Sector General Omnibus 2 - Alien Emergencies (75 page)

In the characteristically forthright manner of a Kelgian, one of the nurses asked, “Is the nonsentient parent to be considered expendable?”

Thornnastor curled an eye to regard Conway, whose mind was still fixed immovably on the circumstances of that earlier birth.

“That is not our intention,” the Tralthan said when he did not respond. “The parent Protector was once a sentient Unborn, and is capable of producing anything up to three more sentient Unborn.
Should the circumstances arise where a decision is needed whether to assist the birth of the sentient infant at the expense of the life of the presently nonsentient parent, or to allow the birth to proceed normally so that we end with two nonsentient Protectors, that must be the decision of the Surgeon-in-Charge.

“If the latter decision was to be considered,” it went on, with one eye still fixed on Conway, “it could be argued in support that with two Protectors, a young and an old one who will both produce telepathic embryos in time, we will have another chance or chances to solve the problem. But this would mean subjecting the two FSOJs to lengthy gestation periods in a highly artificial life-support system, which might have long-term ill effects on the new embryos, and would simply mean deferring the decision. The whole procedure would have to be repeated with, in all likelihood, the same decision having to be taken by a different Surgeon-in-Charge.”

Murchison’s eyes were on him as well, and she was looking worried. Those last few words had been something more than a not particularly direct answer to the nurse’s question; they were in the nature of a professional warning. Conway was being reminded that he was still very much on probation, and that the Diagnostician-in-Charge of Pathology did not, in spite of its seniority, bear the ultimate responsibility for this case. But still he could not speak.

“You will observe that the Unborn’s tentacles are beginning to move, but slowly,” Thornnastor continued. “And now it is beginning to pull itself out of the birth canal…”

It had been at that moment that the soundless telepathic voice in Conway’s mind had lost its clarity. There had been a feeling of pain and confusion and deep anxiety muddying up the clear stream of communication, but the final message from the Unborn had been a simple one.

To be born is to die, friends
, the silent voice had said.
My mind and my telepathic faculty are being destroyed, and I am becoming a Protector with my own Unborn to protect while it grows and thinks and tries to make contact with you
.

Please cherish it
.

The trouble with telepathic communication, Conway thought bitterly, was that it lacked the ambiguity and verbal misdirection
and diplomatic lying which was possible with the spoken word. A telepathic promise had no loopholes. It was impossible to break one without a serious loss of self-respect.

And now the Unborn with whom he had experienced mind-to-mind contact was his patient, a Protector with the Unborn he had promised to cherish about to enter the highly complex and alien world of Sector General. He was still not sure how best to proceed—or, more accurately, which of several unsatisfactory options to adopt.

To nobody in particular he said suddenly, “We don’t even know that the fetus has grown normally in hospital conditions. Our reproduction of the environment may not have been accurate enough. The Unborn may not have developed sentience, much less the telepathic faculty. There have been no indications of…”

He broke off as a series of musical trills and clicks came from the ceiling above their heads, and from their translators came the words, “You may not be entirely correct in your assumption, friend Conway.”

“Prilicla!” Murchison said, and added unnecessarily, “You’re back!”

“Are you…well?” Conway asked. He was thinking of the Menelden casualties and the hell it must have been for an empath to be placed in charge of classifying them.

“I am well, friend Conway,” Prilicla replied, the legs holding it to the ceiling twitching slowly as it bathed in the emotional radiation of friendship and concern emanating from those below. “I was careful to direct operations from as great a distance as possible, just as I am remaining well clear of your patient in the outer ward. The Protector’s emotional radiation is unpleasant to me, but not so the radiation from the Unborn.

“Mentation of a high order is present,” the Cinrusskin went on. “Regrettably, I am an empath rather than a true telepath, but the feelings I detect are of frustration which is caused, I would guess, by its inability to communicate with those outside, together with feelings of confusion and awe which are predominating.”

“Awe?” Conway said, then added, “If it has been trying to communicate, we’ve felt nothing, not even the faintest tickle.”

