by James White
“What…?“began Hewlitt, and broke off as a shapeless, Illensan limb shot forward, grasped the object, and pulled it level again.
“Do not alter the trajectory,” it said in its usual impatient voice. “For your information, if you do not already have the knowledge, that is a container of concentrated food enclosed in an edible shell and propelled by concealed capsules of high-pressure, nontoxic gas which simulates the movement through water of a fleeing, nonsapient native crustacean. It has been found that mobile food increases the patients’ appetite and has beneficial psychological effects. If the food vehicle were to crash edge-on into a wall or deck and burst, it would leave a mess that my nurses would have to filter out and remove when there are more important duties requiring their attention. Please reenter the nurses’ station and stay out of my head fronds. Patients, your attention please…
Its voice was coming from the ward’s wall speakers as well as his headset, and Hewlitt was being ignored.
“The main lunch release is imminent,” Hredlichli went on. “It will be followed in fifteen minutes by the containers marked with concentric blue circles, which are the special diets required by Patients One-Ninety-Three, Two-Eleven, and Two-Fifteen. Kindly remember that these are not to be consumed by anyone else. Patients confined to their treatment frames will have lunch delivered to them by the nurses once the mobile patients are fed. All medical staff who are not already in the nurses’ station return there at once. Padre Lioren, this includes you.
Lioren returned but did not seem disposed to speak to anyone. Perhaps its mind was still on its sick patient. Hewlitt watched as fans of bubbles jetted from the sterns of the lunch vehicles and they began to accelerate down the ward, their numbers thinned by heavy, darting shapes and clashing jaws. The shape of Hredlichli, looking like a grotesque, plastic-wrapped sickly vegetable, was still drifting close by, and for the first time since his arrival it seemed to have nothing to do.
There were times, he thought, when by pretending to have a little knowledge it was possible to obtain a lot more. He decided to risk a question.
“Charge Nurse,” he said in a brisk, confident voice. “The AUGL classification are not easy to move in an off-world environment. How long would it require for an emergency evacuation of all the patients in your ward, and how would you personally assess the chances of success?”
Inside Hredlichli’s protective envelope a group of oily yellow fronds twitched as it said, “Obviously you are already aware of the emergency. This surprises me because the information is restricted to the very senior medical and maintenance staff and to one charge nurse, myself, whose ward poses a particular problem. Or are you more than a mere curious visitor, and there was another reason why you wished to speak to every patient in my ward?”
The answer to both questions was yes, Hewlitt thought, but he could not say so because the knowledge of the virus creature was also restricted. He wanted to ask for more details about the emergency, but could not because he was supposed to know them, and his earlier curiosity was being diluted by a growing fear.
“Sorry, Charge Nurse,” he said, “I am not at liberty to answer that question.”
More parts of Hredlichli twitched grotesquely. It said, “I do not approve of the secrecy where this ward is concerned. My Chalders are overlarge but they are not stupid. Even in this hospital there are too many people who equate large size with a lack of sensitivity. If my patients were to learn that there is a malfunction in the power-generation system that threatens the entire hospital and that they, because of their great size and consequent difficulty of evacuation, would be among the last to leave or, worse, that there might not be time enough to modify enough ships to ac commodate them, they would not panic or try to break out. Your poisonous, rarefied atmosphere outside this ward would be as deadly to them as my own chlorine or space itself. Those that were left behind would accept their fate, and no doubt insist that their medical attendants save themselves, because they are intelligent, sensitive, and caring monsters.”
“I agree,” said Hewlitt. He had recently met all of them and knew. He had also had frightening confirmation of the reason for the emergency drills that were apparently being conducted everywhere but the Chalder ward, but uppermost in his mind was a sudden and inexplicable liking for this ghastly chlorine-breather. He added reassuringly, “It might never happen, Charge Nurse. This is a problem for the maintenance engineers. No doubt they will be able to solve it in time.”
“Considering the time it took for them to repair the waste extractor on One-Eighty-Seven’s treatment frame,” Hredlichli replied, returning to character, “I lack your confidence.”
All of Lioren’s eyes had been directed at him while he was talking to the charge nurse, but the Padre did not comment and it remained silent after they returned to the corridor. Hewlitt wondered if his conversation with Hredlichli had caused the other to take offense.
“Are we agreed,” he said, “that there are no former virus hosts in the Chalder ward?”
“Yes,” said Lioren.
The word had punched a small hole in the other’s wall of silence. But Hewlitt’s fear was growing and so was his impatience to know more, and he knew that his next words might close the hole again.
“Did you know the reason for the evacuation drills?” he asked. “Were you deliberately keeping it from me?”
“Yes,” said the Padre.
Before Hewlitt could ask the obvious question, Lioren answered it.
“There were three reasons,” it went on. “You have already been told one of them, that you are not a specialist in the relevant field so that being given complete and accurate information could not have contributed to a solution of the problem. As well, the knowledge would have worried you unnecessarily and might have had an adverse effect on your conduct of our search. And my own incomplete knowledge was gained in circumstances which preclude me passing it on. In any case, you found out as much about the emergency from Hredlichli as I did, so I now feel free to discuss the situation with you. In general terms, at least.”
