Sector General Omnibus 2 - Alien Emergencies (38 page)

“
You’re
confused!” Murchison began, and stopped because Conway was again at the communicator.

“Captain,” he said, “return at once to Lock Nine to take on another patient. Switch on all of your exterior lighting and ignore the traffic instructions. And please patch me through to Level One Six Three, the EGCL’s recovery room. Quickly.”

“Right,” the Captain coldly said, “but I want an explanation.”

“You’ll get one—” Conway began. He broke off as the Captain’s angry features were replaced by a view of the recovery room with the attending nurse, a Kelgian, curled like a furry question mark beside the EGCL. Its report on the patient’s condition was brief, accurate, and, to Conway, terrifying.

He broke contact and returned to the Captain. Apologetically he said, “There isn’t much time so I would like you to listen while I explain the situation, or what I think is the situation, to the others here. I had intended that the lander be fitted with remote-controlled medical servomechs and used as an isolation unit, but there isn’t time for that now. The EGCL is waking up. All hell could break loose in the hospital at any minute.”

Quickly he explained his theory about the EGCL and the reasoning which had led to it, ending with the proof which was Prilicla’s otherwise inexplicable recovery.

“The part of this which bothers me,” he concluded grimly, “is having to subject Prilicla to the same degree of emotional torture once again.”

The empath’s limbs trembled at the remembered pain, but it said, “I can accept it, friend Conway, now that I know the condition will be temporary.”

But removing the EGCL was not as easy as had been the abduction of Prilicla. The Kelgian duty nurse was disposed to argue, and it took all of Naydrad’s powers of persuasion and the combined ranks of Murchison and Conway to make it do as it was told. And while they were arguing, Conway could see the wildly rippling and twitching fur of the two nurses, the sudden, almost manic changes of facial expression in Murchison, and the emotional overreaction in all of them, in spite of his earlier warning of what would happen if they did not control their feelings. By the time the transfer of the patient to
Rhabwar
’s litter was underway, so much fuss had been created that someone was sure to report it. Conway did not want that.

The patient was coming to. There was no time to go through proper channels, no time for long and repeated explanations. Then suddenly he had to find time, because both Edanelt and O’Mara were in the room. It was the Chief Psychologist who spoke first.

“
Conway!
What do you think you’re doing with that patient?”

“I’m kidnapping it!” Conway snapped back sarcastically. Quickly he went on, “I’m sorry, sir, we are all overreacting. We can’t help it, but try hard to be calm. Edanelt, will you help me transfer the EGCL’s support systems to the litter. There isn’t much time left so I’ll have to explain while we work.”

The Melfan Senior dithered for a moment, the tapping of its six crablike legs against the floor reflecting its indecision, then it spoke. “Very well, Conway. But if I am not satisfied with your explanation the patient stays here.”

“Fair enough,” said Conway. He looked at O’Mara, whose face was showing the indications of a suddenly elevated blood pressure, and went on, “You had the right idea at the beginning, but everyone was too busy to talk to you. It should have occurred to me, too, if the GLNO tape and concern for Prilicla hadn’t confused me by—”

“Omit the flattery and excuses, Conway,” O’Mara broke in, “and get on with it.”

Conway was helping Murchison and Naydrad lift the EGCL into the litter while Edanelt and the other nurse checked the siting of the biosensors. Without looking up he went on, “Whenever we encounter a new intelligent species the first thing we are supposed to ask ourselves is how it got that way. Only the dominant life-form on a planet has the opportunity, the security and leisure, to develop a civilization capable of interstellar travel.”

At first Conway had not been able to see how the EGCL’s people had risen to dominance on their world, how they had fought their way to the top of their evolutionary tree. They had no physical weapons of offense, and their snaillike apron of muscle which furnished locomotion was incapable of moving them fast enough to avoid natural enemies. Their carapace was a defense of sorts in that it protected vital organs, but that osseous shell was mounted high on the body, making it top-heavy and an easy prey for any predator who had only to topple it over to get at the soft underside. Its manipulatory appendages were flexible and dexterous, but too short and lightly muscled to be a deterrent. On their home world the EGCLs should have been one of nature’s losers. They were not, however, and there had to be a reason.

