Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations

by James White

  Conway gulped and tried to keep his voice steady as he replied, “Dr. Arretapec wished to work with the patient alone for a while, and I’ve been doing some research on dinosaurs in the library. I wondered if you had anymore information for me?”

  “A little,” O’Mara said. He looked steadily at Conway for several very uncomfortable seconds, then grunted, “Here it is …”

  The Monitor Corps survey vessel which had discovered Arretapec’s home planet had, after realizing the high stage of civilization reached by the inhabitants, given them the hyper-drive. One of the first planets visited had been a raw, young world devoid of intelligent life, but one of its life-forms had interested them—the giant saurian. They had told the Galactic powers-that-be that given the proper assistance they might be able to do something which would benefit civilization as a whole, and as it was impossible for any telepathic race to tell a lie or even understand what a lie is, they were given the assistance asked for and Arretapec and his patient had come to Sector General. There was one other small item as well, O’Mara told Conway. Apparently the VUXG’s psi faculties included a sort of precognitive ability. This latter did not appear to be of much use because it did not work with individuals but only with populations, and then so far in the future and in such a haphazard manner that it was practically useless.

  Conway left O’Mara feeling more confused than ever.

  He was still trying to make the odd bits and pieces of information add up to something which made sense, but either he was too tired or too stupid. And definitely he was tired; these past two days his brain had been just so much thick, weary fog …

  There must be an association between the two factors, Arretapec’s coming and this unaccountable weariness, Conway thought: he was in good physical condition and no amount of muscular or mental exertion had left him feeling this way before. And had not Arretapec said something about the itching sensations he had felt being symptomatic of a disorder?

  All of a sudden his job with the VUXG doctor was no longer merely frustrating or annoying. Conway was beginning to feel anxiety for his own personal safety. Suppose the itching was due to some new type of bacteria which did not show up on his personal tell-tale? He had thought something like this when his fidgeting had caused Arretapec to send him away, but for the rest of the day he had been subconsciously trying to convince himself that it was nothing because the intensity of the sensations had diminished to practically zero. Now he knew that he should have had one of the senior physicians look into it. He should, in fact, do it now.

  But Conway was very tired. He promised himself that he would get Dr. Mannon, his previous superior, to give him a going over in the morning. And in the morning he would have to get on the right side of Arretapec again. He was still worrying about the strange new disease he might have caught and the correct method of apologizing to a VUXG life-form when he fell asleep.

  IV

  Next morning there was another two-inch hollow eaten in the top of his desk and Arretapec was nestling inside it. As soon as Conway demonstrated that he was awake by sitting up, the being spoke:

  “It had occurred to me since yesterday,” the VUXG said, “that I have perhaps been expecting too much in the way of self-control, emotional stability, and the ability to endure or to discount minor physical irritants in a member of a species which is—relatively, you understand—of low mentality. I will therefore do my utmost to bear these points in mind during our future relations together.”

  It took a few seconds for Conway to realize that Arretapec had apologized to him. When he did he thought that it was the most insulting apology he had ever had tendered to him, and that it spoke well for his self-control that he did not tell the other so. Instead he smiled and insisted that it was all his fault. They left to see their patient again.

  The interior of the converted transport had changed out of all recognition. Instead of a hollow sphere covered with a muddy shambles of soil, water and foliage, three-quarters of the available surface was now a perfect representation of a Mesozoic landscape. Yet it was not exactly the same as the pictures Conway had studied yesterday, because they had been of a distant age of Earth and this flora had been transplanted from the patient’s own world, but the differences were surprisingly small. The greatest change was in the sky.

  Where previously it had been possible to look up at the opposite side of the hollow sphere, now one looked up into a blue-white mist in which burned a very lifelike sun. The hollow center of the ship had been almost filled with this semi-opaque gas so that now it would take a keen eye and a mind armed with foreknowledge for a person to know that he was not standing on a real planet with a real sun in the foggy sky above him. The engineers had done a fine job.

  “I had not thought such an elaborate and lifelike reconstruction possible here,” said Arretapec suddenly. “You are to be commended. This should have a very good effect on the patient.”

  The life-form under discussion—for some peculiar reason the engineers insisted on calling it Emily—was contentedly shredding the fronds from the top of a thirty foot high palm-like growth. The fact of its being on dry land instead of pasturing under water was indicative of its state of mind, Conway knew, because the old-time brontosaur invariably took to the water when threatened by enemies, that being its only defense. Apparently this neo-brontosaurus hadn’t a care in the world.

  “Essentially it is the same as fitting up a new ward for the treatment of any extra-terrestrial patient,” said Conway modestly, “the chief difference here being the scale of the work undertaken.”

  “I am nevertheless impressed,” said Arretapec.

