Sector General Omnibus 3 - General Practice (21 page)

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Authors: James White

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This was not going nearly as well as the remembered case in the Tralthan maternity ward had gone, and there was no consolation in telling herself that, in this instance, the life-form was strange and the operating facilities virtually non-existent. Khone’s mind was no longer sending or receiving impressions, so that she could not even make the Last Apology to it for her failure.
“Please do not distress yourself, friend Cha,” the Cinrusskin went on, beginning to tremble violently. “No blame can be attached to you
for attempting a task that, because of the peculiar circumstances, none of us were able to do. Your present emotional radiation is worrying me. Remember, you aren’t even a member of the medical team, you have no authority, and the responsibility for allowing you to try this procedure is not yours … You have just thought of something?”
“We both know,” Cha Thrat said, so quietly that her voice reached only Prilicla, “that I have made it my responsibility. And yes, I’ve thought of something.”
In a louder voice she went on quickly. “Naydrad, we need a rapid one-G push-pull this time, just enough to keep the fetus moving. Danalta, the muscle wall around the womb is thin, and relaxed due to the patient’s unconsciousness. Will you produce some suitable limbs and hands? Prilicla will tell you the size and shape needed, and use the scanner to direct your movements of the fetus into the proper position. Murchison, will you stand by to help withdraw it, if or when it is born?”
Apologetically she added, “I cannot assist you. For the time being it would be better if I retained the closest possible physical contact with the patient. My feeling is that, unconscious or not, it will derive a greater measure of emotional comfort from my doing so.”
“Your feeling is correct,” Prilicla said. “But time is short, friends. Let’s do it.”
While Naydrad kept the fetus twitching slowly within the womb, and Danalta, using appendages whose shape and movements would give Cha Thrat bad dreams for many nights to come, tried to press and turn it into optimum position, she tried desperately to get through to her deeply unconscious mind-partner.
You will be all right. Your child will be all right. Hang on, please don’t die on me!
It was like thinking into a black and bottomless pit. For an instant she thought there was a flicker of awareness, but it was probably that the feeling had come because she wanted it to be so. She turned her head slightly, so as not to break contact with the long, silvery tendrils, and wished that she was in a position to see the scanner display.
“It’s in optimum position now,” Prilicla said suddenly. “Danalta,
move your hands lower. Be ready to press when I tell you if the fetus starts turning again. Naydrad, two Gs steady, down!”
For a moment there was silence except for the whistling of the distorters, which now seemed to be wavering in intensity as they labored like the patient, on reduced power, to perform their function. Time was running out for both of them. Everyone’s attention was on Khone, and even Prilicla was watching the scanner display too intently to describe what it was seeing.
“I see the head!” Murchison said suddenly. “The top of the head only. But the contractions are too weak, they aren’t helping very much. The legs are at maximum spread, but the fetal head is moving down, then back again, by a fraction of an inch with each contraction. Shall I try surgical enlargement of the—”
“No surgery,” Cha Thrat said firmly. Even if the patient survived it, she had shared Khone’s mind and knew that serious psychological damage would result from the inflicting of a surgical wound—not to mention the aftermath when close physical contact would be necessary to provide treatment and change dressings—on one whose species was virtually untouchable. The brief physical and mental contact with Conway and Cha Thrat had knocked a large hole in Khone’s Gogleskan conditioning, but psychologically it was still a strong and very rigid structure.
But there was no time to explain her feeling or argue her point of view. Murchison had straightened up and was looking questioningly at Prilicla, who shook in the emotional winds blowing from all sides but said nothing.
“It would be better if we tried to assist the natural process,” Cha Thrat went on. “Naydrad, I want alternating positive and reverse gravity again, this time between zero and three Gs down, initially for the next five contractions. And watch out for major displacement of other organs. This species has never been subjected to increased G forces—”
“I see the whole head now!” Murchison broke in excitedly. “And shoulders. Dammit, I’ve
got
the wee bugger!”
“Naydrad,” Cha Thrat said quickly, “maintain three Gs down for a
moment until the afterbirth is out, then return to normal gravity conditions. Murchison, place the newborn between the digital clusters just to the left of my head. My feeling is that Khone will derive greater reassurance from holding on to its little one than from me holding on to its parent.”
She watched as Khone’s digits curled instinctively around the tiny form, which looked to the Sommaradvan part of her mind like a slimy, twitching little horror and which the Gogleskan portion insisted was a thing of indescribable beauty. Reluctantly she lifted her head from Khone’s and released her grip on its fur.
“Your feeling is accurate, Cha Thrat,” Prilicla said, “The patient, although still unconscious, is already emoting more strongly.”
