion replied. "I stand at only forty-eight per cent."
They both looked at Dillingham. Pincushion had knobby stalks that were probably eyes, and Treetrunk's apical disks vibrated like the greenery of a poplar sapling.
"Twenty-one per cent," he said sheepishly.
There was an awkward silence. "Well, these are only estimates based upon the past performance of your species," Pincushion said. "Perhaps your predecessors were not apt."
"I don't think I had any predecessors," Dillingham said. "Earth isn't accredited yet." He hesitated to admit that Earth hadn't even achieved true space travel. He had never been embarrassed for his planet before, though when he thought about it, he realized that he had never had occasion to consider himself a planetary citizen before, either.
"Experience and competence count more than some machine's guess, I'm sure," Treetrunk said. "I've been practicing on my world for six years. If you're—"
"Well, I did practice for ten years on Earth."
"You see—that will probably triple your probability when they find out," Pincushion said encouragingly. "They just gave you a low probability because no one from your planet has applied before."
He hoped they were right, but his stomach didn't settle. He doubted that as sophisticated a setup as the galactic University would have to stoop to such crude approximation. The administration already knew quite a bit about him from the preliminary application, and his ignorance of galactic method was sure to count heavily against him. "Are there—references here?" he inquired. "Facilities? If I could look them over—"
"Good idea!" Pincushion said. "Come—the operatory is this way, and there is a small museum of equipment."
There was. The apartment had an annex equipped with an astonishing array of dental technology. There was enough for him to study for years before he could be certain of mastery. He decided to concentrate on the racked texts first, after learning that they could be fed into the translator for ready assimilation in animated projection.
"Standard stuff," Treetrunk said, making a noise like chafing bark. "I believe I'll take an estivation."
As Dillingham returned to the main room with an armful of the boxlike texts, the elevator loosed another creature. This was a four-legged cylinder with a head tapered like that of an anteater and peculiarly thin-jointed arms terminating in a series of thorns.
It occurred to him that such physical structure would be virtually ideal for dentistry. The thorns were probably animate rotary burrs, and the elongated snout might reach directly into the patient's mouth for inspection of close work without the imposition of a mirror. After the initial introductions, he asked Anteater how his probability stood.
"Ninety-eight per cent," the creature replied in an offhand manner. "Our kind seldom miss. We're specialized for this sort of thing."
Specialization—there was the liability of the human form, Dillingham thought. Men were among the most generalized of Earth's denizens, except for their developed brains—and obviously these galactics had similar intellectual qualities, and had been in space so long they were able to adapt physically for something as narrow as dentistry. The outlook for him remained bleak.
A robotlike individual and a native from Electrolus completed the apartment's complement. He hadn't known that his sponsor-planet was entering one of its own in the same curriculum, though it didn't affect him particularly.
Six diverse creatures, counting himself—all dentists on their home worlds, all specializing in prosthodontics, all eager to pass the entrance examinations. All male, within reasonable definition—the University was very strict about the proprieties. This was only one apartment in a small city reserved for applicants. The University proper occupied the entire planet.
They learned all about it that evening at the indoctrination briefing, guided to the lecture-hall by a blue glow manifested on each identification band. The hall was monstrous; only the oxygen-breathers attended this session, but they numbered almost fifty thousand. Other halls catered to differing life-forms simultaneously.
The University graduated over a million highly skilled dentists every term and had a constant enrollment of twenty times that number. Dillingham didn't know how many terms it took to graduate—the program might be variable—but the incidence of depletion seemed high. Even the total figure represented a very minor proportion of the dentistry in the galaxy. This proportion was extremely important, however, since mere admission as a freshman student required qualifications that would equip the individual as a graduate elsewhere.
There were generally only a handful of University graduates on any civilized planet. These were automatically granted life tenures as instructors at the foremost planetary colleges, or established as consultants for the most challenging cases available. Even the dropouts had healthy futures.
Instructors for the University itself were drawn from its own most gifted graduates. The top one hundred, approximately—of each class of a million—were siphoned off for special training and retained, and a greater number was recruited from the lower ranking body of graduates: individuals who demonstrated superior qualifications in subsequent galactic practice. A few instructors were even recruited from non-graduates, when their specialties were so restricted and their skills so great that such exceptions seemed warranted.
The administrators came largely from the University of Administration, dental division, situated on another planet; they wielded enormous power. The University President was the virtual dictator of the planet, and his pronouncements had the force of law in dental matters throughout the galaxy. Indeed, Dillingham thought as he absorbed the information, if there were any organization that approached galactic overlordship, it was the association of University Presidents. They had the authority—by their own declaration—and the power to quarantine any world found guilty of willful malpractice in any of the established University fields, and since any quarantine covered all fields, it was devastating. An abstract was run showing the consequence of the last absolute quarantine: within a year that world had collapsed in anarchy. What followed was not at all pretty.
Dillingham saw that the level of skill engendered by University training did indeed transcend any ordinary practice. No one on Earth had any inkling of the techniques considered commonplace here. His imagination was saturated with the marvel of it all. His dream of knowledge for the sake of knowledge was a futile one; such training was far too valuable to be reserved for the satisfaction of the individual. No wonder graduates became public servants! The investment was far less monetary than cultural and technological, for the sponsoring planet.