The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 637
During the very short breeding season on Tarla such activity, especially among the aging who had been lifemates for many years, was a cause for celebration and public display rather than a matter for concealment—although he knew that many species within the Federation, races who were otherwise highly intelligent and philosophically advanced, considered the mating process to be a private matter between the beings concerned.
Naturally, Lioren had no personal experience in this area, since his dedication to the healing arts precluded him indulging in any pleasure which would allow emotional factors to affect the clinical objectivity of his mind. If he had been an ordinary Tarlan male, an artisan or a member of one of the noncelibate professions interrupted in similar circumstances, there would have been a verbal impoliteness, but certainly not violence.
Distressing and distasteful as the incident had been, Lioren's mind would not rest in its search to find a reason for such an unreasonable reaction, however alien or uncivilized that reason might be. Could it be that, gravely ill and seriously injured as they had been in the fighting outside, they had crawled into the house to seek a moment of mutual pleasure together before dying? He knew that the coupling must have been by mutual agreement, because the Cromsaggar mechanics of reproduction were physiologically too complicated for the attentions of one partner to be forced on another.
That did not rule out the possibility that the coupling was the end result of the fighting, the bestowal of a female's favor on a warrior victorious in battle. There were many historical precedents for such behavior, although not, thankfully, in the history of Tarla. But that reason was unsatisfactory because both male and female Cromsaggar fought, although not each other.
Lioren made a mental note to prepare a detailed report of the incident for the cultural contact specialists who would ultimately have to produce a solution to the Cromsaggar problem, if any of the species survived and it was invited to join the Federation.
The four separate images of the room, including the one of Dracht-Yur working on the other casualties, that his immobilized eyes were still bringing him dimmed suddenly into blackness, and he remembered a feeling of mild irritation before he fell asleep in midthought.
DRACHT-YUR confined him to the sick bay on Vespasian until the worst of his injuries healed, reminding him, as only a hairy, small-minded, and sarcastic dwarf of a Nidian could, that until then the relationship between them was one of doctor and patient and that in the present situation it was the Surgeon-Lieutenant who had the rank.
It could not, however, no matter how often it stressed the advisability of post-trauma rest and mental recuperation, bind Lioren's jaw closed or keep him from setting up a communication system by his bedside.
Time passed like a pregnant strulmer climbing uphill, and the medical situation on Cromsag worsened until the daily death rate climbed from one hundred to close on one-fifty, and still Tenelphi did not come. Lioren sent a necessarily brief hyperspace radio signal to Sector General, prerecorded and repeated many times so that its words could be reconstructed after fighting their way through the interference of the intervening stars, requesting news. He was not surprised when it was ignored, because the expenditure of power needed for a lengthy progress report would have been wasteful indeed. All that he was telling them was that he and the medical and support personnel on Cromsag were beginning to feel so helpless and angry and impatient that the condition verged on the psychotic, but the hospital probably knew that already.
Five days later he received a reply stating that Tenelphi had been dispatched and was estimating Cromsag in thirty-five hours. It was carrying medication, as yet incompletely tested for long-term effects, which was a specific against the grosser, more life-threatening symptoms of the plague, and that the details of the pathological investigation and directions for treatment accompanied the medication.
During the excitement that ensued Lioren went over his plans for fast distribution. Dracht-Yur relented to the extent of allowing him to transfer from sick bay to the communications center of Vespasian, but not to risk compounding his injuries by traveling the air or surface of Cromsag in vehicles totally unsuited to the Tarlan physiology. But the general feeling of relief and euphoria lasted only until the arrival of Tenelphi.
The scout ship carried more than enough of the antiplague specific, which required only a single, intravenous application, to treat every Cromsaggar on the planet, but Lioren was forbidden to use it until additional field trials had been carried out.
According to Chief Pathologist Thornnastor, the physiological results following a minimum dosage had been very good, but there were indications of possibly damaging side effects. Symptoms of mental confusion and periods of semiconsciousness had been observed. These might prove to be temporary, but further investigation was required.
The single injection was followed by a slight but continuing reduction in symptoms, a slow improvement in the vital signs, and evidence of tissue and organs regeneration throughout the body in the days which ensued. During the periods of semiconsciousness the test subjects had requested and consumed food in quantities which, considering stomach size and the clinical condition of the patients involved, seemed unusually large. There was a steady increase in body weight.
The non-adult subjects had responded in similar fashion, including the periods of unconsciousnessness interspersed with episodes of semi-consciousness and mental confusion, except that with the young the food demand in relation to their smaller size had been greater. Daily measurement had shown a steady increase in growth, both in body mass and limb dimensions.
