Sector General Omnibus 3 - General Practice

by James White

  “Nor would my own normally impenetrable Hudlar skin,” the nurse said. “Doctor Seldal belongs to a fragile species in which cowardice is a prime survival characteristic but it, too, scorns the use of body armor. The few other visitors who come here are allowed to decide for themselves.

  “I have found,” the Hudlar went on, “that the patient is more likely to speak to an entity who is not encased in body armor, which it apparently regards as a being who is partly mechanical and of low intelligence. Its words to these uncovered visitors are few and never polite, but it does sometimes speak to them.”

  Lioren thought of the few words that the patient had spoken after nearly frightening him into premature termination with its pretended attack, and he began unfastening his nonprotective suit. “I am most grateful for your advice, Nurse. Please help me out of this thing and I shall try again. And, Nurse, if there is anything else you wish to say to me I will be pleased to listen.”

  As the FROB moved forward to assist him, its speaking membrane vibrated with the words, “You do not recognize me, Lioren. But I know you and I, too, am grateful for the helpful words that you spoke to my Kelgian friend, nurse-in-training Tarsedth, before and during our recent visit to your quarters. I am greatly surprised that Seldal allowed you to come here, but if there is anything further that I can do to assist you, you have only to ask.”

  “Thank you,” Lioren said.

  He was thinking that the assignment O’Mara had given him to investigate Seldal’s behavior, and his unorthodox method of conducting it, was having unforeseen results. For reasons Lioren could not understand he seemed to be collecting friends.

  The second time Lioren approached the patient’s head he was wearing only his translator pack and a thruster unit to help him navigate in the weightless condition. Again he halted close to one of the enormous, closed eyes and spoke.

  “I am not, in whole or in part, a machine,” he said. “Again I ask with respect, can I speak to you?”

  Once more the eyelid opened slowly like a great, fleshy portcullis, but this time the response was immediate.

  “There is no doubt in either of our minds that you have the ability to speak to me,” it replied in a voice that accompanied the translated words like a deep, modulated drumroll. “But if your question was carelessly phrased, as is much of the speech in this place, and you are asking whether I will listen and reply, I doubt it.”

  Below him one of the great tentacles stirred restively inside the torn netting, then became motionless again. “Your shape is new to me, but it is likely that your questions and behavior will be the same as all the others. You will ask questions whose answers should be already known through prior observation. Even the tiny Cutter called Seldal, who pecks at me and fills the wounds with strange chemicals, asks how I am. If it does not know, who does? And they all behave toward me as if they were the Parents with power and authority and I the tiny offspring needing consolation. It is as if insects were pretending to be wiser and larger than a Parent, which is ridiculous beyond belief.

  “I speak to you very simply of these things,” the BLSU went on, “in the hope that you have the authority to end this ridiculous pretense and that you will leave me undisturbed to die.

  “Go,” it ended, “at once.”

  The great eye closed as if to banish him from sight and mind, but Lioren did not move. “Your wishes in this matter will be passed without delay to the others concerned with your treatment, because the words that have passed between us are being recorded for later study by—”

  Lioren broke off. All of the creature’s tentacles were curling and writhing within the restraining net, which parted loudly in several places before they relaxed again.

  “My words,” it said, “are an expression of my thoughts that were given to you and earlier to those with whom I spoke. Without my express permission on each and every occasion, these thoughts are not to be shared with entities who are not present and whose minds are likely to misunderstand and distort my meaning. If this is being done, I shall speak no more. Go away.”

  Still, Lioren did not move. Instead he keyed his translator to the Nurses’ Station frequency and prepared to speak once again in the manner of a Surgeon Captain.

  “Nurse,” he said, “please switch off all recording devices and erase the words spoken since my arrival. Do likewise with the earlier conversations between Doctor Seldal and the patient. Any personal words of the patient that you yourself have heard on this and previous occasions are to be treated as privileged communications and disclosed to no other person. From this moment on, and until the patient itself has given permission for you to do otherwise, you will cease listening in to any conversation that passes between the patient and anyone else, nor will you use your own organic sound sensors to do so. Do you fully understand your instructions, Nurse? Please speak.”

  “I understand,” the Hudlar replied, “but will Senior Physician Seldal?”

  “The Senior Physician will understand when I make it aware of the strong feelings of the patient regarding the unauthorized recording of its conversations. In the meantime I assume full responsibility.”

  “Breaking sound contact,” the nurse said.

  It was only the sound contact that had been broken, Lioren knew, because the nurse would be continuing to watch and record the proceedings on the clinical monitors as well as watching him even more intently on the visuals in case he had to be pulled out of trouble with the tractors again. He returned his attention to the eye of the patient, which was again closed.

  “We may now speak,” Lioren said, “without our words being overheard or recorded, and I shall not repeat anything you say without your express permission. Is this satisfactory?”

