The Genocidal Healer sg-8

by James White

  “This is the psych profile of an entity who had no choice but to act as it did,” O’Mara resumed, “so that its actions in the circumstances were proper. There was no carelessness on its part, no negligence, and therefore, I submit, no guilt. For it was only after the few survivors had been under observation here for two months that we were able to unravel the secondary endo-crinological effects of the disease Lioren had been treating. If any offense was committed, it was the minor one of impatience allied to Lioren’s firm belief that its ship’s medical facilities were equal to the task demanded of them.

  “I have little more to say,” the major continued, “except to suggest to the court that its punishment should be in proportion to the crime and not, as the accused believes and the prosecution will argue, the results of that crime. Catastrophic and horrifying though the results of the Surgeon-Captain’s actions have been, the offense itself was a minor one and should be treated as such.” While O’Mara had been speaking, Lioren’s anger had risen to a level where it might no longer be controllable. Brown blotches were appearing all over his pale, yellow-green tegument, and both sets of outer lungs were tightly distended to shout a protest that would have been too loud for proper articulation and would probably have damaged the sound sensors of many of those present.

  “The accused is becoming emotionally distressed,” O’Mara said quickly, “so I shall be brief. I urge that the case against Surgeon-Captain Lioren be dismissed or, failing that, that the sentence be noncustodial. Ideally the accused should be confined to the limits of this hospital, where psychiatric assistance is available when required, and where its considerable professional talents will be available to our patients while it is—”

  “No!” Lioren said, in a voice which made those closest to him wince and the translator squawk with sound overload. “I have sworn, solemnly and by Sedith and Wrethrin the Healers, to forgo the practice of my art for the rest of my worthless life.”

  “Now that,” O’Mara replied, not quite as loudly as Lioren, “would indeed be a crime. It would be a shameful and unforgivable waste of ability of which you would be inarguably guilty.”

  “Were I to live a hundred lifetimes,” Lioren said harshly, “I could never save a fraction of the number of beings I caused to die.”

  “But you could try—” O’Mara began, and broke off as once again the fleet commander raised his hand for silence.

  “Address your arguments to the court, not each other,” Der-mod said, looking at them in turn. “I shall not warn you again. Major O’Mara, some time ago you stated that you had little more to say. May the court now assume that you have said it?”

  The Chief Psychologist remained standing fora moment; then it said, “Yes, sir” and sat down.

  “Very well,” the fleet commander said. “The court will now hear the case for the prosecution. Surgeon-Captain Lioren, are you ready to proceed?”

  Lioren’s skin showed an increasing and irregular discoloration caused by the deep emotional distress that even the earliest and innocent memories evoked, but his surface air sacs had deflated so that he was able to speak quietly.

  “I am ready.”

  CHAPTER 2

  THE Cromsag system had been investigated by the Monitor Corps scout ship Tenelphi while engaged on a survey mission in Sector Nine, one of the embarrassing three-dimensional blanks which still appeared in the Federation’s charts. The discovery of a system containing habitable planets was a pleasant break in the boring routine of counting and measuring the positions of a myriad of stars, and when they found one displaying all the indications of harboring intelligent indigenous life, their pleasure and excitement were intense.

  The pleasure, however, was short-lived.

  Because a scout ship with a complement of only four entities did not have the facilities to handle a first-contact situation, the regulations forbade a landing, so the crew had to content themselves with conducting a visual examination from close orbit while trying to establish the natives’ level of technology by analyzing their communications frequencies and any other electromagnetic radiation emanating from the planet. As a result of their findings, Tenelphi remained in orbit while it recklessly squandered its power reserves on the ship’s energy-hungry sub-space communicator on increasingly urgent distress messages to base.

  The Monitor Corps’s specialized other-species contact vessel, Descartes, which normally made the initial approach to newly discovered cultures, was already deeply involved on the planet of the Blind Ones, where communications had reached the stage where it was inadvisable to break off. But the situation on the new planet was not a problem of First Contact but of insuring that enough of the natives would survive to make any kind of contact possible.

