Sector General Omnibus 3 - General Practice (40 page)

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Authors: James White

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S
ince its formation by the original four star-traveling cultures of Traltha, Orligia, Nidia, and Earth, who had formed as its executive and law-enforcement arm the multispecies Monitor Corps, the Galactic Federation had expanded to include the members of sixty-five intelligent species and in population and area of influence had begun to live up to its original and somewhat grandiose name. But not all of the planetary cultures discovered by the Corps survey vessels were opened to full contact, because a few of them would not benefit from it.
These were the worlds whose technical and philosophical development were such that the sudden appearance among them of great ships from the sky, and the strange, all-powerful beings armed with wondrous devices that they contained, would have given the emerging cultures such a racial inferiority complex that their potential for future development would have been seriously inhibited. And there was one world on which the decision for making full contact was not the Galactic Federation’s to make.
As befitted a culture that had been old and wise when the natives of Earth and Orligia and Traltha had still been wriggling through their primeval slime, the Groalterri had been very diplomatic about it. But they had let it be known without ambiguity that they would not tolerate
the Federation’s presence in their adult domain nor allow the maturity and delicacy of their thinking to be upset by a horde of chattering, moronic, other-species children. Both individually and as a race the Groalterri carried enough philosophical and physiological weight to make it so.
They did not have any objection to being observed from space, so the details of their physiological classification and living environment had been obtained by the long-range sensors of an orbiting survey vessel, and this was the only information available.
The Groalterri were the largest intelligent macro life-form so far discovered, a warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing, and amphibious species of physiological classification BLSU who, as individuals, continued to grow in size from their parthenogenetic birth to the end of their extremely long life spans. In common with other extravagantly massive life-forms, intelligent or otherwise, they found difficulty in moving about unaided, so that from the young-adult state onward they avoided potentially lethal gravitic distortion of their bodies by swimming or floating in their individual lakes or communal inland seas, many of which had been produced artificially and contained a level of biotechnology far beyond the understanding of the observers.
Another characteristic they shared with large creatures—the library computer cited the examples of the nonintelligent Tralthan yerrit and the Earth panda—was that the mass of the embryo was so small that often a pregnancy was not suspected until after the birth had taken place. In spite of the vast size and elevated intelligence levels of adult Groalterri, their offspring were relatively tiny and uncivilized in their behavior and remained so into early adolescence.
That was one of the reasons for the nursing attendants being chosen from the heavy-gravity Tralthan FGLI and Hudlar FROB classifications, Lioren thought as he prepared for his first sight of the patient. Another was that the Federation wanted to do the hitherto unapproachable Groalterri a favor, probably in the hope that it might one day be returned, and had dispatched a Monitor Corps transport vessel to move the seriously injured young one to Sector General for treatment. It was
the Corps who had insisted on secrecy so as to minimize political and professional embarrassment should the patient terminate.
There were two unarmed but very large Earth-human Corpsmen guarding the entrance to the ward, a converted ambulance dock, to discourage unauthorized visitors and to advise those with authorization to don heavy-duty space suits. The ward atmosphere and pressure was suited to most warm-blooded oxygen-breathers, they explained to Lioren, but the protection might keep the patient from inadvertently killing him.
In his present mental state, the chance of having his life ended traumatically was a fate greatly to be desired, Lioren thought, but did as they advised without demur.
Even though Seldal’s notes had prepared him for the young BLSU’s body mass and dimensions, the sheer size of the patient came as a shock, and the thought that an adult Groalterri could grow to many hundreds of times as big was too incredible for his mind to accept as a reality. For the patient filled more than three-quarters the volume of the dock, and so large was it that the consequent distortion of perspective kept him from seeing more than a fraction of its surface features until he had used his suit thrusters to tour the vast body.
The dock was being maintained in the weightless condition with the patient lightly restrained by a net whose mesh was sufficiently open to allow medical examination and treatment to be carried out. On the dock’s six inner surfaces, wide-focus pressor and tractor beams controlled from the Nurses’ Station had been positioned so as to hold the creature suspended and out of contact with the walls.
The patient’s overall body configuration, Lioren saw, was that of a squat octopoid with short, thick tentacular limbs and a central torso and head that seemed disproportionately large. The eight limbs terminated alternately in four sets of claws that would with maturity evolve into manipulatory digits while the remaining four ended in flat, sharpedged, osseous blades that were larger than twice the spread of Lioren’s medial arms.
In presapient times those four bone-tipped extremities would have
been fearsome natural weapons, Seldal had warned him, and the very young of any species could sometimes revert to their savage past.
Lioren made another tour of the gigantic body, staying as far from the net that enclosed it as the dock walls and deck would allow. This time he studied the hundreds of tiny post-op scars and freshly dressed wounds as well as the areas of pustulating infection that covered half of the creature’s upper body surface.
The condition had been caused by a deep penetration of the subdermal tissue by a nonintelligent, hard-shelled, and egg-laying insect life-form which did not appear to have the physical ability to achieve such depth, but the reason for the multiple traumatic penetration was unknown. In spite of the Groalterri language being held in the hospital’s translation computer, so far the patient had refused to give any information about itself or the reason for its condition.
That was why Lioren ended his tour of the body by drifting to a weightless halt above the circular swelling that was the creature’s head. There, centered above the four heavily lidded eyes that were equally spaced around the cranium, was the area of tightly stretched skin that served both as the creature’s organ of speech and hearing.
