The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 97
O'Mara's tone at that point implied that he very much doubted it. "... However, all that the hospital and yourself are required to do is co-operate."
APPARENTLY the being who was the doctor in the case came from a race which had been only recently discovered, O'Mara went on to explain, which had tentatively been given the classification VUXG: that was, they were a life-form possessing certain psi faculties, had the ability to convert practically any substance into energy for their physical needs and could adapt to virtually any environment. They were small and well-nigh indestructible.
The VUXG doctor was telepathic, but ethics and the privacy taboo forbade it using this faculty to communicate with a non-telepathic life-form, even if its range included the Earthhuman frequency. For that reason the Translator would be used exclusively. This doctor belonged to a species long-lived both as individuals and in recorded history, and in all that vast sweep of time there had been no war.
They were an old, wise and humble race, O'Mara concluded; intensely humble. So much so that they tended to look down on other races who were not so humble as they. Conway would have to be very tactful because this extreme, this almost overbearing humility might easily be mistaken for something else ...
Conway looked closely at O'Mara. Was there not a faintly sardonic gleam in those keen, iron-grey eyes and a too carefully neutral expression on that square-chiselled competent face? Then with a feeling of complete bafflement he saw O'Mara wink.
Ignoring it, Conway said, "This race, they sound stuck up to me."
He saw O'Mara's lips twitch, then a new voice broke in on the proceedings with dramatic suddenness. It was a flat, toneless, Translated voice which boomed, "The sense of the preceeding remark is not clear to me. We are stuck—adhering—up where?" There was a short pause, then; "While I admit that my own mental capabilities are very low, at the same time I would suggest in all humility that the fault may not altogether lie with me, but be due in part to the lamentable tendency for you younger and more impractical races to make sense-free noises when there is no necessity for a noise to be made at all."
It was then that Conway's wildly searching eyes lit on the transparent plastic globe on O'Mara's desk. Now that he was really looking at it he could see several lengths of strapping attached to it, together with the unmistakable shape of a Translator pack. Inside the container there floated a something ...
"Dr. Conway," said O'Mara drily, "meet Dr. Arretapec, your new boss." Mouthing silently, he added, "You and your big mouth!"
The thing in the plastic globe, which resembled nothing so much as a withered prune floating in a spherical gob of syrup, was the VUXG doctor! Conway felt his face burning. It was a good thing that the Translator dealt only with words and did not also transfer their emotional—in this instance sarcastic—connotations, otherwise he would have been in a most embarrassing position.
"As the closest co-operation is required," O'Mara went on quickly, "and the mass of the being Arretapec is slight, you will wear it while on duty." O'Mara deftly suited actions to his words and strapped the container onto Conway's shoulder. When he had finished he added, "You can go, Dr. Conway. Detailed orders, when and where necessary, will be given to you direct by Dr. Arretapec."
It could only happen here, Conway thought wryly as they left. Here he was with an e-t doctor riding on his shoulder like a quivering, transparent dumpling, their patient a healthy and husky dinosaur, and the purpose of the whole business was something which his colleague was reluctant to clarify. Conway had heard of blind obedience, but blind co-operation was a new—and he thought, rather stupid—concept.
ON THE way to Lock Seventeen, the point where the hospital was joined to the ship containing their patient, Conway tried to explain the organisation of Sector Twelve General Hospital to the extra-terrestrial doctor.
Equipped as they were to treat every known form of intelligent life it was understandable that no single being—Earth-human or otherwise—could hold in its brain even a fraction of the physiological data necessary to perform this function. Surgical dexterity had to be learned over the years, of course, but complete physiological data could usually be furnished on any patient by means of Educator tape, which was nothing less than the brain record of some great medical genius belonging to the same or similar species as the patient to be treated. Normally this knowledge was impressed on the brain of the doctor in charge of the case only until the operation or course of treatment was completed, then it was erased. The sole exceptions to this rule were the Diagnosticians.
They were the beings whose minds were considered stable enough to contain, permanently, six, seven or even ten Educator tapes. To these Diagnosticians fell the job of original research in xenological medicine, using their data-crammed minds as the jumping-off point, and the diagnosis of new diseases treatments in hitherto unknown life-forms.
On the purely structural side Conway tried to give some idea of the complexity of the great hospital floating in interstellar space on the galactic periphery: the wards for the treatment of high-temperature life-forms, of low-gravity, water-breathing or energy-eating types, and species requiring such a degree of cold and darkness that they had to be shielded from even the faint starlight which filtered through the direct vision ports from the parent galaxy.
Dr. Arretapec asked some pertinent questions from time to time, so presumably he was interested.
Even though he had been expecting it, the sheer size of the converted transport's interior shocked Conway. With the exception of the two levels nearest the ship's outer skin, which at the moment housed the artificial gravity generators, the Monitor Corps engineer had cut away everything to leave a great sphere of emptiness some two thousand feet in diameter. The inner surface of this sphere was a wet and muddy shambles. Great untidy heaps of uprooted vegetation were piled indescriminately about, most of it partially trampled into the mud. Conway also noticed that quite a lot of it was withered and dying.
