Sector General Omnibus 3 - General Practice

by James White

  Cha Thrat walked in silence for a moment, then said, “I think that your consideration for my feelings makes you the right person. And a subordinate who has acted wrongly may indeed feel mental pain or anger or intense self-dislike but surely, if the superior speaks justly, no offense can be taken nor insult given.”

  The Earth-human shook its head in a gesture, she had learned, that could mean either negation or puzzlement. It said, “There are times, Cha Thrat, when you make me feel like the subordinate. But what the hell, I’ll try to answer. You are being accorded special treatment because of the wrong we did to you and the mental discomfort we have caused, and there are several important people who feel obligated to do something about it.”

  “But surely,” she said incredulously, “I am the one who has behaved wrongly.”

  “That you have,” Timmins said, “but as a direct result of us wronging you first. The Monitor Corps are responsible for allowing, no, encouraging you to come here in the first place, and waiving the entry requirements. The wrongdoing that followed this combination of misguided gratitude for saving Chiang’s life and sheer political opportunism was the inevitable result.”

  “But I wanted to come,” Cha Thrat protested, “and I still want to stay.”

  “To punish yourself for recent misdeeds?” Timmins asked quietly. “I’ve been trying to convince you that we are originally to blame for those.”

  “I am not mentally or morally warped,” she replied, trying to control her anger at what, on her home world, would have been a grave insult. “I accept just punishment, but I would not seek to inflict it on myself. There are some very disquieting and unpleasant aspects to life here, but in no level of Sommaradvan society could I be subject to such a variety and intensity of experience. That is why I would like to stay.”

  The Earth-human was silent for a moment, then it said, “Conway, O’Mara, and Cresk-Sar among others, even Hredlichli, were sure that your reasons for wanting to stay here were positive rather than negative and that there was little chance of my getting you to agree to a return home …”

  It broke off as Cha Thrat stopped dead in the corridor.

  Angrily she said, “Have you been discussing with all these people my deeds and misdeeds, my competence or incompetence, perhaps my future prospects, without inviting me to be present?”

  “Move, you’re causing a traffic problem,” Timmins said. “And there is no reason for anger. Since that business during the Hudlar demo there isn’t a single being in the hospital who has not talked about your deeds, misdeeds, competence, or lack thereof, and your highly questionable future prospects in the hospital. Having you present at all those discussions was not possible. But if you want to know what was said about you in great and interminable detail—the serious discussions, that is, as opposed to mere hospital gossip—I believe O’Mara has added the recordings to your psych file and might play them back to you on request. Or again, he might not.

  “Alternatively,” it went on when they were moving again, “you may wish me to give you a brief summary of these discussions, inaccurate in that the excess verbiage and the more impolite and colorful phraseology will be deleted.”

  “That,” Cha Thrat said, “is what I wish.”

  “Very well,” it replied. “Let me begin by saying that the Monitor Corps personnel and all of the senior medical staff members involved are responsible for this situation. During the initial interview with O’Mara you mentioned that the lengthy delay in your decision to treat Chiang was that you did not want to lose a limb. O’Mara assumed, wrongly, that you were referring only to Chiang’s limb, and he thinks that in an other-species interview he should have been more alert to the exact meaning of the words spoken, and that he is primarily responsible for your self-amputation.

  “Conway feels responsible,” it went on, “because he ordered you to perform the Hudlar limb removal without knowing anything about your very strict code of professional ethics. Cresk-Sar thinks it should have questioned you more closely on the same subject. Both of them believe that you would make a fine other-species surgeon if you could be deconditioned and reeducated. And Hredlichli blames itself for ignoring the special friendship that developed between you and AUGL-One Sixteen. And, of course, the Monitor Corps, which is originally responsible for the problem, suggested a solution that would give the minimum displeasure to everyone.”

  “By transferring me to Maintenance,” she finished for it.

  “That was never a serious suggestion,” the Earth-human said, “because we couldn’t believe that you would accept it. No, we wanted to send you home.”

  A small part of her mind was moving her body forward and around the heavier or more senior staff members, while the rest of it felt angry and bitterly disappointed in the life-form beside her that she had begun to think of as a friend.

  “Naturally,” Timmins went on, “we tried to take your feelings into account. You were interested in meeting and working with off-planet life-forms, so we would give you a cultural liaison position, as an advisor on Sommaradvan affairs, on our base there. Or on Descartes, our largest specialized other-species contact vessel, which will be orbiting your world until another new intelligent species is discovered somewhere. Your position would be one of considerable responsibility, and could not be influenced in any way by the people who dislike you on Sommaradva.

  “Naturally, nothing could be guaranteed at this stage,” it continued. “But subject to your satisfactory performance with us you would be allowed to choose between a permanent position with the Corps’ Sommaradva establishment as an interspecies cultural advisor or as a member of the contact team on Descartes. We tried to do what we thought was best for you, friend, and everyone else.”

  “You did,” Cha Thrat said, feeling her anger and disappointment melting away. “Thank you.”

  “We thought it was a reasonable compromise,” Timmins said. “But O’Mara said no. He insisted that you be given a maintenance job here in the hospital and have the Corps induction procedures attended to as quickly as possible.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why,” it replied. “Who knows how a Chief Psychologist’s mind works?”

