Hospital Station sg-1

by James White

  Then suddenly there was a subtle change in the sensations. Not a lessening, but of something added. Conway had a brief, blinding glimpse of something — it was like a phrase of great music played on a damaged recording, or the beauty of a masterpiece that is cracked and disfigured almost beyond recognition. He knew that for an instant, through the distorting waves of pain, he had actually seen into Arretapec’s mind.

  Now he knew everything …

  The VUXG continued to have responses all that day, but they were erratic, violent and uncontrolled. After one particular dramatic response had caused the panicky dinosaur to level a couple of acres of trees, then sent it charging into the lake in terror, Arretapec called a halt.

  “It is useless,” said the doctor. “The being will not use what I am trying to teach it for itself, and when I force the process it becomes afraid.”

  There was no emotion in the flat, Translated tones, but Conway who had had a glimpse of Arretapec’s mind knew the bitter disappointment that the other felt. He wished desperately that he could help, but he knew that he could do nothing directly of assistance-Arretapec was the one who had to do the real work in this case, he could only prod things along now and then. He was still wracking his brain for an answer to the problem when he turned in that night, and just before he went to sleep he thought he found it.

  Next morning they tracked down Dr. Mannon just as he was entering the DBLF operating theater. Conway said, “Sir, can we borrow your dog?”

  “Business or pleasure?” said Mannon suspiciously. He was very attached to his dog, so much so that non-human members of the staff suspected a symbiotic relationship.

  “We won’t hurt it at all,” said Conway reassuringly.

  “Thanks.” He took the lead from the appendage of the Tralthan intern holding it, then said to Arretapec, “Now back to my room …

  Ten minutes later the dog, barking furiously, was dashing around Conway’s room while Conway himself hurled cushions and pillows at it. Suddenly one connected fairly, bowling it over. Paws scrabbling and skidding on the plastic flooring it erupted into frantic burst of high-pitched yelps and snarls.

  Conway found himself whipped off his feet and suspended eight feet up in mid-air.

  “I did not realize,” boomed the voice of Arretapec from his position on the desk, “that you had intended this to be a demonstration of Earth human sadism. I am shocked, horrified. You will release this unfortunate animal at once.”

  Conway said, “Put me down and I’ll explain …

  On the eighth day they returned the dog to Dr. Mannon and went back to work on the dinosaur. At the end of the second week they were still working and Arretapec, Conway and their patient were being talked, whistled, cheeped and grunted about in every language in use at the hospital. They were in the dining hall one day when Conway became aware that the annunciator which had been droning out messages in the background was now calling his name.

  O’Mara on the intercom,” it was saying monotonously, “Doctor Conway, please. Would you contact Major O’Mara on the intercom as soon as possible …

  “Excuse me,” Conway said to Arretapec, who was nestling on the plastic block which the catering superintendent had rather pointedly placed at Conway’s table, and headed for the nearest communicator.

  “It isn’t a life-and-death matter,” said O’Mara when he called and asked what was wrong. “I would like to have some things explained to me. For instance:

  “Dr. Hardin is practically frothing at the mouth because the food vegetation which he plants and replenishes so carefully has now got to be sprayed with some chemical which will render it less pleasant to taste, and why is a certain amount of the vegetation kept at its full flavor but in storage? What are you doing with a tri-di projector? And where does Mannon’s dog fit into this?” O’Mara paused, reluctantly, for breath, then went on, “And Colonel Skempton says that his engineers are run ragged setting up tractor and pressor beam mounts for you two-not that he minds that so much, but he says that if all that gadgetry was pointed outward instead of inward that hulk you’re messing around in could take on and lick a Federation cruiser.

  “And his men, well …” O’Mara was holding his tone to a conversational level, but it was obvious that he was having trouble doing so. Quite a few of them are having to consult me professionally. Some

  of them, the lucky ones perhaps, just don’t believe their eyes. The others would much prefer pink elephants.”

  There was a short silence, then O’Mara said, “Mannon tells me that you climbed onto your ethical high horse and wouldn’t say a thing when he asked you. I was wondering—”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” said Conway awkwardly.

