Sector General Omnibus 3 - General Practice

by James White

  “And,” the Pathologist’s voice joined in, “you want me to analyze the samples so as to tell you which containers hold paint and which soup?”

  “Thank you, friend Murchison,” the empath said, and went on. “As well as your cranial investigation would you look at the cadaver’s general metabolism with a view to suggesting a safe anesthetic for use on these people, something fast-acting that we can shoot into them at a distance. They must all be anesthetized very quickly because—”

  “For fast work like that,” Murchison broke in, “I’ll need Rhabwar’s lab, not a portable analyzer like this one. And I’ll need the whole team to help me.”

  “Because,” Prilicla resumed quietly, “I have a feeling that there is another survivor who is not healthy and active and hungry. Its emotional radiation is extremely weak and characteristic of an entity who is deeply unconscious and perhaps dying. But I am unable to locate it because of the stronger, overriding emanations from the conscious survivors. That is why, as soon as the samples are gathered for friend Murchison, I would like every hole, corner, or compartment large enough to hold an FGHJ searched.

  “It must be done quickly,” the Cinrusskin ended, “because the feeling is very weak indeed.”

  Awkwardly Fletcher said, “I understand, Senior Physician, but there is a problem. Pathologist Murchison needs all of the medical team and extending Rhabwar’s hyperenvelope and realigning our tractors for the Jump and deploying the boarding tube will require all of the ship’s officers …”

  “Which leaves me,” Cha Thrat said quietly, “with nothing to do.”

  “ … So which should be given priority?” the Captain went on, seeming not to have heard her. “The search for your unconscious FGHJ, or getting it and the rest of them to Sector General as quickly as possible?”

  “I will search the ship,” she said, more loudly.

  “Thank you, Cha Thrat,” Prilicla said, “I felt you wanting to volunteer. But think carefully before you decide. The survivor, should you find it, will be too weak to harm you. But there are other dangers. This ship is large, and as strange to us as it is to you.”

  “Yes, Technician,” the Captain said. “These aren’t the maintenance tunnels at Sector General. The color codings, if present, will mean something entirely different. You can’t make assumptions about anything you see, and if you accidentally foul a control link … Very well, you may search, but stay out of trouble.

  Fletcher turned to look at Prilicla and added plaintively, “Or do you feel me feeling that I’m wasting my breath?”

  CHAPTER 17

  With the printouts from Rhabwar’s sensors providing information on the ship’s layout, and in particular on the size and location of its empty spaces, Cha Thrat began a rapid and methodical search of the alien vessel. She ignored only the control deck, the occupied dormitories, and areas close to the ship’s reactor that the sensor maps showed to be uninhabitable by the FGHJ life-form or, for that matter, any other species who were not radiation-eaters. She was very careful to check all interiors with sound sensors and the heavy-duty scanner before opening every door or panel. She was not afraid, but there were times when shivers marched like tiny, icy feet along the length of her spine.

  It usually happened when the realization came that she was searching an alien starship for survivors of a species whose existence she could not have imagined a short time ago, at the direction of other unimaginable beings from a place of healing whose size, complexity, and occupants were like the solid manifestations of a disordered mind. But the unthinkable and unimaginable had become not only thinkable but acceptable to her, and all because a discontented and unloved warrior-surgeon of Sommaradva had risked a limb and her professional reputation to treat an injured off-world ship ruler.

  At the thought of what her future would have been had she not taken that risk she shivered again, in dread.

  Even though the first search was to be a fast, perfunctory one, it took much longer than Cha Thrat had expected. By the time it was completed, Rhabwar’s boarding tube was in position, and she could feel and hear the empty grumbling of both her stomachs.

  Prilicla told her to relieve these symptoms before making her report.

  When she arrived on the casualty deck, Prilicla, Murchison, and Danalta were working on the cadaver while Naydrad and Khone, its hairy body pressed against the transparent dividing wall, watched with an interest so intense that only the Cinrusskin sensed her arrival.

