Sector General Omnibus 3 - General Practice (45 page)

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Authors: James White

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“That was the situation,” Prilicla went on, “before friend Conway was successful in delivering an Unborn without loss of sentience. Now there are the original Protector and its offspring, who is itself a young Protector, and the embryos growing within both of them, all but the original parent in telepathic contact. Their ward, which was built to reproduce the FSOJs’ home environment, is the next opening on the
left. You may find the sight disturbing, friend Lioren, and the noise is certainly horrendous.”
The ward was more than half-filled by a hollow, endless cylinder of immensely strong metal latticework. The diameter of the structure was just wide enough to allow continuous, unrestricted movement in one direction to the FSOJ patients it contained, and which curved and twisted back on itself so that the occupants could use all of the available floor area that was not required for access by the medical attendants or environmental support equipment. The cylinder floor reproduced the uneven ground and natural obstacles like the mobile and voracious triproots found on the Protectors’ home planet, while the open sections gave the occupants a continuous view of the screens positioned around the outer surface of the cylinder. Onto the screens were projected moving, tri-d pictures of the indigenous plant and animal life which they would normally encounter.
The open lattice structure also helped the medical attendants to bring to bear on the patients the more positive aspects of the life-support system. Positioned between the projected screen images were the mechanisms whose sole purpose was to beat, tear, or jab at the occupants’ rapidly moving bodies with any required degree of frequency or force.
Everything possible was being done, Lioren noted, to make the Protectors feel at home.
“Will they be able to hear us?” Lioren shouted above the din. “Or we them?”
“No, friend Lioren,” the empath replied. “The screaming and grunting sounds they are making do not carry intelligence, but are solely a means of frightening natural enemies. Until the recent successful birthing the intelligent Unborn remained within the nonsentient Protector and heard only the internal organic sounds of the parent. Speech was impossible and unnecessary for them. The only communication channel open to us is telepathy.”
“I am not a telepath,” Lioren said.
“Nor are Conway, Thornnastor, and the others who have been contacted
by the Unborn,” Prilicla said. “The few known species with the telepathic faculty evolved organic transmitter-receivers that are automatically in tune for that particular race, and for this reason contact between members of different telepathic species is not always possible. When mental contact occurs between one of these entities and a nontelepath, it usually means that the faculty in the latter is dormant or atrophied rather than nonexistent. When such contact occurs the experience for the nontelepath can be very uncomfortable, but there are no physical changes in the brain affected nor is there any lasting psychological damage.
“Move closer to the exercise cage, friend Lioren,” Prilicla went on. “Can you feel the Protector touching your mind?”
“No,” Lioren said.
“I feel your disappointment,” the empath said. A faint tremor shook its body and it went on, “But I also feel the young Protector generating the emotional radiation characteristic of intense curiosity and concentrated effort. It is trying very hard to contact you.”
“I’m sorry, nothing,” Lioren said.
Prilicla spoke briefly into its communicator, then said, “I have stepped up the violence of the attack mechanisms. The patient will suffer no injury, but we have found that the effect of increased activity and apparent danger on the endocrine system aids the process of mentation. Try to make your mind receptive.”
“Still nothing,” Lioren said, touching the side of his head with one hand, “except for some mild discomfort in the inter-cranial area that is becoming very …” The rest was an untranslatable sound which rivaled in volume the noise coming from the Protectors’ life-support system.
The sensation was like a deep, raging itch inside his brain combined with a discordant, unheard noise that mounted steadily in intensity. This must be what it is like, Lioren thought helplessly, when a faculty which is dormant is awakened and forced to perform. As in the case of a muscle long unused, there was pain and stiffness and protest against the change in the old, comfortable order of things.
Suddenly the discomfort was gone, the unheard storm of sound in
his mind faded to become a deep, still pool of mental silence on which the external din of the ward had no effect. Then out of the stillness there came words that were unspoken from a being who did not have a name but whose mind and unique personality were an identification that could never be mistaken for any other.
“You are feeling seriously disturbed, friend Lioren,” Prilicla said. “Has the Protector touched your mind?”
Rather
, Lioren answered silently,
it has almost swamped my mind
. “Yes, contact was established and quickly broken. I tried to help it by suggesting … It asked for another visit at a later time. Can we leave now?”
Prilicla led the way into the corridor without speaking, but Lioren did not need an empathic faculty to be aware of the Cinrusskin’s intense curiosity. “I did not realize that so much knowledge could be exchanged in such a short time,” he said. “Words convey meaning in a trickle, thoughts in a great tidal wave, and problems explained instantly and in the fullest detail. I will need time alone to think about everything it has told me so that my answers will not be confused and half-formed. It is impossible to lie to a telepath.”
“Or an empath,” Prilicla said. “Do you wish to delay your visit to the Gogleskan?”
“No,” Lioren replied. “My lonely thinking can wait until this evening. Will Khone use telepathy on me?”
Prilicla had a moment of unstable flight for some reason, then recovered. “I certainly hope not.”
The empath explained that adult Gogleskans used a form of telepathy which required close physical contact, but, except when their lives were threatened, they did everything possible to avoid such contact. It was not simple xenophobia that ailed them, but a pathological fear of the close approach of any large creature, including nonfamily members of their own species. They possessed a well-developed spoken and written language which had allowed the individual and group cooperation necessary for growth of civilization, but their verbal contacts were rare and conducted over the greatest practicable distance and in the most
impersonal terms. It was not surprising that their level of technology had remained low.
The reason for their abnormally fearful behavior was a racial psychosis implanted far back in their prehistoric past. It was a subject which Lioren was strongly advised to approach with caution.
