doctors and relatives thought later. Go ahead, you talk and I’ll listen.~~
“You want me to tell you all about the times when I wasn’t sick?” said Hewlitt. He inclined his head in the direction of the diet kitchen, where the ward serving floats loaded with meal trays were emerging, and added, “But there isn’t enough… It’s lunchtime.”
Braithwaite sighed and said, “I would like to finish this talk with you as soon as possible, in case Medalont, who has the rank, thinks of doing something more urgent and positive for you. Would you do me a favor by ordering a meal for me? Nothing special, whatever they are giving you will do nicely.”
“But you’re not a patient,” said Hewlitt. “Yesterday I heard Leethveeschi telling an intern not to be a lazy scrassug, whatever that is, and to go to the staff dining hall instead of sneaking food from the ward kitchen. I don’t think the charge nurse will allow it.”
“The charge nurse will allow it,” said the lieutenant, “if you ask to speak to it about a personal matter which you feel is important. After the medical melodrama of five hours ago it will not want to risk a refusal. When it comes, say what you told me you wanted to say to it, that you are sorry for misjudging its actions and are grateful for it saving your life. Then you can say that you feel our talk could be important to your case, and would it be possible for it to order up another DBDG meal for me so that the conversation can continue without interruption.
“Illensans receive a lot of professional compliments from the staff,” Braithwaite went on, “because they are very good at what they do. But not from the patients, who are rarely here long enough to appreciate their good points. It comes of being the only chlorinebreathing, as well as the ugliest, species in the Federation. But if you do as I say, it will be too surprised and pleased to refuse you anything.”
Hewlitt was silent for a moment; then he said, “Lieutenant, you are a selfish, devious, calculating son of a… of a scrassug.
“Of course,” said Braithwaite. “I’m a psychologist.”
He was beginning to sweat at the idea of actually calling the loathsome Leethveeschi to his bedside. He said, “I was thinking of saying those things to it, but later,” he said. “I need more time to work up the nerve.
Braithwaite smiled and pointed at the communicator.
CHAPTER 7
The first and best-remembered early unusual incident had happened when he was a few days past his fourth birthday. His parents had been working at their separate home terminals, safe in the knowledge that they would be free from interruptions, because each was sure that the other was watching out for him, and doubly sure in that he was unable to leave his room without being seen.
Normally there would not have been a problem, because he would have been busy at his own, scaled-down terminal with its garish paint job and the extra flashing lights, playing with the latest educational adventure game that had been his birthday present. But that day he was feeling restless and bored because the educational content of the game was getting in the way of the adventures, and the room’s high, open window was offering the promise of more enjoyable things to do in the garden.
His parents had made two further wrong assumptions: that he would not climb out of the window because he had never done so before; and that their garden, when eventually he grew bored with it, too, had a childproof fence.
Beyond the garden fence the world was a very exciting and, although he did not know it at the time, a dangerous place. The whole area had been devastated by a major battle in the civil war that had resulted when the planetary population had risen to overthrow an interstellar government that had fought and lost an interstellar war that the deliberately misguided population had never wanted, even though a great many of them had suffered and died to support it. A few of the ruined houses had been repaired and occupied by off-planet advisors and reconstruction specialists like his parents after the area had been sensor-scanned and any live ordnance or vehicle power packs removed. The broken and rusting remains had been left where they were. Like the ruined houses, they were being overrun by the wild vegetation that was the ultimate winner of every battle and, on this occasion, by one small boy.
He waded through the long grass that seemed to be everywhere, and wandered happily between the trees and bushes, climbed over broken sections of road paving, and explored one of the ruined buildings. Inside were small, furry animals that ran away from him, and one with a long, thick tail that climbed into the roof beams and scolded him until he went away. He was careful to avoid the occupied houses, because they might not contain people like himself. On the single occasion that his parents had taken him for a walk beyond the garden, they had told him that there were otherspecies families in the neighborhood, and that while they would not deliberately harm him, their young could do unpredictable and possibly dangerous things while playing with other-species children.
There had been no need to remind him of the time when he was learning to swim in the communal pooi and a Melfan kid of his own age, thinking that he was an amphibian too, had pulled him to the bottom to play. Since then he had been scared of extraterrestrials, regardless of their shape, size, or age, and tried not to go anywhere near them.
But there were much better places to explore than other people’s gardens, which might have nasty, other- species kids playing in them. Everywhere he looked there were the scattered shapes of armored vehicles showing dark rust amid the sunlit greenery. Some of them looked as if they were not broken and were ready to move any minute; others were lying on their sides, and one had been knocked upside down. Most of them had their doors hanging open, and a few had holes in them that were bigger than the doors, but the edges were sharp and tore his shirt when he tried to crawl inside. He found one that had a gun barrel hanging low enough for him to swing on it. One of its tracks had come off and was lying along the ground like a narrow, rusting carpet with grass and flowers pushing through it. Small animals were hiding in some of the vehicles, but they ran away whenever he climbed in. One of them was filled with the sound of insects, and he knew that he might be stung if he tried to explore that one.
Then he found one that had no insects or animals inside, and with enough sunlight shining through the open hatches to show a bucket seat facing the vehicle’s control console and screens. The seat was soft and dirty and so big that he had to sit on the edge to reach the control keys. Everything was rusty except for the plastic bits, which were covered with thick, sticky dust. He had to rub the keys with his fingers to see what color they were. Neither the dust nor the rust, which was all over his shirt and trousers by then, nor the dead master screen facing him, made any difference to the battles he was fighting.
This had been a real fighting machine with a real soldier in it, and in his imagination the screen was filled with bright images of enemy tanks and aircraft that exploded even more brightly as soon as they attacked him, because his was a very special, secret tank and he was invincible. He had heard his father and mother talking about the times when such battles had really happened, but they never thought them exciting or interesting and they acted as if everyone concerned in them were sick or something.
But now he was shooting at anything he wanted to imagine- dive bombers, attacking spaceships, horrible other-species soldiers coming at him through the trees-and shouting out loud with excitement when he blew them out of the sky or wiped them out as he always did at the last moment. His parents were not there to stop him yelling, or to remind him that the pretend targets he was shooting down had imaginary people inside them, and that it did not matter what kind of horrible monsters he was pretending to shoot at because they were still people.
Some of their other-species neighbors really were horrible monsters, at least to him, and if any of them had visited the house and found him shooting down things that looked like the visitors, his parents had said, they might take offense and consider the whole Hewlitt family to be less than civilized and not call again. Big peopie never seemed to have any fun.
Gradually he was running out of imaginary enemies to destroy. The sun was no longer shining into the vehicle, and the rusty metal looked almost black instead of red. It was silly, but he started thinking about the being who had driven the tank, and what would happen to him if it came back and found him playing inside. He climbed out so quickly that he tore his trousers again.
