not been made because the race’s energies had been directed into fighting, so much so that many of them no longer grew food or had the strength to forage for that which grew wild, and the population had contracted into one region so that they could continue fighting without having to travel far to do so.
“When we stopped the war,” Lioren went on, “or rather, when our sleep bombs halted the hundreds of small gang and two-person conflicts, there was an estimated surviving population of just under ten thousand entities, a number which included all the adults, their young, and a few newly born infants. But recently they have begun dying at the rate of about one hundred every day.”
Prilicla had begun to tremble again. Lioren was unsure whether it was in response to his emotional radiation or its own reaction to the news of the increasing number of fatalities. He tried to make his mind as well as his voice calm and clinical as he continued.
“In spite of our supporting them with shelters, clothing, and synthetic nutrient, even going so far as to gather supplies of local food that they were too weak to harvest for themselves, the deaths continue. Adult fatalities are invariably due to the plague, sometimes expedited by the debilitating effect of war injuries, and the children succumb to other diseases for which we have no specifics as yet. The Cromsaggar accept our help and our food, but only their young appear grateful for it. They show no interest in what we are trying to do for them. I feel that the adults tolerate us as an additional and unwelcome burden that they can do nothing about. My own feeling is that they are disinterested in their own survival and want to be left alone to commit racial suicide in the bloodiest fashion possible, and there are times when I feel that such a warlike and individually violent race should not be restrained from doing so. I do not know what they themselves feel, about anything.”
“And you would like me to use my empathic faculty,” Prilicla asked, “to tell you what they feel?”
“Yes,” Lioren said, with so much feeling that the Cinrusskin trembled for a moment. “I hoped that you, Doctor, might have detected urges, instincts, feelings about themselves, their off- spring, or their present situation. My ignorance regarding their thinking and motivations is total. I would like to be able to do or say something to them that, as with an emotionally disturbed entity about to jump from a high building, would make them want to live instead of die. What is it that they fear, or need, that would make them want to survive?”
“Friend Lioren,” Prilicla said without hesitation, “they fear death, like every other self-aware creature, and they want to survive. There were no indications, even in the most serious cases, of a wish for individual death or racial self-destruction, and they should not be—”
“I am sorry,” Lioren broke in. “My earlier remark about allowing them to commit racial suicide—”
“They were words spoken because of helplessness and frustration, friend Lioren,” Prilicla said, in the gentlest of interruptions, “that were completely contradicted by your underlying emotional radiation at the time. There was no need for an apology then or for your embarrassment now.
“And I had been about to say,” it v/ent on, “that the Crom-saggar should not be criticized for their lack of cooperation, and the strong feelings of ingratitude until we know why they feel so ungrateful. These feelings were strongly present in all of the adult patients I monitored during transportation to Sector General and while I was present at the subsequent attempts to question them. They know we are trying to help them, but will not help us with clinical or personal information about themselves. When the interrogation was intensified they became agitated and fearful, and a marked if temporary remission of symptoms was observed at these times.”
“I have made the same observation,” Lioren said, “and assumed that it was the transfer of focus from a material condition to an immaterial one, the psychological mechanism which can sometimes make faith healing effective. I did not consider it an important datum.”
“You are probably correct,” Prilicla said. “But Chief Psychologist O’Mara is of the opinion that the marked remission due to the fear stimulus, combined with their fanatical refusal to communicate with us beyond the exchange of a few words, indicates the presence of an extremely strong and deep-rooted conditioning about which the Cromsaggar, as individuals, may be unaware. Friend O’Mara likens it to the racial group psycho- ses afflicting the Gogleskans, and says that it is trying to probe a very sensitive area that is surrounded by a very thick wall of mental scar tissue, and advises everyone concerned to proceed slowly and carefully.”
The Gogleskan psychosis forced them into avoiding direct physical contact with each other for the greater part of their adult lives, which was certainly not the problem with the Cromsaggar. Trying to control his feelings of impatience, Lioren said, “If we do not quickly find a cure for this plague, your Chief Psychologist will run out of subjects for his slow and careful investigation. What progress has been made since your last visit?”