Prilicla dropped from the ceiling, executed a neat loop, and fluttered to the top of a nearby instrument cabinet so that the DBLFs
and DBDGs present would not have to strain their cervical vertebrae watching it. “I cannot be completely sure, friend Conway, because feelings are less trustworthy for the conveyance of intelligence than coherent thoughts, but it seems to me that the trouble may simply be one of mental overcrowding. During your original contact with the then Unborn and present Protector, the being had only three minds to consider, those of friends Murchison, Fletcher, and yourself. The other crew and medical team members were aboard
Rhabwar
and at extreme telepathic range.

“Here there may be too many minds,” the empath went on, “minds of a bewildering variety and degree of complexity, including two”—its eyes turned to regard Thornnastor and Conway—“which seem to contain a multiplicity of entities, and which might be truly confusing, and awe-inspiring.”

“You’re right, of course,” Conway said. He thought for a moment, then went on. “I was hoping for telepathic contact with the Unborn before and during the birth. In this case the assistance of a conscious and cooperating patient would be of great help indeed. But you can see the size of the operating room staff and technical support people. There are dozens of them. I can’t simply send them all away.”

Prilicla began to tremble again, this time in agitation over the additional worry it was causing Conway, when its intention had been only to reassure him regarding the mental health of the Unborn. It made another attempt to improve the quality of its friend’s emotional radiation.

“I called in at the Hudlar ward as soon as I got back,” the Cinrusskin said, “and I must say that your people did very well. Those were bad cases I sent in, as nearly hopeless as it is possible to be, friend Conway, but you lost only one of them. It was very fine work, even though friend O’Mara says that you have handed him another freshly boiled vegetable.”

“I think,” Murchison said, laughing as she translated the translated words, “it means another hot potato.”

“O’Mara?” Conway asked.

“The Chief Psychologist was talking to one of your patients,” Prilicla replied, “and assessing its nonmedical condition after visiting one of the Hudlars in the geriatric section. Friend O’Mara knew
that I was coming to see you, and it said to tell you that a signal from Goglesk has arrived to the effect that your friend Khone wants to come to the hospital as soon as—”

“Khone is sick, badly injured?” Conway broke in, the persona of his Gogleskan mind-partner and his feelings for the little being pushing everything and everybody else out of his mind. He knew, because Khone had known, of the many diseases and accidents to which the FOKTs were prey, and for which very little could be done because to approach each other for help was to invite disaster. Whatever had happened to Khone, it must have been pretty bad for it to want to come to Sector General, where the worst nightmares of its mind were a physical actuality.

“No, no, friend Conway,” Prilicla said, trembling again with the violence of his emotional radiation. “Khone’s condition is neither serious nor urgent. But it has asked that you, personally, collect it and convey it to the hospital lest fear of your physically monstrous friends causes it to change its mind. Friend O’Mara’s precise words were that you seem to be attracting some odd maternity cases these days.”

“But it can’t be volunteering to come
here
!” Conway protested. He knew that Khone was mature and capable of producing offspring. There was nothing in the Gogleskan’s mind regarding recent sexual encounters, which meant that it must have happened since Conway had left Goglesk. He began doing calculations based on the FOKT gestation period.

“That was my reaction as well, friend Conway,” Prilicla said. “But friend O’Mara pointed out that you had lived with and adapted to the presence of your Gogleskan friend and that it, Heaven help it, had been similarly influenced by your Earth-human mind. That was the second boiled vegetable; the other was the geriatric Hudlar business.

“Sorting out the psychoses of a FOKT parent-to-be and offspring scared of their prehistoric shadows was not going to be easy,” the empath went on, “and the geriatric Hudlar problem had grown to the stage where it was taking up practically all of his time. It sounded very irritated and at times angry, did friend O’Mara, but its emotional radiation was at variance with the spoken words. There
were strong feelings of anticipation and excitement, as if it was looking forward to the challenge…”

It broke off and began trembling again. Beside the instrument cabinet it was clinging to, Thornnastor was lifting and lowering its six elephantine feet one at a time and in no particular sequence. Murchison looked at the Diagnostician, and even though she was not an empath, she knew her chief well enough to be able to recognize a very impatient Tralthan.

