by James White
“No,” he said. “Why, Nurse?”
The first thing he learned was that Hudlars did not have mouths. Instead they had what they called organs of absorption, and from there one question led to another.
The species had evolved to intelligence on a heavy-gravity world with a proportionately high atmospheric pressure. The lower reaches of its atmosphere resembled a thick, semiliquid soup filled with tiny, airborne forms of animal and vegetable life which were ingested by the absorption mechanism covering the Hudlars’ back and flanks; and, because they were an intensely energy-hungry species, the process was continuous. The home planet’s atmosphere was very difficult to reproduce, so that in off-world environments such as the hospital it had been found more convenient to spray them at regular intervals with a concentrated nutrient paint.
“Sometimes,” the nurse went on, “we concentrate too deeply on what we are doing and forget our next meal spray. When that happens we grow weak from the effects of accelerated malnutrition wherever we happen to be, and the first member of the medical or maintenance staff to come along, or even an ambulatory patient like yourself, revives us with a quick respray. There are racks of Hudlar food tanks in most of the main corridors and wards, including the one on the wall beside the nurses’ station. The sprayer mechanism is very easy to use, although I hope you will never have to use one on me.
“It disrupts the routine to have a Hudlar collapsing in the middle of a ward,” it continued, “and the nutrient makes a mess on the floor or nearby beds. That would severely irritate Charge Nurse Leethveeschi, and we would not want that to happen.”
“No, we wouldn’t,” he said, unable to imagine a severely irritated chlorine-breather but agreeing anyway. “But, but meals painted on from the outside… that’s terrible. I thought I had problems.”
“I am not the patient here, Patient Hewlitt,” said the nurse, “and your sensors are registering a high level of fatigue and I am being selfish by keeping you awake. Are you ready to go to sleep now?”
The thought of being left alone again, his dimly lit bed like a raft surrounded by a dark sea peopled with fearful alien monsters, with this one monstrous exception, brought the fear that had been held in check by their conversation to come rushing back. Hewlitt did not want to go to sleep, so he answered indirectly in the negative by asking another question.
“I don’t see how it could happen,” he said, “but do you people have the equivalent of stomach ache? Or do you ever take sick?”
“Never,” said the nurse. “You must try to sleep, Patient Hewlitt.”
“If you don’t take sick,” he persisted, fighting a conversational rearguard action, “why do Hudlars need doctors and nurses?”
“As very young children,” the other replied, “we are subject to a wide variety of diseases, but by puberty we develop a complete immunity to them which lasts until a few years before termination, when age-related psychological and physiological degeneration takes place. Diagnostician Conway is heading a project to train Hudlar medical staff who will alleviate the more distressing aspects of the condition, which responds only to major surgery, but the work has many years to go before the aged population as a whole will benefit.”
“Is this the work you are training to do?” Hewlitt asked. “To care for the Hudlar aged?”
The nurse had no features that he could read, because it had no face and the rest of its smooth, hard body was as expressionless as an inflated balloon. But when it replied it spoke quickly, giving him the feeling that it might be embarrassed or ashamed of its answer.
“No,” it said. “I am studying general other-species medicine and surgery. Within the Galactic Federation we Hudlars are a unique species. Because of the nature of our body tegument we are able to live and work in a great many hostile environments. We can survive pressure variations ranging from the very dense down to the vacuum of space, and we do not need an atmosphere in order to absorb our nutrient paint. Hudlars are greatly in demand for work in conditions where other species would be severely hampered by their environmental-protection equipment, and especially on space construction projects. A Hudlar medic with Sector General qualifications, who would be able to bring medical assistance to space construction workers of many different species without the timeconsuming necessity for donning protective garments, would be a valuable asset on-site.
“Ours has never been a rich planet,” it added. “No mineral resources, no fabricated items to trade, no scenery to attract visitors. It has nothing that anybody wants, except its immensely strong, tireless people who can work anywhere and are very well rewarded by the other Federation species for doing so.”
