Sector General Omnibus 3 - General Practice (23 page)

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Authors: James White

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Murchison’s voice sounded relieved as it said, “So you’re telling us that it had an accident, that no other antisocial type bashed in its skull?”
“Yes,” Cha Thrat said.
“I’ll be with you in a few minutes,” it said.
“Friend Murchison,” Prilicla began anxiously.
“Don’t worry, Doctor,” said the Pathologist. “If anyone or anything nasty threatens, Danalta will protect us.”
“Of course,” the shape-changer said.
While she was waiting for them to arrive, Cha Thrat continued to study the cadaver while listening to the voices of Prilicla, Fletcher, and
Rhabwar
’s communications officer. The Cinrusskin’s empathic faculty had given it approximate locations for the survivors who, apart from the single crew member in Control, seemed to be gathered together in three small groups of four or five persons on one deck. But the Captain had decided that it would be better to make contact with a single crew member before approaching a group, and was heading directly for the survivor on the Control deck.
Cha Thrat steadied the cadaver and took one of its large, strong hands in two of her upper manipulators. The fingers were short and stubby and tipped with claws that had been trimmed short, and none of the digits were opposable. In this species’ prehistory she could imagine those clawed hands conveying freshly killed food to the mouth that even now was filled with long and very nasty-looking teeth. It did not, she thought, look like a member of a species capable of building ships that traveled between the stars.
It did not look, well,
civilized
.
“You can’t always judge by external appearance,” Murchison said, making Cha Thrat realize that she had been thinking aloud. “Your Chalder friend from the AUGL ward makes this one look like a pussycat.”
The rest of the medical team were following closely behind the Pathologist: Naydrad guiding the litter; Prilicla walking the ceiling on its six, sucker-tipped legs; and, as she watched, Danalta extruded a thicker, sucker-tipped limb of its own and attached itself to the wall like some watchful, alien vegetable.
Quickly Murchison attached its instrument pack to the wall with magnetic pads and used larger magnets and webbing to immobilize the
cadaver. It said, “Our friend here was unlucky, but at least it is helping the others. I can do things to it which I would not think of doing to a living survivor, and without wasting time on—”
“Dammit, this is
ridiculous
!” a voice said in their suit phones, so distorted by surprise and incredulity that she did not recognize it at first as belonging to the Captain. Fletcher went on. “We’re on the control deck and we’ve found another crew member, alive, apparently uninjured, occupying one of five control positions. The other four positions are empty. But the survivor is wearing restraints on all four legs and is chained to its control couch!”
Cha Thrat turned away and left without speaking. The Captain had told her that she should follow Chen and itself as soon as the medical team arrived, and she wanted to do just that before Fletcher had a chance to countermand the earlier order. Her curiosity about this strange, chained-up ship’s officer was so intense that it was almost painful.
It was not until she had ascended two decks that she noticed Prilicla silently following her.
Fletcher was saying “I’ve tried communicating with it, with the translator and my making the usual friendly signs.
Rhabwar
’s translation computer is capable of converting simple messages into any conceivable language that is based on a system of word-sounds. It growls and barks at me but the sounds don’t translate. When I approach closely it acts as if it wants to tear my head off. At other times its body and limb movements are erratic and uncoordinated, although it seems anxious to be free of its leg restraints.”
Prilicla and Cha Thrat arrived at that moment, and the Captain added, “See for yourselves.”
The Cinrusskin had taken up a position on the ceiling just inside the entrance, well away from the crew member’s wildly flailing arms. It said, “Friend Fletcher, the emotional radiation disturbs me. There are feelings of anger, fear, hunger, and blind, unthinking antagonism. There is a coarseness and intensity in these emotions not usually found in beings possessing high intelligence.”
“I agree, Doctor,” the Captain said, moving back instinctively as one of the clawless hands stabbed out at its face. “But these couches were designed for this particular life-form, and the controls, switches, and doorhandles that we’ve seen so far in the ship are suited to those particular hands. At the moment it is completely ignoring the controls, and the sudden increase in spin we noticed during our approach was probably caused by it accidentally striking the keys concerned.