  The Emperor-class battleship Vespasian, which was more than capable of waging a major war although in this instance it was expected to end one, was hastily converted to disaster-relief mode and dispatched to the region. It was under the command of the Earth-human Colonel Williamson, but in all matters pertaining to relief operations on the surface it was the Tarlan subordinate, Surgeon-Captain Lioren, who had the rank and the sole responsibility.

  Within an hour of the two vessels matching orbits, Tenelphi had docked with Vespasian and the scout ship’s captain, the Earth-human Major Nelson, and its Nidian medical officer, Surgeon-Lieutenant Dracht-Yur, were in the operations room giving the latest situation report.

  “We have recorded samples of their radio signals,” Major Nelson reported briskly, “even though the volume of traffic is unusually small. But we were unable to make any sense of it because our computer is programmed for survey work with just enough reserve capacity to handle the translation requirements of my crew. As things stand, we don’t even know if they know we are here—”

  “Vespasian’s tactical computer will translate the surface traf- fie from now on,” Colonel Williamson broke in impatiently, “and the information will be passed to you. We are less interested in what you did not hear than in what you saw. Please go on, Major.”

  It was unnecessary to mention a fact known to everyone present, that while Williamson’s tremendous capital ship had the bigger brain, Nelson’s tiny and highly specialized survey vessel had eyes that were second to none.

  “As you can see,” Nelson went on, tapping the keys that threw the visuals onto the room’s enormous tactical display screen, “we surveyed the planet from a distance of five diameters before moving in to map in more detail the areas that showed signs of habitation. It is the third planet, and so far as we know the only life-bearing one, of a system of eight planets. Its day is just over nineteen hours long, surface gravity one and one-quarter Earth-normal, the atmospheric pressure in proportion, and its composition would not seriously inconvenience the majority of our warm-blooded oxygen-breathers.

  “The land surface is divided into seventeen large island continents. All but the two at the poles are habitable, but only the largest equatorial continent is presently inhabited. The others show signs of habitation in the past, together with a fairly high level of technology that included powered surface and air transport, with radiation traces suggesting that they had fission-assisted electricity generation. Their towns and cities now appear to be abandoned and derelict. The buildings are undamaged, but there are no indications of industrial or domestic wastes either in atmosphere or on the ground, no evidence of food cultivation, and the road surfaces, street paving, and a few of the smaller buildings have been broken up and damaged due to the unchecked growth of plant life. Even in the inhabited areas of the equatorial continent there is similar evidence of structural and agrarian neglect with the associated indications of—”

  “Obviously a plague,” Lioren said suddenly, “an epidemic for which they have little natural immunity. It has reduced the planetary population to the extent that they can no longer fully maintain all their cities and services, and the survivors have collected in the warmer and less power-hungry cities of the equator to—”

  “To fig
ht a bloody war!” the scout ship’s medic, Dracht-Yur, broke in, its snarling Nidian speech making an angry accom- paniment to the emotionless translated words. “But it is a strange, archaic form of warfare. Either they love war, or hate each other, very much. Yet they seem to have an inordinate respect for property. They don’t use mass-destruction weapons on each other; there is no evidence of aerial bombing or artillery, even though they still have large numbers of ground and atmosphere vehicles. They just use them to transport the combatants to the battleground, where they fight at close quarters, hand to hand and apparently without weapons. It is savage. Look!”

  Vespasian’s, tactical screen was displaying a series of aerial photographs of tropical forest clearings and city streets, sharp and clear despite massive enlargement and the fact that they had been taken from a vertical distance of fifty miles. Normally it was difficult to obtain much information on the body mass and physiological details of a native life-form from orbit — although a study of the shadow it cast could be helpful — but, Lioren thought grimly, far too many of these creatures had been obliging enough to lie flat on the ground dead.

