Sector General Omnibus 2 - Alien Emergencies (66 page)

“Don’t sit there gaping at me,” O’Mara said. “I’m sure you can find something else to do.”

It was an unusual meeting for Conway in that he was the only medic present—the others were exclusively Monitor Corps officers charged with the responsibilities for various aspects of hospital maintenance and supply, and Major Fletcher, the Captain of the
Rhabwar
. It was doubly unusual in that Conway, wearing his gold-edged acting Diagnostician’s armband with a nonchalance he did not feel, was solely and completely himself.

There were no Educator tapes which could help him with this problem, only the experience of Major Fletcher and himself.

“The initial requirement,” he began formally, “is for accommodation, food supply, and treatment facilities for a gravid FSOJ life-form better known to some of us as one of the Protectors of the Unborn. It is an extremely dangerous being, nonintelligent in the adult stage, which on its home planet is continuously under attack from the time it is born until it dies, usually at the tentacles and teeth of its last-born. Captain, if you please…”

Fletcher tapped buttons on his console, and the briefing screen lit with the picture of an adult Protector taken during one of
Rhabwar
’s rescue missions, followed by material on other FSOJs collected on their home world. But it was the way that the Protector’s snapping teeth and flailing tentacles warped and dented the ambulance ship’s internal plating which caused the watchers to grunt in disbelief.

“As you can see,” Conway resumed, “the FSOJ is a large, immensely strong, oxygen-breathing life-form with a slitted carapace
from which protrude those four heavy tentacles and a tail and head. The tentacles and tail have large, osseous terminations resembling organic spiked clubs, and the principal features of the head are the recessed and heavily protected eyes, and the jaws. You will also note that the four stubby legs which project from the underside of the carapace possess bony spurs which make these limbs additional weapons of offense. On their planet of origin all of these weapons are needed.

“Their young remain in the womb until physical development is sufficiently advanced for them to survive birth into their incredibly savage environment, and during the embryo stage they are telepathic. But this aspect of the problem is not in your area.

“Constant and savage conflict is such a vital part of their lives,” Conway went on, “that they sicken and die without it. For that reason the preparation of accommodation for this life-form will be much more difficult than any you have been asked to provide hitherto. The compartment will have to be structurally robust. Captain Fletcher, here, will be able to give you information on the beastie’s physical strength and degree of mobility, and if he sounds as if he is exaggerating, believe me, he is not. The cargo chamber on
Rhabwar
had to be completely rebuilt after the FSOJ had been confined in it during an eleven-hour trip to the hospital.”

“My tibia needed repairing, too,” Fletcher said dryly.

Before Conway could go on there was another interruption. Colonel Hardin, who was the hospital’s Dietician-in-Chief, said, “I get the impression that your FSOJ fights and eats its food, Doctor. Now, you must be aware of the rule here that live food is never provided, only synthesized animal tissue or imported vegetation if the synthesizers can’t handle it. Some of the food animals used in the Federation bear a close resemblance to other sentient Galactic citizens, many of whom find the eating of nonvegetable matter repugnant and—”

“No problem, Colonel,” Conway broke in. “The FSOJ will eat anything. Your biggest headache will be the accommodation, which is going to resemble more closely a medieval torture chamber than a hospital ward.”

“Are we to be given information regarding the purpose of this project?” asked an officer whom Conway had not seen before. He
wore the yellow tabs of a maintenance specialist and the insignia of a major. He smiled as he went on. “It would help guide us in the initial design work, as well as satisfying our curiosity.”

“The work is not secret,” Conway replied, “and the only reason I would not like it to be discussed widely is that we may fall short of our expectations. This, considering the fact that I have been given charge of the project, could cause personal embarrassment, no more than that.

