Mind Changer

CHAPTER 32

Patient Tunneckis was transferred from the otherwise empty recovery ward and through the silent and deserted adjoining levels to the original OR on a remotely controlled litter and immobilized on the operating table. Sensor pads were attached to its oval, sluglike body and it was prepped for the operation, all without being touched by human or any other hands. It was totally relaxed by the local anesthetic but it was and would remain fully conscious.

Watching it intently on a large lecture screen ten levels away were Diagnosticians Conway and Thornnastor, Senior Physician Prilicla, Lieutenant Braithwaite, and O’Mara himself. It was O’Mara who spoke first, and solely to the patient.

“Tunneckis.” he said with gentle reassurance, “we are trying to cure you. Even though you may think that you are telepathically deaf and dumb you are not, at least not completely. Since shortly after you arrived here you have been unknowingly transmitting a continuous, sense-free telepathic shout, a sound so loud, so intensely unpleasant and far-reaching that our medical staff and patients have had to be moved beyond its range. That is why remotely controlled devices instead of people have been taking care of you.”

Beside him he heard Conway give a quiet, incredulous grunt at his massive understatement of the situation. O’Mara ignored him and went on, “But if you can still use your telepathic faculty to shout then it is not completely lost. That is promising because it may be only a short step from being able to shout to being able to speak, and listen, normally. That is why the hospital’s two best doctors are going into your brain to try to rectify the fault. You will be fully conscious during the operation, but as the brain interior has no pain receptors you should feel no physical discomfort. You may, however, feel sensory changes while the doctors are working there. It would be helpful if you told us what they are or how they are affecting your mind. Tenneckis, do you agree to us performing this operation and will you help us during it?”

He knew that they were going to do the operation anyway, with or without the patient’s cooperation, but it would be kinder to let it think that it still had a say in the matter.

“I’m, I’m afraid” the distant Tunneckis replied. It made a low, hissing sound that did not translate, then went on, “I’m afraid of this place, and your cold, shiny, clicking machines that do things to me, and of all the horrible people in the hospital including you. Mostly I’m afraid of going on living this way. Please, I just want this black, awful, continual fear of everybody and everything to stop.”

O’Mara thought of Dr. Cerdal as he had seen it last, heavily sedated but still babbling and crying and completely out of control, and of the others, who had had less protracted contact with Tunneckis and who were in proportionately better shape. He could have said that he understood because others were feeling the same intense and unreasoning fear of all those around them that manifested itself as manic xenophobia, but that would have been adding guilt to the patient’s already crushing mental load.

Instead he said gently, “We want to cure you, Tunneckis, and remove the cause of that fear. Will you help us?”

The silence seemed to last much longer than the few seconds shown on the room’s chronometer, but finally the answer came.

“Yes.”

O’Mara gave an almost explosive sigh of relief and looked away from the screen. Braithwaite was looking quietly pleased, Thornnastor was stamping a forefoot against the floor in agitation, the emotional radiation from some person or persons in the room was giving Prilicla the shakes again, and Conway was frowning and chewing at his lower lip. O’Mara sighed again more quietly.

“Conway,” he said dryly, “I know the signs. You are thinking about doing something stupid. Well?”

“I’ve been too busy to thank you properly or bring you up to date on the later developments” said Conway quickly. “That was a really good steer you gave us about reinvestigating Tunneckis’s accident. The Orligian medical officer on Kerm base was once a forensic scientist, and it took the scene of the crime-I mean the accident-and related circumstances apart and used a microscopic sieve on the evidence. It sent us detailed analyses of the metal structure-the padding, and even the body paintwork of Tunneckis’s groundcar following the lightning strike, and of an undamaged vehicle of the same type. There were also the results of a complete physical examination on a normally healthy Kerm volunteer to serve as an organic benchmark. But it was you who pointed us in the right direction in the first place and…

“Flattery doesn’t work on me,” O’Mara broke in sharply, “so get to the point.”

“The point” said Conway, beginning to sound excited, “is that nothing like the Tunneckis accident had ever happened before because their technology isn’t advanced and ground vehicles are a recent development. The brief, ultra-high temperature and exposure to the electrical discharge of the lightning strike vaporized sections of the internal padding so that toxic material was inhaled and eventually circulated to the brain. Mistakenly I thought that the minor scorching of Tunneckis’s body surface was the only symptom. But now I know differently, and Thornnastor has come up with a specific that will detoxify the brain area involved. I’m confident-well, let’s say I’m guardedly optimistic-of effecting a cure.

