Sector General Omnibus 3 - General Practice

by James White

  O’Mara showed its teeth again. “The highly intelligent and hypersensitive Parents would avoid the Small as much as possible, because it is likely that making telepathic contact with such young and primitive minds would be unpleasant in the extreme. It is also probable that the Parents do not make contact because of the risk of damaging their young minds, and retarding their later philosophical development by trying to instruct them before their immature brains are physiologically ready to accept adult teaching.

  “That is the type of behavior we expect of a loving and responsible Parent.”

  Lioren turned all of his eyes on the aging Earth-human, trying vainly to find the words of respect and admiration that were suited to the occasion. Finally, he said, “Your words are not supposition. I believe them to describe the facts of the situation in every important respect. This information will greatly aid my understanding of Hellishomar’s emotional distress. I am truly grateful, sir.”

  “There is a way that you can show your gratitude,” O’Mara said.

  Lioren did not reply.

  O’Mara shook its head and looked past Lioren at the office door. “Before you leave,” it said, “there is information you should have and a question we would like you to ask the patient. Who requested medical assistance for it, and how? The usual communications channels were not used, and telepathy, originating as it does from an organic nondirectional transmitter of very low power, is supposed to be impossible at distances over a few hundred yards. There is also great mental discomfort when a telepath tries to force communication with a nontelepath.

  “But the facts,” the Chief Psychologist went on, “are that Captain Stillson, the commander of the orbiting contact ship, reported having a strange feeling. He was the only member of the crew to have this feeling, which he likened to a strong hunch that something was wrong on the planetary surface. Until then nobody had even considered making a landing on Groalter without permission from the natives, but Stillson took his ship down to the precise spot where the injured Hellishomar was awaiting retrieval and arranged to transport the patient without delay to Sector General, all because he had a very strong feeling that he should do these things. The captain insists that at no time was there any outside influence and that his mind remained his own.”

  Lioren was still trying to assimilate this new information, and wondering whether or not it should be given to the patient, when O’Mara spoke again.

  “It makes me wonder about the mental capabilities of the adult Groalterri,” it said in a voice so quiet that it might have been talking to itself. “If they do not, as now seems evident, communicate with their own young because of the risk of stunting subsequent mental and philosophical development, that must also be the reason they refuse all contact with our supposedly advanced cultures of the Federation.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Lioren’s next meeting with Hellishomar was very useful and intensely frustrating. It gave many interesting pieces of information about the life and behavior of the Small, and said that Lioren was free to discuss the material with others, but it seemed to be talking too much about a subject that was not on its mind. The Monitor Corps would be delighted with the details of Groalterri Small society that he was discovering, but Lioren had a strong feeling that the patient was talking to avoid talking about something else. After three hours of listening to information that was becoming repetitious, Lioren lost patience.

  During the next pause he said quickly, “Hellishomar, I am pleased and grateful, as will be my colleagues, for this information about your home world. But I would prefer to hear, and I have the feeling that you would prefer to speak, about yourself.”

  The Groalterri stopped talking.

  Lioren forced patience on himself and tried to find the right words of encouragement. Speaking slowly and with many pauses, so as to give Hellishomar every chance to interrupt his questions with an answer, he asked, “Are you concerned about your injuries? There is no need because Seldal assures me that the treatment, although delayed because of the size difference between surgeon and patient, is progressing well and your life is no longer threatened by the infection that has penetrated your body. Are you not a skilled Cutter and highly respected by the Small, who will soon welcome you back to continue the work of extending the lives of Parents? Surely these ailing Parents must also hold you in high regard because of the surgical skills that you can still—”

  “I have grown too large to help the Parents,” Hellishomar said suddenly, “or to continue as a Cutter. The Small will not want me, either. I am nothing but a failure and an embarrassment to all of them, and I am doubly ashamed because of the great wrong I have done.”

  Lioren wished that he had more time to think about the implications of this information, and his need to question Hellishomar more closely about it was like a great hunger in his mind. But he was moving into a sensitive area that had been approached before without success. It was likely that too many questions on this subject might seem to Hellishomar like an interrogation, might even imply a judgment and the apportioning of guilt on Lioren’s part. His instincts told him that this was a time for further encouragement rather than questions.

  “But surely you have grown in surgical experience as well as physical size,” Lioren said. “You have said as much yourself. Among many of the peoples of the Federation, an entity who has amassed great knowledge, and who is no longer capable of the physical work involved, makes that knowledge available to the young and less experienced members of its profession. You could become a teacher, Hellishomar. Your knowledge could be passed on to others of the Small who are sure to be grateful to you for it, as would the Parents for the lives you will indirectly have saved. Is this not so?”

  Hellishomar’s enormous tentacles moved restively, heaving like great, fleshy waves on an organic ocean. “It is not so, Lioren. The Small will pretend that I do not exist, so that my shame will drive me to the loneliest and most inhospitable part of the swamp that I can find, and the Parents … The Parents will ignore and never speak with their minds to me. There are precedents, thankfully a very few, in Groalterri history for what will happen to me. I will be an outcast for the whole of my very long life, with only my thoughts and my guilt for company, for that is the punishment I deserve.”

