Final Diagnosis

CHAPTER 27

First to arrive was a large, slow-moving, and aged Tralthan whom Lioren identified as Thornnastor, the diagnostician-in-charge of Pathology. They watched it from the moment it appeared from a side corridor that was about thirty meters distant until it drew abreast of their position opposite the the room where the meeting was to take place. Without bending an eye in their direction or saying a word, it turned in to the entrance.

“No?” asked the Padre.

“No,” Hewlitt agreed. “But why did it ignore us? We’re big enough to see and there’s nobody else in the corridor.”

“It has a lot on its minds…” Lioren began, then broke off to say, “Here come three more. Conway and the chief psychologist we already know are clear. The Kelgian is Diagnostician Kurrsedeth. No?”

“No,” said Hewlitt again.

Conway nodded as he passed, O’Mara gave them a scowl of impatience, and Kurrsedeth said, “Why are the Padre and that Earth-human DBDG staring at me like that?”

“Right now,” said O’Mara dryly, “they have nothing better to do.”

A refrigerated vehicle which Lioren identified as belonging to Diagnostician Semlic turned in to the corridor. The Vosan was an ultra-low-temperature, methane life-form whose crystalline metabolism made its unsuitability as a virus host a virtual certainty. In contrast to the cold that was radiating from Semlic’s vehicle, since the passage of O’Mara Hewlett had been self-generating a lot of internal heat.

“How,” he said, “did such a sarcastic, ill-mannered, thoroughly obnoxious person ever get to be the hospital’s chief psychologist? Why hasn’t a member of the staff committed a lifethreatening act of physical violence on him long since, as I feel like doing now?”

Lioren taised a medial arm to point along the corridor and said, “This one is Colonel Skempton, another Earth-human DBDG as you can see, who is in charge of supply, maintenance, and nonmedical administration. It is the ranking Monitor Corps officer on Sector General and, I think we can agree, it has never been a host of the virus creature.”

“Right,” said Hewlitt. “But what I don’t understand is why isn’t someone like Prilicla doing O’Mara’s jpb? It is sympathetic, reassuring, pleasant all the time, and it really feels for its patients. And on that subject of empathy, why doesn’t its empathic faculty work on diagnosticians? Or do I add another three questions to the list of those you will not answer?”

The Padre did not look at him when it spoke, because its eyes were directed up and down the corridor. It said, “Your last three questions have a single answer which, subject to interruptions by arriving diagnosticians, I am free to give you because it has no bearing on the present emergency.

“First,” it went on, “Prilicla is much too gentle and and sensitive to hold the position of chief psychologist, while O’Mara is sensitive and caring but not gentle…

“Sensitive and caring?” said Hewlitt. “Is my translator on the blink?”

“We haven’t much time,” said the Padre. “Do you want to hear or talk about Major O’Mara?”

“Sorry,” he said, “I’m listening.”

As the hospital’s chief psychologist, Lioren went on to explain, O’Mara’s overall responsibility was the smooth and efficient mental operations of the ten-thousand-odd members of its medical and maintenance staff. For administrative reasons he carried the rank of major and, theoretically, this placed him among the lower links in the Monitor Corps chain of command. But keeping so many different and potentially hostile life-forms working together in harmony was a large job whose limits, like O’Mara’s actual authority, were difficult to define.

Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and mutual respect among all levels of its personnel, and in spite of the careful psychological screening they were given before being accepted for training, there were still occasions when serious, interpersonal friction threatened to occur because of ignorance or misunderstandings over other-species cultural and interpersonal behavior. Or a being might develop a xenophobic neurosis which, if left untreated, would ultimately affect its mental stability and professional competence.

It was the major’s duty to detect and eradicate such problems before they could become life- or sanity-threatening or, if therapy failed, to remove the potentially troublesome individuals from the hospital. This constant watch for signs of wrong, unhealthy, or intolerant thinking, which his department performed with such zeal, had made him the most disliked entity in the hospital. But the chief psychologist was doubly fortunate in that he had never sought the admiration of others and gave every appearance of enjoying his work.

“O’Mara has a particular and personal responsibility,” Lioren continued, “for safeguarding the sanity of the diagnosticians, who are in simultaneous possession of… The one who is approaching us now is the Melfan diagnostician, Ergandhir. The last time we spoke it was carrying seven tapes. Have you any feelings of recognition for it?”

Hewlitt waited until the Melfan had clicked past on its four, exoskeletal legs and gone in to join the others, then said, “No. And it was another one who completely ignored our presence. From what you just said I thought you two knew each other.”

“We know each other very well,” said Lioren, “so I must assume that the forefront of Ergandhir’s mind is currently occupied by one of its Educator taped entities who does not know me, and never will since the original donor is no longer alive.”

“I hate to ask another question,” said Hewlitt, “but will you explain that?”

“It is part of the same question,” the Padre said, “and I’m trying to answer it.

