“You are supposedly capable of rational thought, so I would be very pleased to see some manifestation of that attribute at this time. Yes, indeed, now would be an excellent time for you to let me see some of the rationality and ability to think clearly under conditions of exceptionally high stress that the beings who study your species repeatedly claim that you possess.
“Further, even if you escaped from this building, there is nowhere for you to go, no food, no shelter, and no way for you to get off this planet without your ship which is currently in a maintenance hangar on this planet’s fourth moon, more than half a million kilometers away. On your own in the wilds of this world, without supplies or equipment, you would be dead quite promptly, which I would regard as a considerable waste given all that was done to keep you alive. Indeed, given the effort that I, individually, expended for the preservation of your life, physical well-being, and intellectual capabilities, I would be particularly irritated were you to walk out of here only to fall prey to some hungry woodland predator.
“So, you have nothing to gain by violence and destruction, except a long sedative-induced nap followed by a long ‘hangover.’ Your situation will all be explained to you.
“But, first, please get back in your bed, I implore you most earnestly. This was a charade staged for your benefit. Truly false, yes it was, truly false. But, my ferocious little primate, this drama was intended as a test of your resolve to preserve your own life and of your resourcefulness under great stress in unfamiliar circumstances. You did very well, very well, very well, indeed, at least as perceived from my particular perspective, but I am only one of the beings involved in evaluating your performance.
“The Vaaach were only mildly impressed, I’m afraid, but their whole species is made up of individuals who are almost impossible to impress. Legend has it that the first Vaaach to be shown a supernova close up said something on the order of, ‘That was entertaining. When is the next one?’
“But, I digress. As I was saying before I most rudely interrupted myself, I am most enthusiastic about your performance in that regard. Of course, you could have done better, as there were ‘chemicals’ in the cabinet that would have burst into flame when exposed to air such that you would not need the defibrillator, but anyone who expects perfection in the real universe is guaranteeing their own disappointment. In the real rather than the theoretical world, no one can expect to be perfect.
“No. No. We are all flawed and imperfect creatures made of perfectly ordinary atoms arranged in amazing ways. As a result, sometimes, we are amazing, and sometimes we are ordinary. So, let’s proceed with this process so that the relevant procedures can be completed. I need you to put down the water bottle and my defibrillator, and get back on your bed where patients such as yourself should be.”
Max complied, somewhat grudgingly, and gave his captor a good once over as the alien, in fussy and fastidious fashion, returned the bottle to its place in the cabinet, the defibrillator to its cart, the cart to its place against the wall, and the items that Max had removed from the cart back where Max had found them, with the labels turned in exactly the same direction and precisely the same distance apart from one another.
Max quickly came to the conclusion that this particular space was the obsessively organized domain of this particular obsessive alien.
Well, that’s not exactly fair. Who knows? Maybe these personality traits are normal where he comes from.
Oblivious to whether his actions were symptoms of psychopathology in his species’ equivalent of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual CXIV used by human mental health professionals, the alien was soon satisfied that he had put back into order what Max had disordered and returned to Max’s side.
Max’s apparent captor was roughly the length and build of a very large leopard, just over two meters, but more slightly built, probably weighing in at about 75 to 80 kilograms. The face of the alien, however, wasn’t even remotely cat-like; rather, it was shaped much like that of a fox or a raccoon, but with a larger (much larger!) brain case. Also, unlike that of a cat or, for that matter, any other large creature Max had ever seen, was the meter and a half long, decidedly whip-like, tail that came with the package.
The being was covered with short tawny and pale green hair marked with thin, irregular vertical lines of slightly darker or lighter color, much like the camouflage worn by Union Marines when deployed to fight on grassland or lightly wooded terrain. Max could make out long, lean muscles rippling under the fur and skin. Something about those muscles told Max that the creature was extremely strong. It wore no clothing and its genitalia, if they were on the outside of the body at all, were hidden by fur. It was, however, wearing a rather complicated-looking equipment harness that looked like a cross between a military web belt and a set of bandoleers, akin to what Poncho Villa wore in the old photographs, crammed with recognizably alien but also recognizably medical instruments.
As Max was getting into the bed, the creature scampered on four legs right up to Max and, like an oversized African meerkat, reared up on its hind legs, letting Max see that what he had thought to be the creature’s front feet to actually be its horn-hard elbows from which protruded small, half meter long, delicate forearms ending in large hands comprised of three finely-articulated fingers and a long, sharply-curved and opposable thumb. The creature looked Max in the eye with a steady, penetrating gaze.
The eyes doing the gazing struck Max as being strange, yet perfectly suited to their owner. The “whites” were light green while its pupils, shaped like those of a cat but with the long axis running horizontally rather than vertically, were an amalgam of brown, tan, and green flecks. After about ten seconds of this regard, the alien wiggled its ears--which looked rather like those on a small dog--in what appeared to Max to be a calculated gesture of some kind.
