Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations

by James White

  The shortage of nursing staff of all species was chronic. With regard to doctors the position was desperate. He called O’Mara.

  “We haven’t enough doctors,” he said. “I think nurses should be given more discretion in the diagnosis and treatment of casualties. They should do as they think best without waiting for authority from a doctor who is too busy to supervise anyway. The casualties are still coming in and I can’t see any other way of—”

  “Do it, you’re the boss,” O’Mara broke in harshly.

  “Right,” said Conway, nettled. “Another thing. I’ve had offers by a lot of the doctors to take two or three tapes for translation purposes in addition to the tape they draw for current ops. And some of the girls have volunteered to do the same—”

  “No!” said O’Mara. “I’ve had some of your volunteers up here and they aren’t suitable. The doctors left to us are either very junior interns or Corps medical officers and e-ts who came with the volunteer forces. None of them have experience with multiple physiology tapes. It would render them permanently insane within the first hour.

  “As for the girls,” he went on, a sardonic edge in his voice, “you have noticed by this time that the female Earth-human DBDG has a rather peculiar mind. One of its peculiarities is a deep, sex-based mental fastidiousness. No matter what they say they will not, repeat not, allow alien beings to apparently take over their pretty little brains. If such should happen, severe mental damage would result. No again. Off.”

  Conway resumed his tour. It was beginning to get him down now. Even though his technique was improving the process of Translation was an increasing strain. And in the relatively easy periods between translations he felt as if there were seven different people all arguing and shouting inside his brain, and his own was very rarely the loudest voice. His throat was raw from making noises that it had never been designed for, and he was hungry.

  All seven of him had different ideas for assuaging that hunger, revoltingly different ideas. Since the hospital’s catering arrangement had suffered as badly as everything else there was no wide selection from which he could have picked neutral items that would not have offended, or at least not completely nauseated, his alter egos. He was reduced to eating sandwiches with his eyes shut, in case he would find out what was in them, and drinking water and glucose. None of him objected to water.

  Eventually an organization for the reception and treatment of casualties was operating again in all the habitable levels—it was slow, but it was operating. And now that there were facilities for treating them Conway’s next job was to move the patients who were currently jamming the approaches to the airlocks. There were actually pressure-litters anchored to the outer hull, he had been told.

  Prilicla objected.

  For a few minutes he tried to find out why. One of Prilicla’s objections was that Conway was tired, which he countered by telling it that everybody in the hospital, including Prilicla itself, was tired. The other objections were either too weak or too subtle for the limited communications available. Conway ignored them and headed for the nearest lock.

  The problems here were very similar to those inside the hospital—the major disadvantage being his spacesuit radio which hampered translation considerably. But to offset this he could get around much more quickly. The tractor beam men who handled the wrecks and wreckage around the hospital could whisk his whole party from point to point within seconds.

  But he discovered that the Melfan segment of his mind, which had been seriously troubled by the weightless conditions inside the hospital, was utterly terrified outside it. The Melfan ELNT who had produced the tape had been an amphibious, crab-like being who lived mainly under water and had had no experience whatever of space. Conway had to fight down the panic which threatened his whole, multi-tenanted mind as well as the fear which all of him felt at the battle going on above his head.

  O’Mara had told him that the attack was easing off, but Conway could not imagine anything more savage than what he was seeing.

  Between the warring ships no missiles were being used—the attackers and defenders were too condensed, too inextricably tangled up. Like tiny, fast-moving models, so sharply defined that he felt he could reach up and grab one, the ships wheeled through their wild, chaotic dance. Singly and in groups they lunged, whirled, took frantic evasive action, broke formation or had their formations broken, reformed and attacked again. It was endless, implacable and almost hypnotic. There was, of course, no noise. What missiles were launched were directed at the hospital, a target too big to miss, and they were felt rather than heard.

  Between the ships, tractor and pressor beams jabbed out like solid, invisible fingers, slowing or deflecting the target ship so that a rattler could be focused. Sometimes three or more vessels would converge on a single target and tear it apart within seconds. Sometimes a well-directed rattler would rip apart the artificial gravity system an instant before it disrupted the drive. With the crew hammered flat by high acceleration the ship would go tumbling out of the fight, unless someone put another rattler on it or a tractor man on Sector General’s hull pulled it down to look for survivors.

  Whether or not there were any survivors the wreck could be used …

  The once smooth and shining hull was a mass of deep, jagged-edged craters and buckled plating. And because the missile lighting did strike twice, or even three times, in the same place—that was how the Translator computer had been destroyed—the craters were being plugged with wreckage in an effort to keep the missiles from exploding deeper inside the hospital. Any type of wreckage served, the tractor men weren’t choosy.

  Conway was on a tractor-beam mount when one of the wrecks was pulled in. He saw the rescue team shooting from the shelter of the airlock, circle the hulk carefully, then enter. About ten minutes later they came out towing … something.

