Sector General Omnibus 2 - Alien Emergencies (62 page)

“Why are they standing there?” he yelled at Khone, waving toward the onlookers. “Why don’t they
help
it?”

“Only a healer may closely approach another Gogleskan when it is in distress,” Khone said as its tiny manipulators drew thin wooden rods from a pouch strapped to its middle and began slotting them together. It added, “Or a person with sufficient mental self-control not to be affected by that distress.”

Conway was following the healer as it moved toward the ca
sualty. He said, “Perhaps a being of a completely different species could bring to bear on the case the required degree of clinical detachment.”

“No,” Khone said firmly. “Physical contact or even a close approach must be avoided.”

The Gogleskan’s rods had fitted together into a set of long-handled tongs to which, as the examination of the casualty proceeded, Khone added a series of interchangeable probes, spatulas, and lenses which were later substituted for fine brushes and swabs soaked in what must have been antiseptics for cleaning the wounds. This was followed by suturing of the larger incisions, using an ingenious device clipped to the end of the tongs. But the treatment was superficial and very, very slow.

Conway quickly extended the telescopic handle of his scanner until it was the same length as Khone’s tongs, then went down onto his hands and knees and pushed the instrument toward the healer.

“Internal injuries may be present,” he said. “This instrument will reveal them.”

Thanks were not expressed—probably Khone was too busy to be polite—but the Gogleskan laid down its tongs at once and began using Conway’s scanner. Its manipulators were awkward at first, but very soon they had adapted to the grips which had been designed for Earth-human fingers so that Khone began varying the focus and magnification in a manner that was almost expert.

“There is minor bleeding from the buried section of the body,” the Gogleskan said a few minutes later. “But it will be observed that the greatest danger to the casualty is the interruption of the blood supply to the cranial area, just here, which is caused by pressure from a wooden beam lying across and compressing the main cranial artery. This has also caused unconsciousness, which explains the lack of recent sounds and body movements which will also have been observed.”

“Rescue procedure?” Conway asked.

“Rescue is not possible in the time available,” Khone replied. “There is no knowledge regarding the time units used by the off-world healer, but the conditions will be terminal in approximately one-fiftieth of the time period between our dawn and dusk. However, the attempt must be made…”

Conway looked at Wainright, who said quietly, “About fifteen minutes.”

“…To immobilize the beam with a wedge,” the Gogleskan went on, “and remove the rubble from under the casualty so that the being will subside into a position where the constriction from the beam will be removed. There is also the risk of a further collapse of the structure, so the removal of beings other than the casualty and its healer is urgently requested in the interest of their safety.”

It returned the scanner to Conway long handle first, and when he took it back the Gogleskan began fitting soil-moving claws to its tongs.

Conway had the nightmarish feeling of being faced with a simple problem requiring a minimal amount of manual activity, and having both hands tied behind his back. It was impossible for him to stand by and watch an injured being die when there were so many ways that he could try to save it. And yet he had been expressly forbidden to go near the creature, even though its fellow Gogleskan knew that he wanted only to help. It was stupid, of course, but there had to be something in this species’ culture which made sense of the apparent stupidity.

He looked helplessly at Wainright, and at the stocky, heavily muscled body which made the Lieutenant’s coveralls look tight, and tried again.

“If a casualty is unconscious,” he said desperately, “it should not be adversely affected by the close presence or touch of other beings. It might be possible for the off-worlders to lift the beam sufficiently high for the casualty to be drawn free.”

“Many others are watching,” Khone said, and its indecision was shown by the way it raised and then lowered its tongs. Then it fitted a new set of tips to them, produced a coil of light rope from somewhere, and began using the tongs to loop it around the casualty’s feet. It went on. “Very well. But there are risks. And the casualty and its healer must not be closely approached by off-worlders, or be seen by others to make such an approach, no matter how well-intentioned it is.”

Conway did not ask how close “closely” was as he preceded the Lieutenant into the wide, low entrance, each putting a shoulder under the beam which was supporting one side of it. No doubt the
physical proximity of Wainright and Conway was offensive to the onlookers, but the doorway was shadowed and perhaps the watching Gogleskans could not see them clearly. Right then Conway was too busy pushing to care what they thought.

