by Mike Resnick
“On Deluros VIII, as on most of the worlds in the galaxy peopled by Man and non-Man alike, our penal codes allow for degrees of leniency based on degrees of guilt. If your honor could bring himself to delay passing sentence until such time as you can look through our codes—and I will be happy to supply numerous experts, at my own expense, to discuss them with you—I feel that both my client and the cause of Atrian justice will be better served.
“I thank you for your patience and tolerance, and hope that in your wisdom you can come to a decision that will be fair both to my client and to the memory of those deceased Atrians, who, though victimized, were no more innocent than was Heinrich Krantz."
Khalinov sat down, sweating profusely. He wished he could see an expression on the Atrian’s face, wished he could get an inkling of what the delicate, blue-white, crystalline being was thinking, but there was no way to tell. He’d just have to sit and wait.
The Atrian judge remained motionless and silent for the better part of an hour. Then, at last, he looked up, and a hush fell over the court as both human and nonhuman waited to hear his verdict.
“Man Khalinov,” said the Atrian, “you have caused me to think deeply and seriously over all you have said. It is my regretful conclusion that Man Krantz must be found guilty. He is hereby sentenced to die by heat tomorrow."
“But your honor!” cried Khalinov, leaping to his feet again.
“Allow me to continue,” said the judge. “The court appreciates your arguments, and will go so far as to admit to their validity in certain cases, including the case of Man Krantz."
“Then why not give him a lesser sentence?"
“Man Krantz’s life span is, in your terms, between ninety and one hundred and ten years. Is that not correct?"
“Yes."
“The expected life span of an Atrian is approximately thirty-four hundred years. While I will admit that a sentence of perhaps fifty years, or possibly even less, would be appropriate from the point of view of the defendant, you must consider that this would be a worse insult to the families of the deceased and the general populace of Atria XVI, than would be a verdict of innocent. You are fond of hypotheses, so allow me to pose one of my own: What would your reaction be if an entity convicted of slaying fifty-seven Men on the planet Deluros VIII were to be given a prison sentence of two months?"
Khalinov closed his eyes. There was no argument to be made. “Thank you, your honor,” he said, and turned to leave.
“Man Khalinov,” said the judge. The barrister stopped. “This does not mean that your logic and efforts have been for naught. If you have time prior to your return flight to Deluros VIII, please accept my invitation to join me in my chambers, and bring along some of your legal books. I would very much like to exchange ideas with you."
“I’d consider it a rare privilege, your honor,” said Khalinov, wondering if he had won or lost. “Is there any particular subject you’d like to cover?"
“I think we shall begin,” said the Atrian, “with involuntary manslaughter."
And then he knew: Krantz had lost.
But Man, just possibly, had won.
9. THE MEDICS
. . . So while it took Man countless eons to develop his medical science to the point where almost all human diseases could be diagnosed and treated with some degree of certainty that a cure would be effected, he was forced to cover the same ground a thousand times over in an infinitesimal portion of the time when contact with other races was made.
And, as if this weren’t enough of a problem for those medics who boldly strode toward these new and incredibly varied horizons, there was always in the background Man’s precarious position in the political schemata of the galaxy . . .
—Man: Twelve Millennia of Achievement
(No mention of the Medics can be found in Origin and History of the Sentient Races.)
“What’s wrong with it?” snapped a haggard Darlinski. “Hell, I don’t even know what keeps the damned thing alive!"
“I’m not paying you enough for you to turn prima donna on me," said Hammett harshly. “Keep making tests until you find out what’s affecting him."
“First,” said Darlinski, “you’ve got to prove to me that it’s a him. Second, you’re not paying me enough to do very damned much of anything. And third—"
“Cure him and you’ve got a raise,” said Hammett quickly, with more than a touch of irritation.
“I don’t want a goddamned bloody raise!” yelled Darlinski. “I want a healthy specimen of whatever this is so I can see what the hell the difference is!"
“He’s all we’ve got."
“Didn’t it have any friends or subordinates?” demanded Darlinski.
“For the twelfth time, no,” said Hammett.
“Then, for the thirteenth time, what in blue blazes is a planetary ambassador doing without even a single subordinate around?"
“I keep telling you, I don’t know. All I know is he screamed once, collapsed, and couldn’t be immediately revived, so they brought him here."
“Of course they couldn’t revive it. Hell, if they slapped its face they might have broken every bone in what seems to pass for its head. And for all I know, it’d melt if anyone threw cold water on it."
A light on an intercom unit flashed, and Darlinski pressed a button.
“Pathology here, boss,” said a laconic voice. “Got anything for us to work on yet?"
Darlinski uttered a few choice but unprintable words into the speaker.
“Don’t get sore, boss. All you got to do is figure out what makes it tick."
“I know,” snarled Darlinski. “The fat bastard that runs this shop just promised me a raise if I get it right."
“Boy, am I impressed,” said the voice. “The fat bastard that runs the planet just promised us a war if you get it wrong. Have fun."
“What are you talking about?” demanded Hammett, walking over to the intercom.
“Haven’t you seen a newstape?” said the voice from Pathology. “Hell, you’ve had the damned thing up there for six hours."
