Sector General Omnibus 3 - General Practice

by James White

  Both Earth-humans moved their right hands up to waist level, then lowered them as the ruler shook its head. Cha Thrat had already told Chiang that grasping a strange person’s appendage was considered quite vulgar where she came from, and it would have been much more considerate of them if they had given her some indication of their status. Ruler Chiang had spoken to them as equals, but then it had often done that while addressing subordinates on the ship. It was very careless of the ruler and most confusing for her.

  “Timmins will see that your personal effects are moved to your quarters,” the ruler went on. “I don’t know what Danalta and Braithwaite have in mind for us.”

  “Nothing too onerous,” Braithwaite said as the other Earth-human was leaving. “On hospital time it is the middle of the day, and the healer’s accommodation will not be ready until early evening. In midafternoon you are due for a physical, Major. Cha Thrat is expected to be present, no doubt to receive the compliments of our medics for what was obviously a very tidy piece of, for a Sommaradvan, other-species surgery.”

  It looked in her direction and for some reason inclined its head forward from the neck, then went on. “Immediately following the examination both of you have appointments in Psychology: Cha Thrat for an orientation talk with O’Mara, and you for an investigation, purely a formality in your case, to ensure that there is no non-physical trauma resulting from your recent injuries. But until then … Have you eaten recently?”

  “No,” said Chiang, “and I would welcome a change from ship food.”

  The other Earth-human made soft barking sounds and said, “You haven’t tasted a hospital meal yet. But we try hard not to poison our visitors …”

  It broke off to apologize and explain hastily that it was making an in-hospital joke, that the food was quite palatable, and that it had been given full instructions regarding Cha Thrat’s dietary requirements.

  But she was only vaguely aware of what it was saying because her attention was on the hemisphere of green stuff, the surface of which had begun to ripple and pucker and grow pseudopods. It wobbled sluggishly and heaved itself upright until it was as tall as she was, its skin coloration became mottled, the wet gleam of what could only be eyes appeared, the number of short, crudely formed appendages increased until it looked like something a young child on Sommaradva might make from modeling clay. She felt sudden nausea, but her feelings of curiosity and wonder were even stronger as the body firmed out, became more finely structured, and the features appeared. Then the clothing and equipment pouch grew into place, and there was standing before her the figure of another female Sommaradvan identical in every detail to herself.

  “If our Earth-human friends intend subjecting you to the environment of a multispecies dining hall within minutes of your arrival,” it said in a voice that was not, thankfully, hers, “I must counteract their lack of consideration by providing you with something familiar, and friendly, to whom you can relate. It is the least I can do for a new member of the staff.”

  “Doctor Danalta,” Braithwaite said, barking again, “is not as altruistic as it would have you think, Cha Thrat. Due to the incredibly savage environment of its planet of origin, the species evolved protective mimicry of a very high order. There are few warm-blooded oxygen-breathing life-forms in Sector General that it cannot accurately reproduce within a few minutes, as you’ve seen. But we suspect that any new, intelligent life-form to arrive at the hospital, be it patient, visitor, or staff, is regarded by Danalta as a challenge to its powers of physical mimicry.”

  “Nevertheless,” she said, “I am impressed.”

  She stared eye to eye at her utterly alien but identical twin, thinking that the being had displayed concern for her present mental well-being by using its incredible talent to make her feel more comfortable. It was the action of a healer of rulers, and it might even be a ruler itself. Instinctively she made the gesture of respect to superiors, then belatedly realized that neither the Earth-humans nor her Danalta-copy would recognize it for what it was.

  “Why, thank you, Cha Thrat,” said Danalta, returning the gesture. “With protective mimicry there is an associated empathic faculty. While I don’t know what the limb gesture means exactly, I could feel that I was being complimented.”

  Danalta, she had no doubt, was also aware of her embarrassment, but as they followed the two Earth-humans from the compartment the shape-changer did not speak of it.

  The corridor outside was thronged with a menagerie of creatures, a few of whom resembled, in shape if not in size, nonintelligent species found on Sommaradva. She tried not to flinch as one of the small, red-furred bipeds of the species she had seen in charge of Reception brushed past, and she felt acutely anxious when enormous, six-limbed, multi-tentacled monsters of many times her body mass bore down on her. But not all of the creatures were frightening, or even ugly. A large crustacean with a beautifully marked carapace and hard exoskeletal limbs clicked past, its pincers opening and closing slowly as it talked to a truly lovely being who had at least thirty short, stubby legs and an overall coat of rippling, silvery fur. There were others she could not see clearly because of their protective envelopes and, in the case of the occupant of a mobile pressure vessel from which steam was escaping, she had no idea what weird or wonderful shape the vehicle was concealing.

  The cacophony of hooting, chirping, gobbling, and moaning conversation could not be described, because it was totally unlike anything she had previously experienced.

  “There is a much shorter route to the dining hall,” Danalta said as a spiney, membraneous being who looked like some kind of dark, oily vegetable shuffled past, its physical details clouded by the thick yellow fog inside its transparent suit. “But it would mean a trip through the water-filled Chalder wards, and your protective envelopes won’t be ready for another six, maybe seven days. How do you feel, and what do you think of the place so far?”