“And after you have achieved fame and fortune in space,” said Hewlitt, “I suppose you will settle down at home and have a large family?”
The nurse still seemed to be bothered about something. He wondered if it could be feeling ashamed for leaving home and training for a well-paid job in space and thereby ducking the responsibility for looking after an aged and sick relative. He should not have asked that question.
“I will have half of a large family,” it said.
“Again,” he said, “I do not understand you.”
“Patient Hewlitt,” it said, “you are not very well informed about Hudlars. I was born and currently remain in female mode, and I intend to continue in this form until I choose to mate for the purpose of procreation rather than pleasure. That is when the gravid female, myself, because of the physiological necessity for avoiding further sexual contact with my life-mate, changes gradually into male mode and, concurrently, my mate slowly becomes female. A Hudlar year after parturition, the changes to both are complete, the offspring requires diminishing attention, and the mother-that-was is ready to become a father-to-be and the father-that-was has the opportunity of bearing the next child. The process continues until the desired number of offspring is reached, usually an even number so that the childbearing is equally divided, after which the lifemates decide together on which one will remain in male or female mode for the rest of their lives.
“It is a very simple, balanced, and emotionally satisfying arrangement,” it went on. “I am surprised that the other intelligent species have not evolved this system.”
“Yes, Nurse,” said Hewlitt.
He could think of nothing else to say.
CHAPTER 5
Hewlitt had been lying awake or, more accurately, trying hard to stay awake because of the completely alien and unknown living nightmares sharing the ward with him as patients and medical staff. But now he was wondering if it was extreme fatigue that was dulling his emotional reactions and causing him to relax, because he could not imagine anything more alien than the spaceproof skin, weird eating habits, and routine sex changes of this friendly monstrosity, and it was no longer unknown.
“Nurse,” he said, “thank you for talking to me for so long. I think I can sleep now.”
“No,” said the Hudlar firmly. “I would advise against that, Patient Hewlitt. The day staff will be coming on duty in twenty minutes and they will be waking everyone so that they can be washed before the first meal is served. We have three other ambulatory patients here, and you may prefer not to share the washroom facilities with them on your first morning in the ward, so it might be more comfortable for you if you get in there and finish first.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Hewlitt without hesitation. “But I’m tired, Nurse. Can I wash later?”
“Bearing in mind your uneasiness in the close proximity of other species,” said the nurse, “I will not accompany you. Instead I will remain close by the washroom in case your personal monitor, which you must not remove while cleansing yourself, should signal an emergency condition or you request help because of unfamiliarity with the equipment.
“If a very high level of mental and physical fatigue is present,” it went on, “you have the option of taking a blanket bath. This operation would be carried out by our three junior trainees, a Melfan and two Kelgians, who would be pleased at the cha
nce to gain more experience in handling and bathing a nontraumatized Earthhuman like yourself. I know that they are particularly anxious to master the technique of scraping away the fur bristles that grow overnight on DBDG faces, and they would be pleased to perform this service for you.
Before it had finished speaking, Hewlitt had thrown back the covers and swung his feet onto the floor, where a pair of soft ward shoes were waiting for them. Then he stood up quickly and said, “I like your first suggestion better, Nurse.”
The Hudlar moved aside to allow him to leave.
About twenty minutes later he was climbing back into bed, feeling clean and fresh and less tired, when the ceiling lights brightened to full strength and the day staff came bustling along the ward. A Kelgian pushing a small trolley loaded with basins and towels poked its furry head and shoulders between the screens and said, “Good morning, Patient Hewlitt. You look clean. Are you?”
“Yes,” he said, and it disappeared.
