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Authors: James White

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BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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To Conway’s mind the quality of that aid and the intervals between its arrival told an awful lot about the people responsible for sending it. They could not be medically advanced, he reasoned, or the drugs they sent would have checked, if only temporarily, some of the epidemics which had been sweeping Etla at the time. And they were almost certainly poor or the ships would have come at shorter intervals. Conway would
not be surprised if the mysterious Empire turned out to be a mother world and a few struggling colonies like Etla. But most important of all, an Empire which regularly sent aid to its distressed colony, whether it was large, medium or small as Empires went, did not seem to Conway to be a particularly evil or dangerous entity. To the contrary, on the evidence available he rather approved of this Empire.
Captain Williamson, he thought as he rolled into bed, was inclined to worry too much.
V
espasian
landed. On the main screen in the Communications room Conway saw a cracked white expanse of concrete which stretched to the half-mile distant periphery, where the fine details of vegetation and architecture which would have made the scene alien were lost in the heat haze. Dust and dried leaves littered the concrete and small heaps of cloud were scattered untidily about a very Earth-like sky. The only other ship on the field was a Monitor courier vessel which was grounded close to the block of disused offices that had been loaned by the Etlan authorities for use as the visitor’s surface base.
Behind Conway the Captain said, “You understand, Doctor, that Lonvellin is unable to leave its ship, and that any physical contact between us at this stage would wreck our present good relations with the natives. But this is a big screen. Excuse me …”
There was a click and Conway was looking into the control room of Lonvellin’s ship, with a life-size image of Lonvellin itself sprawling across most of the picture.
“Greetings, friend Conway,” the EPLH’s voice boomed from the speaker. “It is a great pleasure to see you again.”
“A pleasure to be here, sir,” Conway replied, “I trust you are in good health … ?”
The enquiry was not merely a polite formality. Conway wanted to know if there had been anymore “misunderstandings” on the cellular level between Lonvellin and its personal physician, the intelligent, organized virus-colony which dwelt within its patient-host’s body. Lonvellin’s doctor had caused quite a stir at Sector General, where they were still arguing as to whether it should be classified as a doctor or a disease …
“My health is excellent, Doctor,” Lonvellin replied, then straightaway got down to the business in hand. Conway hastily returned his mind to present time and concentrated on what the EPLH was saying.
Conway’s own instructions were general. He was to coordinate the work of data-gathering Corps medical officers on Etla and, because the sociological and medical aspects of the problem were so closely connected, he was advised to keep abreast of the developments outside his specialty. With the arrival of the latest reports the sociological problem seemed more confusing, and it was Lonvellin’s hope that a mind trained for the complexities of a multi-environment hospital would be able to establish a sensible pattern among this welter of contradictory facts. Dr. Conway would no doubt appreciate the urgency of the matter, and wish to begin work immediately …
“ … And I would like data on the Earth-human Clarke who is operating in District Thirty-five,” Lonvellin went on without a pause, “so that I may properly evaluate the reports of this being …”
As Captain Williamson was giving the required information Stillman tapped Conway’s arm and nodded for them to leave. Twenty minutes later they were in the back of a covered truck on the way to the perimeter. Conway’s head and one ear had been swathed in bandages, and he felt anxious and a little stupid.
“We’ll stay hidden until we’re clear of the port,” Stillman said reassuringly, “then we’ll sit with the driver. Lots of Etlans travel with our people these days, but it might arouse suspicion for us to be seen coming from the ship. And we’ll head straight for town instead of calling at ground headquarters. I think you should see some of your patients as soon as possible.”
Seriously, Conway said, “I know the symptoms are purely psychosomatic, but both my feet seem to be in an advanced stage of frostbite …”
Stillman laughed. “Don’t worry, Doctor,” he said. “The translator bandaged to your ear will let you know everything that goes on, and you won’t have to speak because I’ll explain that your head injury has temporarily affected your speech centers. Later, however, when you begin to pick up a little of the language a good tip is to develop a stutter. An impediment of this kind disguises the fact that the sufferer does not have the local idiom or accent, the large fault concealing all the smaller ones.
