Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations

by James White

  O’Mara will get you if you don’t watch out, he thought grimly.

  Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and mutual respect, there were still occasions when inter-racial friction occurred in the hospital. Potentially dangerous situations arose through ignorance or misunderstanding, or a being could develop xenophobia to a degree which affected its professional efficiency, mental stability, or both. An Earth-human doctor, for instance, who had a subconscious fear of spiders would not be able to bring to bear on a Cinrusskin patient the proper degree of clinical detachment necessary for its treatment. And if one of the Cinrusskins, like Prilicla, were to treat such an Earth-human patient …

  It was O‘Mara’s job as Chief Psychologist to detect and eradicate such trouble—or if all else failed, to remove the potentially dangerous individuals—before such friction developed into open conflict. Conway did not know how O’Mara would react to a hulking great AMSL who fled in panic from such a fragile creature as Dr. Prilicla.

  When the Creppelian’s outburst began to ease off Conway raised his hand for attention and said, “I realize now that Dr. Prilicla bears a physical resemblance to a species of small, amphibious predator native to your home world, and that in your youth you experienced an extremely harrowing incident with these animals. But Doctor Prilicla is not an animal and the resemblance is purely visual. Far from being a threat you could kill Prilicla if you were to touch it carelessly.

  “Knowing this,” Conway ended seriously, “would you be frightened into running if you were to meet this being again?”

  “I don’t know,” said the AMSL. “I might.”

  Conway sighed. He could not help remembering his own first weeks at Sector General and the horrible, nightmare creatures which had haunted his sleep. What had made the nightmares particularly horrifying had been the fact that they were not figments of his imagination but actual, physical realities which in many cases were only a few bulkheads away.

  He had never fled from any of these nightmares who had later become his teachers, colleagues and eventually friends. But to be honest with himself this was not due so much to intestinal fortitude as the fact that extreme fear had a tendency to paralyze Conway rather than to make him run away.

  “I think you may need psychiatric assistance, Doctor,” he told the Creppelian gently, “and the hospital’s Chief Psychologist will help you. But I would advise you not to consult him at once. Spend a week or so trying to adapt to the situation before going to him. You will find that he will think more highly of you for doing this …”

  … And less likely, he added silently, to send you packing as unsuited for duty in a multi-environment hospital.

  The Creppelian left the storeroom with very little persuasion, after Conway told it that Prilicla was the only GLNO in the hospital at the moment and that their paths were very unlikely to cross twice in the same day. Ten minutes later the AMSL was settled in its dining tank and Conway was making for his own dinner by the fastest possible route.

  CHAPTER 7

  By a stroke of luck he saw Dr. Mannon at an otherwise empty table in the Senior’s enclosure. Mannon was an Earth-human who had once been Conway’s superior and was now a Senior Physician well on the way to achieving Diagnostician status. Currently he was allowed to retain three physiology tapes—those of a Tralthan specialist in micro-surgery and two which had been made by surgeons of the low-gravity LSVO and MSVK species—but despite this his reactions were reasonably human. At the moment he was working through a salad with his eyes turned toward Heaven and the dining hall ceiling in an effort not to look at what he was eating. Conway sat down facing him and made a sympathetic, querying noise.

  “I’ve had a Tralthan and a LSVO on my list this afternoon, both long jobs,” Mannon said grumpily. “You know how it is, I’ve been thinking like them too much. If only these blasted Tralthans weren’t vegetarians, or the LSVOs weren’t sickened by anything which doesn’t look like bird seed. Are you anybody else today?”

  Conway shook his head. “Just me. Do you mind if I have steak?”

  “No, just don’t talk about it.”

  “I won’t.”

  Conway knew only too well the confusion, mental double vision and the severe emotional disturbance which went with a physiology tape that had become too thoroughly keyed in to the operating physician’s mind. He could remember a time only three months ago when he had fallen hopelessly—but hopelessly—in love with one of a group of visiting specialists from Melf IV. The Melfans were ELNTs—six-legged, amphibious, vaguely crab-like beings—and while one half of his mind had insisted that the whole affair was ridiculous the other half thought lovingly of that gorgeously marked carapace and generally felt like baying at the moon.

