a hospital is for the sick and injured, not for people who have already recovered. So what is wrong with you? Is it a personal or shameful thing that you do not wish to talk about, even to a member of a different species who might not understand your shame?”
“No, nothing like that,” Hewlitt replied. “It is just that telling you all about it would take a long time, especially if I had to stop to explain some of the Earth-human social behavior and customs. Besides, talking about my troubles would make me remember how little the Earth medics were able to do because they refused to believe that there was anything at all wrong with me, so I would feel frustrated and angry and probably end up complaining to you all the time.”
Morredeth’s fur rippled into a new and visually more attractive pattern, making him wonder if it might be feeling amusement. It said, “You, too? That is the reason why I do not want to talk about myself. You would have complained about me complaining.”
“You have much more to complain about than I have,” said Hewlitt, and stopped because the other’s fur was standing out in spikes again, and the bands of muscle encircling its body were tightening as if they were about to go into spasm. He added quickly, “Sorry, Morredeth, I’m talking about you instead of me. What would you like me to talk about first?”
The Kelgian’s body relaxed, although the fur was still restive as it said, “Talk to me about incidents from your illness that you have yet to tell or, if they are unusual or shameful or depraved, you did not want to tell Medalont or the trainees. I might find your words entertaining enough to be able to forget my own problems for a while. Are you willing to do that for me?”
“Yes,” said Hewlitt. “But don’t expect too much entertainment or eroticism. At the time I was on Earth and living with grandparents who didn’t have a furry pet that I could play with. Some of the episodes are very embarrassing. Do Kelgians experience puberty?”
“Yes,” said Morredeth. “Did you think we were sexually active from birth?”
“Puberty can be an embarrassing time,” said Hewlitt, treating the question as rhetorical, “even for normally healthy people.”
“Then describe your embarrassment and lack of health in detail,” said Morredeth, “if you have nothing more interesting to talk about.”
I could have picked a less personal subject, he thought, feeling surprised at his complete lack of hesitation as he began to speak. Maybe the fact that the other belonged to a different species had something to do with it, and talking to a Kelgian patient was no different from telling his symptoms to a Melfan senior physician or a Hudlar nurse, except that Morredeth’s curiosity was more intense and less clinical.
As he was describing his transition from solitary studies on his home computer into the higher education system with its increasing emphasis on group studies and team and solo athletic events, at which he did very well, and the opportunities to form friendships with the female students that his growing reputation as an athlete provided, Morredeth interrupted him.
“Are you complaining about this situation?” it said. “Or being boastful about your good fortune?”
“I am complaining,” Hewlitt replied, his voice raised with remembered anger, “because the opportunities and advantages were lost. Nothing ever happened. Even when I was strongly attracted to a particular young female and, I believed, she to me… well, it was very unsatisfactory and frustrating and, and painful.”
“Were you more strongly attracted to someone or something else?” asked Morredeth. “To a female who was not attracted to you? Or had you developed even stronger feelings for one of your small furry creatures?”
“No!” said Hewlitt. He looked at the sleepers in the nearby beds and lowered his voice. “What kind of person do you think I am, dammit?”
“A very sick Earth-person,” Morredeth replied. “Isn’t that the reason you are here?”
“I wasn’t that sick,” said Hewlitt, laughing in spite of himself. “I wasn’t sick at all, according to the university medics. They said that I was a perfect physical specimen in every respect. After many embarrassing tests and experiments were carried out, they said that there was no anatomical or hormonal reason why, after I had achieved full mental and physical arousal, my seminal fluid should not have been expelled. They also said that by some involuntary or unconscious method which they did not understand I was checking the mechanism of ejaculation at the penultimate moment, and that the sudden interference with the flow caused immediate pain followed by diminishing discomfort in the genital area until the material was reabsorbed. They suggested that my problem was probably due to a deeply buried, childhood emotional trauma that was showing itself in episodes of shyness so intense that it manifested itself on the physical level.”
“What is shyness?” said Morredeth. “My translator assigns no Kelgian meaning to the word.”
If a being always said exactly what it thought, it could not be expected to understand shyness. Explaining shyness to such a being might be like trying to describe color to a blind person, but he would try.
“Shyness is a psychological barrier to social interaction,” he said. “It is a nonphysical wall that keeps a person from saying or doing what he or she is wanting very badly to say or do; for emotional reasons, usually involving inexperience or oversensitivity or even cowardice, the words or actions are suppressed. Among Earthhumans it is very common during puberty, when the initial social contacts between the sexes are being made.”
“That is ridiculous,” said Morredeth. “On Kelgia the feeling of a male or female for one of the opposite sex is impossible to hide. If the attraction felt by one for the other is very strong but is not reciprocated, the first has the option of persisting in its attempt to influence the second until the feeling is returned or of transferring the affections elsewhere. The successfully persistent ones usually make the best life-mates. Did the psychological treatment enable you to break through your shyness barrier eventually and allow normal coupling?”
“No,” said Hewlitt.
For the first time in his experience the Kelgian’s fur almost stopped moving, but only for a moment before it became even more agitated. Morredeth said, “I’m sorry. That situation must be very frustrating for you.”
“Yes,” he said.
“The senior physician might be able to help you,” said Morredeth, trying to mix reassurance with honesty. “If it cannot solve your problem, Medalont will take it as a personal insult. No matter how serious the disease or injury, Sector General has the reputation of curing everything and everybody. Well, nearly everybody.”
For a moment Hewlitt stared at the other’s fur, which was being stirred into waves and eddies as if it were an agitated pooi of mercury; then he said, “The senior physician has my medical history, but as yet it hasn’t asked me about my involuntary celibacy. Maybe, like the university’s psychologist, it thinks the trouble is all in my mind. But the problem wasn’t, isn’t, painful so long as I avoid close, one-to-one female contact.
“When it became clear that the psychologist was getting nowhere,” he went on, keeping his eyes on the increasing agitation of Morredeth’s fur, “he decided that I was stubbornly refusing to respond to all his attempts at psychotherapy. I was told that living out my life without female companionship, which was probably what I secretly wanted to do, was rare but not in itself unhealthy. Many highly respected people in the past had done so, and made significant contributions to philosophy and the sciences while devoting themselves to the religious celibate life as writers and teachers, or by sublimating their sexual urges in scientific research…
He broke off because Morredeth’s body as well as its fur was showing increasing agitation. The underlying bands of muscle were going in and out of spasm, causing it to twist and turn and bounce against the bed.
“Are you all right?” he asked anxiously. “Shall I call the nurse?”
“No,” said the Kelgian, the upper part of its body threatening to roll onto the floor. “I don’t want any more of your stupid interference.”
Hewlitt wondered if he should raise the screens so that the bed would be visible from the nurses’ station, then remembered that the other was probably on a monitor. He looked at the writhing body again and said, “I was only trying to help you.”
“Why are you doing this cruel thing?” said Morredeth. “Who told you to do this to me?”
“I, I don’t understand you,” he said, feeling baffled. “What did I say?”
“You are not a Kelgian,” said Morredeth, “so you do not fully understand the mental hurt I feel. First you talked about stroking your furry pet, and then apologized for your insensitivity. Now you are talking about yourself and the impossibility of you ever finding a mate, but it is plain that you are really talking about me and my problems. You must have been told to do this. When Li-oren tried to do these things to me earlier, I closed my ears. Who told you to talk to me like this? Lioren? Braithwaite? The senior physician? And why?”
His first impulse was to deny everything, but that would have been unfair because Kelgians did not know