O’Mara looked at him steadily for a moment, then said, “You are about to say ‘but.’”

“But it will be very delicate work” said Conway, “work I would rather not do at a distance with remotely controlled instruments. It will have to be a hands-on job. I fully realize the risks of a lengthy exposure to Tunneckis’s mental contagion, but I don’t foresee it being a long operation. Sir, I’ll have to be there.”

“And I” said Thornnastor and Prilicla, practically making it a duet.

O’Mara was silent for a moment. He was wondering how it would feel at first hand, rather than listening to Cerdal or the others trying to describe it, when the higher levels of one’s mind began to dissolve away and one became more and more suspicious and afraid of all the other-species staff in the hospital, people he had known and respected and liked for a great many years. He took a firm grip on the mind he still had and spoke.

“And I,” he said gruffly. “Somebody will be needed there with enough sense to pull the plug if we look like we’re running out of time.” He turned to Prilicla. “But not you, little friend. You will stay well clear and only fly in for a few seconds at fifteen-minute intervals to monitor and report on our emotional radiation. You will be aware of trouble developing long before we are. And if you detect the slightest sign of a coarsening of the intellect, or insensitive or illmannered or antisocial behavior, no matter what we say to you or how we excuse it, you tell the security team to pull us out at once. Is that understood?”

“Yes, friend O’Mara” said the empath.

Thornnastor stamped three of its feet in rapid succession and turned one of its eyes toward Conway. Aged Tralthans were notoriously hard of hearing and assumed other species to be the same, with the result that its whisper was loud and penetrating.

“Insensitive and rn-mannered behavior,” it said. “With O’Mara, how will we know the difference?”

OR One-Twelve was in all respects ready and waiting for them as Conway, Thornnastor, and O’Mara entered and moved quickly to their positions. The microsurgery instruments, high-magnification scanner, the recorder, and Pathology’s modified crystalline suspension had been checked and double-checked at a distance so that all they had to do was go to work.

Without wasting time.

“Try to relax, Tunneckis,” said O’Mara reassuringly. “This time we know where we’re going because we’ve been there before. The entry-wound area will be anesthetized and there will be no physical sensation from inside your brain. Talk to me whenever you feel like it, and don’t worry. Ready?”

“Yes,” said Tunneckis, “I think.”

Once again the big operating screen showed the tremendously magnified view from the internal vision pickup as Conway’s instruments negotiated the cavernous inner ear, pierced the membrane, and opened a path into the area of the telepathic faculty. Sweating with the effort of making his hands move even more slowly inside the reduction gauntlets, Conway went into the series of liquid-filled, interconnected tunnels with the slender-stemmed clusters of crystalline flowers growing from their mottled pinkand-yellow walls and stirring in the microscopic turbulence caused by the invading instruments.

Even to O’Mara’s untutored eye they didn’t look healthy.

“This is a mess,” said Conway in unknowing confirmation. “The mistake we made during the first op was in analyzing, reproducing, and replacing the ambient fluid and crystal structures without realizing that they were contaminated by a higher than normal concentration of toxic material, the complex of vaporized metal and plastic inhaled by the patient following the lightning strike to its vehicle, that was carried by the blood supply from the lungs to the brain. Thornnastor has injected a specific which has neutralized the toxicity and no more will be arriving. But we can’t simply suck out the contaminated fluid and replace it with the new material in case emptying the area collapses or otherwise damages the brain structure. So we’ll have to do both at the same time and gradually dilute and replace the old, contaminated fluid with the proper mix of minerals and trace elements which will enable the crystals to regrow in their correct but inevitably still slightly toxic medium.

“AS you can see, there are two distinct types of crystals present…

One type was a small, stunted, almost colorless crystalline flower that barely filled the cuplike receptor on the top of its stalk, O’Mara saw. The other was large and dark red and overhung its cup-shaped attachment point like a misshapen black cabbage. He was pretty sure of which one was responsible for the mental contagion spreading throughout the hospital, and again Conway was agreeing with him.

… My guess is that the smaller, less developed type are the telepathic receptors” Conway went on, “and the larger, which have been growing out of control in the contaminated fluid since we were last in here, are the transmitters that are radiating the continuous telepathic shouting that is causing our other problems. We’ll have to remove them from their stalks, very carefully, and withdraw them with the contaminated fluid. Dammit, there are a lot of them. How are we for time? And how is the patient?”

