Sector General Omnibus 1 - Beginning Operations (42 page)

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Authors: James White

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It was only gradually that Conway became aware that the walking wounded had followed him into the room, together with patients who had no business being outside their tents who were being towed by the others. They gathered slowly around and above him, their expression
grim, determined and respectful. Major Stillman pushed his way to the front, awkwardly, because in his one good hand he carried a gun.
“The killing has got to stop, Doctor,” Stillman said quietly. “We’ve all talked it over and that’s what we decided. And it’s got to be stopped right now.” He reversed the weapon suddenly, offering it to Conway. “You might need this, to point at Dermod to keep him from doing anything foolish while we’re telling him what has been going on …”
Close behind Stillman hung the mummified shape of Captain Williamson and the man who had towed him in. They were talking to each other in low voices and the language was both foreign and familiar to Conway. Before he could place it the patients all began moving out again and he noticed how many of them were armed. The weapons had been part of the spacesuits they had worn, and Conway had not thought about guns when he had piled the suits into a ward storage space. Dermod, he thought, would be very annoyed with him. Then he followed the patients out to the main ward entrance, and the corridor which led to Reception.
Stillman talked nearly all the time, telling him what had been happening. When they were almost there he said anxiously, “You don’t think I’m … I’m a traitor for doing this, Doctor?”
There were so many different emotions churning inside Conway that all he could say was
“No!”
H
e felt ridiculous pointing the gun at the Fleet commander, but that had seemed to be the only way to do this thing. Conway had entered Reception, threaded his way through the officers around the control desks until he had reached Dermod, then he had held the gun on the Fleet commander, while the others came in. He had also tried to explain things, but he wasn’t doing a very good job.
“ … So you want me to surrender, Doctor,” said Dermod wearily, not looking at the gun. His eyes went from Conway’s face to those of some of the Corpsmen patients who were still floating into the room. He looked hurt and disappointed, as if a friend had done a very shameful thing.
Conway tried again.
“Not surrender, sir,” he said, pointing at the man who was still guiding Williamson’s stretcher. “We … I mean, that man over there needs a communicator. He wants to order a cease fire …”
Stammering in his eagerness to explain what had happened, Conway started with the influx of casualties after the collision between
Vespasian
and the enemy transport. The interiors of both ships were a shambles and, while it was known that there were enemy as well as Corpsmen injured, there had never been time or the staff available to separate them. Then later, when the less seriously injured began to move around, talking to or helping to nurse the other patients, it became plain that almost half of the casualties were from the other side. Oddly this did not seem to matter much to the patients, and the staff were too busy to notice. So the patients went on doing the simpler, necessary and not very pleasant jobs for each other, jobs which just had to be done in a ward so drastically understaffed, and talking …
For these were Corpsmen from
Vespasian
, and
Vespasian
had been to Etla. Which meant that its crew were variously proficient in the Etlan language, and the Etlans spoke the same language as that used all over the Empire—a general purpose language similar to the Federation’s Universal. They talked to each other a lot and one of the things they learned, after the initial caution and distrust had passed, was that the enemy transport had contained some very high officers. One of the ones who had survived the collision was third in line of command of the Empire forces around Sector General …
“ … And for the last few days peace talks have been going on among my patients,” Conway ended breathlessly. “Unofficial, perhaps, but I think Colonel Williamson and Heraltnor here have enough rank to make them binding.”
Heraltnor, the enemy officer, spoke briefly and vehemently to Williamson in Etlan, then gently tilted the plaster encased figure of the Captain until he could look at the fleet commander. Heraltnor watched Dermod, too. Anxiously.
“He’s no fool, sir,” said Williamson painfully. “From the sound of the bombardment and the glimpses he’s had of your screens he knows our defenses are hammered flat. He says that his people could land now and we couldn’t do a thing to stop them. That is true, sir, and we both know it. He says his chief will probably order the landing in a matter of hours, but he still wants a cease fire, sir, not a surrender.
“He doesn’t want his side to win,” the Captain ended weakly. “He just wants the fighting to stop. There are some things he has been told about this war and us which need straightening out, he says …”
“He’s been saying a lot,” said Dermod angrily. His face had a tortured look, as if he was wanting desperately to hope but did not dare let himself do so. He went on, “And you men have been doing a lot of talking! Why didn’t you let me know about it … ?”