Max shook his head. “Who the hell are you, anyway? Are you male or female? How are we able to talk to each other when I know I’ve never heard anything even remotely resembling your speech before in my life? Where am I? Why am I not covered in bandages and in extreme physical pain from my injuries? Where are the scars and bruises? For that matter why am I not dead? Are you my doctor? How does an alien from thousands of light years away from Earth know how to work on a human?” Max ran out of steam at that point and, out of pure exhaustion if nothing else, lay down on his bed and turned his face toward the alien.
The meerkat-like creature wiggled its ears once more, grabbed an exam stool from one of the several desks that lined the room, wheeled it across the room to Max’s bedside, and plopped his green, furry rump down on it. Despite his dire situation, Max couldn’t help but smile: the round, adjustable-height, three-wheeled stool used almost universally by human physicians on hundreds of worlds appeared to have been invented independently by a culture thousands of light years away.
The alien took a deep breath, sounding much like a sigh, and started talking. “First, I will tell you that I am your physician. I treated your injuries, which were quite severe and from which you would have likely died had you been in the care of your own medical personnel. I am responsible for your further medical care and certain aspects of your evaluation during your training on this world. I will also provide most or all of that care personally, although you may come in brief contact with one or more of my assistants. They are trained to provide treatment to you but are not trained in how to interact with members of your species, so you will be dealing primarily with me as long as you are in this facility. I am of the Bwhoid race. You do not possess the vocal apparatus necessary to speak my name; accordingly you may address me as ‘doctor.’ As I am the only physician of any description in this entire star system, it would truly be an astonishingly improbable set of circumstances that would make calling me ‘doctor’ ambiguous or confusing in any way so, although that title has a rather broad application in general, it is quite specific when applied in this particular star system.”
“Excuse me,” Max interjected. He clearly wasn’t g
oing to be heard otherwise.
“Yes.”
“Sorry to interrupt you, Doctor, but before you went any further I wanted to thank you for taking care of me and for saving my life. I am truly grateful.”
The alien seemed taken aback for a moment and did not speak for several seconds. “You are most entirely welcome, Lieutenant Robichaux. Doing so was my duty, but it was also my very great pleasure. Few patients express gratitude to me in this manner.
“Now, let us resume discussion of the specific information which you need or want to know. Since your species seems to attribute great significance to matters of gender, I am informing you that I am a female. Males of my race are somewhat taller, more powerfully built, have larger eyes, longer ears and shorter tails, and are far, far more talkative than we females. Yes, while I am somewhat more talkative than the average Bwhoid female, I am not nearly as talkative as any but the most taciturn male.
“Next, I wish to assure you most sincerely that you are quite safe here. We are all ceaselessly guarded by a squad of Vaaach elite ground troops with orders to keep you safe from any outside threat. They will lay down their lives for you.”
The doctor paused and tilted her head, as if to consider what she had just said. “Of course, the Vaaach dying for your protection is highly unlikely. You see, my feisty little banana eater, the Vaaach have a saying: ‘Dying for your clan brings honor. But, making your foes die for their clan brings victory.’”
I’ve heard something similar before. Maybe General Patton was part Vaaach. Or, who knows, maybe the Vaaach studied General Patton.
“And,” the Bhwoid continued, “as you are likely aware, the mighty Vaaach are quite outstandingly capable—quite outstandingly capable, indeed--in the art and science of causing their enemies to die more rapidly and in greater numbers than your frivolity-prone primate brain can ever imagine. Oh, yes. In space and on the ground, they are warriors without equal, and any attacker here would most likely be captured, tortured for information, disemboweled, and his remains mounted on a pike near the boundary of this facility as a warning to others of its kind, all in the time it would take the warriors of most species to pick up their weapons and get into firing position.
“And, as you are my patient, I am bound by the sacred honor of my calling to do no harm to you and to see that you come to no harm while under my care. No needles in your eye. And, most certainly, no anal probes.” She paused, again tilting her head in the manner that Max was already associating with the doctor thinking about what she had just said.
“Although, I must admit my puzzlement on this point. Why, pray tell, have you and so many other humans been so pathologically fixated over the centuries over this matter of anal probes. I am hoping that you can enlighten me on this subject during our time together, because I am concerned for the psychosexual well-being of both you and your entire race. There is some pervasive psychopathology here that shows human mental health to be greatly in need of substantial adjustment.
“Irrespective of your profound sexual paranoia, you are far safer here than you would be back with your task force. The Vaaach and I will make sure of it.”
She paused for a moment, as though considering which of the several pending subjects to address next. It occurred to Max that the alien was trying very hard to answer first the questions that were most urgent to him rather than the topics she preferred to discuss for her own purposes.
