Sector General sg-5 Read online

  Conway’s presence was no longer needed, and he would be more usefully employed discussing Prilicla’s condition with O’Mara.

  As he excused himself and left, Edanelt waved a pincer it was spraying with the fast-setting plastic film favored by the Melfan medics instead of surgical gloves, but Thornastor’s four eyes were on the patient, Murchison, and two separate pieces of its equipment so that it did not see him leave.

  In the corridor Conway stopped for a moment to work out the fastest route to the Chief Psychologist’s office. The three levels above this one, he knew, were the province of the chlorine-breathing Illensans, and if he had not known that then the anticontamination warnings above the interlevel airlocks would have told him. There was no danger of contamination from the levels below since they housed the MSVK and LSVO life-forms, each of which breathed oxygen, required a gravity pull of one-quarter Earth normal, and resembled thin, tripedal storks. Below them were the water-filled wards of the Chalders and then the first of the nonmedical treatment levels where O’Mara’s department was situated.

  On the way down a couple of the Nallajim MSVK medics chirped a greeting at him and a recuperating patient narrowly missed flying into his chest before he reached the lock into the AUGL section. For that leg of the journey he had to don a lightweight suit and swim through the vast tanks where the thirty-meters long, water-breathing inhabitants of the water world of Chalderscol drifted ponderously like armorplated crocodiles in their warm, green wards. With his suit still beaded with Chalder water, he was in O’Mara’s office just twenty-three minutes later.

  Major O’Mara indicated a piece of furniture designed for the comfort of a DBLF and said sourly, “No doubt you have been too busy in your professional capacity to contact me, Doctor, so don’t waste time apologizing. Tell me about Pril-icla.”

  Conway insinuated himself carefully into the Kelgian chair and began describing the Cinrusskin’s condition, from the symptoms at onset to their intensification to the degree where complete sedation was indicated, and the relevant circumstance pertaining at the time. While he was speaking, the Chief Psychologist’s craggy features were still and his eyes, which opened into a mind so keenly analytical that it gave O’Mara what amounted to a telepathic faculty, were likewise unreadable.

  As Chief Psychologist of the Federation’s largest multien-vironment hospital, he was responsible for the mental well-being of a staff of several thousand entities belonging to more than sixty different species. Even though his Monitor Corps rank of Major did not place him high in the hospital’s Service chain of command, and anyway had been given for purely administrative reasons, there was no clear limit to O’Mara’s authority. To him the medical staff were patients, too, regardless of seniority, and an important part of his job was to ensure that the right doctor was assigned to each of the weird and often wonderful variety of patients who turned up at the hospital, and that there was no xenophobic complications on either side.

  He was also responsible for the hospital’s medical elite, the Diagnosticians. According to O’Mara himself, however, the real reason for the high level of mental stability among the diverse and often touchy medical staff was that they were all too frightened of him to risk his displeasure by going mad.

  O’Mara watched him closely until Conway had finished, then he said, “A clear, concise, and apparently accurate report, Doctor, but you are a close friend of the patient. There is the possibility of clouded judgment, exaggeration. You are not a psychologist but an e-t physician and surgeon who has apparently already decided that the case is one which should be treated by my department. You appreciate my difficulty? Please describe for me your feelings during this mission from the rescue until now. But first, are you feeling all right?”

  All that Conway could feel just then was his blood pressure rising.

  “Be as objective as possible,” O’Mara added.

  Conway took a deep breath and let it out agaJn slowly through his nose. “After our very fast response to the distress signal there was a general feeling of disappointment at the rescue of just one survivor, a survivor who was barely alive. But you’re on the wrong track, Major. The feeling was shared by everyone on the ship, I believe, but it was not strong enough to explain the Cinrusskin’s hypersensitivity. Prilicla was picking up emotional radiation of distressing intensity from crew members stationed at the other end of the ship, a distance at which emoting would normally be barely detectable. And I am given neither to maudlin sentimentality nor exaggeration of symptoms. Right at this moment 1 feel the way I usually do in this blasted office and that is—”

  “Objectively, remember,” O’Mara said dryly.

  “I was not trying to do your diagnostic work for you,” Conway went on, bringing his voice back to a conversational level, “but the indications are that there is a psychological Problem. The result, perhaps, of an as yet unidentified disease, or organic malfunction or an imbalance in the endocrine system. But a purely psychological reason for the condition is also a Possibility which—”

  “Anything is possible. Doctor,” O’Mara broke in impatiently. “Be specific. What are you going to do about your friend, and what exactly do you want me to do about it?”

  “Two things,” Conway said. “I want you to check on Pril-icla’s condition yourself—”

  “Which you know I will do anyway,” O’Mara said.

  “—and give me the GLNO physiology tape,” he went on, “so that I can confirm or eliminate the nonpsychological reasons for the trouble.”

  For a moment O’Mara was silent. His face remained as expressionless as a lump of basalt, but the eyes showed concern. “You’ve carried Educator tapes before now and know what to expect. But the GLNO tape is … different. You will feel Jike a very unhappy Cinrusskin indeed. You are no Diagnostician, Conway — at least, not yet. Better think about it.”

