Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations

by James White

  “ … It was very distressing,” Prilicla said, still trembling violently. “He wanted to work quickly, but the earlier mistakes had wrecked his self-confidence. He was thinking twice about doing even the simplest things, things which a surgeon of his experience would do automatically, without thinking.”

  Conway was silent for a moment, thinking about the horrible situation Mannon had been in. Then he said, “Was there anything else unusual about his feelings? Or those of the theater staff?”

  Prilicla hesitated, then said, “It is difficult to isolate subtle nuances of emotion when the source is emoting so … so violently. But I received the impression of … the effect is hard to describe … of something like a faint emotional echo of irregular duration …”

  “Probably the Hudlar tape,” said Conway. “It’s not the first time a physiology tape gave me mental double vision.”

  “That might possibly be the case,” said Prilicla. Which, in a being who was invariably and enthusiastically in agreement with whatever was said to it, was as close as the empath could come to a negative reply. Conway began to feel that he might be getting onto something important.

  “How about the others?”

  “Two of them,” said Prilicla, “were radiating the shock-worry-fear combination indicative of a mildly traumatic experience in the recent past. I was in the gallery when both incidents occurred, and one of them gave me quite a jolt …”

  One of the nurses had almost had an accident while lifting a tray of instruments. One of them, a long, heavy, Hudlar Type Six scalpel used for opening the incredibly tough skin of that species, had slipped off the tray for some reason. Even a small punctured or incised wound was a very serious matter for a Kelgian, so that the Kelgian nurse had a bad fright when it saw that vicious blade dropping toward its unprotected side. But somehow it had struck in such a way—it was difficult to know how, considering its shape and lack of balance—that it had not penetrated the skin or even damaged the fur. The Kelgian had been relieved and thankful for its good fortune, but still a little disturbed.

  “I can imagine,” said Conway. “Probably the Charge Nurse read the riot act. Minor errors become major crimes where theater staff are concerned …”

  Prilicla’s legs began to tremble again, a sign that it was nerving itself for the effort of being slightly disagreeable. It said, “The entity in question was the Charge Nurse. That was why, when the other nurse goofed on an instrument count—there was one too many or too few—the ticking off was relatively mild. And during both incidents I detected the echo effect radiated by Mannon, although in these cases the echo was from the respective nurses.”

  “We may have something there!” said Conway excitedly. “Did the nurses have any physical contact with Mannon?”

  “They were assisting him,” said Prilicla, “and they were all wearing protective suits. I don’t see how any form of parasitic life or bacteria could have passed between them, if that is the idea which is making you feel so excited and hopeful just now. I am very sorry, friend Conway, but this echo effect, while peculiar, does not seem to me to be important.”

  “It’s something they had in common,” said Conway.

  “Yes,” Prilicla said, “but the something did not have self identity, it was not an individual. Just a very faint emotional echo of the feelings of the people concerned.”

  “Even so,” said Conway.

  Three people had made mistakes or had had accidents in this theater two days ago, all of whom had radiated an odd emotional echo which Prilicla did not consider important. The presence of an accident-prone Conway ruled out because O’Mara’s screening methods were too efficient in that respect. But suppose Prilicla was wrong and something had got in the theater or into the hospital, some form of life which was difficult to detect and outside their present experience. It was well known that when odd things happened in Sector General the reasons very often were found outside the hospital. At the moment, however, he hadn’t enough evidence to form even a vague theory and the first job should be to gather some—even though he might not recognize it if he tripped over it with both feet.

  “I’m hungry and it’s high time we talked to the man himself,” said Conway suddenly. “Let’s find him and invite him to lunch.”

  The dining hall for the oxygen-breathing Medical and Maintenance staff occupied one complete level, and at one time it had been sectioned off into physiological types with low dividing ropes. But this had not worked out too well because the diners very often wanted to talk shop with other-species colleagues or they found that there were no vacant places in their own enclosure and space going to waste in that of another life-form. So it was no surprise when they arrived to find that they had the choice of sitting at an enormous Tralthan table with benches which were a shade too far from the table’s edge and one in the Melfan section which was cozier but whose chairs resembled surrealistic wastepaper baskets. They insinuated themselves into three of the latter and began the usual preliminaries to ordering.

  “I’m just myself today,” said Prilicla in answer to Conway’s question. “The usual, if you please.”

  Conway dialed for the usual, which was a triple helping of Earth-type spaghetti, then looked at Mannon.

  “I’ve an FROB and an MSVK beastie riding me,” the other Senior said gruffly. “Hudlars aren’t persnickity about food, but those blasted MSVKs are offended by anything which doesn’t look like birdseed! Just get me something nutritious, but don’t tell me what it is and put it in about three sandwiches so’s I won’t see what it is … .”

  While they were waiting for the food to arrive Mannon spoke quietly, the normality of his tone belied by the fact that his emotional radiation was making Prilicla shake like a leaf. He said, “The grapevine has it that you two are trying to get me out of this trouble I’m in. It’s nice of you, but you’re wasting your time.”