  Physiology tapes were decidedly a mixed blessing, but their use was necessary because no single being could hope to hold in its brain all the physiological data needed for the treatment of patients in a multi-environment hospital. The incredible mass of data required to take care of them was furnished by means of Educator tapes, which were simply the brain recordings of great medical specialists of the various species concerned. If an Earth-human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient he took one of the DBLF physiology tapes until treatment was complete, after which he had it erased. But Senior Physicians with teaching duties were often called onto retain these tapes for long periods, which wasn’t much fun at all.

  The only good thing from their point of view was that they were better off than the Diagnosticians.

  They were the hospital’s elite. A Diagnostician was one of those rare beings whose mind was considered stable enough to retain permanently up to ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To their data-crammed minds was given the job of original research in xenological medicine and the diagnosis and treatment of new diseases in hitherto unknown life-forms. There was a well-known saying in the hospital, reputed to have originated with O’Mara himself, that anyone sane enough to want to be a Diagnostician was mad.

  For it was not only physiological data which the tapes imparted, the complete memory and personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was impressed on the receiving brain as well. In effect a Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to the most drastic form of multiple schizophrenia, with the alien personality sharing his mind so utterly different that in many cases they did not have even a system of logic in common.

  Conway brought his thoughts back to the here and now. Mannon was speaking again.

  “A funny thing about the taste of salad,” he said, still glaring at the ceiling as he ate, “is that none of my alter egos seem to mind it. The sight of it yes, but not the taste. They don’t particularly like it, mind, but neither does it completely revolt them. At the same time there are few species with an overwhelming passion for it, either. And speaking of overwhelming passions, how about you and Murchison?”

  One of these days Conway expected to hear gears clashing, the way Mannon changed subjects so quickly.

  “I’ll be seeing her tonight if I’ve time,” he replied carefully. “However, we’re just good friends.”

  “Haw,” said Mannon.

  Conway make an equally violent switch of subjects by hurriedly breaking the news about his latest assignment. Mannon was the best in the world, but he had the painful habit of pulling a person’s leg until it threatened to come off at the hip. Conway managed to keep the conversation off Murchison for the rest of the meal.

  As soon as Mannon and himself split up he went to the intercom and had a few words with the doctors of various species who would be taking over the instruction of the trainees, then he looked at his watch. There was almost an hour before he was due aboard Vespasian. He began to walk a little more hurriedly than befitted a Senior Physician …

  The sign over the entrance read “Recreation Level, Species DBDG, DBLF, ELNT, GKNM & FGLI.” Conway went in, changed his whites for shorts and began searching for Murchison.

  Trick lighting and some really inspired landscaping
had given the recreation level the illusion of tremendous spaciousness. The overall effect was of a small, tropical beach enclosed on two sides by cliffs and open to the sea, which stretched out to a horizon rendered indistinct by heat haze. The sky was blue and cloudless—realistic cloud effects were difficult to reproduce, a maintenance engineer had told him—and the water of the bay was deep blue shading to turquoise. It lapped against the golden, gently sloping beach whose sand was almost too warm for the feet. Only the artificial sun, which was too much on the reddish side for Conway’s taste, and the alien greenery fringing the beach and cliff’s kept it from looking like a tropical bay anywhere on Earth.

  But then space was at a premium in Sector General and the people who worked together were expected to play together as well.

  The most effective, yet completely unseen, aspect of the place was the fact that it was maintained at one-half normal gravity. A half-G meant that people who were tired could relax more comfortably and the ones who were feeling lively could feel livelier still, Conway thought wryly as a steep, slow-moving wave ran up the beach and broke around his knees. The turbulence in the bay was not produced artificially, but varied in proportion to the size, number and enthusiasm of the bathers using it.