  “What’s wrong, friend Cha?” the empath asked. “Something disturbed you on the ship. I felt it even here.”

  “This,” she replied, holding up one of the leg restraints that Murchison had removed from the cadaver and discarded before the dead FGHJ had been moved to Rhabwar. “The chain is not locked to the leg cuff, it is attached with a simple spring-loaded bolt that can be released easily when pressure is applied just here.”

  She demonstrated, then went on. “When I was searching the control deck area I looked at the crew member chained to its couch, without being seen, and noticed that similar fastenings hold the chains to all four of its leg cuffs. It and the cadaver here could have freed themselves simply by releasing the fastenings, which are within easy reach of its hands. It did not have to break free, and neither does the crew member chained to the control couch, who nevertheless continues to struggle violently against restraints that it could so easily remove. It is all very puzzling, but I think we must now discard the theory that any of these people were prisoners under restraint.”

  They were all watching her closely as she went on. “But what is affecting them? What is it that leaves a crew member normally a responsible, highly trained individual capable of guiding a starship, in such a state that it cannot unfasten its couch restraints? What has rendered the other crew members incapable of opening their own dormitory doors or finding food for themselves? Why has their behavior degenerated to that of unthinking animals? Could contaminated food, or the absence of specific foods, have caused this? And before you left me, the Senior Physician suggested that an organism might have invaded the brain tissues. Is it possible that—”

  “If you will stop asking questions, Technician,” Murchison broke in crossly, “I’ll have a chance to answer some of them. No, the food supply is plentiful and contains nothing toxic to this life-form. I have analyzed and identified several varieties carried on the ship, so you will be able to feed them when you go back. As for the brain tissues, there are no indications of damage, circulatory impairment, infection, or any pathological abnormality.

  “I found trace quantities of a complex chemical structure that, in the metabolism of this life-form, would act as a powerful tranquilizer. The residual material suggests that a massive dose was absorbed perhaps three or four days ago, and the effect has since worn off. A large supply of this tranquilizer was found in one of the cadaver’s harness pouches. So it seems that the crew members tranquilized themselves before confining themselves to the control couch and their dormitories.”

  There was a long silence that was broken by Khone, who was holding up its offspring where the scrawny little entity could see all the strange creatures on the other side of its transparent panel. Cha Thrat wondered if the Gogleskan was already trying to weaken the young one’s conditioning, even at the tender age of two days.

  Impersonally it said, “It is hoped that the time of more intelligent and experienced healers will not be wasted by this interruption, but on Goglesk it is accepted that in certain circumstances, and against their will, otherwise intelligent and civilized beings will behave like vicious and destructive animals. Perhaps the entities on the other vessel have a similar problem, and must take strong and repeated doses of medication to keep their animal natures under control so that they can live civilized lives, and make progress, and build starships.

  “Perhaps they are starved,” Khone ended, “not of food but of their civilizing drug.”

  “A neat idea,” Murchison said warmly, then matching the Gogleskan’s
impersonal tone it went on. “Admiration is felt for the originality of the healer’s thinking but, regrettably, the medication concerned would not increase awareness and the ability to mentate, it would decrease it to the point where continuous use would cause these people to spend their entire lives in a state of semi-consciousness.”

  “Perhaps,” Cha Thrat joined in, “the state of semi-consciousness is pleasant and desirable. It shames me to admit it, but on Sommaradva there are people who deliberately affect and often damage their minds with substances for the purely temporary pleasure they give the user …”

  “Sommaradva’s shame,” Naydrad said angrily, “is shared by many worlds in the Federation.”

  “ … And when these harmful substances are withdrawn suddenly from habitual users,” she went on, “their behavior becomes irrational and violent and similar, in many respects, to that of the FGHJs on the other ship.”

  Murchison was shaking its head. “Sorry, no again. I cannot be absolutely certain because we are dealing with the metabolism of a completely new life-form here, but I would say that the traces found in the cadaver’s brain was a simple tranquilizer that deadens rather than heightens awareness, and is almost certainly nonaddictive. Had this not been so I would have suggested using it as an anesthetic.