  “Why,” she repeated, “must I join your Monitor Corps?”

  “Oh, that,” Timmins said. “Purely for administrative convenience. The supply and maintenance of Sector General is our responsibility, and anyone who is not a patient or on the medical staff is automatically a member of the Monitor Corps. The personnel computer has to know your name, rank, and number so as to be able to pay your salary and so we can tell you what to do.

  “Theoretically,” it added.

  “I have never disobeyed the lawful order of a superior …” Cha Thrat began, when it held up its hand again.

  “A Corps joke, don’t worry about it,” Timmins said. “The point I’m trying to make is that our Chief Psychologist bears the administrative rank of major, but it is difficult to define the limits of his authority in this place, because he orders full Colonels and Diagnosticians around, and not always politely. Your own rank of junior technician, Environmental Maintenance, Grade Two, which became effective as soon as we received O’Mara’s instructions, will not give you as much leeway.”

  “Please,” she said urgently, “this is a serious matter. It is my understanding that the Monitor Corps is an organization of warriors. It has been many generations on Sommaradva since our warrior-level citizens fought together in battle. Peace and present-day technology offer danger enough. As a warrior-surgeon I am required to heal wounds, not inflict them.”

  “Seriously,” the Earth-human said, “I think your information on the Corps came chiefly from the entertainment channels. Space battles and hand-to-hand combat are an extremely rare occurrence, and the library tapes will give you a much truer, and more boring, description of what we do and why we do it. Study the material. You’ll find that there will be no conflict of loyalty between your duties to the Corps, your home world, or your ethica
l standards.

  “We’ve arrived,” it added briskly, pointing at the sign on the heavy door before them. “From here on we’ll need heavy radiation armor. Oh, you’ve another question?”

  “It’s about my salary,” she said hesitantly.

  Timmins laughed and said, “I do so hate these altruistic types who consider money unimportant. The pay at your present rank isn’t large. Personnel will be able to tell you the equivalent in Sommaradvan currency, but then there isn’t much to spend it on here. You can always save it and your leave allowance and travel. Perhaps visit your AUGL friend on Chalderescol sometime, or go to—”

  “There would be enough money for an interstellar trip like that?” she broke in.

  The Earth-human went into a paroxym of coughing, recovered, then said, “There would not be enough money to pay for an interstellar trip. However, because of the isolated position of Sector General, free Corps transport is available for physiologically suitable hospital personnel to travel to their home planets or, with a bit of fiddling, to the planet of your choice. The money could be spent there, enjoying yourself. Now will you please get into that armor?”

  Cha Thrat did not move and the Earth-human watched her without speaking.

  Finally she said, “I am being given special treatment, shown areas where I am not qualified to work and mechanisms that I can’t hope to use for a very long time. No doubt this is being done as an incentive, to show me what is possible for me to achieve in the future. I understand and appreciate the thinking behind this, but I would much prefer to stop sightseeing and do some simple, and useful, work.”

  “Well, good for you!” Timmins said, showing its teeth approvingly. “We can’t look directly at the Telfi anyway, so we aren’t missing much. Suppose you begin by learning to drive a delivery sled. A small one, at first, so that an accident will damage you more than the hospital structure. And you’ll have to really master your internal geography, and be able to navigate accurately and at speed through the service tunnel network. It seems to be a law of nature that when a ward or diet kitchen has to be resupplied, the requisition is always urgent and usually arrives late.

  “We’ll head for the internal transport hangar now,” it ended, “unless you have another question?”

  She had, but thought it better to wait until they were moving again before asking it.

  “What about the damage to the AUGL ward for which I was indirectly responsible?” she said. “Will the cost be deducted from my salary?”

  Timmins showed its teeth again and said, “I’d say that it would take about three years to pay for the damage caused by your AUGL friend. But when the damage was done you were one of the medical trainee crazies, not a serious and responsible member of the Maintenance Department, so don’t worry about it.”

  She did not worry about it because, for the rest of the day, there were far more important things to worry about—principally the control and guidance of the uncontrollable and misguided, multiply accursed heap of machinery called an antigravity sled.

  In operation the vehicle rode a repulsion cushion so that there was no contact with the deck, and changes in direction were effected by lowering friction pads, angling the thrusters, or, for fine control, leaning sideways. If emergency braking was necessary, the power was switched off. This caused the vehicle to drop to the deck and grind noisily to a halt. But this maneuver was discouraged because it made the driver very unpopular with the service crew who had to realign the repulsor grids.

  By the end of the day her vehicle had slipped and spun all over the transport hangar floor, hit every collapsible marker that she was supposed to steer around, and generally displayed a high level of noncooperation. Timmins gave her a packet of study tapes, told her to look over them before next morning, and said that her driving was pretty good for a beginner.

  Three days later she began to believe it.

  “I drove a sled with a trailer attached, both fully loaded, from Level Eighteen to Thirty-three,” she told Tarsedth, when her one-time classmate visited her for the customary evening gossip. “I did it using only the service tunnels, and without hitting anything or anybody.”