“But wait,” Murchison said worriedly. “We were told that it must be conscious if it was to take care of the newborn properly. We’ve no idea what …”
She broke off because Cha Thrat, who now knew everything that the Gogleskan healer had known, was busily doing all that was necessary. It was contrary to her Sommaradvan upbringing to tell a deliberate lie, but the situation was fraught with all sorts of interpersonal difficulties and was too complicated for her to take the time needed to tell the truth.
Instead, Cha Thrat waited until the umbilical had been neatly severed and sealed off and the patient’s lower limbs disposed more comfortably, then said smoothly, “There are a number of physiological similarities between the FOKT life-form and my own and, in any case, we females have certain instincts in these matters.”
The Earth-human shook its head doubtfully and said, “Your female instincts are a lot stronger, and more precisely directed, than mine.”
“Friend Murchison,” Prilicla said, its voice sounding loud because all but two of the distorters had ceased their whistling, “let us discuss female instincts at a more convenient time. Friend Naydrad, replace the litter canopy, turn up the internal heating three points, and maintain a pure oxygen atmosphere and watch out for signs of delayed shock. The emotional radiation indicates a condition of grave debility, but it is
stable, there is no immediate danger, and circulation and mobility are returning to the lower limbs. We will all feel better, and especially the patient, when it has the ship’s intensive-care equipment looking after it. Please move quickly.
“All except Cha Thrat,” it added gently. “With you, my Sommaradvan friend, I would like private words.”
Driven by Naydrad and with Danalta and Wainright flanking it, the litter was already moving off. But Pathologist Murchison was hanging back, its face deep pink and wearing an expression that Cha Thrat could now read and understand.
“Don’t be
too
hard on it, Prilicla,” Murchison said. “I think it did a very good job, even if it is inclined to forget who’s in charge at times. I mean, well, let’s just say that with Cha Thrat, Maintenance Department’s gain was the medical staff’s loss.”
As Murchison turned abruptly to hurry after the litter, Cha Thrat watched it from three different and confusing viewpoints and with three sets of very mixed feelings. To her Sommaradvan mind it was a small, flabby, and unlovely DBDG female. To the Gogleskan mind it was just another off-planet monster, friendly but frightening. But from her Earth-human viewpoint it was an altogether different entity, one that for many years she had known to be highly intelligent, second only to Thornnastor in its professional standing, friendly, sympathetic, fairminded, beautiful, and sexually desirable. Some of these aspects of its personality had just been demonstrated, but the sudden physical attraction Cha Thrat felt toward it, and the associated mind-pictures of horrible alien grapplings and intimacies, frightened her so badly that the Gogleskan part of her mind wanted to call for a joining.
Murchison was a female Earth-human and Cha Thrat was a female Sommaradvan. She
had
to stop feeling this stupid attraction toward a member of another species who was not even male, because in that direction lay certain madness. She remembered the discussion about Educator tapes with the wizard, O’Mara, and her own experience of sharing her mind with those of Kelgians, Tralthans, Melfans among others.
But that was not
her
experience, she reminded herself firmly. She
was and would remain Cha Thrat. The Gogleskan and Earth-human who seemed to be occupying her mind were guests, one of them a particularly troublesome guest where thoughts of the entity Murchison were concerned, but they should not be allowed to influence her personal feelings. It was ridiculous to think, or feel, otherwise.
When the disturbing figure of Murchison had disappeared into the middle distance and Cha Thrat was feeling more like herself than two other people, she said, “And now, I suppose, comes the pinning back of the ears of a big-headed and grossly insubordinate technician with delusions of medical grandeur?”
Prilicla had alighted on the roof above Khone’s doorway so that its eyes would be on a level with Cha Thrat’s. It said gently, “Your emotional control is excellent, friend Cha. I compliment you. But your supposition is wrong. However, your obvious understanding of the Earth-human terms you have just used, and your earlier behavior during a very tricky clinical situation, leads me to speculate about what might possibly have happened to you.
“I am merely thinking aloud, you understand,” it went on. “You are not required, in fact you are expressly forbidden to say whether my speculations are accurate or not. In this matter I would prefer to remain officially ignorant.”
It was evident from the first few words that the empath knew exactly what had happened to Cha Thrat, even though its certainties were mentioned as suspicions. It suspected that Cha Thrat had shared minds with Khone, that the Gogleskan’s mind had previously been shared with that of Conway, and it was the Diagnostician’s medical expertise and initiative that had surfaced before and during the birth of Khone’s child. For this reason the Cinrusskin was not offended by the incident—a Senior Physician was far outranked by a Diagnostician, even one who was temporarily in residence within the mind of a subordinate. And neither would the other team members feel offended if they were to suspect the truth.