A few minutes later he heard two patients approaching and then passing his bed on their way to the washroom. One seemed to be large and heavy and walking on more than four feet, while the other one moved with an irregular, tapping sound. He knew they were patients because one was complaining about being wakened when it had only just succeeded in getting to sleep, and the other was insisting that Leethveeschi was conducting illegal sleepdeprivation research and it was being brainwashed as well as waiting to have the croamsteti on its kuld duct replaced. His translator reproduced the original word sounds, so presumably there was no equivalent part of an Earth-human body. He sympathized with them, whatever they were, over their missed sleep.
He had just settled back in the bed and closed his eyes, and the sounds of the ward were beginning to fade, when the Kelgian nurse reappeared, this time carrying his breakfast on a tray. Or maybe it was another Kelgian. As yet he could not tell the difference between one outsize, furry caterpillar and another, and doubted if he ever would.
“Sit up and eat at the bedside table, Patient Hewlitt,” it said. “Your particular species is subject to digestive upsets with accompanying regurgitation, I have learned, if gravity is not allowed to aid the movement of food to the stomach. Enjoy.”
“I don’t want to eat, Nurse,” he said, trying hard to control his irritation, “I want to sleep. Please go away.
“Eat it, then sleep,” said the nurse. “Or try to eat some of it, or Charge Nurse Leethveeschi will eat me.”
“It would?” said Hewlitt, the return of his earlier fears bringing him fully awake. In this place it might not be joking.
“Of course not,” said the nurse. “But only because it is a chlorine-breather and my body meat would poison it.”
“All right, I’ll try,” he said, knowing that way out here in Sector General, as it had been on the ship, the food would be synthesized. But when he raised the tray cover to look inside and the odor wafted up, he realized how long it had been since he had eaten, and added, “It looks and smells very good, Nurse.”
“It is a visually disgusting and nauseating mess,” said the nurse, backing hurriedly through the screens, “and it smells even worse.
“You don’t have much tact, do you, Nurse?” said Hewlitt, but its multiple footfalls were already receding up the ward. Then another voice called out to him from the bed opposite, belonging, he recalled, to a Kelgian patient called Henredth.
“What is tact?” it said.
Hewlitt ignored the question and tried to close his ears to the other questions that followed it until he had finished his breakfast, after which his eyes closed by themselves.
He wakened to the sound of quiet, alien voices and the sight of the screen that was still around his bed, which made him realize where he was. But somehow the realization was not as terrifying as it had been yesterday and, after a few minutes listening through his translator, he pressed the button that raised his bed screens.
Hewlitt saw at once that the Ian who had been in the bed beside his, Patient Makolli, had been moved while he had been asleep, because there was an Orligian lying there now. He recognized the species at once because it was the same as that of the medical officer on Treevendar, but this specimen seemed much older. The parts of it that were not hidden by the blankets-its head, arms, and upper chest-were covered by reddish brown fur that was streaked with grey. It was wearing a personal monitor like his own as well as a translator, but it took no notice of him. He was not sure whether it was asleep, anesthetized, or being antisocial.
In the bed opposite, Patient Kletilt had moved its viewscreen to what, for a Melfan, must have been a more convenient position for viewing in bed. Its eyes were hidden by the back of the set and it did not appear to be interested in anything or anyone but the program it was watching. Hewlitt had not known that his set could be swung over the bed like that and he made a mental note to experiment with it later.
In the bed beside Kletilt the Kelgian patient, Henredth, and a nurse belonging to a species he had never seen before, were talking together, but so quietly that his translator missed most of what they were saying. Beyond them there was a huge, elephantlike creature that he recognized as being a Tralthan. Instead of lying in a bed it stood on its six blocky legs, surrounded by a complicated framework to which was attached the harness that held it upright. He remembered reading somewhere that Tralthans did everything including sleeping on their feet, and even the healthy ones had great difficulty getting up again if they fell onto their sides.
He was still thinking about that and wondering why the creature was in hospital when Senior Physician Medalont, followed by Charge Nurse Leethveeschi, emerged from the nurses’ station. They skittered and squelched respectively along the center of the aisle, speaking to nobody and looking only in Hewlitt’s direction. He knew what the doctor’s first words would be.
