Mind Changer

CHAPTER 11

The Lieutenant O’Mara in his mind picture had been less selfassured in his speech and manner, the appearance of his uniform fell into the gray area between untidy and disheveled, and it was Major Craythorne who looked as if he had stepped out of a Monitor Corps recruiting program. Then the conversation had been similar but the instructions, which Craythorne had the habit of disguising as friendly advice, were much less forceful. Part of the reason for that, he remembered, was that at the time neither of them knew what they were talking about.

“I wonder,” said Craythorne apologetically, “if you would be kind enough to investigate a dispute of some kind going on between trainees on Level One-Eleven. I don’t know what it’s about because the parties concerned haven’t approached me officially, but the maintenance chief in the area says he’s heard quieter riots. Inter-species friction must not be allowed to develop. Look into it, would you, and see if you can…

“Knock a few heads together until they see sense?” asked O’Mara.

Craythorne shook his head. . talk some unofficial sense into them before it comes to our official attention and someone is expelled from the hospital. The disputants are Tralthans and Melfans, so the cranial-contact therapy you suggest would be impracticable, even for you.

“Figure of speech,” O’Mara muttered.

“I know,” said the major. “And both of us should be handling this one, but for the first time I’m making it your responsibility and will require you to turn in a full report and recommendations. Sorry about that. Trainees Edanelt and Vosan are taking more of my therapy time than I’d estimated.”

“Transference,” said O’Mara.

“Transference?”

O’Mara grinned. “I’ve been learning the professional vocabulary,” he said, “and even know what most of the words mean. And I overheard them talking about you in the dining hail. Professionally, both of them have the greatest possible confidence in you. They think you are kindly, sensitive, and understanding and, on the personal side, they see you as a close friend rather than a therapist. I couldn’t support the truth of these verbal statements because it’s difficult to read the facial expression of a being who wears its skull on the outside, but Edanelt said that if you hadn’t been an extraterrestrial-from its standpoint, that is-it would willingly carry your eggs…

He was interrupted by a quiet laugh from the major, who said, “Well, it’s nice to be appreciated.”

“Not always, sir,” said O’Mara. “This isn’t a laughing matter. If you weren’t so nice all the time to everybody, medical staff, subordinates, and especially me, people wouldn’t take advantage of your good nature. Everybody likes you, naturally, because they think you are a soft touch. What I’m trying to say is that if you were more unfriendly, or even nasty sometimes, the demands on your time by people who just want a friendly chat rather than being in urgent need of therapy would be significantly reduced.”

For a moment Craythorne stared down at his desk. When he looked up he was frowning.

“Lieutenant O’Mara,” he said, “please stop trying to psychoanalyze your superior officer. Prying into and trying to tinker with my mind, while doubtless interesting, is a waste of time that you must put to better use. I realise that you learned your other-species psychology the hard way, initially by baby-sitting a Hudlar for three weeks, but knocking some sense into people, while simple and direct, is not the indicated procedure in all cases. ’subtlety’ is also in the vocabulary you’ve been studying. Learn its meaning and try practicing it more often.

“And another thing,” he went on. “If you look unkempt that’s the way people will expect you to think. It’s probably too much to expect that you’ll wear it with pride, but that uniform is supposed to look functional and smart. On you it looks as if you’ve taken a shortcut through the maintenance tunnels in it, which you probably have. Comb your hair as if you meant it and try shaving more often. At least three times a week would be nice. The problem on One-Eleven needs attention. You may go.

O’Mara’s thumb was on the door button when Craythorne spoke from behind him.

“Am I being nasty enough, Lieutenant?”

“Not bad, sir,” said O’Mara, “but you need more practice.”

One-Eleven had been the first accommodation level to be completed and fully furnished to the requirements of five different other-species life-forms. The Maintenance Department was quietly but intensely proud of it and had promised that real soon, or at least as soon as possible, the other uncompleted and partially occupied accommodation levels would be brought up to the same standard of comfort. Since One-Eleven’s completion it had been the hospital’s most desirable place to live, but now, it seemed, the neighborhood was fast going to hell.

He already knew who the offenders were, but made his first calls in the side corridors housing the innocent bystanders. Perhaps the major would have considered this a subtle approach.

In the short corridor accommodating the Kelgian DBLFs, the first few door IDs were flagged ABSENT, ON DUTY or SLEEPING, DO NOT DISTURB. The fourth said OCCUPIED, but several minutes of almost continuous thumb pressure passed before the door was opened by a Kelgian wearing large, padded headphones which it was lifting from its ears. Behind it he could see a lighted screen showing clinically nasty things being performed deep inside a species whose organs he couldn’t identify~

The Kelgian ruffled its fur irritably at him and said, “I’m studying. Didn’t hear you. What do you want?”

“Information,” he replied, falling into the other’s direct mode of speech, “regarding complaints of high levels of organic noise in this area. Have you been inconvenienced by it?”

“Yes, but not now,” said the Kelgian. “My species has a low tolerance for being vivisected by Melfan pincers or trampled to death by Tralthan feet, so I was afraid to attempt to reduce the noise level at the source by remonstrating with them…” It tapped an earphone with one of its tiny fingers. . so I took other measures. Go away.

Its door hissed shut before O’Mara could finish saying, “Thank you.

A few minutes later he was trying to talk to one of the Eurilian MSVKs, a storklike, tripedal nonflier whose atrophied wings were flapping so furiously that they all but lifted it into the air anyway, and whose angry, twittering speech didn’t allow him to get a word in edgewise.