“Not all our undercover people have advanced linguistic training,” he added, “and such ruses are necessary. But the main thing to remember
is not to stay in any one place long enough for the more definite oddities of behavior to be noticed …”
At that point the driver remarked that they were coming level with a blond whom he could cheerfully stay near for the rest of his life. Stillman went on, “Despite the coarse suggestions of Corpsman Briggs here, perhaps our best protection lies in our mental approach to the work, to the fact that our intentions toward these people are completely honorable. If we were hostile agents intent on sabotage, or gathering intelligence for a future act of war, we would be much more likely to be caught. We should be tensed up, trying too hard to be natural, too suspicious and are more inclined to make mistakes because of this.”
Conway said dryly, “You make it sound too easy.” But he felt reassured nevertheless.
The truck left them in the center of town and they began to walk around. The first thing Conway noticed was that there were very few large or new-looking buildings, but that even the oldest were very well kept, and that the Etlans had a very attractive way of decorating the outside of their houses with flowers. He saw the people, the men and women working, shopping or going about businesses which at the present moment he could not even guess at. He
had
to think of them as men and women, as being he and she rather than a collection of coldly alien its.
He saw the twisted limbs, the crutches, the disease scarred faces, his analytical eye detecting and isolating conditions which had been stamped out among the Federation citizenship over a century ago. And everywhere he saw a sight familiar to anyone who had ever been to or worked in a hospital, that of the less sick patient freely and unselfishly giving all the aid possible to those who were worse off than himself.
The sudden realization that he was not in a hospital ward where such sights were pleasantly normal but in a city street brought Conway physically and mentally to a halt.
“What gets me,” he said when he could speak again, “is that so many of these conditions are curable. Maybe all of them. We haven’t had epilepsy for one hundred and fifty years …”
“And you feel like running amuck with a hypo,” Stillman put in grimly, “injecting all and sundry with the indicated specifics. But you have to remember that the whole planet is like this, and that curing a few would not help at all. You are in charge of a very big ward, Doctor.”
“I’ve read the reports,” Conway said shortly. “It’s just that the printed figures did not prepare me for the actuality …”
He stopped with the sentence incomplete. They had paused at a busy intersection and Conway noticed that both pedestrian and vehicular traffic had either slowed or come to a halt. Then he saw the reason.
There was a large wagon coming along the street. Painted and draped completely in red it was, unlike the other vehicle around it, unpowered. Short handles projected at intervals along each side and at every handle an Etlan walked or limped or hobbled, pushing it along. Even before Stillman took his beret off and Conway followed suit he knew that he was seeing a funeral.
“We’ll visit the local hospital now,” Stillman said when it had gone past. “If asked, my story is that we are looking for a sick relative called Mennomer who was admitted last week. On Etla that is a name like Smith. But we’re not likely to be questioned, because practically everybody does a stint of hospital work and the staff are used to the part-time help coming and going all the time. And should we run into a Corps medical officer, as well we might, don’t recognize him.
“And in case you’re worried about your Etlan colleagues wanting to look under your bandages,” Stillman went on practically reading Conway’s mind, “they are far too busy to be curious about injuries which have already been treated …”
They spent two hours in the hospital without once having to tell their story about the ailing Mennomer. It was obvious from the start that Stillman knew his way about the place, that he had probably worked there. But there were always too many Etlans about for Conway to ask if it had been as a Corpsman observer or an undercover part-time nurse. Once he caught a glimpse of a Corpsman medic watching an Etlan doctor draining a pleural cavity of its empyema, his expression showing how dearly he would have liked to roll up his dark green sleeves and wade in himself.
The surgeons wore bright yellow instead of white, some of the operative techniques verged on the barbaric and the concept of isolation wards or barrier nursing had never occurred to them—or perhaps it had occurred to them, Conway thought in an effort to be fair, but the utterly fantastic degree of overcrowding made it impracticable. Considering the facilities at their disposal and the gigantic problem it had to face, this was a very good hospital. Conway approved of it and, judging from what he had seen of its staff, he approved of them, too.
“These are nice people,” Conway said rather inadequately at one point. “I can’t understand them jumping Lonvellin the way they did, somehow they don’t seem to be the type.”
“But they did it,” Stillman replied grimly. “Anything which hasn’t two eyes, two ears, two arms and two legs, or which has these things but happens to have them in the wrong places, gets jumped. It’s something drummed into them at a very early age, with their ABCs, practically. I wish we knew why.”
Conway was silent. He was thinking that the reason he had been sent here was to organize medical aid for this planet, and that wandering in fancy dress over one small piece of the jigsaw was not going to solve the big puzzle. It was time he got down to some serious work.
As if reading Conway’s mind again Stillman said, “I think we should go back now. Would you prefer to work in the office block or the ship, Doctor?”
