Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations

by James White

  “Got you.” After a few minutes the voice returned. It said, “The Telfi say that is very good, and thank you. Out.”

  He should have been pleased at dealing successfully with his first case, but Conway somehow felt let down. Now that it was over his mind felt strangely confused. He kept thinking that fifty percent of seven was three and a half, and what would they do with the odd half Telfi? He hoped that four would pull through instead of three, and that they would not be mental cripples. He thought that it must be nice to be a Telfi, to soak up radiation all the time, and the rich and varied impressions of a corporate body numbering perhaps hundreds of individuals. It made his body feel somehow cold and alone. It was an effort to drag himself away from the warmth of the Radiation Theater.

  Outside he mounted the carrier and left it back at the admittance lock. The right thing to do now was to report to the Educator room and have the Telfi tape erased—he had been ordered to do that, in fact. But he did not want to go; the thought of O‘Mara made him intensely uncomfortable, even a little afraid. Conway knew that all Monitors made him feel uncomfortable, but this was different. It was O’Mara’s attitude, and that little chat he had mentioned. Conway had felt small, as if the Monitor was his superior in some fashion, and for the life of him Conway could not understand how he could feel small before a lousy Monitor!

  The intensity of his feelings shocked him; as a civilized, well-integrated being he should be incapable of thinking such thoughts. His emotions had verged upon actual hatred. Frightened of himself this time, Conway brought his mind under a semblance of control. He decided to side-step the question and not report to the Educator room until after he had done the rounds of his wards. It was a legitimate excuse if O’Mara should query the delay, and the Chief Psychologist might leave or be called away in the meantime. Conway hoped so.

  His first call was on an AUGL from Chalderescol II, the sole occupant of the ward reserved for that species. Conway climbed into the appropriate protective garment—a simple diving suit in this instance—and went through the lock into the tank of green, tepid water which reproduced the being’s living conditions. He collected the instruments from the locker inside, then loudly signaled his presence. If the Chalder was really asleep down there and he startled it the results could be serious. One accidental flick of that tail and the ward would contain two patients instead of one.

  The Chalder was heavily plated and scaled, and slightly resembled a forty-foot-long crocodile except that instead of legs there was an apparently haphazard arrangement of stubby fins and a fringe of ribbon-like tentacles encircling its middle. It drifted limply near the bottom of the huge tank, the only sign of life being the periodic fogging of the water around its gills. Conway gave it a perfunctory examination—he was way behind time due to the Telfi job—and asked the usual question. The answer came through the water in some unimaginable form to Conway’s translator attachment and into his phones as slow, toneless speech.

  “I am grievously ill,” said the Chalder, “I suffer.”

  You lie, thought Conway silently, in all six rows of your teeth! Dr. Lister, Sector General’s Director and probably the foremost Diagnostician of the day, had practically taken this Chalder apart. His diagnosis had been hypochondria and the condition incurable. He had further stated that the signs of strain in certain sections of the patient’s body plating, and its discomfort in those areas, were due simply to the big so-and-so’s laziness and gluttony. Anybody knew that an exoskeletal life-form could not put on weight except from inside! Diagnosticians were not noted for their bedside manners.

  The Chalder became really ill only when it was in danger of being sent home, so the Hospital had acquired a permanent patient. But it did not mind. Visiting as well as Staff medics and psychologists had given it a going over, and continued to do so; also all the interns and nurses of all the multitudinous races represented on the hospital’s staff. Regularly and at short intervals it was probed, pried into and unmercifully pounded by trainees of varying degrees of gentleness, and it loved every minute of it. The hospital was happy with the arrangement and so was the Chalder. Nobody mentioned going home to it anymore.

  III

  Conway paused for a moment as he swam to the top of the great tank; he felt peculiar. His next call was supposed to be on two methane-breathing life-forms in the lower temperature ward of his section, and he felt strongly loath to go. Despite the warmth of the water and the heat of his exertions while swimming around his massive patient he felt cold, and he would have given anything to have a bunch of students come flapping into the tank just for the company. Usually Conway did not like company, especially that of trainees, but now he felt cut-off, alone and friendless. The feelings were so strong they frightened him. A talk with a psychologist was definitely indicated, he thought, though not necessarily with O’Mara.

  The construction of the hospital in this section resembled a heap of spaghetti—straight, bent and indescribably curved pieces of spaghetti. Each corridor containing an Earth-type atmosphere, for instance, was paralleled above, below and on each side—as well as being crossed above and below at frequent intervals—by others having different and mutually deadly variations of atmosphere, pressure and temperature. This was to facilitate the visiting of any given patient-species by any other species of doctor in the shortest possible time in case of emergency, because traveling the length of the hospital in a suit designed to protect a doctor against his patient’s environment on arrival was both uncomfortable and slow. It had been found more efficient to change into the necessary protective suit outside the wards being visited, as Conway had done.

