When they were in the corridor, the lieutenant shook his head, nodded toward Valleschni’s door, and said, “Illensans are not usually so impolite, sir. That could be an early indication of a xenophobic reaction.”
“It’s still your case, Lieutenant? said O’Mara. “Where to next?”
Normally O’Mara did not use the dining hail, because he had always been uncomfortable making polite small talk with people discussing a subject-medicine-in which he had no training, or whose conversation might reveal the early symptoms of an emotional disturbance, or who were merely swapping hospital gossip, of which he might also have to take professional cognizance. His well-known irascibility and impatience with people, although they never suspected it, was principally due to the fact that he still carried the memories and personality of his mind partner, Marrasarah, and over the years that honest and intensely forthright Keigian tape donor and himself had become very close in their thinking. He had chosen therefore to eat privately in his office or living quarters, and so now all the diners were going to stare at him and wonder why the hell he was breaking with precedent. But in the event he and Braithwaite might just as well have been invisible, because the center of attention was elsewhere.
Practically all the staffers in the vast room were on their feet and raising a muitispecies din while gesticulating with arms, tentacles, or whatever, towards a table close to one wall, where he saw a sight that he had hoped he would never see in Sector General: an all-out, no-holds-barred, mixed-species fight.
“Call for a security detail? O’Mara snapped as he hurried towards it. “Armed and with heavy restraints.” But the lieutenant was already talking urgently into the nearby communicator and doing just that.
They were mixing it up so thoroughly that O’Mara had difficulty at first in seeing who and how many were involved among the debris of the partially demolished table and furniture, and the volume of untranslatable noise they were making gave no clue as to the reason for the fighting. But it was immediately obvious that they were fighting indiscriminately among themselves and not ganging up on one individual. That, O’Mara hoped, might reduce the severity if not the number of casualties. A Tralthan was trying to batter in the bony carapace of a Melfan, who was snapping with its pincers at the other’s leathery hide while jabbing with a stiffened leg at the lower torso of a large, bear-like Orligian, who was hanging onto one of the Tralthan’s free tentacles and trying to kick its elephantine legs out from under it. A well-muscled Earth-human charge nurse with blood that was probably his own running down his face and white tunic was in there somewhere using fists and feet. The Orligian’s fur was also showing patches of blood and one of the Melfan’s limbs was hanging limp. As O’Mara moved closer, a Nidian he hadn’t noticed until then was expelled from the affray and came to a skidding halt at his feet.
He went down on one knee and grabbed the tiny, red-furred figure by the shoulders.
“Why the hell are you fighting?” he yelled above the din. “Stop it, stop it at once or you’ll wreck your careers here.”
“I know that, dammit,” said the other crossly. “I was trying to stop it, but they have the advantage of weight. You try to talk some sense into them.”
O’Mara growled an apology, lifted the Nidian to its feet, and began circling the group of combatants, who were completely ignoring the advice he was shouting at them. Suddenly he saw his chance and moved in on the Earth-human and gave him a hard double kidney punch. As the other gasped and buckled at the knees, he grabbed him around the waist and dragged him backward onto the floor a few yards away.
“Don’t move from there, Charge Nurse? he said furiously, “or I’ll damn well stamp on your stupid face.”
As he returned to the fracas he felt so furious at the stupidity of these people who had started the first inter-species fight in Sector General’s history that he almost meant what he had said.
He took out the Melfan by encircling its underside with his arms and, keeping the side of his face close to the carapace so that it couldn’t reach around to poke him in the eyes, immobilized it by sliding it onto its back at a safe distance from the Earth-human charge nurse. Moving the Orligian was going to be much more difficult. Even in the old, wild days when his body weight was made up of muscle rather than fat, he had rarely bested one of them. Feeling ashamed of himself because he might almost be enjoying what he was doing after all the years of civilized behavior, he grabbed the other by its long, furry ears, planted a knee between its shoulder blades, and pulled back hard.
The Orligian gave a growling bellow, released its hold on the Tralthan’s tentacle, dropped onto its hands and knees, and tried to throw O’Mara over its head like a maddened horse trying to unseat its rider. It might have succeeded if a pair of slim, iron-hard Hudlar tentacles hadn’t encircled his waist and legs suddenly and dragged him away from it and high into the air. Another pair oftentacles were doing the same to the Orligian.
“What the hell are you doing?” said O’Mara, startled. “Put me down, dammit?
Below and between the suspended bodies of the Orligian and himself the Hudlar’s speaking membrane vibrated as it replied politely, “Only if you promise to forgo your attempt to settle your dispute by physical means. You are guilty of behavior unbecoming to civilized beings.”
“It’s all right, Nurse? said Braithwaite to the Hudlar, trying hard to keep from smiling. “The Earth-human was trying to separate the combatants. He’s one of the good guys.”
When O’Mara’s feet were on the floor again, he glowered at the other and said, “Are you enjoying this, Lieutenant?”
“Only a small part of it, sir; the rest is much too serious? Braithwaite replied, unabashed, then went on quickly, “While I was calling Security a Hudlar nurse was passing along the corridor and I asked for its help to…
He broke off and waved at six massive Orligians with a selection of pacifiers suspended from their equipment harnesses as they came through the dining-hall entrance at a dead run.
“Here’s the security detail now? he went on. “I suggest we take care of the wounded-at least there’s no shortage of medical assistance in here-then confine them under guard to their quarters until we can interview them individually and get to the bottom of this business.”
“Then do that? said O’Mara. “Is there something else on your mind?”
“Yes, sir? Braithwaite replied worriedly. “The Earth-human charge nurse and the Orligian I recognized, and the other two I’m fairly sure about even though Melfans and Tralthans still look the same to me. They are all currently attached to Tunneckis’s recovery ward.”
CHAPTER 30
Padre Lioren was a Wearer of the Blue Cloak of Tarla which, in Earth academic circles, would have been placed on the same level of professional achievement as the old-time Nobel Prize for Medicine-although, since the Cromsaggar Incident, it had forsworn the practice of the art. Everyone on the Sector General staff knew the reason that he was the Psychology Department’s otherspecies religious counselor rather than a senior physician, but nobody until now, not even a Kelgian like this one, had ever been so crassly insensitive and stupid as to remind him of it to his face.
Lioren took a firm grip on his anger with all eight hands and said gently, “What is troubling you, friend?”
“You are troubling me,” said the Kelgian, its fur heaving into angry tufts, “you sanctimonious bloody murdering hypocrite. Go away, and stop trying to poison my mind with one of your stupid religions. I won’t tell you anything or listen to a thing that looks like a diseased shumpid tree. Leave me alone.”
In general configuration his tall, cone-shaped body with the four stubby, rootlike legs, four medial and four upper arms could be described as resembling a Kelgian shumpid tree if the describer wished to be offensive, which for some reason this one did. But it was the reason for the other’s totally uncharacteristic behavior that interested him.
“I’ll leave you alone,” said Lioren quietly, “if that is what you really want. But what I want to do is to listen to your troubles, and personal insults if they are part of the problem, not try to teach you anything you don’t want to learn. And there are many trees on Tarla that look a little like me, and some of them are infested by small, furry creatures that resemble you. Both species live and grow in the manner originally ordained for them with no choice in the matter. Unlike them, we are self-willed, civilized, and sapient.
“Supposedly? he couldn’t help adding.
The Kelgian’s fur continued to ripple and tuft in what was plainly intense agitation, but it remained