  It was disconcerting and embarrassing to have Danalta, who could be nothing less than a wizard-healer of rulers, ask such questions of a mere warrior-surgeon. But the questions had been asked, and answers were expected. If the being wished to practice its art in the middle of a crowded corridor, it was certainly not her place to criticize.

  Promptly she replied, “I feel confused, frightened, repelled, curious, and unsure of my ability to adapt. My confusion is such that I am unable to be more specific. I’m beginning to feel that the two Earth-humans walking in front of us, member of a species that a short time ago I would have considered totally alien, have an almost welcome normality about them. And I feel that you, because you have made yourself the most familiar and reassuring entity in the hospital, are by your very nature the most alien of all. I haven’t had enough time, nor have I sufficient direct experience, to form any useful impressions or opinions about the hospital, but it may well be that the empathic faculty you possess has already made you aware of my feelings.

  “Is the environment of the dining hall,” she added worriedly, “much worse than this?”

  Danalta did not reply at once, and the two Earth-humans had been silent for some time. The one called Braithwaite had fallen slightly behind the other, and its head was turned to one side so that the fleshy protuberance that was one of its auricular organs would be better able to pick up her words. It seemed that her feelings were of interest not only to the shape-changer. When Danalta did speak, its words resembled a lecture rather than a simple reply to her question.

  “A low level of empathy is common in most intelligent life-forms,” it said, “but only in one species, the natives of Cinruss, is there a perfect empathic faculty. You will meet one of them soon because it, too, is curious about newly discovered life-forms and will want to seek you out at the first opportunity. You can then compare my limited empathic faculty with Prilicla’s.

  “My own limited faculty,” it went on, “is based on the observation of body movements, tensions, changes in skin coloration, and so on, rather than the direct reception of the subject’s emoti
onal radiation. As a healer you, too, must have a degree of empathy with your patients, and on many occasions are able to sense their condition, or changes in their condition, without direct physical investigation. But no matter how refined the faculty may be, your thoughts are still private, exclusively your own property, and it is simply your stronger feelings that I detect—”

  “The dining hall,” Braithwaite said suddenly. It turned into the wide, doorless entrance, narrowly avoided colliding with a Nidian and two of the silver-furred beings who were leaving, and barked softly as they made derogatory remarks about its clumsiness. It pointed. “Over there, an empty table!”

  For a moment Cha Thrat could not move a single limb as she stared across the vast expanse of highly polished floor with its regimented islands of eating benches and seats, grouped by size and shape to accommodate the incredible variety of beings using them. It was much, much worse than her experience of the corridors, where she had encountered the creatures two or three at a time. Here there were hundreds of them, grouped together into species or with several different life-forms occupying the same table.

  There were beings who were terrifying in their obvious physical strength and range of natural weapons; others who were frightening, horrifying, and repugnant in the color and slime-sheen and nauseous growths covering their teguments; and many of them were the phantasms of Sommaradvan nightmare given frightful solidity. At a few of the tables were entities whose body and limb configurations were so utterly ridiculous that she had trouble believing her eyes.

  “This way,” said Danalta, who had been waiting for Cha Thrat’s limbs to stop trembling. It led the way to the table claimed by Braithwaite, and she noticed that the furiture suited neither the physiologies of the Earth-humans nor the trio of exoskeletal crustaceans who were vacating it.

  She wondered if she would ever be able to adapt to the ways of these chronically disorganized and untidy beings. At least on Sommaradva the people knew their place.

  “The mechanism for food selection and delivery is similar to that on the ship,” Braithwaite said as she lowered herself carefully into the dreadfully uncomfortable chair and her weight made the menu display light up. “You tap in your physiological classification and it will list the food available. Until the catering computer has been programmed with details of the combinations, consistencies, and platter displays you favor, it is likely to come in unsightly but nutritious lumps. You’ll soon get used to the system, but in the meantime I’ll order for you.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  When it arrived the biggest lump looked like an uneven block of tasam. But it smelled like roasted cretsi, had the consistency of roasted cretsi, and, she found after trying a small corner, it tasted like roasted cretsi. She realized suddenly that she was hungry.

  “It sometimes happens,” Braithwaite continued, “that the meals of your fellow diners, or even the diners themselves, are visually distressing to the point where it is affecting your appetite. You may keep one eye on your platter and close all the others; we won’t be offended.”

  She did as it suggested, but kept one eye slightly open so that she could see Braithwaite, who was still watching her intently while pretending, for some odd, Earth-human reason, not to do so. While she ate, her mind went back to the incident with the ship ruler on Sommaradva, the voyage, and her reception here, and she realized that she was becoming suspicious, and irritated.

  “On the subject of your stronger feelings,” Danalta said, seemingly intent upon resuming the lecture it had broken off at the entrance, “do you have any strong feelings against discussing personal or professional matters in the presence of strangers?”

  The ship ruler, Chiang, paused with what looked like a piece of what had once been a living creature halfway to its eating orifice. It said, “On Sommaradva they prefer to hear directly what other people think of them. And conversely, the presence of interested witnesses during a discussion of their affairs is often considered beneficial.”

