The Genocidal Healer

CHAPTER 3

WITH a few violent exceptions, the subsequent contacts with the planet’s natives, whose name for their world was Cromsag, went more easily. This was because Vespasian’s transmitter had matched frequencies with the Cromsaggar broadcast channels to explain in greater detail who the off-world strangers were, where they had come from, and why they were there. And when the great capital ship landed and began to disgorge and erect prefabricated hospitals and food-distribution centers for the war’s survivors, the verbal reassurances were given form and substance and all hostility against the strangers ceased.

But that did not mean that they became friends.

Lioren was sure that he knew everything about the Cromsag-gar, with the exception of how their minds worked. From recently dead cadavers abandoned in the war zones he had obtained a complete and accurate picture of their physiology and metabolism. This had enabled their injuries to be treated with safe medication and their war to be ended ingloriously under blankets of anesthetic gas. The scout ship Tenelphi had been pressed into service as a fast courier vessel plying between Cromsag and Sector General. It carried specimens requiring more detailed study in one direction and the findings of Head of Pathology Thornnastor, which more often than not agreed with Lioren’s own, in the other.

But the Cromsaggar disease was proving difficult for even Diagnostician Thornnastor to isolate and identify. Living rather than dead specimens were required for study, if possible displaying the symptomology from onset to the preterminal stage of the condition, and Rhabwar, the hospital’s special ambulance ship, was dispatched to obtain them. And even more baffling than the plague, to which the victims invariably succumbed before reaching middle age, was their mental approach to it.

One plague victim had agreed to talk to Lioren about itself, but its words had merely added to the Surgeon-Captain’s confusion. He knew the patient only by its case file number, because the Cromsaggar considered their written and spoken symbol of identity to be the most important of personal possessions, and even though this one was close to termination it would not divulge its name to a stranger. When Lioren asked it why many of the Cromsaggar had attacked off-worlders with any weapon that came to hand, but fought among themselves only with teeth, hands and feet, it said that there was no honor or gain in killing a member of one’s own race unless it was with great effort and extreme personal danger. For the same reason they always stopped short of killing a very sick, severely weakened, or dying adversary.

Taking the life of another intelligent entity, Lioren firmly believed, was the most dishonorable act imaginable. In his position he should respect the beliefs of others, regardless of how strange or shocking they might be to one of his strict Tarlan upbringing, but he could not and would not respect this one.

Changing the subject quickly, he asked, “Why is it that after you fight, the injured are taken away to be cared for while the dead remain untouched where they fall? We know that your people have some knowledge of medicine and healing, so why do you allow the dead to remain unburied, to risk the spread of further pestilence into your already plague-ridden population? Why do you expose yourselves to this totally unnecessary danger?”

The ravages of the disease, which had covered the entire epidermis in patches of livid camouflage, had left the patient very weak, and for a moment Lioren wondered if it was able to reply, or even if it had heard the questions. But suddenly it said, “A decomposing corpse is indeed a fearful risk to the health of those who pass nearby. The danger and the fear are necessary.”

“But why?” Lioren asked again. “What do you gain by deliberately subjecting yourselves to fear and pain and danger?”

“We gain strength,” the Cromsaggar said. “For a time, for a very short time, we feel strong again.”

“In a very short time,” Lioren said with the confidence of a healer backed by all the resources of Federation medical science, “we will make you feel well and strong without the fighting. Surely you would prefer to live on a world free of war and disease?”

From somewhere within its wasted body the patient seemed to gather strength. It said loudly, “Never in the memories of those alive, or in the memories of their ancestors, has there been a time without war and disease. The stories told of such times, when the planetwide ruins of towns and cities were populated by healthy and happy Cromsaggar, are stories told only to comfort small and hungry children, children who soon grow large enough to fight and to disbelieve these stories.

“You should leave us, stranger, to survive as we have always survived,” it went on, straining to raise itself from the litter. “The thought of a world without war is too frightening to contemplate.”

He asked more questions, but the patient, although fully conscious and displaying a slight improvement in its clinical condition, would not speak to him.