“It wasn’t what we
said
,” Stillman broke in sharply, “it was what we
did
! They didn’t believe a word we told them at first. But this place wasn’t at all what they had been told to expect, it looked more like a hospital than a torture chamber. Appearances could have been deceptive, and they were a very suspicious bunch, but they saw human and e-t doctors and nurses working themselves to death over them, and they saw
him
. Talking didn’t do anything, at least not until later. It was what we did, what
he
did … !”
Conway felt his ears getting warm. He protested, “But the same thing was happening in every ward of the hospital!”
“Shut up, Doctor,” Stillman said respectfully, then went on, “He never seemed to sleep. He hardly ever spoke to us once we were out of danger, but the patients in the side ward he never let up on, even though they were the hopeless cases. A couple of them he proved not to be hopeless, and moved them out to us in the main ward. It didn’t matter what side they were on, he worked as hard foreverybody …”
“Stillman,” said Conway sharply, “you’re dramatizing things … !”
“ … Even then they were wavering a bit,” Stillman went on regardless. “But it was the TRLH case which clinched things. The TRLHs were enemy e-t volunteers, and normally the Empire people don’t think much of e-ts and expected us to feel the same. Especially as this e-t was on the other side. But he worked just as hard on it, and when the pressure drop made it impossible for him to go on with the operation and the e-t died, they saw his reaction—”
“Stillman
!” said Conway furiously.
But Stillman did not go into details. He was silent, watching Dermod anxiously. Everybody was watching Dermod. Except Conway, who was looking at Heraltnor.
The Empire officer did not look very impressive at that moment, Conway thought. He looked like a very ordinary, graying, middle-aged man with a heavy chin and worry-lines around his eyes. In comparison to Dermod’s trim green uniform with its quietly impressive load of insignia the shapeless, white garment issued to DBDG patients put Heraltnor at somewhat of a disadvantage. As the silence dragged on Conway wondered whether they would salute each other or just nod.
But they did better than either, they shook hands.
 
 
There was an initial period of suspicion and mistrust, of course. The Empire commander-in-chief was convinced that Heraltnor had been hypnotized at first, but when the investigating party of Empire officers landed on Sector General after the cease fire the distrust diminished rapidly to zero. For Conway the only thing which diminished was his worries regarding wards being opened to space. There was still too much for his staff and himself to do, even though engineers and medical officers from the Empire fleet were doing all they could to put Sector General together again. While they worked the first trickle of the evacuated staff began to
return, both medical and maintenance, and the Translator computer went back into operation. Then five weeks and six days after the cease fire the Empire fleet left the vicinity of the hospital. They left their wounded behind them, the reasons being that they were getting the best possible treatment where they were, and that the fleet might have more fighting to do.
In one of the daily meetings with the hospital authorities—which still consisted of O’Mara and Conway since nobody more senior to them had come with the recent arrivals—Dermod tried to put a complex situation into very simple terms.
“ … Now that the Imperial citizens know the truth about Etla among other things,” he said seriously, “the Emperor and his administration are virtually extinct. But things are still very confused in some sectors and a show of force will help stabilize things. I’d like it to be just a show of force, which is why I talked their commander into taking some of our cultural contact and sociology people with him. We want rid of the Emperor, but not at the price of a civil war.
“Heraltnor wanted you to go along, too, Doctor. But I told him that …”
Beside him O’Mara groaned. “Besides saving hundreds of lives,” the Chief Psychologist said, “and averting a galaxy-wide war, our miracle-working, brilliant young doctor is being called on to—”
“Stop needling him, O’Mara!” Dermod said sharply. “Those things are literally true, or very nearly so. If he hadn’t …”
“Just force of habit, sir,” said O’Mara blandly. “As a head-shrinker I consider it my bounden duty to keep his from swelling …”
At that moment the main screen behind Dermod’s desk, manned by a Nidian Receptionist now instead of a Monitor officer, lit with a picture of a furry Kelgian head. It appeared that there was a large DBLF transport coming in with FGLI and ELNT staff aboard in addition to the Kelgians, eighteen of which were Senior Physicians. Bearing in mind the damaged state of the hospital and the fact that just three locks were in operable condition, the Kelgian on the screen wanted to discuss quarters and assignments
before
landing with the Diagnostician-in-Charge …
“Thornnastor’s still unfit and there are no other …” Conway began to say when O’Mara reached across to touch his arm.