  “Should I be impressed?” the Kelgian asked.

  “A little,” Cha Thrat said, feeling more than a little deflated. “What’s been happening to you?”

  “Cresk-Sar transferred to me LSVO Surgical,” Tarsedth said, its fur rippling in an unreadable mixture of emotions. “It said I was ready to broaden my other-species nursing experience, and working with a light-gravity life-form would improve my delicacy of touch. And anyway, it said, Charge Nurse Lentilatsar, the rotten, chlorine-breathing slimy slob, was not entirely happy with the way I exercised my initiative. What tape is that? It looks massively uninteresting.”

  “To the contrary,” Cha Thrat said, touching the pause stud. The screen showed a picture of a group of Monitor Corps officers meeting the great Earth-human MacEwan and the equally legendary Orligian Grawlya-Ki, the true founders, it was said, of Sector General hospital. “It’s the history, organization, and present activities of the Monitor Corps. I find it very interesting, but ethically confusing. For example, why must a peace-keeping force be so heavily armed?”

  “Because, stupid, it couldn’t if it wasn’t,” Tarsedth said. It went on quickly. “But on the subject of the Monitor Corps I’m an expert. A lot of Kelgians join these days, and I was going to try for a position as Surgeon-Lieutenant, a ship’s medic, that is, and might still do it if I don’t qualify here.

  “Of course,” it went on enthusiastically, “there are other, nonmilitary, openings …”

  As the Galactic Federation’s executive and law-enforcement arm, the Monitor Corps was essentially a police force on an interstellar scale, but during the first century since it had come into existence it had become much more. Originally, when the Federation had comprised a rather unstable alliance of only four inhabited systems—Nidia, Orligia, Traltha, and Earth—its personnel had been exclusively Earth-human. But those Earth-humans were responsible for discovering other inhabited systems, and more and more intelligent life-forms, and for establishing friendly contact with them.

  The result was that the Federation now numbered among its citizens close on seventy different species—the figure was constantly being revised upward—and the peace-keeping function had taken second place to that of the Survey, Exploration, and Other-species Communications activities. The people with the heavy weaponry did not mind because a police force, unlike an army, feels at its most effective when there is nothing for it to do but keep in training by carving up the odd mineralrich asteroid for the mining people, or clearing and leveling large tracts of virgin land on a newly discovered world in preparation for the landing of colonists.

  The last time a Monitor Corps police action had been indistinguishable from an act of war had been nearly two decades ago, when they had defended Sector General itself from the badly misguided Etlans, who had since become law-abiding citizens of the Federation. A few of them had even joined the Corps.

  “Nowadays membership is open to any species,” Tarsedth continued, “although for physiological reasons, life-support and accommodation problems on board the smaller ships, most of the space-going personnel are warm-blooded oxygen-breathers.

  “Like I said,” the Kelgian went on, undulating forward and restarting the tape, “there are lots of interesting openings for restless, adventurous, home-hating types like us. You could do worse than join.”

  “I have joined,” Cha Thrat said. “But driving a gravity sled isn’t exactly adventurous.”

  Tarsedth’s fur spiked in surprise, then settled down again as it said, “Of course you have. Stupid of me, I’d forgotten that all nonmedical staff are automatically coopted into the Monitor Corps. And I’ve seen how you people drive. Adventurous verging on the suicidal best describes it. But you made a good decision. Congratulations.”

  The decision had been made for her, Cha Thrat thought wryly, but that did not mean tha
t it was necessarily a wrong decision. They had settled back to watch the remainder of the Monitor Corps history tape when Tarsedth’s fur became agitated again.

  “I’m worried about you and the Corps people, Cha Thrat,” the Kelgian said suddenly. “They can be a bit stuffy about some things, easygoing about others. Just study and work hard. And think carefully before you do anything that will get you kicked out.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Time slipped past and Cha Thrat felt that she was making no progress at all, until one day she realized that she was performing as routine tasks that only a little earlier would have been impossible. Much of the work was servile but, strangely, she was becoming increasingly interested in it and felt proud when she did it well. Sometimes the morning assignments contained unpleasant surprises.

  “Today you will begin moving power cells and other consumables to the ambulance ship Rhabwar,” Timmins said, consulting its worksheet. “But there is a small job I want you to do first—new vegetable decoration for the AUGL ward. Study the attachment instructions before you go so that the medics will think you know what you’re doing … Is there a problem, Cha Thrat?”

  There were other and more senior technicians in her section—three Kelgians, an Ian, and an Orligian—waiting for the day’s assignments. She doubted her ability to take over one of their jobs, and hers was probably too elementary for the Lieutenant to consider swapping assignments, but she had to try.

  Perhaps the Earth-human would accord her some of the earlier special treatment that, for some reason, had been completely absent since she had been put to work.

  “There is a problem,” Cha Thrat said quietly. The note of pleading in her voice was probably lost in the process of translation, she thought as she went on. “As you know, I am not well liked by Charge Nurse Hredlichli, and my presence in the AUGL ward is likely to cause, at very least, verbal unpleasantness. The bad feeling for which I am largely responsible may fade in time, but right now I think that it would be better to send someone else.”