by James White
Lioren thought of the wasted and barely living entity he had just left, the pitiful and fragile tool that was performing exemplary work, and he wondered at the strange feelings of hurt and sadness that arose in him.
Was his first experience of friendship, like his first friend, to be short-lived?
As soon as Lioren entered the office he knew that something was wrong, because both Cha Thrat and Braithwaite swung round to face him. It was the Earth-human who spoke first.
“O’Mara is at a meeting and is not to be disturbed and, frankly, I have no idea how to advise you about this,” Braithwaite said in a rapid, agitated voice. “Dammit, Lioren, you were told to be discreet in your enquiries. What have you been saying about your assignment, and to whom? We have just had a message from Senior Physician Seldal. It wants to see you in the Nallajim staff flocking lounge on Level Twentythree.”
Cha Thrat made the Sommaradvan gesture of deep concern, and added, “At once.”
CHAPTER 12
Since the Nallajim LSVOs often entertained other-species colleagues, their lounge was spacious enough not to cause Lioren any physical inconvenience, but he wondered at the choice of meeting place. In spite of their fragile, low-gravity physiology, the birdlike species could be as abrasive in their conversational manner as any Kelgian, and if this one had found cause for complaint against Lioren, the expected course would have been for it to present itself in the Psychology Department and demand to see O’Mara.
Of one thing he felt very sure, Lioren thought as he moved between the nestlike couches filled with sleeping or quietly twittering occupants toward Seldal, this would not be a social occasion.
“Sit or stand, whichever is more comfortable for you,” the Senior Physician said, lifting a wing to indicate the couch’s food dispenser. “Can I offer you anything.”
It was wrong, Lioren told himself as he lowered his body into the downy softness of the couch, to feel sure about anything.
“I am curious about you,” the Nallajim Senior said, the rapid twittering of its voice making an impatient background to the slower, translated words. “Not about the Cromsag Incident because that has become common knowledge. It is your behavior toward my patient Mannen that interests me. Exactly what did you say to him, and what did he say to you?”
If I told you that, Lioren thought, this meeting would not long remain a social occasion.
Lioren did not want to lie, and he was trying to decide whether it would be better to avoid telling all of the truth or simply remain silent when the Nallajim spoke again.
“Hredlichi tells me,” it said, “and I use the Charge Nurse’s words as clearly as I can recall them, that two of O’Mara’s Psych types, Cha Thrat and yourself, approached it asking permission to interview its patients, including the terminal case, Mannen regarding some planned improvements in ward environment. Hredlichi said that it was too busy to waste time arguing with you, and your physical masses were such that it could not evict you bodily, so it decided to accede where the patient Mannen was concerned knowing that the ex-Diagnostician would ignore you as it had done everyone else who tried to talk to it. But Hredlichi says that you spent two hours with the patient, who subsequently left instructions that you could visit it at any time.
“Ex-Diagnostician Mannen is highly regarded at Sector General,” Seldal went on, “and its length of service on the staff is second only to that of O’Mara, who was and is its friend. When I joined the hospital it was in charge of training. It helped me then and on many occasions since so that I, too, consider it to be more than a medical colleague. But until yesterday, when it suddenly acknowledged my presence and began to ask questions which were lucid, general, but more often personal, it would not speak to anyone except you.
“I ask again, Lioren, what transpired between Mannen and yourself?”
“It is a terminal patient,” Lioren said, choosing his words with care, “and some of the words and thoughts expressed might not have been those of the entity you knew when it was at the peak of its physical and mental powers. I would prefer not to discuss this material with others.”
“You would prefer not …” began Seldal, its angry, twittering speech rising in volume so that the sleeping Nallajims around them stirred restively in their nests. “Oh, keep your secrets if you must. Truly, you remind me of the departed Carmody, who was before your time. And you are correct, I would not want to know about it if a great entity like Mannen were to display weakness, even though I once shared my mind with an Earth-human DBDG who believed that feet of clay could sometimes form a most solid foundation.”
“Thank you for your forbearance, sir,” Lioren said.
“I have learned forbearance,” the Senior Physician said, “from a very close friend. I shall not explain that, but instead I shall tell you what I think went on between you.”
Lioren was greatly relieved that the other was no longer angry and, seemingly, did not suspect that it was the object of Lioren’s investigation rather than Mannen. He was wondering whether the remark about learning from a very close friend was an important datum when the Nallajim resumed speaking.
“When Mannen discovered who you were during your first visit,” Seldal went on, “it decided that you might have more problems than it had and became curious about you. This curiosity must have led to personal questions about your reactions to the Cromsag business that were distressing to you, but it was the first time in several weeks that Mannen showed curiosity about anything. Now it seems to be curious about everything. It has talked about you, and closely questioned me, and asked about my other patients, the latest gossip, everything. I am most grateful, Lioren, for the significant improvement your visits have brought about in its condition …”
“But the clinical picture—” Lioren began.
