by James White
“No!” Braithwaite said sharply, the hairy crescents on its face lowering so that they almost hid its eyes. “You must not question the subject directly. If you should discover anything amiss, report it to O’Mara and do or say nothing to Seldal itself. You will please remember that.”
“I am unlikely to forget,” Lioren said quietly, “what happened the last time I used my initiative.”
For a moment there was neither sound nor movement from Cha Thrat or Braithwaite, but the Earth-human’s facial pigmentation was deepening in color. Lioren went on. “I was about to say that I would have to question Seldal’s patients, discreetly, in the hope of detecting by hearsay any unusual changes in the subject’s behavior during its visits before and after surgery. For this I need a list and present locations of Seldal’s post-op patients and the timing of its ward rounds so that I can talk to them without meeting the subject itself. To avoid comment by the ward staff concerned it would be better if someone other than myself requested this information.”
Braithwaite nodded its head. “A sensible precaution. But what will be your excuse for speaking to these patients and for talking to them about Seldal?”
“The reason I shall give for visiting them,” Lioren replied, “will be to ask for any comments or criticism they may have regarding the environmental aspects of their various recovery wards, since this is an important nonmedical aid to recuperation and the department carries out such checks from time to time. I shall not ask the patients about their medical condition or their surgeon. But I have no doubt that both subjects will arise naturally and, while pretending disinterest, I shall gather as much information as I can.”
“A finely woven, intricate, and well-concealed spell,” Cha Thrat said before Braithwaite could speak. “My compliments, Lioren. Already you show promise of becoming a great wizard.”
Braithwaite nodded its head again. “You seem to be covering all eventualities. Is there any other information or help you need?”
“Not at present,” Lioren said.
He was not being completely truthful, because he wanted clarification of Cha Thrat’s compliment, which, to a highly qualified former medic like himself, had verged on the insulting. Perhaps “spell” and “wizard,” which were words that Cha Thrat used frequently, had different meanings on Sommaradva than on Tarla. But it seemed that his curiosity was soon to be satisfied, because the Sommaradvan wanted to see a Tarlan trainee wizard at work.
The choice of the first patient was forced on him because the other two were beginning their rest periods and Psychology Department staff had no authority to intervene during clinical treatment, which included interrupting a patient’s sleep. The interview promised to be the most difficult and delicate of the three cases Braithwaite had listed for him.
“Are you sure you want to talk to this one, Lioren?” Cha Thrat asked with the small upper-limb movements that he had learned signified deep concern. “This is a very sensitive case.”
Lioren did not reply at once. It was a truism accepted on every inhabited world of the Federation that medics made the worst patients. Not only was this one a healer of the highest professional standing, the interview would have to be conducted with great care because patient Mannen’s condition was terminal.
“I dislike wasting time,” Lioren said finally, “or an opportunity.”
“Earlier today,” Cha Thrat said, “you told Braithwaite that you had learned your lesson regarding the too-free use of initiative. With respect, Lioren, it was impatience and your refusal to waste time that caused the Cromsag Incident.”
Lioren did not reply.
Mannen was an Earth-human DBDG, of advanced age for that comparatively short-lived species, who had come to Sector General after graduating with the highest honors at its home world’s foremost teaching hospital. It had quickly been promoted to Senior Physician and within a few years to the post of Senior Tutor, when its pupils had included such present members of the medical hierarchy as Conway, Prilicla, and Edanelt, until it relinquished the position to Cresk-Sar on its elevation to Diagnostician. Inevitably the time had come when the establishment’s most advanced medical and mechanical aids were no longer capable of extending its life, even though its level of mentation remained as sharp and clear as that of a young adult.
Ex-Diagnostician and current-patient Mannen lay in a private compartment off the main DBDG medical ward, with biosensors monitoring its vital signs and the usual life-support mechanisms absent at its own request. Its clinical condition was close to critical but stable, and its eyes had remained closed, indicating that it was probably unconscious or asleep. Lioren had been surprised and pleased when they found the patient unattended, because Earth-humans were numbered among the intelligent species who liked the company of family or friends at ending of life. But his surprise had disappeared when the ward’s Charge Nurse informed them that the patient had had numerous visitors who had left or been sent away within a few moments of arrival.
“Let us leave before it awakens,” Cha Thrat said very quietly. “Your excuse for being here, to ask if it is satisfied with the room’s environmental system, is, in the circumstances, both ridiculous and insensitive. Besides, not even O’Mara can work a spell on an unconscious mind.”
For a moment Lioren studied the monitor screens, but he could not recall the values he had learned so long ago regarding the measurement of Earth-human life processes. This room was a quiet and private place, he thought, in which to ask personal questions.
“Cha Thrat,” he asked softly, “what precisely do you mean by working a spell?”
It was a simple question that required a long and complicated answer, and the process was neither shortened nor simplified by Cha Thrat breaking off every few minutes to look worriedly toward the patient.
The Sommaradvan culture was divided into three distinct levels of person — serviles, warriors, and rulers — and the medical fraternities responsible for their welfare were similarly stratified.