Stillman, Conway thought, was going to be a very good
aide.
Aloud he said, “The office block, please. I get lost too easily in the ship.”
And so Conway was installed in a small office with a large desk, a button for calling Stillman and some other less-vital communications equipment. After his first lunch in the officers dining quarters he ate all his meals in the office with Stillman. Sometimes he slept in the office and sometimes he didn’t sleep at all. The days passed and his eyes began to feel like hot, gritty marbles in his head from reading reports and more reports. Stillman always kept them coming. Conway reorganized the medical investigation, bringing in some of the Corps doctors for discussion or flying out to those who could not for various reasons get in.
A large number of the reports were outside his province, being copies of information sent in by Williamson’s men on purely sociological problems. He read them on the off-chance of their having a bearing on his own problem, which many of them did, But they usually added to his puzzlement.
Blood samples, biopsies, specimens of all kinds began to flow in. They were immediately loaded onto a courier—the Corps had put three of them at his disposal now—and rushed to the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology at Sector General. The results were sub-radioed back to
Vespasian,
taped, and the reels dumped on Conway’s desk within a few days. The ship’s main computer, or rather the section of it which wasn’t engaged on Translator relay, was also placed at his disposal, and gradually the vaguest suggestion of a pattern seemed to be emerging out of the
flood of related and unrelated facts. But it was a pattern which made no sense to anyone, least of all Conway. He was nearing the end of his fifth week on Etla and there was still very little progress to report to Lonvellin.
But Lonvellin wasn’t pushing for results. It was a very patient being who had all the time in the world. Sometimes Conway found himself wondering if Murchison would be as patient as Lonvellin.
I
n answer to his buzz Major Stillman, red-eyed and with his usually crisp uniform just slightly rumpled, stumbled in and sat down. They exchanged yawns, then Conway spoke.
“In a few days I’ll have the supply and distribution figures needed to begin curing this place,” he said. “Every serious disease has been listed together with information on the age, sex and geographical location of the patient, and the quantities of medication calculated. But before I give the go ahead for flooding the place with medical supplies I’d feel a lot easier in my mind if we knew exactly how this situation came about in the first place.
“Frankly, I’m worried,” he went on. “I think we may be guilty of replacing the broken crockery while the bull is still loose in the china shop.”
Stillman nodded, whether in agreement or with weariness Conway couldn’t say.
On a planet which was an absolute pest-hole why were infant mortality figures, or deaths arising from complications or infections during childbirth so low? Why was there a marked tendency for infants to be healthy and the adults chronically ill? Admittedly a large proportion of the infant population were born blind or were physically impaired by inherited diseases, but relatively few of them died young. They carried their deformities and disfigurements through to late middle age where, statistically, most of them succumbed.
And there was also statistical evidence that the Etlans were guilty of gross exhibitionism in the matter of their diseases. They ran heavily to unpleasant skin conditions, maladies which caused gradual wasting or
deformity of the limbs, and some pretty horrible combinations of both. And their costume did nothing to conceal their afflictions. To the contrary, Conway had the feeling sometimes that they were like so many small boys showing off their sore knees to their friends …
Conway realized that he had been thinking aloud when Stillman interrupted him suddenly.
“You’re wrong, Doctor!” he said, sharply for him. “These people aren’t masochists. Whatever went wrong here originally, they’ve been trying to fight it. They’ve been fighting, with very little assistance, for over a century and losing all the time. It surprises me they have a civilization left at all. And they wear an abbreviated costume because they believe fresh air and sunlight is good for what ails them, and in most cases they are quite right.
“This belief is drilled into them from an early age,” Stillman went on, his tone gradually losing its sharpness, “like their hatred of e-ts and the belief that isolating infectious diseases is unnecessary. Is dangerous, in fact, because they believe that the germs of one disease fight the germs of another so that both are weakened …”
Stillman shuddered at the thought and fell silent.
“I didn’t mean to belittle our patients, Major,” Conway said. “I have no sensible answers to this thing so my mind is throwing up stupid ones. But you mentioned the lack of assistance which the Etlans receive from their Empire. I would like more details on that, especially on how it is distributed. Better still, I’d like to ask the Imperial Representative on Etla about it. Have you been able to find him yet?”
