The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 720
Lioren stopped so suddenly that Hewlitt had to take three paces backward. They seemed to have left the medical levels, because the people who passed them were wearing Maintenance coveralls and the doors and side corridors bore the interspecies symbols for power-transmission stations, heat-exchanger systems, and, above the opening just ahead of them, a radiation warning. He wondered what kind of ward he would find up here.
"Are you tired?" asked Lioren.
"No," said Hewlitt. "Are you trying to change the subject?"
"As you may already have heard," said the Padre, "I trained here as a medic before ... What I'm trying to say is that I know my Earth-human physiology well enough to be aware of your physical limitations. By now you should be very tired as well as hungry. My next and final patient contact is classification VXTM. That is a radiation-eater and therefore completely unsuitable as a host entity for the virus. It is also a terminal case and is being visited for no other reason than that I visited it once and it requested as many subsequent visits as were possible. You may as well take this opportunity to eat or rest."
"I'm not tired," said Hewlitt. "Have you forgotten that the legacy left us by the virus is one of optimum health which presumably includes a body that operates at peak efficiency and is less subject to fatigue? Am I right in thinking that, following our recent high level of physical activity, you also are feeling less tired than you would normally have been?"
"I dislike arguing with you," said the Padre, "especially when, as now, you are right. I have much on my mind and this is not an important matter. But very well, we are not as tired as we should be."
It was clear that Lioren was irritated with him, probably for good and perhaps religious reasons so far as a padre making a sick call was concerned. He tried to apologize.
"I seem to have spent my whole life arguing," he said, "usually with medics who were sure they were right and I was wrong. I'm sorry, it has become a bad habit that I should curb. If you have strong personal or religious reasons for not wanting my company on this visit, just say so. But I also feel that if we have checked all of your possible virus contacts together up to now, in the interests of consistency we should finish the job that way even though we may be wasting our time."
When the Padre did not respond, he laughed and went on, "As well, if you consider the Telfi radiation-eaters as unsuitable hosts, what about that ultra-low-temperature SNLU? Could a virus exist that close to absolute zero, and if it is an intelligent virus, why would it want to?"
Lioren ignored his attempt at humor. It said, "I do not know enough about the virus creature's motivations to be able to speculate about why it would do anything. And if you remember your home world's natural history, there are many instances of simple forms of life surviving for extended periods under your polar ice layers, sometimes for millions of years."
"And do you remember," said Hewlitt, trying hard to control his own irritation, "my telling O'Mara that our virus creature passed through the fringes of a nuclear detonation? And that it survived the experience for more than twenty years before it infected me?"
They had to move aside quickly to avoid two Orligians in Monitor Corps uniforms who were driving their equipment litters like racing vehicles, but it was a few minutes before Lioren spoke.
"I do not remember that," it said, "because I did not overhear that part of the meeting so that information is new to me. But there is a vast difference between the short burst of radiation sustained by the virus and the intense, lifelong exposure required by the Telfi. You are arguing with me again, but again you may be right. Very well, you may accompany me into the Telfi section."
"Thank you," said Hewlitt. "After I see the patient the two of you will be left alone to speak in private."
"That will not be necessary this time," said the Padre. "The patient is close to death. Beyond its self-knowledge of that fact, it has not said that there is anything troubling its mind. As you would expect, all of the Telfi religions are based on various forms of sun worship, but it has not said whether or not it believes in any of them. All that it needs or wants at this time is contact with another intelligent creature, or creatures, who will listen to it and speak in the Language of Strangers until it is no longer capable of forming thoughts or words. While it is suffering all we can do is stay with it for a while and listen in the hope that we are doing some good."
Lioren turned without warning into a side corridor so that Hewlitt had to hurry to catch up. He said, "Wouldn't the patient feel better if one of its friends were with it at a time like this?"
"Obviously," said the Padre, "you know very little about the Telfi."
"Not much," said Hewlitt, feeling his face grow warm at the implication of ignorance. "I never expected to meet one socially, so there was no reason to learn more. I know they are radioactive, very dangerous, and, well, not approachable people."
"Their environment is hostile," said Lioren, "not the people. And very few Federation citizens need to meet or learn about the Telfi person-to-person, so your lack of knowledge is not a reason for you to feel offended. Before you meet this patient you will have to learn a little about how the Telfi live, and, more important in this case, how they die. Are you able to absorb knowledge while moving your lower limbs a little faster, I hope?"
"I'll be able to keep up with you," said Hewlitt.
Lioren ignored the deliberate ambiguity and went on. "I have promised to touch and listen to the last thoughts, if it still has the strength to articulate them for the translator, of the dying Telfi astrogator part Cherxic. So far we have had no success with our search for the virus. I want to take a little of the time we seem to be wasting to keep my promise."
"And do you have a little time," said Hewlitt, "to listen to me?"
"Yes," said the Padre without hesitation. "For some time I have sensed in you an emotional disturbance, but whether it is anger directed at me because of unsatisfied curiosity or some more serious, personal concern that distresses you I do not know. If the latter, is the matter urgent? Either way I will listen, now or later, but you know as well as I do that now is not a good time. Can you tell me simply, and I hope briefly, what is troubling you?"