“Continuous conception takes place within every member of this species,” he went on briskly, “and the intention is to closely study this process with the ultimate aim of inhibiting the effects of the mechanism which destroys the sentient and telepathic portion of the embryo’s brain prior to its birth. If a newly born Protector retained its sentience and telepathic faculty, it could in time communicate with its own Unborn and, hopefully, establish a bond which would make it impossible for them to harm each other. We will also be trying to gradually reduce the violence of the environmental beating they take and stimulate, medically rather than physically, the release of the complex secretions which are triggered by this activity. That way they should gradually get out of the habit of trying to kill and eat everything they see. Also, the answers we find must enable the FSOJs to continue to survive on their frightful planet, and help them escape from the evolutionary trap which has rendered impossible any chance of the species’ developing a civilized culture.”

They have a lot in common with the Gogleskans
, he thought. Smiling, he added, “But this is one of my problems. Another is making sure that you fully understand yours.”

There followed a long and at times overheated discussion at the end of which they understood all of the problems—including the need for urgency. Their captive Protector could not be held indefinitely in the old Tralthan Observation Ward on Level 202 with a couple of FROB maintenance engineers taking turns at beating it with metal bars. The two Hudlars, despite their immense strength and fearsome aspect, were kindly souls, and the work—in spite of constant reassurances that the activity was necessary for the Protector’s well-being—was causing them serious psychological discomfort.

Everybody had problems, Conway thought. But his own most immediate one, hunger, was easily solved.

He had timed his visit to the dining hall to coincide with the meal schedule of
Rhabwar
’s medical team, primarily to see Murchison, and he found Prilicla, Naydrad, and Danalta with her at a table designed for Melfan ELNTs. The pathologist did not speak until he had finished tapping out his food selection, an enormous steak with double the usual accessories.

“Obviously you are still yourself,” she said, looking enviously at his plate, “or your alter egos are nonvegetarian. Synthetics are still fattening, you know. Why is it you don’t grow an abdomen like a pregnant Crepellian?”

“It’s my psychological approach to eating which is responsible,” Conway said with a grin as he initiated major surgery on the steak. “Food is simply a fuel which has to be burned up. It must be obvious to you all that I am not enjoying this.”

Naydrad made an untranslatable Kelgian noise and continued eating. Prilicla maintained its stable hover above the table without comment, and Danalta was in the process of growing a pair of Melfan manipulators while the rest of its body resembled a lumpy green pyramid with a single eye on top.

“I’m still myself,” he said to Murchison, “with just a shade of Gogleskan FOKT. I’ve been given the Protector case, among others, and that is what I wanted to talk to you about. Temporarily I’m an acting Diagnostician, with full responsibility and authority regarding treatment, and may call on any assistance I require. I do need help, badly, but I don’t know exactly what kind as yet. Neither do I want to pester other Diagnosticians, even politely, and certainly not the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology. So I shall have to be devious and approach Thornnastor through you, its chief assistant, to get the sort of advice I need.”

Murchison watched his refueling operation for a moment without speaking, then she said seriously, “You don’t have to be circumspect with Thornnastor, you know. It badly wants to be involved in the Protector case, and would have been placed in charge if it hadn’t been for the fact that you were the Senior with firsthand experience of the beastie, and you were already being considered for Diagnos
tician status. Thorny will be happy to assist you in every way possible.

“In fact, if you don’t ask for its help,” she ended, smiling, “our Chief of Pathology will walk all over you with its six outsize feet.”

“I, too, would like to assist you, friend Conway,” Prilicla joined in. “But considering the massive musculature of the patient, my cooperation will not be close.”

“And I,” Danalta said.

“And I,” Naydrad said, looking up from the green mess which its Kelgian taste buds were finding so delectable, “will continue doing as I’m told.”

Conway laughed. “Thank you, friends.” To Murchison, he said, “I’ll go back to Pathology with you and talk to Thornnastor. And I’m not proud. If I were to mention the Gogleskan problem, and the FROB geriatrics, and the other odds and ends which—”

“Thornnastor,” Murchison said firmly, “likes to know, and stick its outsize olfactory sensor into everything.”