But they must not suspect, at least until Cha Thrat was safely lost in the maintenance tunnels of Sector General.
“From your recent emotional radiation,” Prilicla went on, “I suspect that you had strong if confused feelings of a sexual nature toward friend Murchison that were not pleasant for your Sommaradvan self. But consider the intensity of Murchison’s embarrassment if it suspected that you, an entity of a completely different physiological classification forced by circumstances to work in close proximity with it, were regarding it with the eyes and the same strength of feeling as that of its life-mate. And if the others were to suspect as well, the emotional radiation from the team would be extremely painful and distressing to me.”
“I understand,” Cha Thrat said.
“Pathologist Murchison is highly intelligent,” the Cinrusskin continued, “and in time she will realize what has happened, if she doesn’t learn it from Khone first. That is why I would like you to explain this delicate situation to friend Khone at the first opportunity, and ask for its silence in this matter.
“Friend Khone,” Prilicla added gently, “has the memories and feelings of Cha Thrat as well as Conway.”
For a moment Cha Thrat could not speak as the Gogleskan healer’s mind threatened to engulf her own with its peculiar mixture of fear, curiosity, and parental concern. Finally she said, “Will Khone be able to speak?”
“I have the feeling, not a suspicion, that both our Gogleskans are doing well,” Prilicla replied, shaking out its wings in readiness for flight. “But now, if we don’t end this conversation soon, the others will wonder what I am doing to you, and will be expecting you to arrive back bruised and bleeding.”
The idea of Prilicla inflicting any kind of injury on anyone was so ridiculous that even a Gogleskan as well as a Sommaradvan and Earth-human considered it funny. Cha Thrat laughed out loud as, with the down-draft from the empath’s wings stirring her hair, they followed the others back to the lander.
“You realize, friend Cha,” the empath said, its trembling limbs a visible apology for the words that would diminish her pleasure, “that O’Mara will have to be told.”
B
y the time they had been transfered from the lander to the special FOKT accommodation of
Rhabwar
’s casualty deck, both patients were fully conscious and making loud hissing noises. The sounds that the younger one was making did not translate, but Khone’s were divided into repeated expressions of gratitude for its survival and weak but very insistent reassurances about its clinical condition. The healer’s self-diagnosis was supported by the biosensors and confirmed by the less tangible but even more accurate findings of the emotion-sensitive Prilicla. And now that it was separated from its friendly off-world monsters, and its subconscious fears thereby allayed, by a thick transparent partition, Khone was quite happy to speak to anyone at any time.
That included the nonmedical crew members who, with Captain Fletcher’s permission, left their positions in Control and the Power Room briefly to congratulate the patient and tell complimentary lies about the obvious intelligence, parental resemblance, and great beauty of the new arrival, a male child of greater than average weight. In spite of Prilicla’s urgings that it should rest and refrain from overexcitement, the atmosphere around Khone’s accommodation more closely resembled a birthday party than the casualty deck of an ambulance ship.
When Captain Fletcher arrived, they did not need an emphatic faculty
to feel the atmosphere change. To Khone the Earth-human made a perfunctory inquiry about its health, then turned quickly to Prilicla.
“I need a decision, Senior Physician,” it went on, “one that only you people can make. The hospital signaled us a few minutes ago, saying that an emergency beacon had been detected in this sector. The distressed ship is about five hours subspace flight away; the distress beacon was not one of the types used by the Federation, so the casualties might be a species new to us. That makes it difficult to estimate the time needed for the rescue. It could take a couple of days rather than hours.
“The question is,” it ended, “do your patients require hospitalization before or after we respond to this distress call?”
It was not an easy decision to make because their patients, although stable and not in need of urgent treatment, belonged to a life-form about which little was known clinically, so that unexpected complications might arise at any time. Surprisingly the discussion, which was animated but necessarily brief, was ended by Khone itself.
“Please, friends,” it said during one of the rare lulls, “Gogleskan females recover quickly once the birth trauma is over. I can assure you, both as a healer and a parent, that such a delay will not endanger either of us. Besides, here we are receiving much better attention than would be possible anywhere on Goglesk.”
“You’re forgetting something,” Murchison said quietly. “We may be going into a disaster situation possibly involving a life-form completely new to us. It is conceivable that they might horrify or scare even us, much less a Gogleskan leaving its planet for the first time.”
“They might,” Khone replied, “but they would almost certainly be in a worse condition than I am.”