  Projecting from one of the cliffs were a series of diving ledges connected by concealed tunnels. Conway climbed to the highest, fifty-foot ledge and from this point of vantage tried to find a DBDG female in a white swimsuit called Murchison.

  She wasn’t in the restaurant on the other cliff, or in the shallows adjoining the beach, or in the deep green water under the diving ledges. The sand was thickly littered with reclining forms which were large, small, leathery, scaley and furry—but Conway had no difficulty separating the Earth-human DBDGs from the general mass, they being the only intelligent species in the Federation with a nudity taboo. So he knew that anyone wearing clothing, no matter how abbreviated, was what he considered a human being.

  Suddenly he caught a glimpse of white which was partly obscured by two patches of green and one of yellow standing around it. That would be Murchison, all right. He took a quick bearing and retraced his steps.

  When Conway approached the crowd around Murchison, two Corpsmen and an intern from the eighty-seventh level dispersed with obvious reluctance. In a voice which, much to his disgust, had gone up in pitch, he said, “Hi. Sorry I’m late.”

  Murchison shielded her eyes to look up at him. “I just arrived myself,” she said, smiling. “Why don’t you lie down?”

  Conway dropped onto the sand but remained propped on one elbow, looking at her.

  Murchison possessed a combination of physical features which made it impossible for any Earth-human male member of the staff to regard her with anything like clinical detachment, and regular exposure to the artificial but UV-rich sun had given her a deep tan made richer by the dazzling contrast of her white swimsuit. Dark auburn hair stirred restively in the artificial breeze, her eyes were closed again and her lips slightly parted. Her respiration was slow and deep, that of a person either perfectly relaxed or asleep, and the things it was doing to her swimsuit was also doing things to Conway. He thought suddenly that if she was telepathic at this moment she would be up and running for dear life …

  “You look,” she said, opening one eye, “like somebody who wants to growl deep in his throat and beat his manly, clean-shaven chest—”

  “It isn’t clean-shaven,” Conway protested, “it’s just naturally not hairy. But I want you to be serious for a moment. I’d like to talk to you, alone, I mean …”

  “I don’t care either way about chests,” she said soothingly, “so you don’t have to feel bad about it.”

  “I don’t,” said Conway, then doggedly; “Can’t we get away from this menagerie and … Oops, stampede!”

  He reached across quickly and clapped his hand over her eyes, simultaneously closing his own.

  Two Tralthans on a total of twelve, elephantine feet thundered past within a few yards of them and plowed into the shallows, scattering sand and spray over a radius of fifty yards. The half-G conditions which allowed the normally slow and ponderous FGLIs to gambol like lambs also kept the sand they had kicked up airborne for a considerable time. When Conway was sure that the last grains had settled he took his hand away from Murchison’s eyes. But not completely.

  Hesitantly, a little awkwardly, he slid his hand over the soft warm contour of her cheek until he was cupping the side of her jaw in his palm. Then gently he pushed his fingers into the soft tangle of curls behind her ear. He felt her stiffen, then relax again.

  “Uh, see what I mean,” he said dry-mouthed. “Unless you like half-ton bullies kicking sand in your face …”

  “We’ll be alone later,” said Murchison, laughing, “when you take me home.”

  “And then what happens!” Conway said disgustedly. “Just the same as last time. We’ll sneak up to your door, being very careful not to wake your roommate who has to go on early duty, and then that damned servo will come trundling up …” Angrily, Conway began to mimic the taped voice of the robot as he went on, “ … I perceive that you are beings of classification DBDG and are of differing genders, and note further that you have been in close juxtaposition for a period of two minutes forty-eight seconds. In the circumstances I must respectfully remind you of Regulation Twenty-one, Sub-section Three regarding the entertaining of visitors in DBDG Nurses’ Quarters …”

  Almost choking, Murchison said, “I’m sorry, it must have been very frustrating for you.”