  “Doctor,” said the NCO in charge of the installation, “I think I goofed. My men say the beastie they’ve pulled out of that wreck is new to them and want you to have a look. I’m sorry, but one wreck is like any other wreck. I don’t think it is one of ours …”

  Six parts of Conway’s mind contained personalities whose memories did not contain data on the war and they did not think it mattered. As the minority opinion Conway didn’t think it mattered either, but he knew that neither the sergeant nor himself had time to start an ethical debate on it. He had a quick look, then said, “Take it inside. Level Two-forty, Ward Seven.”

  Since being given the tapes Conway had been forced to watch helplessly while patients—casualties whose condition was such that they merited a fully qualified Senior Physician at least to perform the surgery—were operated on by tired, harassed, but well-intentioned beings who just did not have the required skill. They had done the job as best they could because there was nobody else to do it. Conway had wanted to step in many times, but had reminded himself and been reminded by Prilicla and the rest of his entourage, that he had to consider the Big Picture. Reorganizing the hospital then had been more important than any one patient. But now he felt that he could stop being an organizer and go back to being a doctor.

  This was a new species to the hospital. O’Mara would not have a tape on its physiology, and even if the patient recovered consciousness it would not be able to cooperate because the Translators were dead. Conway had got to take this one and nobody was going to talk him out of it.

  Ward Seven was adjacent to the section where a Kelgian military doctor and Murchison had been working wonders with a mixed bag of FGLI, QCQL and Earth-human patients, so he asked them both to assist. Conway put the new arrival’s classification as TRLH, being aided in this by the fact that the patient’s spacesuit was transparent as well as flexible. Had the suit been less flexible the being’s injuries would have been less severe, but then the suit would have cracked instead of bending with the force which had smashed against it.

  Conway bored a tiny hole in the suit, drew off a sample of the internal atmosphere and resealed it. He put
the sample in the analyzer.

  “And I thought the QCQLs were bad,” said Murchison when he showed her the result. “But we can reproduce it. You will need to replace the air here, I expect?”

  Conway said, “Yes, please.”

  They climbed into their operating suits—regulation light-weight pattern except that the arms and hands sections ended in a fine, tight-fitting sheath that was like a second skin. The air was replaced by the patient’s atmosphere and they began cutting it out of its suit.

  The TRLH had a thin carapace which covered its back and curved down and inward to protect the central area of its underside. Four thick, single-jointed legs projected from the uncovered sections and a large, but again lightly boned head contained four manipulatory appendages, two recessed but extensible eyes and two months, one of which had blood coming from it. The being must have been hurled against several metal projections. Its shell was fractured in six places and in one area it had been almost shattered, the pieces being severely depressed. In this area it was losing blood rapidly. Conway began charting the internal damage with the X-ray scanner, then a few minutes later he signaled that he was ready to start.

  He wasn’t ready, but the patient was bleeding to death.

  The internal arrangement of organs was different from anything he had previously encountered, and different from anything in the experience of the six personalities sharing his mind. But from the QCQL he received pointers on the probable metabolism of beings who breathed such highly corrosive air, from the Melfan data on the possible methods of exploring the damaged carapace, and the FGLI, DBLF, GLNO and AACP contributed their experience. But it was not always helpful—at every stage they literally shrieked warnings to be careful, so much so that for seconds at a time Conway stood with his hands shaking, unable to go on. He was probing the recorded memories deeply now, hitherto it had only been for data on language, and everything was coming up.

  The private nightmares and neuroses of the individuals, triggered off by being so inextricably mixed with the similar alien nightmares around them, and all mounting, growing worse by the minutes. The beings who had produced the tapes did not all have e-t hospital experience, they were not accustomed to alien points of view. The proper thing was to keep reminding himself that they were not separate personalities, Conway told himself, but merely a mass of alien data of different types. But he was horribly, stupidly tired and he was beginning to lose control of what was going on in his mind. And still the memories welled up in a dark, turgid flood. Petty, shameful, secret memories mostly concerned with sex—and that, in e-ts, was alien, so alien that he wanted to scream. He found suddenly that he was bent over, sweating, as if there was a heavy weight on his back.

  He felt Murchison gripping his arm. “What’s wrong, Doctor?” she said urgently. “Can I help?”

  He shook his head, because for a second he didn’t know how to form words in his own language, but he kept looking at her for all of ten seconds. When he turned back he had a picture of her in his mind as she was to him, not as a Tralthan or a Melfan or a Kelgian saw her. The concern in her eyes had been for him alone. At times Conway had had secret thoughts of his own about Murchison, but they were normal, human thoughts. He hugged them to him tightly and for a time he was in control again. Long enough to finish with the patient.

  Then suddenly his mind was tearing itself apart into seven pieces and he was falling into the deepest, darkest pits of even different Hells. He did not know that his limbs stiffened or bent or twisted as if something alien had separate possession of each one. Or that Murchison dragged him out and held him while Prilicla, at great danger to life and its fragile, spidery limbs, gave him the shot which knocked him out.

  CHAPTER 22

  The intercom buzzer awakened Conway, instantly but without confusion in the pleasant, familiar, cramped surroundings of his own room. He felt rested and alert and ready for breakfast, and the hand he used to push back the sheets had five pink fingers on it and felt just right that way. But then he became aware of a certain strangeness which made him hesitate for a moment. The place was quiet … !

