whether he was talking to male or female Chalders he could hardly object to them making the same mistake with him.
“Usually,” he said, “the juiciest gossip is associated with some physical or emotional aspect of the reproductive process. You will find me less reticent when telling you about other people’s embarrassments.”
“We understand,” said One-Ninety-Three, “but right now we would prefer to know when we are likely to be sent home. Have you heard anything on that subject?”
“Sorry, no,” said Hewlitt. “But I will try to find out.”
That much is true, he thought, remembering the warning to Rhabwar and the emergency drills that had been held in his former ward. Whether or not he would be allowed to pass on his findings was another matter, because he was beginning to suspect that the explanation was neither simple nor pleasant. But it soon became clear that all the Chalders really wanted to talk about was home.
At first he had expected that their attempts to explain the water world of Chalderescol to him would be like trying to describe a sunset to a person who was color-blind, but he was wrong. Within a few minutes he was experiencing the freedom of an ocean that, apart from two small areas at the poles, covered the planetary surface in places to a depth of over a hundred miles.
The Chalders had battled their way to the top of their evolutionary underwater tree, learned to survive and later to control and utilize the power from their undersea volcanic activity while husbanding the living, nonsapient resources of the most beautiful world in the Federation, although the small-eyed air-breathers like himself required pressure vessels and visual enhancement to appreciate it. They were already a highly civilized species before their discovery of fire and the beginnings of the technology that enabled the very few of their number to fly through the near-vacuum above their ocean and into the space beyond. But no matter how far or often they traveled or their reasons for doing so, they remained a part of Chalderescol’s mother ocean and needed periodically to return to it.
Considering their enormous body mass, the size and complexity of life-support required, and the extreme danger and discomfort involved in traveling in space, Hewlitt wondered why they did not stay at home.
“Why does any otherwise sane person want to travel in space?” said Two-Eleven, making him realize that he had been wondering aloud. “That is a very large philosophical question, and much too complex for debate if you still want to speak to the other patients before the lunch hunt begins. Hold on to my fin again…
His experience with the first three Chalders meant that he was able to speak briefly to the other patients with some understanding of their feelings, or at least without making a complete fool of himself. He stopped beside but did not speak to the gravely ill patient Lioren was visiting, because they were already having a conversation and he thought it better not to intrude. But from his moment of floating beside its treatment frame he was able to establish that it, along with the rest of the ward’s other patients and medical staff, had never been hosts of the virus creature.
He returned to find the food-dispenser outlet beside the nurses’ station open and, drifting horizontally in the water before it, what seemed like more than a hundred flattened, ovoid shapes just under a meter in diameter. Their upper surfaces were covered by irregular patches of dull color while the underside was pale grey. A long, low dorsal fin ran fore and aft, and the rim at the stern was pierced by three circular openings. While he was moving forward for a closer look his hand touched the object, sending it into a slow roll. Suddenly Charge Nurse Hredlichli was beside him.
“What…?“began Hewlitt, and broke off as a shapeless, Illensan limb shot forward, grasped the object, and pulled it level again.
“Do not alter the trajectory,” it said in its usual impatient voice. “For your information, if you do not already have the knowledge, that is a container of concentrated food enclosed in an edible shell and propelled by concealed capsules of high-pressure, nontoxic gas which simulates the movement through water of a fleeing, nonsapient native crustacean. It has been found that mobile food increases the patients’ appetite and has beneficial psychological effects. If the food vehicle were to crash edge-on into a wall or deck and burst, it would leave a mess that my nurses would have to filter out and remove when there are more important duties requiring their attention. Please reenter the nurses’ station and stay out of my head fronds. Patients, your attention please…
Its voice was coming from the ward’s wall speakers as well as his headset, and Hewlitt was being ignored.
“The main lunch release is imminent,” Hredlichli went on. “It will be followed in fifteen minutes by the containers marked with concentric blue circles, which are the special diets required by Patients One-Ninety-Three, Two-Eleven, and Two-Fifteen. Kindly remember that these are not to be consumed by anyone else. Patients confined to their treatment frames will have lunch delivered to them by the nurses once the mobile patients are fed. All medical staff who are not already in the nurses’ station return there at once. Padre Lioren, this includes you.
Lioren returned but did not seem disposed to speak to anyone. Perhaps its mind was still on its sick patient. Hewlitt watched as fans of bubbles jetted from the sterns of the lunch vehicles and they began to accelerate down the ward, their numbers thinned by heavy, darting shapes and clashing jaws. The shape of Hredlichli, looking like a grotesque, plastic-wrapped sickly vegetable, was still drifting close by, and for the first time since his arrival it seemed to have nothing to do.
There were times, he thought, when by pretending to have a little knowledge it was possible to obtain a lot more. He decided to risk a question.
“Charge Nurse,” he said in a brisk, confident voice. “The AUGL classification are not easy to move in an off-world environment. How long would it require for an emergency evacuation of all the patients in your ward, and how would you personally assess the chances of success?”
Inside Hredlichli’s protective envelope a group of oily yellow fronds twitched as it said, “Obviously you are already aware of the emergency. This surprises me because the information is restricted to the very senior medical and maintenance staff and to one charge nurse, myself, whose ward poses a particular problem. Or are you more than a mere curious visitor, and there was another reason why you wished to speak to every patient in my ward?”
The answer to both questions was yes, Hewlitt thought, but he could not say so because the knowledge of the virus creature was also restricted. He wanted to ask for more details about the emergency, but could not because he was supposed to know them, and his earlier curiosity was being diluted by a growing fear.
“Sorry, Charge Nurse,” he said, “I am not at liberty to answer that question.”
More parts of Hredlichli twitched grotesquely. It said, “I do not approve of the secrecy where this ward is concerned. My Chalders are overlarge but they are not stupid. Even in this hospital there are too many people who equate large size with a lack of sensitivity. If my patients were to learn that there is a malfunction in the power- generation system that threatens the entire hospital and that they, because of their great size and consequent difficulty of evacuation, would be among the last to leave or, worse, that there might not be time enough to modify enough ships to ac commodate them, they would not panic or try to break out. Your poisonous, rarefied atmosphere outside this ward would be as deadly to them as my own chlorine or space itself. Those that were left behind would accept their fate, and no doubt insist that their medical attendants save themselves, because they are intelligent, sensitive, and caring monsters.”
“I agree,” said Hewlitt. He had recently met all of them and knew. He had also had frightening confirmation of the reason for the emergency drills that were apparently being conducted everywhere but the Chalder ward, but uppermost in his mind was a sudden and inexplicable liking for this ghastly chlorine-breather. He added reassuringly, “It might never happen, Charge Nurse. This is a problem for the maintenance engineers. No doubt they will be able to solve it in time.”
“Considering the time it took for them to repair the waste extractor on One-Eighty-Seven’s treatment frame,” Hredlichli replied, returning to character, “I lack your confidence.”
All of Lioren’s eyes had been directed at him while he was talking to the charge nurse, but the Padre did not comment and it remained silent after they returned to the corridor. Hewlitt wondered if his conversation with Hredlichli had caused the other to take offense.
“Are we agreed,” he said, “that there are no former virus hosts in the Chalder ward?”
“Yes,” said Lioren.
The word had punched a small hole in the other’s wall of silence. But Hewlitt’s fear was growing and so was