“Its couch, like the other four, is mounted on runners,” Fletcher went on. “It has been moved back to the limit of its travel, which makes it very difficult for the being’s hands to reach the control consoles. Have you any ideas, Senior Physician, because I haven’t.”
“No, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said, “but let us move to a lower deck where it cannot see or hear us.”
A few minutes later it continued. “The levels of fear, anger, and antagonism have diminished, and its hunger remains at the same intensity. For reasons that aren’t clear to me at the moment, the crew member’s behavior is irrational and emotionally unstable. But it is in no immediate danger where it is, and it is not in any pain. Friend Murchison.”
“Yes?” the Pathologist responded.
“When you are examining that cadaver,” it went on, “pay special attention to the head. It has occurred to me that the cranial injury may not have been an accident, but was deliberately self-inflicted in response to acute and continuing cranial discomfort. You should look for evidence of an area of infection or cell degeneration affecting the brain tissues, which may have adversely affected or destroyed its higher centers of mentation and emotional control.
“Friend Fletcher,” it went on without waiting for a reply, “we must quickly locate and check the condition of the other survivors. But carefully, in case they are behaving like our friend in Control.”
With Prilicla’s empathic faculty to guide them, they quickly found the three large dormitory compartments containing the remaining conscious survivors, five in one room and four in each of the others. The doors were not locked but the occupants had not used the simple latch
system that would have opened them from the inside. The artificial gravity system was in operation, and the brief look they were able to catch before the occupants spotted and began to attack them showed plain, undecorated metal walls and flooring that was covered by disordered bedding and wrecked waste-disposal equipment. The smell, Cha Thrat thought, could have been cut with a knife.
“Friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said as they were leaving the last dormitory, “all of the crew members are physically active and without pain, and if it wasn’t for the fact that they are clearly no longer capable of working their ship, I would say that they are quite healthy. Unless friend Murchison discovers a clinical reason for their abnormal behavior, there is nothing we can do for them.
“I realize that I am being both cowardly and selfish,” it went on, “but I do not want to endanger our casualty deck equipment and terrify friend Khone by moving in close on twenty oversized, overactive, and, at present, underintelligent life-forms who—”
“I agree,” Fletcher said firmly. “If that lot got loose, they could wreck my ship and not just the casualty deck. The alternative is to keep them here, extend
Rhabwar
’s hyperspace envelope, and Jump both ships to Sector General.”
“That was my thought as well, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla replied. “Also, that you rig the boarding tube so that we can have rapid access to the survivors, that we gather samples of all packets and containers likely to hold this life-form’s food or nutritious fluids. The only symptom these people display is intense hunger and, considering the size of their teeth, I would like to relieve it as soon as possible in case they start eating each other.”
“And,” the Pathologist’s voice joined in, “you want me to analyze the samples so as to tell you which containers hold paint and which soup?”
“Thank you, friend Murchison,” the empath said, and went on. “As well as your cranial investigation would you look at the cadaver’s general metabolism with a view to suggesting a safe anesthetic for use on these people, something fast-acting that we can shoot into them at a distance.
They must all be anesthetized very quickly because—”
“For fast work like that,” Murchison broke in, “I’ll need
Rhabwar
’s lab, not a portable analyzer like this one. And I’ll need the whole team to help me.”
“Because,” Prilicla resumed quietly, “I have a feeling that there is another survivor who is not healthy and active and hungry. Its emotional radiation is extremely weak and characteristic of an entity who is deeply unconscious and perhaps dying. But I am unable to locate it because of the stronger, overriding emanations from the conscious survivors. That is why, as soon as the samples are gathered for friend Murchison, I would like every hole, corner, or compartment large enough to hold an FGHJ searched.
“It must be done quickly,” the Cinrusskin ended, “because the feeling is very weak indeed.”
Awkwardly Fletcher said, “I understand, Senior Physician, but there is a problem. Pathologist Murchison needs all of the medical team and extending
Rhabwar
’s hyperenvelope and realigning our tractors for the Jump and deploying the boarding tube will require all of the ship’s officers …”
“Which leaves me,” Cha Thrat said quietly, “with nothing to do.”