“Regarding our ability to understand each other’s speech, the translator module implanted in my cerebral cortex will translate what you say into neuro-linguistic equivalents in my own language sent directly to the language centers of my brain. The one that I implanted in yours will do the same for what I say. So, by simply talking in our own languages, we may communicate the most complex and abstract ideas with little more difficulty than we would experience conversing about them with members of our own species. Marvelous devices, these implants. Without them, communication between races would be so difficult.”
An idea occurred to her, causing her to look at her feet with apparent sheepishness. “I am almost embarrassed, though, to have told you that you could communicate with me by ‘simply talking.’ To say that either of us will be ‘simply talking,’ is absurd, is it not? After all, there are few things more complex in this plane of existence than communication, don’t you agree? Of course, you agree. I see in your eyes acquiescence to this inarguable proposition, for the brain activity that shows in your scans and the problem-solving ability you just demonstrated show you to be a reasonably intelligent being and this assertion is one with which no reasonably intelligent being would ever disagree, I think. Indeed, certainly, this is something about which I’m quite certain you and I are both quite certain, I’m quite certain.”
During the foregoing, the doctor’s tail was in constant, sinuous motion: curling and uncurling, whipping back and forth, and even curving into various corkscrew-like shapes. That motion, combined with the tail’s markings, looked to Max as though it might serve to confuse predators pursuing through tall grass or brush. Max also wondered whether the tail was useful as some sort of whip-like weapon. Max’s musings on this subject, however, did nothing to slow the torrent of words flowing from the alien physician.
“But, to matters that, even if they have less significance in the greater scheme of things, are of more significance to you and me in the here and now. Yes, yes, yes, it is easy to lose sight of these things in light of the extreme degree, the very great and extreme degree indeed, that I am pleased that we are having this conversation together, you and I. I get so very, very anxious when the Vaaach explain to me the conditions under which beings such as yourself are challenged and tested. Those surrounding your landing caused me particular distress. It seemed to be far too stern a test of your abilities and fortitude and I was only too grateful, too grateful indeed, to be proven wrong—notwithstanding that I generally do not take being proven wrong with the degree of grace to which I aspire. Not in the least. I strive, but fail, to be more gracious and accepting when I am in error. It is a fault that I fear I will not soon remedy.
“And, there I go again, interrupting myself. It is a good thing that I am so quick to forgive myself for my appalling manners.
“Where was I? Oh, yes. Your test conditions. It is a fine line, is it not, between presenting a bright young being with a challenge that, at least to some degree, places him in existential peril without that peril causing the termination of that existence? I was impressed by the outstanding piloting you exhibited, although I am not really much of a judge of such things.
“But, now, I need for you to talk to me in detail so that I can evaluate your brain function and check you for various neurological and physiological symptomologies, deficiencies, and deficits. Say something, if you would.”
Not since Max was six years old and had heard a couchon (pig) being auctioned at the Tchefuncte Parish Fair had Max heard anyone speak so quickly.
“Uh,” Max said. “Like what?”
“It appears your eloquence has fled. I know not where. Only a few moments ago, you asked me a series of questions—quite relevant ones at that—that showed mastery of both thought and language. I urge you to resume speaking for the sake of your further treatment. Accordingly, in order to encourage you to speak at greater length, I’m going to stop talking to give you an opportunity to offer more than a few words in sequence. Now.” Very short pause. “I’m stopping now.” Slightly longer pause. “You can speak at any time.” Another pause, this one stretching out for a nearly interminable half a second or so. “I meant now.” This pause dragged on for at least two thirds of a second and may have even dragged on for nearly three quarters of a second. “Now, as in ‘immediately and without delay.’”
“Why aren’t I covered in casts and bandages?” Max managed to blurt into the Bwhoid’s verbal traffic. “I thought I was severely injured in the crash.”
“Outstanding! Outstanding, indeed! Not only several words in sequence but well-cho
sen words, at that. A most pertinent question, to be sure. Hmmm. Yes, indeed. Most, most pertinent, most relevant, most outstanding. This inquiry is indicative of the complete restoration of the logical faculties necessary to discern relevant from irrelevant facts and, indeed, to parse the relevant issues and find among them the most significant. I am very pleased. Very pleased, indeed. Quite outstanding.” The doctor’s speech trailed off as he touched a recessed area at the foot of Max’s bed, calling up a holographic image of a human brain, presumably the one residing in Max’s skull, about a meter and a half wide, slowly rotating, parts of which were flickering in various colors, probably to indicate various kinds and degrees of activity. By pressing and stroking that same spot, the doctor viewed the virtual brain from several angles, then zoomed in on several areas while scrolling forward and back in time while whistling and hooting softly to himself and paying no attention to Max, this virtual brain floating in the air apparently being far more interesting than the living, breathing patient on the bed.
“Doctor, if my question is so pertinent, wouldn’t it be fair to give me an equally pertinent answer? Or is observation of my response to being ignored by my doctor one of the things you use to evaluate my brain function?”
The Hunters of Vermin Page 8
