He thought I was lying,” said Hewlitt, trying to hide his anger. So did my parents, the few times I tried to tell them about it, and so do you.
Lieutenant Braithwaite studied him in silence for a moment before he said, “The way you have just told it, I can understand why. He had good medical and anatomical reasons for thinking you were lying and, because most people trust the members of the medical profession, your parents believed him rather than their, well, imaginative four-year-old son. I don’t know what or who to believe, because I wasn’t there and the truth can be a very subjective thing. I believe that you believe you are telling the truth, but that is not the same as me believing you are a liar.”
“You’re confusing me,” said Hewlitt. “Do you think I’m a liar but don’t want to come straight out and say it?”
Braithwaite ignored the question and said. “Did you tell your other doctors about the ravine incident?”
“Yes,” he replied, “but I stopped doing so. None of them were interested in hearing about my lucky escapes. The psychologists thought that it was all my imagination, just like you.”
“I suppose,” said Braithwaite, smiling, “they asked you whether or not you disliked your parents, and if so, how much? Sorry, but I have to ask, too.”
“You suppose right,” said Hewlitt, “and you’re wasting your time. Sure there were times when I disliked my parents, when they didn’t do or give me what I wanted or they were too busy to play with me and made me work on school stuff instead. This didn’t happen very often, only when something urgent came up and they were both busy. They were attached to the cultural-contact department in the nearby base, and both of them were in the Monitor Corps but didn’t wear the uniform often because they worked mostly from home. But I wasn’t neglected. My mother was nice and could be coaxed into doing things for me, and my father was harder to fool but was more fun. One or the other was usually at home, and they spent plenty of time with me once I’d done the schoolwork. But I always wanted more time with them. Maybe that was because I knew, somehow, that I was going to lose them and there wasn’t much time left. I really missed them. I still do.
“Anyway,” he went on, shaking his head in a vain attempt to lose those memories, “your psychological colleagues decided that I had been behaving like a selfish, scheming, and normal four-yearold.”
Braithwaite nodded and said, “The psychological trauma of losing both parents at the age of four can have long-lasting emotional effects. They were killed in a flyer crash and you survived it. How much can you remember about the accident, and your feelings about it then and now?”
“I can remember everything,” he replied, wishing that the other would change to a less painful subject. “At the time I didn’t know what was happening, but I found out later that we were flying over a forested area on the way to a weeklong conference in a city on the other side of Etla when there was a major malfunction. We were using the small aircraft flight level, five thousand feet, and there must have been a few minutes before we hit the trees. My mother climbed into the backseat where I was strapped and wrapped herself around me while my father tried to regain control. We hit hard and tree branches pushed through the floor and one side of the fuselage and I passed out. When they found us next day my parents were dead and I was completely unhurt.”
“You were very lucky,” said the psychologist quietly. “That is, if a kid who had just lost both parents could be considered lucky.”
Hewlitt did not reply, and after a moment Braithwaite went on, “Let’s go back to the tree you climbed, or believed that you climbed, and the fruit you are supposed to have eaten that gave you the severe stomach cramps. Was there ever a recurrence of those symptoms later, before or after the flyer accident?”
“Why should I tell you,” said Hewlitt, “when you are thinking that I imagined everything?”
“If it is any consolation to you,” said Braithwaite, “I haven’t decided what to think.”
“All right, then,” Hewlitt said, feeling that this was going to be another waste of time. “For the first few days after I fell into the ravine I felt nauseated every time I ate something, but not badly enough to upchuck, and after that with reducing frequency until it went away altogether. It came back for a short time after I moved to my grandparents’ place on Earth, but I suppose that could have been due to the change of food and cooking. On Etla and on Earth, no medical cause could be found for these mild attacks of nausea, and I first began to hear the phrase ‘the condition has a psychological component.’ It hadn’t happened for years until I tasted my first synthesized meal on Treevendar, and then it was mild and happened only once. Obviously it was my imagination.”
Braithwaite ignored the sarcasm and said, “Would you really like to know that it was your imagination, or would you rather not be sure? Think very carefully before you answer.
“If I’m imagining things,” said Hewlitt sharply, “I don’t want to be the only one who doesn’t know it.”
“Fair enough,” Braithwaite replied. “How well do you remember that tree you say you climbed on Etla, and the appearance of the fruit you may have eaten?”
“Well enough to draw a picture of it,” said Hewlitt, “if I could draw. Do you want me to try?”
“No,” the psychologist replied. He leaned sideways until he could reach the communicator keyboard with one hand and tapped briefly. When the screen lit up with the Sector General emblem, he said, “Library, nonmedical, vocal input, visual and translated vocal output, subject former Etlan Empire, planet Etla the Sick.”
“Please wait,” said the cool, impersonal voice of the library computer.
Surprised, Hewlitt said, “I didn’t know I could get the library on that thing, just the nurses’ station and the so-called entertainment channels.”
“Without the correct access codes, you can’t,” said Braithwaite. “But if you ever feel so bored that you want to browse, I could probably get you authorization. You won’t be given the codes for the medical library, though. When a case is thought to include a degree of hypochondria, the patient concerned should not be allowed access to a virtually unlimited number of symptoms.”
Hewlitt laughed suddenly in spite of himself and said, “I can understand why.”
Before Braithwaite could respond, the library voice said, “Caution. The Etla data is accurate but not yet complete. Following the large-scale police action taken against the then-Etlan Empire by the Monitor Corps, and the subsequent acceptance of its planets as members of the Galactic Federation twenty-seven standard years ago, the required transfer of Etlan botanical information to Central Records has been given a low order of priority owing to an intervening period of social unrest. The current situation is stable, the native intelligent life-form is physiological classification DBDG and nonhostile, and visits by other Federation citizens are encouraged. Please state your area of interest.”
A large-scale police action, Hewlitt thought. There had been a savage and mercifully short interstellar war fought between the Etlan Empire and the Federation, brought about by the need of the ruling group to maintain itself in power while diverting the attention of its citizens from its own shortcomings. But the function of the Monitor Corps was to maintain the Federation’s peace and not fight wars, so the response to the Etlan invasion of a whole galactic sector was a police action rather than a war. The fact that peace and stability had returned to the Etlan worlds meant that the Federation had won it.
“Etlan native flora,” said Braithwaite, interrupting Hewlitt’s cynical train of thought. “Specifically, a listing of all large fruitbearing trees, ten meters tall or higher, found in the south temperate zone. Display for twenty seconds’ duration unless requested otherwise.”
For some reason Hewlitt was beginning to feel uneasy. He looked at Braithwaite and opened his mouth to speak, but the lieutenant shook his head, pointed at the viewscreen, and said, “You described your tree as being very tall, but it may have looked tall because at the time you were a very small child. I thought it better to start with ten meters.”
It was like one of his childhood botany lessons, Hewlitt thought, a steady succession of tree pictures which in the present situation he found anything but boring. Most of them were strange to him, both in shape and foliage and in the fruit they bore, while others resembled the large bushes he had seen growing outside the garden fence. But one of them…
“That’s it!” he said.
“Hold: replay and expand data on the Pessinith tree,” said Braithwaite into the communicator. Then he said to Hewlitt, “It certainly looks like the tree you described: thick, twisted branches, with four thinner ones without bark at the top bearing the fruit clusters. And the color of the foliage is right for late summer when you climbed it. Library, run and repeat close-ups of the fruit showing seasonal growth and color changes.”
For several minutes he watched while the screen showed the fruit going through its cycle of green bud to