There was no doubt in Lioren’s mind that a medical cure would quickly be discovered for the condition affecting the ten thousand-odd surviving Cromsaggar. But he was less sure whether a species which fought wars using only the natural weapons provided by evolution, because that made them feel good for a while, was worth saving. The strict rules of engagement that governed the fighting did not make the situation any less barbaric. They did not fight weaker opponents or children or the very few who were advanced in years, but only because the element of personal risk, and presumably the emotional reward, was reduced. He was glad that his only responsibility was the return of the plague sufferers to bodily health and not the curing of what appeared to be the even more diseased minds inhabiting those bodies.

And yet there had been occasions when, in an effort to give his patients something other than their own distressing clinical condition to think about, he had tried to explain star travel and the Galactic Federation to them. He had described the bewildering variety of shapes and sizes that intelligent life could take, and tried to make them understand that they lived on one inhabited world of many hundreds. He found those frightening and inexplicable minds of theirs had displayed an agility and a level of intelligence, although not the degree of education and knowledge, that was almost the equal of his own.

At those times there had been a small and transient improvement in their clinical condition, and that had made Lioren wonder if their craving for the danger and emotional excitement of war and single combat might not someday be fulfilled by the many and even more difficult challenges of peace. But they refused, or perhaps were psychologically unable because of cultural conditioning, to divulge personal information about their social behavior, moral strictures, or feelings on any subject unless, as in the present case, the patient was gravely ill and its mental resistance low.

The truth was that Lioren did not know how his patients felt, about themselves or anyone or anything else, and the stock question of the attending physician, “How do you feel?” was never answered.

Rhabwar was due in two days’ time, and he decided that this particular patient would be among those transferred to the ambulance ship for investigation and treatment at Sector General, and that he would ask for a consultation with the vessel’s senior medical officer.

Doctor Prilicla was a Cinrusskin, and, as a member of the Federation’s only empathic species, it knew how everyone felt.

Lioren asked that the meeting take place on Rhabwar’? casualty deck, rather than summoning Prilicla to the overcrowded sick bay of Vespasian, for reasons both practical and personal. The level of background emotional radiation from patients was much higher on Vespasian and would doubtless have distressed his visitor — it did no harm to show consideration to a professional colleague. On the ambulance ship there was less likelihood of his uncertainties regarding the Cromsaggar becoming known to his subordinates. It was his firm belief that a leader should display certainty at all times to the led if he was to receive their respect and total obedience.

Perhaps the empath held the same belief, but it was more likely that Prilicla had detected Lioren’s emotional radiation at a distance, correctly analyzed it, and insured that their meeting would be private. He was grateful but not surprised. It was in the other’s own selfish interest to minimize the generation of unpleasant emotional radiation around it, because to do otherwise would be to expose itself to exactly the same degree of unpleasantness.

The Cinrusskin positioned itself at eye level above one of the treatment tables, an enormous, incredibly fragile flying insect rendered small only by Lioren’s greater body mass. From its tubular, exoskeletal body there projected six pencil-thin legs, four even more delicately fashioned manipulators, and four sets of wide, iridescent, and almost transparent wings that were beating slowly as, with the aid of the gravity nullifiers strapped’to its body, it maintained a stable hover. Only on Cinruss, with its thick atmosphere and gravitational pull of one-eighth standard G, could a species of flying insect have evolved intelligence, civilization, and star travel, and Lioren knew of no race within the Federation who did not consider them to be the most beautiful of all intelligent life-forms.

From one of the narrow openings in the delicate, convoluted eggshell that was its head came a series of musical trills and clicks which translated as “Thank you, friend Lioren, for the complimentary feelings you are harboring, and for the pleasure of meeting you in person for the first time. I also detect strong emotional radiation which suggests that the purpose of our meeting is professional and urgent rather than social.

“I am an empath, not a telepath,” it ended gently. “You will have to tell me what is troubling you, friend Lioren.”

Lioren felt sudden irritation at the other’s continuing use of the word “friend.” He was, after all, the medical and administrative director of the disaster relief operation on Cromsag, and a Surgeon-Captain in the Monitor Corps, while Prilicla was a civilian Senior Physician at Sector General. His irritation was making the empath’s whole body tremble and causing its hovering flight to become less stable. He suddenly realized that he was attacking a being with a weapon, his feelings, against which it had no defense.

