the heat of his embarrassment was warming the whole ward. Then he flung himself back against the pillows to glare at the monitor lens in the ceiling, wondering if the sudden reddening of his face would worry an observer and some other horrible medical creature would come hurrying to investigate.
Apparently not. Several minutes passed and there were no further visitations. But his relief was mixed with irritation as he wondered if he would have to do something melodramatic like falling out of bed and breaking an arm to attract attention. His embarrassment had faded, but it was being replaced by the old, familiar feelings of helpless anger and despair.
I should not have come here.
He looked along both sides of the ward at the large, complicated beds, several of whose occupants were not, unfortunately, screened from view, and beyond to the nurses’ station, where the alien shapes were rendered a little less frightening by distance, and listened to the quiet barking and moaning and gobbling sounds of other- species’ conversations. He had always felt distrustful of strangers, and even of relatives he had not met for a long time, because they usually represented varying degrees of change and disruption to the comfortable, organized, lonely, and moderately happy life he had made for himself. But now he was among the strangers who were stranger than he could ever have imagined, and it was his own stupid fault.
Hewlitt had been advised not to go to Sector General, by a succession of Earth doctors who had studied his psych profile and decided that it would not be a comfortable place for him. They had not, however, been able to do anything about his illness beyond stating the obvious, that his symptoms were unusually varied, nonspecific, and, at times, violently nonresponsive to the indicated medication. It was suggested that his trouble might lie in an overactive mind that was having a disproportionately large influence on the body containing it.
Being a solitary person out of necessity rather than choice, Hewlitt had had to take responsibility for looking after his own wellbeing, which included guarding himself against accident, illness, and infection. But he was not, or at least not entirely, a hypochondriac. He knew that there was something seriously wrong with him and that, in these days of advanced medical science, it was his right as a Galactic Federation citizen to demand that it be put right by somebody, somewhere.
He did not like being among strangers, but neither did he like the prospect of being intermittently and inexplicably sick for the rest of his life, so he had insisted on his rights. Now he was wondering if it would not have been better for him to stay and die comfortably on Earth. Here the treatment, and certainly the doctors prescribing it, were likely to cause him more mental anguish than the disease.
All at once Hewlitt wanted to be back home.
His attention was drawn to the nurses’ station entrance, where two creatures had emerged and were moving down the ward toward him. The first one was a long, fat, silver-furred being who undulated along the floor on more legs than he was able count and who belonged to the same species as Patient Henredth in the bed opposite. It was accompanied by the Hudlar nurse-for some reason he had begun to think of it as his nurse, possibly because it was both familiar and polite-whose flanks appeared to have been repainted since he had seen it last. In the Earth hospitals quite a few of the nurses haa used cosmetics, although only on their faces.
For a moment he wondered if his nurse was considered beautiful by other Hudlars; then he sat up straight in the bed and steeled himself for his first medical examination by a giant extraterrestrial caterpillar. But they stopped at the bed beside his, the one containing Patient Kletilt, moved inside its screens, and completely ignored his existence.
He could hear three different voices talking quietly. There was the Kelgian modulated moaning sound that must have been coming from the doctor, an erratic scraping and clicking noise that he had never heard before but that had to belong to the Melfan patient, and-with lesser frequency, suggesting that it was in response to questions or instructions-the remembered sound of the Hudlar nurse’s speaking membrane. But none of their translators were set for human speech, so he did not know what they were saying.
That irritated him, because every few minutes the fabric of the screen bulged outward as if something large and round, like the Hudlar’s flanks, or small and sharp, like something else, moved behind it. In spite of the fact that it would probably have horrified him, Hewlitt wanted to know what was going on.
Whatever it was lasted for about twenty minutes; then the Kelgian doctor emerged from behind the screens and undulated toward the nurses’ station without even a side glance at him. He could hear the Hudlar nurse moving around Kletilt’s bed, apparently doing something to or for the patient; then it, too, appeared and began following the doctor. He did not point and shout “Nurse” as Leethveeschi had advised; he waved to attract its attention.
The nurse paused to make an adjustment to its translator, then said, “Is there anything wrong, Patient Hewlitt?”
You fool, he thought, it should be obvious what is wrong. But he tried to keep his tone polite as he said, “I was expecting to be examined, Nurse. What is going on? That doctor completely ignored me!”
“That doctor,” the nurse replied, “was arranging for Patient Kletilt’s transfer to a different ward, and I was repositioning the patient during the examination. It is Senior Physician Karthad, who is currently the hospital’s specialist in other-species obstetrics and gynecology and has no interest in your case. But if you will wait for just a moment longer, Patient Hewlitt, your own doctor will be here to examine you.”
CHAPTER 3
He had seen pictures of the Melfan species as well as a few lifesize specimens in the corridors during his trip to the ward, but this was the first one that had been motionless and very, very close. It still looked like an outsize crab that was wearing its skeleton on the outside. But this time he barely noticed the thin, tubular legs projecting from the slits where the bony carapace and underside joined, because he was staring at the head with its big, vertically lidded eyes, enormous mandibles, and pincers projecting forward from the place where ears should have been. The two feelers growing from the sides of its mouth were so long and thin and fragile that they looked ridiculous by comparison. The creature’s fearsome head moved closer and, inevitably, it said, “How are we feeling, Patient Hewlitt?”
Just as inevitably, Hewlitt replied, “Fine.~~
“Good,” said the other. “I am Dr. Medalont, and I would like to give you a preliminary examination and ask a few questions, if you don’t mind. Please fold back your blanket and lie face downward. There is no need to remove your garment; my scanner imaging will not be affected by it. I shall explain everything as we go along.”
The scanner was a small, flat, rectangular object that reminded Hewlitt of an old-time book. Its “spine,” Medalont told him, contained the depth-focus and enhancement controls; the matte black underside that was being moved slowly over every square inch of his body surface held the microsensors; and the top surface displayed a picture of the underlying organic structures. An enlarged scanner image was being repeated on the bedside viewscreen, possibly for the benefit of the nurse. He twisted his neck to look at it.
“Stop wriggling, Patient Hewlitt,” said the doctor. “Now lie face upward. Thank you.”
One of its pincers gripped him gently by the wrist and straightened his arm by his side. A feeler curled down to lie vertically along the crease inside his elbow, while the other one dropped like a soft, furry feather across his nose and mouth, making him fight a sudden urge to sneeze. A few minutes later the pincer and the feelers were withdrawn and the doctor straightened up.
“If I remember my Earth-human DBDG anatomy and vital signs correctly,” said the doctor, adding a series of quiet, untranslatable clicks that might have been the Melfan equivalent of a chuckle, “I am inclined to agree with your self-diagnosis. Apart from a little general muscular tension, which is understandable in these circumstances, you are in very good physical condition.”
This was how so many of the other examinations had ended, Hewlitt thought angrily, with the doctor pronouncing him fit. A few of the early ones had laughed at him, too, or accused him of wasting their time. This Medalont seemed to be a polite one, in spite of being an extraterrestrial, and would probably satisfy itself by wondering aloud what he was doing here.
Instead, it said, “I would like to ask you a few questions, Patient Hewlitt. They are questions you will have been asked many times, and your answers are in the case history. But I am hoping that those answers, because of their constant repetition, may have become inaccurate or incomplete, and I may be able to uncover information
