itself. It is the hospital’s Diagnostician-in-Charge of Surgery, and it will be
lecturing and demonstrating its new FROB major operative techniques here this
afternoon.
“I shall be required to observe the operation,” it went on. “But we will need
surgeons so badly and in such large numbers that you would only have to express
an interest in the project, not actually join it, to be invited to attend. It
would be reassuring to have someone beside me who is almost as ignorant as I
am.”
“Other-species surgery,” Cha Thrat said, “is my principal interest. But I’ve
only just arrived in the ward. Would the Charge Nurse release me from duty so
soon?”
“Of course,” the FROB said as they were moving to the next patient. “Just so
long as you do nothing to antagonize it.”
“I won’t,” she said, then added, “at least, not deliberately.”
There was no muffler around the third patient’s speaking membrane, and a few
minutes before their arrival it had been having an animated conversation about
its grandchildren with a patient across the ward. Cha Thrat spoke the ritual
greeting used by the healers on Sommaradva and, it seemed, by every medic in the
hospital.
“How are you feeling today?”
“Well, thank you, Nurse,” the patient replied, as she knew it would.
Plainly the being was anything but well. Although it was mentally alert and the
degenerative process had notyet advanced to the stage where the pain-killing
medication had no effect, the mere sight of the surface condition of the body
and tentacles made her itch. But, like so many of the other patients she had
treated, this one would not dream of suggesting that her ability was somehow
lacking by saying that it was not well.
“When you’ve absorbed some more food,” she said while her partner was busy with
its sponge, “you will feel even better.”
Fractionally better, she added silently. “I haven’t seen you before, Nurse,” the
patient went on. “You’re new, aren’t you? I think you have a most interesting
and visually pleasing shape.”
“The last time that was said to me,” Cha Thrat said as she turned on the spray,
“it was by an overardent young Sommaradvan of the opposite sex.”
Untranslatable sounds came from the patient’s speaking membrane and the great,
disease-wasted body began twitching in its cradle. Then it said, “Your sexual
integrity is quite safe with me, Nurse. Regrettably, I am too old and infirm for
it to be otherwise.”
A Sommaradvan memory came back to her, of seriously wounded and immobilized
warrior-patients of her own species trying to flirt with her during surgical
rounds, and she did not know whether to laugh or cry.
“Thank you,” she said. “But I may need further reassurance in this matter when
you become convalescent …”
It was the same with the other patients. The Hudlar nurse said very little while
the patients and Cha Thrat did all the talking. She was new to the ward, a
member of a species from a world about which they knew nothing, and a subject,
therefore, of the most intense but polite curiosity. They did not want to
discuss themselves or their distressing physical conditions, they wanted to
talkabout Cha Thrat and Sommaradva, and she was pleased to satisfy their
curiosity—at least about the more pleasant aspects of her life there.
The constant talking helped her to forget her growing fatigue and the fact that,
in spite of the gravity compensators reducing the weight of the heavy nutrient
tank to zero, the harness straps were making a painful and possibly permanent
impression on her upper thorax. Then suddenly there were only three patients
left to sponge and feed, and Segroth had materialized behind them.
“If you work as well as you talk, Cha Thrat,” the Charge Nurse said, “I shall
have no complaints.” To the Hudlar, it added, “How is it doing, Nurse?”
“It assists me very well, Charge Nurse,” the FROB trainee replied, “and without
complaint. It is pleasant and at ease with the patients.”
“Good, good,” Segroth said, its fur rippling in approval. “But Cha Thrat belongs
to another one of those species that require food at least three times a day if