Even the pathologically warlike Cromsaggar would scorn to attack such a weak and defenseless enemy.

Lioren’s irritation quickly changed to shame. This was a time to forget the feelings of justified pride in his high rank and in the many professional accomplishments that had earned it. Instead he should try, as he had often done in the past, to make the most effective use of the abilities of a subordinate whose feelings were easily hurt, and to control his emotions.

“Thank you, friend Lioren, for the mental self-discipline you have just displayed,” Prilicla said before he could speak. It settled like a feather onto the top of the examination table, no longer trembling, and added, “But I detect strong background emotional radiation that you are finding more difficult to control and that, I feel sure, concerns the Cromsaggar. My own feelings of concern over the situation here are strong, perhaps as strong as yours, and shared feelings about other persons or situations cause me lesser discomfort. So if there is some way that I can help you please do not hesitate to speak.”

Lioren felt renewed irritation at being given permission to discuss the Cromsaggar when his only purpose in coming here had been to do so, but the feeling was faint and transient. As he began to speak, the Surgeon-Captain knew that he was briefly verbalizing his latest report, copied to his Monitor Corps superiors and to Prilicla itself, that Rhabwar would be carrying back to Thornnastor, but it was necessary that the empath be acquainted with the current position if it was to understand the importance of the later questions.

He described the continually expanding search that had brought back data fit only for industrial archeologists. There were no recent life signs. Many of the abandoned cities and mining and manufacturing complexes in the north and south temperate regions were many centuries old, and so well con- structed that only a moderate effort would be required to restore them because the mineral wealth of the planet was far from exhausted. But the effort had not been made because the race’s energies had been directed into fighting, so much so that many of them no longer grew food or had the strength to forage for that which grew wild, and the population had contracted into one region so that they could continue fighting without having to travel far to do so.

“When we stopped the war,” Lioren went on, “or rather, when our sleep bombs halted the hundreds of small gang and two-person conflicts, there was an estimated surviving population of just under ten thousand entities, a number which included all the adults, their young, and a few newly born infants. But recently they have begun dying at the rate of about one hundred every day.”

Prilicla had begun to tremble again. Lioren was unsure whether it was in response to his emotional radiation or its own reaction to the news of the increasing number of fatalities. He tried to make his mind as well as his voice calm and clinical as he continued.

“In spite of our supporting them with shelters, clothing, and synthetic nutrient, even going so far as to gather supplies of local food that they were too weak to harvest for themselves, the deaths continue. Adult fatalities are invariably due to the plague, sometimes expedited by the debilitating effect of war injuries, and the children succumb to other diseases for which we have no specifics as yet. The Cromsaggar accept our help and our food, but only their young appear grateful for it. They show no interest in what we are trying to do for them. I feel that the adults tolerate us as an additional and unwelcome burden that they can do nothing about. My own feeling is that they are disinterested in their own survival and want to be left alone to commit racial suicide in the bloodiest fashion possible, and there are times when I feel that such a warlike and individually violent race should not be restrained from doing so. I do not know what they themselves feel, about anything.”

“And you would like me to use my empathic faculty,” Prilicla asked, “to tell you what they feel?”

“Yes,” Lioren said, with so much feeling that the Cinrusskin trembled for a moment. “I hoped that you, Doctor, might have detected urges, instincts, feelings about themselves, their off- spring, or their present situation. My ignorance regarding their thinking and motivations is total. I would like to be able to do or say something to them that, as with an emotionally disturbed entity about to jump from a high building, would make them want to live instead of die. What is it that they fear, or need, that would make them want to survive?”

“Friend Lioren,” Prilicla said without hesitation, “they fear death, like every other self-aware creature, and they want to survive. There were no indications, even in the most serious cases, of a wish for individual death or racial self-destruction, and they should not be—”

“I am sorry,” Lioren broke in. “My earlier remark about allowing them to commit racial suicide—”

“They were words spoken because of helplessness and frustration, friend Lioren,” Prilicla said, in the gentlest of interruptions, “that were completely contradicted by your underlying emotional radiation at the time. There was no need for an apology then or for your embarrassment now.