  “But what the blinding blue blazes are you doing?” O’Mara erupted, then, “Well, good luck with it anyway. Off.”

  Conway hurried to rejoin Arretapec and take up the conversation where it had been left off. As they were leaving a little later, Conway said, “It was stupid of me not to take the size factor into consideration. But now that we have—”

  “Stupid of us, friend Conway,” Arretapec corrected in its toneless voice. “Most of your ideas have worked out successfully so far. You have been of invaluable assistance to me, so that I sometimes think that you have guessed my purpose. I am hoping that this idea, also, will work.”

  “We’ll keep our fingers crossed.”

  On this occasion Arretapec did not, as it usually did, point out that firstly it did not believe in luck and secondly that it possessed no fingers. Arretapec was definitely growing more understanding of the ways of humans. And Conway now wished that the high-minded VUXG would read his mind, just so that the being would know how much he was with it in this, how much he wanted Arretapec’s experiment to succeed this afternoon.

  Conway could feel the tension mounting in him all the way to the ship. When he was giving the engineers and maintenance men their final instructions and making sure that they knew what to do in any emergency, he knew that he was joking a bit too much and laughing a little too heartily. But then everyone was showing signs of strain. A little later, however, as he stood less than fifty yards from the patient and with equipment festooning him like a Christmas tree — an anti-gravity pack belted around his waist, a tri-di projector locus and viewer strapped to his chest and his shoulders hung with a heavy radio pack — his tension had reached the point of immobility and outward calm of the spring which can be wound no tighter.

  “Projector crew ready,” said a voice.

  “The food’s in place,” came another.

  “All tractor and pressor beam men on top line,” reported a third.

  “Right, Doctor,” Conway said to the hovering Arretapec, and ran a suddenly dry tongue around drier lips. “Do your stuff.”

  He pressed a stud on the locus mechanism on his chest and immediately there sprang into being around and above him the immaterial image of a Conway who was fifty feet high. He saw the patient’s head go up, heard the low-pitched whinnying sound that it made when agitated or afraid and which contrasted so oddly with its bulk, and saw it backing ponderously toward the water’s edge. But Arretapec was radiating furiously at the brontosaur’s two small, almost rudimentary brains — sending out great waves of calm and reassurance — and the great reptile grew quiet. Very slowly so as not to alarm it, Conway went through the motions of reaching behind him, picking something up and placing it well in front of him. Above and around him his fifty-foot image did the same.

  But where the image’s great hand came down there was a bundle of greenery, and when the solid-seeming but immaterial hand moved upward the bundle followed it, kept in position at the apex of three delicately manipulated pressor beams. The fresh, moist bundle of plants and palm fronds was placed close to the still uneasy dinosaur, apparently by the hand which then withdrew. After what seemed like an eternity to the waiting Conway the massive, sinuous neck arched downward. It began poking at the greenery. It began to nibble …

  Conway went throu
gh the same motions again, and again. All the time he and his fifty-foot image kept edging closer.

  The brontosaur, he knew, could at a pinch eat the vegetation which grew around it, but since Dr. Hardin’s sprayer had gone into operation it wasn’t very nice stuff. But it could tell that these tidbits were the real, old stuff; the fresh, juicy, sweet-smelling food that it used to know which had so unaccountably disappeared of late. Its nibbles became hungry gobbling.

  Conway said, “All right. Stage Two..

  Using the tiny viewer which showed his image’s relationship to the dinosaur as a guide, Conway reached forward again. High up and invisible on the opposite wall of the hull another pressor beam went into operation, synchronizing its movements with the hand which was now apparently stroking the patient’s great neck, and administering a firm but gentle pressure. After an initial instant of panic the patient went back to eating, and occasionally shuddering a little. Arretapec reported that it was enjoying the sensation.

  “Now,” said Conway, “We’ll start playing rough.”

  Two great hands were placed against its side and massed pressors toppled it over with a ground-shaking crash. In real terror now it threshed and heaved madly in a vain attempt to get its ponderous and ungainly body upright on its feet. But instead of inflicting mortal damage, the great hands continued only to stroke and pat. The brontosaur had quieted and was showing signs of enjoying itself again when the hands moved to a new position. Tractor and pressor beams both seized the recumbent body, yanked it upright and toppled it onto the opposite side.