At the bottom were the serviles, people who were unwilling to strive for promotion and whose work was undemanding, repetitious, and completely without risk because in their daily lives they were protected against gross physical damage. The healers charged with their care were physicians whose treatments were purely medical. The second level, much less numerous than the serviles, were the warriors, who occupied positions of great responsibility and, in the past, considerable physical danger.
There had been no war on Sommaradva for many generations, but the warrior class had kept the name because they were the descendants of the people who had fought to protect their homelands, hunted for food, and raised defenses against predatory beasts while the serviles saw to their physical needs. Now they were the technicians, engineers, and scientists who still performed the high-risk or the most prestigious duties, which included the protection of rulers. For this reason the injuries sustained by warriors had usually been traumatic in nature, requiring surgical intervention or repair rather than medication, and this work was the responsibility of the warrior-surgeons. At the top of Sommaradva’s medical tree were the ruler-healers, who had even greater responsibilities and, at times, much less reward or satisfaction in their work.
Protected against all risk of physical injury, the ruler class were the administrators, academics, researchers, and planners on Sommaradva. They were the people charged with the smooth running of the cities and the world, and the ills which affected them were principally the phantasms of the mind. Their healers dealt only in wizardry, spells, sympathetic magic, and all the other practices of nonphysical medicine.
“Naturally,” Cha Thrat said, “as our culture advanced socially and scientifically an overlapping of responsibilities occurred. Serviles occasionally fracture a limb, or the mental stresses encountered while studying for promotion sometimes threaten the sanity of the mind concerned, or a ruler succumbs to a servile digestive upset, all of which necessitates healers practicing above or below their class.
“Sin
ce earliest times,” the Sommaradvan concluded, “our practitioners of healing have been divided into physicians, surgeons, and wizards.”
“Thank you,” Lioren said. “Now I understand. It is merely a matter of semantic confusion combined with a too-literal translation. To you a spell is psychotherapy which can be short and simple or long and complicated, and the wizard responsible for it is simply a psychologist who—”
“It is not a psychologist!” Cha Thrat said fiercely; then, remembering the patient, it lowered its voice again and went on, “Every non-Sommaradvan I have met makes the same mistake. On my world a psychologist is a being of low status who tries to be a scientist by measuring brain impulses or bodily changes brought about by physical and mental stress, and by making detailed observations of the subject’s subsequent behavior. A psychologist tries to impose immutable laws in an area of nightmares and changing internal realities, and attempts to make a science of what has always been an art, an art practiced only by wizards.
“A wizard will use or ignore the instruments and tabulations of the psychologists,” the Sommaradvan continued before Lioren could speak, “to cast spells that influence the complex, insubstantial structures of the mind. A wizard uses words, silences, minute observation, and most important, intuition, to uncover and gradually reorient the sick, internal reality of the patient to the external reality of the world. There is a great difference between a mere psychologist and a wizard.”
The other’s voice had been rising again but the sensors reported no change in the patient’s condition.
It was obvious to Lioren that the Sommaradvan had few opportunities to talk freely about its home planet and the few friends it had left there or to relieve its feelings about the intolerance of its professional peers that had forced it to come to Sector General. It went on to relate in detail the disruption its particularly rigid code of professional ethics had caused throughout the hospital until its eventual rescue by the wizard O’Mara, and its own personal feelings and reactions to all these events. Plainly Cha Thrat wanted, perhaps badly needed, to talk about itself.
But confidences invited more confidences, and Lioren began to wonder if he, the one member of the Tarlan species on the hospital staff speaking like this to its only Sommaradvan, did not have the same need. Gradually there was developing a two-way exchange in which the questions and answers were becoming very personal indeed.
Lioren found himself telling Cha Thrat about his feelings during and after the Cromsag Incident, of the guilt that was terrible beyond words or belief, and of his helpless fury at the Monitor Corps and O’Mara for refusing him the death he so fully deserved and for sentencing him instead to the ultimate cruelty of life.
At that point Cha Thrat, who must have sensed his increasing emotional distress, firmly steered the conversation onto O’Mara and the Chief Wizard’s reasons for taking them into its department, and from there to the assignment that had brought him here in the hope of gathering information from a patient who was plainly in no condition to give it.
They were still discussing Seldal and wondering aloud whether they should try talking to Mannen the next day, if it should survive that long, when the supposedly unconscious patient opened its eyes and looked at them.
“I, that is, we apologize, sir,” Cha Thrat said quickly. “We assumed that you were unconscious because your eyes remained closed since our arrival and the biosensor readings showed no change. I can only assume that you realized our mistake, and because we were discussing matters of a confidential nature, you maintained the pretense of sleep out of politeness to avoid causing us great embarrassment.”
Mannen’s head moved slowly from side to side in the Earth-human gesture of negation, and it seemed that the eyes staring up at him were in some clinically inexplicable fashion younger than the rest of the patient’s incredibly wrinkled features and time-ravaged body. When it spoke, the words were like the whispering of the wind through tall vegetation and slowed with the effort of enunciation.
