by James White
The Hudlar came forward and said shyly, “We all, everyone who was there, wish you well. That includes Patient Eleven Thirty-two, who is pain-free now and making good progress. And Charge Nurse Segroth whose good wishes were, ah, more perfunctory. Will you recover the full use of the limb?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Tarsedth broke in. “With two Diagnosticians on the case it doesn’t dare not make a complete recovery.” To Cha Thrat it went on. “But so much has been happening to you recently that I can’t keep up. Is it true that you ticked off the Chief Psychologist in front of everybody in the Chalder ward, called it some kind of witch-doctor, and reminded it of its professional duty toward Patient AUGL-One Sixteen? According to the stories going around—”
“It wasn’t quite as bad as that,” Cha Thrat said.
“It never is,” the DBLF said, its fur subsiding in disappointment. “But the business during the FROB demonstration, now. You can’t deny or diminish what happened there.”
“Perhaps,” the Hudlar quietly said, “it would rather not talk about that.”
“Why not?” Tarsedth asked. “Everyone else is talking about it.”
Cha Thrat was silent for a moment as she looked up at the head and shoulders of the Kelgian projecting like a silver-furred cone over one side of her bed and the enormous body of the Hudlar looming over the other. She tried to make her unnaturally fuzzy mind concentrate on what she wanted to say.
“I would prefer to talk about all the lectures I’ve missed,” she said finally. “Was there anything especially interesting or important? And would you ask Cresk-Sar if I could have a remote control for the viewscreen, so I can tune in to the teaching channels? Tell it that I have nothing to do here and I would like to continue with my studies as soon as possible.”
“Friend,” Tarsedth said, its fur rising into angry spikes, “I think you would be wasting your time.”
For the first time she wished that her Kelgian classmate was capable of something less than complete honesty. She had been expecting to hear something like this, but the bad news could have been broken more gently.
“What our forthright friend should have told you,” the Hudlar said, “is that we inquired about your exact status from Senior Physician Cresk-Sar, who would not give us a firm answer. It said that you were guilty not so much of contravening hospital rules but of breaking rules that nobody had dreamed of writing. The decision on what to do with you has been referred up, it said, and you could expect a visit from O’Mara quite soon.
“When asked if we could bring you lecture material,” it ended apologetically, “Cresk-Sar said no.”
It did not make any difference how it was broken, she thought after they had gone, the news was equally bad. But the sudden, raucous sound of her bedside communicator kept her from dwelling for too long on her troubles.
It was Patient AUGL-One Sixteen who, with Charge Nurse Hredlichi’s cooperation, was shouting into one of the Nurses’ Station communicators from the entrance to the Chalder ward. It began by apologizing for the physiological and environmental problems that kept it from visiting her in person, then told her how much it was missing her visits—the Earth-human wizard O’Mara, it said, lacked her sympathetic manner and charm—and it hoped she was recovering with no physical or mental distress.
“Everything is fine,” she lied. It was not a good thing to burden a patient with its medic’s troubles, even when the medic was temporarily a patient. “How are you?”
“Very well, thank you,” the Chalder replied, sounding enthusiastic in spite of the fact that its words were reaching her through two communicators, a translator, and a considerable quantity of water. “O’Mara says that I can leave and rejoin my family very soon, and can start contacting the space administration on Chalder about my old job. I’m still young for a Chalder, you know, and I do really feel well.”
“I’m very happy for you, One Sixteen,” Cha Thrat said, deliberately omitting its name because others might be listening who were not entitled to use it. She was surprised by the strength of her feelings toward the creature.
“I’ve heard the nurses talking,” the Chalder went on, “and it seems like you are in serious trouble. I hope all goes well for you, but if not, and you have to leave the hospital … Well, you are so far from Sommaradva out here that if you felt like seeing another world on your way home, my people would be pleased to have you for as long as you liked to stay. We’re pretty well advanced on Chalderescol and your food synthesis and life-support would be no problem.