After the gleaming, aseptic cleanliness which he was used to Conway found that the sight was doing peculiar things to his nervous system. He began looking around for the patient.
His gaze moved out and upwards across the acres of mud and tumbled vegetation until, high above his head on the opposite side of the sphere the swamp merged into a small, deep lake. There were shadowy movements and swirlings below its surface. Suddenly a tiny head mounted on a great sinuous neck broke the surface, looked around, then submerged again with a tremendous splash.
Conway surveyed the distance to the lake and the quality of the terrain between it and himself. He said, "It's a long way to walk, I'll get an antigravity belt ..."
"That will not be necessary," said Arretapec. The ground abruptly flung itself away from them and they were hurtling towards the distant lake.
Classification VUXG, Conway reminded himself when he got his breath back; possessing certain psi faculties ...
Chapter Two
THEY LANDED gently near the edge of the lake. Arretapec told Conway that it wanted to concentrate its thinking processes for a few minutes and requested him to keep both quiet and still. A few seconds later an itching started deep inside his ear somewhere. Conway manfully refrained from poking at it with his finger and instead kept all his attention on the surface of the lake.
Suddenly a great grey-brown, mountainous body broke the surface, a long, tapering neck and tail slapping at the water with explosive violence. For an instant Conway thought that the great beast had simply bobbed to the surface like a rubber ball but then he told himself that the bed of the lake must have shelved suddenly under the monster, giving an optically similar effect. Still threshing madly with neck, tail and four massive columnar legs the giant reptile gained the lake's edge and floundered onto, or rather into, the mud, because it sank over its knee joints Conway estimated that the said knee-joints were at least ten feet from ground level, that the thickest diameter of the great body was about eighteen feet and that from head to tail the brute measured well over one hundred feet. He guessed its weight at about 80,000 pounds. It possessed no natural body armour but the extreme end of its tail, which showed surprising mobility for such a heavy member, had an osseous bulge from which spouted two wicked, forward-curving boney spikes.
As Conway watched, the great reptile continued to churn up the mud in obvious agitation. Then abruptly it fell onto its knees and its great neck curved around and inwards until its head muzzled underneath its own underbelly. It was a ridiculous but oddly pathetic posture.
"It is badly frightened," said Arretapec. "These conditions do not adequately stimulate its true environment."
Conway could understand and sympathise with the beast. The ingredients of its environment were no doubt accurately reproduced but rather than being arranged in a life-like manner they had just been thrown together into a large, muddy stew. Probably not deliberately, he thought, there must have been some trouble with the artificial gravity grids on the way out to account for this jumbled landscape. He said;
"Is the mental state of the patient of importance to the purpose of your work?"
"Very much so," said Arretapec.
"Then the first step is to make it a little more happy with its lot," said Conway, and went down on his haunches. He took a sample of the lake water, the mud and several of the varieties of vegetation nearby. Finally he straightened up and said, "Is there anything else we have to do here?"
"I can do nothing at present," Arretapec replied. The Translated voice was toneless and utterly without emotion, naturally, but from the spacing of the words Conway thought that the other sounded deeply disappointed.
BACK AT the entry lock Conway made determined tracks towards the dining hall reserved for warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing life-forms. He was hungry.
Many of his colleagues were in the hall—DBLF caterpillars who were slow everywhere but in the operating theatre, Earth-human DBDG's like himself and the great, elephantine Tralthan—classification FGLI—who, with the little OTSB life-form who lived in symbiosis with it, was well on the way to joining the ranks of the lordly Diagnosticians. But instead of engaging in conversation all round, Conway concentrated on gaining all the data possible on the planet of origin of the reptilian patient.
For greater ease of conversation he had taken Arretapec out of its plastic container and placed it on the table in a space between the potatoes and gravy dish. At the end of the meal Conway was startled to find that the being had dissolved—ingested—a two inch hole in the table!
"When in deep cogitation," Arretapec replied when Conway rather exasperatedly wanted to know why, "the process of food-gathering and ingestion is automatic and unconscious with us. We do not indulge in eating as a pleasure as you obviously do, it dilutes the quality of our thinking. However, if I have caused damage ...?"
Conway hastily reassured him that a plastic tabletop was relatively valueless in the present circumstances, and beat a quick retreat from the place. He did not try to explain how catering officers could feel rather peeved over their relatively valueless property.
He had left the samples in for analysis on the way to lunch, so Conway called for the results on the way to the Maintenance Chief's office. This was occupied by a small humanoid life-form with seven-fingered hands, an overall coat of curly red fur and wearing a Maintenance armband which had gold edging. It also held an Earth-human in Monitor Corps green with Colonel's insignia on his collar over an Engineering flash. Conway had once held a poor and very inaccurate opinion of Monitors, and it had taken a runaway ship ploughing into the hospital and close contact with another Monitor which had ensued to get him straightened out on the subject. Now he quietly described the situation and what he wanted done, if such a thing was possible.
"It is possible," said the red teddybear after they had gone into a huddle over Conway's data sheets, "but—"
"O'Mara told me expense is no object," Conway interrupted, nodding towards the tiny being on his shoulder. "Maximum co-operation, he said."
