The Genocidal Healer sg-8

by James White

  One of the Earth-humans had been gripping the door mechanism tightly to prevent it being opened from within. Now it held out its free hand waist high with three digits extended, then lowered it palm downward to show two digits at hip level, and brought it down almost to its knee joint before showing one digit. For an instant it released the door handle, pressed both palms together and brought its hands to one side of its face, then inclined its head and closed both of its eyes.

  For a moment Lioren was completely baffled by the gestures until he remembered that the Earth-human DBDG classification, and quite a few other life-forms, adopted this peculiar position while asleep. The rest of the hand signals could only mean that the room contained three children, one of whom was little more than an infant, and that they were all asleep.

  Lioren dipped his head Earth-human fashion in acknowledgment, relieved that the children could be easily contained in their room so that there would be no possibility of uninformed and terrified escapees spreading panic throughout the area. Feeling pleased and much more confident, he moved forward to open communication with what, judging by the sounds emanating from the food-preparation room, was almost certainly the only adult in the house.

  The entity had its back turned toward the entrance, showing him a three-quarters rear profile as it busied itself with some task that was concealed by its upper torso. Because of the absence of individually mobile eye mountings in its cranium and the consequent loss of all-around vision, Lioren was able to watch it for a moment without it being able to see him.

  Its bodily configuration more closely resembled Lioren’s own than those of the Earth-humans, Nidians, or Orligians accompanying him, which should greatly reduce the visual shock of first contact. Except for the possession of three sets of limbs-two ambulators, two medial heavy manipulators, and two more at neck level for eating and to perform more delicate work, rather than the Tarlan’s three sets of four — and a cranium covered by thick, blue fur that continued in a narrow strip along the spine to the vestigial tail, the general physical characteristics were remarkably similar. Its skin showed areas of pale yellow-discoloration that were symptomatic of the plague that, with the savage and barbaric war, was threatening to sweep its planet free of intelligent life. The creature’s physiological classification was DCSL, and curing its medical condition, at least, would be relatively simple once he obtained its cooperation.

  Gently at first but with increasing firmness Lioren began clapping two of his guantleted, medial hands together to attract its attention, and when it swung around suddenly to face him, Lioren said, “We are friends. We have come to—”

  It had been supporting a large bowl partially filled with a pale gray semiliquid material between its body and one medial hand, while the other medial hand was holding and pouring the contents of a smaller bowl into the first. Both containers, Lioren had time to note, were thick-walled and seemed to be made of a hard but very brittle ceramic, as was proved by the way they shattered when dropped onto the floor. The noise was loud enough to waken the three youngsters in the other room, and one of them, probably the infant, began making loud, frightened sounds which did not translate.

  “We will not harm you,” Lioren began again. “We have come to help cure you of the terrible disease which—”

  The creature made a high-pitched gobbling sound which translated as, “The children! What have you done to the children?” and hurled itself at Lioren and Dracht-Yur.

  It was not a bare-handed attack.

  From the number of kitchen implements lying on the tabletop nearby it had snatched up a knife, which it swung at Lioren’s chest. The blade was long and pointed, serrated along one edge and sharp enough to leave a deep scratch in the fabric of Lioren’s heavy-duty space suit. But the creature was a quick learner, because the second blow was a straight-armed jab which might have penetrated if Lioren had not grasped the creature’s wrist in two medial hands and used a third to prise the weapon from its fingers, taking a small, incised wound to one of his own digits in the process, while at the same time holding off its two upper hands, which seemed intent on tearing holes in his face.

  The violence of its attack sent Lioren staggering backward into the other room, and he had a glimpse of the diminutive Dracht-Yur diving at the creature’s legs and wrapping its short, furry arms tightly around them. The creature overbalanced and all three of them crashed to the floor.

  “What are you waiting for, immobilize it!” Lioren said sharply. Then with a sudden feeling of concern for the being, he said, “As yet I am unfamiliar with your internal physiology, and I trust that the weight of my body against your lower thorax is not causing damage to underlying organs.”

  The creature’s response was to struggle even harder against the Earth-human, Orligian, and Tarlan hands holding it down, and only a few of the sounds it was making were translatable. Looking at the obviously confused and terrified being, Lioren spoke silent and highly critical words to himself. This, his first contact with a member of a newly discovered intelligent species, had not been handled well.

  “We will not harm you,” Lioren said, trying to sound reassuring in a voice louder than that of the creature and those of the three children in the other room, all of whom were awake and contributing their own untranslatable sounds. “We will not harm your children. Please calm yourself. Our only wish is to help you, all of you, to live out your lives free of war and the disease which is affecting you …”

  It must have understood his translated words, because it had grown silent as he was speaking, but its struggle to free itself continued.

  “But if we are to find a cure for this disaster,” Lioren went on in a quieter voice, “we will have to isolate and identify the pathogen within your body causing it, and to do this we require specimens of your blood and other body fluids …”

  They would also be needed to prepare large quantities of safe anesthetics, tranquilizing gases and synthetic food suited to the species metabolism if the war as well as the disease was to be checked with minimum delay and loss of life. But this did not seem to be the right moment to tell it all of the truth, because its efforts to break free had intensified.