  “We don’t think so and neither does O‘Mara,” said Conway, shading the truth considerably. “O’Mara gives you a clean bill of mental and physical health, and he said that your behavior was most uncharacteristic. There must be some explanation, some environmental influence, perhaps, or something whose presence or absence would make you behave, if only momentarily, in an uncharacteristic fashion …”

  Conway outlined what little they knew to date, trying to sound more hopeful than he really felt, but Mannon was no fool.

  “I don’t know whether to feel grateful for your efforts or concerned for your respective mental well-beings,” Mannon said when he had finished. “These peculiar and rather vague mental effects are … are … at the risk of offending Daddy-longlegs here I would suggest that any peculiarities there are lie in your own minds—your attempts to find excuses for me are becoming ridiculous!”

  “Now you’re telling me I have a peculiar mind,” said Conway.

  Mannon laughed quietly, but Prilicla was trembling worse than ever.

  “A circumstance, person or thing,” Conway repeated, “whose presence or absence might effect your—”

  “Ye Gods!” Mannon burst out. “You’re not thinking of the dog!”

  Conway had been thinking about the dog, but he was too much of a moral coward to admit it right then. Instead he said, “Were you thinking about it during that op, Doctor?”

  “No!” said Mannon.

  There was a long, awkward silence after that, during which the service panels slid open and their orders rose into view. It was Mannon who spoke first.

  “I liked that dog,” he said carefully, “when I was myself, that is. But for the past four years I’ve had to carry MSVK and LSVO tapes permanently in connection with my teaching duties, and recently I’ve needed the Hudlar and Melfan tapes for a project Thornnastor invited me to join. They were in permanent occupation as well. With my brain thinking that it was five different people, five very different people … Well, you know how it is …”

  Conway and Prilicla knew how it was only too well.

  The Hospital was equipped to tr
eat every known form of intelligent life, but no single person could hold in his brain even a fraction of the physiological data necessary for this purpose. Surgical dexterity was a matter of ability and training, but the complete physiological knowledge of any patient was furnished by means of an Educator Tape, which was simply the brain record of some great medical genius belonging to the same or a similar species to that of the patient being treated. If an Earth-human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient he took a DBLF physiology tape until treatment was completed, after which it was erased. The sole exceptions to this rule were Senior Physicians with teaching duties and the Diagnosticians.

  A Diagnostician was one of the elite, a being whose mind was considered stable enough to retain permanently six, seven or even ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To their data-crammed minds was given the job of original research in xenological medicine and the treatment of new diseases in hitherto unknown life-forms.

  But the tapes did not impart only physiological data, the complete memory and personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was transferred as well. In effect a Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to the most drastic form of schizophrenia. The entities apparently sharing one’s mind could be unpleasant, aggressive individuals—geniuses were rarely charming people—with all sorts of peeves and phobias. These did not become apparent only at mealtimes. The worst period was when the possessor of the tapes was relaxing prior to sleeping.

  Alien nightmares were really nightmarish and alien sexual fantasies and wish-fulfillment dreams were enough to make the person concerned wish, if he were capable of wishing coherently for anything, that he was dead.

  “ … Within the space of a few minutes,” Mannon continued, “she would change from being a ferocious, hairy beast intent on tearing out my belly feathers to a brainless bundle of fur which would get squashed by one of my six feet if it didn’t get to blazes out of the way, to a perfectly ordinary dog wanting to play. It wasn’t fair to the mutt, you know. She was a very old and confused dog toward the end, and I’m more glad than sorry that she died.

  “And now let’s talk and emote about some other subject,” Mannon ended briskly. “Otherwise we will completely ruin Prilicla’s lunch …”

  He did just that for the remainder of the meal, discussing with apparent relish a juicy piece of gossip originating in the SNLU section of the methane wards. How anything of a scandalous nature could occur between two intelligent crystalline life-forms living at minus one hundred and fifty degrees Centigrade was something which puzzled Conway, or for that matter why their moral shortcomings were of such interest to a warm-blooded oxygen-breather. Unless this was one of the reasons why Senior Physician Mannon was so far on the way to becoming a Diagnostician himself.

  Or had been.

  If Mannon was assisting Thornnastor, the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology (and as such the hospital’s senior Diagnostician) in one of that august being’s projects, then Mannon had to be in good physical and mental shape—Diagnosticians were terribly choosy about their assistants. And everything the Chief Psychologist had told him pointed the same way. But then what had got into Mannon two days ago to make him behave as he had?

  As the others talked Conway began to realize that the sort of evidence he needed might be difficult to gather. The questions he had to ask would require tact and some sort of theory to explain his line of investigation. His mind was still miles away when Mannon and Prilicla began rising to go. As they were leaving the table Conway moved closer to Prilicla and asked softly, “Any echoes, Doctor?”

  “Nothing,” said Prilicla, “nothing at all.”

  Within seconds their places at the table were taken by three Kelgians who draped their long, silvery, caterpillar bodies over the backs of the ELNT chairs so that their forward manipulators hung over the table at a comfortable distance for eating. One of the three was Naydrad, the Charge Nurse on Mannon’s theater staff. Conway excused himself to his friends and returned quickly to the table.