Hewlitt did not look at the other as he replied, "You are right, Padre. I am curious and angry with you for not satisfying my curiosity, and I am growing increasingly frightened by the fact that you have been forbidden to satisfy it. So I keep asking myself questions that I'm not qualified to answer, and worrying. There is something about this whole business that bothers me."
"Go on," said Lioren, stopping before a rail containing Earth-human radiation protection suits in various sizes. "Put one on without removing the garment you are wearing. It would be better if you talked while I help you to dress."
It would also waste less time, he thought, but the Padre was too polite to say that.
"Right," said Hewlitt. "So far as we know, the only beings to be infected or invaded by this virus creature were myself, my cat, Morredeth, you, and some other as yet unknown person or persons. It left us with a legacy of unusually good health and, for some reason, a strange ability to recognize former hosts. Why would it want to do that? And what exactly did it do to us?"
Without waiting for a reply he went on, "Is it telepathy, or an empathic faculty like Prilicla's? We can't receive each other's thoughts or feelings with accuracy, so probably not. I don't know enough about xenobiology or the behavior of extraterrestrial viruses, intelligent or otherwise, and nobody, yourself included, will answer questions. But am I right in thinking that the recognitive ability could only have come about as the result of a physical change of some kind within us? Was this invisible, two-way name tag that identifies us to other hosts merely a side effect and did something else happen, something the virus does to everyone it occupies? Has the long-term survival of the creature's species got anything to do with it? Have we all been seeded by the thing and are busy growing virus-creature embryos?"
He had stopped moving and was standing balanced on one foot and with the other one pushed deep into the leg section of the radiation suit. The Padre was standing behind him, supporting the upper body section and not moving or speaking, either. The lengthening silence was broken by the Padre.
"I was forbidden to answer your questions," Lioren said, "for the reasons you have already been given. It was to avoid causing you mental distress by listing our more frightening speculations. But I will not continue to withhold answers when it is plain that you are discovering them for yourself."
Hewlitt was silent. He was no longer sure that he wanted his questions answered.
"You already know that the most important factor in the treatment of multispecies patients," Lioren went on, "is that we can provide it without risk of cross-infection, because pathogens native to one world cannot be transmitted to a lifeform that has evolved on another. We have derived much professional comfort from the fact that, throughout the explored galaxy, no exception has ever been found to this rule. Until now."
"But the virus isn't harmful," Hewlitt protested. "It isn't a disease. The opposite, in fact."
"Yes," said the Padre. "But it is still a virus, a form of multispecies pathogen, with all that that implies. Admittedly it seems to be an intelligent, perhaps a highly intelligent organism who intends no harm to anyone, but we cannot be sure of that. We may be mistaking a simple, selfish need to occupy and maintain a host in optimum health for altruism. Certainly that is a very comforting and reassuring thought, but in a place like Sector General we cannot afford to ignore the possibility that, whether its behavior is guided by intelligence and altruism or is the result of a highly evolved survival instinct, it is the worst medical nightmare that any of us can imagine."
"I still don't understand why you're so worried," said Hewlitt. "It only cures people."
"You are forgetting what it has done," said the other. "On six separate occasions that we know of it has crossed the species barrier. It has done so with ease and without triggering the host's natural defenses, although later it hyperreacted to any medication or toxic material introduced into the host body. In essence it is a superpathogen, an organized, intelligent collection of viruses which is capable of modifying its structure to adapt and survive within a wide range of temperatures and the physiologies and metabolisms of an as yet unknown number of former hosts ..."
"Wait," said Hewlitt. "Did the medical team on Rhabwar know about this and deliberately keep it from me?"
"Yes," said the Padre, "as soon as they realized Lonvellin's personal healer was involved and you were no longer hyperreacting to new medication, but Prilicla didn't want you to worry."
"On the way back from Etla," he said, "I remembered Naydrad saying that my troubles were just beginning. I thought it was talking about something else."
"It wasn't," said Lioren, and went on, "potentially an organism that can do all that is very dangerous indeed. It might not intend to harm anyone, but the mechanism that enables it to transfer so easily between species could also serve as a bridge that would allow the transmission of lethal pathogens between the species of its former hosts. If such an adaptable, multispecies strain were to get loose in the hospital it is possible that the virus creature could cure the victims as it has done on previous occasions, provided we could communicate and make our needs known to it. But it is only one individual who would be trying to cure patients one at a time, and if there were a hospital-wide epidemic that would not be fast enough. Sector General and possibly the entire Galactic Federation would be in very serious trouble.
"It would mean the end of our present free and open contact between planetary cultures," Lioren ended, "and we would be forced back to inhabiting only our own home planets or, if we did go visiting, taking the most stringent decontamination precautions."
"So that," said Hewlitt, "is the reason why the evacuation ships have been forbidden to dock."
This time he was not asking a question.
Chapter Thirty
FOR A moment Hewlitt felt that his body was so cold that he could have been back in the SNLU ward without his protective suit, and he wondered why the sweat breaking on his forehead was not dropping off as hailstones. All of the Padre's eyes were turned on him, and he did not know whether its next words were driven by impatience or the need to administer a therapeutic change of subject.