  The words, thought Lioren with a sudden rush of remembered pain and guilt, were an echo of those he had used so often to himself, and for a moment he could think of nothing but the Cromsaggar. Frantically he tried to return his mind to Hellishomar’s sin, which could not possibly be as grievous as that of wiping out a planetary population. Perhaps one of the Small, or even a Parent, had died because of something Hellishomar had or had not done. With Lioren’s crime there could be no real comparison.

  In an unsteady voice Lioren said, “I cannot know whether or not your punishment is deserved unless you tell me of the crime, or the sin, you have committed. I know nothing of Groalterri philosophy or theology, and I would be pleased to learn of these matters from you if you are allowed to discuss them. But from my recent studies I know that there is one factor common to all the religions practiced throughout the Federation, and that is forgiveness for sins. Are you sure the Parents will not forgive you?”

  “The Parents did not touch my mind,” Hellishomar replied. “If they did not do so before I left Groalter, they never will.”

  “Are you sure?” Lioren said again. “Did you know that the Parents touched the mind of the officer commanding the ship orbiting your planet? The touch was gentle and almost without trace, and it was the first and only time that a Groalterri made direct contact with an off-worlder, but nevertheless the captain was directed accurately to the place where you were dying.”

  Without giving Hellishomar time to respond, Lioren continued. “You have already told me that the Parents are hilosophically incapable of inflicting physical damage or pain, and that even the most skilled Cutters among the Small are too crude and awkward in their methods to undertake surgery on one of their own kind;
only the oldest and largest Parents become sick, the Small never. It is certain that your Small colleagues could never equal the delicacy and precision of the work performed by Seldal. You know this to be so, and you know also that if you had not been taken to this hospital you would be dead.

  “That being so,” Lioren went on quickly, “is it not possible, indeed is it not a certainty that the Parents responsible for your presence here have already forgiven you? By their willingness to break with Groalterri tradition to ask help from an off-planet species, have they not given proof that they have forgiven you, that they value you and are doing all that they can to help you return to full health?”

  While he had been speaking, the patient’s great body had remained absolutely motionless, but it was the stillness of extreme muscular tension rather than repose. Lioren hoped that the Hudlar nurse on the tractor beam was alert to the situation and ready to pull him out.

  “They spoke to a strange, Small-minded off worlder,” Hellishomar said, “but not to me.”

  Be careful, Lioren told himself warningly, this might be a very hurt and angry Groalterri. “I had assumed from what you told me earlier that the Parents did not touch the minds of the Small for any reason. Was I mistaken? What do they say to you?”

  Hellishomar’s great muscles were still fighting each other, and so evenly matched were they that its body remained motionless. “Are you less intelligent than I assumed, Lioren? Don’t you realize that the Small do not remain the Small forever? In preparation for the transition into adulthood of the most senior among us, the Parents touch our minds gently and instruct us in the great laws that guide and bind the long lives of the Parents. We are given the reasons why they seek to live for as long as possible in spite of sickness and physical pain—so that they may be adequately prepared to Go Out. All of these laws are passed on in simplified form to the very young among us by Small teachers who are on the verge of maturity.

  “I have waited with patience for the Parents to speak to me,” Hellishomar went on, “because I have grown old and large and should rightly have been a young Parent by now. But they do not speak to me. In Groalterri history there are precedents for my situation, a very few of them, fortunately, so I knew that a long, lonely, unhappy and uneventful mental life lay ahead of me. Then in my great despair I committed the most grievous sin of all, and now the Parents will never speak to me.”

  As the implications of what the other had been saying became clear to Lioren, a great wave of sympathy washed over his mind, and with it the growing excitement of being on the verge of a full understanding of Hellishomar’s problem. He was remembering Seldal’s description of the patient’s clinical condition and Hellishomar’s insistence that the Small were impervious to illness. Now he knew the nature of the great sin that Hellishomar had committed, because Lioren had come very close to committing it himself.

  He wished that there was some way that he could bring consolation to this gravely troubled being, or relieve the inner distress of knowing that among its own highly intelligent kind it was mentally retarded. That had been the reason Hellishomar had tried to end its own life.

  He said gently, “If the Parents touch the minds and speak to the Small who are nearing maturity, and for the first time to an off-worlder ship captain in the hope that your injuries could be successfully treated, then they must have a high regard, perhaps a great affection, for you. The reason they do not speak and tell you so is because you cannot hear them. Am I right, Hellishomar?”

  “To my shame,” Hellishomar replied, “you are right.”

