Mind Changer

CHAPTER 10

Then as well as now there had been problems with Educator tapes, O’Mara thought dourly, except that with the passage of time the problems were more familiar and much more numerous, and now it was he rather than Craythorne who had the rank and ultimate responsibility for solving them-even when, as now, he was able to dump some of them onto his chief assistant. In that respect at least, nothing had changed.

“Braithwaite” said O’Mara sourly, “how the blazes do you always manage to look so neat? The only creases in your uniform are where they’re supposed to be, the vertical ones in your pants. Is it Monitor Corps conditioning, something in your DNA, or have you sold your soul to some sartorial devil?”

The lieutenant knew a rhetorical question when he heard one and replied with a polite smile.

“Ml right,” said O’Mara. “Diagnostician Yursedth. What happened?”

Braithwaite smiled again and said, “Initially there was a frank exchange of views. It said that, considering its position within the hospital, it deserved the attention of the chief psychologist. I told it that was so, normally, but as the new administrator you had more urgent matters to attend to and were being forced to delegate. It became personally uncomplimentary, toward both of us, and some of the phrases from the Tralthan component of its mind were particularly… inventive. But after a few minutes letting off steam, it agreed to talk to a substandard psychiatrist, me.

“And.” said O’Mara.

“Currently it carries four Educator tapes.” said the lieutenant, “Tralthan, Melfan, Dwerlan, and Earth-human. I checked the donors’ psych profiles and none of them seemed as if they would be particularly hard to live with, especially for a strong-willed Kelgian like Yursedth who has years of experience with mind transfers. Its own psych file shows nothing suspect in its past. As for the troublesome dreams, which are causing mental distress of nightmare proportions during sleep and continual worry for hours subsequent to waking, I can find no cause for them. The same applies to the bouts of peripheral neuropathy, which are almost certainly associated with the main problem because they so closely resemble the nightmares. If there is a culprit tape, as you called it, I couldn’t identify it. This is a strange one, sir, because there is no obvious reason why the subject’s problem should exist.”

O’Mara nodded. “You didn’t expect me to hand you an easy one, Lieutenant” he said. “What are you doing about this nonexistent problem?”

“The subject is becoming increasingly distressed” said Braithwaite, “and I don’t want to waste time duplicating someone else’s work, especially yours. Yursedth wouldn’t tell me, at the time it was still annoyed because it wasn’t being treated by you, whether you had already initiated any kind of therapy. Have you?”

O’Mara shook his head. “I barely glanced through Yursedth’s file to check on its current workload’ he said, “which was about normal for a diagnostician of its seniority. The original question stands, Lieutenant: what are you going to do?”

Braithwaite was silent for a moment, and then he said, “I already checked for stress due to overwork and found nothing unusual. I’m going to get it to talk about its dreams and psychosomatic episodes again, and listen even more carefully this time. If nothing else occurs to me, I’ll suggest erasing the Melfan tape. If any of the Educator tapes are causing the trouble it is likely, well, slightly more likely, to be that one. As you know, sir, while the Melfans have very precise and accurate muscle control and positional sense, but the exoskeletal structures covering their limbs and digits have no sense of touch. It is probably a forlorn hope, but that might equate with Yursedth’s waking loss of sensation in its limbs and other areas of its body and its persistent nightmares. One of them, the one that seems to trouble it most, is about it being in a hospital OR on Melf and unable to operate because of an unexplained, creeping paralysis. I would then erase the Melfan tape and, before impressing another, observe and question the subject closely for a few days or weeks, to see whether or not the troublesome symptoms were still present or receding. I would do the same with the other tapes in turn and, if that didn’t work, I’d erase all of them and observe the effects. If any.”

O’Mara sat back in his chair and kept his face expressionless. Everyone on the staff knew that Yursedth had teaching duties as well as ongoing surgical commitments using its own medical experience as well as that of its four other-species mind partners. Time, as well as considerable personal mental disruption, was required to acclimatize mentally after the erasure of long-term tapes, which was why junior medics were not allowed to retain them for more than a few hours after use. Much more time and considerable emotional hassle would be needed for Yursedth’s mind, which subjectively would feel suddenly empty, to accommodate the alien knowledge and feelings of four new mind partners. But Braithwaite knew all this.

Deliberately, O’Mara decided to give a noncommittal, unhelpful answer. He said, “I can only imagine what Yursedth will say about that”

“I didn’t have to imagine.” said Braithwaite feelingly. “It told me what it thought in detail when I told it what I intended to do, purely as a last resort. I hoped that would concentrate, well, scare its mind to the extent of producing a reaction that would furnish a clue to the basic problem. It didn’t. Apart from the verbal abuse it said that it would ask for a second opinion. Yours.”

“And you said?” O’Mara prompted.

“That you had given me sole responsibility for its case and that if you did speak to it, that was the first thing you would say,” the lieutenant replied, then hesitated. “I don’t know what the second thing would be.”

“The same as the first” said O’Mara carefully. “I expect you to talk to me about the case and report progress, if any. If you consider it necessary you may discuss it with your colleagues in the outer office, but not to the extent that you would be dividing the responsibility for treatment. I am not going to advise or second-guess you with Yursedth. So don’t worry, Lieutenant, this psychological hot, medium-roasted, or cold mashed potato is all yours.”