Dust and fine rubble rained down on them as they lifted their end of the beam by three, four, and then nearly six inches. But at the other end where the casualty was trapped, it rose by barely two inches. Khone’s tongs had successfully looped the rope around the casualty’s legs, and it had wrapped the other end several times around its own middle. It took up the slack, braced its feet, and leaned against the rope like the anchorman in a tug-of-war team, but without effect. The Gogleskan FOKT life-form was too lightly built and physiologically unsuited to the application of the required traction.

“Can you hold it up yourself for a moment?” Wainright asked, crouching suddenly and disappearing further into the entrance. “I can see something that might help us.”

It seemed much longer than a moment while the Lieutenant dug among the rubble inside the entrance and the beam dug into Conway’s shoulder. His straining back and leg muscles were knotted in a continual, fiery cramp. He blinked the sweat out of his eyes and saw that Khone had changed its approach to the problem. Instead of pulling continuously, it had begun returning as close as was allowable to the casualty and then waddling as fast as it could away from it until the rope was pulled taut, trying to jerk the other Gogleskan free.

With every jerk the injured FOKT moved a little, but some of the sutures had opened and it was bleeding freely again.

Every single vertebra in his back was being compressed into a single osseous column, Conway thought angrily, which any second now would break.

“
Hurry
, dammit!”

“I
am
hurrying,” Khone said, forgetting to be impersonal.

“Coming,” the Lieutenant said.

Wainright arrived with a short, thick piece of timber which he quickly wedged between the beam and the ground. Conway collapsed thankfully onto his knees, easing his maltreated shoulder and back, but only for a moment. The Lieutenant’s idea was for them
to lift with a few seconds of maximum effort, and then use the prop to keep from losing the extra height gained, repeating the process until the casualty could be pulled free.

It was a very good idea, but the intermittent falls of dust and rubble were becoming a steadily increasing shower. The casualty was almost free when there was a low rumble and the sound of splintering timber from inside the building.

“Get clear!” Khone shouted as it got ready to give one last, desperate jerk on the rope. But as the healer came to the end of its waddling run, the loop slipped off the casualty’s feet and Khone went tumbling and rolling away, entangled in its own rescue rope.

Later, Conway was to spend a long and agonizing time wondering whether he had done the right or the wrong thing just then, but there was simply no time to evaluate and compare extraterrestrial social behavior with that of Earth-humans—he did it because he could not do anything else. He checked his stumbling run away from the collapsing entrance, turned and grabbed the unconscious FOKT casualty by the feet.

With his greater weight and strength it came away easily, and crouched double and moving backward, he dragged it clear of the subsiding building. As the dust began to settle, he pulled it gently onto a patch of soft grass. Nearly all of Khone’s sutures had pulled free, and the casualty had acquired a number of new wounds, all of which were bleeding.

The being opened its eyes suddenly, stiffened, then began making a loud, continuous, hissing sound which wavered up and down in pitch so that at times it was almost a whistle.

“
No!
” Khone said urgently. “There is no danger! It is a healer, a friend!…”

But the irregular hissing and whistling grew louder, and Conway was aware that the circle of onlookers, no longer distant, had joined in. He could scarcely hear himself think. Khone was stumbling around the casualty, sometimes approaching to within a few inches, then moving away again, as if it was performing an intricate ritual dance.

“Yes,” Conway said reassuringly, “I’m not an enemy. I pulled you out.”

“You stupid, stupid healer!” Khone said, sounding angry as well
as personal. “You ignorant off-worlder! Go
away
!…”

What happened then was one of the strangest sights Conway had ever witnessed, and at Sector General he had seen many of those. The casualty rolled and jerked itself to its feet, still emitting the undulating whistling noises. Khone had begun to make the same sound, and the long, stiff body hair on both beings was standing out straight, so that the plaid effect caused by the different colors lying at right angles to each other was lost. Suddenly Khone and the casualty touched and were instantly welded or, more accurately, tightly woven together where they had made contact.

The stiff hairs covering their sides had insinuated into and through each other, like the warp and weft of an old-time woven rug, and it was plain that no outside agency would be able to separate them without removing the hair of both creatures and probably the underlying tegument as well.

“Let’s get out of here, Doctor,” Wainright said from the top of the groundcar, pointing at the Gogleskans who were closing in from all sides.

Conway hesitated, watching a third FOKT join itself in the same incredible fashion to Khone and the casualty. The long spikes whose purpose he had not known were projecting stiffly from the cranium of every Gogleskan, and there was a bright yellow secretion oozing from the tips. As he climbed into the vehicle, one of the spikes tore the fabric of his coveralls, but without penetrating the underlying clothing or skin.