“Very well,” Prilicla said, turning back to the Captain. “It seems that friend Khone has reminded us of the priorities and of our duty as healers. Tell the hospital that
Rhabwar
will respond.”
Fletcher disappeared in the direction of Control, and the Cinrusskin went on. “We should now eat and sleep, since there might not be an opportunity to do either for some time. The patients’ biosensors will be monitored automatically and any change in condition signaled to me at
once. They need rest, too, and they wouldn’t get it if I left a team member on duty. Come along, everyone. Sleep well, friend Khone.”
It flew gracefully into the gravity-free central well and up toward the dining and recreation deck, followed in more orthodox fashion by Naydrad, Danalta, Murchison, and Cha Thrat. But just before they began their weightless climb, Murchison gripped the ladder with one hand and placed the other on one of her medial limbs.
“Wait, please,” it said. “I would like to speak to you.”
Cha Thrat stopped but did not speak. The sensation of alien digits gently enclosing her arm and the sight of the flabby, pink Earth-human face looking up at her were giving rise to feelings that no Sommaradvan, much less a female one, had any business harboring. Slowly, so as not to give offense, she disengaged the limb from the other’s grip and sought for emotional control.
“I’m worried about this ship rescue, Cha Thrat,” it said, “and the effect on you of the casualties we may have to treat. Disaster injuries can be pretty bad, collision fractures and explosive decompressions for the most part, and as a rule there are very few survivors. You don’t seem to be able to keep your Sommaradvan nose out of the medical area, but this time you must try, try really hard, not to get involved with our casualties.”
Before Cha Thrat could reply, it went on. “You did some very nice work with Khone, even though I’m still not sure what exactly was going on, but you were very lucky. If Khone or the infant or both of them had died, how would you have felt? More important, what would you have done to yourself?”
“Nothing,” Cha Thrat said, trying hard to tell herself that the expression on the pink face below her was one of friendly concern for an other-species subordinate and not something more personal. Quickly she went on. “I would have felt very bad, but I would not have injured myself again. The code of ethics of a warrior-surgeon is strict, and even on Sommaradva there were colleagues who did not observe it as I have done, and who envied and disliked me for my own strict observance. To me the code remains valid, but in Sector General and on Goglesk
there are other and equally valid codes. My viewpoints have changed …”
She stopped herself, afraid that she had said too much, but the other had not noticed that she had used the plural.
“We call that broadening the mind,” Murchison said, “and I’m relieved and pleased for you, Cha Thrat. It’s a pity that … Well, I meant what I said about you being the Maintenance Department’s gain and our loss. Your superiors find you a bit hard to take at times, and after the Chalder and Hudlar incidents I can’t imagine you being accepted for ward training by anyone. But maybe if you waited until the fuss died down, and didn’t do anything else to get yourself noticed, I could speak to a few people about having you transfered back to the medical staff. How do you feel about that?”
“I feel grateful,” she replied, trying desperately to find a way of ending this conversation with a being who was not only sympathetic and understanding as a person, but whose physical aspect was arousing in her other feelings of the kind usually associated with the urge to procreate. Most definitely, she thought, this was a problem that could only be resolved by one of O’Mara’s spells. Quickly she added, “I also feel very hungry.”
“Hungry!” Murchison said. As the Earth-human turned to resume climbing to the dining area, it laughed suddenly and said, “You know, Cha Thrat, sometimes you remind me of my life-mate.”
She was able to rest after the meal but not sleep and, after three hours of trying, she made the excuse to herself that Khone’s life-support and synthetic food delivery systems needed checking. She found the Gogleskan awake, as well, and they talked quietly while it fed the infant. Soon afterward they were both asleep and she was left to stare silently at the complex shapes of the casualty deck equipment, which looked like weird, mechanical phantasms in the night-level lighting, until the arrival of Prilicla.
“Have you been able to speak with friend Khone?” the Cinrusskin asked, hovering over the two Gogleskans.
“Yes,” Cha Thrat replied. “It will do as you suggested, to avoid embarrassing us.”
“Thank you, friend Cha,” Prilicla said. “I feel the others awake and about to join us. We should be arriving at any—”
It was interrupted by a double chime that announced their emergence into normal space, followed a few minutes later by the voice of Lieutenant Haslam speaking from Control.
“We have long-range sensor contact with a large ship,” the communications officer said. “There are no indications of abnormal radiation levels, no expanding cloud of debris, no sign of any catastrophic malfunction. The vessel is rotating around its longitudinal axis as well as spinning slowly end over end. We are locking the telescope into the sensor bearing and putting the image on your repeater screen.”