  When he had finished talking it was Naydrad who spoke first. It said, “We would like to help, sir, but this is an unusual request. It involves, at very least, the wholesale betrayal of confidence …”

  “We don’t want names,” said Conway urgently. “The mistakes are required for statistical purposes only and no disciplinary action will be taken. This investigation is unofficial, an idea of my own. Its only purpose is to help Doctor Mannon.”

  They were all keen to help their Chief, naturally, and Conway went on, “To summarize, if we accept that Senior Physician Mannon is incapable of gross professional misconduct—which we all do—then we must assume that his error was caused by an outside influence. Since there is strong evidence that the Doctor was mentally stable and free from all disease or physical malfunction it follows that we are looking for an outside influence—or more accurately, indications of the presence of an outside influence—which may be nonphysical.

  “Mistakes by a person in authority are more noticeable, and serious, than those of a subordinate,” Conway went on, “but if these errors are being caused by an outside agency they should not be confined only to senior staff, and it is here that we need data. There are bound to be mistakes, especially among trainee staff—we all realize this. What we must know is whether there has been an overall or local increase in the number of these minor errors and, if so, exactly where and when they occurred.”

  “Is this matter to be kept confidential?” one of the Kelgians asked.

  Conway nearly choked at the idea of anything being kept confidential in this place, but the sarcasm was, fortunately, filtered out of his tone by the process of Translation.

  “The more people gathering data on this the better,” he said. “Just use your discretion …”

  A few minutes later he was at another table saying much the same thing, then another and another. He would be late back to his wards today, but fortunately he had a couple of very good assistants—the type who just loved it when they had a chance to show how well they could do without him.

  During the remainder of the day there was no great response, nor had he expected any, but on the second day nursing staff of all shapes and species began approaching him with elaborate secrecy to tell of incidents which invariably had happened to a third party. Conway noted times and places carefully while showing no curiosity whatever regarding the identities of the persons concerned. Then on the morning of the third day Mannon sought him out during his rounds.

  “You’re really working at this thing, aren’t you, Conway,” Mannon said harshly, then added, “I’m grateful. Loyalty is nice even when it’s misplaced. But I wish you would stop. You’re heading for serious trouble.”

  Conway said, “You’re the one in trouble, Doctor, not me.”

  “That’s what you think,” said Mannon gruffly. “I’ve just come from O’Mara’s office. He wants to see you. Forthwith.”

  A few minutes later Conway was being waved into the inner sanctum by one of O‘Mara’s assistants, who was trying hard to warn him of impending doom with his eyebrows while commiserating with him by turning down the corners of his mouth. The combination of expressions looked so ridiculous that Conway found himself inside before he realized it, facing a very angry O’Mara with what must have been a stupid grin on his face.

  The psychologist stabbed a finger in the direction of the least comfortable chair and shouted, “What the blazes do you mean by infesting the hospital with a disembodied intelligence?”

  “What … ?” began Conway.

  “ … Are you trying to make a fool of yourself?” O’Mara stormed on, disregarding him. “Or make a fool out of me? Don’t interrupt! Granted you’re the youngest Senior in the place and your colleagues—none of whom specialize in applied psychology, let me add—think highly of you. But such idiotic and irresponsible behavior is worthy only of a patient in the psychiatric wards!

  “Junior staff discipline is going to pot, thanks to you,” O’Mara went on,
a little more quietly. “It is now becoming the done thing to make mistakes! Practically every Charge Nurse in the place is screaming for me—me!—to get rid of the thing! All you did was invent this invisible, undetectable, insubstantial monster—apparently the job of getting rid of it is the responsibility of the Chief Psychologist!”

  O’Mara paused to catch his breath, and when he continued his tone had become quiet and almost polite. He said, “And don’t think that you are fooling anyone. Boiled down to its simplest terms, you are hoping that if enough other mistakes are made your friend’s will pass relatively unnoticed. And stop opening and closing your mouth—your turn to talk will come! One of the aspects of this whole situation which really troubles me is that I share responsibility for it in that I gave you an insoluble problem hoping that you might attack it from a new angle—an angle which might give a partial solution, enough to let our friend off the hook. Instead you created a new and perhaps worse problem!

  “I may have exaggerated things a little because of excusable annoyance, Doctor,” O’Mara went on quietly, “but the fact remains that you may be in serious trouble over this business. I don’t believe that the nursing staff will deliberately make mistakes—at least, not of the order which would endanger their patients. But any relaxation of standards is dangerous, obviously. Do you begin to see what you’ve been doing, Doctor?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Conway.

  “I see that you do,” O’Mara said with uncharacteristic mildness. “And now I would like to know why you did it. Well, Doctor?”

  Conway took his time about answering. This was not the first time he had left the Chief Psychologist’s office with his ego singed around the edges, but this time it looked serious. The generally held opinion was that when O‘Mara was not unduly concerned over, or in some cases when he actually liked an individual, the psychologist felt able to relax with them and be his bad-tempered, obnoxious self, but when O’Mara became quiet and polite and not at all sarcastic, when he began treating a person as a patient rather than a colleague in other words, that person was in trouble up to his or its neck.