It was thought probable that with the gradual remission of the condition the non-adult patients, whose physical growth had been retarded by the plague, were returning to optimum size for their ages. The periods of unconsciousness and impaired thinking were in response to a demand by the body for maximum rest during these periods of regeneration and were of little clinical importance. The medication was being used in minimum quantities, but a very small increase in the dosage of one test subject resulted in a strengthening and acceleration of the effects already noted. In spite of the excellent physiological results so far, the associated episodes of mental confusion were cause for concern lest a side effect of the medication led to long-term brain damage.
Thornnastor apologized for sending medication that it had not completely cleared for use, but said that Lioren's hyperspace radio signals had emphasized the urgency of the situation, and in order to save a few days' transit time between the medication's approval and its administration to the patients the final tests should be made concurrently on Cromsag and in Sector General.
"I have been instructed to conduct tests on a maximum of fifty Cromsaggar," Lioren said, when he was relaying Thornnastor's report to his senior medical officers. "The subjects are to include the widest possible variation in age and clinical condition, as well as minor variations in the dosage administered within that number. We are to pay particular attention to the mental state of these subjects during their periods of semiconsciousness, in the hope that their degree of confusion will be lessened when they are on their home world among others of their kind rather than in the strange and doubtless unsettling environment of Sector General. The initial test period will require ten days, followed by a further—"
"In ten days we would lose a quarter of the remaining population," Dracht-Yur broke in suddenly, its barking speech sounding angry even through the translator, "which has already shrunk to two-thirds of the number alive when Tenelphi found this Crutath-accursed planet. They're dying out there like, like ..."
"That was my thought exactly," Lioren said, omitting the reprimand the Nidian deserved for its bad manners, and making a mental note to check on the meaning of the word "Crutath". "It is a thought which all of you share. But it is not because of our common feelings that I will disobey Thornnastor and ignore its recommendations. The decision is not yours. I will, of course, listen to your professional advice and accept it if it has merit, but the instruction to proceed and the responsibility for everything that ensues as a result will be entirely mine.
"This is what I am planning to do ..."
There was no criticism of his plan because he had formulated it with great care and attention to detail, and—strangely, since it was coming from subordinates to a superior—the advice offered by many of them was personal rather than professional. They advised that he obey Thornnastor, but compromise by testing a few hundred, perhaps a thousand subjects instead of a mere fifty, saying that the course he was advocating would do nothing for any hopes he might have for future advancement. Lioren felt a strong temptation to do as they suggested, if only out of respect for the words of an entity said to be the foremost pathologist in the Federation rather than out of any selfish concern over his future career, but he was not sure that Diagnostician Thornnastor fully appreciated the urgency of the Cromsaggar problem. The hospital's Chief of Pathology was a perfectionist who would never allow imperfect work to leave its department, and giving Lioren permission to assist with the test program was probably the only compromise that it was capable of making. But a great, hulking Tralthan whose data-crammed mind, it was said, permanently accommodated the brain recordings of at least ten other-species medical authorities could be forgiven for a certain amount of mental confusion.
The Cromsaggar death rate was climbing steadily toward two hundred a day, and treating a mere fifty of them with an unnecessary degree of caution when virtually the entire population could be given the chance to live instead of dying in a lingering and painful manner was, to Lioren's mind, a great and a cowardly and a completely unacceptable wrong.
In this desperate situation he could accept imperfections even if Thornnastor's department could not. The psychological effects that accompanied the cure might be temporary, and even if they were not then they, too, might be curable in time. But if the worst should happen and permanent mental harm was the result, it was highly unlikely that the condition would be transmitted to an offspring, because O'Mara itself had stated that the damage was nonphysical. Any Cromsaggar child born of cured but mentally deficient parents would grow up healthy and sane.
Or as sane, Lioren thought, as it was possible for any member of this bloodthirsty race to be.
He had told his staff that it must be an operation combining maximum effort with maximum urgency, and that every single Cromsaggar on the planet must be treated for effect rather than submitting them to time-wasting trials, and within an hour of the meeting's end the plan was being implemented. On foot to the patients who were being housed close to the grounded Vespasian, and by surface or air transport to the more distant shelters, the medication and supplies of synthetic nutrient were being distributed by every Monitor Corps entity available, which meant all but the capital ship's watch-keeping and communications officers and those charged with the maintenance of the air and surface vehicles. Lioren, whose injuries were still hampering his mobility, divided his attention between communications and the sick bay, where he was the only medic on duty.
The dosage administered varied in proportion to the age, body mass, and clinical condition of the patients. With the very young it was triple that recommended for trial purposes by Thornnastor, and, making due allowance for the potency of the medication, for those close to termination it was massive. Priority should have been given to the more serious cases, but there was so much variation in the degree of illness within small groups that it saved time if everyone was treated as and when they were encountered.
It quickly developed into a routine that was too frenetic to be described as boring. A few words of explanation and reassurance would be given, the single injection administered, and food and water placed within easy reach of the patient, who was usually too ill to make anything but a verbal objection; then it would be on to the next one.