“Seven tapes, remember,” he said gruffly. “Let us not quibble, Doctor.”
Conway gave O‘Mara a long, steady look, a look which went deeper
than the blunt, scowling features and the sarcastic, hectoring voice. Conway was not a Diagnostician—what he had done two months ago had been forced on him, and it had nearly killed him. But what O’Mara was saying—with the touch of his hand and the expression in his eyes, not the scowl on his face and the tone of his voice—was that it would be just a matter of time.
Coloring with pleasure, which Dermod probably put down to embarrassment at O’Mara’s ribbing, he dealt quickly with the quartering and duties of the staff on the Kelgian transport, then excused himself. He was supposed to meet Murchison at the recreation level in ten minutes, and she had asked
him
…
As he was leaving he heard O’Mara saying morosely, “ … And in addition to saving countless billions from the horrors of war, I bet he gets the girl, too …”
F
ar out on the Galactic Rim, where star systems were widely scattered and the darkness nearly absolute, the tremendous structure which was Sector Twelve General Hospital hung in space. Inside its three hundred and eighty-four levels were reproduced the environments of all the intelligent life-forms known to the Galactic Federation, a biological spectrum ranging from the ultrafrigid methane species through the more normal oxygen- and chlorine-breathing types up to the exotic beings who existed by the direct conversion of hard radiation. In addition to the patients, whose number and physiological classification was a constant variable, there was a medical and maintenance staff who were composed of sixty-odd differing life-forms with sixty different sets of mannerisms, body odors and ways of looking at life.
The staff of Sector General was an extremely able, dedicated, but not always serious group of people who were fanatically tolerant of all forms of intelligent life—had this not been so they could never have served in such a multienvironment hospital in the first place. They prided themselves that no case was too big, too small or too hopeless, and their facilities and professional reputation were second to none. It was unthinkable that one of their number should be guilty of nearly killing a patient through sheer carelessness.
“Obviously the thought isn’t unthinkable,” O’Mara, the Chief Psychologist, said dryly. “I’m thinking it, reluctantly, and you are also thinking it—if only momentarily. Far worse, Mannon himself is convinced of his own guilt. This leaves me with no choice but to—”
“No!” said Conway, strong emotion overriding his usual respect for authority. “Mannon is one of the best Seniors we have—you know that!
He wouldn’t … I mean, he isn’t the type to … He’s …”
“A good friend of yours,” O’Mara finished for him, smiling. When Conway did not reply he went on, “My liking for Mannon may not equal yours, but my professional knowledge of him is much more detailed and objective. So much so that two days ago I would not have believed him capable of such a thing. Now, dammit, uncharacteristic behavior bothers me …”
Conway could understand that. As Chief Psychologist, O‘Mara’s prime concern was the smooth and efficient running of the hospital’s medical staff, but keeping so many different and potentially antagonistic life-forms working in harmony was a big job whose limits, like those of O’Mara’s authority, were difficult to define. Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and mutual respect in its personnel, there were still occasions when friction occurred.
Potentially dangerous situations arose through ignorance or misunderstanding, or a being could develop a xenophobic neurosis which might affect its efficiency, mental stability, or both. An Earth-human doctor, for instance, who had a subconscious fear of spiders would not be able to bring to bear on one of the insectile Cinrusskin patients the proper degree of clinical detachment necessary for its treatment. It was O’Mara’s duty to detect and eradicate such trouble, or to remove the potentially troublesome individuals. This guarding against wrong, unhealthy or intolerant thinking was a duty which he performed with such zeal that Conway had heard him likened to a latter-day Torquemada.
Now it looked as if this paragon of psychologists had been something less than alert. In psychology there were no effects without prior cause and O’Mara must now be thinking that he had missed some small but vital warning signal—a slightly uncharacteristic word or expression or display of temper, perhaps—which should have warned him of trouble developing for Senior Physician Mannon.
