by James White
At present there were three telepathic species in the hospital, all of whom were patients. The Telfi life-forms were physiological classification VTXM, a group-mind species whose small, beetlelike bodies lived by the direct conversion of hard radiation. Although individually the beings were quite stupid, the gestalt entities were highly intelligent. Investigating their ultra-hot metabolism closely was to risk death by radiation poisoning.
Access to the remaining telepathic life-forms was restricted. They were the Gogleskan healer Khone and its recent offspring and two Protectors of the Unborn, all of whom were at Sector General for clinical and psychological investigation by Diagnostician Conway, Chief Psychologist O’Mara, and Prilicla itself.
“Conway has had successful contact as well as surgical experience with both of these life-forms,” the empath went on, “although it is still too recent and radical to have found its way into the literature. Your colleague Cha Thrat has also had extended contact with the Gogleskan, Khone, and helped deliver its child. It would save time and effort if you simply talked to these entities, or asked that the relevant clinical notes be made available to you … I am sorry, friend Lioren. From the intensity of your emotional radiation it is clear that my suggestion was not helpful.”
Prilicla was trembling as though its fragile body and pipestem limbs were being shaken by a great wind that only it could feel. But it was an emotional gale whose origin was Lioren himself, so he strove to control his feelings until the empath’s body was again at rest.
“It is I who should apologize for distressing you,” Lioren said. “You are correct. I have strong, personal reasons for not involving other members of my department, at least until I know enough to speak without wasting their time. But I would dearly like to read the Diagnostician’s clinical notes and visit the patients you mentioned.”
“I can feel your curiosity, friend Lioren,” Prilicla said, “but not, of course, the reasons for it. My guess is that it has something to do with the Groalterri patient.”
It paused and once again its body trembled, but only for a moment. “Your control of your emotional radiation is improving, friend Lioren, and I compliment and thank you for it. But there is no cause for the fear in your mind. I know that you are hiding something from me, but not being a telepath I do not know what it is. I would not relay my suspicions to others in case I caused emotional distress in you that would rebound on myself.”
Lioren relaxed, feeling grateful and reassured, and knowing that with this entity he did not have to vocalize his feelings. But the empath was still speaking.
“It is common knowledge,” Prilicla said, “that you are the only being within the hospital who has talked freely with Hel-lishomar. Because my empathic faculty is bound by the inverse square law, it increases in sensitivity with proximity to the radiating mind. I have deliberately avoided approaching the Groal-terri because Hellishomar is a deeply distressed and desperately unhappy entity, full of guilt and grief and pain, and it has a mind so powerful that there is nowhere within the hospital that I can escape completely from these terrible and continuing feelings. However, since you began to visit Hellishomar there has been a marked decrease in the intensity of this distressing emotional radiation and for that, friend Lioren, I am truly grateful.
“When Hellishomar’s name is mentioned,” the empath went on before Lioren could speak, “I detected from you an emotion that is closer to a strong hope than an expectation. It was strongest when telepathy was mentioned. That is why you will be allowed to visit the telepathic patients. Copies of the relevant clinical files will be made available to you for study. If now is a convenient time, we will begin by visiting the Protectors of the Unborn.”
The Cinrusskin’s six iridescent wings began to beat slowly and it rose gracefully into the air above the table.
“You are radiating an intense feeling of gratitude,” Prilicla went on as it flew above Lioren toward the dining-hall entrance, “but it is not strong enough to conceal an underlying anxiety and suspicion. What troubles you, friend Lioren?”
His first impulse was to deny that anything was troubling him, but that would have been like two Kelgians trying to lie to each other — his deepest feelings were as visible to Prilicla as a Kel-gian’s mobile fur. “I am anxious because these are Conway’s patients, and if you are allowing me to visit them without permission you might find yourself in trouble. My suspicions are that Conway has already given its permission and for some reason you are not telling me why.”
“Your anxiety is unfounded,” Prilicla said, “and your sus- picions are accurate. Conway was about to ask you to visit these patients. They are here for close observation and investigation which, to them, is the clinical equivalent of a prison sentence of unknown duration. They are cooperative but not happy and are missing their home planets. We know of two patients, Mannen and Hellishomar, who have benefited from talking to you and, with apologies for any hurt to your feelings, friend Conway thought that visits from you would do no harm even if they did no good.
“I don’t know what it is that you say to them,” the empath went on, “and according to the grapevine you won’t even tell O’Mara precisely how you achieve your results. My own theory is that you use the reversal technique, so that instead of the doctor extending sympathy to the patient the opposite occurs, and proceed from there. I have used this technique myself on occasions. Being fragile and emotionally hypersensitive myself, people are inclined to feel sorry for me and allow me, as Con-way describes it, to get away with murder. But for you, friend Lioren, they can really feel sorry because—”
For a moment Prilicla’s hovering flight became less than stable as the terrible memories of a depopulated planet came flooding back into his mind. Of course they all felt sorry for him, but no less sorry than he felt for himself. Desperately he fought to push those memories back to the safe place he had made for them, where they could trouble only his sleep, and he must have succeeded because the Cinrusskin was flying straight and level again.
