Final Diagnosis sg-10

by James White

  Hewlitt stopped with his hand still resting on the pale marble, lizard skull. “Wait right there,” he said. “I tried to ask this question earlier but you… Are you telling me that you actually laid your bare hand on Cherxic in the same way as you did when you felt Morredeth’s fur?”

  “Yes,” said the Padre. “But there is no need to feel so excited about it. Physiologically the Telfi are not suitable hosts for the virus creature. It would be like trying to infect a nuclear reactor.”

  A great light was beginning to dawn. Hewlitt said, “I told you already that the virus survived a close encounter with a nuclear detonation and, and the hospital’s reactor has been, well, very sick.”

  The great light, he realized, was external as well as internal because the big, inner seal of the lock was swinging open to reveal the shape of a Telfi. Behind it there was another closed, transparent door that gave a view of the ship’s interior. He decided that it must be a very healthy Telfi, because in spite of the high level of illumination, it reflected no light at all. It and the others that he could see beyond the transparent seal were like so many mobile, lizardshaped black holes.

  And every single Telfi that Hewlitt could see he recognized at once as being past, and one present, hosts of the virus creature.

  There was a burst of modulated static as the one in the open lock moved closer and spoke.

  “I am the part Cherxic,” it said. “Please touch me, my offworld brothers and benefactors, one at a time. Our ship will be returning to Telf very soon and there is important information that must be passed to you.”

  CHAPTER 31

  He watched as Cherxic moved between them and as the Padre, whose curiosity was greater or its cowardice less than Hewlitt’s, placed one uncovered medial hand on the Telfi’s head. Lioren’s body trembled for a moment although it did not seem to be in any distress. No words were spoken and he had still to learn how to read a Tarlan’s facial expression, so he had no idea what was going on. A few more minutes passed before the Padre lifted its hand away and it was his turn.

  Unlike the body of the dead Telfi he had touched, the dense black skin of Cherxic felt cold, and there was a faint, warm tingling in his palm similar to the sensation he had felt when he had pressed his hand against Patient Morredeth’s damaged fur. But this time the tingling was moving up his arm, across his shoulder and into his head. For a moment his sensorium went wild as tiny, random sensations of warmth, cold, pressure, pleasure, and pain occurred all over his body, while bursts of color that were beyond his previous experience or imagination and odors familiar and utterly strange were flooding his senses.

  For some odd reason the memory picture of his cat came into his mind, and the way it had circled and stamped gently with each paw in turn as it had tried to push his lap into a more comfortable shape before it curled up to sleep. Now something was pushing and probing at his mind, trying to make itself fit more comfortably, and it was both gentle and persistent.

  Suddenly there was a great, soft explosion of knowledge.

  Hewlitt was still running through his bright, newly acquired memories like an excited small child exploring a new playground when the virus creature retraced its path along his shoulder, arm, and palm to return to Cherxic. Without a word the Telfi left the lock chamber and the inner seal closed behind it.

  There was nothing more to be said to it, they knew, and nothing left to ask.

  They maintained their silence while Hewlitt followed the Padre as it guided the gravity litter containing the two Telfi cadavers through the boarding tube and into the hospital lock chamber. The seal had closed behind them and emitted a loud, double chime accompanied by a visual warning indicating that the Telfi vessel had broken the docking seals before Lioren spoke, and then it was into its communicator.

  “Braithwaite? Lioren. I must speak to Major O’Mara. It’s urgent.”

  “O’Mara,” said the voice of the chief psychologist. “Go on, Padre.”

  “We are calling off the search,” said Lioren. “The last and only remaining host of the virus creature has been found. It is currently inhabiting a member of the Telfi gestalt whose ship is leaving as we speak. The vessel is to be given departure clearance without delay. And you can cancel the evacuation drills and disperse the waiting ships. The problem with the power-generation control systems is over and…

  “I don’t see the connection,” O’Mara broke in sharply. “Are you trying to tell me there is one?”

