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Authors: James White

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B
y a stroke of luck he saw Dr. Mannon at an otherwise empty table in the Senior’s enclosure. Mannon was an Earth-human who had once been Conway’s superior and was now a Senior Physician well on the way to achieving Diagnostician status. Currently he was allowed to retain three physiology tapes—those of a Tralthan specialist in micro-surgery and two which had been made by surgeons of the low-gravity LSVO and MSVK species—but despite this his reactions were reasonably human. At the moment he was working through a salad with his eyes turned toward Heaven and the dining hall ceiling in an effort not to look at what he was eating. Conway sat down facing him and made a sympathetic, querying noise.
“I’ve had a Tralthan
and
a LSVO on my list this afternoon, both long jobs,” Mannon said grumpily. “You know how it is, I’ve been thinking like them too much. If only these blasted Tralthans weren’t vegetarians, or the LSVOs weren’t sickened by anything which doesn’t look like bird seed. Are you anybody else today?”
Conway shook his head. “Just me. Do you mind if I have steak?”
“No, just don’t talk about it.”
“I won’t.”
Conway knew only too well the confusion, mental double vision and the severe emotional disturbance which went with a physiology tape that had become too thoroughly keyed in to the operating physician’s mind. He could remember a time only three months ago when he had fallen hopelessly—but
hopelessly
—in love with one of a group of visiting specialists from Melf IV. The Melfans were ELNTs—six-legged, amphibious, vaguely crab-like beings—and while one half of his mind had insisted
that the whole affair was ridiculous the other half thought lovingly of that gorgeously marked carapace and generally felt like baying at the moon.
Physiology tapes were decidedly a mixed blessing, but their use was necessary because no single being could hope to hold in its brain all the physiological data needed for the treatment of patients in a multi-environment hospital. The incredible mass of data required to take care of them was furnished by means of Educator tapes, which were simply the brain recordings of great medical specialists of the various species concerned. If an Earth-human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient he took one of the DBLF physiology tapes until treatment was complete, after which he had it erased. But Senior Physicians with teaching duties were often called onto retain these tapes for long periods, which wasn’t much fun at all.
The only good thing from their point of view was that they were better off than the Diagnosticians.
They were the hospital’s
elite.
A Diagnostician was one of those rare beings whose mind was considered stable enough to retain permanently up to ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To their data-crammed minds was given the job of original research in xenological medicine and the diagnosis and treatment of new diseases in hitherto unknown life-forms. There was a well-known saying in the hospital, reputed to have originated with O’Mara himself, that anyone sane enough to want to be a Diagnostician was mad.
For it was not only physiological data which the tapes imparted, the complete memory and personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was impressed on the receiving brain as well. In effect a Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to the most drastic form of multiple schizophrenia, with the alien personality sharing his mind so utterly
different
that in many cases they did not have even a system of logic in common.
Conway brought his thoughts back to the here and now. Mannon was speaking again.
“A funny thing about the taste of salad,” he said, still glaring at the ceiling as he ate, “is that none of my alter egos seem to mind it. The sight of it yes, but not the taste. They don’t particularly like it, mind, but neither does it completely revolt them. At the same time there are few species with an overwhelming passion for it, either. And speaking of overwhelming passions, how about you and Murchison?”
One of these days Conway expected to hear gears clashing, the way Mannon changed subjects so quickly.
“I’ll be seeing her tonight if I’ve time,” he replied carefully. “However, we’re just good friends.”
“Haw,” said Mannon.
Conway make an equally violent switch of subjects by hurriedly breaking the news about his latest assignment. Mannon was the best in the world, but he had the painful habit of pulling a person’s leg until it threatened to come off at the hip. Conway managed to keep the conversation off Murchison for the rest of the meal.
As soon as Mannon and himself split up he went to the intercom and had a few words with the doctors of various species who would be taking over the instruction of the trainees, then he looked at his watch. There was almost an hour before he was due aboard
Vespasian.
He began to walk a little more hurriedly than befitted a Senior Physician …
The sign over the entrance read “Recreation Level, Species DBDG, DBLF, ELNT, GKNM & FGLI.” Conway went in, changed his whites for shorts and began searching for Murchison.