“It’s a beautiful world,” it added, “much, much nicer than the Chalder ward …”
When the Chalder eventually broke contact, she settled back into the pillows, feeling tired but not depressed or unhappy, thinking about the ocean world of Chalderescol. Before joining the AUGL ward she had studied the library tape on that world with the idea of being able to talk about home to the patients, so she was not completely unfamiliar with the planet. The thought of living there was exciting, and she knew that, as an off-planet person entitled to call Muromeshomon by name, its family and friends would make her welcome however long or short her stay. But thoughts like that were uncomfortable because they presupposed that she would be leaving the hospital.
Instead she wondered how the normally shy and gentle Chalder had been able to prevail upon the acid-tongued Hredlichli to use the Nurses’ Station communicator as it had done. Could it have forced cooperation by threatening to wreck the place again? Or, more likely, had the Chalder’s call to her been supported, perhaps even suggested, by O’Mara?
That, too, was an uncomfortable thought, but it did not keep her awake. The continuing spell of the Earth-human wizard or the medication it had prescribed, or both, were still having their insidious effect.
During the days that followed she was visited singly and, where physiological considerations permitted, in small groups by her classmates. Cresk-Sar came twice but, like all the other visitors, the tutor would not talk about medical matters at all. Then one day O’Mara and Diagnostician Conway arrived together and would discuss nothing else.
“Good morning, Cha Thrat, how are you feeling?” the Diagnostician began, as she knew it would.
“Very well, thank you,” she replied, as it knew she would. After that she was subjected to the most meticulously thorough physical examination she had ever experienced.
“You’ve probably realized by now that all of this wasn’t strictly necessary,” Conway said as it replaced the sheet that had been covering her body. “However, it was my first opportunity to have a really close look at the DCNF physiological classification as a whole, as opposed to one of the limbs. Thank you, it was interesting and most instructive.
“But now that you are completely recovered,” it went on, with a quick glance toward O’Mara, “and will require only a course of exercises before you would be fit for duty, what are we going to do with you?”
She suspected that it was a rhetorical question, but she badly wanted to reply to it. Anxiously she said, “There have been mistakes, misunderstandings. They will not occur again. I would like to remain in the hospital and continue my training.”
“No!” Conway said sharply. In a quieter voice it went on. “You are a fine surgeon, Cha Thrat—potentially a great one. Losing you would be a shameful waste of talent. But keeping you on the medical staff, with your peculiar ideas of what constitutes ethical behavior, is out of the question. There isn’t a ward in the hospital that would accept you for practical training now. Segroth took you only because O’Mara and I requested it.
“I like to make my surgery lectures as interesting and exciting as possible for the trainees,” Conway added, “but there are limits, dammit!”
Before either of them could say the words that would send her from the hospital, Cha Thrat said quickly, “What if something could be done that would guarantee my future good behavior? One of my early lectures was on the Educator tape system of teaching alien physiology and medicine that, in effect, gives
the recipient an other-species viewpoint. If I could be given such a tape, one with a more acceptable, to you, code of professional behavior, then I would be sure to stay out of trouble.”
She waited anxiously, but the two Earth-humans were looking at each other in silence, ignoring her.
Without the Educator or physiology tape system, she had learned, a multispecies hospital like Sector General could not have existed. No single brain, regardless of species, could hold the enormous quantity of physiological knowledge required to successfully treat the variety of patients the hospital received. But complete physiological data on any patient’s species was available by means of an Educator tape, which was simply the brain record of some great medical mind belonging to the same or a similar species as the patient to be treated.
A being taking such a tape had to share its mind with a completely alien personality. Subjectively, that was exactly how it felt; all of the memories and experiences and personality traits of the being who had donated the tape were impressed on the receiving mind, not just selected pieces of medical data. An Educator tape could not be edited and the degree of confusion, emotional disorientation, and personality dislocation caused to a recipient could not be adequately described even by the Senior Physicians and Diagnosticians who experienced it.