“You have been working for half an hour,” said Prilicla, who had flown silently into the room. “During my last visit you were all too busy to notice me so I left without speaking when I found that the emotional-radiation levels were optimum.”

“Half an hour?” said Conway, incredulously. “It shows how fast time passes when you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Conway!” said O’Mara sharply. “That was a particularly insensitive remark to make in the presence of a conscious patient, especially one who might not understand Earth-human sarcasm.

“Insensitive?” said Conway, looking suddenly worried. “Am I being… affected?”

“I don’t think so, friend Conway” Priicla broke in. “Your emotional radiation, like that of everyone else here, is being distorted by fear, but it is diffuse and may be based on your general fear for the patient’s well-being. Friend Tunneckis is also feeling intense fear, but that is normal for the circumstance and it is trying hard to keep it under control.”

“And I do understand sarcasm,” Tunneckis added, “wherever it originates, so an apology is unnecessary.”

Conway gave a short, relieved laugh and was back at work before it ended.

The procedure was slow, painstaking, and seemingly endless. As Conway used his microinstruments carefully to crush and detach the large crystals from their stalks, large only because of the ultra-high magnification, and withdraw them through a tiny suction tube, O’Mara thought that it was like watching a particularly inefficient underwater vacuum cleaner at work. But with the crystalline debris was going a measured quantity of the toxin-filled liquid that Thornnastor was replacing with the uncontaminated fluid in which, they were hoping, the new, healthy crystals would grow. Slowly and steadily the proportion of toxic material was diminishing, and it seemed that a few of the crystalline flowers of both kinds were attaching themselves to empty stalks. Conway was sweating in concentration and all four of Thornnastor’s eyes were directed at its instruments. Prilicla paid four more visits but came and went without comment. It was not until the seventh visit that it spoke.

“The security detail is standing by at a safe distance” it said, maintaining a stable hover just inside the entrance, “but they can be here within three minutes. I must remind you that you have been in close proximity to your patient for nearly two hours and—”

“No, dammit!” Conway broke in. “We could be nearly there. I’m not stopping now.”

“Nor I” rumbled Thornnastor.

“The ambient emotional radiation here is—” Prilicla began, when Conway broke in again.

“Thornnastor,” he said urgently, “if our empathic friend calls in the security heavies, will you block the door with your body? They won’t dare do anything too violent to the hospital’s senior diagnostician even if our administrator tells them otherwise. Right?”

“Right” said Thornnastor.

“Your administrator,” said O’Mara firmly, “will order them to keep their distance.”

Conway’s expression was puzzled but very pleased as he looked up briefly at O’Mara and then at Prilicla before going on, “Please listen to me. I’m not afraid of anybody here, or anywhere else for that matter. There’s no xenophobia that I’m aware of…” For a moment his voice was tinged with doubt. “… unless losing my temper like this with a good friend is an early symptom. But I don’t feel that there’s anything wrong with my mind. How is the patient feeling?”

“I know exactly what and how you feel, friend Conway” said Prilicla, “and friend Tunneckis is feeling frightened, disoriented, and badly confused.”

“Tunneckis” said Conway urgently, “what’s happening?”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” the other replied angrily. “My mind is flashing pictures and sounds. They are disconnected, unrelated, and, and nonverbal. What, what did you just do to me?”

“It would take too long to explain right now,” Conway replied, “but I intend doing it again for as long as I can.” Keeping his hands inside the stepdown gauntlets and his eyes fixed on the operating screen, he said excitedly, “The patient’s reaction proves it. We’re beginning to get results.”

“Friend Conway, I don’t know what’s happening, either” said Prilicla. “Based on the staff distance and exposure tables we worked out for friend Tunneckis’s telepathic, ah, shouting, all of you should be showing marked changes in emotional radiation and behavior by now. Instead your symptoms, with one exception, are minimal. I can only attribute this to the presence of several tape-donor entities within your minds. These tapes, which are the recordings of the past donors’ knowledge and memories, are not subject to modification by a mental influence of the present, so they may be serving as a mental anchor for the minds concerned. As diagnosticians in possession of many mind partners, you are being kept stable by the thoughts and feelings of your taped entities. But this is buying you only a little time, how much exactly I can’t say, because I can already feel your minds being affected. You will need to leave soon.”

“And one of us,” said Conway, with his eyes still fixed on the operating screen, “is not a diagnostician. Administrator, for your own mental safety you must leave at once. You can talk to the patient by communicator, and keep Security off our backs, when you’re at a safe distance.”

“No,” said O’Mara.