  Braithwaite, she saw, was concentrating too much attention on its disgusting meal. She turned as many eyes as would bear on the shape-changer, ignoring the many things she did not want to see in the background.

  “Very well,” Danalta said, turning its alien mimic’s eyes on her. “You must already have realized, Cha Thrat, that your situation is unlike that of the other staff members who join the hospital for a probationary period. Appointments to Sector General are much sought after, and candidates must pass rigorous professional examinations and deep psychological investigation on their home worlds to ensure that they will have a fair chance of adapting to a multispecies hospital environment so that they will profit from our training.

  “You were not screened in this manner,” her alien twin went on. “There were no professional examinations, no birth-to-maturity psych profiles, no objective measure of your worth as a healer. We know only that you come with a very high recommendation, from the Cultural Contact department of the Monitor Corps and, presumably, your professional colleagues on Sommaradva, a world and society about which we know little.

  “You appreciate our difficulty, Cha Thrat?” it continued. “An untrained, unprepared, single-species-oriented being could cause untold harm to itself and to the hospital staff and patients. We have to know what exactly it is that we’re getting, and quickly.”

  The others had stopped eating and so did she, even though there was a mouth free for speaking. She said, “As a stranger arriving and expecting to take up an appointment here, I thought that my treatment showed a lack of sensitivity, but I decided that alien behavior patterns, of which I have very limited experience, were to blame. Then I began to suspect that the harsh and insensitive treatment was deliberate, and I was being tested in some fashion. You have confirmed this suspicion, but I am seriously displeased that I was not informed of the test. Secret tests, to my mind, can often show a failure in the examiner.”

  There was a long silence. She looked at Danalta and away again. The shape-changer’s body and features and expression were the mirror of her own, and told her nothing. She turned her attention to Braithwaite, who had been taking such a continuous and covert interest in her, and waited for a reaction.

  For a moment the Earth-human’s two recessed eyes looked calmly into her four, and she began to feel very sure that the being was, in fact, a ruler and not a warrior as it said, “A secret test is sometimes given to avoid the unpleasantness of telling a candidate that it has failed. By pretending that no test took place, another and more acceptable reason, one that does not imply any lack of professional competence or psychological or emotional weakness, can be given for refusing the candidate an appointment. I’m sorry that you are displeased by the covert nature of the test, but in the circumstances we decided that it was better to … to …”

  It broke off and began to bark quietly, as if there was something humorous in the situation, then went on. “We Earth-humans have an expression that covers your position very well. We threw you in at the deep end of the pool.”

  “And what,” Cha Thrat said, deliberately omitting the gesture of politeness due a ruler, “did you discover from this secret test?”

  “We discovered,” Braithwaite said, and this time it did not bark, “that you are a very good swimmer.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Braithwaite left before the others had finished eating, saying that O’Mara would have its intestines for hosiery supports if it was late back from lunch two days in a row. Cha Thrat knew nothing of the entity other than that it was a greatly respected and feared ruler of some kind, but the punishment for tardiness sounded a bit extreme. Danalta said that she should not worry about it, that Earth-humans frequently made such ridiculously exaggerated statements, that there was no factual basis to the remark, and that it was some kind of linguistic code they used among themselves which had a tenuous connection with the mental associative process they called humor.

  “I understand,” Cha Thrat said.

  “I don’t,�
� Danalta said.

  Ship ruler Chiang barked quietly but did not speak.

  As a result, the shape-changer was their only guide on an even longer and more complicated journey to the place where Chiang was to undergo its examination—one of the casualty reception and observation wards, she was informed, reserved for the treatment of warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing patients. Danalta had returned to its original body configuration of a large, dark-green, uneven ball that guided itself, with surprising speed and accuracy, through the wheeled and walking traffic in the corridors. Was the Sommaradvan form too difficult to maintain, she wondered, or did it now feel that such psychological props were no longer necessary?

  It was a surprisingly large compartment, rendered small by the number and variety of examination tables and associated equipment covering the floor and walls. There was an observation gallery for the use of visitors and trainees, and Danalta suggested that she choose the least uncomfortable chair while they were waiting. One of the silver-furred beings had already taken Chiang away to be prepared for the examination.

  “We shall be able to see and hear everything that is happening,” Danalta said, “but they will not hear us unless you press the transmit button, just there, on the side of your chair. You may have to use it if they ask questions.”

  Another silver-furred being, or perhaps it was the same one, undulated into the compartment, performed a seemingly purposeless act on an as-yet incomprehensible piece of equipment, then looked up at them briefly as it was leaving.

  “And now we wait,” Danalta went on. “But you must have questions, Cha Thrat. There is enough time to answer a few of them.”

  The shape-changer had retained the form of a lumpy green hemisphere, featureless except for one bulbous eye and a small fleshy protuberance that seemed to combine the functions of hearing and speech. In time, she thought, one could become used to anything—except the lack of discipline among these people, and their unwillingness to define properly their areas of authority and responsibility.