“Does that mean,” he said, trying to control his irritation, “that there is something that you are still not telling me? For my own peace of mind, naturally.”
“Yes,” said Lioren.
This time it was Hewlitt who erected the wall of silence, because the words he felt like using were not those normally spoken to a Padre, and it was Lioren who was trying to demolish it.
“The next call,” it said, “is to a patient in the SNLU ward. It is an ultra-frigid, methane life-form with a crystalline tissue structure that is hypersensitive to bright light and minute increases in temperature. The environmental-protection vehicle is cumbersome, heavily insulated, fitted with sensory enhancement and remote manipulator systems. Because of the patients’ extreme aural sensitivity it is necessary to attenuate external sound output and amplify the input. It is a very quiet ward. You will be able to move close to my patient, and the three others who are under treatment, when I introduce you, but then you must leave the two of us alone as you did in the Chalder ward and talk to the others. You will not have to concern yourself with your vehicle’s controls; one of the staff will guide it remotely from the nurses’ station.”
Still feeling angered by the other’s implication that he could not be trusted with sensitive information without losing his emotional control, Hewlitt remained silent.
“You will find,” Lioren added, “that the SNLU environment will cool even the hottest temper.
CHAPTER 29
Not only was the ward cold and dark, but heavy shielding and sulation protected it from the trace quantities of radiation and heat given off by ship traffic in the vicinity of the hospital. There were no windows, because even the light that filtered in from the distant stars could not be allowed to penetrate to this area. The images that appeared on his display had been converted from the nonvisible spectrum, giving them the ghostly, unreal quality of fantasy, so that the scales covering the patients�
� eight-limbed, starfish bodies shone coldly through the methane mist like multihued diamonds, making them resemble a species of wondrous, heraldic beast.
When he turned off his translator while moving between patients so as to listen to their natural voices, the sound was like nothing he had ever heard before. So clear and cold and beautiful were the sounds that he could almost imagine that he was hearing the musical, amplified chiming of colliding snowflakes. Even though there were no virus hosts in the ward, and Hewlitt doubted that anything other than an SNLU could survive for more than a few minutes in that environment, it surprised him how sorry he felt when the time came to leave.
Lioren’s next visit was to the quarters of an off-duty Melfan nurse called Lontallet. Again he was introduced and, after removing it from their suspect list of former virus hosts, he waited in the corridor while the other two went inside to talk.
The wait was neither long nor boring, because the corridor was invaded by a slow-moving column of patients. He counted thirty of them comprising five different oxygen-breathing species, several of whom were being transported in gravity litters. From the overheard conversations of the nursing attendants he discovered that it was both an evacuation drill and an utter shambles. The last of them was moving away when the Padre rejoined him.
“Did they pass by slowly enough for detection?” it asked. “Did you feel anything from them?”
“Yes,” said Hewlitt. “And no. Where to next?”
“To the dock airlock on Level One,” Lioren replied, “and calling on the wards and scanning all the passersby in the corridors between. We will have to work much faster now. No longer may we speak at length to any of the patients. A few words or a brief visual contact is all we can allow ourselves. Are you feeling tired?”
“No, curious,” said Hewlitt. “And hungry. We haven’t eaten since—”
“In the short term,” the Padre broke in, “our hunger is not lifethreatening. I contacted the department from Nurse Lontallet’s room. O’Mara is in conference, this time by communicator with the waiting ships’ captains, but it left a message for us. The situation has worsened but so far the exact nature of the technical emergency has not been made public. At present there are three separate evacuation drills in progress, but as yet there are no ships at the boarding locks. The patients are complaining about the inconvenience, the medical staff know that something serious is going on and are wanting answers, and in spite of their efforts to project clinical calm, their uncertainty is being communicated to their patients and each other. Psychologically, this is a dangerous situation which must not be allowed to continue.”
“But what is the problem, exactly?” said Hewlitt. “Not enough ships for a complete evacuation, or what? Keep it a secret from me if you have to, but surely the other people here are used to emergencies, medical emergencies, at least, and would react better in conditions of full knowledge, even if the knowledge is frightening, than total ignorance.”
Lioren increased its pace along a clear section of corridor as it said, “Assembling enough ships to empty the hospital should not be a major problem, considering the Federation’s past response times on disaster-relief operations. It may be that they can’t talk about the problem because they don’t fully understand it themselves, or there is more than one problem.”
“Are you trying to confuse me,” said Hewlitt, “or give me some kind of clue?”
Lioren ignored the question and went on, “Prilicla reported nothing unusual from the dining hall. The virus creature was not occupying any of the diners whose emotional radiation it scanned, but due to its low stamina, it requires a lengthy period of rest before it will be able to resume the search. That leaves us as the only people who are able to detect the virus, O’Mara says, and we must find it with minimum delay. As well, from now on we are ordered to seal our helmets and use only suit air to avoid wasting time when changing environments.
“But that would save only a few minutes…” Hewlitt began, then ended, “Never mind.”