A narrow, fuzzy triangle appeared in the center of the screen, becoming more distinct as Haslam brought it into focus.
It went on. “Prepare for maximum thrust in ten minutes. Gravity compensators set for three Gs. We should close with it in less than two hours.”
Cha Thrat and Khone watched the screen with the rest of the medical team, who were making Prilicla tremble with the intensity of their impatience. They were as ready as it was possible to be, and the more detailed preparations would have to wait until they had some idea of the physiological classification of the people they were about to rescue. But it was possible for the ship ruler to draw conclusions, even at long range.
“According to our astrogation computor,” Fletcher said, “the nearest star is eleven light-years distant and without planets, so the ship did not come from there. Although large, it is still much too small to be a generation ship, so it is highly probable that it uses a form of hyperdrive similar to our own. It does not resemble any vessel, past, current, or under development, on the Federation’s fleet list.
“In spite of its large size,” the Captain went on, “it has the aerodynamically clean triangular configuration typical of a vessel required
to maneuver in a planetary atmosphere. Most of the star-traveling species that we know prefer, for technical and economic reasons, to keep their combined atmosphere-and-space vessels small and build the larger nonlanders in orbit where streamlining is unnecessary. The two exceptions that I know of build their space-atmosphere ships large because the crews needed to operate them are themselves physically massive.”
“Oh, great,” Naydrad said. “We’ll be rescuing a bunch of giants.”
“This is only speculative at the moment,” the Captain said. “Your screen won’t show it, but we’re beginning to resolve some of the structural details. That ship was not put together by watchmakers. The overall design philosophy seems to have been one of simplicity and strength rather than sophistication. We are beginning to see small access and inspection panels, and two very large features that must be entry locks. While it is possible that these are cargo locks that double as entry ports for personnel who are physically small, the probability is that these people are a very large and massive life-form—”
“Don’t be afraid, friend Khone,” Prilicla broke in quickly. “Even a demented Hudlar couldn’t break through the partition Cha Thrat put around you, and our casualties will be unconscious anyway. Both of you will be quite safe.”
“Reassurance and gratitude are felt,” the Gogleskan said. With a visible effort it added, more personally, “Thank you.”
“Friend Fletcher,” the empath said, returning its attention to the Captain, “can you speculate further about this life-form, other than that it is large and probably lacks digital dexterity?”
“I was about to,” the Captain said. “Analysis of internal atmosphere leakage shows that—”
“Then the hull has been punctured!” Cha Thrat said excitedly. “From within or without?”
“Technician,” said the ship ruler, reminding her of her position and her insubordination with the single word. “For your information, it is extremely difficult, expensive, and unnecessary to make a large, space-going structure completely airtight. It is more practical to maintain the vessel at nominal internal pressure and replace the negligible quantity
of air that escapes. In this case, had escaping air not been observed, it would almost certainly have meant that the ship was open to space and airless.
“But there are no signs of collision or puncture damage,” Fletcher went on, “and our sensor data and analysis of the atmosphere leakage suggests that the crew are warm-blooded oxygen-breathers with environmental temperature and pressure requirements similar to our own.”
“Thank you, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said, then joined the others who were silently watching the repeater screen.
The image of the slowly rolling and spinning ship had grown until it was brushing against the edges of the screen, when Murchison said, “The ship is undamaged, uncontrolled, and, the sensors tell us, there is no abnormal escape of radiation from its main reactor. That means their problem is likely to be disease rather than traumatic injuries, a disabling or perhaps lethal illness affecting the entire crew. Under illness I would include the inhalation of toxic gas accidentally released from—”
“No, ma’am,” said Fletcher, who had maintained the communicator link with Control. “Toxic contamination of the air supply system on that scale would have shown up in our leak analyses. There’s nothing wrong with their air.”
“Or,” Murchison went on firmly, “the toxic material may have contaminated their liquid or food supply, and been ingested. Either way, there may be no survivors and nothing for us to do here except posthumously investigate, record the physiology of a new life-form, and leave the rest to the Monitor Corps.”
The rest, Cha Thrat knew, would mean carrying out a detailed examination of the vessel’s power, life-support, and navigation systems with the intention of assessing the species’ level of technology. That might provide the information that would enable them to reconstruct the elements of the ship’s course before the disaster occurred and trace it back to its planet of origin. Simultaneously, an even more careful evaluation of the nontechnical environment—crew accommodation and furnishings, art or decorative objects, personal effects, books, tapes, and self-entertainment systems—would be carried out so that they would
know what kind of people lived on the home planet when they succeeded in finding it, as they ultimately would.

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