The psychologist sat back and fixed Conway with a pair of gray eyes which saw so much and which opened into a mind so keenly analytical that together they gave O’Mara what amounted to a telepathic faculty. He said, “No doubt you are thinking that I have lost my grip. You feel sure that Mannon’s trouble is basically psychological and that there is an explanation other than negligence for what happened. You may decide that the recent death of his dog has caused him to go to pieces from sheer grief, and other ideas of an equally uncomplicated and ridiculous nature will occur to you. In my opinion, however, any time spent investigating
the psychological aspects of this business will be completely wasted. Doctor Mannon has been subjected to the most exhaustive tests. He is physically sound and as sane as we are. As sane as I am anyway …”
“Thank you,” said Conway.
“I keep telling you, Doctor,” O’Mara said sourly, “my job here is to shrink heads, not swell them. Your assignment, if we can call it that, is strictly unofficial. Since there is no excuse for Mannon’s error so far as health and psychoprofile are concerned I want you to look for some other reason—some outside influence, perhaps, of which the Doctor is unaware. Doctor Prilicla observed the incident in question and may be able to help you.
“You have a peculiar mind, Doctor,” O’Mara concluded, rising from his seat, “and an odd way of looking at problems. We don’t want to lose Doctor Mannon, but if you do get him out of trouble the surprise will probably kill me. I mention this so that you will have an added incentive …”
Conway left the office, fuming slightly. O’Mara was always flinging his allegedly peculiar mind in his face when the simple truth was that he had been so shy when he had first joined the hospital, especially with nurses of his own species, that he had felt more comfortable in extraterrestrial company. He was no longer shy, but still he numbered more friends among the weird and wonderful denizens of Traltha, Illensa and a score of other systems than beings of his own species. This might be peculiar, Conway admitted, but to a doctor living in a multi-environment hospital it was also a distinct advantage.
Outside in the corridor Conway contacted Prilicla in the other’s ward, found that the little empath was free and arranged a meeting for as soon as possible on the Forty-sixth Level, which was where the Hudlar operating theater was situated. Then he devoted a part of his mind to the problem of Mannon while the rest of it guided him toward Forty-six and kept him from being trampled to death en route.
His Senior Physician’s armband automatically cleared the way so far as nurses and subordinate grades of doctors were concerned, but there were continual encounters with the lordly and absentminded Diagnosticians who plowed their way through everyone and everything regardless, or with junior members of the staff who happened to belong to a more massive species. Tralthans of physiological classification FGLI—warmblooded oxygen breathers resembling a sort of low-slung, six-legged elephant. Or the Kelgian DBLFs who were giant, silver-furred caterpillars
who hooted like a siren when they were jostled whether they were outranked or not, or the crab-like ELNTs from Melf IV …
The majority of the intelligent races in the Federation were oxygen breathers even though their physiological classifications varied enormously, but a much greater hazard to navigation on foot was the entity traversing a foreign level in protective armor. The protection required by a TLTU doctor, who breathed superheated steam and whose gravity and pressure requirements were three times those of the oxygen levels, was a great, clanking juggernaut which was to be avoided at all costs.
At the next intersection lock he donned a lightweight suit and let himself into the yellow, foggy world of the chlorine-breathing Illensans. Here the corridors were crowded with the spiny, membraneous and unadorned denizens of Illensa while it was the Tralthans, Kelgians and Earth-humans like himself who wore, or in some cases drove, protective armor. The next leg of his journey took him through the vast tank where the thirty-foot long, water-breathing entities from Chalderescol II swam ponderously through their warm, green world. The same suit served him here and, while the traffic was less dense, he was slowed down considerably through having to swim instead of walk. Despite this he was on the Forty-sixth Level observation gallery, his suit still streaming Chalder water, just fifteen minutes after leaving O’Mara’s office, and Prilicla arrived close behind him.
“Good morning, friend Conway,” said the little empath as it swung itself deftly onto the ceiling and hung by six fragile, sucker-tipped legs. The musical trills and clicks of its Cinrusskin speech were received by Conway’s Translator pack, relayed down to the tremendous computer at the center of the hospital and transmitted back to his earpiece as flat, emotionless English. Trembling slightly, the Cinrusskin went on, “I feel you needing help, Doctor.”