“Friend Lioren,” Prilicla said gently, “significant progress has been made. However, I sense and wholly agree with your need to avoid wasting time, so I suggest that Pathologist Mur-chison makes its report to you in person rather than having it relayed through myself, since you will doubtless have questions and I, because of my selfish need to surround myself with pleasant emotional radiation, have the unfortunate habit of accentuating the positive aspects of any situation.”
Lioren’s original reason for wanting a private meeting with Prilicla no longer seemed valid, and he could not reject the other’s suggestion without seriously embarrassing both himself and the empath. He had the feeling, which was no doubt shared by the empath, that somehow he had lost the initiative.
Pathologist Murchison was a warm-blooded oxygen-breather of physiological classification DBDG with a body that, although considerably shorter and less massive than Lioren’s own, had the soft, lumpy and top-heavy aspect of many of the Earth-human females. It was Thornnastor’s principal assistant, when not required for special ambulance-ship duty, and its words were clear and concise and its manner respectful without being subservient. It also had the slightly irritating habit of answering questions before Lioren could ask them.
The identification, isolation, and neutralization of other-species pathogens, Pathologist Murchison said, was a routine procedure for Thornnastor’s department, but the behavioral characteristics of the Cromsaggar virus — its mechanisms of transmission, infection, incubation, and propagation — remained undetectable to all of the normal investigative techniques. It was only in recent days, when the discovery had been made that the virus was either inherited at conception or transmitted by the mother prior to birth, that some progress had been made.
“The effects on the adult Cromsaggar are known to you,” Murchison went on, “and the present indications are that every member of the species is infected. In the preterminal stage there is a livid rash and skin eruptions covering most of the body, accompanied by progressive and massive debilitation and lassitude which is sometimes overcome, temporarily, by strong emotional stimuli such as fear and danger. The effects on the children are less apparent and this led to the initial assumption that the young were immune, which they are not.
“We have since discovered,” it continued, “that severe debility and lassitude are also present in the young, although it is difficult to be precise since we have no idea of how active a young, noninfected Cromsaggar should be. And, incredible though it might seem, neither can we be precise about the ages of these child patients. There is physiological and verbal evidence which suggests that many of them are not nearly as young as they appear, and that our age estimates should be extended by a factor of two or three because, in addition to its general debilitating effect, the plague retards the overall physiological development and greatly delays the onset of puberty. Probably there are psychological effects, as well, which might explain their grossly antisocial adult behavior, but again, this must remain speculative since you have yet to find a normal, disease-free Cromsaggar.”
“I doubt whether such an entity exists,” Lioren said. “But you spoke of having verbal as well as physiological evidence. These people absolutely refuse to give information about themselves. How was it obtained?”
“A large proportion of the cases you sent us were young or, as we now know, not yet physically mature,” Murchison replied. “The adult patients remain completely uncooperative, but O’Mara was able to open dialogue with a few non-adults, who were much less reticent about themselves. Because of this immature viewpoint, adult motivations still remain unclear, and the picture of the Cromsaggar culture that is emerging is confusing and fraught with—”
“Pathologist Murchison,” Lioren interrupted, “my interest is in the clinical rather than the cultural picture, so please confine yourself to that. My reason for asking Rhabwar to transfer so many young or not so young patients to the hospital was that they were among the large numbers left parentless or without adults to care for them. As well as suffering from undernourishment or exposure, conditions which are treatable, they displayed symptoms of respiratory distress associated with elevated temperature, or a wasting disease affecting the peripheral vascular and nervous systems. If Thornnastor’s investigation into the plague is showing no results, what of these other and, I would think, clinically less complex conditions which seem to affect only the young?”
“Surgeon-Captain Lioren,” the pathologist said, using Lioren’s name and rank for the first time, “I did not say that no progress is being made.
“All of the non-adult cases are being investigated and significant progress is being made,” it went on quickly.