While the Lieutenant moved the vehicle to higher ground for a better view of what was going on, Conway used his analyzer on the traces of yellow secretion which had been left along the edges of the tear in his suit. He was able to calculate that the contents of one of those stings introduced directly into the bloodstream would be instantly disabling, and that three or more of them would be fatal.

The Gogleskans were joining themselves into a group-entity which was growing larger by the minute. Individual FOKTs were hurrying from nearby buildings, moored ships, and even from the surrounding trees to add themselves to this great, mobile, spiky carpet which crawled around large buildings and over small ones as if it did not know or care what it was doing. In its wake it left a trail of smashed equipment, vehicles, dead animals, and even one
capsized ship. The vessel had been tied up, and when the periphery of the group-entity has stumbled on board it had flipped onto its side, smashing the masts and superstructure against the jetty.

But the Gogleskans who had fallen into the water did not seem to be inconvenienced, Conway saw, and the movement of the land-based constituents of the group-entity pulled them out again within a few minutes.

“They’re not blind,” Conway said, aghast at the wholesale destruction. He stood on his bucket seat to get a better view and went on. “There are enough unobscured eyes around the periphery for them to see where they’re going, but they seem to have great difficulty making up their mind. Oh, man, they’re fairly wrecking that settlement. Can you put up the flyer and get me a detailed, high-level record of this?”

“Can do,” the Lieutenant said. He spoke briefly into his communicator, then went on. “It isn’t making straight for us, Doctor, but it’s trying to get nearer. We’d better change position.”

“No, wait,” Conway said, gripping the edge of the open canopy and leaning out, the better to see the edge of the group-entity which had stumbled to within six meters’ distance. Dozens of eyes regarded him coldly, and the long, yellow-tipped stings were like a thinly stubbled hayfield. “They are hostile, yet Khone itself was friendly. Why?”

His voice was almost drowned by the rushing, whistling sound made by the group, a sound which their translators did not register. But somewhere in that unintelligible mush there was a whisper of intelligence trying to fight its way out, the voice of the Gogleskan healer.

“Go away,” it said. “Go away.”

Conway had to drop quickly into his seat before Wainright closed the canopy on him and they moved away. Angrily, the Lieutenant said, “You can’t
do
anything!”

There was no need for the memory-enhancing medication which Conway had been taking since leaving Sector General to recall the incident—it was there in his mind, complete in every detail. And there was no arguing against the evidence, no escaping the damning conclusion that he alone was responsible for the whole sorry mess.

The vision tapes from the flyer had shown an immediate decrease in the destructive activity of the rampaging Gogleskans as soon as the groundcar carrying Wainright and Conway had left the scene. And within an hour the group-entity had fragmented into its individual members, who had stood immobile, widely separated from each other and giving the impression that they were suffering from extreme exhaustion.

He had gone over the visual material again and again, together with his scanner’s playback of the self-examination by Khone and the later material on the FOKT whose rescue had precipitated the fusion of all the Gogleskans in the area. He tried to find a clue, a mere indication, the most tenuous of hints which would explain the reason for the FOKTs’ incredible reaction to his touching one of their number, but without success.

At one stage the thought came that he was here to rest, to clear his mind so that he could make important decisions regarding his future. The Gogleskan situation was a nonurgent problem which, according to O’Mara, he could think about or ignore. But he could
not
ignore it, because, apart from making it fractionally worse, he
had been presented with a puzzle so alien that even his long experience of extraterrestrial behavior and thought processes at the hospital was not of much help.

As an individual, Khone had been so
normal
.

Irritably he dropped into his bunk, still holding his scanner at eye level and trying to squeeze some meaning out of the FOKT recordings. In theory it was impossible to feel discomfort in a bunk with gravity controls set to a tiny fraction of one Earth-G, but Conway wriggled and tossed and managed to feel very uncomfortable indeed.

He was able to trace the shallow roots of the four FOKT stings, which at the time Khone had been examining itself had been lying flat against the upper cranium and partially concealed by the surrounding hair, and chart the positions of the fine ducts which connected the spikes to the poison sac which supplied them. There was also a nerve linkage between the base of the brain and the muscles for erecting the stings and for compressing the reservoir of venom, but he had no idea of the kind of stimulus which would trigger this activity. Neither had he any ideas regarding the function of the long, silvery strands which lay among the coarser cranial hair.