  “And before you ask,” the Pathologist went on, “progress with the anesthetic is slow. I have gone as far as I can go with the physiological data provided by the cadaver, but to produce one that will be safe to use in large doses I require blood and gland secretion samples from a living FGHJ.”

  Cha Thrat was silent for a moment, then she turned to include Prilicla as she said, “I could not find any trace of injured or unconscious survivors during my preliminary search, but I shall search again more diligently when the required samples have been obtained. Is the being still alive? Can you give me even an approximate guide to its location?”

  “I can still feel it, friend Cha,” Prilicla replied. “But the cruder, conscious emoting of the other survivors is obscuring it.”

  “Then the sooner Pathologist Murchison has its samples the sooner we’ll have the anesthetic to knock out the emotional interference,” Cha Thrat said briskly. “My medial digits are strong enough to restrain the arms of the FGHJ on the control couch while my upper manipulators take the samples. From which veins and organs, and in what quantities, must they be removed?”

  Murchison laughed suddenly and said, “Please, Cha Thrat, let the medical team do something to justify its existence. You will hold the crew member tightly to its couch, Doctor Danalta will position the scanner, and I will obtain the samples while—”

  “Control here.” Fletcher’s voice broke in from the wall speaker. “Jump in five seconds from … now. The extra mass of the distressed ship will delay our return somewhat. We are estimating Sector General parking orbit in just under four days.”

  “Thank you, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said.

  Suddenly there was the familiar but indescribable sensation, unseen, unheard, and unfelt but indisputably present, that signaled their removal from the universe of matter to the tiny, unreal, and purely mathematical structure that the ship’s hyperdrive generators had built around them. She forced herself to look through the casualty deck’s direct vision panel. The tractor and pressor beams that laced the ships rigidly together were invisible, so that she saw only the ridiculously flimsy boarding tube joining them and, at the bottom of the metal chasm formed by the two hulls, the heaving, flickering grayness that seemed to reach up through her eyes and pull her very brain out of focus.

  She returned her attention to the solid, familiar if temporarily unreal world of the casualty deck before hyperspace could give her an eyestrain headache.

  Cha Thrat had time for only a few words with Khone before following Murchison, Danalta, and Naydrad to the boarding tube. The Charge Nurse was helping her carry packages of the material that Murchison had identified as food, and she had only to compare them with the hundreds of others in the other ship’s stores to be able to feed all of the surviving crew members until they bulged at the seams.

  Her last sight of the casualty deck for a long time, although she did not know it just then, was of Senior Physician Prilicla hovering above the widely scattered remains of the cadaver and interspersing its quiet words to Khone with untranslatable cluckings and trillings to the younger Gogleskan.

  “If we can spare the time,” Cha Thrat said to the Pathologist when they were standing around the control couch and its agitated and weakly struggling occupant, “we could feed it before taking your samples. That might make the patient more contented, and amenable.”

  “We can spare the time for that,” Murchison replied, then added, “There are times, Cha Thrat, when you remind me of somebody else.”

  “Who do we know,” Naydrad asked in its forthright Kelgian manner, “who’s that weird?”

  The Pathologist laughed but did not reply, and neither did Cha Thrat. Without realizing it, Murchison had moved into a sensitive and potentially highly embarrassing area, and, if it ever did learn exactly what had happened to the Sommaradvan’s mind on Goglesk, it should be from its life-mate, Conway, and not Cha Thrat—Prilicla had been quite insistent about that.

  There was surprisingly little variety in the FGHJs’ food containers—two differently shaped plastic bottles, one holding water and the other a faintly odorous nutrient liquid, and there were uniform blocks of a dry, spongy material wrapped in a thin plastic film with a large ring for tearing it open. The liquid and solid foods were synthetic, according to Murchison, but nutritionally tailored to the requirements of the FGHJs’ metabolism, and the small quantities of nonnutrient material present were probably there to excite the taste buds.

