missed by my predecessors. Except as an infant and very young child on Etla, you have never traveled beyond the atmosphere of Earth, your home world. Correct?”
“Yes,” said Hewlitt.
“Were there any other-species contacts on Etla?”
“I can remember seeing a few extraterrestrials,” he replied, “but not well enough to describe them now. I was only four at the time and they frightened me. My parents said that I would grow out of it but kept me out of the way whenever they had other-species visitors. Obviously I didn’t grow out of it.”
“There is still time,” said Medalont. “What do you remember of your childhood illnesses? Begin with the earliest episodes, please.”
“Not much,” Hewlitt replied. “I was a pretty healthy infant, I learned later. But when my parents died in the flyer accident it was decided to return me to my grandparents on Earth, and I was given the usual immunizations against Earth-human child and adult diseases. That was when the trouble started. There were very few Earthpeople living on Etla at that time, and as my parents had not planned on returning to Earth, there had been no need for them to worry about giving me preventive shots.”
“Do you know the reason for that?” asked the doctor.
“I think so,” said Hewlitt.
“Then tell me,” said the other. “Explaining it to me aloud might give you something less to worry about while living among all us aliens.”
Hewlitt disliked being humored. He was neither a simple child nor a senile oldster, and it irritated him when some medical knowit-all implied that he was dim-witted, or worse, uneducated. He said, “If you sneeze I won’t be affected by your Melfan germs, and vice versa. The same situation applies to all the other life-forms in the hospital. It is a matter of evolution and environment. Germs that evolved on one world cannot affect or infect beings who are native to another. On Earth people said that some hospitals, usually the very old or badly run ones, were places one went to catch other people’s diseases as well as, hopefully, getting rid of one’s own.
“Is that why there is only one patient of any given species in this ward?” he ended. “To eliminate the risk of own-species crossinfection?”
Dr. Medalont blinked its eyes hard enough for Hewlitt to hear the eyelids clicking together. Then it said, “That is not a reason the hospital would admit to officially, and there are other reasons. You seem to be well- informed medically, but would you now kindly return to the account of your early onset of symptoms?”
“Listening to the number of doctors that have discussed my case over the years,” Hewlitt replied, “I couldn’t help learning a few things. But all right, back to the symptoms. After the first immunization shot before moving to Earth, I was told that I’d had a bad reaction to it: high temperature, body rash, and inflamed mucous membranes, all of which cleared up within a few days; the symptoms were not entirely those of the diseases I was being vaccinated against. The same thing happened after I arrived on Earth, with different symptoms and recovery times. And I can remember other times when I just did not feel well, when I would become suddenly tired even though I hadn’t been playing very hard, or get sick and vomit for no reason, or run a slight temperature or break out in spots. But the symptoms were not severe enough for me to remember them in detail or how long they lasted. My grandparents were curious but not seriously concerned. They took me to a local doctor who agreed with them that I was a sickly child who seemed to be catching every virus in the book.
“But I wasn’t sickly,” he went on, angry at the memory of that first, unjust accusation. “Between times I was very fit and was always picked for the school team and track events when…
“Patient Hewlitt,” Medalont broke in. “These episodes of nausea, minor skin eruptions, and the other symptoms that were not related, at least as far as you knew at the time, to the immunization shots. Could they have followed the administration of other forms of medication? A mild palliative for a headache, perhaps, or a painkiller given after an accident during a sporting contest that you were too excited to remember? Or did you eat something you should not have eaten, like uncooked or unripe vegetation?”
“No,” said Hewlitt. “If somebody had butted me in the stomach during a game I would remember it. And if I had eaten something that made me sick, I would have remembered that, too, and especially not to eat it again. I’m not stupid now and I wasn’t then.”
“Just so,” said the doctor. “Please continue.”
Feeling angry and impatient, he continued, as he had done so many times in the past to so many medics who had made halfhearted attempts to hide their impatience while listening to him. He described the sudden onset of a wide variety of symptoms that were apparently without cause and, while inconvenient and at times embarrassing, were never serious enough to be disabling. At the age of nine, five years after he had been returned to Earth, his aunt had taken him to the family’s aging general practitioner. That doctor had made the first positive, or perhaps it was a completely negative, contribution to his problem by deciding not to administer any form of medication whenever his inexplicable and relatively painfree symptoms appeared. There was evidence, the doctor had said, that the number and variety of symptoms increased in direct proportion to the amount of medication administered, so the sensible course was to withhold all medication and observe the results. He could still come to see the doctor if or when symptoms reappeared, but henceforth they would do nothing but talk about them.
He had also been given an appointment to see a psychiatrist, who had listened to him with sympathy during the course of several weeks before telling his grandmother that Hewlitt was a physically healthy, highly intelligent, and very imaginative young man who would grow out of his problem with the approach of maturity.
I realized later,” Hewlitt went on, “that neither of them believed I had anything wrong with me. The psychiatrist said so in polite polysyllables, but the doctor did the right thing by not doing anything. For three years after his negative treatment, the symptoms were reduced in frequency and strength so that, unless a rash or something appeared on a visible part of my body, I didn’t mention them to anyone. But when I reached puberty, the trouble began happening every few weeks and some of the symptoms were very embarrassing. Even so, the family doctor continued to withhold medication and the frequency of onset began to reduce again. From the time I was fourteen until I was twenty there were only three, well, attacks, but the symptoms and some of the things that happened between times were distressing and very embarrassing.. …“Now I understand,” Medalont broke in, “why your case history advises against prescribing medication without prior discussion with the patient. Your aged local doctor displayed the good sense that many of us younger and more enthusiastic medics lack, by deciding that when in doubt, and when the condition was not life-threatening, it was better to do nothing. But now that the episodes have become more distressing, you will have to trust us. If you are to be cured we cannot continue to do nothing for you.
“I know that,” said Hewlitt. “Shall I go on?”
“Later,” said the doctor. “The main meal is due shortly and Leethveeschi will scold me if I deliberately cause a patient to starve. Nurse, consultation mode, please.”
A pincer and a digited tentacle rose to touch their respective translators briefly, and thereafter their conversation was completely unintelligible to him. Hewlitt took it for as long as he could, about three minutes, before anger and frustration got the better of him.
“What are you saying about me?” he burst out. “Talk so I can listen, dammit. You’re just like the others. You think it’s all in my mind and that nothing is wrong with me but an overactive imagination. Is that what you think?”
The doctor and nurse touched their translators again, and Medalont said, “You may listen to us if you wish, Patient Hewlitt. We are not hiding anything from you except, possibly, our own clinical confusion regarding your case. Is what others think important to you?”
“I don’t like people thinking that I’m a liar,” said Hewlitt in a quieter voice. “Or that there is nothing wrong with me.”
The doctor was silent for a moment. Then it said, “During the days or weeks to come there will be many strange beings talking to you, and thinking about you in their strange fashions, in an effort to find the answer to your problem. But one thing they will not be thinking is that you are a liar. If there was nothing wrong with you, you would not be here. Excuse me.
“There can be little doubt,” it went on, turning both of its large, protruding eyes toward the nurse, “that there is a psychological component to Patient Hewlitt’s condition. While the clinical work is proceeding we will request a concurrent investigation by the Psychology Department. Bearing in mind that the symptoms include a measure of xenophobia, one of the Earth-humans, O’Mara or Braithwaite, would be best…