Trick lighting and some really inspired landscaping had given the recreation level the illusion of tremendous spaciousness. The overall effect was of a small, tropical beach enclosed on two sides by cliffs and open to the sea, which stretched out to a horizon rendered indistinct by heat haze. The sky was blue and cloudless—realistic cloud effects were difficult to reproduce, a maintenance engineer had told him—and the water of the bay was deep blue shading to turquoise. It lapped against the golden, gently sloping beach whose sand was almost too warm for the feet. Only the artificial sun, which was too much on the reddish side for Conway’s taste, and the alien greenery fringing the beach and cliff’s kept it from looking like a tropical bay anywhere on Earth.
But then space was at a premium in Sector General and the people who worked together were expected to play together as well.
The most effective, yet completely unseen, aspect of the place was the fact that it was maintained at one-half normal gravity. A half-G meant that people who were tired could relax more comfortably and the ones who were feeling lively could feel livelier still, Conway thought wryly as a steep, slow-moving wave ran up the beach and broke around his knees. The turbulence in the bay was not produced artificially, but varied in proportion to the size, number and enthusiasm of the bathers using it.
Projecting from one of the cliffs were a series of diving ledges connected
by concealed tunnels. Conway climbed to the highest, fifty-foot ledge and from this point of vantage tried to find a DBDG female in a white swimsuit called Murchison.
She wasn’t in the restaurant on the other cliff, or in the shallows adjoining the beach, or in the deep green water under the diving ledges. The sand was thickly littered with reclining forms which were large, small, leathery, scaley and furry—but Conway had no difficulty separating the Earth-human DBDGs from the general mass, they being the only intelligent species in the Federation with a nudity taboo. So he knew that anyone wearing clothing, no matter how abbreviated, was what he considered a human being.
Suddenly he caught a glimpse of white which was partly obscured by two patches of green and one of yellow standing around it. That would be Murchison, all right. He took a quick bearing and retraced his steps.
When Conway approached the crowd around Murchison, two Corpsmen and an intern from the eighty-seventh level dispersed with obvious reluctance. In a voice which, much to his disgust, had gone up in pitch, he said, “Hi. Sorry I’m late.”
Murchison shielded her eyes to look up at him. “I just arrived myself,” she said, smiling. “Why don’t you lie down?”
Conway dropped onto the sand but remained propped on one elbow, looking at her.
Murchison possessed a combination of physical features which made it impossible for any Earth-human male member of the staff to regard her with anything like clinical detachment, and regular exposure to the artificial but UV-rich sun had given her a deep tan made richer by the dazzling contrast of her white swimsuit. Dark auburn hair stirred restively in the artificial breeze, her eyes were closed again and her lips slightly parted. Her respiration was slow and deep, that of a person either perfectly relaxed or asleep, and the things it was doing to her swimsuit was also doing things to Conway. He thought suddenly that if she was telepathic at this moment she would be up and running for dear life …
“You look,” she said, opening one eye, “like somebody who wants to growl deep in his throat and beat his manly, clean-shaven chest—”
“It isn’t clean-shaven,” Conway protested, “it’s just naturally not hairy. But I want you to be serious for a moment. I’d like to talk to you, alone, I mean …”
“I don’t care either way about chests,” she said soothingly, “so you don’t have to feel bad about it.”
“I don’t,” said Conway, then doggedly; “Can’t we get away from this menagerie and … Oops, stampede!”
He reached across quickly and clapped his hand over her eyes, simultaneously closing his own.
Two Tralthans on a total of twelve, elephantine feet thundered past within a few yards of them and plowed into the shallows, scattering sand and spray over a radius of fifty yards. The half-G conditions which allowed the normally slow and ponderous FGLIs to gambol like lambs also kept the sand they had kicked up airborne for a considerable time. When Conway was sure that the last grains had settled he took his hand away from Murchison’s eyes. But not completely.
Hesitantly, a little awkwardly, he slid his hand over the soft warm contour of her cheek until he was cupping the side of her jaw in his palm. Then gently he pushed his fingers into the soft tangle of curls behind her ear. He felt her stiffen, then relax again.
“Uh, see what I mean,” he said dry-mouthed. “Unless you
like
half-ton bullies kicking sand in your face …”
“We’ll be alone later,” said Murchison, laughing, “when you take me home.”
“And then what happens!” Conway said disgustedly. “Just the same as last time. We’ll sneak up to your door, being very careful not to wake your roommate who has to go on early duty, and then that damned servo will come trundling up …” Angrily, Conway began to mimic the taped voice of the robot as he went on, “ … I perceive that you are beings of classification DBDG and are of differing genders, and note further that you have been in close juxtaposition for a period of two minutes forty-eight seconds. In the circumstances I must respectfully remind you of Regulation Twenty-one, Sub-section Three regarding the entertaining of visitors in DBDG Nurses’ Quarters …”
Almost choking, Murchison said, “I’m sorry, it must have been very frustrating for you.”