He felt much better after the meeting with the Chief of Pathology which, because the Tralthan’s waking and sleeping cycle was much longer than that of an Earth-human, took the remainder of his duty period. Thornnastor was the biggest gossip in the hospital; it just could not keep any of its mouths shut, but its information on virtually every aspect of extraterrestrial pathology, as well as in many areas not considered to be within its specialty, was completely dependable.

Thornnastor wanted to know everything, and it was certainly not reticent, about anything.

“As you are already aware, Conway,” it said ponderously as he was about to leave, “we Diagnosticians are generally held in high regard among the members of our profession, and the respect shown us, insofar as it can be shown in a madhouse like this, is tempered by pity for the psychological discomfort we experience, and an almost lighthearted acceptance of the medical miracles we produce.

“We are Diagnosticians and, as such, medical miracles are expected of us,” the Tralthan went on. “But the production of true medical miracles, or radical surgical procedures, or the successful culmination of a line of xenobiological research, can be personally unsatisfying to certain types of doctor. I refer to those practitioners
who, although able and intelligent and highly dedicated to their art, require a fair apportionment of credit for the work they do.”

Conway swallowed. He had never before heard the Diagnostician-in-Chief of Pathology talk to him like this, and the words would have been more suited to a lecture on his personal shortcomings from the Chief Psychologist. Was Thornnastor, knowing of his fondness for reaching solutions and initiating treatments with the minimum of consultation, suggesting that he was a grandstander and was therefore unsuitable material for a Diagnostician? But apparently not.

“As a Diagnostician one rarely obtains complete satisfaction from producing good work,” the Tralthan went on, “because one can never be wholly sure that the work performed or the ideas originated are one’s own. Admittedly the Educator tapes furnish other-species memory records only, but purely imaginary personality involvement with the tape donor leaves one feeling that any credit due for new work should be shared. If the doctor concerned is in possession of three, five, perhaps ten, Educator tapes, well, the credit is spread very thinly.”

“But nobody in the hospital,” Conway protested, “would dream of withholding the credit due a Diagnostician who had—”

“Of course not,” Thornnastor broke in. “But it is the Diagnostician itself who withholds the credit, not its colleagues. Unnecessarily, of course, but that is one of the personal problems of being a Diagnostician. There are others, for the circumvention of which you will have to devise your own methods.”

All four of the Tralthan’s eyes had turned to regard Conway, a rare occurrence and proof that Thornnastor’s vast mind was concentrating exclusively on his particular case. Conway laughed nervously.

“Then it is high time I visited O’Mara to take a few of those tapes,” he said, “so that I will have a better idea of what my problems will be. I think initially a Hudlar tape, then a Melf and a Kelgian. When I’m accustomed, if I ever become accustomed to them, I’ll request some of the more exotic…”

“Some of the mental stratagems used by my colleagues,” Thornnastor continued ponderously, ignoring the interruption, “are such that they might conceivably tell their life-mates about them, but
certainly no person with a lesser relationship. In spite of my overwhelming curiosity regarding these matters, they have not confided in me, and the Chief Psychologist will not open its files.”

Two of its eyes curved away to regard Murchison and it went on. “A few hours’ or even days’ delay in taking the tapes is not important. Pathologist Murchison is free to go, and I suggest that you take full advantage of each other while you are still able to do so without otherspecies psychological complications.”

As they were leaving, Thornnastor added, “It is the Earth-human taped component of my mind which has suggested this…”

“The theory is that if you are to accustom yourself to the confusion of alien thought patterns,” O’Mara growled at him as Conway was still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, “it is better in the long run to confuse you a lot rather than a little at a time. You have been given the tapes during four hours of light sedation, during which you snored like a demented Hudlar, and you are now a five-way rugged individualist.

“If you have problems,” the Chief Psychologist went on, “I don’t want to know about them until you’re absolutely sure they’re insoluble. Be careful how you go and don’t trip over your own feet. In spite of what your alter egos tell you to the contrary, you only have two of them.”