“Otherwise,” Prilicla said as it checked its flight above the entrance to the side ward reserved for the Gogleskans, “you risk distressing the patient and endangering the trust that has gradually been built up between Khone and those responsible for its treatment. I am unwilling to subject it to the emotional strain of a visit from two strangers, so I shall leave you now. Healer Khone is a frightened, timid, but intensely curious being. Try to converse impersonally as I have suggested, friend Lioren, and think well before you speak.”
A wall of heavy, transparent plastic stretching from floor to ceiling divided the room into equal halves. Hatches for the introduction of food and remote handling devices hung apparently unsupported like empty white picture frames. The treatment half of the ward contained the usual tools of medical investigation modified for use at a distance and three viewscreens. Only two of them were visible to the adult Gogleskan, the third being a repeater for the patient monitor in the main ward’s nursing station. Not wishing to risk giving offense by staring at Khone directly, Lioren concentrated his attention on the picture on the repeater screen.
The Gogleskan healer, Lioren saw at once, was classification FOKT. Its erect, ovoid body was covered by a mass of long, brightly colored hair and flexible spikes, some of which were tipped by small, bulbous pads and grouped into digital clusters so as to enable eating utensils, tools, or medical instruments to be grasped and manipulated. He was able to identify the four long, pale tendrils that were used during contact telepathy lying amid the multicolored cranial hair. The head was encircled by a narrow metal band that supported a corrective lens for one of the four, equally spaced and recessed eyes. Around the lower body was a thick skirt of muscle on which the creature rested, and whenever it changed position four stubby legs were extended below the edge of
the muscular skirt. It was making untranslatable moaning sounds, which Lioren thought might be wordless music, to its offspring, who was almost hairless but otherwise a scaled-down copy of its parent. The sound seemed to be coming from a number of small, vertical breathing orifices encircling its waist.
Beyond the transparent wall, the metal plating had been covered with a layer of something that resembled dark, unpolished wood, and several pieces of low furniture and shelves of the same material were placed around the inner three walls. Clumps of aromatic vegetation decorated the room, and the lighting reproduced the subdued orange glow of Gogleskan sunlight that had been filtered through overhead branches. Khone’s accommodation was as homelike as the hospital’s environment technicians could make it, but Khone was too timid to complain about anything except a sudden and close approach of strangers.
A timid entity, Prilicla had described it, who was perpetually fearful and intensely curious.
“Is it permitted,” he asked in the prescribed impersonal manner, “for the trainee Lioren to examine the medical notes of the patient and healer, Khone? The purpose is the satisfaction of curiosity, not to conduct a medical examination.”
A personal name could be given only once, at the Time of First Meeting, Prilicla had told him, for the purpose of identification and introduction, and never mentioned again except during written communication. Khone’s body hair stirred restively and for a moment it stood out straight from the body, making the little entity appear twice its real size and revealing the long, sharply pointed stings that lay twitching close against the curvature of the lower torso. The stings were the Gogleskans’ only natural weapon, but the poison they delivered was instantly lethal to the metabolism of any warm-blooded oxygen-breather.
The moaning sound died away. “Relief is felt that clinical examination by another fearsome but well-intentioned monster is not imminent,”
Khone said. “It is permitted and, since access to the medical notes cannot be forbidden, gratitude is felt for the polite wording of the request. May suggestions be made?”
“They would be welcomed,” Lioren said, thinking that the Gogleskan’s forthright manner was not what he had expected. Perhaps the timidity was not evident during verbal exchanges.
“The entities who visit this ward are invariably polite,” Khone said, “and frequently politeness retards conversation. If the curiosity of the trainee is specific rather than general, there would be an advantage if the patient rather than the medical notes were consulted.”
“Yes, indeed,” Lioren said. “Thank you … That is, helpfulness has been shown and gratitude is felt. The trainee’s primary interest lies in the—”
“It is presumed,” the Gogleskan went on, “that the trainee will answer as well as ask questions. The patient is an experienced healer, by Gogleskan standards, and knows that both parent and firstborn are healthy and are protected from physical danger or disease. The firstborn is too young to feel anything other than contentment, but the parent is prey to many different feelings, the strongest of which is boredom. Does the trainee understand?”
“The trainee understands,” Lioren replied, gesturing toward the inward-facing display screens, “and will try to relieve the condition. There is interesting visual material available on the worlds and peoples of the Federation—”
“Which shows monstrous creatures inhabiting crowded cities,” Khone broke in. “Or packed tightly together in close, nonsexual contact inside air or ground vehicles, or similar terrifying sights. Terror is not the indicated cure for boredom. If knowledge is to be obtained about the visually horrifying peoples and practices of the Federation, it must be slowly and of one person at a time.”
Even a Groalterri, Lioren thought, would not live long enough to do that. “As the uninvited guest is it not proper for the trainee to give answers before asking questions of the host?”
“Another unnecessary politeness,” Khone replied, “but appreciation
is felt nonetheless. What is the trainee’s first question?”
This was going to be much easier than he had expected, Lioren thought. “The trainee desires information on Gogleskan telepathy, specifically on the organic mechanisms which enable it to function and the physical causes, including both the clinical and subjective symptomology present if the faculty should malfunction. This information might prove helpful with another patient whose species is also tele—”
“No!” Khone said, so loudly that the young one began making agitated, whistling sounds that did not translate. A large patch of the Gogleskan’s body hair rose stiffly outward and, in a manner that Lioren could not see clearly, wove the strands into the shorter growth of its offspring and held it close to the parent’s body until the young one became quiet again.

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