Prilicla was the only person in the hospital who knew that O’Mara had a mind partner, one single mental anchor called Marrasarah that might or might not save his sanity, but the empath was sworn to silence on that subject. One strong-willed, Kelgian anchor, he told himself, should be enough. He knew that Prilicla was feeling his doubts, but it left without mentioning them.

It was insidious.

He was watching Conway and Thornnastor at work and trying with little success to find reassuring words to say to Tunneckis, whose confusion and fear and despair hung around it like an unseen, smothering, and terrifying cloud that was almost palpable. He felt a growing urge to leave the room, if only to get the chance to breathe some clean air. More and more he found himself wondering if they were wasting their time, and he was gradually coming to the decision that they were. This Tunneckis creature was suffering because it had been the victim of a fluke accident that none of its own people could do anything about, and it was wrecking the sanity of the hospital staff who were trying to cure it. One had to keep a sense of proportion in these things. And an overgrown, sluglike, loathsome thing was all that Tunneckis was, a telepath who was eating away at his mind, a foul thing that could never go home and must not be allowed to stay here. The solution was obvious, the decision simple, and he had the rank to see that it was carried out. He would tell this self-opinionated young upstart Conway and the stupid elephant assisting him that the Kerma slug was expendable and to abort the procedure forthwith.

But suddenly O’Mara felt afraid, more afraid than he had ever been in his entire life. The fear was formless, unfocused but intense, and reinforced with a feeling of utter despair. He didn’t want to make a decision or give orders because he was sure Conway, who had always managed to do things his own way, would refuse to obey them; and Thornnastor would grip him in its long, warty tentacles and stamp him to a pulp under its elephant’s feet. He just wanted to run away and hide, from everything and every horrible, frightening, and alien person in this terrible place. Even Prilicla, so soft and fragile and so outwardly friendly, was forever crawling into his mind with its empathic faculty and uncovering the deepest, most shameful feelings that nobody should ever know while it waited its chance to tell everybody the truth about him. He was no good, O’Mara told himself bitterly, despairingly and fearfully, and useless to himself and everybody else. He was nothing.

O’Mara gripped the edge of the operating table so tightly that his fingers and hands turned white. He wasn’t aware that when he spoke it was closer to being a shout of anguish.

“Marrasarah, please help me!”

Conway looked up, his expression furious. “You bloody fool, O’Mara! Don’t make sudden loud noises like that, this is a delicate operation. Who the hell is Marrasarah? Never mind, just stand there and keep quiet.”

A tiny, cool, and aloof group of brain cells that were unaffected by the storm of fear and despair sweeping his tortured mind noted the disrespectful words and manner and decided that this was totally uncharacteristic of Conway, and that the Tunneckis contagion was getting to him, too. Suddenly the other shouted even louder than had O’Mara.

“Dammit, my head!”

Conway’s teeth were clenched and his face contorted with pain, but he had not taken his hands out of the operating gauntlets. Then slowly he relaxed.

For some reason the intensity of O’Mara’s fear and despair was beginning to ease. Concerned, he said, “What’s wrong with your head?”

“A deep, unlocalized itching between the ears that felt as if somebody was working in my brain with a wire brush,” Conway replied. Suddenly recovering his respectful manners, he went on excitedly, “Sir, I’ve felt that itching sensation before. It was Tunneckis trying to communicate telepathically with nontelepaths. It lasted only for an instant. Didn’t you feel it, too? And hear the message?”

“No,” said O’Mara.

“I felt the cranial itching,” said Thornnastor, being ponderously clinical, “but not from between my ears, which are, as you must know, differently situated in my species. It was accompanied by a confusion of mental noise but no message. What did it say?”

Conway had returned all of his attention to the operating screen and was speaking quickly as he worked.

“It said an awful lot in such a short time,” he said, “and I’ll tell you all about it later. Right now we need about twenty minutes to complete this procedure and withdraw, but we could stay here all day if need be without suffering any mental ill effects. For a while there I was off the mental rails, feeling useless and afraid and suspicious of everybody. I apologize for anything I said. You two must have been having similar feelings. But now we’re all back to normal and our troubles, all of our troubles, are over. We can begin repopulating the evacuated levels. Tunneckis is no longer telepathically deaf and dumb and is feeling fine.”

“Much as I dislike having to disagree with a colleague, friend Conway,” said Prilicla as it flew into the room to hover above the operating table, “I must say that you are guilty of a gross understatement. Friend Tunneckis is radiating feelings of relief, gratitude, and intense happiness.”