The corridor outside O’Mara’s office was one of the busiest in the hospital, with medical and maintenance staff belonging to a large variety of physiological classifications walking, crawling, wriggling, or driving past in both directions. Seeing his Diagnostician’s armband and realizing, rightly in his case, that a certain amount of mental confusion and physical uncoordination might be present, they gave him as wide a berth as possible. Even the TLTU inside a pressure sphere mounted on heavy caterpillar treads passed him with more than a meter to spare.

A few seconds later a Tralthan Senior he knew passed by, but the big FGLI was not known to Conway’s other selves, so his reaction time was slowed. When he swiveled his head to return the Tralthan’s greeting, he was overcome suddenly by vertigo, because
the Hudlar and Melf components of his mind were of beings whose heads did not swivel. Instinctively he reached toward the corridor wall to steady himself. But instead of a hard, tapering Hudlar tentacle or a shiny black Melfan pincer, the member supporting him was a flaccid pink object with five lumpy digits. By the time he had steadied himself both physically and mentally, he had become aware of an Earth-human DBDG in Monitor green waiting patiently to be noticed.

“You were looking for me, Lieutenant?” Conway asked.

“For the past couple of hours, Doctor,” the officer replied. “But you were with the Chief Psychologist on a taping session and could not be disturbed.”

Conway nodded. “What’s the trouble?”

“Problems with the Protector,” the Lieutenant said, and went on quickly. “The Exercise Room—that’s what we’re calling it now even though it still looks like a torture chamber—is underpowered. Tapping into the main power line for the section would necessitate going through four levels, only one of which is inhabited by warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. The structural alterations in the other three areas would be very time-consuming because of our having to guard against atmosphere contamination, especially where the Illensan chlorine-breathers are concerned. The answer would be a small power source sited within the Exercise Room. But if the Protector broke free, the shielding around the power unit might not survive, and if the shielding went, the radiation hazard would necessitate five levels’—above and below the area—being evacuated, and a lot more time would be wasted cleaning the—”

“The room is close to the outer hull,” Conway said, feeling that a lot of time was being wasted right now by asking a medical man’s advice on purely technical questions, and fairly simple ones at that. “Surely you can set up a small reactor on the outer hull, safe from the Protector, and run a line into—”

“That was the answer I came up with, too,” the Lieutenant broke in, “but it gave rise to other problems, administrative rather than technical. There are regulations regarding what structures can and cannot be placed on the outer hull, and a reactor there, where one had never been before, might necessitate alterations in the hospital’s
external traffic flow patterns. In short, there is a major tangle of red tape which I can unravel given time, and if I asked all of the people concerned nicely and in triplicate. But you, Doctor, considering the urgency of your project, could
tell
them what you need.”

Conway was silent for a moment. He was remembering one of the Chief Psychologist’s remarks prior to the taping session and just before the sedation had taken effect. O’Mara had smiled sourly and said, “You have the rank now, Conway, even though it may turn out to be temporary. Go out and use it, or even abuse it. Just let me see you doing something with it.”

Striving to make his tone that of a Diagnostician to whom nobody in the hospital would say no, Conway said, “I understand, Lieutenant. I’m on my way to Hudlar Geriatric, but I’ll deal with it at the first communicator I pass. You have another problem?”

“Of course I have problems,” the Lieutenant replied. “Every time you bring a new patient to the hospital, the whole maintenance division grows ulcers! Levitating brontosaurs, Drambon rollers, and now a patient who hasn’t even been born yet inside a…a berserker!”

Conway looked at the other in surprise. Usually the Monitor Corps officers were faultless in matters of discipline and respect toward their superiors, whether military or medical. Dryly, he said, “We can treat ulcers.”

“My apologies, Doctor,” the other said stiffly. “I’ve been in charge of a squad of Kelgians for the past two years, and I’ve forgotten how to be polite.”