Conway thought sourly that the expression of sorrow was rather spoiled by the suppressed laughter preceeding it. He leaned closer and took her gently by the shoulder. He said, “It was and is. I want to talk to you and I won’t have time to see you home tonight. But I don’t want to talk here, you always head for the water when I get you cornered. Well, I want to get you in a corner, both literally and conversationally, and ask some serious questions. This being friends is killing me …”
Murchison shook her head. She took his hand away from her shoulder, squeezed it and said, “Let’s swim.”
Seconds later as he chased her into the shallows he wondered if perhaps she wasn’t a little telepathic after all. She was certainly running fast enough.
In half-G conditions swimming was an exhilarating experience. The waves were high and steep and the smallest splash seemed to hang in the air for seconds, with individual drops sparkling red and amber in the sun. A badly executed dive by one of the heavier life-forms-the FGLIs especially had an awful lot of belly to flop—could cause really spectacular effects. Conway was threshing madly after Murchison on the fringe of just such a titanic upheaval when a loudspeaker on the cliff roared into life.
“Doctor Conway,” it boomed. “Will Doctor Conway report at Lock Sixteen for embarkation, please …”
They were walking rapidly up the beach when Murchison said, very seriously for her, “I didn’t know you were leaving. I’ll change and see you off.”
There was a Monitor Corps officer in the lock antechamber. When he saw Conway had company he said, “Doctor Conway? We leave in fifteen minutes, sir,” and disappeared tactfully. Conway stopped beside the boarding tube and so did Murchison. She looked at him but there was no particular expression on her face, it was just beautiful and very desirable. Conway went on telling her about his important new assignment although he didn’t want to talk about that at all. He talked rapidly and nervously until he heard the Monitor officer returning along the tube, then he pulled Murchison tightly against him and kissed her hard.
He couldn’t tell if she responded. He had been too sudden, too ungentle …
“I’ll be gone about three months,” he said, in a voice which tried to explain and apologize at the same time. Then with forced lightness he ended, “And in the morning I won’t feel a bit sorry.”
C
onway was shown to his cabin by an officer wearing a medic’s caduceus over his insignia who introduced himself as Major Stillman. Although he spoke quietly and politely Conway got the impression that the Major was not a person who would be overawed by anything or anybody. He said that the Captain would be pleased to see Conway in the control room after they had made the first jump, to welcome him aboard personally.
A little later Conway met Colonel Williamson, the ship’s Captain, who gave him the freedom of the ship. This was a courtesy rare enough on a government ship to impress Conway, but he soon discovered that although nobody said anything he was simply in everyone’s way in the control room, and twice he lost himself while trying to explore the ship’s interior. The Monitor heavy cruiser
Vespasian
was much larger than Conway had realized. After being guided back by a friendly Corpsman with a too-expressionless face he decided that he would spend most of the trip in his cabin familiarizing himself with his new assignment.
Colonel Williamson had given him copies of the more detailed and recent information which had come in through Monitor Corps channels, but he began by studying the file which O’Mara had given him.
The being Lonvellin had been on the way to a world, about which it had heard some very nasty rumors, in a practically unexplored section of the Lesser Megellanic Cloud, when it had been taken ill and admitted to Sector General. Shortly after being pronounced cured it had resumed the journey and a few weeks later it had contacted the Monitor Corps. It had stated that conditions on the world it had found were both sociologically complex and medically barbaric, and that it would need advice on the
medical side before it could begin to act effectively against the many social ills afflicting this truly distressed planet. It had also asked if some beings of physiological classification DBDG could be sent along to act as information gatherers as the natives were of that classification and were violently hostile to all off-planet life, a fact which seriously hampered Lonvellin’s activities.
The fact of Lonvellin asking for help of any sort was surprising in itself in view of the enormous intelligence and experience of his species in solving vast sociological problems. But on this occasion things had gone disastrously wrong, and Lonvellin had been kept too busy using its defensive science to do anything else …
According to Lonvellin’s report it had begun by observing the planet from space during many rotations, monitoring the radio transmissions through its Translator, and taking particular note of the low level of industrialization which contrasted so oddly with the single, still functioning space port. When all the information which it had thought necessary had been collected and evaluated it chose what it considered to be the best place to land.
