to me than to you even though I myself am most reluctant to accept it.”
The Tarlan was leaning so far over the bed that Hewlitt wondered if its bottom-heavy, inherently stable body would overbalance and fall on him. The features were unreadable but its tension could almost be felt.
“Patient Hewlitt,” it said, “are you a member of a religious sect?”
“No,” he said.
“Before they died in the flyer accident,” it went on, leaning even closer, “were your parents or subsequently your grandparents members of such a sect? It may have been very small, probably restricted in numbers because of its inability to proselytize among a largely materialistic population, but it would have been highly moral, intensely devout, and utterly certain in its beliefs. Even though you were very young at the time, did your parents or grandparents, or perhaps a teacher at school, instruct you in the beliefs and disciplines of such a faith?”
“No,” he said again.
“You have not taken enough time to search your memory, said Lioren. “Please do so now.
Its body swayed backward until it was upright again, and Hewlitt was not sure whether the movement signified a relaxation of tension or disappointment.
“I’m sorry, Padre,” he said. “When you mentioned religion to me earlier, and I refused your offer of spiritual consolation, I assumed that you would know that I was not a religious person. Why are you asking so many religious questions? I have never been a believer.”
When it replied, Hewlitt was glad that a hush field was around his bed, because the Padre’s voice would have carried to the other end of the ward. It said, “I am asking them because they must be asked, and because religious beliefs can often have a strong effect on a psychological or medical condition. Mostly I am asking them because of what you did last night.
“As a result of you speaking to Patient Morredeth,” it continued without lowering its voice, “and even though its clinical condition was giving no cause for concern at the time, the patient became emotionally distressed, culminating in severe convulsions. You assisted the duty nurse by restraining the patient while a sedative shot was administered, but by then both of its hearts had arrested. While the activity could never be described as dignified, much less solemn, the process that is called ‘the laying on of hands’ took place.
“When the resuscitation team arrived they were very irritated,” it went on, its voice quieter but not quiet, “because they had been called to the same ward twice in two days on emergencies that had turned out to be false alarms. Thornnastor is completely baffled, a condition rare indeed in the diagnostician-in-charge of Pathology, and has transferred Morredeth to its lab for closer investigation into an incident that is completely without precedent. And Patient Morredeth is happy because its missing and damaged areas of fur have regrown good as new.”
Lioren paused, and an almost plaintive note entered its voice as it said, “To a hospital with the reputation of performing medical miracles routinely, a real one is a major embarrassment. A miraculous cure is, well, disquieting even to me.
“Do you have any other explanation, Patient Hewlitt?”
CHAPTER 15
During the week following Morredeth’s transfer to Pathology, Hewlitt noticed a change in everyone’s behavior toward him, but there was nothing so definite or unpleasant that it warranted a complaint. Senior Physician Medalont’s words to him were few and had nothing to do with his case, Charge Nurse Leethveeschi was almost polite, his Hudlar nurse was friendly but less talkative, and, when he tried to play three-handed scremman with Patients Horrantor and Bowab, it seemed that they had both developed a speech impediment. Everyone around him, to use a phrase much favored by his grandmother, was walking on eggs.
The only being who was willing to talk to him at length was Lioren, whose visits seemed always to end in long, unresolved, and often heated religious arguments that the other, because of his often stated lack of beliefs, preferred to call philosophical debates. Whatever they were, they shortened his days and kept his mind busy far into the intervening nights, and for that he was grateful. Even so, the Padre would not have been his first choice as the most amusing of companions, especially, as now, when it was trying to steer the conversation once again onto the increasingly tiresome subject of what could have happened to Morredeth’s fur.
“When I spoke to Morredeth earlier today,” said the Tarlan, “it told me that Pathology could find nothing wrong with it. There were no signs of a deterioration in its newly regenerated fur and, in its opinion, Thornnastor is running out of reasons for keeping it under observation and must soon allow it to go home. In case it doesn’t see you again, it sends good wishes and thanks for whatever it was you did to cure it…
“But I didn’t do anything,” Hewlitt broke in, “except wrestle with it. I told you to tell it that.”
“I did,” said the Padre, “but it said that, just in case you did do something, it is grateful. It has trouble believing in miracles, too.”
“There are no miracles,” said Hewlitt, not for the first time. “There are just natural laws that we don’t understand or haven’t discovered yet. Because we understand how this one works, it is one miracle we perform several times a day without even thinking about it. Right?”
As he spoke, Hewlitt switched on the bedside communicator and keyed in the library menu, wondering if Lioren might take the hint and go away. It had not done so on previous occasions and the Padre was nothing if not consistent.
“A few centuries ago, vision transmission would have been a miracle,” Lioren agreed, and went on, “Morredeth is very pleased and proud about the overall condition of its fur. It insisted on me placing my hands along its flanks and feeling the thickness and mobility which, it claimed, has never before felt so good. On Tarla such an activity is conducted only in circumstances of intimacy and deep emotional involvement, but Morredeth wanted me to feel its fur and at such times I can be a complete moral coward. The sensation was peculiar, unexpected, and very difficult to describe. Ifelt…”
“Utterly ridiculous?” asked Hewlitt. “That was howl felt when the same thing happened with Horrantor. Medalont asked me, as a clinical experiment, to lay my hands on the Tralthan’s damaged limb. According to the senior physician, Horrantor’s leg injury has complications that are slow to respond to treatment. Medalont, Leethveeschi, two Orligian nurses, and the resuscitation team were standing by in case something dramatic happened. I think they were all relieved, even Horrantor, when nothing did.
“There was no second miracle. Sorry.”
“No need to apologize,” said Lioren. “I feel like they did. Miracles make me very uncomfortable and insecure in my beliefs and disbeliefs, and I would as soon have proof that they did not happen.
“They don’t, Padre,” said Hewlitt. “Can we talk about something else?”
“It must be nice to feel such certainty,” said Lioren, flexing its medial arms in a gesture that would probably have meant something to another Tarlan. “But I wonder if, in all the vastness of space and time and the immutable laws of cause and effect and perfect balance of forces that is Creation, there isn’t room for the occasional miracle. But why did it happen here?”
Hewlitt shook his head, seeing no chance of getting away from the interminable subject of Morredeth’s fur and the inevitable religious argument, and said, “It didn’t happen here. Miracles are impossible, Padre. If they were to exist in your big, complicated, wellordered universe, or Creation as you call it, they would be out of place, a defect in the perfect Scheme of Things. There is simply no room for miracles in your universe.”
“An interesting philosophical idea,” said Lioren. “It suggests that our Creation is flawed because an apparently supernatural event or events took place within it. Bearing in mind the hypothetical attributes of the Supreme Being, why should He, She, or It create an imperfection of any kind?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “This isn’t my area of expertise. But can we suppose that this universe was created as a prototype, an early model that requires modification and a little fine-tuning from time to time. The intrusion of random supernatural events into a universe supposedly based on natural laws might be evidence of this tinkering. Thank God… Oops, just a figure of speech, Padre… it doesn’t happen very often.”
“If you believe that…” the other began.
“I am not believing anything, Padre, just talking.”
The Tarlan was silent for a moment, then it said, “If this universe is imperfect, that presupposes, eternity being what it is, without beginning or end, that there was, is, will be one that is perfect. Would you like to, ah, just