“I see.” Conway laughed. Since he was carrying a Kelgian tape himself right then, the Lieutenant had his sympathy. “That problem I cannot help you with. Are there others?”

“Oh, yes,” the other replied. “They are insoluble, but minor. The two Hudlars are still objecting to their continuous beating of the Protector. I asked O’Mara if he could find someone else for the job, someone who would suffer less mental distress while carrying it out. O’Mara told me that if such a person had escaped his screening and was currently working in the hospital, he would resign forthwith. So I’m stuck with the Hudlars, and their damn music, until the new accommodation is ready.

“They insist that it helps keep their minds off what they’re doing, but have you ever had to listen to Hudlar music, continuously, day after day?”

Conway admitted that he had not had that experience, that a few minutes of it had been more than enough for him.

They had arrived at the interlevel lock, and he began climbing into one of the lightweight suits for the journey through the foggy yellow levels of the Illensan chlorine-breathers and the water-filled wards of the aquatic denizens of Chalderescol which lay between him and the Hudlar wards. He double-checked all the fastenings and reread the checklist, even though he had donned such pieces of hospital equipment thousands of times and could do it with his eyes shut. But he was not entirely himself just then, and the regulations stated that all medical personnel carrying Educator tapes, and as a consequence laboring under a degree of mental confusion, must use the checklist with their eyes wide open.

The Lieutenant was still standing patiently beside him. Conway said, “There’s more?”

The officer nodded. “A fairly easy one, Doctor. Hardin, the Dietician-in-Chief, is asking about the consistency of the Protector’s food. He says he can reproduce a synthetic mush tailored to fit its dietary requirements in all respects, but that there is a psychological aspect to the ingestion of food which may be important to the overall well-being of this particular patient. You had a brief telepathic contact with one of them and so have firsthand information on the subject. He would like advice.”

“I’ll talk to him later,” Conway said, pausing before pulling the helmet over his head. “But in the meantime you can tell him that it rarely eats vegetation, and the food that it does eat is usually wrapped in a thick hide or exoskeleton and is fighting back. I suggest that he encases the food in long, hollow tubes with edible walls. The tubes can be incorporated into the exercise machinery and used to beat the patient in the interests of greater environmental realism. Its mandibles are capable of denting steel plating, and Hardin is right. It would not be happy eating the equivalent of thin, milky cereal.”

He laughed again and added, “We wouldn’t want to risk rotting its teeth.”

The Hudlar Geriatric Ward was a comparatively new addition to Sector General’s facilities, and it was the closest the hospital came to providing treatment for psychologically disturbed patients, and even then the treatment was available to only a statistically chosen few. This was because the solution to the problem, if one could be found, would have to be put into effect on a planet-wide scale on Hudlar itself.

The ward’s artificial gravity had been set at the Hudlar normal of nearly four Earth-Gs, and the atmospheric pressure was a compromise which caused the minimum of inconvenience to both patients and nursing staff. There were three Kelgian nurses on duty, their fur twitching restlessly under their lightweight suits and gravity neutralizer harnesses as they sprayed nutrient paint onto three of the five patients. Conway buckled on a G-neutralizer suited to his Earth-human mass, signaled that he did not require a nurse to attend him, and moved toward the nearest unoccupied patient.

Immediately the Hudlarian component of his mind came surging up, almost obliterating the Melfan, Tralthan, Kelgian, and Gogleskan material and threatening to engulf Conway’s own mind in a great wave of pity and helpless anger at the patient’s condition.

“How are you today?” Conway asked ritually.

“Fine, thank you, Doctor,” the patient replied, as he knew it would. Like the majority of other life-forms possessing immense strength, the Hudlarian FROBs were a gentle, inoffensive, and self-effacing race, none of whom would dream of suggesting that his medical ability was somehow lacking by saying that it was
not
well.

