by James White
“Dr. Cerdal, we are competing for the same job,” Braithwaite said after one of them, “but that doesn’t mean we have to dislike each other now or when one of us, or perhaps neither of us, is successful. But lately you have been displaying signs of a growing personal hostility toward me. Why?”
“It’s not only you,” said Cerdal without looking up, “but you are particularly irritating with your continual advice that is nothing but thinly veiled criticism. You gave me a patient who is visually loathsome, unfriendly, and has now refused even to speak to me. Tunneckis is, is impossible. I’ve spent days on end with it since it came out of surgery. You gave me the assignment knowing that I would fail, fail both to provide therapy for a stupid, uncooperative patient and to impress O’Mara with my fitness for its position. You and the others have shown me that strangers are not welcome here.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Braithwaite. “We’re all strangers here, and some of us are a lot stranger than others, at least until we get to know each other. Lioren, Cha Thrat, or I could have taken the case, but you said that you had never before treated a telepath and it would be a challenge. You specifically asked for the assignment. I decided to give it to you.”
“But without obtaining your superior’s permission?” said Cerdal. “It was solely your own decision, correct?”
“Yes,” Braithwaite replied. He hesitated for a moment before going on, “As the new administrator, O’Mara has nondepartmental business to attend to at present. You know this. He instructed me to take full responsibility for such assignment decisions, which I did. Would you like to be relieved of the Tunneckis case?”
Cerdal looked up from its plate to stare at him for a moment; then it said, “Is that what you want, Braithwaite, to see me fail? But no matter. Following several days of attempted therapy I’ve come to regard the patient as a stupid, obdurate, disrespectful, personally repulsive, and worthless being who should not have so much of my time wasted on it. If O’Mara had given me the assignment, he would have wanted me to fail, too, just like the rest of you. And don’t waste my time or insult my intelligence with your lying, Earth-human protestations of innocence. And now I expect you’ll run as fast as those long, misshapen Earth-human legs will carry you to tell your chief exactly what I said with, I’ve no doubt, a few embellishments?”
Braithwaite felt his face reddening. He opened his mouth to speak, then brought his teeth together again with an audible click as he tried to impose calm on himself. In an angry Kelgian such a conversational exchange might have been excusable, but his first assessment of Cerdal was that it was a cool, self-assured, smoothtalking diplomat who was in complete control of its emotions. That impression had been shared by everyone else in the department during the job interview. So what he was seeing here was a serious, completely uncharacteristic, and potentially dangerous change in behavior which was verging on outright paranoia and possibly xenophobia. It was his duty to report such sudden and uncharacteristic personality changes to O’Mara. But he didn’t want to do that until he could also include the reason behind it.
“Doctor,” he said quietly, “are you feeling all right?”
Cerdal didn’t answer; instead it left the table without excusing itself.
He couldn’t approach Tunneckis directly for information, Braithwaite thought as he finished his meal, because it was Cerdal’s patient and that, in the other’s present touchy state of mind, would cause even more offense. But as a psychologist, O’Mara was constantly reminding him, indirection was the most well-used tool of his trade. Besides, it was information on Cerdal and not its patient that he needed, and that could be more easily obtained through a third party.
Culcheth was the Kelgian charge nurse on the mixed-species surgical recovery ward which included, at a distance sufficient to minimize the telepathic radiation of the other patients, the isolation chamber that housed Tunneckis. Because Culcheth was a Kelgian, Braithwaite would not have to waste time on misdirection or making tangential approaches.
“Charge Nurse, how is patient Tunneckis doing?” said Braithwaite. “This isn’t a visit, I just wanted to know your feelings regarding the patient. Is it friendly, cooperative?”
“Patient Tunneckis is doing as well as can be expected,” Culcheth replied, its fur spiking in irritation, “but neither of the diagnosticians will tell me what their expectations are. It cooperates because it has no choice. It is not friendly and I will say no more about it.”