“Another … wrong assumption,” it said. “I am … never polite.”
“Nor do we deserve politeness, Diagnostician Mannen,” Lioren said, forcing his mind and his voice to the surface of a great, hot sea of embarrassment. “I alone am responsible for this visit, and the blame for it is entirely mine. My reason for coming no longer seems valid and we shall leave at once. Again, my apologies.”
One of the thin, emaciated hands lying outside the bed covering twitched feebly, as if it would have been raised in a nonverbal demand for silence if the arm muscles had possessed sufficient strength. Lioren stopped speaking.
“I know … your reason for coming,” Mannen said, in a voice barely loud enough to carry the few inches to its bedside translator. “I overheard everything … you said about Seldal … as well as yourself. Very interesting it was … But the effort of listening to you … for nearly two hours … has tired me … and soon my sleep will not be a pretense. You must go now.”
“At once, sir,” Lioren said.
“And if you wish to return,” Mannen went on, “come at a better time … because I want to ask questions as well as listen to you. But the visit should not be long delayed.”
“I understand,” Lioren said. “It will be very soon.”
“Perhaps I will be able to help you … with the Seldal business and in return … you can tell me more about Cromsag … and do me another small favor.”
The Earth-human Mannen had been a Diagnostician for many years. Its help and understanding of the Seldal problem would be invaluable, especially as it would be given willingly and without the need of him having to waste time hiding the reason for his questions. But he also knew that the price he would have to pay for that assistance in inflaming wounds that could never heal would be higher than the patient realized.
Before he could reply, Mannen’s lips drew back slowly in the peculiar Earth-human grimace which at times could signify a response to humor or a nonverbal expression of friendship or sympathy.
“And I thought I had problems,” it said.
CHAPTER 11
LlOREN’s subsequent visits were lengthier, completely private, and not nearly as painful as he had feared.
He had asked Hredlichi, the Charge Nurse on Mannen’s ward, to inform him immediately whenever the patient was conscious and in a condition to receive visitors, regardless of the time of the hospital’s arbitrary day or night that should be. Before agreeing, Hredlichi had checked with the patient, who hitherto had refused visits from everyone except for the ward rounds of its surgeon, and been greatly surprised when Mannen agreed to receive nonmedical visits only from Lioren.
Cha Thrat had explained it was insufficiently motivated to be willing to interrupt its sleep or drop other, more urgent work at a moment’s notice to pursue the Seldal investigation — which was, after all, Lioren’s responsibility — although it would continue to assist Lioren in any other way which did not involve major personal inconvenience. As a result, the first visit to Mannen had been the only one at which the Sommaradvan had been present.
By the third visit, Lioren was feeling relieved that Mannen did not want to talk exclusively about the Cromsaggar, disappointed that his understanding of Seldal’s behavior was no clearer, and embarrassed that the patient was spending an increasing proportion of each visit talking about itself.
“With respect, Doctor,” Lioren said after one particularly argumentative self-diagnosis, “I am not in possession of an Earth-human Educator tape which would enable me to give an opinion in your case nor, as a member of the Psychology Department, am I allowed to practice medicine. Seldal is your physician-in-charge and it—”
“Talks to me as if … I was a drooling infant,” Mannen broke in. “Or a frightened, terminal patient. At least you don’t … try to administer … a lethal overdose … of sympathy.
You are here to … obtain information about Seldal and, in return, to satisfy my curiosity … about you. No, I am not so much afraid of dying … as having t
oo much time to think about it.”
“Is there pain, Doctor?” Lioren asked.
“You know there is no pain, dammit,” Mannen replied in a voice made stronger by its anger. “In the bad old days there might have been pain, and inefficient painkilling medication that so depressed the functioning of the involuntary muscle systems that … the major organs went into failure and the medication killed the patient as well as its pain … so that its medic escaped with the minimum of ethical self-criticism and … its patient was spared a lingering death. But now we have learned how to negate pain without harmful side effects … and there is nothing I can do but wait to see which of my vital organs … will be the first to expire from old age.
“I should not,” Mannen ended, its voice dropping to a whisper again, “have allowed Seldal loose in my intestines. But that blockage was … really uncomfortable.”
“I sympathize,” Lioren said, “because I, too, wish for death. But you can look back with pride and without pain to your past and to an ending that will not be long delayed. In my past and future lies only guilt and desolation that I must suffer until—”
“Do you really feel sympathy, Lioren?” Mannen broke in. “You impress me as being nothing but a proud and unfeeling … but very efficient organic healing machine. The Cromsag Incident … showed that the machine had a flaw. You want to destroy the machine … while O’Mara wants to repair it. I don’t know which of you will succeed.”
“I would never,” Lioren said harshly, “destroy myself to avoid just punishment.”
“To an ordinary member of the staff,” Mannen went on, “I would not say such … personally hurtful things. I know you feel you deserve them … and worse … and you expect no apology from me. But I do apologize … because I am hurting in a way that I did not believe possible … and am striking out at you … and I ignore my friends when they visit me in case they discover … that I am nothing but a vindictive old man.”