“You have good control, friend Lioren,” Prilicla said. “Your close-range emotional radiation is uncomfortable to me but no longer as distressing as it was during and after the court-martial. I am glad for both our sakes. On the way there I will tell you about the first two patients.”
The Protector of the Unborn belonged to physiological classification FSOJ, a large, immensely strong life-form with a heavy, slitted carapace from which protruded four thick tentacles, a heavy, serrated tail, and its head. The tentacles terminated in a cluster of sharp, bony projections which made them resemble spiked clubs. The main features of the head were the well-protected, recessed eyes, the large upper and lower mandibles, and teeth which were capable of deforming all but the strongest metal alloys.
They had evolved on a world of shallow seas and steaming jungle swamps where the line of demarcation between animal and vegetable life, so far as physical mobility and aggression were concerned, was unclear. To survive at all, a life-form had to be immensely strong, highly mobile, and unsleeping, and the dominant species on that planet had earned its place by fighting and moving faster and reproducing its kind with a greater potential for survival than any of the others.
The utter savagery of their environment had forced them to evolve a physical form that gave maximum protection to the vital organs. Brain, heart, lungs, and greatly enlarged womb, all were housed deep inside the organic fighting machine that was the Protector’s body. Their gestation period was abnormally extended because the embryo had to grow virtually to maturity before parturition, and it was rare for an adult to survive the reproduction of more than three offspring. An aging parent was usually too weak to defend itself against attack by its lastborn.
The principal reason for the Protectors’ rise to dominance on their world was that their young were already fully educated in the techniques of survival long before they were born. In the dawn of their evolution the process had begun as a complex set of survival characteristics at the genetic level,
but the small physical separation of the brains of the parent and its developing fetus had led to an effect analogous to induction of the electrochemical activity associated with thought. The result was that the embryos became short-range telepaths receiving everything the parent saw or felt.
And before the fetus was half-grown there was taking form within it another embryo that was also increasingly aware of the violent world outside its self-fertilizing grandparent, until gradually the telepathic range increased until communication became possible between embryos whose parents came close enough to see each other.
To minimize damage to a parent’s internal organs, the growing fetus was paralyzed within the womb, and the prebirth de-paralysis also caused loss of both sentience and the telepathic faculty. A newborn Protector would not survive for long in its incredibly savage environment if it was hampered by the ability to think.
With nothing to do but receive impressions from the outside world, exchange thoughts with the other Unborn, and try to extend their telepathic range by making contact with various forms of nonsentient life around them, the embryos developed minds of great power and intelligence. But they could not build anything, or engage in any form of technical research, or do anything at all that would influence the activities of their parents and protectors, who had to fight and kill and eat continually to maintain their unsleeping bodies and the unborn within them.
“That was the situation,” Prilicla went on, “before friend Conway was successful in delivering an Unborn without loss of sentience. Now there are the original Protector and its offspring, who is itself a young Protector, and the embryos growing within both of them, all but the original parent in telepathic contact. Their ward, which was built to reproduce the FSOJs’ home environment, is the next opening on the left. You may find the sight disturbing, friend Lioren, and the noise is certainly horrendous.”
The ward was more than half-filled by a hollow, endless cylinder of immensely strong metal latticework. The diameter of the structure was just wide enough to allow continuous, unrestricted movement in one direction to the FSOJ patients it contained, and which curved and twisted back on itself so that the occupants could use all of the available floor area that was not required for access by the medical attendants or environmental support equipment. The cylinder floor reproduced the uneven ground and natural obstacles like the mobile and voracious trip-roots found on the Protectors’ home planet, while the open sections gave the occupants a continuous view of the screens positioned around the outer surface of the cylinder. Onto the screens were projected moving, tri-d pictures of the indigenous plant and animal life which they would normally encounter.
The open lattice structure also helped the medical attendants to bring to bear on the patients the more positive aspects of the life-support system. Positioned between the projected screen images were the mechanisms whose sole purpose was to beat, tear, or jab at the occupants’ rapidly moving bodies with any required degree of frequency or force.
Everything possible was being done, Lioren noted, to make the Protectors feel at home.
“Will they be able to hear us?” Lioren shouted above the din. “Or we them?”
“No, friend Lioren,” the empath replied. “The screaming and grunting sounds they are making do not carry intelligence, but are solely a means of frightening natural enemies. Until the recent successful birthing the intelligent Unborn remained within the nonsentient Protector and heard only the internal organic sounds of the parent. Speech was impossible and unnecessary for them. The only communication channel open to us is telepathy. ”
“I am not a telepath,” Lioren said.
“Nor are Conway, Thornnastor, and the others who have been contacted by the Unborn,” Prilicla said. “The few known species with the telepathic faculty evolved organic transmitter-receivers that are automatically in tune for that particular race, and for this reason contact between members of different telepathic species is not always possible. When mental contact occurs between one of these entities and a nontelepath, it usually means that the faculty in the latter is dormant or atrophied rather than nonexistent. When such contact occurs the experience for the nontelepath can be very uncomfortable, but there are no physical changes in the brain affected nor is there any lasting psychological damage.