  Conway thought sourly that the expression of sorrow was rather spoiled by the suppressed laughter preceeding it. He leaned closer and took her gently by the shoulder. He said, “It was and is. I want to talk to you and I won’t have time to see you home tonight. But I don’t want to talk here, you always head for the water when I get you cornered. Well, I want to get you in a corner, both literally and conversationally, and ask some serious questions. This being friends is killing me …”

  Murchison shook her head. She took his hand away from her shoulder, squeezed it and said, “Let’s swim.”

  Seconds later as he chased her into the shallows he wondered if perhaps she wasn’t a little telepathic after all. She was certainly running fast enough.

  In half-G conditions swimming was an exhilarating experience. The waves were high and steep and the smallest splash seemed to hang in the air for seconds, with individual drops sparkling red and amber in the sun. A badly executed dive by one of the heavier life-forms-the FGLIs especially had an awful lot of belly to flop—could cause really spectacular effects. Conway was threshing madly after Murchison on the fringe of just such a titanic upheaval when a loudspeaker on the cliff roared into life.

  “Doctor Conway,” it boomed. “Will Doctor Conway report at Lock Sixteen for embarkation, please …”

  They were walking rapidly up the beach when Murchison said, very seriously for her, “I didn’t know you were leaving. I’ll change and see you off.”

  There was a Monitor Corps officer in the lock antechamber. When he saw Conway had company he said, “Doctor Conway? We leave in fifteen minutes, sir,” and disappeared tactfully. Conway stopped beside the boarding tube and so did Murchison. She looked at him but there was no particular expression on her face, it was just beautiful and very desirable. Conway went on telling her about his important new assignment although he didn’t want to talk about that at all. He talked rapidly and nervously until he heard the Monitor officer returning along the tube, then he pulled Murchison tightly against him and kissed her hard.

  He couldn’t tell if she responded. He had been too sudden, too ungentle …

  “I’ll be gone about three months,” he said, in a voice which tried to explain and apologize at the same time. Then with forced lightness he ended, “And in the morning I won’t feel a bit sorry.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Conway was shown to his cabin by an officer wearing a medic’s caduceus over his insignia who introduced himself as M
ajor Stillman. Although he spoke quietly and politely Conway got the impression that the Major was not a person who would be overawed by anything or anybody. He said that the Captain would be pleased to see Conway in the control room after they had made the first jump, to welcome him aboard personally.

  A little later Conway met Colonel Williamson, the ship’s Captain, who gave him the freedom of the ship. This was a courtesy rare enough on a government ship to impress Conway, but he soon discovered that although nobody said anything he was simply in everyone’s way in the control room, and twice he lost himself while trying to explore the ship’s interior. The Monitor heavy cruiser Vespasian was much larger than Conway had realized. After being guided back by a friendly Corpsman with a too-expressionless face he decided that he would spend most of the trip in his cabin familiarizing himself with his new assignment.

  Colonel Williamson had given him copies of the more detailed and recent information which had come in through Monitor Corps channels, but he began by studying the file which O’Mara had given him.

  The being Lonvellin had been on the way to a world, about which it had heard some very nasty rumors, in a practically unexplored section of the Lesser Megellanic Cloud, when it had been taken ill and admitted to Sector General. Shortly after being pronounced cured it had resumed the journey and a few weeks later it had contacted the Monitor Corps. It had stated that conditions on the world it had found were both sociologically complex and medically barbaric, and that it would need advice on the medical side before it could begin to act effectively against the many social ills afflicting this truly distressed planet. It had also asked if some beings of physiological classification DBDG could be sent along to act as information gatherers as the natives were of that classification and were violently hostile to all off-planet life, a fact which seriously hampered Lonvellin’s activities.

  The fact of Lonvellin asking for help of any sort was surprising in itself in view of the enormous intelligence and experience of his species in solving vast sociological problems. But on this occasion things had gone disastrously wrong, and Lonvellin had been kept too busy using its defensive science to do anything else …