  Using the anti-gravity belt to increase his mobility, Conway began hopping over and around the brontosaur, with Arretapec, who was in rapport with the patient, reporting constantly on the effects of the various stimuli. He stroked, patted, pummeled and pushed at the giant reptile with blown-up, immaterial hands and feet. He yanked its tail and he slapped its neck, and all the time the tractor and pressor crews kept perfect time with him …

  Something like this had occurred before, not to mention other things which, it was rumored, had driven one engineer to drink and at least four off it. But it was not until the size factor had been taken into consideration as it had today with this monster tri-di projection that there had been such promising results. Previously it had been as if a mouse were manhandling a St. Bernard during the past week or so — no wonder the brontosaurus had been in a frenzy of panic when all sorts of inexplicable things had been happening to it and the only reason it could see for them was two tiny creatures that were just barely visible to it!

  But the patient’s species had roamed its home planet for a hundred million years, and it personally was immensely long-lived. Although its two brains were tiny it was really much smarter than a dog, so that very soon Conway had it trying to sit and beg.

  And two hours later the brontosaurus took off.

  It rose rapidly from the ground, a monstrous, ungainly and indescribable object with its massive legs making involuntary walking movements and the great neck and tail hanging down and waving slowly. Obviously it was the brain in the sacral area and not the cranium which was handling the levitation, Conway thought, as the great reptile approached the bunch of palm fronds which were balanced tantalizingly two hundred feet above its head. But that was a detail, it was levitating, that was the main thing. Unless—“Are you helping?” Conway said sharply to Arretapec.

  The reply was flat and emotionless by necessity, but had the VUXG been human it would have been a yell of sheer triumph.

  “Good old Emily!” somebody shouted in Conway’s phones, probably one of the beam operators, then, “Look, she’s passing it!”

  The brontosaur had missed the suspended bundle of foliage and was still rising fast. It made a clumsy, convulsive attempt to reach it in passing, which had set up a definite spin. Further wild movements of neck and tail were aggravating it.

  “Better get her down out of there,” said a second voice urgently. “That artificial sun could scorch her tail off.”

  And that spin is making it panicky,” agreed Conway. “Tractor beam men …!”

  But he was too late. Sun, earth and sky were careening in wild, twisting loops around a being which had been hitherto accustomed to solid ground under its feet. It wanted down or up, or somewhere. Despite Arretapec’s frantic attempts to soothe it, it teleported again.

  Conway saw the great mountain of flesh and bone go hurtling off at a tangent, at least four times faster than its original speed. He yelled, “H sector men! Cushion it down, gently.”

  But there was neither time nor space for the pressor beam men to slow it down gently. To keep it from crashing fatally to the surface — also through the underlying plating and out into space outside — they had to slow it down steadily but firmly, and to the brontosaurus that necessarily sharp braking must have felt like a physical blow. It teleported again.

  “C-sector, it’s coming at you!”

  But at C it was a repetition of what happened with H, the beast panicked and shot off in another direction. And so it went on, with the great reptile rocketing from one side of the ship’s interior to the other until …

  “Skempton here,” said a brisk authoritative voice. “My men say the pressor beam mounts were not designed to stand this sort of thing. Insufficiently braced. The hull plating has sprung in eight places.”

  “Can’t you—”

  “We’re sealing the leaks as fast as we can, Skempton cut in, answering Conway’s question before he could ask it. “But this battering is shaking the ship apart …

  Dr. Arretapec joined in at that point.

  “Doctor Conway,” the being said, “while it is obvious that the patient has shown a surprising aptitude with its new talent, its use is uncontrolled because of its fear and confusion. This traumatic experience will cause irreparable damage, I am convinced, to the being’s thinking processes …

  “Conway, look out!”