“Yes indeed,” said Conway, his words going through the same process of Translation and reaching Prilicla as equally toneless Cinrusskin. “It’s about Mannon. There was no time to give details when I called you …”
“No need, friend Conway,” said Prilicla. “On the Mannon incident the grapevine is more than usually efficient. You want to know what I saw and felt, of course.”
“If you don’t mind,” said Conway apologetically
Prilicla said that it didn’t mind. But the Cinrusskin was, in addition to being the nicest entity in the whole hospital, its greatest liar.
Of physiological classification GLNO—insectile, exoskeletal with six
pipestem legs and a pair of iridescent and not quite atrophied wings, and possessing a highly developed empathic faculty, only on Cinruss with its one-eighth Earth gravity could a race of insects have grown to such dimensions and in time developed intelligence and a high civilization. But in Sector General Prilicla was in deadly danger for most of its working day. It had to wear gravity nullification devices everywhere outside its quarters because the gravity pull which most beings considered normal would instantly have crushed it flat, and when Prilicla held a conversation with anyone it swung itself out of reach of any thoughtless movement of arm or tentacle which would have caved in its fragile body or snapped off a leg. While accompanying anyone on rounds it usually kept pace with them along the corridor walls or ceiling so as to avoid the same fate.
Not that anyone would have wanted to hurt Prilicla in any way—it was too well liked for that. Prilicla’s empathic faculty saw to it that the little being always said and did the right thing to people—being an emotion-sensitive to do otherwise would mean that the feelings of anger or sorrow which its thoughtless action caused would bounce back and figuratively smack it in the face. So the little empath was forced constantly to lie and to always be kind and considerate in order to make the emotional radiation of the people around it as pleasant for itself as possible.
Except when its professional duties exposed it to pain and violent emotion in a patient, or it wanted to help a friend.
Just before Prilicla began its report Conway said, “I’m not sure myself what exactly it is I’m looking for, Doctor. But if you can remember anything unusual about Mannon’s actions or emotions, or those of his staff …”
With its fragile body trembling with the memory of the emotional gale which had emanated from the now empty Hudlar theater two days ago, Prilicla set the scene as it had been at the beginning of the operation. The little GLNO had not taken the Hudlar physiology tape and so had not been able to view the proceedings with any degree of involvement with the patient’s condition, and the patient itself was anesthetized and scarcely radiating at all. Mannon and his staff had been concentrating on their duties with only a small part of their minds free to think or emote about anything else. And then Senior Physician Mannon had his … accident. In actual fact it was five separate and distinct accidents.
Prilicla’s body began to quiver violently and Conway said, “I … I’m sorry.”
“I know you are,” said the empath, and resumed its report.
The patient had been partially decompressed so that the operative field could be worked more effectively. There was some danger in this considering the Hudlar pulse rate and blood pressure, but Mannon himself had evolved this procedure and so was best able to weigh the risks. Since the patient was decompressed he had had to work quickly, and at first everything seemed to be going well. He had opened a flap of the flexible armor-plating which the Hudlars used for skin and had controlled the subcutaneous bleeding when the first mistake occurred, followed in quick succession by two more. Prilicla could not tell by observation that they were mistakes, even though there was considerable bleeding—it was Mannon’s emotional reactions, some of the most violent the empath had ever experienced, which told it that the surgeon had committed a serious and stupid blunder.
There were longer intervals between the two others which followed—Mannon’s work had slowed drastically, his technique resembling the first fumblings of a student rather than that of one of the most skillful surgeons in the hospital. He had become so slow that curative surgery was impossible, and he had barely time to withdraw and restore pressure before the patient’s condition deteriorated beyond the point of no return.
“ … It was very distressing,” Prilicla said, still trembling violently. “He wanted to work quickly, but the earlier mistakes had wrecked his self-confidence. He was thinking twice about doing even the simplest things, things which a surgeon of his experience would do automatically, without thinking.”
Conway was silent for a moment, thinking about the horrible situation Mannon had been in. Then he said, “Was there anything else unusual about his feelings? Or those of the theater staff?”
Prilicla hesitated, then said, “It is difficult to isolate subtle nuances of emotion when the source is emoting so … so violently. But I received the impression of … the effect is hard to describe … of something like a faint emotional echo of irregular duration …”

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