“Just tell me what’s going on,” said Hammett.
“Seems this joker’s buddies back on Pnath are claiming we’ve either kidnapped or killed it. I gather it was here on a peacemaking mission—a very private little war the powers-that-be didn’t see fit to tell us about—and evidently they think we’re doing them dirt. According to the media, a tiny skirmish is about to become a full-fledged war unless we can convince the Pnathians, or Pnaths, or whatever they call themselves, that we’re acting in good faith."
“Have any of those geniuses down at Central thought to ask for a Pnathian medic?” asked Darlinski.
“Yep. But the Pnathians think we’ve killed or brainwashed this one and they won’t send any others until it’s returned whole and healthy."
“Beautiful,” said Darlinski. “What if the damned thing dies on me?"
“Well,” chuckled the pathologist, “I guess the Navy can always use another bedpan scrubber. Ta-ta."
The intercom switched off.
Hammett waited until Darlinski’s stream of curses had left him momentarily breathless, then walked over to the Pnathian ambassador.
“I didn’t realize it was going to turn into this kind of incident," he said. “Let’s get back to work."
“What do you mean, ‘Let’s?’” snapped Darlinski. “You wouldn’t know a tumor from a wart. Go on back to your goddamned office and worry about how to pay for next week’s heating bill."
He turned back to the patient, and Hammett, shrugging, left and closed the door very carefully behind him.
Darlinski took a deep breath, sighed, and looked at the notes he had scribbled down during the past few hours. They weren’t much.
The Pnathian breathed an oxygen-nitrogen compound, but there was no way of telling whether a dose of forty percent oxygen would revive it or kill it; ditto for a ninety percent nitrogen dose. Its skin was extremely fine-textured, but he didn’t dare take a sample,
or even a scraping; for all he knew, the Pnathians, or at least this particular one, were chronic hemophiliacs. And for that reason he couldn’t take a sample of the being’s blood, either.
Nor could he even make a guess about the gravity of the Pnathian’s home world. It had three legs, allowing it a tripodal stance, which implied a heavier gravity; but the structure seemed much more fragile than a heavier gravity would allow. And, of course, he didn’t dare X-ray it for fear of a fatal, or at least terribly adverse, reaction.
There were no hands or arms as such, but instead a trio of tubular appendages, all extremely flexible, not quite tentacles but far from hands. He tried to figure out what function they served, but couldn’t.
Obviously, the race was intelligent, and had developed the machinery of space travel and war, but when he tried to imagine the control panel of one of their ships, his mind came up blank.
As for the head, it extended on a long thin stalk of a neck and contained not one but four orifices that might or might not have been mouths. They were arranged perpendicular to the ground, and the third orifice was the only one that fogged the crystal of his watch.
However, he had never come across any being that required four mouths, nor did it seem likely that the remaining orifices could all be breathing apparatus, unless the being had the equivalent of three stuffed noses. They could be ears, but it seemed unlikely; in every species he had ever examined, human and nonhuman, sapient and nonsapient, the ears were set much farther apart for greater efficiency. Urethra and anus? Possibly; but, if so, which was which, and how could he differentiate them from the mouth? He grinned at the thought of some alien physician pouring the equivalent of hot chicken broth into his rectum, then frowned as he realized that it would only be funny after he cured the patient.
Or, he admitted honestly to himself, if he cured it.
The Pnathian had two eyes. The lids were over them, but he had lifted them and seen that they were quite dull, with the pupils reacting only very slightly to light stimuli. Just above the eyes was the cranium, an oblong structure stuck atop the rest of the face at a 45-degree angle, almost like a baby whose head was terribly misshapen due to a difficult birth.
Its pulse was almost twice that of his own, but that could simply be because of the gravitational difference. Or it could be a sign of impending death. Or. . .
Darlinski cursed once again, stepped back, and stared at the Pnathian. He felt terribly oppressed. Hell, oxygen-breathers weren’t even his specialty. But Jacobson was on vacation somewhere on Deluros VIII, so they’d pulled the boy genius out of the chlorine ward, pointed him in the direction of the Pnathian, patted him on the head, and said Go.
The question, of course, was: Go where? Hammett broke his concentration, such as it was, by calling on the intercom.
“Any ideas yet?"
“All of ’em pertain to what I’m going to do to you once I get this patient out of my hair,” said Darlinski disgustedly.
“I hope we’re both still here long enough for you to have a chance,” said Hammett. “I’ve been checking up on the story, and it’s true. The government’s bought us a little more time, but if we haven’t got our ambassador on its feet and ready to exonerate us in a few days, that’s it."
“I don’t suppose anyone has yet thought to get me any useful information from a Pnathian medic?” said Darlinski.
“Yes and no,” said Hammett.
“And just what in blazes is that supposed to mean?"
“Yes, they thought to ask, and no, nobody got you anything. You don’t understand the political situation. I can hardly believe it myself. I don’t know if this race is composed of nothing but paranoids or what, but they won’t send anyone here or even feed us any information about their physiology until they know their ambassador is all right."
“Thereby making sure that it’s never going to be all right,” said Darlinski grimly.