“ … So which should be given priority?” the Captain went on, seeming not to have heard her. “The search for your unconscious FGHJ, or getting it and the rest of them to Sector General as quickly as possible?”
“I will search the ship,” she said, more loudly.
“Thank you, Cha Thrat,” Prilicla said, “I felt you wanting to volunteer. But think carefully before you decide. The survivor, should you find it, will be too weak to harm you. But there are other dangers. This ship is large, and as strange to us as it is to you.”
“Yes, Technician,” the Captain said. “These aren’t the maintenance tunnels at Sector General. The color codings, if present, will mean something entirely different. You can’t make assumptions about anything you see, and if you accidentally foul a control link … Very well, you may search, but stay out of trouble.
Fletcher turned to look at Prilicla and added plaintively, “Or do you feel me feeling that I’m wasting my breath?”
W
ith the printouts from
Rhabwar’s
sensors providing information on the ship’s layout, and in particular on the size and location of its empty spaces, Cha Thrat began a rapid and methodical search of the alien vessel. She ignored only the control deck, the occupied dormitories, and areas close to the ship’s reactor that the sensor maps showed to be uninhabitable by the FGHJ life-form or, for that matter, any other species who were not radiation-eaters. She was very careful to check all interiors with sound sensors and the heavy-duty scanner before opening every door or panel. She was not afraid, but there were times when shivers marched like tiny, icy feet along the length of her spine.
It usually happened when the realization came that she was searching an alien starship for survivors of a species whose existence she could not have imagined a short time ago, at the direction of other unimaginable beings from a place of healing whose size, complexity, and occupants were like the solid manifestations of a disordered mind. But the unthinkable and unimaginable had become not only thinkable but acceptable to her, and all because a discontented and unloved warrior-surgeon of Sommaradva had risked a limb and her professional reputation to treat an injured off-world ship ruler.
At the thought of what her future would have been had she not taken that risk she shivered again, in dread.
Even though the first search was to be a fast, perfunctory one, it took much longer than Cha Thrat had expected. By the time it was completed,
Rhabwar
’s boarding tube was in position, and she could feel and hear the empty grumbling of both her stomachs.
Prilicla told her to relieve these symptoms before making her report.
When she arrived on the casualty deck, Prilicla, Murchison, and Danalta were working on the cadaver while Naydrad and Khone, its hairy body pressed against the transparent dividing wall, watched with an interest so intense that only the Cinrusskin sensed her arrival.
“What’s wrong, friend Cha?” the empath asked. “Something disturbed you on the ship. I felt it even here.”
“This,” she replied, holding up one of the leg restraints that Murchison had removed from the cadaver and discarded before the dead FGHJ had been moved to
Rhabwar
. “The chain is not locked to the leg cuff, it is attached with a simple spring-loaded bolt that can be released easily when pressure is applied just here.”
She demonstrated, then went on. “When I was searching the control deck area I looked at the crew member chained to its couch, without being seen, and noticed that similar fastenings hold the chains to all four of its leg cuffs. It and the cadaver here could have freed themselves simply by releasing the fastenings, which are within easy reach of its hands. It did not have to break free, and neither does the crew member chained to the control couch, who nevertheless continues to struggle violently against restraints that it could so easily remove. It is all very puzzling, but I think we must now discard the theory that any of these people were prisoners under restraint.”
They were all watching her closely as she went on. “But what is affecting them? What is it that leaves a crew member normally a responsible, highly trained individual capable of guiding a starship, in such a state that it cannot unfasten its couch restraints? What has rendered the other crew members incapable of opening their own dormitory
doors or finding food for themselves? Why has their behavior degenerated to that of unthinking animals? Could contaminated food, or the absence of specific foods, have caused this? And before you left me, the Senior Physician suggested that an organism might have invaded the brain tissues. Is it possible that—”
“If you will stop asking questions, Technician,” Murchison broke in crossly, “I’ll have a chance to answer some of them. No, the food supply is plentiful and contains nothing toxic to this life-form. I have analyzed and identified several varieties carried on the ship, so you will be able to feed them when you go back. As for the brain tissues, there are no indications of damage, circulatory impairment, infection, or any pathological abnormality.