“But I am worrying, sir” said Braithwaite, “mostly about my proposed line of treatment. I was ashamed of even suggesting it. Just wiping all four mind partners is, is crude, like amputating a leg on the off chance of curing a sprained ankle. I want to try something a little more sophisticated, and I’m not asking for advice…

“Good,” said O’Mara, “because you wouldn’t get it.”

“… but I would appreciate your technical supervision.” Braithwaite went on, “during a tape impression of Yursedth’s suspect Melfan mind partner into another subject. Instead of working from subjective verbal data secondhand, I’d like to have a close look around that Melfan donor’s mind myself from the inside—”

“No!”

Braithwaite looked surprised. “I know we don’t usually do it, sir,” he said, “and that technically it’s against the rules, but I believe this to be a special problem which I might not be able to solve in any other way without wasting several days or weeks of Yursedth’s teaching and operating time as well as subjecting it to a lot of emotional hassle. With respect, sir, it was you who made the rules and, from what I’ve heard, broke them all before they could be made official.”

That was then, O’Mara remembered, during the early years before Craythorne and the newly promoted and eager Lieutenant O’Mara knew what they were doing. He had insisted on doing more while knowing much less than the major and he still carried the mental scars, many of them willingly, to prove it. We lived, as the old Chinese curse phrased it, in interesting times. He shook his head.

“No,” he repeated in a conversational tone, “because the staff in this department are expected to be more or less sane. Failing that, they are expected at very least to know exactly who and what they are at all times and in all circumstances. To function effectively a therapist in this place must retain his, her, or its mental objectivity. That cannot be done if you assimilate and go probing into a donor mind that may be psychologically suspect because the experience, no matter how hard you tried to be objective, is intensely and dangerously subjective. A form of insidious psychological merging takes place, and traces of the emotional involvement with the donor entity remain even after the tape has been erased. You know the rule and, if you’ve temporarily forgotten it, I’m reminding you now. If you go exploring in alien mental territory, Lieutenant, you might bring back mental mud on your boots. So your mind, such as it is, must remain exclusively your own.

O’Mara paused for a moment to stare hard into the other’s eyes. Without raising his voice he ~added, “If one of my staff was to break that rule, they would need to urgently consider other work options. Is that clearly understood?”

“Yes, sir,” said Braithwaite. “But what about the diagnosticians and seniors who carry anything up to six long-term tapes each? Were they told the psychological reason for that rule, and about the risks?”

O’Mara shook his head. “No” he said, “because the risk for them is nil, or at most very slight. All they are interested in is obtaining the other-species tape donor’s medical knowledge and experience for use in a current op or research project. The personality of the entity sharing their minds, be it nice, nasty, egocentric, or whatever, is something they try hard to ignore because they are physicians and surgeons who have neither the inclination nor the time to waste on delving into the reasons for their mind partner’s emotional behavior. The donor’s subconscious surfaces often enough when they sleep, or for some other reason lose concentration and awareness of their own identity. But when this happens they instinctively fight it and are, therefore, safe. To be sure of that we always check periodically for any sudden change in their psych profiles during long-term mind impressions.

“But you want to dive into the middle of an other-species mind’ he went on seriously, “perhaps a disturbed alien mind who may already have had psychiatric assistance from a therapist of its own species to control its psychoses. That is asking for serious trouble because neuroses and psychoses are subjective experiences which, unlike other-species pathogens, can be passed from one intelligent and disturbed mind to another that is more or less sane. If that were to happen to you, the only hope of a cure would be to bring in a therapist of the mind partner’s species as well as one of your own, me, to clean up the mess. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, I don’t have the time.”

“Sorry, sir’ said Braithwaite. “Until you gave me the Yursedth case, I just accepted your general instruction about not taking Educator tapes without realizing the reasoning behind it. I’m still tempted by the thought of going into and viewing an alien mental landscape from the inside, and maybe help clear away some of the weeds, but… well, I’ll resist the temptation.”

O’Mara nodded. He said, “Your job, and everyone else’s in this department, is to clear away mental weeds. But you will continue to do it by using your knowledge and experience and the tools of observation and verbal probing and your own Earth-human, or Sommaradvan or Tarlan as the case may be, processes of deduction while at all times remaining yourselves. I won’t ask if you understand me, Lieutenant, because if you don’t, you’re fired?

“I do understand, sir” said Braithwaite, looking chastened but as cool and impeccable as ever. “But I don’t understand why you reacted so strongly when I mentioned the idea. Have you yourself been inside a disturbed, alien mind, sir, and have you firsthand experience with the long-term problems?”

A few days ago Braithwaite would not have dared ask such a question. Plainly the acquisition of full responsibility was bringing out some of the lieutenant’s hidden strengths. O’Mara remained silent.

“With respect,” the lieutenant went on calmly, “that could be the reason for your complete lack of social contact with the staff over the years, and your general antisocial behavior, which has made you the most disliked as well as the most professionally respected person in the hospital. It is difficult to believe that you like that situation. Would you care to comment, sir?”

For a moment O’Mara stared into the other’s eyes, which, he was pleased to see, stared right back. Then he sighed and deliberately looked at his watch.

“Was there anything else you want to ask me, Lieutenant” he said, “before you leave?”

Braithwaite departed, his curiosity unsatisfied, and O’Mara tried to concentrate on moving the mounting pile of administrative detail, which his two jobs had caused to double in size. But instead his mind kept sliding away from the now and into the then.

Increasing bouts of stupid nostalgia, he thought sourly, is a neurosis of the senile.