  The pictures shocked but did not sicken the Surgeon-Captain as they did Dracht-Yur, because the Nidian medic belonged to one of those strange cultures who reverenced the decomposing remains of their dead. Even so, the number of recently and not so recently dead lying about in the streets and forest clearings was bound to pose a health risk.

  Lioren wondered suddenly whether the surviving combatants were unwilling or simply unable to bury them. A less sharp moving picture showed two of the creatures fighting together on the ground, and so gentle were the blows and bites they inflicted on each other that they might have been indulging publicly in a sexual coupling.

  The Nidian seemed to be reading Lioren’s mind, because it went on. “Those two look as if they are incapable of seriously damaging each other, and at first I assumed this to be a species lacking in physical endurance. Then other entities were seen who fought strongly and continuously for an entire day. But you will also observe that the bodies of these two show widespread patches of discoloration, while a few of the others have skins without blemish. There is a definite correlation between the degree of physical weakness and the area of discoloration on the body. I think it is safe to assume that these two are seriously ill rather than tired.

  “But that,” Dracht-Yur ended in an angry growl, “doesn’t stop them from trying to kill each other.”

  Lioren raised one hand slightly from the tabletop, middle digits extended in the Tarlan sign of respect and approval. But the two officers gave no indication of understanding the significance of the gesture, which meant that they had to be complimented verbally.

  “Major Nelson, Surgeon-Lieutenant Dracht-Yur,” Lioren said, “you have both done very well. But there is more that you must do. Can I assume that the other members of your crew have also had the opportunity of observing the situation below and have discussed it among themselves?”

  “There was no way of stopping them—” Nelson began. “Yes,” Dracht-Yur barked.

  “Good,” Lioren said. “Tenelphi is detached from its current survey duty. Transfer its officers to Vespasian. They will join the crews of the first four reconnaissance vehicles to go down as advisors since they know more, perhaps only a little more, about the local situation than we do. This ship will remain in orbit until the most effective rescue site has been chosen …”

  At times like these Lioren was reluctant to waste time on politeness, but he had learned that, where Earth-human senior officers in particular were concerned, time wasted now would help expedite matters later. And Colonel Williamson was, after all, Vespasian’s commander and nominally the senior officer.

  “If you have any comments or objections so far, sir,” Lioren said, “I would be pleased to hear them.”

  Colonel Williamson looked at Nelson and Dracht-Yur briefly before returning its attention to Lioren. The scout-ship officers were showing their teeth, and a few of the colonel’s were also visible as it said, “Tenelphi will not be able to resume its survey mission until we have topped up its consumables, and I would be surprised if its officers objected to any break in that deadly dull routine. You are making friends, Surgeon-Captain. Please continue.”

  “The first priority is to end the fighting,” Lioren said, “and only then will it be possible to treat the sick and injured. This forced cessation of hostilities will have to be achieved without inflicting additional casualties or causing too much mental dis- tress among the population. To a culture at the prespaceflight level of technology, the sudden arrival among them of a vessel of the size and power of Vespasian, and the visually monstrous entities it contains, would not be reassuring. The first approach will have to be made in a small ship by people who, for psychological reasons, must be of equal or lesser body mass than they are. And it will have to be done covertly, in an isolated area where there are few natives or, ideally, only one whose temporary withdrawal from among its friends will arouse minimum distress …”

  The vehicle chosen for the mission was Vespasian’s short-range communications vessel, which was equally capable of space operations or extended aerodynamic maneuvering in atmosphere. It was small but comfortably appointed, Lioren thought, if one happened to be an Earth-human, but at present it was overloaded and overcrowded.

  They descended steeply out of the orange light of sunrise into an uneven blanket of dark, predawn cloud, thrusters shut down and velocity reduced so that they would not cause unnecessary distress by dragging a sonic shock wave in their wake, and the ship was darkened except for the radiation from its infrared sensors, which the natives might or might not be able to see.

