Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations

by James White

  The anesthetic was one of several which Pathology had pronounced safe for the EPLH life-form, and while it was being administered Conway found his mind going off at a tangent toward his Tralthan assistant.

  Surgeons of that species were really two beings instead of one, a combination of FGLI and OTSB. Clinging to the leathery back of the lumbering, elephantine Tralthan was a diminutive and nearly mindless being who lived in symbiosis with it. At first glance the OTSB looked like a furry ball with a long ponytail sprouting from it, but a closer look showed that the ponytail was composed of scores of fine manipulators most of which incorporated sensitive visual organs. Because of the rapport which existed between the Tralthan and its symbiote the FGLI-OTSB combination were the finest surgeons in the Galaxy. Not all Tralthans chose to link up with a symbiote, but FGLI medics wore them like a badge of office.

  Suddenly the OTSB scurried along its host’s back and huddled atop the dome-like head between the eye-stalks, its tail hanging down toward the patient and fanning out stiffly. The Tralthan was ready to begin.

  “You will observe that this is a surface condition only,” Conway said, for the benefit of the recording equipment, “and that the whole skin area looks dead, dried-up and on the point of flaking off. During the removal of the first skin samples no difficulty was encountered, but later specimens resisted removal to a certain extent and the reason was discovered to be a tiny rootlet, approximately one quarter of an inch long and invisible to the naked eye. My naked eye, that is. So it seems clear that the condition is about to enter a new phase. The disease is beginning to dig in rather than remain on the surface, and the more promptly we act the better.”

  Conway gave the reference numbers of the Path reports and his own preliminary notes on the case, then went on, “ … As the patient, for reasons which are at the moment unclear, does not respond to medication I propose surgical removal of the affected tissue, irrigation, cleansing and replacement with surrogate skin. A Tralthan-guided OTSB will be used to ensure that the rootlets are also excised. Except for the considerable area to be covered, which will make this a long job, the procedure is straightforward—”

  “Excuse me, Doctors,” Prilicla broke in, “the patient is still conscious.”

  An argument, polite only on Prilicla’s side, broke out between the Tralthan and the little empath. Prilicla held that the EPLH was thinking thoughts and radiating emotions and the other maintained that it had enough of the anesthetic in its system to render it completely insensible to everything for at least six hours. Conway broke in just as the argument was becoming personal.

  “We’ve had this trouble before,” he said irritably. “The patient has been physically unconscious except for a few minutes yesterday, since its arrival, yet Prilicla detected the presence of rational thought processes. Now the same effect is present while it is under anesthetic. I don’t know how to explain this, it will probably require a surgical investigation of its brain structure to do so, and that is something which will have to wait. The important thing at the moment is that it is physically incapable of movement or of feeling pain. Now shall we begin?”

  To Prilicla he added, “Keep listening just in case …”

  CHAPTER 4

  For about twenty minutes they worked in silence, although the procedure did not require a high degree of concentration. It was rather like weeding a garden, except that everything which grew was a weed and had to be removed one plant at a time. He would peel back an affected area of skin, the OTSB’s hair-thin appendages would investigate, probe and detach the rootlets, and he would peel back another tiny segment. Conway was looking forward to the most tedious operation of his career.

  Prilicla said, “I detect increasing anxiety linked with a strengthening sense of purpose. The anxiety is becoming intense …”

  Conway grunted. He could think of no other comment to make.

  Five minutes later the Tralthan said, “We will have to slow down, Doctor. We are at a section where the roots are much deeper …”

  Two minutes later Conway said, “But I can see them! How deep are they now?”

  “Four inches,” replied the Tralthan. “And Doctor, they are visibly lengthening as we work.”

  “But that’s impossible!” Conway burst out; then, “We’ll move to another area.”

  He felt the sweat begin to trickle down his forehead and just beside him Prilicla’s gangling, fragile body began to quiver—but not at anything the patient was thinking. Conway’s own emotional radiation just then was not a pleasant thing, because in the new area and in the two chosen at random after that the result was the same. Roots from the flaking pieces of skin were burrowing deeper as they watched.

  “Withdraw,” said Conway harshly.

  For a long time nobody spoke. Prilicla was shaking as if a high wind was blowing in the ward. The Tralthan was fussing with its equipment, all four of its eyes focused on one unimportant knob. O’Mara was looking intently at Conway, also calculatingly and with a large amount of sympathy in his steady gray eyes. The sympathy was because he could recognize when a man was genuinely in a spot and the calculation was due to his trying to work out whether the trouble was Conway’s fault or not.

  “What happened, Doctor?” he said gently.

  Conway shook his head angrily. “I don’t know. Yesterday the patient did not respond to medication, today it won’t respond to surgery. Its reactions to anything we try to do for it are crazy, impossible! And now our attempt to relieve its condition surgically has triggered off—something—which will send those roots deep enough to penetrate vital organs in a matter of minutes if their present rate of growth is maintained, and you know what that means …”

  “The patient’s sense of anxiety is diminishing,” Prilicla reported. “It is still engaged in purposeful thinking.”