It had come to him slowly, Conway went on, while he was moving through the chlorine and light-gravity sections. In every ward there had been cases of patients with known and properly diagnosed ailments displaying, or at least complaining about, atypical symptoms. The demand for painkilling medication had been unprecedented. Conditions which should have caused a minor degree of discomfort were, it seemed, inflicting severe pain. He had been aware of some of this pain himself, but had put that down to a combination of his imagination and the effect of the Cinrusskin tape.

He had already considered and discarded the idea that the trouble was psychosomatic because the condition was too widespread, but then he thought about it again.

During their return from the disaster site with the sole surviving EGCL, everyone had felt understandably low about the mission’s
lack of success and because Prilicla was giving cause for concern. But in retrospect there was something wrong, unprofessional, about their reactions. They were feeling things too strongly, overreacting, developing in their own fashions the same kind of hypersensitivity which had affected Prilicla and which had affected the patients and staff on the Illensan and the Nallajim levels. Conway had felt it himself; the vague stomach pains, the discomfort in hands and fingers, the overexcitability in circumstances which did not warrant it. But the effect had diminished with distance, because when he visited O’Mara’s office for the GLNO tape and later for the erasure, he had felt normal and unworried except for the usual degree of concern over a current case, accentuated in this instance because the patient was Prilicla.

The EGCL was receiving the best possible attention from Thornnastor and Edanelt, so it was not on his mind to any large extent. Conway had been sure of that.

“But then I began to think about its injuries,” Conway went on, “and the way I had felt on the ship and within three levels of the EGCL operation. In the hospital while I had the GLNO tape riding me, I was an empath without empathy. But I seemed to be feeling things—emotions, pains, conditions which did not belong to me. I thought that, because of fatigue and the stress of that time, I was generating sympathetic pains. Then it occurred to me that if the type of discomfort being suffered by the EGCL were subtracted from the symptoms of the medics and patients on those six levels and the intensity of the discomfort reduced, then the affected patients and staff would be acting and reacting normally. This seemed to point toward—”

“An empath!” O’Mara said. “Like Prilicla.”

“
Not
like Prilicla,” Conway said firmly. “Although it is possible that the empathic faculty possessed by the preintelligent ancestors of both species was similar.”

But their prehistoric world was an infinitely more dangerous place than Cinruss had been, Conway continued, and in any case the EGCLs lacked the ability of the Cinrusskins quite literally to fly from danger. And in such a savage environment there was little advantage in having an empathic faculty other than as a highly un
pleasant early warning system, and so the ability to receive emotions had been lost. It was probable that they no longer received even the emotional radiation of their own kind.

They had become organic transmitters, reflectors and focusers and magnifiers of their own feelings and those of the beings around them. The indications were that the faculty had evolved to the stage where they had no conscious control over the process.

“Think of the defensive weapon that makes,” Conway explained. The EGCL’s life support and sensors had been transferred to the litter and it was ready to leave. “If a predator tries to attack it, the anger and hunger it feels for its victim together with the fear and pain, if the victim was hurt or wounded, would be magnified, bounced back, and figuratively hit the attacker in the teeth. I can only guess at the order of emotional amplification used. But the effect on the predator, especially if there were others in the vicinity whose feelings were also being amplified, would be discouraging to say the least, also very confusing. It might have the effect of having them attack each other.

“We already know the effect of a deeply unconscious EGCL on the patients and staff three levels above and below this one,” Conway went on grimly. “Now consciousness is returning and I don’t know what will happen, or how far-reaching the effect will be. We have to get it away from here before the hospital’s patients have their own as well as the EGCL’s pain magnified to an unknown but major degree, and their medical attendants thrown into a steadily accelerating state of disorder and panic because they, too, will receive the reflected pain and—”

He broke off and tried to control his own growing panic, then he said harshly, “We have to get it away from the hospital now, without further delays or arguments.”

O’Mara’s face had lost its angry red coloration while Conway had been talking, until now it looked gray and bloodless. He said, “Don’t waste time talking, Doctor. I shall accompany you. There will be no further delays or arguments.”