His first thought, that they were simply an indication of advancing age, had to be revised when closer study showed that the follicle structure was completely unlike that of the surrounding hair and that they, like the stings, had underlying muscle and nerve connections which gave them the capability of independent movement. Unlike the stings, they were much larger, finer, and more flexible.

Unfortunately he could not trace the subdermal nerve connections, if such were present, because his scanner had not been set for such fine work. His intention had been simply to impress the Gogleskan healer by showing it pictures of its own major organs operating, and no amount of magnification during playback could bring up details which were not already there.

Even so, had it not been for the utterly strange behavior of the FOKTs, Conway would have been highly satisfied with the physiological data he had obtained. But in this case he was not satisfied. He badly wanted to meet Khone again and examine it more closely—both clinically and verbally.

After today’s debacle the chance of that happening was small indeed.

“Go away!” Khone had told him from somewhere within that rampaging mob of Gogleskans. And the Lieutenant, too, had been angry when he had shouted, “You can’t
do
anything!”

Conway knew that he had slipped into sleep when he became aware that he was no longer on Goglesk. His surroundings had changed, but they were still familiar, and the problems occupying his mind had become much simpler. He did not dream very often—or, as O’Mara was fond of reminding him, he dreamed as frequently as any other so-called intelligent being, but was fortunate in that he recalled very few of his dreams. This particular dream was pleasant, uncomplicated, and bore no relation to his present situation.

At least, so it seemed at first.

The chairs were enormous and had to be climbed into instead of being sat upon, and the big dining table, which was also hand-built, required him to stand on tiptoe if he was to see onto the deeply grained and highly polished planking of its top. That, thought the mature, dreaming Conway, placed him at the age of about eight.

Whether the effect was due to O’Mara’s medication or a psychological quirk which was all his own, Conway did not know, but he was viewing the dream as a mature and fully informed adult while his feelings about it were those of a not very happy eight-year-old.

His parents had been third-generation colonists on the mineral-rich, Earth-seeded world of Braemar which, at the time of their deaths, had been explored, tamed, and made safe—at least, so far as the areas occupied by the mining and agricultural towns and the single spaceport were concerned.

He had lived on the outskirts of that spaceport city, which was a great, sprawling complex of one-, two-, and three-story buildings, for all of his young life. He had not thought it strange that the log cabins greatly outnumbered the towering white blocks of the manufacturing complexes, the administration center, the spacefield buildings, and the hospital; or that the furniture, nonmetal household equipment, pottery, and ornaments were all home-produced.
With his mature hindsight he knew that wood was plentiful and cheap on Braemar while imported Earth furniture and gadgetry were very expensive and, in any case, the colonists took pride in their own handiwork and wanted it no other way.

But the log cabins were powered and lit by modern fusion generators, and the hand-built furniture supported sophisticated vision transceivers whose chief purposes were, so far as the young Conway was concerned, to educate during the day and entertain in the evening. Ground and air transportation was also modern, fast, and as safe as it was possible to make it, and only very occasionally did a flyer drop out of the sky with the loss of all on board.

It was not the loss of his parents which was making him unhappy. He had been too young to remember them as anything but vague, comforting presences, and when they had been called to the emergency at the mine he had been left in the charge of a young couple who were close neighbors. He had remained with them until after the burial, when his father’s oldest brother had taken him to live with his family.

His aunt and uncle had been kindly, responsible, and very busy people who were no longer young. Their own children were young adults, so except for a period of initial curiosity, they had very little time for him. Not so the grandmother of the house, Conway’s great-grandmother, who had decided that the newly orphaned infant would be her sole responsibility.

She was incredibly old—anyone who dared ask her age did not do it a second time—and as fragile as a Cinrusskin, but was still physically and mentally active. She had been the first child born to the Braemar colony, and when Conway began taking an interest in such things, she had an endless supply of stories about those early days of the colony which were far more exciting, if perhaps a little less factual, than the material in the history tapes.

Without understanding what they had been talking about at the time, Conway had heard his uncle tell a visitor that the kid and the old lady got on very well together because they were the same mental age. Except when she chastised him, which was not very often and not at all during the later years, she was always good fun. She covered for him when accidents occurred which were not entirely his fault, and she defended his pet-pen when it began to grow from
a small, wired-in enclosure in the back garden to something resembling a miniature wildlife park, although she was most insistent that he not acquire pets which he could not care for properly.

