Sector General Omnibus 2 - Alien Emergencies (37 page)

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 species, my Cinrusskin alter ego tells me, but in nothing like the intensity 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, jabbing a finger toward Prilicla. “This?”

“I would like to eliminate that possibility,” Conway replied calmly. To Prilicla, he said, “If you don’t mind I would like 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 non-physical 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 sud
den in onset that their recession will be equally rapid.”

“Perhaps Thornnastor could—” Conway began.

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

Prilicla had switched its attention suddenly to the viewscreen. 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 through 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 compartment.

“That was very good advice,” the Chief Psychologist said when 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.”

Conway shook his head firmly. “Not yet. Prilicla said all that could be said about its case back there. The hard facts are that the Cinrusskin species is not one of the Federation’s most robust. They have no stamina, no reserves to resist over a long period the effects of any injury or disease, whatever the cause. We all know—myself, my alter ego and, I suspect, you yourself—that unless its condition is treated and relieved very quickly Prilicla will die within a few hours, perhaps ten hours at most.”

The Major nodded.

“Unless you can come up with a bright idea,” he went on grimly, “and I would certainly welcome it if you did, I intend to go on thinking with the Cinrusskin tape. It hasn’t helped much up to now, but I want to think without constraint, without having to play mental games with myself to avoid emoting too strongly in the presence of my patient. There is something very odd about this case, something I’m missing.

“So I’m going for a walk,” he ended suddenly. “I won’t be far away. Just far enough, I hope, to be outside the range of Prilicla’s empathy.”

O’Mara nodded again and left without speaking.

Conway put on a lightweight suit and traveled upward for three levels into the section reserved for the spiney, membranous,
chlorine-breathing Illensan PVSJs. The inhabitants of Illensa were not a sociable species by Earth-human standards, and Conway was hoping to walk their foggy yellow wards and corridors without interruption while he wrestled with his problem. But that was not to be.

Senior Physician Gilvesh, who had worked with Conway some months earlier on a Dwerlan DBPK operation, was feeling uncharacteristically sociable and wanted to talk shop with its fellow Senior. They met in a narrow corridor leading from the level’s pharmacy and there was no way that Conway could avoid talking to it.

Gilvesh was having problems. It was one of those days, the Illensan medic said, when all the patients were demanding inordinate amounts of attention and unnecessary quantities of palliative medication, the administration of which required its personal supervision. The junior medics and nursing staff were under pressure, therefore, and there was evident an unusual degree of verbal overreaction and sheer bad temper. Gilvesh said that it was explaining and apologizing in advance for any seeming discourtesy encountered by such an important visiting Senior as Conway. There were several of Gilvesh’s cases, it insisted, which he would find interesting.

In common with the other medics trained for service in a multienvironment hospital, Conway had a thorough grounding in the basics of extraterrestrial physiology, metabolism, and the more common diseases of the Federation’s member species. But for a detailed consultation and diagnosis of the kind required here he needed an Illensan physiology tape, and Gilvesh knew that as well as he did. So the Illensan Senior, it seemed, was sufficiently worried by the current state of its patients to seek a quick, other-species opinion.

With the Cinrusskin tape and his intense concern for Prilicla confusing his clinical view, Conway could do little more than make encouraging noises while Gilvesh discussed a painful intestinal tract, a visually dramatic and undoubtedly uncomfortable fungoid infection involving all eight of the spatulate limbs, and sundry other conditions to which Illensans were heir.

While the patients were seriously ill, their conditions were not critical, and the increased dosages of painkilling medication which Gilvesh was administering against its better judgment seemed to be having the desired effect, albeit slowly. Conway excused himself
from the frantically busy wards as soon as he could and headed towards the much quieter MSVK and LSVO levels.

He had to pass through Level 163 again on the way, and stopped to check on the condition of the EGCL. Murchison yawned in his face and said that the operation was going well and that Prilicla was satisfied with the patient’s emotional radiation. He did not call on Prilicla.

But he found that the low-gravity levels were having one of those days, too, and he was immediately trapped into further consultations. He could not very well avoid them because he was Conway, the Earth-human Senior Physician, known throughout the hospital for his sometimes unorthodox but effective methods and ideas on diagnosis and treatment. Here, at least, he was able to give some useful if orthodox advice because his Cinrusskin mind-partner was closer temperamentally and physically to the Nallajim LSVOs and the MSVKs of Euril who were fragile, birdlike, and extremely timid where the larger life-forms were concerned. But he could find no solution, orthodox or otherwise, to the problem he most desperately wanted to solve.

Prilicla’s.

He thought about going to his quarters where he would have peace and quiet in which to think, but they were more than an hour’s journey away at the other end of the hospital and he wanted to be close by in case there was a sudden deterioration in Prilicla’s already close to critical condition. So instead he continued listening to Nallajim patients describing their symptoms and feeling a strange sadness because the Cinrusskin part of his mind knew that they were suffering, feeling, and emoting on many levels but his Earth-human mental equipment was incapable of receiving their emotional radiation. It was as if a sheet of glass lay between them, through which only sight and sound could pass.