  Lioren looked at Dracht-Yur and indicated one of the native’s medial arms where muscle tension and elevated blood pressure had caused one of the veins to distend, making it an ideal site for withdrawing blood samples.

  “We will not harm you,” Lioren repeated. “Do not be afraid. And please stop moving your arm.”

  But the large, glittering, and multibarreled instrument that the Nidian medic had produced, while absolutely painless in use, was not an object to inspire confidence. If their positions had been reversed, Lioren knew, he would not have believed a single word he was saying.

  CHAPTER 3

  WITH a few violent exceptions, the subsequent contacts with the planet’s natives, whose name for their world was Cromsag, went more easily. This was because Vespasian’s transmitter had matched frequencies with the Cromsaggar broadcast channels to explain in greater detail who the off-world strangers were, where they had come from, and why they were there. And when the great capital ship landed and began to disgorge and erect prefabricated hospitals and food-distribution centers for the war’s survivors, the verbal reassurances were given form and substance and all hostility against the strangers ceased.

  But that did not mean that they became friends.

  Lioren was sure that he knew everything about the Cromsag-gar, with the exception of how their minds worked. From recently dead cadavers abandoned in the war zones he had obtained a complete and accurate picture of their physiology and metabolism. This had enabled their injuries to be treated with safe medication and their war to be ended ingloriously under blankets of anesthetic gas. The scout ship Tenelphi had been pressed into service as a fast courier vessel plying between Cromsag and Sector General. It carried specimens requiring more detailed study in one direction and the findings of Head of Pathology Thornnastor, which more often than not agree
d with Lioren’s own, in the other.

  But the Cromsaggar disease was proving difficult for even Diagnostician Thornnastor to isolate and identify. Living rather than dead specimens were required for study, if possible displaying the symptomology from onset to the preterminal stage of the condition, and Rhabwar, the hospital’s special ambulance ship, was dispatched to obtain them. And even more baffling than the plague, to which the victims invariably succumbed before reaching middle age, was their mental approach to it.

  One plague victim had agreed to talk to Lioren about itself, but its words had merely added to the Surgeon-Captain’s confusion. He knew the patient only by its case file number, because the Cromsaggar considered their written and spoken symbol of identity to be the most important of personal possessions, and even though this one was close to termination it would not divulge its name to a stranger. When Lioren asked it why many of the Cromsaggar had attacked off-worlders with any weapon that came to hand, but fought among themselves only with teeth, hands and feet, it said that there was no honor or gain in killing a member of one’s own race unless it was with great effort and extreme personal danger. For the same reason they always stopped short of killing a very sick, severely weakened, or dying adversary.

  Taking the life of another intelligent entity, Lioren firmly believed, was the most dishonorable act imaginable. In his position he should respect the beliefs of others, regardless of how strange or shocking they might be to one of his strict Tarlan upbringing, but he could not and would not respect this one.

  Changing the subject quickly, he asked, “Why is it that after you fight, the injured are taken away to be cared for while the dead remain untouched where they fall? We know that your people have some knowledge of medicine and healing, so why do you allow the dead to remain unburied, to risk the spread of further pestilence into your already plague-ridden population? Why do you expose yourselves to this totally unnecessary danger?”

  The ravages of the disease, which had covered the entire epidermis in patches of livid camouflage, had left the patient very weak, and for a moment Lioren wondered if it was able to reply, or even if it had heard the questions. But suddenly it said, “A decomposing corpse is indeed a fearful risk to the health of those who pass nearby. The danger and the fear are necessary.”

  “But why?” Lioren asked again. “What do you gain by deliberately subjecting yourselves to fear and pain and danger?”

  “We gain strength,” the Cromsaggar said. “For a time, for a very short time, we feel strong again.”

  “In a very short time,” Lioren said with the confidence of a healer backed by all the resources of Federation medical science, “we will make you feel well and strong without the fighting. Surely you would prefer to live on a world free of war and disease?”

  From somewhere within its wasted body the patient seemed to gather strength. It said loudly, “Never in the memories of those alive, or in the memories of their ancestors, has there been a time without war and disease. The stories told of such times, when the planetwide ruins of towns and cities were populated by healthy and happy Cromsaggar, are stories told only to comfort small and hungry children, children who soon grow large enough to fight and to disbelieve these stories.

  “You should leave us, stranger, to survive as we have always survived,” it went on, straining to raise itself from the litter. “The thought of a world without war is too frightening to contemplate.”

  He asked more questions, but the patient, although fully conscious and displaying a slight improvement in its clinical condition, would not speak to him.