From the evidence at hand Lonvellin judged the world—the native’s name for it was Etla—to have been a once-prosperous colony which had regressed for economic reasons until now it had very little contact with outside. But it did have some, which meant that Lonvellin’s first and usually most difficult job, that of making the natives trust an alien and perhaps visually horrifying being who had dropped out of the sky, was greatly simplified. These people would know about e-ts. So it took the role of a poor, frightened, slightly stupid extra-terrestrial who had been forced to land to make repairs to its ship. For this it would require various odd and completely worthless chunks of metal or rock, and it would pretend great difficulty in making the Etlans understand exactly what it needed. But for these valueless pieces of rubbish it could exchange items of great value, and soon the more enterprising natives would get to know about it.
At this stage Lonvellin expected to be exploited shamelessly, but it didn’t mind. Gradually things would change. Rather than give items of value it would offer to perform even more valuable services. It would let it be known that it now considered its ship to be irrepairable, and gradually it would become accepted as a permanent resident. After that it would be just a matter of time, and time was something with which Lonvellin was particularly well supplied.
It landed close to a road which ran between two small towns, and soon had the chance to reveal itself to a native. The native, despite Lonvellin’s careful contact and many reassurances via the Translator, fled. A few hours later small, crude projectiles with chemical warheads began falling on his ship and the whole area, which was densely wooded, had been saturated with volatile chemicals and deliberately set alight.
Lonvellin had been unable to proceed without knowing why this race with experience of space-travel should be so blindly hostile to e-ts, and not being in a position to ask questions himself it had called for Earth-human assistance. Shortly afterward Alien Contact specialists of the Monitor Corps had arrived, sized up the situation for themselves and gone in.
Quite openly, as it happened.
They discovered that the natives were terrified of e-ts because they believed them to be disease carriers. What was even more peculiar was the fact that they were not worried by off-planet visitors of their own species or a closely similar race, members of which would have been more likely to be carriers of disease: because it was a well-known medical fact that diseases which affected extra-terrestrials were not communicable to members of other planetary species. Any race with a knowledge of space travel should know
that,
Conway thought. It was the first thing a star-traveling culture learned.
He was trying to make some sense out of this strange contradiction, using a tired brain and some hefty reference works on the Federation’s colonization program, when Major Stillman’s arrival made a very welcome interruption.
“We’ll arrive in three days time, Doctor,” the Major began, “and I think it’s time you had some cloak and dagger training. By that I mean getting to know how to wear Etlan clothes. It’s a very fetching costume, although personally I don’t have the knees for a kilt …”
Etla had been contacted on two levels by the Corps, Stillman went onto explain. On one they had landed secretly using the native language and dress, no other disguise being necessary because the physiological resemblance had been so close. Most of their later information had been gained in this way and so far none of the agents had been caught. On the other level the Corpsmen admitted their extra-terrestrial origin, conversed by Translator, and their story was that they had heard of the plight of the native population and had come to give medical assistance. The Etlans had accepted this story, revealing the fact that similar offers of help
had been made in the past, that an Empire ship was sent every ten years loaded with the newest drugs, but despite all this the medical situation continued to worsen. The Corpsmen were welcome to try to relieve the situation if they could, but the impression given by the Etlans was that they were just another party of well-intentional bunglers.
Naturally when the subject of Lonvellin’s landing came up the Corps had to pretend complete ignorance, and their expressed opinions leaned heavily toward the middle of the road.
It was a very complex problem, Stillman told him, and became more so with every new report sent in by undercover agents. But Lonvellin had a beautifully simple plan for clearing up the whole mess. When Conway heard it he wished suddenly that he hadn’t tried to impress Lonvellin with his skill as a doctor. He would much rather have been back in the hospital right now. This being made responsible for organizing the cure of an entire planetary population gave him an unpleasantly gone feeling in the region of his transverse colon …
Etla was beset with much sickness and suffering and narrow, superstitious thinking, their reaction to Lonvellin being a shocking illustration of their intolerance toward species which did not resemble themselves. The first two conditions increased the third, which in turn worsened the first two. Lonvellin hoped to break this vicious circle by causing a marked improvement in the health of the population, one that would be apparent to even the least intelligent and bigoted natives. It would then have the Corpsmen admit publicly that they had been acting under Lonvellin’s instructions all along, which should make the e-t hating natives feel somewhat ashamed of themselves. Then during the perhaps temporary increase of e-t tolerance which would follow, Lonvellin would set about gaining their trust and eventually return to its original long-term plan for making them a sane, happy and thriving culture again.
