It was O’Mara’s job as Chief Psychologist to detect and eradicate such trouble-or if all else failed, to remove the potentially dangerous individuals-before such friction developed into open conflict. Conway did not know how O’Mara would react to a hulking great AMSL who fled in panic from such a fragile creature as Dr. Prilicla.
When the Creppelian’s outburst began to ease off Conway raised his hand for attention and said, “I realize now that Dr. Prilicla bears a physical resemblance to a species of small, amphibious predator native to your home world, and that in your youth you experienced an extremely harrowing incident with these animals. But Doctor Prilicla is not an animal and the resemblance is purely visual. Far from being a threat you could kill Prilicla if you were to touch it carelessly.
“Knowing this,” Conway ended seriously, “would you be frightened into running if you were to meet this being again?”
“I don’t know,” said the AMSL. “I might.”
Conway sighed. He could not help remembering his own first weeks at Sector General and the horrible, nightmare creatures which had haunted his sleep. What had made the nightmares particularly horrifying had been the fact that they were not figments of his imagination but actual, physical realities which in many cases were only a few bullcheads away.
He had never fled from any of these nightmares who had later become his teachers, colleagues and eventually friends. But to be honest with himself this was not due so much to intestinal fortitude as the fact that extreme fear had a tendency to paralyze Conway rather than to make him run away.
“I think you may need psychiatric assistance, Doctor,” he told the Creppelian gently, “and the hospital’s Chief Psychologist will help you. But I would advise you not to consult him at once. Spend a week or so trying to adapt to the situation before going to him. You will find that he will think more highly of you for doing this …
… And less likely, he added silently, to send you packing as unsuited for duty in a multi-environment hospital.
The Creppelian left the storeroom with very little persuasion, after Conway told it that Prilicla was the only GLNO in the hospital at the moment and that their paths were very unlikely to cross twice in the same day. Ten minutes later the AMSL was settled in its dining tank and Conway was making for his own dinner by the fastest possible route.
CHAPTER 7
By a stroke of luck he saw Dr. Mannon at an otherwise empty table in the Senior’s enclosure. Mannon was an Earth-human who had once been Conway’s superior and was now a Senior Physician well on the way to achieving Diagnostician status. Currently he was allowed to retain three physiology tapes-those of a Tralthan specialist in microsurgery and two which had been made by surgeons of the low-gravity LSVO and MSVK species-but despite this his reactions were reasonably human. At the moment he was working through a salad with his eyes turned toward Heaven and the dining hall ceiling in an effort not to look at what he was eating. Conway sat down facing him and made a sympathetic, querying noise.
“I’ve had a Tralthan and a LSVO on my list this afternoon, both long jobs,” Mannon said grumpily. “You know how it is, I’ve been thinking like them too much. If only these blasted Tralthans weren’t vegetarians, or the LSVOs weren’t sickened by anything which doesn’t look like bird seed. Are you anybody else today?”
Conway shook his head. “Just me. Do you mind if I have steak?”
“No, just don’t talk about it.”
“I won’t.”
Conway knew only too well the confusion, mental double vision and the severe emotional disturbance which went with a physiology tape that had become too thoroughly keyed in to the operating physician’s mind. He could remember a time only three months ago when he had fallen hopelessly-but hopelessly-in love with one of a group of visiting specialists from Melf IV. The Melfans were ELNTs-six-legged, amphibious, vaguely crab-like beings-and while one half of his mind had insisted that the whole affair was ridiculous the other half thought lovingly of that gorgeously marked carapace and generally felt like baying at the moon.
Physiology tapes were decidedly a mixed blessing, but their use was necessary because no single being could hope to hold in its brain all the physiological data needed for the treatment of patients in a multienvironment hospital. The incredible mass of data required to take care of them was furnished by means of Educator tapes, which were simply the brain recordings of great medical specialists of the various species concerned. If an Earth- human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient he took one of the DBLF physiology tapes until treatment was complete, after which he had it erased. But Senior Physicians with teaching duties were often called onto retain these tapes for long periods, which wasn’t much fun at all.
The only good thing from their point of view was that they were better off than the Diagnosticians.
They were the hospital’s elite. A Diagnostician was one of those rare beings whose mind was considered stable enough to retain permanently up to ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To their data-crammed minds was given the job of original research in xenological medicine and the diagnosis and treatment of new diseases in hitherto unknown life-forms. There was a well-known saying in the hospital, reputed to have originated with O’Mara himself, that anyone sane enough to want to be a Diagnostician was mad.
For it was not only physiological data which the tapes imparted, the complete memory and personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was impressed on the receiving brain as well. In effect a Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to the most drastic form of multiple schizophrenia, with the alien personality sharing his mind so utterly different that in many cases they did not have even a system of logic in common.
Conway brought his thoughts back to the here and now. Mannon was speaking again.
“A funny thing about the taste of salad,” he said, still glaring at the ceiling as he ate, “is that none of my alter egos seem to mind it. The sight of it yes, but not the taste. They don’t particularly like it, mind, but neither does it completely revolt them. At the same time there are few species with an overwhelming passion for it, either. And speaking of overwhelming passions, how about you and Murchison?”
One of these days Conway expected to hear gears clashing, the way Mannon changed subjects so quickly.
“I’ll be seeing her tonight if I’ve time,” he replied carefully. “However, we re just good friends.”
“Haw,” said Mannon.
Conway make an equally violent switch of subjects by hurriedly breaking the news about his latest assignment. Mannon was the best in the world, but he had the painful habit of pulling a person’s leg until it threatened to come off at the hip. Conway managed to keep the conversation off Murchison for the rest of the meal.
As soon as Mannon and himself split up he went to the intercom and had a few words with the doctors of various species who would be taking over the instruction of the trainees, then he looked at his watch. There was almost an hour before he was due aboard Vespasian. He began to walk a little more hurriedly than befitted a Senior Physician …
The sign over the entrance read “Recreation Level, Species DBDG, DBLF, ELNT, GKNM & FGLI.” Conway went in, changed his whites for shorts and began searching for Murchison.
Trick lighting and some really inspired landscaping had given the recreation level the illusion of tremendous spaciousness. The overall effect was of a small, tropical beach enclosed on two sides by cliffs and open to the sea, which stretched out to a horizon rendered indistinct by heat haze. The sky was blue and cloudless-realistic cloud effects were difficult to reproduce, a maintenance engineer had told him-and the water of the bay was deep blue shading to turquoise. It lapped against the golden, gently sloping beach whose sand was almost too warm for the feet. Only the artificial sun, which was too much on the reddish side for Conway’s taste, and the alien greenery fringing the beach and cliff’s kept it from looking like a tropical bay anywhere on Earth.
But then space was at a premium — in Sector General and the people who worked together were expected to play together as well.
The most effective, yet completely unseen, aspect of the place was the fact that it was maintained at one- half normal gravity. A half-G meant that people who were tired could relax more comfortably and the ones who were feeling lively could feel livelier still, Conway thought wryly as a steep, slow-moving wave ran up the beach and