“Has not changed,” it said, completing the sentence for him. “But the patient is feeling better.”
“Hredlichi also tells me,” Seldal went on, “that you interviewed my other patients about a ward environment improvement scheme, with the exception of my isolation case who is forbidden visitors and all medical contacts not directly involved with its treatment. The case is a young and therefore relatively small member of a macrospecies, so there would be an element of risk involved to any life-form of more or less normal body mass approaching it closely. If you still want to do so, you now have my permission to visit it whenever you wish.”
“Thank you, Senior Physician,” Lioren said, feeling grateful but even more confused by the way the conversation was going. “Naturally, I am curious about the secrecy surrounding that particular patient—”
“As is everyone else in the hospital,” Seldal broke in, “who is not closely involved with its treatment, which, I must admit, is not going well. But I am not merely satisfying your curiosity, I have a favor to ask.
“My recent conversations with Mannen and the way it speaks of you,” the Nallajim went on quickly, “make me wonder if the change you brought about in the ex-Diagnostician might be repeated with the young Groalterri patient, whose prognosis is being adversely affected for nonmedical reasons about which it will not speak. My idea is that it, too, may benefit from knowing that its problems are minor when compared with your own. But I will understand if you prefer not to assist me.”
“I will be pleased to help you in whatever way I can,” Lioren said, controlling his excitement and the volume of his voice with difficulty. “A—a Groalterri, here in the hospital? I have never seen one, and had doubts about their existence … Thank you.”
“Lioren, you should take more time to consider,” the Nallajim said. “As with Mannen, the process of recollection will be distressing for you. But it seems to me that you accept this distress willingly, as a just punishment that you must not avoid. I think this is wrong and unnecessary. At the same time I must accept these feelings, and use you and them as I would any other surgical tool, for the good of my patient. Nevertheless, I am sorry for inflicting this added punishment on you.”
“As often as you wish,” Seldal replied.
“And discuss this new case with it?” Lioren asked.
“Could I stop you?” Seldal asked in return. “I will not discuss the case further lest my ideas influence your own. The Groalterri patient’s medical file will be opened to you, including what little information there is on the species’ home world.”
It was very strange, Lioren thought as he left the Nallajim lounge, that the Senior Physician should be using him as a tool in the treatment of a difficult patient while he was using the other’s patients as tools in his investigation of Seldal itself—not that he was making much progress with that.
He called briefly on Mannen to tell it about this new development and give its too-empty mind something more to think about before returning to the department. Chief Psychologist O’Mara was still absent, and Lieutenant Braithwaite and Cha Thrat were behaving as if they were about to perform a slightly premature Rite for the Dead over him. Lioren told them that he was not in any trouble, that Senior Physician Seldal had asked him for a favor which he was, of course, granting, and as a result of which he would have to copy some material for later study in his quarters.
“The Groalterri patient!” Braithwaite said suddenly, and Lioren turned to see that Cha Thrat and the lieutenant were standing behind him reading his display. “We aren’t supposed to know that it is even in the hospital, and now you’re involved with it. What is Major O’Mara going to think about this?”
Lioren decided that it was what Earth-humans called a rhetorical question and continued with his work.
CHAPTER 13
Since its formation by the original four star-traveling cultures of Traltha, Orligia, Nidia, and Earth, who had formed as its executive and law-enforcement arm the multispecies Monitor Corps, the Galactic Federation had expanded to include the members of sixty-five intelligent species and in population and area of influence had begun to live up to its original and somewhat grandiose name. But not all of the planetary cultures discovered by the Corps survey vessels were opened to full contact, because a few of them would not benefit from it.
These were the worlds whose technical and philosophical development were such that the sudden appearance among them of great ships from the sky, and the strange, all-powerful beings armed with wondrous devices that they contained, would have given the emerging cultures such a racial inferiority complex that their potential for future development would have been seriously inhibited. And there was one world on which the decision for making full contact was not the Galactic Federation’s to make.
As befitted a culture that had been old and wise when the natives of Earth and Orligia and Traltha had still been wriggling through their primeval slime, the Groalterri had been very diplomatic about it. But they had let it be known without ambiguity that they would not tolerate the Federation’s presence in their adult domain nor allow the maturity and delicacy of their thinking to be upset by a horde of chattering, moronic, other-species children. Both individually and as a race the Groalterri carried enough philosophical and physiological weight to make it so.
They did not have any objection to being observed from space, so the details of their physiological classification and living environment had been obtained by the long-range sensors of an orbiting survey vessel, and this was the only information available.
