know you feel you deserve them … and worse … and you expect no apology from me. But I do apologize … because I am hurting in a way that I did not believe possible … and am striking out at you … and I ignore my friends when they visit me in case they discover … that I am nothing but a vindictive old man.”
Before Lioren could think of a reply, Mannen said weakly, “I have been hurtful to a being who has not hurt me. The only recompense I can make is by helping you … with information on Seldal. When it visits me tomorrow morning … I shall ask it specific and very personal questions. I shall not mention … nor will it suspect your connection.”
“Thank you,” Lioren said. “But I do not understand how you can ask—”
“It is very simple,” Mannen said, its voice strengthening again. “Seldal is a Senior Physician and I was, until my summary demotion to the status of patient, a Diagnostician. It will be pleased to answer all my questions for three reasons. Out of respect for my former rank, because it will want to humor a terminal patient who wants to talk shop for what might well be the last time, and especially because I have not spoken a word to it since three days before the operation. If I cannot discover any helpful information for you after that exercise, the information does not exist.”
This terminally ill entity, in what might well be the last constructive act of its life, was going to help him with the Seldal assignment as no other person was capable of doing, simply because it had used a few impolite words to him. Lioren had always considered it wrong to become emotionally involved in a case, however slightly, because the patient’s interests were best served by the impersonal, clinical approach — and Mannen was not even his patient. But somehow it seemed that the investigation into the Nallajim Senior’s behavior was no longer his only concern.
“Thank you again,” Lioren said. “But I had been about to say that I cannot understand why you are hurting in ways that you did not believe possible when your medication should render you pain-free. Is it a nonmedical problem?”
Mannen stared up at him unblinkingly for what seemed a very long time in silence, and Lioren wished that he was able to read the expression on its wasted and deeply wrinkled features. He tried again.
“If it is nonmedical, would you prefer I send for O’Mara?”
“No!” Mannen said, weakly but very firmly. “I do not want to talk to the Chief Psychologist. He has been here many times, until he stopped trying to talk to a person who pretended to be asleep all the time and, like my other friends, stayed away.”
It was becoming clear that Mannen wanted to talk to someone, but had not yet made the decision to do so. Silence, Lioren thought, might be the safest form of questioning.
“In your mind,” Mannen said finally, in a voice which had found strength from somewhere, “there is too much that you want to forget. In mine there is even more that I cannot remember.”
“Still I do not understand you,” Lioren said.
“Must I explain it as if you were a first-day trainee?” the patient said. “For the greater part of my professional life I have been a Diagnostician. As such I have had to accommodate in my mind, often for periods of several years, the knowledge, personalities, and medical experience of anything up to ten entities at a time. The experience is of many alien personalities occupying and — because these tape donors were rarely timid or self-effacing people — fighting for control of the host mind. This is a subjective mental phenomenon which must be overcome if one is to continue as a Diagnostician, but initially it seems that the host mind is a battleground with too many combatants warring with each other until—”
“That I do understand,” Lioren said. “During my time here as a Senior I was once required to carry three tapes simultaneously.”
“The host is able to impose peace and order,” Mannen continued slowly, “usually by learning to understand and adapt to and make friends with these alien personalities without surrendering any part of his own mind, until the necessary accommodation can be made. It is the only way to avoid serious mental trauma and removal from the roster of Diagnosticians.”
Mannen closed its eyes for a moment, then went on. “But now the mental battlefield is deserted, emptied of the onetime warriors who became friends. I am all alone with the entity called Mannen, and with only Mannen’s memories, which includes the memory of having many other memories that were taken from me. I am told that this is as it should be because a man’s mind should be his own for a time before termination. But I am lonely, lonely and empty and cared for and completely pain-free while I spend a subjective eternity waiting for the end.
Lioren waited until he was sure that Mannen had finished speaking; then he said, “Terminally aged Earth- humans, indeed the members of the majority of species, find comfort in the presence of friends at a time like this. For some reason you have chosen to discourage such visits, but if you would prefer the company of donor entities who were your friends of the mind, this answer is to reimpress your brain with Educator tapes of your choosing. I shall suggest this solution to the Chief Psychologist, who might—”
“Tear you psychologically limb from Tarlan limb,” Mannen broke in. “Have you forgotten that you are supposed to be investigating Seldal, not one of its patients called Mannen? Forget about the tapes. If O’Mara ever found out what you, a psychology trainee, have been trying to do here, you would be in very serious trouble.”
“I cannot imagine,” Lioren said very seriously, “being in worse trouble than I am now.”
“I’m sorry,” Mannen said, raising one of its hands a few inches above the covers and then letting it fall again. “For a moment I had forgotten the Cromsag Incident. A tongue-lashing from O’Mara would be insignificant compared to the punishment you are inflicting on yourself.”
Lioren did not acknowledge the other’s apology because the guilty did not deserve one and said instead, “You are right, reimpressing your Educator tapes is not a good solution. My knowledge of Earth-human psychology is meager, but would it not be better if at this time your mind was your own, and not filled with others whose mind records were taken before they even knew of your existence, and whose apparent friendship for you was a self- delusion aimed at making their alien presence more bearable? At this time should you not be ordering the contents of your own mind, its thoughts, experiences, right or wrong decisions, and its considerable accomplishments during your own lifetime? This would help to pass your remaining time, and if your friends were no longer discouraged from visiting you, that would also shorten—”
“I have yet to meet an intelligent being,” Mannen said, “who did not wish for a long life and an instantaneous death. But such wishes are rarely granted, are they, Lioren? My suffering does not compare with yours, but I will still have a long time to spend in a body deprived of all feeling and with a mind that is empty and alien and frightening because it is my own, a mind I can no longer fill.”
The ex-Diagnostician’s two recessed eyes were fixed on the one of Lioren’s that was closest to it. He returned the patient’s stare for several minutes, his mind recalling the words the other had spoken and searching everyone of them for unspoken meanings, but Mannen spoke before he did.
“I have not talked for so long in many weeks,” it said, “and I am very tired. Go now, or I will be so discourteous as to fall asleep in the middle of a sentence.”
“Please don’t,” Lioren said quickly, “because I have one more question to ask of you. It is possible that you are thinking that an entity who has already committed the monstrous and multiple crime of genocide would not suffer additional distress if he were to commit a single and, relatively, more venial offense as a favor to a colleague. Are you suggesting that I shorten your time of waiting?”
Mannen was silent for so long that Lioren checked the biosensors to be sure that it had not lost consciousness with its eyelids open; then it said, “If that was my suggestion, what would your answer be?”
Lioren did not wait as long before replying. “The answer would be no. If it is possible, I must try to reduce my guilt, not increase it by however small an amount. The ethical and moral aspects might be argued, but I could not justify such an act on medical grounds because there is no physical distress of any kind. Your distress is subjective, the product of a mind that is empty of all but one occupant, you, who is no longer happy there.
“But the experience is not new to you,” Lioren went on, “because it was your normal condition before you became a Senior Physician and then a Diagnostician. I have already suggested that you fill your mind with old memories, experiences or professional decisions which brought you pleasure, or problems which you enjoyed solving. Or would you prefer to continue exercising it with new material?”
What he was about to say would sound callous and selfish and might well anger the patient into total noncooperation, but he said it anyway.
“For example,” he added, “there is the mystery of Seldal’s behavior.”
“Go away,” Mannen said in a weak voice, closing its eyes, “go now.”