  Remembering the geography of this section Conway knew that there was a shortcut he could use to get to his frigid-blooded patients—along the waterfilled corridor which led to the Chalder operating theater, through the lock into the chlorine atmosphere of the Illensan PVSJs and up two levels to the methane ward. This way would mean his staying in warm water for a little longer, and he was definitely feeling cold.

  A convalescent PVSJ rustled past him on spiny, membraneous appendages in the chlorine section and Conway found himself wanting desperately to talk to it, about anything. He had to force himself to go on.

  The protective suit worn by DBDGs like himself while visiting the methane ward was in reality a small mobile tank. It was fitted with heaters inside to keep its occupant alive and refrigerators outside so that the leakage of heat would not immediately shrivel the patients to whom the slightest glow of radiant heat—or even light—was lethal. Conway had no idea how the scanner he used in the examinations worked—only those gadget-mad beings with the Engineering armbands knew that—except that it wasn’t by infrared. That also was too hot for them.

  As he worked Conway turned the heaters up until the sweat rolled off him and still he felt cold. He was suddenly afraid. Suppose he had caught something? When he was outside in air again he looked at the tiny tell-tale that was surgically embedded on the inner surface of his forearm. His pulse, respiration and endocrine balance were normal except for the minor irregularities caused by his worrying, and there was nothing foreign in his bloodstream. What was wrong with him?

  Conway finished his rounds as quickly as possible. He felt confused again. If his mind was playing tricks on him he was going to take the necessary steps to rectify the matter. It must be something to do with the Telfi tape he had absorbed. O‘Mara had said something about it, though he could not remember exactly what at the moment. But he would go to the Educator room right away, O’Mara or no O’Mara.

  Two Monitors passed him while he was on the way, both armed. Conway knew that he should feel his usual hostility toward them, also shock that they were armed inside a hospital, and he did, but he also wanted to slap their backs or even hug them: he desperately wanted to have people around, talking and exchanging ideas and impressions so that he would not feel so terribly alone. As they drew level with him Conway managed to get out a shaky “Hello.” It was the first time he had spoke
n to a Monitor in his life.

  One of the Monitors smiled slightly, the other nodded. Both gave him odd looks over their shoulders as they passed because his teeth were chattering so much.

  His intention of going to the Educator room had been clearly formed, but now it did not seem to be such a good idea. It was cold and dark there with all those machines and shaded lighting, and the only company might be O’Mara. Conway wanted to lose himself in a crowd, and the bigger the better. He thought of the nearby dining hall and turned toward it. Then at an intersection he saw a sign reading “Diet Kitchen, Wards 52 to 68, Species DBDG, DBLF & FGLI.” That made him remember how terribly cold he felt …

  The Dietitians were too busy to notice him. Conway picked an oven which was fairly glowing with heat and lay down against it, letting the germ-killing ultraviolet which flooded the place bathe him and ignoring the charred smell given off by his light clothing. He felt warmer now, a little warmer, but the awful sense of being utterly and completely alone would not leave him. He was cut off, unloved and unwanted. He wished that he had never been born.

  When a Monitor—one of the two he had recently passed whose curiosity had been aroused by Conway’s strange behavior—wearing a hastily borrowed heat suit belonging to one of the Cook-Dietitians got to him a few minutes later, the big, slow tears were running down Conway’s cheeks …

  “You,” said a well-remembered voice, “are a very lucky and very stupid young man.”

  Conway opened his eyes to find that he was on the Erasure couch and that O‘Mara and another Monitor were looking down at him. His back felt as though it had been cooked medium rare and his whole body stung as if with a bad dose of sunburn. O’Mara was glaring furiously at him, he spoke again.

  “Lucky not to be seriously burned and blinded, and stupid because you forgot to inform me on one very important point, namely that this was your first experience with the Educator …”

  O’Mara’s tone became faintly self-accusatory at this point, but only faintly. He went onto say that had he been thus informed he would have given Conway a hypno-treatment which would have enabled the doctor to differentiate between his own needs and those of the Telfi sharing his mind. He only realized that Conway was a first-timer when he filed the thumb-printed slip, and dammit how was he to know who was new and who wasn’t in a place this size! And anyway, if Conway had thought more of his job and less of the fact that a Monitor was giving him the tape, this would never have happened.

  Conway, O’Mara continued bitingly, appeared to be a self-righteous bigot who made no pretense at hiding his feelings of defilement at the touch of an uncivilized brute of a Monitor. How a person intelligent enough to gain appointment to this hospital could also hold those sort of feelings was beyond O’Mara’s understanding.

  Conway felt his face burning. It had been stupid of him to forget to tell the psychologist that he was a first-timer. O’Mara could easily bring charges of personal negligence against him—a charge almost as serious as carelessness with a patient in a multi-environment hospital—and have Conway kicked out. But that possibility did not weigh too heavily with him at the moment, terrible though it was. What got him was the fact that he was being told off by a Monitor, and before another Monitor!

  The man who must have carried him here was gazing down at him, a look of half-humorous concern in his steady brown eyes. Conway found that harder to take even than O’Mara’s abusiveness. How dare a Monitor feel sorry for him!