“How are we feeling today, Patient Hewlitt?”
“Fine,” he replied, as it knew he would.
“Patient Hewlitt’s monitor readout since its arrival,” said Leethveeschi, “supports its nonclinical and subjective selfassessment. The patient appears to be in optimum health.”
“Good,” said the senior physician, clicking one of its pincers together in a gesture that might have signified approval but that looked threatening. “I would like to have another long talk with you, Patient Hewlitt, this time covering the episode that resulted in your first admission to an Earth hospital when you…
“But you already have that information,” Hewlitt broke in. “It’s in my case history, in much more detail than I could possibly remember now. There is nothing wrong with me, at least not right now. Instead of wasting time talking to me, surely you could visit patients who are more in need of attention?”
“They received attention,” Leethveeschi joined in, “while you were sleeping. Now it’s your turn. But Patient Hewlitt is right. I have more important things to do than listen to two healthy beings talking to each other. Do you need me here, Doctor?”
“Thank you, no, Charge Nurse,” Medalont replied. It returned its attention to Hewlitt and went on, “I am not wasting my time talking to you, because I am hoping that today, or sometime soon, you will tell me something that is not in your case history, something that will enable me to solve this clinical conundrum… .
The interrogation resumed at the point where it had ended the previous day, and it seemed to last forever. If Hewlitt could have read the other’s bony exoskeletal features, he felt sure that they would have been registering disappointment. But they were forced to break off when the voice of the charge nurse spoke from his bedside viewer. Until then he had not known that the device included a communicator.
“Doctor,” said Leethveeschi, “the midday meal is due in thirty minutes. Will you be finished with your patient by then?”
“Yes, at least for today,” said Medalont. To Hewlitt it went on, “I try to do something more for our patients than bore them to death with questions. We will need to make a series of tests, which means me tak
ing samples of your blood for path lab investigation. Don’t worry about it; the process is completely painless. Please uncover your upper arm.
“You-you’re not supposed to give me anything that might… began Hewlitt.
“I know, I know,” said the doctor, its rapid, clicking speech sounding more impatient than usual. “If you remember, it was I who told you that you are to receive no medication of any kind until we have identified the condition we are treating, which is why I require a fairly large sample. I am withdrawing blood, Patient Hewlitt, not injecting medication. You will feel nothing, but if the sight distresses you then close your eyes.
He had never been distressed by the sight of his own blood, at least not in the number of small quantities that the doctor seemed to consider a large sample. When it was over, Medalont thanked him and said that it would have to hurry if it was to make a lunch meeting on time.
As the doctor had promised, Hewlitt had not felt a thing, and a small area of nonsensation persisted inside the fold of his elbow where the samples had been withdrawn. He relaxed back into the pillows but decided to stay awake until after lunch by watching and listening to the other patients who were within range of his translator. Compared to his blind near-panic of yesterday, he was surprised by the growing curiosity he was feeling about them.
Hewlitt did not know how much time went by, because it was too much trouble to bother lifting his wrist to look at his watch. He continued to feel fine, comfortable, without pain, and very curious about the thick, grey fog that had drifted into the ward and was keeping him from seeing the other beds. The sounds of the ward, too, were fading, but he was able to see and hear the flashing red light and the strident beeping noises coming from the monitor on his chest, and Charge Nurse Leethveeschi looming over him and shouting into its communicator.
“Bed eighteen, classification DBDG Earth-human. Two-plus minutes into cardiac and respiratory arrest. Resuscitation team, move!”
Something like a column of oily seaweed projected from Leethveeschi’s body and pushed a bulge in the creature’s protective envelope to flop onto Hewlitt’s chest. He felt the steady, regular pressure of a heart massage, and the last thing he saw was the charge nurse leaning closer.