But something more was getting through, surely? He had felt some of the aches and pains of the Illensan patients as he was feeling, to a certain extent, those of the Eurils and Nallajims around him. Or was that simply the GLNO tape fooling him into believing that he was an empath?

A sheet of glass
, he thought suddenly, and an idea began to stir at the back of his mind. He tried to bring it out into the light, to
give it form. Glass. Something about glass, or the properties of glass?

“Excuse me, Kytili,” he said to the Nallijim medic who was worrying aloud about an atypical case of what should have been an easily treated and nonpainful condition. “I have to see O’Mara urgently.”

It was Carrington who erased the GLNO tape because the Chief Psychologist had been called to some trouble in the chlorine-breathing level lately vacated by Conway. As O’Mara’s senior assistant, Carrington was a highly qualified psychologist. He studied Conway’s expression for a moment and asked if he could be of assistance.

Conway shook his head and forced a smile. “I wanted to ask the Major something. He would probably have said no, anyway. May I use the communicator?”

A few seconds later the face of Captain Fletcher flicked onto the screen and he said briskly, “
Rhabwar
, Control Deck.”

“Captain,” Conway said, “I want to ask a favor. If you agree to do it then it must be clearly understood that you will not be held responsible for any repercussions since it will be a medical matter entirely and you will be acting under my orders.

“There is a way that I may be able to help Prilicla,” he went on, and described what he wanted done. When he finished, Fletcher looked grave.

“I’m aware of Prilicla’s condition, Doctor,” the Captain said. “Naydrad has been in and out of the ship so often it is threatening to wear out the boarding tube, and each time it returns we get an update on the empath’s progress, or rather lack of it. And there is no need to belabor the point about our respective responsibilities. Obviously you wish to use the ship for an unauthorized mission and you are concealing the details so that any blame attached to me as a result of a future inquiry will be minimal. You are cutting corners again, Doctor, but in this instance I sympathize and will accept any instructions you care to give.”

Fletcher broke off, and for the first time in Conway’s experience of the man the Captain’s cold, impassive, almost disdainful expression softened and the voice lost its irritatingly pedantic quality. “But it is my guess that you will order me to take
Rhabwar
to Cinruss,” he went on, “so that our little friend can die among its own kind.”

Before Conway could reply, Fletcher had switched him to Naydrad on the Casualty Deck.

Half an hour later the Kelgian Charge Nurse and Conway were transferring Prilicla, who was barely conscious and trembling only slightly by then, from its supporting harness to a powered litter. In the corridor leading to Lock Nine none of the medical staff questioned their action, and when any of them looked as if they might, Conway tapped irritably at the casing of his translator pack and pretended that it was malfunctioning. But when they were passing the entrance to the EGCL’s room, Murchison was just leaving it. She stepped quickly in front of the litter.

“Where are you taking Prilicla?” she demanded. She sounded desperately tired and uncharacteristically angry, so much so that the empath began to twitch weakly.

“To
Rhabwar
,” Conway said as calmly as he could. “How is the EGCL?”

Murchison looked at the empath, then visibly tried to control her feelings as she replied, “Very well, all things considered. Its condition is stable. There is a senior nurse continually in attendance. Edanelt is resting next door, only seconds away if anything should go wrong, but we don’t expect any problems. In fact, we are expecting it to recover consciousness fairly soon. And Thornnastor has returned to Pathology to study the results of the tests we did on Prilicla. That’s why you shouldn’t be moving Prilicla from—”

“Thornnastor can’t cure Prilicla,” Conway said firmly. He looked from her to the litter and went on, “I can use your help. Do you think you can stay on your feet for another couple of hours? Please, there isn’t much time.”

Within seconds of the litter’s arrival on
Rhabwar
’s Casualty Deck, Conway was on the intercom to Fletcher. “Captain, take us out quickly, please. And ready the planetary lander.”

“The planetary—” Fletcher began, then went on, “We haven’t undocked yet, much less reached Jump distance, and you’re worrying about landing on Cinruss! Are you sure you know what—”

“I’m not sure of anything, Captain,” Conway said. “Take us out but be prepared to check velocity at short notice, and well within Jump distance.”

Fletcher broke the connection without replying, and a few sec
onds later the direct vision port showed the vast metal flank of the hospital moving away. Their velocity increased to the maximum allowed in the vicinity of the establishment, until the nearest section of the gigantic structure was a kilometer, then two kilometers away. But nobody was interested in the view just then because all of Conway’s attention was on Prilicla, and Murchison and Naydrad were watching him.

“Back there,” the pathologist said suddenly, “you said that even Thornnastor could not cure Prilicla. Why did you say that?”

“Because there was nothing wrong with Prilicla,” Conway said. He ignored Murchison’s unladylike gape of surprise and Naydrad’s wildly undulating fur and spoke to the empath. “Isn’t that so, little friend?”

“I think so, friend Conway,” Prilicla said, speaking for the first time since coming on board. “Certainly there is nothing wrong with me now. But I am confused.”