The other couldn’t lie but it could refuse to speak. Braithwaite tried again.
“Our new psychologist has been attempting to treat it,” he said. “What do you think about Dr. Cerdal?”
Culcheth’s fur became even more agitated. “That, that organic black hole,” it said. “Its fur doesn’t move and it’s disgusting and its eyes… It’s like a nightmare I used to have as a child when—”
“But surely,” Braithwaite broke in, “you’ve grown out of childish nightmares? Especially in a place like this where you meet and work with them every day?”
“I still don’t like it,” said Culcheth. “Neither do my nursing staff. We won’t be happy until both Tunneckis and Cerdal leave the hospital.”
The charge nurse would say no more, and when he persisted with the questioning it became personally abusive. Kelgians always said what they thought, but this one, he was beginning to realize, wasn’t thinking straight.
O’Mara was spending a few hours in the luxurious administrator’s office when Braithwaite arrived looking cool and impeccable but more worried than usual.
“As I remember,” he said, pointing to the nearest chair, “you were supposed to handle your own problems for a while. If you’ve come up against one you can’t solve, for your sake I hope it’s serious. Briefly, what is it?”
“I think it’s very serious, sir,” said the lieutenant, “but I can’t be brief.”
“Try,” said O’Mara.
“Sir,” said Braithwaite, “we are all aware that you have introduced an element of competitiveness among the candidates for your job. That being so, I must first assure you that in no way have I tried to place Cerdal in a situation beyond its level of competence, or undermine its position in any way that would make it look bad and so eliminate it from the competition. I wouldn’t be comfortable doing that and with respect, sir, I’m not sure I want your job that much.”
“So Cerdal is the problem,” said O’Mara. “Are you still trying to solve it?”
The lieutenant nodded. “I feel sure that Cerdal is showing increasing signs of emotional disturbance,” he said. “Over the past few days it has displayed sudden and marked changes in personality and behavior, but that may be only a small part of a greater problem, the part that came to my attention first. I now have reasons to believe that a surgical post-op patient called Tunneckis, currently in recovery and in need of psychological suppport, may also be involved as well as a presently unknown number of other-species medical staff I’m also aware of a subjective change in my own personality. Without being overtly insubordinate, I no longer feel quite so frightened of or even respectful toward those in authority, including yourself, sir.
“Lieutenant,” said O’Mara dryly, “I’ve been hoping for years to hear you say that. Go on.”
“Sir?” said the other, looking puzzled, then went on, “I’m still trying, or maybe just hoping, to solve this problem by myself, but I will need the cooperation of senior department heads, certain members of their medical staff, and maybe their technical-support and maintenance personnel as well. I don’t have the rank to request the kind of help I need but you do, which is why I’m here. But frankly, sir, I’m not sure myself what is going on except that—”
O’Mara held up a hand. “Whose help do you need?”
“Initially,” Braithwaite replied promptly, “Diagnosticians Thornnastor and Conway, because I don’t think that ordinary minds will be able to solve this problem. If there is a problem, that is, and it isn’t simply a case of me scaring myself u
nnecessarily. And Senior Physician Prilicla will be needed for a precise analysis of the emotional radiation of the people involved, and you, of course, for your other-species psychiatric experience. Depending on developments there may be others.”
“Is that all?” said O’Mara with heavy sarcasm. “Are you quite sure it’s Cerdal and not yourself who’s emotionally disturbed?”
“Sir,” said Braithwaite, “this matter is serious. And it may be urgent.”
O’Mara continued to stare at Braithwaite’s face for a moment, while the other stared unblinkingly at his, which was very unusual behavior for the lieutenant. “Tell me exactly what help you need, begining with mine.”
Braithwaite gave a relieved sigh, then went on quickly, “First I’d like you to open Cerdal’s psych profile to me, or better yet, discuss its contents. From its initial job interview and during a few later conversations with it, I formed the opinion that it was a stable, well-integrated, if a trifle self-important, personality…
“You mean bigheaded,” said O’Mara.