  “It is possible,” Lioren said, carefully avoiding all mention of Hellishomar’s other shame, “that your future life will not be lonely. If embarrassment or other reasons keep the Small from talking to you, and you cannot hear the words of the Parents, there are others who would gladly speak and listen and learn from you. The off-worlders would be pleased to set up a base on the polar hard ground and make it as comfortable as possible for you. If the Parents do not allow this, you could be provided with communications devices which would enable two-way contact to be maintained from orbit. Admittedly, this would not be as satisfactory as full telepathic contact with the Parents, but many questions would be asked and answered by the off-worlders and yourself. Their curiosity about the Groalterri is as great as is yours about the Federation, and will require a long time to satisfy. It is said by many of our foremost thinkers that, to a truly intelligent entity, the satisfaction of curiosity is the greatest and most lasting of pleasures. You would not be lonely, Hellishomar, nor would there be little to occupy your mind.”

  Around and below Lioren the patient’s body was stirring although muscular tension was still evident.

  “You would not be exchanging mere words,” Lioren went on quickly, “or the verbal questions and answers and descriptions that have passed between us here. When you are well again, large-screen viewing facilities will be made available to you. The visuals will be three-dimensional and in full color. Not only will they show you the physical structure of the galaxy in which we live and the tiny fraction of it that is populated by the Federation, but display to you in as much detail as you desire the science and cultures and philosophies of the many and widely varied intelligent life-forms who are its members. Arrangements could be made that would enable you to question these life-forms and, visually and aurally, to live among many of them. Your life would be long, Hellishomar, but full and interesting so that the absence of Parent mental contact would not be so—”

  “No!”

  Once again the razor-edged, bony tip of a cutting tentacle whistled past Lioren’s head to crash against the wall plating. Surprise and fear paralyzed both his body and mind, but only for an instant. Before the metallic reverberations had died away he was talking urgently to the Hudlar in the Nurses’ Station, telling it not to pull him out. If Hellishomar had wanted that cutting blade to strike him, he would have been a bloody, dismembered corpse by now. With a great effort he forced himself to speak calmly.

  “Have I offended you?” Lioren asked. “I do not understand. If nobody else is willing to speak to you, why do you refuse contact with the Fed—”

  “Stop talking about it!” Hellishomar broke in, its voice loud and unmodulated as that of a person who could not hear itself speak. “I am unworthy, and you tempt me to an even greater sin.”

  Lioren was deeply puzzled by this sudden change in the other’s behavior, but decided to give the words and circumstances that had led up to it more serious thought at another time. He hoped that the ban on conversation referred to the one hypersensitive topic, whatever that was. But now he had to apologize without knowing what he was apologizing for.

  “If I have given offense,” Lioren said, “such was not my intention and I am truly sorry. What is it that I’ve said that offends you? We can discuss a subject of your choosing. The work of this hospital, for example, or the Monitor Corps’s continuing search for inhabited worlds in the unexplored reaches of our galaxy, or scientific disciplines practiced throughout the Federation that are unknown to a water world like Groalter—”

  Lioren broke off, his body and tongue alike paralyzed with fear. The razor edge of a cutting blade had swept up to within a fraction of an inch of his forebody and face. Any higher and it would have lopped off two of his eyestalks. Suddenly the flat of the blade pressed hard against his chin, chest, and abdomen, pushing him away. Hellishomar’s tentacle continued to uncurl to full extension, and the blade was not withdrawn until Lioren had been deposited back at the entrance to the Nurses’ Station.

  “Officially I have heard nothing,” said the Hudlar nurse on duty, after it had satisfied itself that Lioren was uninjured, “but unofficially I would say that the patient does not want to speak to you.”

  “The patient needs help …” Lioren began.

  He fell silent then because his thoughts were rushing far ahead of his words. The recent conversation with Hellishomar, together with the information he had already gathered
or deduced about the Groalterri culture, was forming a picture in his mind that grew clearer with every moment that passed. Suddenly he knew what had to be done to and for Hellishomar and the entities who were capable of doing it, but there were serious moral and ethical considerations that worried him. He was sure, or as sure as it was possible to be before the event, that he was right. But he had been right on a previous occasion, right and proud and impatient in his self-confidence, and the population of a world had all but died. He did not want to take on the responsibility for destroying another planetary culture, not alone.

  “And so do I,” he finished.

  CHAPTER 18

  He found Senior Physician Prilicla in the dining hall, its four sets of slowly beating, iridescent wings maintaining a stable hover above the tabletop while it ingested a yellow, stringy substance which the menu screen identified as Earth-human spaghetti. The process by which the little empath drew the strands from the platter and used its delicate forward manipulators to weave them into a fine, continuous rope which disappeared slowly into its eating mouth was one of the most fascinating sights that Lioren had ever seen.

  As he was about to apologize for interrupting the other’s meal, Lioren discovered that the musical trills and clicks of the Cinrusskin’s speech came from a different orifice.

  “Friend Lioren,” Prilicla said. “I can sense that you are not feeling hunger, or even repugnance at my unusual in-flight method of eating, and that your predominant feeling and probable reason for approaching me is curiosity. How may I satisfy it?”