“I found trace quantities of a complex chemical structure that, in the metabolism of this life-form, would act as a powerful tranquilizer. The residual material suggests that a massive dose was absorbed perhaps three or four days ago, and the effect has since worn off. A large supply of this tranquilizer was found in one of the cadaver’s harness pouches. So it seems that the crew members tranquilized themselves before confining themselves to the control couch and their dormitories.”
There was a long silence that was broken by Khone, who was holding up its offspring where the scrawny little entity could see all the strange creatures on the other side of its transparent panel. Cha Thrat wondered if the Gogleskan was already trying to weaken the young one’s conditioning, even at the tender age of two days.
Impersonally it said, “It is hoped that the time of more intelligent and experienced healers will not be wasted by this interruption, but on Goglesk it is accepted that in certain circumstances, and against their will, otherwise intelligent and civilized beings will behave like vicious and destructive animals. Perhaps the entities on the other vessel have a similar problem, and must take strong and repeated doses of medication to keep their animal natures under control so that they can live civilized lives, and make progress, and build starships.
“Perhaps they are starved,” Khone ended, “not of food but of their civilizing drug.”
“A neat idea,” Murchison said warmly, then matching the Gogleskan’s impersonal tone it went on. “Admiration is felt for the originality of the healer’s thinking but, regrettably, the medication concerned would not increase awareness and the ability to mentate, it would decrease it to the point where continuous use would cause these people to spend their entire lives in a state of semi-consciousness.”
“Perhaps,” Cha Thrat joined in, “the state of semi-consciousness is pleasant and desirable. It shames me to admit it, but on Sommaradva there are people who deliberately affect and often damage their minds with substances for the purely temporary pleasure they give the user …”
“Sommaradva’s shame,” Naydrad said angrily, “is shared by many worlds in the Federation.”
“ … And when these harmful substances are withdrawn suddenly from habitual users,” she went on, “their behavior becomes irrational and violent and similar, in many respects, to that of the FGHJs on the other ship.”
Murchison was shaking its head. “Sorry, no again. I cannot be absolutely certain because we are dealing with the metabolism of a completely new life-form here, but I would say that the traces found in the cadaver’s brain was a simple tranquilizer that deadens rather than heightens awareness, and is almost certainly nonaddictive. Had this not been so I would have suggested using it as an anesthetic.
“And before you ask,” the Pathologist went on, “progress with the anesthetic is slow. I have gone as far as I can go with the physiological data provided by the cadaver, but to produce one that will be safe to use in large doses I require blood and gland secretion samples from a living FGHJ.”
Cha Thrat was silent for a moment, then she turned to include Prilicla as she said, “I could not find any trace of injured or unconscious survivors during my preliminary search, but I shall search again more diligently when the required samples have been obtained. Is the being still alive? Can you give me even an approximate guide to its location?”
“I can still feel it, friend Cha,” Prilicla replied. “But the cruder, conscious emoting of the other survivors is obscuring it.”
“Then the sooner Pathologist Murchison has its samples the sooner we’ll have the anesthetic to knock out the emotional interference,” Cha Thrat said briskly. “My medial digits are strong enough to restrain the arms of the FGHJ on the control couch while my upper manipulators take the samples. From which veins and organs, and in what quantities, must they be removed?”
Murchison laughed suddenly and said, “Please, Cha Thrat, let the medical team do something to justify its existence. You will hold the crew member tightly to its couch, Doctor Danalta will position the scanner, and I will obtain the samples while—”
“Control here.” Fletcher’s voice broke in from the wall speaker. “Jump in five seconds from … now. The extra mass of the distressed ship will delay our return somewhat. We are estimating Sector General parking orbit in just under four days.”
“Thank you, friend Fletcher,” Prilicla said.