When they reached
Rhabwar
’s Casualty Deck the EGCL was still not fully conscious and Prilicla was again being seriously affected by the ambient emotional radiation which was being amplified and bounced off their patient. The discomfort diminished sharply with
increasing distance from the hospital, the empath told them, and the awakening EGCL was radiating only a relatively low intensity of discomfort from the sites of the recent surgery—but Prilicla did not have to tell them that because they could all feel it for themselves.

“I have been thinking about the problem of communicating with these people,” O’Mara said thoughtfully. “If they are all high-powered transmitters and reflectors of emotional radiation, they may not be aware of what they are doing, only that they have an automatic, nonmaterial defense against everything and everyone wishing them harm. The job of establishing communications with them may not be easy and is likely to be a long-range affair, unless our basic premise is wrong and we—”

“My first idea,” Conway broke in, “was to put it in the lander with remote-controlled medical servomechs. Then I thought there should be one medic, a volunteer, in attendance—”

“I won’t ask who,” O’Mara said dryly, and smiled as Conway’s embarrassment bounced off the EGCL and hit them.

“—because if ever there was case demanding isolation,” Conway ended, “this is it.”

The Chief Psychologist nodded. “What I had been about to say was that we may have miscalculated. Certainly we could never treat EGCLs in hospital where the patients surrounding them were in pain, even slight pain. But the situation here in the ship isn’t too bad. I can feel pains in the equivalent sites to where the EGCL is hurting, but nothing I can’t handle. And the rest of you are emoting concern for the patient, and this is not unpleasant even when magnified. It seems that if you don’t think badly toward the patient, it can’t bounce anything too unpleasant back at you. It’s surprising. I feel just the way I always do, except more so.”

“But it is regaining consciousness,” Conway protested. “There should be an intensification of—”

“There isn’t,” O’Mara cut in. “That is very obvious, Conway. Could the reason be
because
the patient is regaining consciousness? Think about it. Yes, Doctor, we can all feel you feeling ‘Eureka!’”

“Of
course
!” Conway said, and paused because his pleasure and excitement at seeing the answer, magnified by the EGCL, was causing Prilicla’s wings to go into the series of slow, rippling undulations which indicated intense pleasure in a Cinrusskin. It also counter
acted the aches which he and everyone else were feeling from the patient. He thought,
What a weird experience the cultural contact specialists were going to have with this species
.

Aloud he said, “The process of reflecting and magnifying the feelings, hostile or otherwise, of the people around them is a defense mechanism which would, naturally, be at its most effective when the being is helpless, vulnerable, or unconscious. With a return to consciousness the effect seems to diminish but the empathic reflections are still strong. The result is that everyone around them will have an empathic faculty not unlike Prilicla’s, and yet the EGCLs are deaf to each other’s emotional radiation because they are transmitters only.

“Being like Prilicla,” he went on, looking across at the empath, “is something of a mixed blessing. But the EGCL would be a nice person to have around if we were having a good time—”

“Control here,” the voice of the Captain broke in. “I have some information on your patient’s species. Federation Archives have signaled the hospital to the effect that this race—their name for themselves is the Duwetz—was contacted briefly by an exploring Hudlar ship before the formation of the Galactic Federation. Enough information was obtained for the basic Duwetz language to be programmed into the present-day translation computers, but contact was severed because of serious psychological problems among the crew. We are advised to proceed with caution.”

“The patient,” Prilicla said suddenly, “is awake.”

Conway moved closer to the EGCL and tried to think positive, reassuring thoughts toward it. He noted with relief that the biosensors and associated monitors were indicating a weak but stable condition; that the damaged lung was again working satisfactorily and the bandages immobilizing the two rejoined appendages were firmly in position. The extensive suturing on the muscular apron and ambulatory pad at the base were well up to Thornnastor and Edanelt’s high standards, as were the deftly inserted staples which gleamed in neat rows where the carapace fractures had been. Obviously the being was in considerable discomfort in spite of the painkilling medication Thornnastor had synthesized for its particular metabolism. But pain was not the predominant feeling it was transmitting, and fear and hostility were entirely absent.