  “Yes,” said Lioren. “When two unusual events occur at the same time, the chances are that they have a common cause. I had forgotten that particular unwritten natural law and it was Hewlitt, not me, who made the connection. There is no longer any danger to anyone inside the hospital, either from a nuclear detonation or a cross-species contagion, and we will give you a full report as soon as we reach the department.”

  “Wait,” said O’Mara, “where you are.

  For what seemed a long time Hewlitt stared at Lioren, who was looking with all of its eyes at the two dead Telfi, before the chief psychologist’s voice returned.

  “You’re right, Padre,” said O’Mara, “Engineering confirms that the instability in the nuclear power and distribution systems has rectified itself, why or how they don’t know, and the emergency is over. It happened within the past fifteen minutes. But that was the lesser of the two problems. There is still the matter of the multispecies virus loose in the hospital and, with respect, you two are so deeply and personally involved that your assurance that there is no danger could be, well, more an unconscious product of wishful thinking than clinical fact. Is Hewlitt fully aware of the situation?”

  When it was clear that Lioren was not going to reply, he said, “Yes, I think so.”

  “Then let there be no doubt in your mind, Hewlitt,” said O’Mara, “that you two are in serious trouble. I am personally very sorry about this, we all are, but your trouble started when you were infected by the virus creature as a child on Etla, and here it was passed to ex-Patient Morredeth, Padre Lioren, and, an idea which I find completely incredible, a Telfi whose physiology and environment is less suited to a microbiological form of life than one of our hottest autoclaves. There are probably other hosts that we don’t know about. That is why, when our power generation showed indications of increasing instability that would not respond to the failsafe systems, we kept calling emergency evacuation drills instead of moving everyone into the ships that had been assembled for that purpose. We could not afford to take the risk of turning a multispecies disease of unknown potentiality loose in the Federation.

  “Padre, I have no wish to offend you,” the chief psychologist went on, “by doubting the words of a Wearer of the Blue Cloak of Tarla. But the will to survive in you two as individuals, and for the citizens of the Galactic Federation as a whole, is an evolutionary imperative that may be superseded by any ethical considerations. That is why Kelgia has been instructed to place ex-Patient Morredeth in orbital quarantine on arrival. Similar instructions will be sent to Telf regarding the ship that has just left, and to Etla regarding that cat. You two will be placed in isolation for intensive study by Pathology, and the decision is about to be taken to dismiss the evacuation vessels and replace them with a Monitor Corps sector subfleet with orders to interdict Sector General to all external contact. This could result in serious destabilization throughout the Federation, but it seems that we have no choice. Do you understand our position?”

  “It sounds,” said Hewlitt, with a small, uncontrollable shiver that was partly of dread as well as a reaction to well-meaning stupidity, “that you would have preferred the hospital to blow up and save everybody a lot of trouble. But please believe us, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m sorry, Hewlitt,” said O’Mara. “If the Padre has broken communicator contact with us, please ask it to speak. Diagnosticians Conway and Thornnastor as well as Murchison, Prilicla, and Colonel Skempton are with me. You may already know that Lioren was once a highly respected
senior physician in Sector General. No offense, Hewlitt, but right now we need to hear the report from a medical professional.”

  One of Lioren’s eyes moved up to regard Hewlitt for a moment; then the Padre returned all of its attention to the Telfi dead. He could almost feel the other’s present sorrow and its old, remembered pain. It did not speak.

  “Lioren is unable or unwilling to speak to you right now,” he said, “nor will it speak to me. But we have become very close to the Telfi and each other during the past few minutes. I understand the situation as well as the Padre does, and I am willing to speak.”

  “It isn’t like the Padre to behave this way,” said the chief psychologist, in a voice that mixed impatience with concern. “But I suppose we must settle for a bloody amateur. Talk, dammit.”