… who would have no difficulty adapting to the multiplicity of life-forms we have here,” the other went on. “Over the past few days, since I assigned patient Tunneckis to it at its own request, Cerdal has displayed a marked change in its professional and social behavior, and there are clear indications of a worsening case of xenophobia. This behavior seems to me to be totally uncharacteristic in the entity I thought I knew. I made discreet inquiries and discovered that the people with whom it had had recent contact also noticed a change for the worse in its behavior, so much so that some of them have come to dislike it so much that they can barely bring themselves to speak to it anymore, and they, too, are exhibiting xenophobic behavior, of a lower intensity.
“I know that a mental abnormality isn’t contagious,” Braithwaite went on quickly, “whether it stems from patient Tunneckis or Dr. Cerdal. But Tunneckis is the one common factor in all this because Cerdal, and to a lesser extent the people associated with the patient’s post-op medical care, are the only ones affected. Ridicubus as the idea sounds, the mental-contagion theory has to be eliminated from the investigation before I clutch at some other stupid straw.”
The lieutenant took a deep breath and continued, “There could be a simple explanation for this behavior if Tunneckis bears a physical resemblance to something or someone in its past life about which Cerdal has a deeply buried phobia or if, during the course of Cerdal’s therapy, the patient has revealed something about itself that triggered this extreme phobic reaction. That’s why I wanted to look at its psych profile.”
O’Mara nodded, tapped keys on his console, then swung the screen around so that they both could read it.
“Move closer, Lieutenant,” he said, “and be my guest.”
Without appearing to do so, he was studying the information on the screen as intently as Braithwaite was doing. When they were finished the other sighed, sat back, and shook his head. O’Mara allowed a little sympathy to enter his voice.
“Sorry, Lieutenant,” he said, “this is the profile of a person who is in all respects sane, well-adjusted, and completely lacking in xenophobic tendencies.”
Braithwaite shook his head again, stubbornly. “But, sir, that isn’t the profile of Cerdal as it is now. That’s why I need Prilicla to do an emotional-radiation reading on everyone concerned, beginfling with Cerdal and Tunneckis. And I want to know the details of what was done to the patient and, if there was any chance that the procedure was likely to cause more than the simple post-op depression, why we weren’t told about it. I’ve learned that the procedure involved some very delicate work and that Thornnastor and Conway insisted on doing it themselves. I feel sure something is badly wrong here, but I don’t know what exactly. Our two top diagnosticians are in the habit of coming up with answers to some very strange questions and maybe they’ll do it again, if only it is to tell me that I’m making a fool of myself…
He hesitated and for a moment the old, self-effacing Braithwaite returned as he added,”… which I probably am?
“Possibly you are, Lieutenant, not probably,” said O’Mara. He swung the screen around to face him again, hit the communications key for the outer office, and went on briskly, “Get Thornnastor, Conway, and Priicla up here at once… No, hold while I rephrase that…? In an undertone to Braithwaite he said, “Dammit, Lieutenant, I keep forgetting my new eminence and the need for politeness and fake humility that is supposed to go with the job.” In a conversational tone he resumed, “Please locate and contact Diagnosticians Thornnastor and Conway and Senior Physician Prilicla, give them my compliments and tell them that their presence is required urgently in Administrator O’Mara’s office?
Braithwaite smiled. “Sir,” he said, “I couldn’t have worded that better myself.”
O’Mara ignored the compliment and added, “You stay where you are, Lieutenant. I don’t want to sound bike a fool to those three by relaying your suspicions to them secondhand. I know you don’t know what is going on, but before they arrive I want you to tell me what the hell you think is going on.”