It was a stupid order, he thought, when all but two of the wards they would be visiting belonged to warm-blooded oxygenbreathers with similar atmospheric composition and pressure requirements as themselves. Maybe the emergency could affect the thinking of even the chief psychologist.
Their next ward was one of the few in Sector General-the Chalder section they had visited was another-where only one species of patient was treated. For the first time he was able to see, at close range and in horrendous, sharp focus rather than through a semitransparent chlorine envelope, not only one but a whole ward full of uncovered Illensan bodies. He was not surprised to find that none of them had harbored the virus, because he could not imagine any creature, no matter how desperate it was for a host, wanting to occupy a body like that.
Ward followed ward, as did the bewildering succession of patients and medical staff, many of them belonging to species he was meeting for the first time. There was no time to ask questions or wait for answers. None of the beings were as visually unpleasant as the Illensans and neither had any of them been former virus hosts. The speed of their visits aroused comment, as did the odor of chlorine emanating from their unnecessary protective suits, but the presence of the Padre insured that the remarks were polite. In the intervening corridors all of the people they met gave similar negative results.
“I’m beginning to wonder,” said Hewlitt, “if we aren’t deluding ourselves with our host-recognition capability. We have an indescribable-well, I suppose you could call it a fellow feeling for each other. But the feeling might be for each other and nobody else. And there is something wrong with this whole situation. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I think you know and could tell me.”
Lioren stopped so suddenly that Hewlitt had to take three paces backward. They seemed to have left the medical levels, because the people who passed them were wearing Maintenance coveralls and the doors and side corridors bore the interspecies symbols for power-transmission stations, heat-exchanger systems, and, above the opening just ahead of them, a radiation warning. He wondered what kind of ward he would find up here.
“Are you tired?” asked Lioren.
“No,” said Hewlitt. “Are you trying to change the subject?”
“As you may already have heard,” said the Padre, “I trained here as a medicbefore… What I’m trying to say is that I know my Earth-human physiology well enough to be aware of your physical limitations. By now you should be very tired as well as hungry. My next and final patient contact is classification VXTM. That is a radiation-eater and therefore completely unsuitable as a host entity for the virus. It is also a terminal case and is being visited for no other reason than that I visited it once and it requested as many subsequent visits as were possible. You may as well take this opportunity to eat or rest.”
“I’m not tired,” said Hewlitt. “Have you forgotten that the legacy left us by the virus is one of optimum health which presumably includes a body that operates at peak efficiency and is less subject to fatigue? Am I right in thinking that, following our recent high level of physical activity, you also are feeling less tired than you would normally have been?”
“I dislike arguing with you,” said the Padre, “especially when, as now, you are right. I have much on my mind and this is not an important matter. But very well, we are not as tired as we should be.”
It was clear that Lioren was irritated with him, probably for good and perhaps religious reasons so far as a padre making a sick call was concerned. He tried to apologize.
“I seem to have spent my whole life arguing,” he said, “usually with medics who were sure they were right and I was wrong. I’m sorry, it has become a bad habit that I should curb. If you have strong personal or religious reasons for not wanting my company on this visit, just say so. But I also feel that if we have checked all of your possible virus contacts together up to now, in the interests of consistency we should finish the job that way even though we may be wasting our time.
&nbs
p; When the Padre did not respond, he laughed and went on, “As well, if you consider the Telfi radiation-eaters as unsuitable hosts, what about that ultra-low-temperature SNLU? Could a virus exist that close to absolute zero, and if it is an intelligentvirus, why would it want to?”
Lioren ignored his attempt at humor. It said, “I do not know enough about the virus creature’s motivations to be able to speculate about why it would do anything. And if you remember your home world’s natural history, there are many instances of simple forms of life surviving for extended periods under your polar ice layers, sometimes for millions of years.”
“And do you remember,” said Hewlitt, trying hard to control his own irritation, “my telling O’Mara that our virus creature passed through the fringes of a nuclear detonation? And that it survived the experience for more than twenty years before it infected me?”
They had to move aside quickly to avoid two Orligians in Monitor Corps uniforms who were driving their equipment litters like racing vehicles, but it was a few minutes before Lioren spoke.
“I do not remember that,” it said, “because I did not overhear that part of the meeting so that information is new to me. But there is a vast difference between the short burst of radiation sustained by the virus and the intense, lifelong exposure required by the Telfi. You are arguing with me again, but again you may be right. Very well, you may accompany me into the Telfi section.”
“Thank you,” said Hewlitt. “After I see the patient the two of you will be left alone to speak in private.”
“That will not be necessary this time,” said the Padre. “The patient is close to death. Beyond its self-knowledge of that fact, it has not said that there is anything troubling its mind. As you would expect, all of the Telfi religions are based on various forms of sun worship, but it has not said whether or not it believes in any of them. All that it needs or wants at this time is contact with another intelligent creature, or creatures, who will listen to it and speak in the Language of Strangers until it is no longer capable of forming thoughts or words. While it is suffering all we can do is stay with it for a while and listen in the hope that we are doing some good.”