Suddenly there was the familiar but indescribable sensation, unseen, unheard, and unfelt but indisputably present, that signaled their removal from the universe of matter to the tiny, unreal, and purely mathematical structure that the ship’s hyperdrive generators had built around them. She forced herself to look through the casualty deck’s direct vision panel. The tractor and pressor beams that laced the ships rigidly together were invisible, so that she saw only the ridiculously flimsy boarding tube joining them and, at the bottom of the metal chasm formed by the two hulls, the heaving, flickering grayness that seemed to reach up through her eyes and pull her very brain out of focus.
She returned her attention to the solid, familiar if temporarily unreal world of the casualty deck before hyperspace could give her an eyestrain headache.
Cha Thrat had time for only a few words with Khone before following Murchison, Danalta, and Naydrad to the boarding tube. The Charge Nurse was helping her carry packages of the material that Murchison had identified as food, and she had only to compare them with the hundreds of others in the other ship’s stores to be able to feed all of the surviving crew members until they bulged at the seams.
Her last sight of the casualty deck for a long time, although she did not know it just then, was of Senior Physician Prilicla hovering above the widely scattered remains of the cadaver and interspersing its quiet words to Khone with untranslatable cluckings and trillings to the younger Gogleskan.
“If we can spare the time,” Cha Thrat said to the Pathologist when they were standing around the control couch and its agitated and weakly struggling occupant, “we could feed it before taking your samples. That might make the patient more contented, and amenable.”
“We can spare the time for that,” Murchison replied, then added, “There are times, Cha Thrat, when you remind me of somebody else.”
“Who do we know,” Naydrad asked in its forthright Kelgian manner, “who’s that weird?”
The Pathologist laughed but did not reply, and neither did Cha Thrat. Without realizing it, Murchison had moved into a sensitive and potentially highly embarrassing area, and, if it ever did learn exactly what had happened to the Sommaradvan’s mind on Goglesk, it should be from its life-mate, Conway, and not Cha Thrat—Prilicla had been quite insistent about that.
There was surprisingly little variety in the FGHJs’ food containers—two differently shaped plastic bottles, one holding water and the other a faintly odorous nutrient liquid, and there were uniform blocks of a dry, spongy material wrapped in a thin plastic film with a large ring for tearing it open. The liquid and solid foods were synthetic, according to Murchison, but nutritionally tailored to the requirements of the FGHJs’ metabolism, and the small quantities of nonnutrient material present were probably there to excite the taste buds.
But when Cha Thrat tossed one of the packages into the crew member’s hands, it began tearing at it with its teeth without removing the plastic wrapping. The simple, spring-loaded caps sealing the bottles were also ignored. It tore open the neck of the container with its teeth and sucked out the liquid that it had not already spilled down its chest.
A few minutes later the Pathologist made an untranslatable sound and said, “Its table manners certainly leave a lot to be desired, but it
doesn’t appear to be hungry anymore. Let’s get started.”
Feeding the crew member made no perceptible difference to its behavior except, perhaps, to give it more strength to resist them. By the time Murchison had withdrawn its samples, Naydrad, Cha Thrat, and the Pathologist itself were displaying several areas of surface bruising and Danalta, whose body could not be injured or deformed except by the application of ultrahigh temperatures, had been forced into some incredible shape-changes in order to help them immobilize the brute. When the task was done, Murchison sent Naydrad and Danalta ahead with its test samples while it remained, breathing rapidly, and with its eyes fixed on the crew member.
“I don’t like this,” it said.
“It worries me, too,” Cha Thrat said. “However, if a problem is restated often enough, in different words, a solution sometimes emerges.”
“I suppose some wise old Sommaradvan philosopher said that,” Murchison said drily. “I’m sorry, Technician. What were you going to say?”
“An Earth-human Lieutenant called Timmins said it,” she replied. “And I was about to restate the problem, which is that we are faced with a ship’s crew who are apparently suffering from a disease that leaves them completely healthy, but mindless. Not only can they not operate their own undamaged and fully functioning ship, they do not remember how to unfasten their leg restraints, unlatch doors, or open food containers. They have become like healthy animals.”
Murchison said quietly, “The problem is being restated, but in the same words.”

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