  The physiology tapes, Conway knew from personal experience, fell somewhere between the categories of mixed blessing and necessary evil. While skill in e-t surgery came with aptitude, training, and experience, no single being could hope to hold in its brain the vast quantity of physiological data needed for the treatment of the variety of patients encountered in a hospital like Sector General. The incredible mass of clinical and anatomical information needed to take care of them had therefore to be furnished, usually on a temporary basis, by means of the Educator tapes, which were the brain recordings of the great medical specialists belonging to the species concerned. If an Earth-human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient, he took one of the Kelgian physiologytapes until treatment was completed, after which he had it erased. But for the medic concerned, whether the tape was being carried for as long as it took to perform an other-species operation or for a teaching project lasting several months, the experience was not a pleasant one.

  The only good thing about it from the medic’s point of view was that he was much better off than one of the Diagnosticians.

  They were the hospital’s elite. A Diagnostician was one of those rare entities whose mind had proved itself stable enough to retain up to ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To their data-crammed minds was given the work of original research in xenological medicine and the diagnosis and treatment of

  disease and injury in hitherto unknown life-forms. There was a saying current in the hospital, reputed to have originated with O’Mara himself, that anyone sane enough 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 mind as well. In effect, a Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to a form of multiple schizophrenia, with the alien personalities sharing its mind so utterly different that in many cases they did not have even a system of logic in common. And all too frequently the foremost medical authorities of a planet, despite their eminence in the field of healing, were very bad-tempered, aggressive, and unpleasant people indeed.

 
Such would not be the case with the GLNO tape, Conway knew, because Cinrusskins were the most timid, friendly, and likable beings imaginable.

  “I’ve thought about it,” Conway said.

  O’Mara nodded and spoke into his desk set. “Carrington? Senior Physician Conway is approved for the GLNO tape, with compulsory postimpression sedation of one hour. I’ll be in Emergency Admissions on Level One Six Three—” he grinned suddenly at Conway “—trying not to tell the medics their business.”

  Conway woke to see a large, pink balloon of a face hanging °yer him. Instinctively he tried to scramble up the wall beside “is couch in case the enormous, heavily muscled body sup-Porting the face fell and crushed the life out of him. Then suddenly there was a mental shift in perspective as the features registered concern and withdrew and the slim, Earth-human body in Monitor Corps green straightened up.

  Lieutenant Carrington, one of O’Mara’s assistants, said, Easy, Doctor. Sit up slowly, then stand. Concentrate on put-big your two feet onto the floor and don’t worry because they aren’t a Cinrusskin’s six.”

  He made good time back to 163 in spite of having to walk a large number of beings who were much smaller than just because the Cinrusskin component of his mind that they were big and dangerous. From Murchison he learned that O’Mara was in Prilicla’s ward, having first called in to the OR to discuss the EGCL’s basic physiology and probable environmental and evolutionary influence with Thorn-nastor and Edanelt, both of whom had been too busy to speak to him.

  They would not speak to Con way, either, and he could see why. The operation on the EGCL had become an emergency with an unknown but probably extremely short time limit.

  When the splinters of depressed carapace had been removed from the brain over an hour earlier, Murchison explained quietly between rumbled instructions from Thomnastor, there had been a sudden and surprising deterioration in the EGCL’s condition. The change had been detected by Prilicla who, because of its condition, had been excluded from any part of the operation. But the Cinrusskin had continued to act like a doctor by making use of its abnormally heightened emotion-detection faculty. Prilicla had pulled rank to send Ward Seven’s duty nurse to the operating theater with its empathic findings and a diffident suggestion that if they were to relay the operational proceedings to Seven’s viewscreen, it would be able to assist them.

  The cause of the deterioration was a number of large blood vessels in the cerebral area which had ruptured when the pressure from the depressed fracture had been removed. Trie two surgeons had been forced to accede to Prilicla’s request” because, without the empath’s monitoring of the patient’s level of consciousness, they had no way of knowing whether the delicate, dangerous, and perforce hurried repair work in the cerebral area was having a good or bad effect — if any.

  “Prognosis?” Conway murmured. But before Murchison could reply, one of Thornnastor’s eyes curled backward over its head to glare down at him.

  “If this patient does not succumb to a massive cerebral hemorrhage within the next thirty minutes,” the Diagnostician said crossly, “it is probable that it will perish, in time, from the degenerative diseases associated with extreme old age. No* stop distracting my assistant, Conway, and tend to your own patient.”

  On the way to Seven Conway wondered briefly how the empath’s emotion sensitivity could detect the unconscious level of emoting of the EGCL without the signals beings swamped by the emotional radiation of dozens of fully conscious entities in the area. Maybe Prilicla’s recent hypersensitivity was responsible, but there was a niggling doubt at the back of his mind which suggested that there was another reason.

  O’Mara was still in the ward, steadying himself in the close to zero-gravity conditions with a hand on an equipment rack while he and Prilicla watched thescene in the operating theater.