  First apologies and now compliments, Conway thought wryly. As they moved closer and Arretapec once again warned him to keep quiet and still, Conway guessed that the VUXG’s change of manner was due to the work of the engineers. With the patient now in ideal surroundings the treatment, whatever form it was taking, might have an increased chance of success …

  Suddenly Conway began to itch again. It started in the usual place deep inside his right ear, but this time it spread and built up in intensity until his whole brain seemed to be crawling with viciously biting insects. He felt cold sweat break on him, and remembered his fears of the previous evening when he had resolved to go to Mannon. This wasn’t imagination, this was serious, perhaps deadly serious. His hands flew to his head with a panicky, involuntary motion, knocking the container holding Arretapec to the ground.

  “You are fidgeting again …” began the VUXG.

  “I … I’m sorry,” Conway stammered. He mumbled something incoherent about having to leave, that it was important and couldn’t wait, then fled in disorder.

  Three hours later he was sitting in Dr. Mannon’s DBDG examination room while Mannon’s dog alternately growled fiercely at him or rolled on its back and looked appealing in vain attempts to entice him to play with it. But Conway had no inclination for the ritual pummeling and wrestling that the dog and himself enjoyed when he had the time for it. All his attention was focused on the bent head of his former superior and on the charts lying on Mannon’s desk. Suddenly the other looked up.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he said in the peremptory manner reserved for students and patients suspected of malingering. A few seconds later he added, “Oh, I’ve no doubt you’ve felt these sensations—tiredness, itching, and so on—but what sort of case are you working on at the moment?”

  Conway told him. A few times during the narration Mannon grinned.

  “I take it this is your first long-term—er—exposure to a telepathic life-form and that I am the first you’ve mentioned this trouble to?” Mannon’s tone was of one making a statement rather than of asking a question. “And, of course, although you feel this itching sensation intensely when close to the VUXG and the patient, it continues in a weaker form at other times.”

  Conway nodded. “I felt it for a while just five minutes ago.”

  “Naturally, there is attenuation with distanc
e,” Mannon said. “But as regards yourself, you have nothing to worry about. Arretapec is—all unknowingly, you understand—simply trying to make a telepath out of you. I’ll explain …”

  Apparently prolonged contact with some telepathic life-forms stimulated a certain area in the human brain which was either the beginnings of a telepathic function that would evolve in the future, or the atrophied remnant of something possessed in the primitive past and since lost.

  The result was troublesome but a quite harmless irritation. On very rare occasions however, Mannon added, this proximity produced in the human a sort of artificial telepathic faculty—that was, he could sometimes receive thoughts from the telepath to whom he had been exposed, but of no other being. The faculty was in all cases strictly temporary, and disappeared when the being responsible for bringing it about left the human.

  “But these cases of induced telepathy are extremely rare,” Mannon concluded, “and obviously you are getting only the irritant by-product, otherwise you might know what Arretapec is playing at simply by reading his mind …”

  While Dr. Mannon had been talking, and relieved of the worry that he had caught some strange new disease, Conway’s mind had been working furiously. Vaguely, as odd events with Arretapec and the brontosaurus returned to his mind and were added to scraps of the VUXG’s conversations and his own studying of the life—and extinction—of Earth’s long-gone race of giant reptiles, a picture was forming in his mind. It was a crazy—or at least cockeyed—picture, and it was still incomplete, but what else could a being like Arretapec be doing to a patient like the brontosaurus, a patient who had nothing at all wrong with it?

  “Pardon?” Conway said. He had become aware that Mannon had said something which he had not caught.

  “I said if you find out what Arretapec is doing, let me know,” Mannon repeated.

  “Oh, I know what it’s doing,” said Conway. “At least I think I do—and I understand why Arretapec does not want to talk about it. The ridicule if it tried and failed, why even the idea of its trying is ridiculous. What I don’t know is why it is doing it …”

  “Dr. Conway,” said Mannon in a deceptively mild voice, “if you don’t tell me what you’re talking about I will, as our cruder-minded interns so succinctly put it, have your guts for garters.”

  Conway stood up quickly. He had to get back to Arretapec without further delay. Now that he had a rough idea of what was going on there were things he must see to—urgent safety precautions that a being such as the VUXG might not think of. Absently, he said, “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t tell you. You see, from what you’ve told me there is a possibility that my knowledge derives directly from Arretapec’s mind, telepathically, and is therefore privileged information. I’ve got to rush now, but thanks very much.”

  Once outside Conway practically ran to the nearest communicator and called Maintenance. The voice which answered he recognized as belonging to the engineer Colonel he had met earlier. He said quickly, “Is the hull of that converted transport strong enough to take the shock of a body of approximately eight thousand pounds moving at, uh, anything between twenty and one hundred miles an hour, and what safety measures can you take against such an occurrence?”

  There was a long, loaded silence, then, “Are you kidding? It would go through the hull like so much plywood. But in the event of a major puncture like that the volume of air inside the ship is such that there would be plenty of time for the maintenance people to get into suits. Why do you ask?”

  Conway thought quickly. He wanted a job done but did not want to tell why. He told the Colonel that he was worried about the gravity grids which maintained the artificial gravity inside the ship. There were so many of them that if one section should accidentally reverse its polarity and fling the brontosaurus away from it instead of holding it down …

  Rather testily the Colonel agreed that the gravity grids could be switched to repulsion, also focused into pressor or attractor beams, but that the changeover did not occur simply because somebody breathed on them. There were safety devices incorporated which …

  “All the same,” Conway broke in, “I would feel much safer about things if you could fix all the gravity grids so that at the approach of a heavy falling body they would automatically switch over to repulsion—just in case the worst happens. Is that possible?”