The Groalterri were the largest intelligent macro life-form so far discovered, a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing, and amphibious species of physiological classification BLSU who, as individuals, continued to grow in size from their parthenogenetic birth to the end of their extremely long life spans. In common with other extravagantly massive life-forms, intelligent or otherwise, they found difficulty in moving about unaided, so that from the young-adult state onward they avoided potentially lethal gravitic distortion of their bodies by swimming or floating in their individual lakes or communal inland seas, many of which had been produced artificially and contained a level of biotechnology far beyond the understanding of the observers.
Another characteristic they shared with large creatures—the library computer cited the examples of the nonintelligent Tralthan yerrit and the Earth panda—was that the mass of the embryo was so small that often a pregnancy was not suspected until after the birth had taken place. In spite of the vast size and elevated intelligence levels of adult Groalterri, their offspring were relatively tiny and uncivilized in their behavior and remained so into early adolescence.
That was one of the reasons for the nursing attendants being chosen from the heavy-gravity Tralthan FGLI and Hudlar FROB classifications, Lioren thought as he prepared for his first sight of the patient. Another was that the Federation wanted to do the hitherto unapproachable Groalterri a favor, probably in the hope that it might one day be returned, and had dispatched a Monitor Corps transport vessel to move the seriously injured young one to Sector General for treatment. It was the Corps who had insisted on secrecy so as to minimize political and professional embarrassment should the patient terminate.
There were two unarmed but very large Earth-human Corpsmen guarding the entrance to the ward, a converted ambulance dock, to discourage unauthorized visitors and to advise those with authorization to don heavy-duty space suits. The ward atmosphere and pressure was suited to most warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, they explained to Lioren, but the protection might keep the patient from inadvertently killing him.
In his present mental state, the chance of having his life ended traumatically was a fate greatly to be desired, Lioren thought, but did as they advised without demur.
Even though Seldal’s notes had prepared him for the young BLSU’s body mass and dimensions, the sheer size of the patient came as a shock, and the thought that an adult Groalterri could grow to many hundreds of times as big was too incredible for his mind to accept as a reality. For the patient filled more than three-quarters the volume of the dock, and so large was it that the consequent distortion of perspective kept him from seeing more than a fraction of its surface features until he had used his suit thrusters to tour the vast body.
The dock was being maintained in the weightless condition with the patient lightly restrained by a net whose mesh was sufficiently open to allow medical examination and treatment to be carried out. On the dock’s six inner surfaces, wide-focus pressor and tractor beams controlled from the Nurses’ Station had been positioned so as to hold the creature suspended and out of contact with the walls.
The patient’s overall body configuration, Lioren saw, was that of a squat octopoid with short, thick tentacular limbs and a central torso and head that seemed disproportionately large. The eight limbs terminated alternately in four sets of claws that would with maturity evolve into manipulatory digits while the remaining four ended in flat, sharpedged, osseous blades that were larger than twice the spread of Lioren’s medial arms.
In presapient times those four bone-tipped extremities would have been fearsome natural weapons, Seldal had warned him, and the very young of any species could sometimes revert to their savage past.
Lioren made another tour of the gigantic body, staying as far from the net that enclosed it as the dock walls and deck would allow. This time he studied the hundreds of tiny post-op scars and freshly dressed wounds as well as the areas of pustulating infection that covered half of the creature’s upper body surface.
The condition had been caused by a deep penetration of the subdermal tissue by a nonintelligent, hard-shelled, and egg-laying insect life-form which did not appear to have the physical ability to achieve such depth, but the reason for the multiple traumatic penetration was unknown. In spite of the Groalterri language being held in the hospital’s translation computer, so far the patient had refused to give any information about itself or the reason for its condition.
That was why Lioren ended his tour of the body
by drifting to a weightless halt above the circular swelling that was the creature’s head. There, centered above the four heavily lidded eyes that were equally spaced around the cranium, was the area of tightly stretched skin that served both as the creature’s organ of speech and hearing.
Lioren made a quiet, untranslatable sound and said, “If this physical or verbal intrusion gives offense I apologize, for such is not my intention. May I speak with you?”
For a long moment there was no response; then the enormous flap of flesh that was the nearest eyelid opened slowly and Lioren found himself looking into the depths of a dark transparency that seemed to go on forever. Suddenly the tentacle just below him tensed, then curled upward and tore through the restraining net as if it had been the insubstantial structure of a web-spinning insect. The great, bony blade at its tip crashed against the wall behind him, leaving a deep, bright trench in the metal before continuing the swing past Lioren’s head, so closely that the push of displaced air could be felt through his open visor.
“Another stupid, half-organic machine,” the patient said, just as Lioren was caught by a tightly focused tractor beam and whisked back to the safety of the Nurses’ Station.
Reassuringly the Hudlar duty nurse said, “The patient does not mind visual or tactile examinations or even surgery, but reacts in unsocial fashion to attempts at communication. The probability is that it meant to discourage rather than harm you.”
“If it had wanted to harm me,” Lioren said, remembering how that outsize, organic axe had whistled past his head, “my suit would not have been of much use.”