  Hewlitt took a firmer grip on his temper and said, “The Padre may indeed have taken offense at your suggestion that we are lying; I certainly did. But it is also gravely troubled by the thought of two dead Telfi who, if it had only known what we now know, might not have died. But in the event it decided to comfort Patient Cherxic, whose case was also terminal although the condition was not as far advanced as that of the other two. The mistake, which was not deliberate and not a reason to punish itself, was on a much smaller scale than the results of the wrong decision it made a few years ago, but its distress over the Cromsag Incident is never far from the Padre s…

  “Lioren spoke to you about Cromsag?” O’Mara broke in. “It never speaks of that to anyone, not even me.

  “It did not speak to me,” said Hewlitt. “As of a few minutes ago, after the virus creature transferred temporarily from Cherxic to Lioren and then to me, I knew everything that was in the Padre’s mind

  He had to break off, because it sounded as if six voices were trying to ask six different questions at once. He looked at the Padre for help, but Lioren’s eyes were still on the dead Telfi and he knew that its mind was on the terrible occurrence in its past when a planet had been all but depopulated because of a single wrong dec~sion. Sympathy for the Tarlan made his voice sound harsher than he had intended.

  “If you don’t stop asking questions,” he said, “I won’t be able to answer any of them. Please be quiet and listen to me.

  He was surprised at how quickly the voices died away until he realized that O’Mara had been giving them the same message, in much less polite language.

  “Yes,” he said, “the virus creature briefly reentered my body, specifically my brain. And no, the process did not render me telepathic. The effect is closer to that of the Educator-tape experience remembered by the then Senior Physician Lioren, except that the process is gentler and without the psychological disorientation associated with the sudden transfer into one’s mind of the memories and personality of a completely alien donor. This was not a mindrecording, it was the transfer of memories by a thinking, sensitive entity who, because of the debt it felt it owed us, was anxious not to cause mental distress.”

  “Wait,” O’Mara broke in, and there was a suspicious edge to his tone when he went on, “Are you saying that the memories were diluted, changed, or even edited?”

  “Diluted with the passage of time,” Hewlitt replied, “but not distorted. You have experience with treating telepathic species and must know that it is impossible to lie with the mind. I know everything that was in the mind of the virus creature, who, because there seems to be only one of it, does not have a name. That includes its future intentions, which in a telepath cannot be concealed or edited in any way.

  “Go on,” said O’Mara.

  “During the recent second visitation,” he continued, “I was made aware of the memories of all its previous hosts. Strongest were those of Lioren, Cherxic, and the other members of the Telfi gestalt among whom it was invited to transfer at will. When you think about it, an organized, self-aware, intelligent virus has much in common with a gestalt entity. But it was the Telfi contact telepathy that enabled it, for the very first time, to achieve perfect communication with other sapient beings. Without knowing how or why, this was the ability it had been searching for all of its life. But even more important were the Telfi radiation-based metabolism and experience in adapting their horrendous environment to their needs, together with their promise of long-term cooperation that will, hopefully, enable the virus creature to make another and most hazardous future change of hosts. That was the reason for the initial investigation and experimentation, unsettling for the hospital staff but never life-threatening, that caused the problem with the power-generation and control systems.

  “I don’t have the technical vocabulary, but it seems that the structure of the virus is such that it is possible for it to interpenetrate and exert a measure of control on the subatomic level.”

  Hewlitt paused for a moment, then moved onto more familiar ground. He said, “I was also given the Morredeth material and, strangely, the feelings of the creature from the time I first became its host as a child. That was a weird experience. Before that there was its time with Lonvellin, and before that a succession of non-sapient hosts stretching far beyond even its own recollection.

  “The virus creature is old, very old…

  There was no knowing what environmental influences had caused it to evolve intelligence or if there had ever been other sapient virus creatures; it could well have been a genetic accident and unique of its kind. In the beginning its hosts had been small, and rather than infecting and killing them through uncontrolled proliferation as did normal pathogens, it tried to insure its own longterm survival by maintaining the hosts in optimum physical condition for as long as possible. It transferred when, in spite of its efforts, a host grew too old or was killed by a larger predator, whereupon the predator became the new host.