  The reptile had come to a halt near ground level a few hundred yards away, then shot off at right angles toward Conway’s position. But it was traveling a straight line inside a hollow sphere, and the surface was curving up to meet it. Conway saw the hurtling body lurch and spin as the beam operators sought desperately to check its velocity. Then suddenly the mighty body was ripping through the low, thickly-growing trees, then it was plowing a wide, shallow furrow through the soft, swampy ground and with a small mountain of earth-uprooted vegetation piling up in front of it, Conway was right in its path.

  Before he could adjust the control of his anti-gravity pack the ground came up and fell on him. For a few minutes he was too dazed to realize why it was he couldn’t move, then he saw that he was buried to the waist in a sticky cement of splintered branches and muddy earth. The heavings and shudderings he felt in the ground were the brontosaurus climbing to its feet. He looked up to see the great mass towering over him, saw it turn awkwardly and heard the sucking and crackling noises as the massive, pile-driver legs drove almost knee deep into the soil and underbrush.

  Emily was heading for the lake again, and between the water and it was Conway …

  He shouted and struggled in a frenzied attempt to attract attention, because the anti-gray and radio were smashed and he was stuck fast. The great reptilian mountain rolled up to him, the immense, slowly-waving neck was cutting off the light and one gigantic forefoot was poised to both kill and bury him in one operation, then Conway was yanked suddenly upward and to the side to where a prune in a gob of syrup was floating in the air.

  “In the excitement of the moment,” Arretapec said, “I had forgotten that you require a mechanical device to teleport. Please accept my apologies.”

  “Q-quite all right,” said Conway shakily. He made an effort to steady his jumping nerves, then caught sight of a pressor beam crew on the surface below him. He called suddenly, “Get another radio and projector locus here, quick!”

  Ten minutes later he was bruised, battered but ready to continue again. He stood at the water’s edge wi
th Arretapec hovering at his shoulder and his fifty-foot image again rising above him. The VUXG doctor, in rapport with the brontosaur under the surface of the lake, reported that success or failure hung in the balance. The patient had gone through what was to it a mind-wrecking experience, but the fact that it was now in what it felt to be the safety of underwater-where it had hitherto sought refuge from hunger and attacks of its enemies-was, together with the mental reassurances of Arretapec, exerting a steadying influence.

  At times hopefully, at others in utter despair, Conway waited. Sometimes the strength of his feelings made him swear. It would not have been so bad, meant so much to him, if he hadn’t caught that glimpse of what Arretapec’s purpose had been, or if he had not grown to like the rather prim and over-condescending ball of goo so much. But any being with a mind like that who intended doing what it hoped to do had a right to be condescending.

  Abruptly the huge head broke surface and the enormous body heaved itself onto the bank. Slowly, ponderously, the hind legs bent double and the long, tapering neck stretched upward. The brontosaurus wanted to play again.

  Something caught in Conway’s throat. He looked to where a dozen bundles of succulent greenery lay ready for use, with one already being maneuvered toward him. He waved his arm abruptly and said, “Oh, give it the whole lot, it deserves them …

  … So that when Arretapec saw the conditions on the patient’s world,” Conway said a little stiffly, “and its precognitive faculty told him what the brontosaur’s most likely future would be, it just had to try to change it.”

  Conway was in the Chief Psychologist’s office making a preliminary, verbal report and the intent faces of O’Mara, Hardin, Skempton and the hospital’s Director encircled him. He felt anything but comfortable as, clearing his throat, he went on, “But Arretapec belongs to an old, proud race, and being telepathic added to its sensitivity-telepaths really feel what others think about them. What Arretapec proposed doing was so radical, it would leave itself and its race open to such ridicule if it failed, that it just had to be secretive. Conditions on the brontosaur’s planet indicated that there would be no rise of an intelligent life-form after the great reptiles became extinct, and geologically speaking that extinction would not be long delayed. The patient’s species had been around for a long time — that armored tail and amphibious nature had allowed it to survive more predatory and specialized contemporaries — but climatic changes were imminent and it could not follow the sun toward the equator because the planetary surface was composed of a large number of island continents. A brontosaurus could not cross an ocean. But if these giant reptiles could be made to develop the psi faculty of teleportation, the ocean barrier would disappear and with it the danger from the encroaching cold and shortage of food. It was this which Dr. Arretapec succeeded in doing.”