  The patient’s gargantuan body remained still, it did not speak, and its eye did not open. Lioren could not help remembering his first visit to ex-Diagnostician Mannen and thought that here, too, the clinical monitors were indicating that the patient was motionless but conscious. Perhaps the BLSU classification did not sleep, for there were several intelligent species in the Federation who had evolved in presapient conditions of extreme physical danger so that a part of their minds remained constantly on watch. Or it might be that the patient, being a member of a species said to be the most philosophically advanced yet discovered, had twice asked him to leave and was now ignoring him because it was too civilized to be capable of physically enforcing the request.

  In Mannen’s case it had been the patient’s own curiosity that had caused it to break the silence.

  “You have told me,” Lioren said slowly and patiently, “that the attention and questions of the medical staff here are an irritation to you, because they swarm like tiny insects around a behemoth while behaving as if they had the authority of a parent. Have you considered that, in spite of their small size, they feel toward you the same concern and need to help you that is a parent’s? The insect analogy is as distasteful to me as it is to the others, if you have told them of it, for we are not mindless insects.

  “I much prefer,” Lioren went on, “the analogy of the highly intelligent entity with one of lower intelligence of whom it has made a friend, or a pet, if that concept is understood by the Groalterri. Two such entities can often form a strong nonphysical bond with each other and, ridiculous though the idea might seem, should the one of greater intelligence become injured or in distress of some kind, the other will want to give solace and will grieve when it is helpless to do so.

  “By comparison with yours,” Lioren said, “the intelligence level of those around you is low. But we are not helpless and our purpose here is to relieve many different kinds of distress.”

  There was no response from the patient, and Lioren wondered if the other was treating his words as the buzzings of an irritating insect. But his pride would not allow him to accept that idea. He reminded himself that while this patient belonged to a superintelligent species, it was a very young member of that species, which should go a long way toward levelling
the difference between them; one important characteristic in the young of any species was their curiosity about all things.

  “If you do not wish to satisfy my curiosity about you, because of your earlier words being shared with others without your knowledge or consent,” Lioren said, “you might be curious about one of the entities who are trying to help you, myself.

  “My name is Lioren …”

  He was there at Seldal’s request because of an age-old and Galaxy-wide truism that in a place of healing there are always entities in worse condition than oneself, and that the one in lesser distress felt sympathy toward its less fortunate fellow and seemed to benefit in the nonclinical area thereby. Plainly the Nallajim Senior was hoping for a similar response from this patient, but Lioren wondered whether an entity so massive in size and intellect, and so tremendously long-lived as this one, was capable of feeling sympathy for the stupid, ephemeral insect hovering above its closed eye.

  It took much longer than on the previous telling, because then Mannen had known about the Federation and the Monitor Corps and court-martial as well as the swarm of intelligent insects called the Cromsaggar that Lioren had all but exterminated. Many times his manner lost its clinical objectivity as the words caused him to live again the terrible events on Cromsag, and he had to remind himself several times that his memories were being used as a psychological tool that caused pain to its user, but finally it was over.

  Lioren waited, glad of the patient’s lack of response that was enabling him to drive away those fearful images and regain control of his mind.

  “Lioren,” the Groalterri said suddenly, without opening its eye, “I did not know that it was possible for a small entity to bear such a great load of suffering. Only by not looking at you can I continue to believe it, for in my mind I see an old and greatly distressed Parent seeking help. But I cannot give you that help just as you cannot help me because, Lioren, I, too, am guilty.”

  Its voice had grown so quiet that the translator required full amplification to resolve the word-sounds as it ended, “I am guilty of a great and terrible sin.”

  CHAPTER 14

  More than an hour passed before Lioren returned to the Nurses’ Station to find Seldal, its atrophied wings twitching and feathers ruffled in the Nallajim sign of anger, awaiting him.

  “Nurse tells me that you ordered the voice recorders switched off,” it said before Lioren could speak, “and the earlier conversations with the patient to be erased. You exceeded your authority, Lioren, which is a bad habit of yours that I thought you had given up after the Cromsag business. But you have spoken with the patient at greater length than all of the medical staff combined since its arrival. What did it say to you?”

  Lioren was silent for a moment, then he said, “I cannot tell you exactly. Much of the information is personal and I have not yet decided what can and cannot be divulged.”

  Seldal gave a loud, incredulous cheep. “This patient must have given you information that will help me in its treatment. I cannot order a member of your department to reveal psychosensitive information about another entity, but I can request O’Mara to order you to do so.”

  “Senior Physician,” Lioren said, “whether it was the Chief Psychologist or any other authority my response would have to be the same.”

  The Hudlar nurse had moved away so as to absent itself and avoid embarrassing its department head by overhearing an argument that entity was losing.

  “May I assume that I still have your permission to continue visiting the patient?” Lioren asked quietly. “It is possible that I might be able to obtain information arrived at by observation and deduction and the detection of facts, material of nonpersonal nature about itself or its species which would assist you. But great care is needed if it is not to take offense, because it places great importance on the contents of its mind and the words used to reveal it.”

  Seldal’s feathers were again lying like a bright and unruffled carpet around its body. “You have my permission to continue visiting. And now I presume you have no objection to me talking to my own patient?”

  “If you tell it that the speech recorders will remain switched off,” Lioren said, “it might talk to you.”