It was immediately obvious that the aging Hudlar was not at all well. Its six great tentacles, which normally supported its heavy trunk in an upright position for the whole of its waking and sleeping life, and which served as both manipulatory and ambulatory appendages, hung limply over the sides of its supporting cradle. The hard patches of callus, the knuckles on which it walked while its digits were curled inward to protect them against contact with the ground, were discolored and cracking. The digits themselves, usually so strong, rock-steady, and precise in their movements, were twitching continually into spasm.

The Hudlars lived in a heavy-gravity, high-pressure environment whose superdense air teemed with so much airborne vegetable and
microanimal life-forms that it resembled a thick soup, which the inhabitants absorbed directly through the tegument of the back and flanks. But the absorption mechanism of the patient had begun to fail, so large areas of the skin were caked with discolored nutrient paint which would have to be washed off before the next meal could be sprayed on. But the condition was worsening, the patient’s ability to absorb nourishment was diminishing, and that, in turn, was accelerating the deterioration in the skin condition.

Chemical changes caused by the incomplete absorption process caused the residual nutrient to smell. But even worse was the odor from the waste elimination area, no longer under voluntary control, whose discharge formed like milky perspiration on the patient’s underside before dripping into the cradle’s suction pan. Conway could not really smell anything at all, because his suit had its own air supply. But the FROB personality sharing his mind had experienced this situation many times in its life, and psychosomatic smells were, if anything, worse than the real kind.

The patient’s mind was still clear, however, and there would be no physical deterioration in the brain structure until a few minutes after its double heart stopped beating, and therein lay the real tragedy. Rare indeed was the Hudlar mind that could remain stable inside a great body which was disintegrating painfully all around it, especially when the mind was fully and intensely aware of the process.

Hopelessly he searched for an answer, going through the material on gereology available at the time his tapes were donated as well as the painful data associated with his own childhood memories and subsequent medical experience. But there was no answer to be found anywhere in his multiple mind, and the consensus of all of them was that he should increase the dosage of painkilling medication so as to make the patient as comfortable as possible.

While he made the addition to the treatment chart, the Hudlar’s speaking membrane vibrated stiffly, but that organ, too, was deteriorating, and this time the sounds it made were too distorted for his translator to make any sense of them. He murmured reassurances, which they both knew to be empty, and moved to the next cradle.

Its condition was fractionally better than the previous one, and
its conversation with him was animated and covered every subject under the Hudlar sun except what ailed it. Conway was not fooled, much less his Hudlarian alter ego, and he knew that this particular FROB was enjoying—although that was scarcely the right word in these circumstances—its last few hours of sanity. The next two patients did not speak to him at all, and the last one was loudly articulate but no longer sane.

Its speaking membrane was vibrating continually inside the wide, cylindrical muffler which had been attached to reduce both the sound and the mental discomfort of those within earshot, but enough was escaping to make Conway feel very uncomfortable indeed. It was in poor physical shape as well. In addition to the breakdown of the absorption system over a large area of the body surface, the incontinence, and the marked deterioration evident in all of the limb extremities, two of the tentacles had lost mobility and resembled nothing so much as a couple of withered tree-trunks.

“Those limbs require urgent surgical attention, Doctor,” the nurse engaged in spraying the patient with nutrient said, having first turned off its translator. In the forthright manner of all Kelgians it added, “Amputation is indicated to prolong the patient’s life, if that is considered desirable.”

In ordinary circumstances the prolongation of the patient’s life was desirable and, in fact, was the prime consideration, and his mind was being flooded with information and suggestions for treating the equivalent condition in Melfans, Kelgians, Tralthans, and Earth-humans. But to the physiological classification FROB the very concept of curative medicine had been unknown until the discovery of Hudlar by the Federation, and to that species any major surgical intervention was hazardous in the extreme. On a heavy gravity, high-pressure world like Hudlar, the internal pressure and metabolic rate of its dominant life-form had to be correspondingly high.