“And I had been about to say,” it v/ent on, “that the Crom-saggar should not be criticized for their lack of cooperation, and the strong feelings of ingratitude until we know why they feel so ungrateful. These feelings were strongly present in all of the adult patients I monitored during transportation to Sector General and while I was present at the subsequent attempts to question them. They know we are trying to help them, but will not help us with clinical or personal information about themselves. When the interrogation was intensified they became agitated and fearful, and a marked if temporary remission of symptoms was observed at these times.”

“I have made the same observation,” Lioren said, “and assumed that it was the transfer of focus from a material condition to an immaterial one, the psychological mechanism which can sometimes make faith healing effective. I did not consider it an important datum.”

“You are probably correct,” Prilicla said. “But Chief Psychologist O’Mara is of the opinion that the marked remission due to the fear stimulus, combined with their fanatical refusal to communicate with us beyond the exchange of a few words, indicates the presence of an extremely strong and deep-rooted conditioning about which the Cromsaggar, as individuals, may be unaware. Friend O’Mara likens it to the racial group psycho- ses afflicting the Gogleskans, and says that it is trying to probe a very sensitive area that is surrounded by a very thick wall of mental scar tissue, and advises everyone concerned to proceed slowly and carefully.”

The Gogleskan psychosis forced them into avoiding direct physical contact with each other for the greater part of their adult lives, which was certainly not the problem with the Cromsaggar. Trying to control his feelings of impatience, Lioren said, “If we do not quickly find a cure for this plague, your Chief Psychologist will run out of subjects for his slow and careful investigation. What progress has been made since your last visit?”

“Friend Lioren,” Prilicla said gently, “significant progress has been made. However, I sense and wholly agree with your need to avoid wasting time, so I suggest that Pathologist Mur-chison makes its report to you in person rather than having it relayed through myself, since you will doubtless have questions and I, because of my selfish need to surround myself with pleasant emotional radiation, have the unfortunate habit of accentuating the positive aspects of any situation.”

Lioren’s original reason for wanting a private meeting with Prilicla no longer seemed valid, and he could not reject the other’s suggestion without seriously embarrassing both himself and the empath. He had the feeling, which was no doubt shared by the empath, that somehow he had lost the initiative.

Pathologist Murchison was a warm-blooded oxygen-breather of physiological classification DBDG with a body that, although considerably shorter and less massive than Lioren’s own, had the soft, lumpy and top-heavy aspect of many of the Earth-human females. It was Thornnastor’s principal assistant, when not required for special ambulance-ship duty, and its words were clear and concise and its manner respectful without being subservient. It also had the slightly irritating habit of answering questions before Lioren could ask them.

The identification, isolation, and neutralization of other-species pathogens, Pathologist Murchison said, was a routine procedure for Thornnastor’s department, but the behavioral characteristics of the Cromsaggar virus — its mechanisms of transmission, infection, incubation, and propagation — remained undetectable to all of the normal investigative techniques. It was only in recent days, when the discovery had been made that the virus was either inherited at conception or transmitted by the mother prior to birth, that some progress had been made.

“The effects on the adult Cromsaggar are known to you,” Murchison went on, “and the present indications are that every member of the species is infected. In the preterminal stage there is a livid rash and skin eruptions covering most of the body, accompanied by progressive and massive debilitation and lassitude which is sometimes overcome, temporarily, by strong emotional stimuli such as fear and danger. The effects on the children are less apparent and this led to the initial assumption that the young were immune, which they are not.

“We have since discovered,” it continued, “that severe debility and lassitude are also present in the young, although it is difficult to be precise since we have no idea of how active a young, noninfected Cromsaggar should be. And, incredible though it might seem, neither can we be precise about the ages of these child patients. There is physiological and verbal evidence which suggests that many of them are not nearly as young as they appear, and that our age estimates should be extended by a factor of two or three because, in addition to its general debilitating effect, the plague retards the overall physiological development and greatly delays the onset of puberty. Probably there are psychological effects, as well, which might explain their grossly antisocial adult behavior, but again, this must remain speculative since you have yet to find a normal, disease-free Cromsaggar.”