  A great many centuries must have elapsed before the highly intelligent and extremely long-lived explorer Lonvellin visited its home world and, believing that no off-world pathogen could affect it, took no precautions and acquired a most unusual and unique parasite.

  Instinctively the virus realized that it had found an organism that could be made to survive for a very long time indeed, but the new host’s body was so massive and strange and complex that it had extreme difficulty adapting to the new surroundings. Lonvellin, however, who must have been subject to many irritating and uncomfortable illnesses during its long life, would have deduced the virus’s presence and capabilities from the fact that the incidence of its former maladies was dropping toward zero. But at that time the virus creature could not communicate with its host, nor was it aware of the reasons why certain obscure metabolic processes were taking place in that massive and confusing body. All it was able to do at the time, and then only with great difficulty, was to maintain its host in the same physiological condition as it had been in when found.

  The virus made mistakes.

  One of them, its stubborn retention of dying skin material which would normally have been discarded and replaced with new growth, brought Lonvellin to Sector General. Another was allowing the then Senior Physician Conway to trick it into leaving its host and revealing itself as a separate entity. At this stage in its continuing evolutionary development the virus creature was sapient but not very bright.

  After it was reclaimed by Lonvellin, it traveled to Etla, where it had a narrow escape from the nuclear detonation that killed its host. That incident came close to killing the creature as well, but instead resulted in a structural mutation which later enabled it to enter and adapt to a radiation-eating Telfi host.

  It saved the Hewlitt child’s life twice, after the poisoning and potentially lethal fall from a tree and following the flyer crash, but it was still making mistakes, such as halting the blood circulation by arresting the heart so as to give it more time to negate the effect of any fast-acting foreign medication introduced, which eventually resulted in the adult Hewlitt being sent to Sector General. It was learning, however, and becoming increasingly aware of the host’s mind and feelings as well as its own. The process b
egan with Lonvellin, but the incident with the mutilated cat was more important than was realized because it was the first time that the virus had been influenced by psychological factors, specifically the emotional pressure of a child’s grief for a dying pet, into changing hosts.

  “The transfer was temporary,” Hewlitt went on, “because it was not in the creature’s interests to move from a long-lived host to a small and shorter-lived one. By then it was being driven by curiosity and the urge to experiment as well as by its need to survive into the indefinite future, but for a long time there were only Earthhumans like myself available and it had not yet fully understood the workings of my body. By the time I arrived here it was becoming intensely curious, more aware of its surroundings and hungry for the new experiences that were available in a place that is filled with very interesting and long-lived potential hosts. When it felt my sorrow and sympathy for Patient Morredeth and I accidentally touched, or perhaps was subtly influenced by it to place a bare hand on, the wound where the fur had been destroyed, it transferred to its first Kelgian. Later it moved to the Padre and then to Cherxic and, in turn, to each of the surviving members of the Telfi ship gestalt, where the latest and most significant but not, it believes, the final adaptation occurred. From the telepathic and technically highly specialized members of the ship gestalt it learned how to communicate mind-to-mind with its subsequent hosts, and to understand and control at the particle level the radiation on which the Telfi live. The covert and Telfi-guided experiments with the hospital’s power system were part of its learning process.

  “Now it has everything it needs to survive into the indefinite future,” Hewlitt went on. “Individual Telfi will die, many with less frequency now that it is moving among them, but the gestalts replace or increase their membership and will continue to amass information and experience. It has found the perfect host species. With the willing cooperation and the radiation-absorption mechanism of the Telfi as its launching point, it will grow in size and intelligence and power, and it will continue to evolve until it is able to populate the stars or, a risk which it fully accepts, kill itself in the attempt.