“This is all very interesting, Prilicla,” she said gently, “but unlike that of Khone, the condition of the patient awaiting our attention in the outer ward is both serious and urgent.”

In spite of everyone else’s sense of urgency the Protector seemed to be in no particular hurry to deliver its Unborn. Conway was secretly relieved. It gave him more time to think, to consider alternative procedures and, if he was honest with himself, more time to dither.

The normally phlegmatic Thornnastor, with three eyes on the patient and one on the scanner projection, was slowly stamping one foot as it watched the lack of activity in the area of the Protector’s womb. Murchison was dividing her attention between the screen and the Kelgian nurse who was in charge of the patient’s restraints, and Prilicla was a distant, fuzzy blob clinging to the ceiling at the other end of the ward, where the emotional radiation from the Protector was bearable if not comfortable, and linked to the OR Team by communicator.

It was there purely out of clinical curiosity, the little empath had insisted. But the true reason was probably that it sensed Conway’s anxiety regarding the coming operation and it wanted to help.

“Of the alternative procedures you have mentioned,” Thornnastor said suddenly, “the first is slightly more desirable. But prematurely enlarging the birth opening and withdrawing the Unborn while at the same time clamping off those gland ducts… It’s tricky, Conway. You could be faced with an awakened and fully active young Protector tearing and eating its way out of the parent. Or have you now decided that the parent is expendable?”

Conway’s mind was filled again with the memory of his telepathic contact with an Unborn, an Unborn who had been born as a mindless Protector,
this
Protector. He knew that he was not being logical, but he did not want to discard a being whose mind he had known so intimately simply because, for evolutionary reasons, it had suffered a form of brain death.

“No,” Conway said firmly.

“The other alternatives are even worse,” the Tralthan said.

“I was hoping you’d feel that way,” Conway said.

“I understand,” Thornnastor said. “But neither am I greatly in favor of your primary suggestion. The procedure is radical, to say the least, and unheard-of when the species concerned possesses a carapace. Such delicate work on a fully conscious and mobile patient is—”

“The patient,” Conway broke in, “will be conscious, and immobilized.”

“It seems, Conway,” it said, speaking quietly for a Tralthan, “that there is some confusion in your mind due, perhaps, to the multiplicity of tapes occupying it. Let me remind you that the patient cannot be immobilized for any lengthy period of time, either by physical restraint or anesthetics, without irreversible metabolic changes taking place which lead quickly to unconsciousness and termination. The FSOJ is constantly moving and constantly under attack, and the response of its endocrine system is such that… But you know this as well as I do, Conway! Are you well? Is there psychological, perhaps temporary, distress? Would you like me to assume charge for a time?”

Murchison had been listening to her communicator and had missed Thornnastor’s earlier words. She looked worriedly at Conway, obviously wondering what was wrong with him, or what her Chief thought was wrong with him; then she said, “Prilicla called me. It didn’t want to interrupt you during what might have been an important clinical discussion between its superiors, but it reports a steady increase and change in the quality of emotional radiation emanating from both the Protector and its Unborn. The indications are that the Protector is preparing itself for a major effort, and this in turn has caused an increase in the level of mentation in the
Unborn. Prilicla wants to know if you have detected any signs of an attempt at telepathic contact. It says the Unborn is trying very hard.”

Conway shook his head. To Thornnastor he said, “With respect, this information was contained in my original report on the FSOJ life-form to you, and my memory is unimpaired. I thank you for the offer to take charge, and I welcome your advice and assistance, but I am not psychologically distressed, and my mental confusion is at a similar level to that at which I normally operate.”

“Your remarks about immobilizing the patient suggested otherwise,” Thornnastor said after a short pause. “I’m glad that you feel well, but I am not completely reassured regarding your surgical intentions.”