The Diagnosticians were the hospital’s highest medical rulers, beings whose minds were both adaptable and stable enough to retain permanently up to ten physiology tapes at one time. To their data-crammed minds was given the job of original research into xenological medicine and the treatment of new diseases in newly discovered life-forms.
But Cha Thrat was not interested in subjecting herself voluntarily, as had the Diagnosticians, to a multiplicity of alien ideas and influences. She had heard it said among the staff that any person sane enough to be a Diagnostician had to be mad, and she could well believe it. Her idea represented a much less drastic solution to the problem.
“If I had an Earth-human, a Kelgian, even a Nidian personality sharing my mind,” she persisted, “I would understand why the things I sometimes do are considered wrong, and would be able to avoid doing them. The other-species material would be used for interpersonal behavioral guidance only. As a trainee I would not try to use its medical or surgical knowledge on my patients without permission.”
The Diagnostician was suddenly overcome by an attack of coughing. When it recovered it said, “Thank you, Cha Thrat. I’m sure the patients would thank you, too. But it’s impossible to … O’Mara, this is your field. You answer it.”
The Chief Psychologist moved close to the bedside and looked down at her. It said, “Hospital regulations do not allow me to do as you ask, nor would I do so if I could. Even though you are an unusually strong and stubborn personality, you would find it very difficult to control the other occupant of your mind. It isn’t an alien entity fighting for control, but because the type of leading medical specialist who donates the tapes is frequently a very strong-minded and aggressive person used to getting its own way, it would feel as if it is taking control. The ensuing purely subjective conflict could give rise to episodes of pain, skin eruptions, and more troublesome organic malfunctionings. All have a psychosomatic basis, of course, but they will hurt you just as much as the real thing. The risk of permanent mental damage is great and, until a trainee has learned to understand the external personalities of the beings around it, it would not receive one of their Educator tapes.
“In your case there is an additional reason,” O’Mara added. “You are a female.”
Sommaradvan prejudices, she thought furiously, even here in Sector General! and made a sound that at home would have resulted in an immediate and probably violent breakdown in communication. Fortunately, the sound did not translate.
“The conclusion you have just jumped to is wrong,” O’Mara went on. “It is simply that the females of all the two-sexed species yet discovered have evolved with certain peculiarities, as opposed to abnormalities, of mind. One of them is a deeply rooted, sex-based fastidiousness and aversion toward anything or anyone entering or trying to possess their minds. The only exception is in the situation when lifemating has taken place, where, in many species, the processes of physical and mental sharing and the feelings of possession complement each other. But I can’t imagine you falling in love with an other-species mind impression.”
“Do male entities,” Cha Thrat asked, both satisfied and intrigued by the explanation, “receive mind recordings from other-species females, then? Could I be given a female tape?”
“There is only one recorded instance of that …” O’Mara began.
“Let’s not go into that,” Conway broke in, its face becoming a darker shade of pink. “I’m sorry, Cha Thrat, you cannot be given an Educator tape, now or ever. O’Mara has explained why, just as he has explained the political circumstances of your arrival here and the delicate state of the cultural contact on Sommaradva that would be jeopardized if we simply dismissed you from the hospital. Wouldn’t it be better for all concerned if you left of your own free will?”
Cha Thrat was silent for a moment, her eyes turned toward the limb that she had thought would be lost forever, trying to find the right words. Then she said, “You don’t owe me anything for my work on ship ruler Chiang. I have already explained, during my first meeting with the Chief Psychologist, that the delay in attending to its injuries was caused by my not wanting to lose a limb because if, as a result of my decision to perform the operation it lost a limb, then so would I. As a warrior-surgeon I cannot escape a responsibility willingly accepted.