CHAPTER 28
The world was known as Kerm in the language of its inhabitants, which was their spoken and written word for “world”. They didn’t often use those forms of communication, but their telepathic range was restricted to their own-planet species and did not extend to joining with the minds of the members of the startraveling other-worlders who made contact with them, including those of the Monitor Corps who asked and were granted permission to establish a cultural-study facility on their planet. While agreeing to its presence, they insisted that it be sited in an uninhabited area because, regardless of the species concerned, they received the closer-range thoughts of its personnel as a constant and distressing barrage of mental static. As a result the base was maintained in a state of voluntary mental quarantine and all messages between them were exchanged via sound or vision communicators.
Physiologically the Kermi were classification VBGM, the V prefix indicating the telepathic faculty in an otherwise unexceptional warm-blooded oxygen-breathing life-form. Their body mass was similar to that of an average Earth-human but that, apart from a high degree of intelligence, was all that they had in common. Visually they resembled large, dark-brown slugs whose means of locomotion was a wide apron of muscle attached to the underside rather than legs. A cluster of three short tentacles, each terminating in four digits, grew from the tops of their heads. They were totally lacking in natural weapons of attack or defense.
The species had climbed to the top of the evolutionary tree by using their telepathic faculty alone, either to avoid danger or to cause the danger, in the shape of natural enemies, to avoid them. Too weak to fight and too slow to run, they learned how to control the minds of any predators who posed an imminent threat to either turn the predators against one another or to disappear from the attackers’ mental and sensory map. In time they widened the process by making use of these lesser life-forms to work for them and to maintain a balanced planetary ecology of flora and fauna and, ultimately, to give their nonsapient brothers who had helped them to develop their present civilization the protection they had earned and deserved.
There was a moment’s silence in the room while Diagnostician Conway, who had been giving the potted history of the Kerma culture, paused to look around at O’Mara, Braithwaite, Thornnastor, Prilicla, and back to O’Mara. When he went on there was a hint of embarrassment in his tone.
“Medical science on Kerm is pretty basic” he said, “and when a life-threatening condition arises with no possibility of a cure, there is nothing much that their doctors can do beyond giving mental solace. In a telepathic culture, remember, there can be no secrets between doctor and patient and this includes not only the bad news but the complete sharing of the associated pain. In this they are like the Telfi VTXMs and, like them, the being who is terminating will voluntarily withdraw itself and its mental and physical pain beyond the telepathic range of its friends so that the
y will not share its dying anguish.
“When the ranking Monitor Corps officer on Kerm base heard of the Tunneckis case” Conway continued, “it offered the facilities of Sector General. The patient was fully acquainted with the risks plus the fact that we would be learning as we went along instead of knowing what we were doing from the start. This did not matter to Tunneckis and it asked me to proceed. The patient’s condition was extremely serious although it was and is not life-threatening, but then neither is that of a Kelgian with dead fur. In the event, the operation was clinically unsatisfactory and Tunneckis now requires psychiatric support.”
In its open, bowl-shaped relaxer Prilicla’s limbs began trembling in response to a strong source of emotional radiation in the room. Thornnastor cleared its throats with a sound like a hoarse foghorn.
“Administrator’ it said, “Conway is being too hard on itself. It, or more accurately we, were operating in completely unknown surgical territory. There was no background anatomical or metabolic knowledge available at all. For religious and ecological reasons the Kermi will not allow strangers to interfere physically with the bodies of their dead or even to investigate those of their nonsapient brothers although in time, when the cultural contact with them widens, this situation may change. As it is, we had to learn what we could while the surgical procedure was in progress. This was not an ideal situation for the surgeon-in-charge.”
“I know all that” Conway joined in again, “but I think I still made a mess of it, O’Mara, and ended up handing your department a seriously distressed ex-patient to salvage what you can of its mind. Originally the patient had nothing more to lose and I considered the risks acceptable.”
The trembling of Priicla’s limbs increased for a moment, then subsided as Conway regained control of his emotional radiation and went on, “But why are you interested in the details of our surgical foul-up when it’s the mental fallout that should concern you? I’m far from happy about this result because frankly I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.”