“And I’m not completely sure that I’m right,” Conway replied. “But my indecision has gone, and my intended procedure is based on the assumption that we have been too heavily influenced by the FSOJ’s life-support machinery and the insistence on physical mobility…”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the figure of Prilicla grow more blurred as it began to tremble violently. He broke off and said into his communicator, “Withdraw, little friend. Keep in contact but move out into the corridor. The emotional radiation around here is going to be pretty savage stuff, so move back quickly.”

“I was about to do so, friend Conway,” it replied. “But the quality of your own emotional radiation is not pleasant for either of us. There is determination, anxiety, and the feeling that you are forcing yourself to do something which normally you would not do. My apologies. In my concern for a friend I am discussing material which should properly be considered privileged. I am leaving now. Good luck, friend Conway.”

Before he could reply one of the Kelgians, its fur rippling with urgency, reported that the birth opening was beginning to enlarge.

“Relax,” he said, studying the scanner picture. “Nothing is happening internally as yet. Please position the patient on its left side with a right upper dorsal presentation. The operative field will be centered fifteen inches to the right of the carapacial median line in the position marked. Continue with the present life-support arrangements, but with a bit more enthusiasm if you can manage it,
until I tell you to stop. On my signal the restraints team will immobilize the patient’s limbs, being particularly careful to stretch the tentacles to full lateral extension and to anchor them with clamps and pressor beams. I have just decided that this job will be difficult enough without the patient jerking and wriggling all over the table while we are operating. While the operation is in progress, I want the minimum number of OR and support staff present, and those who are present must discipline their thinking as I will direct. Do you understand your instructions?”

“Yes, Doctor,” the Kelgian replied, but its fur was showing doubt and disapproval. A series of shocks transmitted through his shoes from the floor told him that Thornnastor was stamping its feet again.

“Sorry about the interruptions,” he said to the Tralthan. “I had been about to suggest that complete immobilization might be possible during the period necessary to complete the operation without serious damage to the patient. To follow my reasoning in this we must first consider what happens before, during, and after a major operation on any of the life-forms who, unlike the FSOJ, become periodically and frequently unconscious in the condition we know as sleep. In such cases—”

“They are tranquilized to minimize preoperative worry,” Thornnastor broke in, its feet still displaying its impatience, “anesthetized during the procedure, and monitored postoperatively until the metabolism and vital signs have stabilized. This is elementary, Conway.”

“I realize that,” he replied, “and I’m hoping that the solution to the problem is also elementary.”

He paused for a moment to marshal his thoughts, then went on. “You will agree that a normal patient, even though it is deeply anesthetized, reacts against the surgical intervention which is taking place. If it was conscious it would want to do what the Protector is trying to do to our operating staff, that is, trying to kill them and/or escape from the threat they represent. Even when anesthetized the normal patient is reacting unconsciously to a condition of severe stress, its system has been flooded with its equivalent of adrenaline, the available supplies of blood, sugars, and oxygen have been stepped up, and it is ready to fight or flee. This is a condition which
our Protector enjoys, if that is the correct word, permanently. It is constantly fighting and fleeing because it is constantly under attack.”

Thornnastor and Murchison were watching him intently, but neither spoke.

“Because we are showing it pictures in three dimensions and in quite terrifying detail of its natural environment,” Conway went on, “and we will be attacking it, surgically, with an intensity that it has certainly not experienced before, I am hoping to fool it and its endocrine system into believing that its limbs are still engaged in fighting off the attack or trying to flee from it. The limbs are, after all, fighting against the restraints, and the muscular effort needed is comparable.

“We will be attacking it,” he concluded, “with a major cesarean procedure through the carapace rather than in the abdominal area, without benefit of anesthesia, and I expect that there will be enough pain and confusion in its mind to make it forget that its body is not in motion, at least for the relatively short time it will take to complete the operation.”

Murchison was staring at him, her face expressionless but as pale as her white uniform. The full meaning of what he had just been saying dawned on Conway, and he felt sick and ashamed. The words were in direct contradiction to everything he had been taught as a healer and a bringer of comfort.
You must be cruel to be kind
, someone had told him once, but surely they had not meant this cruel.