“And now,” she went on, “if I were to leave the hospital as you suggest, it would not be of my own free will. I cannot do, or leave undone, something that I know to be wrong.”
The Diagnostician was also looking at the replaced limb. “I believe you,” it said.
O’Mara exhaled slowly and half turned to leave. It said, “I’m very sorry I didn’t pick up on that ‘losing a limb’ remark you made at our first meeting; it would have saved us all a lot of trouble. Against my better judgment I relented after the AUGL-One Sixteen business, but the bloody drama during the FROB demonstration was too much. The remainder of your stay here will not be very pleasant because, in spite of the earlier recommendations you’ve had from Diagnostician Conway and myself, nobody wants you anywhere near their patients.
“Let’s face it, Cha Thrat,” it ended as both Earth-humans moved toward the door, “you’re in the doghouse.”
She heard them talking with a third person in the corridor, but the words were too muffled for translation. Then the door opened and another Earth-human entered. It was wearing the dark-green uniform of the Monitor Corps and looked familiar.
Cheerfully it said, “I’ve been waiting outside in case they couldn’t talk you into leaving, and O’Mara was pretty sure they wouldn’t. I’m Timmins, in case you don’t remember me. We have to have a long talk.
“And before you ask,” it went on, “the doghouse, so far as you’re concerned, is the Maintenance Department.”
CHAPTER 9
It was obvious from the beginning that Lieutenant Timmins did not consider its job to be either servile or menial, and it was not long before the Lieutenant had her beginning to feel the same way. It wasn’t just the Earth-human’s quiet enthusiasm for its job, there was also the portable viewer and set of study tapes it had left at her bedside that convinced her that this was work for warriors—although not, of course, for warrior-surgeons. The wide-ranging and complex problems of providing technical and environmental support for the sixty-odd—some of them very odd indeed—life-forms comprising the hospital’s patients and staff made her earlier medical and physiological studies seem easy by comparison.
Her last formal contact with the training program was when Cresk-Sar arrived, carried out a brief but thorough examination, and, subject to the findings of the eye specialist, Doctor Yeppha, who would be visiting her shortly, pronounced her physically fit to begin the new dutie
s. She asked if there would be any objection to her continuing to view the medical teaching channels in her free time, and the Senior Physician told her that she could watch whatever she pleased in her spare time, but it was unlikely that she would ever be able to put any of the medical knowledge gained into practice.
It ended by saying that while it was relieved that she was no longer the Training Department’s responsibility, it was sorry to lose her and that it joined her erstwhile colleagues in wishing her success and personal satisfaction in the new work she had chosen.
Doctor Yeppha was a new life-form to her experience, a small, tripedal, fragile being that she classified as DRVJ. From the furry dome of its head there sprouted, singly and in small clusters, at least twenty eyes. She wondered whether the overabundance of visual sensors had any bearing on its choice of specialty, but thought it better not to ask.
“Good morning, Cha Thrat,” it said, taking a tape from the pouch at its waist and pushing it into the viewer. “This is a visual acuity test designed primarily to check for color blindness. We don’t care if you have muscles like a Hudlar or a Cinrusskin, there are machines to do the really heavy work, but you have to be able to see. Not only that, you must be able to clearly identify colors and the subtle shades and dilution of color brought about by changes in the intensity of the ambient lighting. What do you see there?”
“A circle made up of red spots,” Cha Thrat replied, “enclosing a star of green and blue spots.”
“Good,” Yeppha said. “I am making this sound much simpler than it really is, but you will learn the complexities in time. The service bays and interconnecting tunnels are filled with cable looms and plumbing all of which is color coded. This enables the maintenance people to tell at a glance which are power cables and which the less dangerous communication lines, or which pipes carry oxygen, chlorine, methane, or organic effluvia. The danger of contamination of wards by other-species atmospheres is always present, and such an environmental catastrophe should not be allowed to occur because some partially sighted nincompoop has connected up the wrong set of pipes. What do you see now?”