  Lioren stared at the enhanced picture of the forest clearing with its single, low-roofed dwelling and outbuildings rushing up at them. Without power their ship was gliding in too steeply and much too fast and with the flight characteristics, it seemed, of an aerodynamically clean lump of rock. Then three small areas of vegetation were flattened suddenly and driven downward into shallow craters as the ship’s pressor beams reached out to support it on immaterial, shock-absorbing stilts. The touchdown was silent and sudden but very gentle.

  Lioren turned a disapproving eye toward the pilot, wondering, not for the first time, why some experts felt it necessary to display their expertise so dramatically; the boarding ramp slid out before he could think of words that were both complimentary and critical.

  They wore heavy-duty space suits with the air tanks and helmet visors removed, confident that this makeshift body armor would protect them against any bare-handed attack by an intelligent life-form that used only natural weapons. The five Earth-humans and three Orligians in the party ran to search the outbuildings while Dracht-Yur and Lioren moved quickly toward the house, which, in spite of the early hour, had its internal lighting switched on. They circled the house once, keeping below the level of the closed and uncurtained windows, to stop at the building’s only entrance.

  Dracht-Yur focused its scanner on the door mechanism and the life-sensor on the spaces beyond; then it used the suit radio to say quietly, “Beyond the door there is a large room, presently unoccupied, and three smaller compartments opening off it. The first is empty of life, the second contains traces which are not moving and positioned so closely together that I can’t be sure whether there are two or three entities, who are making the low, untranslatable noises characteristic of sleep. Maybe they are sick or wounded. The third room contains one being whose movements appear slow and deliberate, and the sounds from that compartment are quiet but distinct, like the intermittent contact between cooking utensils. The overall indication is that the occupants are unaware of our presence.

  “The door mechanism is very basic,” the Nidian medic continued, “and the large metal bar on the inside has not been engaged. You can simply lift the latch and walk in, sir.”

  Lioren was relieved. Breaking down the door would have made the job of convincing these people of his g
ood intentions much more difficult. But with anything up to four natives in the house and only one overeager but diminuitive Nidian in support, Lioren was unwilling to enter just then. He remained silent until the others arrived to report that the outhouses contained only agricultural implements and nonsapient farm animals.

  Quickly he described the layout of the house, then went on. “The greatest risk to us is the group of three or four beings occupying the room directly opposite this entrance, and they must not be allowed to leave it until the situation has been explained to them. Four of you guard the interior door and four the window in case they try to escape that way. Dracht-Yur and myself will talk to the other one. And remember, be quiet, careful, and nonaggressive at all times. Do not damage furniture or artifacts, and especially not the beings themselves, or do anything to suggest that we are not their friends.”

  He unlatched the door quietly and led the way inside.

  An oil-burning lamp hung from the center of the ceiling, illuminating walls hung with a few pictorial carvings and what seemed to be displays of dried, aromatic vegetation, although to his Tarlan olfactory sensors the aroma was anything but pleasant. Against the facing wall there was a long dining bench with four high-backed chairs pushed under it. A few smaller tables and larger, more heavily padded chairs were visible, plus a large bookcase and other items which he could not immediately identify. The majority of the furniture was of wood and strongly but not expertly built, and a few of the items showed signs of being mass-produced. Plainly they were the very old, scratched, and dented legacies of better times. The middle of the room was uncluttered and covered only by a thick carpet of some fabric or vegetable material that deadened the sound of their feet as they crossed it.

  All three of the internal doors had been left ajar, and from the room occupied by the single native the quiet noises of cooking utensils making contact with crockery were accompanied by a soft, wailing sound that was untranslatable. Lioren wondered if the entity was in pain from illness or wounds, or was perhaps indulging in its version of mouth music. He was about to move in to confront the native when Dracht-Yur grasped one of his medial hands and pointed toward the door of the other occupied room.