What do they say to you?”
Hellishomar’s great muscles were still fighting each other, and so evenly matched were they that its body remained motionless. “Are you less intelligent than I assumed, Lioren? Don’t you realize that the Small do not remain the Small forever? In preparation for the transition into adulthood of the most senior among us, the Parents touch our minds gently and instruct us in the great laws that guide and bind the long lives of the Parents. We are given the reasons why they seek to live for as long as possible in spite of sickness and physical pain — so that they may be adequately prepared to Go Out. All of these laws are passed on in simplified form to the very young among us by Small teachers who are on the verge of maturity.
“I have waited with patience for the Parents to speak to me,” Hellishomar went on, “because I have grown old and large and should rightly have been a young Parent by now. But they do not speak to me. In Groalterri history there are precedents for my situation, a very few of them, fortunately, so I knew that a long, lonely, unhappy and uneventful mental life lay ahead of me. Then in my great despair I committed the most grievous sin of all, and now the Parents will never speak to me.”
As the implications of what the other had been saying became clear to Lioren, a great wave of sympathy washed over his mind, and with it the growing excitement of being on the verge of a full understanding of Hellishomar’s problem. He was remembering Seldal’s description of the patient’s clinical condition and Hellishomar’s insistence that the Small were impervious to illness. Now he knew the nature of the great sin that Hellishomar had committed, because Lioren had come very close to committing it himself.
He wished that there was some way that he could bring consolation to this gravely troubled being, or relieve the inner distress of knowing that among its own highly intelligent kind it was mentally retarded. That had been the reason Hellishomar had tried to end its own life.
He said gently, “If the Parents touch the minds and speak to the Small who are nearing maturity, and for the first time to an off-worlder ship captain in the hope that your injuries could be successfully treated, then they must have a high regard, perhaps a great affection, for you. The reason they do not speak and tell you so is because you cannot hear them. Am I right, Hellishomar?”
“To my shame,” Hellishomar replied, “you are right.”
“It is possible,” Lioren said, carefully avoiding all mention of Hellishomar’s other shame, “that your future life will not be lonely. If embarrassment or other reasons keep the Small from talking to you, and you cannot hear the words of the Parents, there are others who would gladly speak and listen and learn from you. The off-worlders would be pleased to set up a base on the polar hard ground and make it as comfortable as possible for you. If the Parents do not allow this, you could be provided with communications devices which would enable two-way contact to be maintained from orbit. Admittedly, this would not be as satisfactory as full telepathic contact with the Parents, but many questions would be asked and answered by the off-worlders and yourself. Their curiosity about the Groalterri is as great as is yours about the Federation, and will require a long time to satisfy. It is said by many of our foremost thinkers that, to a truly intelligent entity, the satisfaction of curiosity is the greatest and most lasting of pleasures. You would not be lonely, Hellishomar, nor would there be little to occupy your mind.”
Around and below Lioren the patient’s body was stirring although muscular tension was still evident.
“You would not be exchanging mere words,” Lioren went on quickly, “or the verbal questions and answers and descriptions that have passed between us here. When you are well again, large-screen viewing facilities will be made available to you. The visuals will be three-dimensional and in full color. Not only will they show you the physical structure of the galaxy in which we live and the tiny fraction of it that is populated by the Federation, but display to you in as much detail as you desire the science and cultures and philosophies of the many and widely varied intelligent life-forms who are its members. Arrangements could be made that would enable you to question these life-forms and, visually and aurally, to live among many of them. Your life would be long, Hellishomar, but full and interesting so that the absence of Parent mental contact would not be so—”
“No!”
Once again the razor-edged, bony tip of a cutting tentacle whistled past Lioren’s head to crash against the wall plating. Surprise and fear paralyzed both his body and mind, but only for an instant. Before the metallic reverberations had died away he was talking urgently to the Hudlar in the Nurses’ Station, telling it not to pull him out. If Hellishomar had wanted that cutting blade to strike him, he would have been a bloody, dismembered corpse by now. With a great effort he forced himself to speak calmly.
“Have I offended you?” Lioren asked. “I do not understand. If nobody else is willing to speak to you, why do you refuse contact with the Fed—”
“Stop talking about it!” Hellishomar broke in, its voice loud and unmodulated as that of a person who could not hear itself speak. “I am unworthy, and you tempt me to an even greater sin.”
Lioren was deeply puzzled by this sudden change in the other’s behavior, but decided to give the words and circumstances that had led up to it more serious thought at another time. He hoped that the ban on conversation referred to the one hyper- sensitive topic, whatever that was. But now he had to apologize without knowing what he was apologizing for.
“If I have given offense,” Lioren said, “such was not my intention and I am truly sorry. What is it that I’ve said that offends you? We can discuss a subject of your choosing. The work of this hospital, for example, or the Monitor Corps’s continuing search for inhabited worlds in the unexplored reaches of our galaxy, or scientific disciplines practiced throughout the Federation that are unknown to a water world like Groalter—”
Lioren broke off, his body and tongue alike paralyzed with fear. The razor edge of a cutting blade had swept up to within a fraction of an inch of his forebody and face. Any higher and it would have lopped off two of his eyestalks. Suddenly the flat of the blade pressed hard against his chin, chest, and abdomen, pushing him away. Hellishomar’s tentacle continued to uncurl to full extension, and the blade was not withdrawn until Lioren had been deposited back at the entrance to the Nurses’ Station.
“Officially I have heard nothing,” said the Hudlar nurse on duty, after it had satisfied itself that Lioren was uninjured, “but unofficially I would say that the patient does not want to speak to you.”
“The patient needs help …” Lioren began.
He fell silent then because his thoughts were rushing far ahead of his words. The recent conversation with Hellishomar, together with the information he had already gathered or deduced about the Groalterri culture, was forming a picture in his mind that grew clearer with every moment that passed. Suddenly he knew what had to be done to and for Hellishomar and the entities who were capable of doing it, but there were serious moral and ethical considerations that worried him. He was sure, or as sure as it was possible to be before the event, that he was right. But he had been right on a previous occasion, right and proud and impatient in his self-confidence, and the population of a world had all but died. He did not want to take on the responsibility for destroying another planetary culture, not alone.
“And so do I,” he finished.
CHAPTER 18
HE found Senior Physician Prilicla in the dining hall, its four sets of slowly beating, iridescent wings maintaining a stable hover above the tabletop while it ingested a yellow, stringy substance which the menu screen identified as Earth-human spaghetti. The process by which the little empath drew the strands from the platter and used its delicate forward manipulators to weave them into a fine, continuous rope which disappeared slowly into its eating mouth was one of the most fascinating sights that Lioren had ever seen.
As he was about to apologize for interrupting the other’s meal, Lioren discovered that the musical trills and clicks of the Cin-russkin’s speech came from a different orifice.
“Friend Lioren,” Prilicla said. “I can sense that you are not feeling hunger, or even repugnance at my unusual in-flight method of eating, and that your predominant feeling and probable reason for approaching me is curiosity. How may I satisfy it?”
Cinrusskin GLNOs were empaths, emotion-sensitives who were forced to do everything in their power to insure that the emotional radiation of those around them was as pleasant as possible because to do otherwise would have caused them to suffer the identical feelings that they had caused. In their words and deeds Cinrusskins were invariably pleasant and helpful, but Lioren was nonetheless relieved and grateful for the reminder that it was