He had a few Earth pets as well as a collection of the small and harmless native Braemar Herbivores—who sometimes took sick, frequently injured themselves, and multiplied practically all the time. She had called up the relevant veterinary tapes for him—such material was considered too advanced for a child—and with her advice and by his using practically all of his nonstudy time the inhabitants of his pet-pen prospered and, much to his aunt and uncle’s surprise, showed a fair profit when the word got around that he was a prime source of healthy garden and household pets for the neighborhood children.

The young Conway was kept much too busy to realize that he was a very lonely boy—until his great-grandmother and only friend suddenly lost interest in talking about his pets, and seemed to lose interest in him. The doctor began visiting her regularly, and then his aunt and uncle took it in turn to stay in the room with her night and day, and they forbade him even to see his only friend.

That was why he felt unhappy. And the adult Conway, remembering as well as reexperiencing the whole incident, knew that there was more unhappiness to come. The dream was about to become a nightmare.

They had forgotten to lock the door one evening, and when he sneaked into the bedroom he found his aunt sitting on a chair by the bedside with her chin on her chest, dozing. His great-grandmother was lying with her face turned toward him, her eyes and mouth wide open, but she did not speak and she did not seem to see him. As he moved toward the bed, he heard her harsh, irregular breathing, and he became aware of the smell. Suddenly he felt frightened, but he reached forward to touch the thin, wasted arm which lay outside the bedclothes. He was thinking that she might look at him or say something, or maybe even smile at him the way she had done only a few weeks ago.

The arm was
cold
.

The mature and medically experienced Conway knew that circulation had already failed at the extremities and that the old lady had only minutes to live, and the very young Conway knew it, too,
without knowing why. Unable to stop himself, he tried to call her, and his aunt woke up. She looked at his grand-grandmother, then grabbed him tightly by the arm and rushed him from the bedroom.

“Go away!” she had said, beginning to cry. “You can’t
do
anything!…”

His adult eyes were damp when he awakened in his tiny room in the Monitor Corps base on Goglesk, and not for the first time he wondered to what extent the death of that incredibly old and fragile and warmhearted old lady had affected his subsequent life. The grief and sense of loss had faded, but not the memory of his utter helplessness, and he had not wanted to feel that way ever again. In later life, when he had encountered disease and injury and impending death, there had always been something, sometimes quite a lot, that he could do. And until his arrival on Goglesk he had never felt as helpless as that again.

“Go away,” Khone had said when Conway’s misguided attempt to help had resulted in the near-devastation of a town, and had probably caused untold psychological damage as well. And “You can’t
do
anything,” the Lieutenant had said.

But he was no longer a frightened, grieving young boy. He refused to believe that there was nothing he could do.

He thought about the situation as he bathed, dressed, and converted the room into its daytime mode, but ended by feeling angry with himself and even more helpless. He was a medic, he told himself, not a Cultural Contact specialist. The majority of his contacts were with extraterrestrials who were immobilized by disease or injury or examination-room restraints, and when close physical contact and investigative procedures were taken for granted. But not so on Goglesk.

Wainright had warned him about the phobic individualism of the FOKTs, and he had seen it for himself. Yet he had allowed his Earth-human instincts and feelings to take over when he should have controlled them—at least until he had understood a little more about the situation.

And now the only being who could have helped him understand the problem, Khone, would not want to meet him again except, perhaps, to offer physical violence.

Maybe he could try with another Gogleskan in a different area,
presupposing that Wainright agreed to Conway’s borrowing the base’s only flyer for a lengthy period, and that the FOKTs had no means of long-distance communication. Certainly there had been nothing detected on the radio frequencies, and no evidence of visual or audible signaling systems or of messages carried by intelligent or nonintelligent runners or flyers.

But was it likely, he was thinking when his communicator beeped suddenly, that a species which so fanatically avoided close contact would be interested in keeping in touch over long distances?

“Your room sensors say that you’re up and moving around,” Wainright said, laughing. “Are you mentally awake as well, Doctor?”

Conway did not feel like laughing at anything, and he hoped the well-meaning Lieutenant was not intent on cheering him up. Irritably, he said, “Yes.”

“Khone is outside,” Wainright said, as if he was having trouble believing his own words. “It says that an obligation exists to return our visit of yesterday, and to apologize for any mental or physical distress the incident may have caused us. Doctor, it particularly wants to talk to you.”

Extraterrestrials
, thought Conway, not for the first time,
are full of surprises
. This one might have some answers, as well. As he left the room his pace could never have been described as the confident, unhurried tread of a Senior Physician. It was more like a dead run.