  “ … And if you’re still wondering what happened,” O’Mara was saying in withering tones, “you allowed—through inexperience, I admit—the Telfi personality contained in the tape to temporarily overcome your own. Its need for hard radiation, intense heat and light and above all the mental fusion necessary to a group-mind entity, became your needs—transferred into their nearest human equivalents, of course. For a while you were experiencing life as a single Telfi being, and an individual Telfi—cut off from all mental contact with the others of its group—is an unhappy beastie indeed.”

  O’Mara had cooled somewhat as his explanation proceeded. His voice was almost impersonal as he went on, “You’re suffering from little more than a bad case of sunburn. Your back will be tender for a while and later it will itch. Serves you right. Now go away. I don’t want to see you again until hour nine the day after tomorrow. Keep that hour free. That’s an order—we have to have a little talk, remember?”

  Outside in the corridor Conway had a feeling of complete deflation coupled with an anger that threatened to burst out of all control—an intensely frustrating combination. In all his twenty-three years of life he could not remember being subjected to such extreme mental discomfort. He had been made to feel like a small boy—a bad, maladjusted small boy. Conway had always been a very good, well-mannered boy. It hurt.

  He had not noticed that his rescuer was still beside him until the other spoke.

  “Don’t go worrying yourself about the Major,” the Monitor said sympathetically. “He’s really a nice man, and when you see him again you’ll find out for yourself. At the moment he’s tired and a bit touchy. You see, there are three companies just arrived and more coming. But they won’t be much use to us in their present state—they’re in a bad way with combat fatigue, most of ‘em. Major O’Mara and his staff have to give them some psychological first aid before—”

  “Combat fatigue,” said Conway in the most insulting tone of which he was capable. He was heartily sick of people he considered his intellectual and moral inferiors either ranting at him or sympathizing with him. “I suppose,” he added, “that means they’ve grown tired of killing people?”

  He saw the Monitor’s young-old face stiffen and something that was both hurt and anger burn in his eyes. He stopped. He opened his mouth for an O’Mara-type blast of invective, then thought better of it. He said quietly, “For someone who has been here for two months you have, to put it mildly, a very unrealistic attitude toward the Monitor Corps. I can’t understand that. Have you been too busy to talk to people or something?”

  “No,” replied Conway coldly, “but where I come from we do not discuss persons of your type, we prefer pleasanter topics.”

  “I hope,” said the Monitor, “that all your friends—if you have friends, that is—indulge in backslapping.” He turned and marched off.

  Conway winced in spite of himself at the thought of anything heavier than a feather hitting his scorched and tender back. But he was thinking of the other’s earlier words, too. So his attitude toward Monitors was unrealistic? Did they want him, then, to condone violence and murder and befriend those who were responsible for it? And he had also mentioned the arrival of several companies of Monitors. Why? What for? Anxiety began to eat at the edges of his hitherto solid block of self-confidence. There was something here that he was missing, something important.

  When he had first arrived at Sector General the being who had given Conway his original instructions and assignments had added a little pep-talk. It had said that Dr. Conway had passed a great many tests to come here and that they welcomed him and hoped he would be happy enough in his work to stay. The period of trial was now over, and henceforth nobody would be trying to catch him out, but if for any reason—friction with his own or any other species, or the appearance of some xenological psychosis—he became so distressed that he could no longer stay, then with great reluctance he would be allowed to leave.

  He had also been advised to meet as many different entities as possible and try to gain mutual understanding, if not their friendship. Finally he had been told that if he should get into trouble through ignorance or any other reason, he should contact either of two Earth-human beings who were called O’Mara and Bryson, depending on the nature of his trouble, though a qualified being of any species would, of course, help him on request.

  Immediately afterward he had met the Surgeon-in-Charge of the wards to which he had been posted, a very able Earth-human called Mannon. Dr. Mannon was not yet a Diagnostician, though he wa
s trying hard, and was therefore still quite human for long periods during the day. He was the proud possessor of a small dog which stuck so close to him that visiting extra-terrestrials were inclined to assume a symbolic relationship. Conway liked Dr. Mannon a lot, but now he was beginning to realize that his superior was the only being of his own species toward whom he had any feeling of friendship.

  That was a bit strange, surely. It made Conway begin to wonder about himself.

  After that reassuring pep-talk Conway had thought he was all set—especially when he found how easy it was to make friends with the e-t members of the Staff. He had not warmed to his human colleagues—with the one exception—because of their tendency to be flippant or cynical regarding the very important and worthwhile work he, and they, were doing. But the idea of friction developing was laughable.

  That was before today, though, when O’Mara had made him feel small and stupid, accused him of bigotry and intolerance, and generally cut his ego to pieces. This, quite definitely, was friction developing, and if such treatment at the hands of Monitors continued Conway knew that he would be driven to leave. He was a civilized and ethical human being—why were the Monitors in a position to tell him off? Conway just could not understand it at all. Two things he did know, however; he wanted to remain at the hospital, and to do that he needed help.