  But when Cha Thrat tossed one of the packages into the crew member’s hands, it began tearing at it with its teeth without removing the plastic wrapping. The simple, spring-loaded caps sealing the bottles were also ignored. It tore open the neck of the container with its teeth and sucked out the liquid that it had not already spilled down its chest.

  A few minutes later the Pathologist made an untranslatable sound and said, “Its table manners certainly leave a lot to be desired, but it doesn’t appear to be hungry anymore. Let’s get started.”

  Feeding the crew member made no perceptible difference to its behavior except, perhaps, to give it more strength to resist them. By the time Murchison had withdrawn its samples, Naydrad, Cha Thrat, and the Pathologist itself were displaying several areas of surface bruising and Danalta, whose body could not be injured or deformed except by the application of ultrahigh temperatures, had been forced into some incredible shape-changes in order to help them immobilize the brute. When the task was done, Murchison sent Naydrad and Danalta ahead with its test samples while it remained, breathing rapidly, and with its eyes fixed on the crew member.

  “I don’t like this,” it said.

  “It worries me, too,” Cha Thrat said. “However, if a problem is restated often enough, in different words, a solution sometimes emerges.”

  “I suppose some wise old Sommaradvan philosopher said that,” Murchison said drily. “I’m sorry, Technician. What were you going to say?”

  “An Earth-human Lieutenant called Timmins said it,” she replied. “And I was about to restate the problem, which is that we are faced with a ship’s crew who are apparently suffering from a disease that leaves them completely healthy, but mindless. Not only can they not operate their own undamaged and fully functioning ship, they do not remember how to unfasten their leg restraints, unlatch doors, or open food containers. They have become like healthy animals.”

  Murchison said quietly, “The problem is being restated, but in the same words.”

  “The living quarters are bare and comfortless,” Cha Thrat went on, “which made us think at first that this was a prison ship. But is it possible that the crew members, for reasons that may be psychological and associated with space-travel, or a disease that affects them during s
pace travel, know that bodily comforts, pleasant surroundings, and valued personal possessions would be wasted on them during a voyage because they expect to become animals. Perhaps the condition is brief, episodic, and temporary, but on this occasion something went wrong and it became permanent.”

  “Now,” Murchison said, twitching her shoulders in the movement that Earth-humans called a shiver, “the words are different. But if it is of any help to you, among the samples Naydrad brought me for analysis there was medication as well as food. The medication was of one kind only, the tranquilizer capsules of the type found on the cadaver, in a form intended for oral self-administration. So you may be right about them expecting the condition and taking steps to reduce accidental damage to themselves during the mindless phase. But it’s strange that Naydrad, who looks very carefully for such things, found only this one type of medication, and no sign of any instruments for the purposes of examination, diagnosis, or surgery. Even if they knew in advance that they were going to take sick, it looks as if the ship’s crew did not include a medic.”

  “If anything,” Cha Thrat said, “this new information increases the problem.”

  Murchison laughed, but the pallor of its normally pink face showed that it found nothing humorous in the situation. It said grimly, “I could not find anything wrong with the being I examined, apart from the accidental head injury that killed it, nor can I see anything clinically wrong with the other crew members. But something has tracelessly destroyed their higher centers of intelligence and wiped their minds clean of all memory, training, and experience so that they are left with nothing but the instincts and behavior patterns of animals.

  “What kind of organism or agency,” it ended with another shiver, “could cause such a selectively destructive effect as that?”

  Cha Thrat had a sudden urge to wrap her medial arms around the Pathologist and comfort it, and an upsurge of the kind of emotion that no Sommaradvan, male or female, should feel for an Earth-human. With difficulty she controlled the feelings that were not her own and said gently, “The anesthetic might give you the answer. We are seeing patients in whom the disease, or whatever, has run its course. If they are knocked out and we found the other one, isn’t it possible that the disease might not have run its course with this survivor, or the survivor has natural resistance to it? By studying the disease and the resistant patient you might discover the cure for all of them.”