"In that case we can do it," the Monitor Colonel put in briskly. He was regarding Arretapec with an expression close to awe. "Let's see, transports to bring the stuff from its home planet—quicker and cheaper in the long run than sythesising its food here. And we'll need two full companies of the Engineer's Division with their robots to make its house a happy home, instead of the twenly-odd men responsible for bringing it here." His eyes became unfocussed as rapid calculations went on behind them, then: "Three days."
Even allowing for the fact that hyperdrive travel was instantaneous, Conway thought that that was very fast indeed. He said so.
The Colonel acknowledged the compliment with the thinnest of smiles. He said, "What is all this in aid of, you haven't told us yet?"
Conway waited for a full minute to give Arretapec plenty of time to answer the question, but the VUXG kept silent. He could only mumble "I don't know "and leave quickly.
THE NEXT door they entered was boldly labelled "Dietician-in-Chief—Species DBDG, DBLF and FGLI. Dr. K. W. HARDIN." Inside, the whitehaired and distinguished head of Dr. Hardin raised itself from some charts he was studying and bawled, "And what's biting you ...?"
While Conway was impressed by and greatly respected Dr. Hardin, he was no longer afraid of him. The Chief Dietician was a man who was quite charming to strangers, Conway had learned; with acquaintances he tended to be a little on the abrupt side, and towards his friends he was downright rude. As briefly as possible Conway tried to explain what was biting him.
"You mean I have to go around replanting the stuff it's eaten, so that it doesn't know but that it grew naturally?"
Harding interrupted at one point. "Who the blazes do you think I am? And how much does this dirty great cow eat, anyway?"
Conway gave him the figures he had worked out.
"Three and a half tons of palm fronds a day!" Hardin roared, practically climbing his desk. "And tender green shoots of ... Ye Gods! And they tell me dietetics is an exact science. Three-and-a-half tons of shrubbery, exact! Hah ...!"
They left Hardin at that point. Conway knew that everything would be all right because the dietician had shown no signs of becoming charming.
To the VUXG Conway explained that Hardin had not been non-co-operative, but had just sounded that way. He was keen to help as had been the other two. Arretapec replied to the effect that members of such immature and short-lived races could not help behaving in an unsane fashion.
A SECOND visit to their patient followed. Conway brought a G-belt along with him this time and so was independent of Arretapec's teleportive ability. They drifted around and above the great, ambulating mountain of flesh and bone, but not once did Arretapec so much as touch the creature. Nothing whatever happened except that the patient once again showed signs of agitation and Conway suffered a periodic itch deep inside his ear. He sneaked a quick look at the tell-tale which was surgically embedded in his fore-arm to see if there was anything foreign in his bloodstream, but everything was normal. Maybe he was just allergic to dinosaurs.
Back in the hospital proper Conway found that the frequency and violence of his yawns was threatening to dislocate his jaw, and he realised that he had had a hard day. The concept of sleep was completely strange to Arretapec, but the being raised no objections to Conway indulging in it if it was necessary to his physical well-being. Conway gravely assured it that it was, and headed for his room by the shortest route.
This involved donning a lightweight diving suit for a fifty-yard swim through a water filled corridor in the section inhabited by the AUGLs, a large, armoured, fish-like species, and a walk through another in the PVSJ section. The PVSJ's—spiny, membraneous, chlorine-breathers—were inclined to be sociable, so that the walk usually took several minutes, but this time he was lucky in not meeting anyone.
What to do with Dr. Arretapec bothered him for a while. The VUXG was an important personage; he could not very well leave it in a storage closet or in a corner somewhere, even though the being was tough enough to be comfortable in much more rugged surroundings. Nor could he simply put it out for the night without gravely hurting its feelings—at least, if the positions had been reversed his feelings would have been hurt. He wished O'Mara had given instructions to cover this contingency. Finally he placed the being on top of his writing desk and forgot about it.
Arretapec must have thought deeply during the night, because there was a three inch hole in the desk-top next morning.
Chapter Three
DURING the afternoon of the second day a row started between the two doctors. At least Conway considered it a row: what an entirely alien mind like Arretapec's chose to think of it was anybody's guess.
It started when the VUXG requested Conway to be quiet and still while it went into one of its silences. The being had gone back to the old position on Conway's shoulder, explaining that it could concentrate more effectively while at rest rather than with part of its mind engaged in levitating. Conway had done as he was told without comment though there were several things he would have liked to say; What was wrong with the patient? What was Arretapec doing about it? And how was it being done when neither of them so much as touched the creature? Conway was in the intensely frustrating position of a doctor confronted with a patient on whom he is not allowed to practise his craft: he was eaten up with curiosity and it was bothering him. Yet he did his best to stand still. He tried.
But the itching started inside his ear again, worse than ever before. He barely noticed the geysers of mud and water flung up by the dinosaur as it threshed its way out of the shallows and onto the bank. The gnawing, unlocalised itch built up remorselessly until with a sudden yell of fright he slapped at the side of his head and began poking frantically at his ear. The action brought immediate and blessed relief, but ...