  The Tralthan joined in then. It said, “I have noticed a peculiar fact about those root-like tendrils which join the diseased flakes of skin with the body. My symbiote has extremely sensitive vision, you will understand, and it reports that the tendrils seem to be rooted at each end, so that it is impossible to tell whether the growth is attacking the body or the body is deliberately holding onto the growth.”

  Conway shook his head distractedly. The case was full of mad contradictions and outright impossibilities. To begin with no patient, no matter how fouled up mentally, should be able to negate the effects of a drug powerful enough to bring about a complete cure within half an hour, and all within a few minutes. And the natural order of things was for a being with a diseased area of skin to slough it off and replace it with new tissue, not hang onto it grimly no matter what. It was a baffling, hopeless case.

  Yet when the patient had arrived it had seemed a simple, straightforward case—Conway had felt more concern regarding the patient’s background than its condition, whose cure he had considered a routine matter. But somewhere along the way he had missed something, Conway was sure, and because of this sin of omission the patient would probably die during the next few hours. Maybe he had made a snap diagnosis, been too sure of himself, been criminally careless.

  It was pretty horrible to lose a patient at any time, and at Sector General losing a patient was an extremely rare occurrence. But to lose one whose condition no hospital anywhere in the civilized galaxy would have considered as being serious … Conway swore luridly, but stopped because he hadn’t the words to describe how he felt about himself.

  “Take it easy, son.”

  That was O‘Mara, squeezing his arm and talking like a father. Normally O’Mara was a bad-tempered, bull-voiced and unapproachable tyrant who, when one went to him for help, sat making sarcastic remarks while the person concerned squirmed and shamefacedly solved his own problems. His present uncharacteristic behavior proved something, Conway thought bitterly. It proved that Conway had a problem which Conway could not solve himself.

  But in O‘Mara’s expression there was something more than just concern for Conway, and it was probably that deep dow
n the psychologist was a little glad that things had turned out as they did. Conway meant no reflection on O’Mara’s character, because he knew that if the Major had been in his position he would have tried as hard if not harder to cure the patient, and would have felt just as badly about the outcome. But at the same time the Chief Psychologist must have been desperately worried about the possibility of a being of great and unknown powers, who was also mentally unbalanced, being turned loose on the Hospital. In addition O’Mara might also be wondering if, beside a conscious and alive EPLH, he would look like a small and untutored boy …

  “Let’s try taking it from the top again,” O’Mara said, breaking in on his thoughts. “Is there anything you’ve found in the patients’s background that might point to it wanting to destroy itself?”

  “No!” said Conway vehemently. “To the contrary! It would want desperately to live. It was taking unselective rejuvenation treatments, which means that the complete cell-structure of its body was regenerated periodically. As the process of storing memory is a product of aging in the brain cells, this would practically wipe its mind clean after every treatment …”

  “That’s why those taped logs resembled technical memoranda,” O’Mara put in. “That’s exactly what they were. Still, I prefer our own method of rejuvenation even though we won’t live so long, regenerating damaged organs only and allowing the brain to remain untouched …”

  “I know,” Conway broke in, wondering why the usually taciturn O’Mara had become so talkative. Was he trying to simplify the problem by making him state it in non-professional terms? “But the effect of continued longevity treatments, as you know yourself, is to give the possessor an increasing fear of dying. Despite loneliness, boredom and an altogether unnatural existence, the fear grows steadily with the passage of time. That is why it always traveled with its own private physician, it was desperately afraid of sickness or an accident befalling it between treatments, and that is why I can sympathize to a certain extent with its feelings when the doctor who was supposed to keep it well allowed it to get sick, although the business of eating it afterward—”

  “So you are on its side,” said O’Mara dryly.

  “It could make a good plea of self-defense,” Conway retorted. “But I was saying that it was desperately afraid of dying, so that it would be constantly trying to get a better, more efficient doctor for itself … Oh!”

  “Oh, what?” said O’Mara.

  It was Prilicla, the emotion sensitive who replied. It said, “Doctor Conway has just had an idea.”

  “What is it, you young whelp? There’s no need to be so damn secretive . . !” O’Mara’s voice had lost its gentle fatherly tone, and there was a gleam in his eye which said that he was glad that gentleness was no longer necessary. “What is wrong with the patient?”

  Feeling happy and excited and at the same time very much unsure of himself, Conway stumbled across to the intercom and ordered some very unusual equipment, checked again that the patient was so thoroughly strapped down that it would be unable to move a muscle, then he said, “My guess is that the patient is perfectly sane and we’ve been blinding ourselves with psychological red herrings. Basically, the trouble is something it ate.”

  “I had a bet with myself you would say that sometime during this case,” said O’Mara. He looked sick.

  The equipment arrived—a slender, pointed wooden stake and a mechanism which would drive it downward at any required angle and controlled speeds. With the Tralthan’s help Conway set it up and moved it into position. He chose a part of the patient’s body which contained several vital organs which were, however, protected by nearly six inches of musculature and adipose, then he set the stake in motion. It was just touching the skin and descending at the rate of approximately two inches per hour.

  “What the blazes is going on?” stormed O’Mara. “Do you think the patient is a vampire or something!”