Stillman shook his head and said dryly, “This aid doesn’t come like a batch of food parcels. There are drugs, of course, but most of it would be in the form of the latest medical literature relevent to the conditions here. How it reaches the people is something we are just now finding out …”
Every ten years an Empire ship would land and be met by the Imperial Representative, Stillman went on to explain, and after unloading and handing over what were presumably dispatches it left again within a matter of hours. Apparently no citizen of the Empire would stay on Etla for a second longer than was necessary, which was understandable. Then the Imperial Representative, a personage called Teltrenn, set about distributing the medical aid.
But instead of using the mass distribution media to bring local medical authorities up to date on these new methods, and allow local GPs
time to familiarize themselves with the theory and procedures before the medication arrived, Teltrenn sat tight on all the information until such times as he could pay them a personal visit. Then he handed everything over as being a personal gift from their glorious Emperor, accruing no small measure of glory himself by being the middleman, and the data which could have been in the hands of every doctor on the planet within three months reached them piecemeal in anything up to six years …
“Six
years!”
said Conway, startled.
“Teltrenn isn’t, so far as we’ve been able to find out, a very energetic person,” Stillman said. “What makes matters worse is that little or no original medical research is being done on Etla, due to the absence of the researcher’s most vital tool, the microscope. Etla can’t make precision optical equipment and apparently no Empire ship has thought to bring them.
“It all boils down to the fact,” Stillman ended grimly, “that the Empire does all of Etla’s medical thinking for her, and the evidence suggests that medically the Empire is not very smart.”
Conway said firmly, “I’d like to see the correlation between the arrival of this aid and the incidence of disease immediately thereafter. Can you help me in that?”
“There’s a report just in which might help you,” Stillman replied. “It’s a copy of the records of a North Continent hospital which go back past Teltrenn’s last visit to them. The records show that he brought on that occasion some useful data on obstetrics and a specific against what we have called B-Eighteen. The incidence of B-Eighteen dropped rapidly within a few weeks there, although the overall figures remained much the same because F-Twenty-one began to appear about that time …”
B-Eighteen was analogous to a severe influenza, fatal to children and young adults in four cases out of ten. F-Twenty-one was a mild, nonfatal fever which lasted three to four weeks during which large, crescentric weals appeared all over the face, limbs and body. When the fever abated the weals darkened to a livid purple and remained for the rest of the patient’s life.
Conway shook his head angrily. He said, “One of the main things wrong with Etla is its Imperial Representative!”
Standing up, Stillman said, “We want to ask him a few questions, too. We’ve advertised that fact widely by radio and print, so much so that we are now fairly certain that Teltrenn is hiding from us deliberately. Probably the reason is a guilty conscience over his mismanagement of
affairs here. But a psych report, based on what hearsay evidence we have been able to gather about him, has been prepared for Lonvellin. I’ll have them send a copy from the ship.”
“Thank you,” said Conway.
Stillman nodded, yawned and left. Conway thumbed his communicator switch, contacted
Vespasian
and asked for an audio link with the fifty miles distant Lonvellin. He was still worried and wanted to get it off his chest, the only trouble being he did not know exactly what “it” was.
“ … You have done very well, friend Conway,” Lonvellin said when he had finished speaking, “in fulfilling your part of the project so quickly, and I am fortunate indeed in the quality and eagerness of my assistants. We have now gained the trust of the Etlan doctors in most areas and the way will shortly be open to begin full-scale instruction in your latest curative techniques. You will therefore be returning to your hospital within a few days, and I urge that you do not leave with the feeling that you have not performed your assigned task in a completely satisfactory manner. These anxieties you mention are groundless.
“Your suggestion that the being Teltrenn should be removed or replaced as part of the re-education program is sound,” Lonvellin continued ponderously, “and I already had this step in mind. An added reason for removing it from office being the well-documented fact that it is the being largely responsible for keeping alive the widespread intolerance of off-planet life-forms. Your other suggestion that these harmful ideas may originate, not with Teltrenn but in the Empire, may or may not be correct. This does not, however, call for an immediate search for and investigation of the Empire which you urge.”
Lonvellin’s Translated voice was slow and necessarily emotionless, but Conway seemed to detect a hardening in its tone as it went on, “I perceive Etla as an isolated world kept in quarantine. The problem can therefore be solved without bringing in considerations of Empire influences or understanding fully the various inconsistencies which puzzle us both. These will become plain after its cure has been effected, and the answers we seek are of secondary importance to the planet-wide relief of suffering.