… and you’ve got to do something about this!” the Euril was saying, not for the first time. “Somehow you’ve got to stop that infernal racket. It isn’t too bad when they visit each other’s rooms to talk over lectures, or whatever else they do. You hear the Tralthans rumbling at each other sometimes when they get excited and raise their voices, and the Melfans sound as if they’re beating their walls with sticks, but that’s just a noise nuisance and bearable. But then they go back to their rooms to settle for the night. It’s quiet for maybe an hour and we begin to feel safe. But when they start falling asleep the noise nearly blows me off my sleeping perch. And when they open their doors and the Tralthans and Melfans start complaining to each other about the noise they’re both making keeping the other party awake, by then everybody is awake and we’re lucky to get any sleep for the rest of the night. Or until next day during lectures when the tutors have harsh things to say to us for being inattentive. It’s quiet now because they are settling themselves to sleep, but any minute now… I’m not equipped to inflict physical damage, but more and more often I feel like murdering one of them, any one of them. You’ve got to do something before somebody bigger and stronger than I am does.”

O’Mara held up both hands placatingly. This was worse than he had been led to believe. For a moment he considered trying for a soft, conciliatory, Craythorne-type approach, then decided against it. The trouble that was developing here was much too serious for that. He would have to be tough.

“When you applied for a position here,” he said firmly, “you knew that you would have to work and live with persons of many different species. Are you no longer able to do that?”

The Euril didn’t reply. To O’Mara the expression on its feathered, birdlike face was unreadable, but he felt that the other was looking uneasy. Maybe hinting that it might be asked to leave Sector General was an unnecessary psychological overkill, especially as it was one of the injured parties.

Gently, he went on, “Don’t worry, that would be a measure of last resort. Did you complain person to person, and explain your problem to them directly?”

“I tried once, with one of the Tralthans,” the Euril replied. “It said it was sorry, but that many members of its species made noises in their sleep, that they couldn’t help it and that the only way to stop making the noises was for them to stop breathing. It sounded very irritated, the way we all are when we don’t get enough sleep. I didn’t want to risk irritating again someone with twelve times my body mass, and decided that complaining to the Melfans, who aren’t as big but are more excitable than Tralthans, would be better. It wasn’t. The one I spoke to used words that the translator wasn’t programmed to accept. Now I don’t talk to any of them.”

“But surely you talk to them during lectures,” said O’Mara, “or on the wards, in the dining hail, or on the recreation level?”

“A little,” the other replied. “But then it’s mostly answering questions from the tutor or charge nurse, or talking to wide-awake patients. If any of them make sleeping noises they do it somewhere else in the hospital, not here in study block. The dining hall is big enough to let everyone dine among their own people, so we don’t have to watch some of the others’ disgusting eating habits. The same goes for the rec deck. It’s better, and much more comfortable for us, if we stay away from them and them from us. Not just the snoring Tralthans and clattering Melfans, I mean everybody else.”

O’Mara started to speak, then decided against it because he could think of nothing constructive to say. The situation was much worse than he had thought.

One pint-sized furry Nidian still looked much like any other to O’Mara, but with the one who opened its door to him it was immediately obvious that the reverse did not hold true.

“You’re that other Earth-human psychologist, O’Mara,” it said. Even through the translator it sounded as if it were barking angrily at him. “What is a psychologist going to do about that damned noise? Tell me to think beautiful, positive thoughts and ignore it? Suggest I OD on tranquilizers? Move the source to the other side of the galaxy? What?”

“I agree,” said O’Mara, fighting an urge not to bark back at the irate little teddy bear, “that you have a legitimate complaint—”

“No!” snapped the Nidian. “I have a legitimate request. I want to be moved out of here. There’s Nidian accommodation on Level One-Fourteen, I’ve seen Maintenance working on it.”

“Level One-Fourteen isn’t just for Nidians,” said O’Mara quietly, but the other wasn’t listening to him.

“They haven’t finished the interior furnishings yet,” it went on, “and it won’t be nearly as comfortable as this place. But with a bunk and a chair and a console I’ll be able to study in peace, and during sleep periods Maintenance are considerate enough to stop hammering and drilling, so at night it will be quiet…

It was interrupted by a low, intermittent, growling sound from farther along the corridor that rose slowly in pitch and volume like a modulated foghorn before fading away. But the silence lasted only for the few moments necessary to lull a listener into thinking that it had gone away for good. The sound was muffled to an unknown extent by the sleeper’s room walls, but at times it was so deep that it seemed as if the accompanying subsonics were vibrating the bones as well as the eardrums. Before O’Mara could speak there was a new sound, a slow, irregular clicking like amplified castanets. The short periods of silence during the Tralthan snoring were filled by the Melfan sleeping sounds and vice versa. The noises weren’t all that loud, but together they were so nerve-shredding and insistent that O’Mara found himself clenching his teeth.

“I rest my case,” barked the Nidian. “Well, what are you going to do about it?”

O’Mara remained silent, because right then he didn’t know how to answer. Another set of amplified castanets were starting up, but they faltered and died. A door hissed open and a Melfan emerged and moved diagonally across the corridor to stab at a door call button with a bony pincer. A blocky Tralthan head and forebody appeared and they exchanged complaints about wanting to sleep in loud rumbling and clicking conversations interspersed with beeps because their translators had not been programmed to accept some of the words they were using. O’Mara shook his head.

“The Earth-human word that applies here,” said the Nidian as it closed its door, “is ‘chicken.’”

For a few minutes O’Mara watched the two quarreling ETs until he was sure that the dire threats of violence would be verbal rather than physical. He told himself that he was not being a moral coward, but he wasn’t sure that he entirely believed himself. Trying to talk sense to those two when he didn’t know how to solve the problem would simply increase the level of noise, especially if they made him lose his temper. Before he talked to them he needed to know what he was talking about.

He had to see a doctor.

It would have to be a friendly, approachable, closemouthed doctor, he decided, who was neither a Tralthan nor a Melfan but who knew a lot about the behavior of other-species staff under stress.