Lioren made a quiet, untranslatable sound and said, “If this physical or verbal intrusion gives offense I apologize, for such is not my intention. May I speak with you?”
For a long moment there was no response; then the enormous flap of flesh that was the nearest eyelid opened slowly and Lioren found himself looking into the depths of a dark transparency that seemed to go on forever. Suddenly the tentacle just below him tensed, then curled upward and tore through the restraining net as if it had been the insubstantial structure of a web-spinning insect. The great, bony blade at its tip crashed against the wall behind him, leaving a deep, bright trench in the metal before continuing the swing past Lioren’s head, so closely that the push of displaced air could be felt through his open visor.
“Another stupid, half-organic machine,” the patient said, just as Lioren was caught by a tightly focused tractor beam and whisked back to the safety of the Nurses’ Station.
Reassuringly the Hudlar duty nurse said, “The patient does not mind visual or tactile examinations or even surgery, but reacts in unsocial fashion to attempts at communication. The probability is that it meant to discourage rather than harm you.”
“If it had wanted to harm me,” Lioren said, remembering how that outsize, organic axe had whistled past his head, “my suit would not have been of much use.”
“Nor would my own normally impenetrable Hudlar skin,” the nurse said. “Doctor Seldal belongs to a fragile species in which cowardice is a prime survival characteristic but it, too, scorns the use of body armor. The few other visitors who come here are allowed to decide for themselves.
“I have found,” the Hudlar went on, “that the patient is more likely to speak to an entity who is not encased in body armor, which it apparently regards as a being who is partly mechanical and of low intelligence. Its words to these uncovered visitors are few and never polite, but it does sometimes speak to them.”
Lioren thought of the few words that the patient had spoken after nearly frightening him into premature termination with its pretended attack, and he began unfastening his nonprotective suit. “I am most grateful for your advice, Nurse. Please help me out of this thing and I shall try again. And, Nurse, if there is anything else you wish to say to me I will be pleased to listen.”
As the FROB moved forward to assist him, its speaking membrane vibrated with the words, “You do not recognize me, Lioren. But I know you and I, too, am grateful for the helpful words that you spoke to my Kelgian friend, nurse-in-training Tarsedth, before and during our recent visit to your quarters. I am greatly surprised that Seldal allowed you to come here, but if there is anything further that I can do to assist you, you have only to ask.”
“Thank you,” Lioren said.
He was thinking that the assignment O’Mara had given him to investigate Seldal’s behavior, and his unorthodox method of conducting
it, was having unforeseen results. For reasons Lioren could not understand he seemed to be collecting friends.
The second time Lioren approached the patient’s head he was wearing only his translator pack and a thruster unit to help him navigate in the weightless condition. Again he halted close to one of the enormous, closed eyes and spoke.
“I am not, in whole or in part, a machine,” he said. “Again I ask with respect, can I speak to you?”
Once more the eyelid opened slowly like a great, fleshy portcullis, but this time the response was immediate.
“There is no doubt in either of our minds that you have the ability to speak to me,” it replied in a voice that accompanied the translated words like a deep, modulated drumroll. “But if your question was carelessly phrased, as is much of the speech in this place, and you are asking whether I will listen and reply, I doubt it.”
Below him one of the great tentacles stirred restively inside the torn netting, then became motionless again. “Your shape is new to me, but it is likely that your questions and behavior will be the same as all the others. You will ask questions whose answers should be already known through prior observation. Even the tiny Cutter called Seldal, who pecks at me and fills the wounds with strange chemicals, asks how I am. If it does not know, who does? And they all behave toward me as if they were the Parents with power and authority and I the tiny offspring needing consolation. It is as if insects were pretending to be wiser and larger than a Parent, which is ridiculous beyond belief.
“I speak to you very simply of these things,” the BLSU went on, “in the hope that you have the authority to end this ridiculous pretense and that you will leave me undisturbed to die.
“Go,” it ended, “at once.”
The great eye closed as if to banish him from sight and mind, but Lioren did not move. “Your wishes in this matter will be passed without delay to the others concerned with your treatment, because the words that have passed between us are being recorded for later study by—”
Lioren broke off. All of the creature’s tentacles were curling and
writhing within the restraining net, which parted loudly in several places before they relaxed again.
“My words,” it said, “are an expression of my thoughts that were given to you and earlier to those with whom I spoke. Without my express permission on each and every occasion, these thoughts are not to be shared with entities who are not present and whose minds are likely to misunderstand and distort my meaning. If this is being done, I shall speak no more. Go away.”
Still, Lioren did not move. Instead he keyed his translator to the Nurses’ Station frequency and prepared to speak once again in the manner of a Surgeon Captain.
“Nurse,” he said, “please switch off all recording devices and erase the words spoken since my arrival. Do likewise with the earlier conversations between Doctor Seldal and the patient. Any personal words of the patient that you yourself have heard on this and previous occasions are to be treated as privileged communications and disclosed to no other person. From this moment on, and until the patient itself has given permission for you to do otherwise, you will cease listening in to any conversation that passes between the patient and anyone else, nor will you use your own organic sound sensors to do so. Do you fully understand your instructions, Nurse? Please speak.”
“I understand,” the Hudlar replied, “but will Senior Physician Seldal?”
“The Senior Physician will understand when I make it aware of the strong feelings of the patient regarding the unauthorized recording of its conversations. In the meantime I assume full responsibility.”
“Breaking sound contact,” the nurse said.
It was only the sound contact that had been broken, Lioren knew, because the nurse would be continuing to watch and record the proceedings on the clinical monitors as well as watching him even more intently on the visuals in case he had to be pulled out of trouble with the tractors again. He returned his attention to the eye of the patient, which was again closed.

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