“I doubt whether such an entity exists,” Lioren said. “But you spoke of having verbal as well as physiological evidence. These people absolutely refuse to give information about themselves. How was it obtained?”

“A large proportion of the cases you sent us were young or, as we now know, not yet physically mature,” Murchison replied. “The adult patients remain completely uncooperative, but O’Mara was able to open dialogue with a few non-adults, who were much less reticent about themselves. Because of this immature viewpoint, adult motivations still remain unclear, and the picture of the Cromsaggar culture that is emerging is confusing and fraught with—”

“Pathologist Murchison,” Lioren interrupted, “my interest is in the clinical rather than the cultural picture, so please confine yourself to that. My reason for asking Rhabwar to transfer so many young or not so young patients to the hospital was that they were among the large numbers left parentless or without adults to care for them. As well as suffering from undernourishment or exposure, conditions which are treatable, they displayed symptoms of respiratory distress associated with elevated temperature, or a wasting disease affecting the peripheral vascular and nervous systems. If Thornnastor’s investigation into the plague is showing no results, what of these other and, I would think, clinically less complex conditions which seem to affect only the young?”

“Surgeon-Captain Lioren,” the pathologist said, using Lioren’s name and rank for the first time, “I did not say that no progress is being made.

“All of the non-adult cases are being investigated and significant progress is being made,” it went on quickly. “In one of them, the condition presenting respiratory distress symptoms, there has been a minor but positive response to treatment. But the main effort is being directed toward finding a specific for the adult condition, because it has become evident that if the massive debilitation and growth-retarding effects of the plague were removed, the diseases currently afflicting the pre-adult Cromsaggar would be countered by their bodies’ natural defense mechanisms and would no longer be life-threatening.”

If that much was known, Lioren thought, then progress was indeed being made.

“The trials conducted so far,” Murchison continued, “have been inconclusive. Initially the medication was introduced in trace quantities and the patients’ condition monitored routinely for fifty standard hours before the dosage was increased, until on the ninth day, within a few moments of the injection being given, both patients lost consciousness.”

It paused for a moment to look at Prilicla then, seeming to receive a signal undetectable by Lioren, resumed. “Both patients were placed in isolation some distance from the others and each other. This was done so as to minimize same-species interference in their emotional radiation. Doctor Prilicla reported that the level of unconsciousness was extraordinarily deep, but that there was no sign of the subconscious distress that would have been present had they been drifting into termination. It suggested that the unconsciousness might be recuperative since it had many of the characteristics of sleep following a lengthy period of physical stress and that nutrient should be given intravenously. A few days after this was done there was a minor remission of symptoms in both cases, and evidence of slight tissue regeneration, although both patients remained deeply unconscious and in a critical condition.”

“Surely that means—!” Lioren began, and broke off as Mur-chison held up one hand as if it and not himself had the rank. But suddenly he was too excited to verbally tear its insubordinate head off as he should.

“It means, Surgeon-Captain,” Murchison said, “that we must proceed very carefully and, if the first two test subjects regain consciousness rather than drifting into termination, we must closely monitor their clinical and psychological condition before the trial is extended to the other patients. Diagnostician Thornnastor and everyone in its department believes, and Doctor Prilicla feels sure, that we are on the way to finding the cure. But until we are certain we must exercise patience for a time until—”

“How much time?” Lioren demanded harshly.

Prilicla’s fragile body was shaking as if a strong wind was blowing through the casualty deck, but Lioren could no more have controlled the emotional storm of impatience, eagerness, and excitement that raged within him than he could have flown on the empath’s fragile wings. He would apologize to Prilicla later, but now all that he could think of was the steadily dwindling number of Cromsaggar who still clung to life on this plague world, and who might now have a chance to remain alive. More quietly, he asked, “How long must I wait?”

“I don’t know, sir,” the pathologist said. “I only know that Tenelphi has been ordered to remain at flight readiness at Sector General until the medication has been approved for general use, so as to bring you the first production batch without delay.”