“Your contention that the visits of the Imperial ship,” it went on, “which occur every ten years and last only a few hours, is a major factor in this problem is invalid. I might even suggest that, unconsciously perhaps, you are laying too much stress on this point merely that your curiosity regarding this Empire might be satisfied.”
You’re so right,
Conway thought. But before he could reply the EPLH
went on, “I wish to treat Etla as an isolated problem. Bringing in the Empire, which itself may or may not be in need of medical aid also, would enlarge the scope of the operation beyond managable limits.
“However, and purely to remove your evident anxiety,” Lonvellin ended, “you may tell the being Williamson that it has my permission to scout for this Empire and report on conditions within it. In the event of it being found, however, no mention of what we are doing here on Etla is to be made until the operation is completed.”
“I understand, sir,” Conway said, and broke the connection. He thought it decidedly odd that Lonvellin had pinned his ears back for being curious, then almost with the same breath given him permission to indulge that curiosity. Was Lonvellin more concerned about the Empire’s influence here than it cared to admit, or was the big beastie just going soft in its old age?
He called Captain Williamson.
The Captain hemmed a coupled of times when Conway had finished speaking and there was a distinctly embarrassed note in his voice when he replied. He said, “We’ve had a number of officers, both medical and cultural contact people, searching for the Empire for the last two months, Doctor. One of them has been successful and sent in a preliminary report. It comes from a medical officer who was not attached to the Etla project, and knows very little of what has been happening here, so it may not be as informative as you might wish. I’ll send you a copy with the material on Teltrenn.”
Coughing slightly, Williamson ended, “Lonvellin will have to be informed of this, naturally, but I must leave it to your discretion
when
you tell it.”
Suddenly Conway laughed out loud. “Don’t worry, Colonel, I’ll sit on the information for a while. But if you
are
found out you can always remind Lonvellin that the function of a good servant is to anticipate the wishes of his master.”
He continued laughing softly after Williamson signed off, then all at once the reaction set in.
Conway hadn’t laughed much since coming to Etla. And he had not been guilty of over-identifying with his patients—no half-way decent doctor with the good of his charges at heart would commit that crime. It was just that nobody laughed very much on Etla. There was something in the atmosphere of the place, a feeling comprised both of urgency and hopelessness which seemed to intensify with each day that passed. It was
rather like the atmosphere in a ward where a patient was going to die, Conway thought, except that even in those circumstances people found time to make cracks and relax for a few minutes between crises …
Conway was beginning to miss Sector General. He was glad that in a few days he would be going back, despite his feeling of dissatisfaction over all the loose ends he was leaving untied. He began to think about Murchison.
That was something he had not done very often on Etla, either. Twice he had sent messages to her with the Elan specimens. He knew that Thornnastor in Pathology would see that she got them, even though Thornnastor was an FGLI with only the barest of passing interests in the emotional involvements of Earth-human DBDGs. But Murchison was the undemonstrative type. She might consider that going to the trouble of smuggling back a reply would be giving him too much encouragement, or maybe that kiss and run episode at the airlock had soured her on him completely. She was a peculiar girl. Very serious-minded, extremely dedicated, absolutely no time for men.
The first time she agreed to date him it had been because Conway had just pulled off a slick op and wanted to celebrate, and that previously he had worked with her on a case without once making a pass. Since then he had dated Murchison regularly and had been the envy of all the male DBDGs in the hospital. The only trouble was that they had nothing to be envious about …
His lugubrious train of thought was interrupted by the arrival of a Corpsman who dropped a folder onto his desk and said, “The material on Teltrenn, Doctor. The other report was confidential to Colonel Williamson and has to be copied by his Writer. We’ll have it for you in fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you,” said Conway. The Corpsman left and he began to read.
Being a colony world which had not had the chance to grow naturally, Etla did not have national boundaries or the armed forces which went with them, but the police force enforcing the law on the planet were technically soldiers of the Emperor and under the command of Teltrenn. It had been a force of these policemen-soldiers who had attacked, and were still attacking, Lonvellin’s ship. At first appraisal, the report stated, the evidence pointed to Teltrenn having a personality which was proud and power-hungry, but the cruelty usually found in such personalities was absent. In his relations with the native population—the Imperial Representative had not been born on Etla—Teltrenn showed fairness and
consideration. It was plain that he looked down on the natives—way down, almost as if they were members of a lower species. But he did not, openly, despise them, and he was never cruel to them.
BOOK: Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations
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