Educator tapes were very much a mixed blessing, Lioren explained, but their use was necessary because no single being could hope to hold in its brain all the physiological and clinical information needed for the treatment of patients in a multispecies hospital. That was why the incredible mass of data required to care for them was furnished by means of the Educator tapes, which were the complete brain recordings of great medical specialists of the past belonging to the species concerned. If an Earth-human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient, he took one of the DBLF physiology tapes until the treatment was complete, after which he had it erased. Senior physicians with teaching duties were often called on to retain two or three of the tapes for long periods, which was not very pleasant for them, and their only consolation from their points of view was that they were better off than the diagnosticians.

They were the hospital’s medical elite. A diagnostician was one of those rare entities whose mind was considered stable enough to retain permanently and simultaneously up to ten physiology tapes. To their data-crammed minds was given the job of original research in xenological medicine and the diagnosis and treatment of new diseases in hitherto unknown life-forms.

There was a well-known saying in the hospital, reputed to have originated with O’Mara himself, that anyone sane enough to want to be a diagnostician was mad.

“You must understand that it is not only the physiological data that the tapes impart,” the Padre went on. “The complete memory and personality of the donor entity who possessed that knowledge is impressed as well. In effect a diagnostician subjects itself voluntarily to a most drastic form of multiple schizophrenia, with the alien personalities sharing its mind so utterly different in motivation and character that… Well, geniuses in any field are rarely nice people. These donor entities have no control over the host’s thinking or bodily functions, but a diagnostician who does not have a stable and well-integrated personality can sometimes fool itself into believing that the opposite is true and it is no longer in charge of itself. Getting used to walking on two feet when your mind insists that you have six is bad enough, but the food preferences, the dreams that come when the body is asleep and the mind has no conscious control, are much worse. Worst of all are the other-species sexual fantasies. They can be really disturbing.

“With some of the diagnosticians,” the Padre ended, “O’Mara has its hands full.”

Hewlitt thought for a moment, then said, “Now I understand the reason for Pathologist Murchison’s remark about her husband being multiply absentminded, and Prilicla’s uncertainty about detecting the virus’s emotional radiation if its host is a diagnostician, but I find it impossible to believe that…

He broke off as another diagnostician waddled and squelched into view wearing a transparent suit with the helmet open. It was a Creppelian octopoid, Lioren said, a warm-blooded amphibious life-form who could breathe air or water. Owing to a skin condition associated with advanced age, it found it more convenient to breathe air and more comfortable to keep its body immersed in water. He did not catch its name because even through his translator it sounded like nothing so much as a short sneeze. When they agreed that it, too, had never been a virus host, Lioren spoke into its communicator.

“The last one has just gone in, Major,” it said. “With the exception of Semlic, who was invisible inside its environmental protection, all of the diagnosticians and Colonel Skempton are cleared.”

“Right, Padre,” O’Mara replied. “You two resume your search at once, and don’t waste time.”

The sound of other-species’ voices raised in anger or argument followed them as they moved away, but the sounds were too muffled for Hewlitt’s translator to make any sense of them. Lioren said, “Our next call is the AUGL ward. What is it that you find impossible to believe?”

“No offense intended,” said Hewlitt, “but I think your profession has made you feel too kindly disposed toward the chief psychologist. Nobody can convince me that he is anything but a sarcastic, bad-tempered, ill-mannered, unfeeling person who is sensitive and caring about nobody but himself. Every time he opens his mouth he reinforces that belief.”

The Padre made an untranslatable sound and said, “It is true that Major O’Mara has personality defects, and there are many people on the staff who will tell you that the only thing that keeps them sane is the fear of what O’Mara will do to them if they dare go mad. This is an exaggeration for humorous effect on their part. It is also completely untrue.”

“If you say so, Padre,” he said.

They were moving along a main corridor again. Hewlitt was avoiding other-species collisions without Lioren’s guiding hand on his shoulder and holding a conversation at the same time. He felt surprised and pleased with himself.

“Believe me,” said the Padre, “if a being of any species is in serious need of psychiatric help, there is no better person in the hospital, and that includes myself, to give it. O’Mara takes the bad cases, those which could lead to permanent mental damage or to otherwise well-motivated and dedicated members of the staff being expelled from the hospital, and more often than not it saves their sanity as well as their future careers. But those files are closed to the other psychology staff, and neither the major nor its patients will talk about the treatment they were given afterward.”

He did not know why, but Hewlitt felt sure that one of the patients concerned had been Lioren itself.

“O’Mara will tell you that the entire hospital staff are its patients,” the Padre went on. “Most of them require minimum attention or no treatment at all and with them, it says, it can relax and be its normal, bad-tempered, sarcastic self. But when it begins to show concern toward a person, as it did to you when you showed signs of psychological distress on recognizing me as a former virus host, that is the time to worry. You recovered quickly, however, so O’Mara reverted to its normal behavior pattern toward a person it again considered to be one of its mentally healthy and well-adjusted patients.

“Instead of anger,” it ended, “you should be feeling relieved and complimented. And perhaps a little incredulous.”

Hewlitt laughed. “Thank you for the incredible information,” he said. “But seriously, I have another question, the one I asked you earlier. What are you all hiding from me?”

“My previous answer was designed to change the subject by giving you something else to think about,” Lioren said. “We are approaching the AUGL ward. Can you swim?”