  “To save you the where-am-I-what-time-is-it? routine,” O’Mara’s voice came wearily, “you have not been consciously with us for two days. During that time, early yesterday, to be exact, the attack ceased and has not yet been resumed and I did a lot of work on you. For your own good you were given a hypno treatment to forget everything, so you will not be eternally grateful for what I’ve done for you. How do you feel now?”

  “Fine,” said Conway enthusiastically. “I can’t feel any … I mean, there seems to be plenty of room in my head …”

  O’Mara grunted. “The obvious retort is that your head is empty, but I won’t make it.”

  The Chief Psychologist, despite his attempt to maintain his usual dry, sardonic manner, sounded desperately tired—his words were actually slurred with weariness. But O’Mara, Conway knew, was not the type who became tired—he might, if driven long and hard enough, succumb to mental fatigue …

  “The fleet commander wants a meeting with us in four hours time,” O’Mara went one, “so don’t get involved with any cases between now and then. Things are running fairly smoothly now, anyway, so you can afford to play hooky for a while. I’m going to sleep. Off.”

  But it was very difficult to spend four hours doing nothing, Conway found. The main dining hall was jammed with Corpsmen—projector crews engaged on hull defense, replacements for the defending ships, maintenancemen and Medical Division personnel who were supplementing the civilian medical staff. Conversation was loud and nervous and too cheerful, and revolved around the past and possible future aspects of the attack.

  Apparently the Monitor force had practically been pushed down onto the outer hull when an e-t force of volunteer Illensans had emerged from hyperspace just outside the enemy globe. Illensan ships were big and badly designed and looked like capital ships even though they only had the armament of a light cruiser, and the sight of ten of them popping out of nowhere had put the enemy off his stride. The attacking force had pulled back temporarily to regroup and the Monitors, with nothing to regroup with, were concentrating on increasing the armament of their last line of defense, the hospital itself. But even though it concerned him as closely as anyone else in the room, Conway felt averse to joining in the cheerfully morbid conversations.

  Since O’Mara had erased all the physiology tapes and indulged in some curative tinkering with his mind, the nightmare of two days ago and the e-t language data he had gained had faded, so he could not indulge in polite conversation with the e-ts scattered about the hall. And the Earth-human nurses were being monopolized by Corpsmen, usually at the rate of ten or twelve to one, with an obvious improvement in morale in both directions. Conway ate quickly and left, feeling that his own morale was in need of improvement, too.

  Which made him wonder suddenly if Murchison was on duty, off duty or asleep. If she was asleep there was nothing he could do, but if she was on duty he could very soon take her off it, and when she was off …

  Strangely he felt only the slightest pricklings of conscience over this shameless abuse of his authority for his own selfish ends. In time of war, he thought, people became less bound by their professional and moral codes. Ethically he was going to the dogs.

  But Murchison was just going off duty when he arrived in her ward, so he did not have to openly commit the crime he had been intent on committing. In the same loud, too-cheerful tone that he had considered so artificial when he had heard it in the dining hall he asked if she had any previous engagement, suggested a date, and muttered something horribly banal about all work and no play …

  “Previous engage … play … ! But I want to sleep!” she protested; then in more reasonable tones, “You can’t … I mean, where would we go, what would we do? The place is a wreck. Would I have to change?”

  “The recreation level is still there,” Conway said, “and you look fine.”

  The regulation nurses
uniform of blue, tight-fitting tunic and slacks—very tight-fitting so as to ease the problem of climbing in and out of protective suits—flattered Murchison, but she looked worn out. As she unhooked the broad white belt and instrument pouches and removed her cap and hairnet Conway growled deep in his throat, and immediately burst into a fit of coughing because it was still tender from making e-t noises.

  Murchison laughed, shaking out her hair and rubbing her cheeks to put some color into them. She said brightly,· “Promise you won’t keep me out too late … ?”

  On the way to the recreation level it was difficult not to talk shop. Many sections of the hospital had lost pressure so that in the habitable levels overcrowding was severe—there was scarcely an air-filled corridor which was not also filled with casualties. And this was a situation which none of them had foreseen. They had not expected the enemy to use limited warfare on them. Had atomic weapons been used there would not have been any overcrowding, or, possibly, any hospital. Most of the time Conway was not listening to Murchison, but she didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps because she wasn’t listening to him.

  The recreation level was the same in detail as they remembered it, but the details had been dramatically changed around. With the hospital’s center of gravity being above the recreation level what little attraction there was was upward, and all the loose material normally on the ground or in the bay had collected against the roof, where it made a translucent chaos of sand-veined water, air-pockets and trailing watery globes through which the submerged sun shone a deep, rich purple.

  “Oh, this is nice!” said Murchison. “And restful, sort of.”

  The lighting gave her skin a warm, dusky coloration that was wholly indescribable, Conway thought, but nice. Her lips—soft purple, verging on black—were parted slightly to reveal teeth which seemed almost iridescent, and her eyes were large and mysterious and glowing.