  “Conway, stop that!” O’Mara said sharply.

  He had tried not to react when he had seen the empath’s condition. But half his mind belonged to a Cinrusskin, a member of a species acknowledged to be the most sensitive and sympathetic intelligent life-form known to the Federation who was regarding a brother in extreme distress while the Earth-human half was feeling for a friend in the same condition, and it was difficult to be cool and clinical for both of them.

  “I’m sorry,” he said inadequately.

  “I know you are, friend Conway,” Prilicla said, turning toward him. “You should not have taken that tape.”

  “He was warned,” O’Mara said gruffly, but his expression showed concern.

  Conway was a member of an empathic race. All the memories and experience of his GLNO life were those of a normally healthy and happy empath, but now he was no longer an empath. He could see, hear, and touch Prilicla, but the faculty was missing which enabled him to share the other’s emotions and which subtly colored every word, gesture, and expression so that for two Cinrusskins to be within visual range was unalloyed pleasure for both. He could remember experiencing empathic contact, remember having the ability all his life, but now he was little more than a deaf-mute. What he was feeling from Prilicla so strongly was a product of his imagination: It was sympathy, not empathy.

  His human brain did not possess the empathic faculty, and it was not bestowed by filling his mind with memories of having had it. But there were other memories as well, covering a lifetime’s experience of Cinrusskin clinical physiology, and these he could, use.

  “If you don’t mind, Doctor Prilicla,” Conway said with cool formality, “I would like to examine you.”

  “Of course, friend Conway.” Prilicla’s uncontrollable shaking had diminished to a steady, continuous trembling, an indication that Conway’s emotional radiation was under control. “There are more symptoms, Doctor, which are causing severe discomfort.”

  “I can see that,” Conway said as he gently moved aside one of the incredibly fragile wings to place his scanner against the empath’s thorax. “Describe them, please.”

  In the two hours since Conway had last seen it, Prilicla had changed in ways which were individually subtle but cumulatively marked. There was a strange lack of animation and concentration in the large, triple-lidded eyes; the delicate structure which supported the wing membranes had softened and warped sothat the translucent and iridescent membrane had fallen into unsightly folds and wrinkles; its four tiny, wonderfully precise manipulators, which should one day make it one of the finest surgeons in the hospital, were quivering in spite of being gripped tightly together, and the overall aspect was of a GLNO who was old and grievously ill.

  While Conway continued the examination, the Cinrusskin part of his mind shared his bafflement at the findings and described symptoms. They were both sure, and in this their agreement was based on the GLNO tape donor’s personal experience and Conway’s knowledge acquired over many years in Sector General, that Prilicla was close to death.

  The empath’s trembling increased sharply, then diminished as Conway once again forced a feeling of clinical detachment on himself. He said calmly, “There is no evidence of deformation, obstruction, lesion, or infection which might cause the symptoms you describe. Neither can I see any cause for the respiratory difficulty you are experiencing. Some degree of empathic hypersensitivity occurs in adolescents of your specie5' my Cinrusskin alter ego tells me, but in nothing like the in* tensity you describe. It is possible, I suppose, that there is a nonpathogenic and nontoxic involvement with the central nervous system.”

  “You think it’s psychosomatic?” O’Mara said harshly, i3"3” bing a finger toward Prilicla. “This?”

  “I would like to eliminate that possibility,” Conway repljf” calmly. To Prilicla, he said, “If you don’t mind I would & to discuss your case with Major O’Mara outside.”

  “Of course, friend Conway,” the empath said. The constant trembling seemed as if it would shake the fragile body apart. “But please have that Cinrusskin tape erased as quickly as possible. Your heightened levels of concern and sympathy are helping neither of us
. And consider, friend Conway, your tape was donated by a great Cinrusskin medical authority of the past. In all modesty, I can say that, before coming to Sector General and in preparation for my work here, I had reached a similar degree of eminence in the field.

  'There is nothing in the clinical history of our species which even approximates this condition,” it went on, “and absolutely no precedent for the symptomology. Regarding the possibility of a nonphysical basis for the condition, I cannot, of course, be completely objective about this. But I have always been a happy and well-adjusted person with no mental aberrations in childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. Friend O’Mara has my psych file and will confirm this. My hope is that these peculiar symptoms were so sudden in onset that their recession will be equally rapid.”

  “Perhaps Thomnastor could—” Conway began.

  “The thought of that — that behemoth approaching me with investigative intent would cause me to terminate at once. And Thomnastor is busy — Friend Edanelt, be careful!”

  Prilicla had switched its attention suddenly to the view-screen. It went on,"Pressure, even temporary pressure in that area causes a marked decrease in the EGCL’s unconscious emoting. I suggest you approach that nerve bundle anteriorly hrough the opening in the …”

  Conway missed the rest of it because O’Mara had gripped his arm and pulled him carefully out of the low-gravity com-partment.

  That was very good advice,” the Chief Psychologist said ner they were some distance from Prilicla’s ward. “Let’s erase that tape, Doctor, and discuss our little friend’s problem on the way to my office.”