“I did learn that it’s a female, and her name is . . . well, it’s not really pronounceable, but the closest human analog is Leonora. And no, she’s not pregnant."
“They told you that?"
“Not in so many words, but I gather that she’s only recently reached childbearing age."
“Then why in the name of pluperfect hell is she their sole ambassador to a race they’re at war with?” demanded Darlinski.
“How should I know?” said Hammett. “We’ve got Psychology working on it, but they’ve got even less to go on than you do."
“I hope you don’t expect me to feel sorry for Psychology."
“Nope. Muff this one and you can spend the rest of your life feeling sorry for you and me."
“Very funny,” growled Darlinski.
“No,” corrected Hammett. “Very serious. I’d rather have you kill her by accident than have her just lie there and die for lack of treatment. I don’t care if you begin by ripping her heart out with your bare hands, but you’ve got to do something. Is there anybody I can send to assist you?"
Darlinski roared a negative and cut the intercom off. Then he walked back to the Pnathian and examined her again, armed with the knowledge that she was a female. This implied some bodily cavity that would be absent in a male, but as he went over her, inch by inch, he concluded that the only orifices on her entire body were the four pseudo-mouths on her head. One was obviously for breathing, which meant that of the remaining trio, one was for ingestion, one for sexual congress, and one was of undertermined properties. And, for the life of him, he still couldn’t figure out which was which.
He glanced at a clock, and realized that he’d been on his feet for more than twenty hours and would shortly be in a state of near-collapse.
That meant he had to get something down to Pathology that they could analyze while he slept. He ordered a pair of nurses into the room and prepared to take small skin scrapings from each of the patient’s tentacular appendages, another scraping from the trunk of the body, and smears from each of the three nonbreathing orifices.
Careful as he was, he noticed that on the last scraping, a small amount of pinkish fluid began oozing out. It had to be blood, and he immediately placed it on a slide and sat back to see whether or not the bleeding would stop by itself. It did, almost immediately, and he instructed one of the nurses to take everything down to the Path lab.
“Get me a report within six hours, hunt me up a room, see that it has a hot shower, and have someone bring me some breakfast and a stimulant in five hours."
So stating, he waited until he’d been assigned some nearby sleeping quarters, and, with a sigh, put them to good if brief use.
He awoke feeling no better rested, and within a matter of minutes was standing next to Jennings of Pathology as they took turns viewing slides in the latter’s lab.
“Not that having very few red corpuscles proves a damned thing,” Jennings was saying. “It could, of course, indicate a serious blood deficiency. On the other hand, maybe the damned beast doesn’t need red corpuscles. I think, though, that we’d better go under the assumption that this blood count is pretty near normal."
“Any reason why?” asked Darlinski.
“The best,” Jennings grinned. “If it’s not normal, we’re out of luck. I’ve broken down the blood structure, and there’s no way we could synthesize red corpuscles of a type this thing wouldn’t reject before it died for lack of them. So, pragmatism being what it is, we’ll pretend that whatever else is wrong, the blood count’s normal."
Darlinski nodded his head and grunted his assent. “How about the tissues?"
“You mean the scrapings?” asked Jennings. “Well, we might be running into a little more luck there . . . or worse luck, depending on your point of view."
“Suppose you tell me what my point of view is,” said Darlinski warily.
“If your point of view is that of a doctor looking for something to cure, we might have something for you. Here, take a look."
Darlinski bent low over the powerful microscope and peered through it. A tiny s
kin sampling was on the slide, and even without resorting to the highest magnification Darlinski was aware of an enormous amount of cellular activity.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“Can’t say for sure,” said Jennings. “But by all rights, that ought to be a very dead piece of skin, and it just as obviously is not. For the life of me I can’t figure out what’s feeding it or supplying it with whatever it needs in the way of blood and oxygen."
“Speaking of oxygen,” said Darlinski, “what kind of dose can I give her?"
“Based on the blood structure, I’d say she’s living in her equivalent of an oxygen tent right now. I wouldn’t want to be the guy responsible for giving her a higher dose. It just might burn her lungs out."
“How about the smears?"
“Now, that’s something really interesting,” said Jennings.
“You found something?"
“Nope. I found absolutely nothing."
“You’re an easy guy to interest,” said Darlinski.
“Hold on a second, boss,” said Jennings. “Let me ask you a question first: Who the hell told you that this was a female?"
“Hammett."
“And who told him?"
“The Pnathians."
“Yeah? Well, you can’t prove it by me."
“What did the smears show?” asked Darlinski, scratching his head.
“Nothing. Or, rather, nothing even remotely sexual. I’ve labeled the three smears One through Three. Now, Smear One, taken from the bottommost orifice, showed traces of water, a couple of enzymes, and the residue of two or three other organic liquids. From this, and the fact that they’re not broken down, we’ve got to figure that its sole purpose is the ingestion of liquid nourishment. Smear Two has numerous traces of solids, plus a few decay germs and something which seems to act as a mild preliminary stomach acid. Ergo, that’s where the solid nourishment goes. Smear Three is a problem, but I’d be willing to wager that its function is strictly vocal."