“The Earth-human DBDG component of my mind,” Thornnastor said slowly, “is feeling shock and disgust at such unheard-of behavior.”

“This DBDG,” Conway said, tapping himself angrily on the chest, “feels the same way. But your taped DBDG never had to deliver a Protector.”

“Neither,” Thornnastor said, “has anyone else.”

Murchison was about to speak when there was a double interruption.

“The birth opening is beginning to widen,” the Kelgian charge nurse reported, “and there is a small change in the position of the fetus.”

“The emotional radiation from both entities is reaching a peak,”
Prilicla said on the communicator. “You will not have long to wait, friend Conway. Please do not distress yourself. Your clinical thinking is usually trustworthy.”

The Cinrusskin invariably said the right thing, Conway thought gratefully as Thornnastor followed him to the operating frame.

They checked the underside first, moving as close as they could while still avoiding the Protector’s wildly thrashing legs and the Hudlar who was jabbing at them with a metal bar to reproduce the attacks of the small, sharp-toothed predators of its home world. The musculature associated with the limbs was in constant, writhing motion, and in the medial area the birth opening was slowly lengthening and widening.

For the recorders, Conway said, “Junior will not be coming out this way. Normally, a cesarean procedure calls for a long, abdominal incision through which the fetus is removed. That course is contraindicated in this case for two reasons. It would involve cutting through several of the leg muscles, and because this being is incapable of resting a damaged limb while healing takes place, the clinical injury would never heal and the limbs concerned would be permanently affected. Secondly, we would be going in very close to the two glands which, we are virtually certain, contain the secretions which reverse the prebirth paralysis and obliterate the mind. Both, as you can see in the scanner, are connected to the umbilical and are compressed, and their contents discharged into the fetus, during the later stages of the birth process. In this physiological classification, a traditional cesarean entry would almost certainly compress these glands prematurely, and the purpose of the operation, the delivery of an intelligent Unborn, would be defeated. So we’ll have to do it the hard way, by going through the carapace at an angle which will cause minimum disturbance to the underlying vital organs.”

While the charge nurse had been positioning the Protector for the operation, the movements of the Unborn had been imperceptible, but now the scanner showed a slow, steady motion toward the birth canal. He forced himself to walk around to the other side of the operating frame, when his instinct was to break into an undignified gallop; then he checked that Thornnastor and Murchison were in position and said quietly, “Immobilize the patient.”

The four dorsal tentacles were at full extension, motionless except for the barest tremor caused by their efforts to overcome the restraints. He tried not to think of the devastation even one of those limbs would cause among the OR staff if it succeeded in pulling free, or that he was closest and would be the first casualty.

“It is desirable—in fact it may be vitally necessary—that we establish telepathic contact with the Unborn before the operation is completed,” Conway said above the buzzing of his surgical saw. “The first time such contact took place, there was only one physiological classification present, the Earth-human DBDGs Pathologist Murchison, Captain Fletcher of
Rhabwar
, and I. A multiplicity of physiological types and thought patterns may be making it difficult to make contact, or it may be that DBDGs are fractionally easier to communicate with telepathically. For this reason…”

“Do you wish me to leave?” Thornnastor asked.

“No,” Conway said very firmly. “I need your assistance, as both a surgeon and an endocrinologist. But it would be helpful if you tried to bring forward the DBDG component of your mind and concentrated on its thought processes.”

“I understand,” the Tralthan said.

Working quickly, Thornnastor and Conway excised a large, triangular section of carapace, then paused to control some minor bleeding from the underlying vessels. Murchison was not assisting directly, but was concentrating all of her attention on the scanner so that she could warn them if the trauma of the operation was giving indications of triggering premature delivery. They went deeper, cutting through the thick, almost transparent membrane which enclosed the lungs, clamping it back.

“Prilicla?” Conway asked.

“The patient is feeling anger, fear, and pain in steadily increasing intensity. It does not seem to be aware of anything other than that it is being savagely attacked and is defending itself. Apparently it has not realized that it isn’t moving, and there are no emotional indications of endocrine misfunction…