"Try not to think about it now," it said. "You are about to meet your first Telfi, regrettably one who is dying. There is information you must have and precautions you must take, both for your own safety and to avoid further distressing Patient Cherxic. Listen carefully, if possible without asking questions ..."
Lioren went on to describe the conditions on Telf, a planet that orbited some thirty million miles from and presented the same face to its parent sun. It was a world whose flora occupied the grey area between vegetable and mineral, a world where the temperature and radiation levels were lethal to every other intelligent species known to the Federation. It was a truly hellish place to all but the Telfi inhabitants.
They were a quasi-animal life-form that had evolved on the dayside hemisphere and required the continuous high levels of heat and hard radiation given off by their sun in order to live. As well as a spoken language they possessed a telepathic faculty which operated between individuals, and especially the members of a family gestalt, who were in physical contact at the time.
Their civilization was very old and well established by the time they achieved space travel, life-support for the Telfi being difficult to reproduce inside a ship, and the proportion of malfunctions and crew losses among them were considered very high when measured by Federation standards. But that had not kept them from traveling between the stars and, eventually, joining and sharing in the commercial and cultural benefits of Federation membership, which included making frequent use of its medical service.
Provided a Telfi ship with space casualties on board could be brought to Sector General quickly enough, it was possible to help them. The problem was that when a Telfi casualty's radiation-absorption mechanism failed because of a sudden withdrawal or a catastrophic surfeit of its radiant food supply, or a traumatic injury producing the same effect, the hospital had a maximum of one hundred hours from the time the injuries were sustained to initiation of treatment. This included reproducing in the required intensity and duration the cocktail of radiation that would enable the casualty to recover.
The need to reproduce this variety of curative radiation was the only reason why Sector General maintained a small fission reactor, which was little more than a functioning museum piece, among its contemporary fusion equipment.
Over the years the hospital had learned how to treat a large number of the nontraumatic conditions as well, the Telfi equivalents of respiratory, intestinal, or gynecological problems, but often it was work for a physicist as much as a physician.
"The patient we are about to visit," Lioren went on, "is the last and only surviving casualty of three sustained when their ship suffered a malfunction, the nature of which neither of us would understand. Cherxic was part of the specialized gestalt entity responsible for operating the vessel and, since it is no longer a functioning member of its group, the others have closed ranks as best they can and all physical, verbal, and telepathic contact with Patient Cherxic has been severed due to ..."
"You did say," Hewlitt broke in, "that this is a civilized species?"
"Yes," said Lioren. Its eyes and medial hands moved quickly over the seals of his suit, and then it went on, "That's fine. Leave off one of your gauntlets—and the surgical glove, too, you won't need them while visiting Cherxic—but double-check your glare shield for yourself while I dress. The visual radiation where we are going is vicious stuff."
"The suit fabric," said Hewlitt doubtfully, "seems very thin."
"The fabric and visor materials are imported from Telf," said the Padre, "where they were developed for the protection of off-planet visitors. Neither you nor any offspring you may produce need worry."
"If we were carrying virus embryos," he said, trying to hold his voice steady, "would Prilicla be able to detect them?"
"Yes," said Lioren, "provided they had developed to the stage of being aware of themselves."
Hewlitt was still trying to think of a suitable response when it continued, "Patient Cherxic does not want, nor would any other Telfi even consider asking for, the presence of a family member or friend at such a time. Dying slowly while remaining conscious is a very unpleasant experience for any life-form, and for the Telfi who retain their telepathic faculty until the end, it is not one they wish to share with others of their kind. There is severe pain even while the sensorium is closing down, accompanied by fear that cannot be controlled or concealed because a telepath is incapable of controlling either, and for a being used to close physical and mental contact with its fellows from birth, there is a strange and terrible isolation, a loneliness so intense that nontelepaths can scarcely imagine it. And it is only nontelepaths like ourselves who are able to comfort a dying Telfi, by talking to it on the translator, listening to its final thoughts, and allowing it to feel contact with another sentient being for the last time, because it knows that we are feeling sympathy but will not be able to feel its pain."
Hewlitt had yet to meet the dying Cherxic, but already he was feeling a little ashamed that his sympathy for the other was being outweighed by his own selfish fear.
"What do they look like?" he asked. "And when you said close contact, how close did you mean?"
"We'll go in now," said Lioren. "Follow me and don't worry, the radiation where we are going is all in the visible spectrum."
The airlock seal swung open to reveal a boarding tunnel whose other end blazed like a square sun. By the time they had traversed it, his eyes had grown accustomed to the intense light, but in spite of his glare shield he still had to look through slitted eyes to see the details of the compartment beyond. The equipment projecting from the walls and ceiling was a blur to him, both visually and intellectually, but in the center of the deck there was a tethered gravity litter with two long, opened metal boxes resting on it. He followed as the Padre moved across the room to stand beside them, thinking that a coffin looked much the same on any world, although putting them in their last resting place before they were clinically dead showed a certain lack of sensitivity.