Conway told Stillman that he wasn’t an expert in these matters but it sounded like a very good plan.
Stillman said, “I am, and it is. If it works.”
On the day before they were due to arrive the Captain asked if Conway would like to come to Control for a few minutes. They were computing their position in preparation for making the final jump and the ship had emerged relatively close to a binary system, one star of which was a short-term variable.
Awed, Conway thought it was the sort of spectacle which makes people feel small and alone, makes them feel the urge to huddle together and
the need to talk so that they might re-establish their puny identities amid all the magnificence. Conversational barriers were down and all at once Captain Williamson was speaking in tones which suggested three things to the listening Conway—that the Captain might be human after all, that he had hair and that he was about to let it down a little.
“Er, Doctor Conway,” he began apologetically, “I don’t want to sound as if I’m criticizing Lonvellin. Especially as it was a patient of yours and may also have been a friend. Neither do I want you to think that I’m annoyed because it has a Federation cruiser and various lesser units running errands for it. That isn’t so …”
Williamson took off his cap and smoothed a wrinkle from the head-band with his thumb. Conway had a glimpse of thinning gray hair and a forehead whose deep worry lines had been concealed by the cap’s visor. The cap was replaced and he became the calm, efficient senior officer again.
“ … To put it bluntly, Doctor,” he went on, “Lonvellin is what I would call a gifted amateur. Such people always seem to stir up trouble for us professionals, upsetting schedules and so on. But this doesn’t bother me either, because the situation Lonvellin uncovered here most definitely needs something done about it. The point I’m trying to make is that, as well as our survey, colonization and enforcement duties, we have experience at sorting out just such sociological tangles as this one, although at the same time I admit that there is no individual within the Corps with anything like Lonvellin’s ability. Nor can we suggest any plan at the moment better than the one put forward by Lonvellin …”
Conway began to wonder if the Captain was getting at something or merely blowing off steam. Williamson had not struck him as being the complaining type.
“ … As the person with most responsibility next to Lonvellin on this project,” the Captain finished with a rush, “it is only fair that you know what we think as well as what we are doing. There are nearly twice as many of our people working on Etla than Lonvellin knows about, and more are on the way. Personally I have the greatest respect for our long-lived friend, but I can’t help feeling that the situation here is more complex than even Lonvellin realizes.”
Conway was silent for a moment, then he said, “I’ve wondered why a ship like
Vespasian
was being used on what is basically a cultural study project. Do you think that the situation is more, ah, dangerous as well?”
“Yes,” said the Captain.
At that moment the tremendous double-star system pictured in the view-screen dissolved and was replaced by that of a normal G-type sun and, within a distance of ten million miles, the tiny sickle shape of the planet which was their destination. Before Conway could put any of the questions he was suddenly itching to ask, the Captain informed him that they had completed their final jump, that from now until touchdown he would be a very busy man, and ended by politely throwing him out of the control room with the advice that he should catch as much sleep as possible before landing.
Back in his cabin Conway undressed thoughtfully and, a part of his mind was pleased to note, almost automatically. Both Stillman and he had been wearing Etlan costume—blouse, kilt and a waist-sash with pockets, a beret and a dramatic calf-length cloak being added for outdoor use—continually for the past few days, so that now he felt comfortable in it even while dining with
Vespasian’s
officers. At the moment, however, his discomfort was caused solely by the Captain’s concluding remarks to him in the control room.
Williamson thought that the Etlan situation was dangerous enough to warrant using the largest type of law enforcement vessel possessed by the Monitor Corps. Why? Where was the danger?
Certainly there was nothing resembling a military threat on Etla. The very worst that the Etlans could do they had done to Lonvellin’s ship and that had hurt the being’s feelings and nothing else. Which meant that the danger had to come from somewhere outside.
Suddenly Conway thought he knew what was worrying the Captain.
The Empire …
Several of the reports had contained references to the Empire. It was the great unknown quantity so far. The Monitor Corps survey vessels had not made contact with it, which wasn’t surprising because this sector of the galaxy was not scheduled for mapping for another fifty years, and would not have been entered if Lonvellin’s project had not come unstuck. All that was known about the Empire was that Etla was part of it and that it sent medical aid at regular if lengthy intervals.
BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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