  As Seldal departed the Hudlar nurse returned to its position on the monitors. Quietly, it said, “With respect, Lioren, the Hudlar organ of hearing is extremely sensitive and cannot be turned off other than by swathing it in a bulky muffling device, the need for which was not foreseen in this ward and so it was not available to me.”

  “Did you hear everything?” Lioren asked, feeling a sudden anger that the patient’s confidence had been breached and that Seldal, from whom he had been keeping the conversation a secret, would shortly be able to hear it all on the hospital grapevine. “Including the crime it is supposed to have committed prior to its arrival here?”

  “I was instructed not to hear,” the Hudlar said, “so I did not hear, and cannot discuss what I did not hear with anyone other than the entity who forbade me to hear.”

  “Thank you, Nurse,” Lioren said with great feeling. He stared for a moment at the other’s identification patch, which bore only the hospital staff and department symbols because Hudlars used their names only among the members of the family or those whom they proposed to mate, and memorized it so that he would know the nurse again. Then he asked, “Do you wish to discuss some aspect of that which you did not hear with me now?”

  “With respect,” the Hudlar said, “I would prefer to make an observation. You appear to be gaining the patient’s confidence with remarkable speed, by speaking freely about yourself and inviting an exchange in kind.”

  “Go on,” Lioren said.

  “On my world and, I believe, among the majority of your own population on Tarla,” the nurse said, “it would not matter because we believe that our lives begin at birth and end with death, and we do not distinguish between the forms of wrong-doing which seem to be troubling the patient. But among the Groalterri, and in many other cultures throughout the Federation, you would be treading on dangerous philosophical ground.”

  “I know,” Lioren said as he turned to leave. “This is no longer a purely medical problem, and I hope the library computer will give me some of the answers. At least I know what my first question will be.”

  What is the difference between a crime and a sin?

  When he returned to the department, Lioren was told that O’Mara was in the inner office but had left instructions not to be disturbed. Braithwaite and Cha Thrat were about to leave for the day, but the Sommaradvan held back, plainly wanting to question him. Lioren tried to ignore its nonverbal curiosity because he was not sure what, if anything, he could allow himself to say.

  “I know that you are seriously troubled in the mind,” Cha Thrat said, pointing suddenly at his screen. “Has your distress increased to the level where you are seeking solace in … Lioren, this is uncharacteristic and worrying behavior in a personality as well integrated as yours. Why are you requesting all that study material on the Federation’s religions?”

  Lioren had to pause for a moment to consider his answer, because it was suddenly borne in upon him that, since he had become involved with Seldal and its patients, he had spent much more time thinking about the troubles of Manner and the Groalterri than his own. The realization came as a great surprise to him.

  “I am grateful for your concern,” he replied carefully, “but my distress has not increased since last we spoke. As you already know, I am investigating Seldal by talking to its patients, and the process has become ethically complicated, so much so that I am uncertain of how much I can tell you. Religion is a factor. But it is a subject about which I am totally ignorant, and I should not want to be embarrassed if I were to be asked questions about it.”

  “But who would ask questions about religion,” Cha Thrat asked, “when it is a subject everyone is supposed to avoid? It causes arguments that nobody wins. Is it the terminal patient, Mannen, who might ask these questions? If it nee
ds help of that kind, I wonder at it asking you rather than a member of its own species. But I understand your reticence.”

  Allowing another person to arrive at a wrong conclusion was not the same as lying, Lioren told himself.

  Cha Thrat made a Sommaradvan gesture the significance of which Lioren did not know, and went on, “Speaking clinically, Lioren, I would say that you have been forgetting to eat as well as sleep. You can call up that stuff on your room console as well as from here. I cannot help you where Earth-human beliefs are concerned, but let us go to the dining hall and I will tell you all about the religions—there are five of them altogether—of Sommaradva. It is a subject about which I can speak with full knowledge if less than complete conviction.”

  During their meal and continued discussion in Lioren’s quarters, Cha Thrat did not press him for information that he was unwilling to give, but he did not have such an easy time at his next visit to Mannen.

  “Dammit, Lioren,” the ex-Diagnostician said, who seemed no longer to be troubled by breathlessness, “Seldal tells me that you have been talking to the Groalterri, and it to you, for longer than anyone else in the hospital, and that you refuse to tell anyone about it. And now you want me to give you an ethical justification for your silence without telling me the reason why you won’t speak.

  “What the hell is going on, Lioren?” it ended. “Curiosity is killing me.”

  “Curiosity,” Lioren said calmly, looking at the age-wasted body and face with its youthful eyes, “would only be a contributing factor.”

  The patient made an untranslatable sound. “Your problem, if I understand it correctly, is that during your second and much lengthier visit to the Groalterri you were given, presumably in exchange for personal data on yourself and information regarding the worlds and peoples of the Federation, a large amount of information about the patient, its people, and its culture. Much of this information is impersonal and clinical and extremely valuable both to the physician in charge of the Groalterri’s treatment and to the cultural-contact specialists of the Monitor Corps. You, however, feel that you have sworn yourself to secrecy. But surely you know that neither you nor the patient have the right to conceal such information.”