  There was no doubt in Lioren’s mind that a medical cure would quickly be discovered for the condition affecting the ten thousand-odd surviving Cromsaggar. But he was less sure whether a species which fought wars using only the natural weapons provided by evolution, because that made them feel good for a while, was worth saving. The strict rules of engagement that governed the fighting did not make the situation any less barbaric. They did not fight weaker opponents or children or the very few who were advanced in years, but only because the element of personal risk, and presumably the emotional reward, was reduced. He was glad that his only responsibility was the return of the plague sufferers to bodily health and not the curing of what appeared to be the even more diseased minds inhabiting those bodies.

  And yet there had been occasions when, in an effort to give his patients something other than their own distressing clinical condition to think about, he had tried to explain star travel and the Galactic Federation to them. He had described the bewildering variety of shapes and sizes that intelligent life could take, and tried to make them understand that they lived on one inhabited world of many hundreds. He found those frightening and inexplicable minds of theirs had displayed an agility and a level of intelligence, although not the degree of education and knowledge, that was almost the equal of his own.

  At those times there had been a small and transient improvement in their clinical condition, and that had made Lioren wonder if their craving for the danger and emotional excitement of war and single combat might not someday be fulfilled by the many and even more difficult challenges of peace. But they refused, or perhaps were psychologically unable because of cultural conditioning, to divulge personal information about their social behavior, moral strictures, or feelings on any subject unless, as in the present case, the patient was gravely ill and its mental resistance low.

  The truth was that Lioren did not know how his patients felt, about themselves or anyone or anything else, and the stock question of the attending physician, “How do you feel?” was never answered.

  Rhabwar was due in two days’ time, and he decided that this particular patient would be among those transferred to the ambulance ship for investigation and treatment at Sector General, and that he would ask for a consultation with the vessel’s senior medical officer.

  Doctor Prilicla was a Cinrusskin, and, as a member of the Federation’s only empathic species, it knew how everyone felt.

  Lioren asked that the meeting take place on Rhabwar’? casualty deck, rather than summoning Prilicla to the overcrowded sick bay of Vespasian, for reasons both practical and personal. The level of background emotional radiation from patients was much higher on Vespasian and would doubtless have distressed his visitor — it did no harm to show consideration to a professional colleague. On the ambulance ship there was less likelihood of his uncertainties regarding the Cromsaggar becoming known to his subordinates. It was his firm belief that a leader should display certainty at all times to the led if he was to receive their respect and total obedience.

  Perhaps the empath held the same belief, but it was more likely that Prilicla had detected Lioren’s emotional radiation at a distance, correctly analyzed it, and insured that their meeting would be private. He was grateful but not surprised. It was in the other’s own selfish interest to minimize the generation of unpleasant emotional radiation around it, because to do otherwise would be to expose itself to exactly the same degree of unpleasantness.

  The Cinrusskin positioned itself at eye level above one of the treatment tables, an enormous, incredibly fragile flying insect rendered small only by Lioren’s greater body mass. From its tubular, exoskeletal body there projected six pencil-thin legs, four even more delicately fashioned manipulators, and four sets of wide, iridescent, and almost transparent wings that were beating slowly as, with the aid of the gravity nullifiers strapped’to its body, it maintained a stable hover. Only on Cinruss, with its thick atmosphere and gravitational pull of one-eighth standard G, could a species of flying insect have evolved intelligence, civilization, and star travel, and Lioren knew of no race within the Federation who did not consider them to be the most beautiful of all intelligent life-forms.

  From one of the narrow openings in the delicate, convoluted eggshell that was its head came a series of musical trills and clicks which translated as “Thank you, friend Lioren, for the complimentary feelings you are harboring, and for the ple
asure of meeting you in person for the first time. I also detect strong emotional radiation which suggests that the purpose of our meeting is professional and urgent rather than social.

  “I am an empath, not a telepath,” it ended gently. “You will have to tell me what is troubling you, friend Lioren.”

  Lioren felt sudden irritation at the other’s continuing use of the word “friend.” He was, after all, the medical and administrative director of the disaster relief operation on Cromsag, and a Surgeon-Captain in the Monitor Corps, while Prilicla was a civilian Senior Physician at Sector General. His irritation was making the empath’s whole body tremble and causing its hovering flight to become less stable. He suddenly realized that he was attacking a being with a weapon, his feelings, against which it had no defense.

  Even the pathologically warlike Cromsaggar would scorn to attack such a weak and defenseless enemy.

  Lioren’s irritation quickly changed to shame. This was a time to forget the feelings of justified pride in his high rank and in the many professional accomplishments that had earned it. Instead he should try, as he had often done in the past, to make the most effective use of the abilities of a subordinate whose feelings were easily hurt, and to control his emotions.

  “Thank you, friend Lioren, for the mental self-discipline you have just displayed,” Prilicla said before he could speak. It settled like a feather onto the top of the examination table, no longer trembling, and added, “But I detect strong background emotional radiation that you are finding more difficult to control and that, I feel sure, concerns the Cromsaggar. My own feelings of concern over the situation here are strong, perhaps as strong as yours, and shared feelings about other persons or situations cause me lesser discomfort. So if there is some way that I can help you please do not hesitate to speak.”