by James White
“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 twitch- ing 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 dep
artment to reveal psychosen-sitive 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 nonper-sonal 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 wrongdoing 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 Mannen 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 needs 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 Som-maradva. 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.”
Lioren kept one eye directed toward the biosensors, watching for signs of respiratory distress following that long speech. He did not find any.
“The personal stuff, yes,” Mannen went on. “My earlier attempt to get you to shorten my waiting time here was not to become general knowledge, for it affected only myself and had no bearing on the treatment of a patient of a new species or that culture’s future relations with the Federation. The clinical or otherwise nonpersonal information you have been able to gather or deduce is pure knowledge that you have no right to keep to yourself. It should be available to everyone just as the operating principles of our scanners or the hyperdrive generators are available to those able to understand and use them without risk, although for a while in the bad old days the hyperdrive was considered to be a top secret, whatever that meant.
But knowledge is, well, knowledge. You might just as well try to keep secret a natural law. Have you tried explaining all this to your patient?”
“Yes,” Lioren said. “But when I suggested making the non-personal sections of our conversation public, and argued that it would not be breaking a confidence because it was clearly impractical to ask every single Groalterri in their population for their permission to reveal this information, it said that it would have to think carefully about its reply. I’m sure it would like to help us, but there may be a religious constraint, and I would not want to cause an adverse reaction through impatience. If it became angry, it is capable of tearing a hole through the structure and opening the ward to space.”
“Yes,” Mannen said, showing its teeth. “Children, no matter how large they happen to be, can sometimes throw tantrums. Regarding the religious aspect, there are many Earth-humans who believe that—”
It stopped speaking because suddenly the small room was being invaded, first by Chief Psychologist O’Mara, followed by Senior Physicians Seldal and Prilicla, who flew in and attached itself with spidery, sucker-tipped legs to the ceiling, where its fragile body would be in less danger from unguarded movements by its more physically massive colleagues. O’Mara nodded in acknowledgment of Lioren’s presence and bent over the patient. When it spoke its voice had a softness that Lioren had never heard before.
“I hear that you are talking to people again,” O’Mara said, “and that you especially want to talk to me, to ask a favor. How do you feel, old friend?”
Mannen showed its teeth and inclined its head in Seldal’s direction. “I feel fine, but why not ask the doctor?”