  “Of course not,” Conway replied. “I’m using a wooden stake to give the patient a better chance of defending itself. You wouldn’t expect it to stop a steel one, would you.” He motioned the Tralthan forward and together they watched the area where the stake was entering the EPLH’s body. Every few minutes Prilicla reported on the emotional radiation. O’Mara paced up and down, occasionally muttering to himself.

  The point had penetrated almost a quarter of an inch when Conway noticed the first coarsening and thickening of the skin. It was taking place in a roughly circular area, about four inches in diameter, whose center was the wound created by the stake. Conway’s scanner showed a spongy, fibrous growth forming under the skin to a depth of half an inch. Visibly the growth thickened and grew opaque to his scanner’s current setting, and within ten minutes it had become a hard, boney plate. The stake had begun to bend alarmingly and was on the point of snapping.

  “I’d say the defenses are now concentrated at this one point,” Conway said, trying to keep his voice steady, “so we’d better have it out.”

  Conway and the Tralthan rapidly incised around and undercut the newly-formed bony plate, which was immediately transferred into a sterile, covered receptacle. Quickly preparing a shot—a not quite maximum dose of the specific he had tried the previous day—Conway injected, then went back to helping the Tralthan with the repair work on the wound. This was routine work and took about fifteen minutes, and when it was finished there could be no doubt at all that the patient was responding favorably to treatment.

  Over the congratulations of the Tralthan and the horrible threats of O’Mara—the Chief Psychologist wanted some questions answered, fast—Prilicla said, “You have effected a cure, Doctor, but the patient’s anxiety level has markedly increased. It is almost frantic.”

  Conway shook his head, grinning. “The patient is heavily anestheticized and cannot feel anything. However, I agree that at this present moment …” He nodded toward the sterile container. “ … its personal physician must be feeling pretty bad.”

  In the container the excised bone had begun to soften and leak a faintly purplish liquid. The liquid was rippling and sloshing gently about at the bottom of the container as if it had a mind of its own. Which was, in fact, the case …

  Conway was in O‘Mara’s office winding up his report on the EPLH and the Major was being highly complimentary in a language which at times made the compliments indistinguishable from insults. But this was O’Mara’s way, Conway was beginning to realize, and the Chief Psychologist was polite and sympathetic only when he was professionally concerned about a person.

  He was still asking questions.

  “ … An intelligent, amoebic life-form, a organized collection of submicroscopic, virus-type cells, would make the most efficient doctor obtainable,” said Conway in reply to one of them. “It would reside within its patient and, given the necessary data, control any disease or organic malfunction from the inside. To a being who is pathologically afraid of dying it must have seemed perfect. And it was, too, because the trouble which developed was not really the doctor’s fault. It came about through the patient’s ignorance of its own physiological background.

  “The way I see it,” Conway went on, “the patient had been taking its rejuvenation treatments at an early stage of its biological lifetime. I mean that it did not wait until middle or old age before regenrating itself. But on this occasion, either because it forgot or was careless or had been working on a problem which took longer than usual, it aged more than it had previously and acquired this skin condition. Pathology says that this was probably a common complaint with this race, and the normal course would be for the EPLH to slough off the affected skin and carry on as usual. But our patient, because the type of its rejuvenation treatment caused memory damage, did not know this, so its personal physician did not know it either.”

  Conway continued, “This, er, resident physician knew very little about the medical background of its patient-host’s body, but its motto must have been to maintain the status quo at all costs. When pieces of its patient
’s body threatened to break away it held onto them, not realizing that this could have been a normal occurrence like losing hair or a reptile periodically shedding its skin, especially as its master would have insisted that the occurrence was not natural. A pretty fierce struggle must have developed between the patient’s body processes and its doctor, with the patient’s mind also ranged against its doctor. Because of this the doctor had to render the patient unconscious the better to do what it considered to be the right thing.

  “When we gave it the test shots the doctor neutralized them. They were a foreign substance being introduced into its patient’s body, you see. And you know what happened when we tried surgical removal. It was only when we threatened underlying vital organs with that stake, forcing the doctor to defend its patient at that one point …”

  “When you began asking for wooden stakes,” said O’Mara dryly, “I thought of putting you in a tight harness.”

  Conway grinned. He said, “I’m recommending that the EPLH takes his doctor back. Now that Pathology has given it a fuller understanding of its employer’s medical and physiological history it should be the ultimate in personal physicians, and the EPLH is smart enough to see that.”

  O’Mara smiled in return. “And I was worried about what it might do when it became conscious. But it turned out to be a very friendly, likeable type. Quite charming, in fact.”

  As Conway rose and turned to go he said slyly, “That’s because it’s such a good psychologist. It is pleasant to people all the time …”

  He managed to get the door shut behind him before the explosion.

  CHAPTER 5

  In time the EPLH patient, whose name was Lonvellin, was discharged and the steady procession of ailing e-ts who came under his care made the memory of Lonvellin’s fade in Conway’s mind. He did not know whether the EPLH had returned to its home galaxy or was still wandering this one in search of good deeds to do, and he was being kept too busy to care either way. But Conway was not quite finished with the EPLH.