By the end of the third day the entire population had been treated and the second phase began, that of visiting the patients, on a daily basis if possible, to replenish the consumables and observe and report on any change in their clinical condition. The medical and support staff worked day and night, eating infrequently of the same bland, synthetic food supplied to their patients and sleeping hardly at all. Increasing fatigue caused a forced landing and two ground-vehicle accidents, none of which involved fatalities, so that the ship's hospital no longer held only plague victims.
On the fourth day one of his adult Cromsaggar in sick bay terminated, but the number of deaths outside the ship went down to one hundred and fifteen. On the fifth day the figure had dropped to seven, and there were no fatalities reported on the sixth day.
Except for the difference in scale and the continuing effort needed to keep the widely dispersed patients supplied with food, the situation in sick bay reflected the clinical conditions outside.
As Thornnastor had predicted, a gradual remission in external symptoms was apparent and the food requirement of the adult patients had increased, and the fact that all of the food had been synthesized made no difference to their appetites. Much as he wanted to monitor their progress internally, they would not cooperate and refused to allow him to so much as touch them. With all of his medical staff and the majority of the ship's crew scattered across the continent, he thought it better not to force the issue, especially as the patients were growing stronger with every day that passed. In spite of the differences in body mass, the young were eating more than the adults, and, as Thornnastor had also observed, their rate of physical growth was phenomenal.
It was obvious that, in order to cause such a massive retardation of growth, the disease, which the Cromsaggar had acquired prenatally, must have involved the entire endocrine system. Now that the process was being reversed and they were not only growing but maturing, another, nonclinical change was occurring. The young patients who, once their initial fear had given way to curiosity and they had grown accustomed to his strange body and multiplicity of limbs, had spoken to him freely and with the unguarded enthusiasm of children were becoming increasingly reticent.
They were speaking to him less because, Lioren observed, their recovering elders were talking to them more. And they talked only when he was not present.
By then his Monitor Corps patients had been well enough to be discharged to continue their recuperation in their own quarters, so he did not know what the Cromsaggar talked about until one day, after replenishing the food supply and his few words of friendship and reassurance had been ignored, he deliberately left one of the sick-bay senders switched on Transmit so that he would be able to listen to them from his own quarters.
In the manner of all eavesdroppers, he fully expected to overhear unkind things about himself and the bad dreams from the sky, which was the literal translation of the Cromsaggar name for their rescuers. But he was completely wrong. Instead, they talked and chanted and sang together so that his translator was unable to separate the individual voices. It was only when a single Cromsaggar spoke out alone, an adult addressing one or more of the young, that Lioren realized what he was hearing.
It was part of an initiation ceremony, a preparation and formalized sex instruction given to the newly mature before entry into adult life, including the behavior expected of them thereafter.
Lioren broke the connection hastily. The rite of passage into adulthood was a highly sensitive area in the cultures of many intelligent species, and one into which he was not qualified to delve. If he were to continue listening out of mere lascivious curiosity, he might find that he no longer respected himself.
He was relieved, nevertheless, that with the exception of two very small children who were little more than infants, the sick bay held only male Cromsaggar.
During the days that followed there were no organic fatalities reported, but the air and surface vehicles, which had been in continuous operation over eight days and nights, had not fared so well. The food synthesizers on Vespasian and in the outlying medical stations were running at maximum safe overload, a condition that was not recommended for more than a few hours at a time. All of the organic components were displaying signs of stress and severe fatigue but were operating at close to optimum efficiency, even though they rarely talked to each other and seemed to be asleep on their feet. It was becoming clear to everyone concerned that the operation was a success and that no member of the patient population was about to die, and that knowledge was both the fuel and the lubrication which kept them working.
It was irritating to all of them, but not important, that the Cromsaggar showed no gratitude for what was being done for them apart from demolishing the previous day's food supply. The brief explanation of the treatment and reassurance regarding their ultimate cure that was given at every visit to replenish stores was ignored. The patients were not actively hostile, unless one of the medics tried to check on their vital signs or obtain a blood sample, whereupon they reacted violently toward the person concerned.
An ungrateful and unlikable race, Lioren thought, not for the first time. But it was their physiology rather than their psychology which was his problem, and the problem was being solved.
From Sector General there was a continuing silence.
He could imagine Thornnastor's slow, careful progress, with its relatively few patients, toward a stage in the treatment which Lioren had already surpassed with the entire planetary population. It was no reflection on the Tralthan pathologist, who was, after all, the entity responsible for producing the cure for the plague. But if Lioren had not ignored its recommendations and risked the displeasure of his superiors, many hundreds of Cromsaggar would have died by now. And without false modesty on his part, the solution he had devised for the problem had been truly elegant.
His calculated variation in the dosage administered, based as it had been on age, body mass, and clinical factors, had insured that the young and old alike were progressing toward a complete cure at the same time. In spite of his insubordination, he was sure that his action would merit praise rather than censure.