  “Is this an order?” said the Colonel, “or are you just the worrying type?”

  “It’s an order, I’m afraid,” said Conway.

  “Then it’s possible.” A sharp click put a full stop to the conversation.

  Conway set out to rejoin Arretapec again to become an ideal assistant to his chief in that he would have answers ready before the questions were asked. Also, he thought wryly, he would have to maneuver the VUXG into asking the proper questions so that he could answer them.

  V

  On the fifth day of their association, Conway said to Arretapec, “I have been assured that your patient is not suffering from either a physical condition or one requiring psychiatric correction, so that I am led to the conclusion that you are trying to effect some change in the brain structure by telepathic, or some related means. If my conclusions are correct, I have information which might aid or at least interest you:

  “There was a giant reptile similar to the patient which lived on my own planet in primitive times. From remains unearthed by archaeologists we know that it possessed, or required, a second nerve center several times as big as the brain proper in the region of the sacral vertebrae, presumably to handle movements of the hind legs, tail and so on. If such was the case here you might have two brains to deal with instead of one.”

  As he waited for Arretapec to reply Conway gave thanks that the VUXG belonged to a highly ethical species which did not hold with using their telepathy on non-telepaths, otherwise the being would have known that Conway knew that their patient had two nerve-centers-that he knew because while Arretapec had been slowly eating another hole in his desk one night and Conway and the patient had been asleep, a colleague of Conway’s had surreptitiously used an X-ray scanner and camera on the unsuspecting dinosaur.

  “Your conclusions are correct,” said Arretapec at last, “and your information is interesting. I had not thought it possible for one entity to possess two brains. However this would explain the unusual difficulty of communication I have with this creature. I will investigate.”

  Conway felt the itching start inside his head again, but now that he knew what it was he was able to take it without “fidgeting.” The itch died away and Arretapec said, “I am getting a response. For the first time I am getting a response.” The itching sensation began inside his skull again and slowly built up, and up …

  It wasn’t just like ants with red-hot pincers chewing at his brain cells, Conway thought agonizedly as he fought to keep from moving and distracting Arretapec now that the being appeared to be getting somewhere; it felt as though somebody was punching holes in his poor, quivering brain with a rusty nail. It had never been like this before, this was sheer torture.

  Then suddenly there was a subtle change in the sensations. Not a lessening, but of something added. Conway had a brief, blinding glimpse of something—it was like a phrase of great music played on a damaged recording, or the beauty of a masterpiece that is cracked and disfigured almost beyond recognition. He knew that for an instant, through the distorting waves of pain, he had actually seen into Arretapec’s mind.

  Now he knew everything …

  The VUXG continued to have responses all that day, but they were erratic, violent and uncontrolled. After one particular dramatic response had caused the panicky dinosaur to level a couple of acres of trees, then sent it charging into the lake in terror, Arretapec called a halt.

  “It is useless,” said the doctor. “The being will not use what I am trying to teach it for itself, and when I force the process it becomes afraid.”

  There was no emotion in the flat, Translated tones, but Conway who had had a glimpse of
Arretapec’s mind knew the bitter disappointment that the other felt. He wished desperately that he could help, but he knew that he could do nothing directly of assistance—Arretapec was the one who had to do the real work in this case, he could only prod things along now and then. He was still wracking his brain for an answer to the problem when he turned in that night, and just before he went to sleep he thought he found it.

  Next morning they tracked down Dr. Mannon just as he was entering the DBLF operating theater. Conway said, “Sir, can we borrow your dog?”

  “Business or pleasure?” said Mannon suspiciously. He was very attached to his dog, so much so that non-human members of the staff suspected a symbiotic relationship.

  “We won’t hurt it at all,” said Conway reassuringly.

  “Thanks.” He took the lead from the appendage of the Tralthan intern holding it, then said to Arretapec, “Now back to my room …”

  Ten minutes later the dog, barking furiously, was dashing around Conway’s room while Conway himself hurled cushions and pillows at it. Suddenly one connected fairly, bowling it over. Paws scrabbling and skidding on the plastic flooring it erupted into frantic burst of high-pitched yelps and snarls.

  Conway found himself whipped off his feet and suspended eight feet up in mid-air.

  “I did not realize,” boomed the voice of Arretapec from his position on the desk, “that you had intended this to be a demonstration of Earth-human sadism. I am shocked, horrified. You will release this unfortunate animal at once.”

  Conway said, “Put me down and I’ll explain …”

  On the eighth day they returned the dog to Dr. Mannon and went back to work on the dinosaur. At the end of the second week they were still working and Arretapec, Conway and their patient were being talked, whistled, cheeped and grunted about in every language in use at the hospital. They were in the dining hall one day when Conway became aware that the annunciator which had been droning out messages in the background was now calling his name.