“Move closer to the exercise cage, friend Lioren,” Prilicla went on. “Can you feel the Protector touching your mind?”
“No,” Lioren said.
“I feel your disappointment,” the empath said. A faint tremor shook its body and it went on, “But I also feel the young Protector generating the emotional radiation characteristic of intense curiosity and concentrated effort. It is trying very hard to contact you.”
“I’m sorry, nothing,” Lioren said.
Prilicla spoke briefly into its communicator, then said, “I have stepped up the violence of the attack mechanisms. The patient will suffer no injury, but we have found that the effect of increased activity and apparent danger on the endocrine system aids the process of mentation. Try to make your mind receptive.”
“Still nothing,” Lioren said, touching the side of his head with one hand, “except for some mild discomfort in the inter-cranial area that is becoming very …” The rest was an untranslatable sound which rivaled in volume the noise coming from the Protectors’ life-support system.
The sensation was like a deep, raging itch inside his brain combined with a discordant, unheard noise that mounted steadily in intensity. This must be what it is like, Lioren thought helplessly, when a faculty which is dormant is awakened and forced to perform. As in the case of a muscle long unused, there was pain and stiffness and protest against the change in the old, comfortable order of things.
Suddenly the discomfort was gone, the unheard storm of sound in his mind faded to become a deep, still pool of mental silence on which the external din of the ward had no effect. Then out of the stillness there came words that were unspoken from a being who did not have a name but whose mind and unique personality were an identification that could never be mistaken for any other.
“You are feeling seriously disturbed, friend Lioren,” Prilicla said. “Has the Protector touched your mind?”
Rather, Lioren answered silently, I has almost swamped my mind. “Yes, contact was established and quickly broken. I tried to help it by suggesting … It asked for another visit at a later time. Can we leave now?”
Prilicla led the way into the corridor without speaking, but Lioren did not need an empathic faculty to be aware of the Cinrusskin’s intense curiosity. “I did not realize that so much knowledge could be exchanged in such a short time,” he said. “Words convey meaning in a trickle, thoughts in a great tidal wave, and problems explained instantly and in the fullest detail. I will need time alone to think about everything it has told me so that my answers will not be confused and half-formed. It is impossible to lie to a telepath.”
“Or an empath,” Prilicla said. “Do you wish to delay your visit to the Gogleskan?”
“No,” Lioren replied. “My lonely thinking can wait until this evening. Will Khone use telepathy on me?”
Prilicla had a moment of unstable flight for some reason, then recovered. “I certainly hope not.”
The empath explained that adult Gogleskans used a form of telepathy which required close physical contact, but, except when their lives were threatened, they did everything possible to avoid such contact. It was not simple xenophobia that ailed them, but a pathological fear of the close approach of any large creature, including nonfamily members of their own species. They possessed a well-developed spoken and written language which had allowed the individual and group cooperation necessary for growth of civilization, but their verbal contacts were rare and conducted over the greatest practicable distance and in the most impersonal terms. It was not surprising that their level of technology had remained low.
The reason for their abnormally fearful behavior was a racial psychosis implanted far back in their prehistoric
past. It was a subject which Lioren was strongly advised to approach with caution.
“Otherwise,” Prilicla said as it checked its flight above the entrance to the side ward reserved for the Gogleskans, “you risk distressing the patient and endangering the trust that has gradually been built up between Khone and those responsible for its treatment. I am unwilling to subject it to the emotional strain of a visit from two strangers, so I shall leave you now. Healer Khone is a frightened, timid, but intensely curious being. Try to converse impersonally as I have suggested, friend Lioren, and think well before you speak.”
A wall of heavy, transparent plastic stretching from floor to ceiling divided the room into equal halves. Hatches for the introduction of food and remote handling devices hung apparently unsupported like empty white picture frames. The treatment half of the ward contained the usual tools of medical investigation modified for use at a distance and three viewscreens. Only two of them were visible to the adult Gogleskan, the third being a repeater for the patient monitor in the main ward’s nursing station. Not wishing to risk giving offense by staring at Khone directly, Lioren concentrated his attention on the picture on the repeater screen.
The Gogleskan healer, Lioren saw at once, was classification FOKT. Its erect, ovoid body was covered by a mass of long, brightly colored hair and flexible spikes, some of which were tipped by small, bulbous pads and grouped into digital clusters so as to enable eating utensils, tools, or medical instruments to be grasped and manipulated. He was able to identify the four long, pale tendrils that were used during contact telepathy lying amid the multicolored cranial hair. The head was encircled by a narrow metal band that supported a corrective lens for one of the four, equally spaced and recessed eyes. Around the lower body was a thick skirt of muscle on which the creature rested, and whenever it changed position four stubby legs were ex- tended below the edge of the muscular skirt. It was making untranslatable moaning sounds, which Lioren thought might be wordless music, to its offspring, who was almost hairless but otherwise a scaled-down copy of its parent. The sound seemed to be coming from a number of small, vertical breathing orifices encircling its waist.
