expect a visit from O’Mara quite soon.
“When asked if we could bring you lecture material,” it ended apologetically,
“Cresk-Sar said no.”
It did not make any difference how it was broken, she thought after they had
gone, the news was equally bad. But the sudden, raucous sound of her bedside
communicator kept her from dwelling for too long on her troubles.
It was Patient AUGL-One Sixteen who, with Charge Nurse Hredlichi’s cooperation,
was shouting into one of the Nurses’ Station communicators from the entrance to
the Chalder ward. It began by apologizing for the physiological and
environmental problems that kept it from visiting her in person, then told her
how much it was missing her visits—the Earth-human wizard O’Mara, it said,
lacked her sympathetic manner and charm—and it hoped she was recovering with no
physical or mental distress.
“Everything is fine,” she lied. It was not a good thing to burden a patient with
its medic’s troubles, even when the medic was temporarily a patient. “How are
you?”
“Very well, thank you,” the Chalder replied, sounding enthusiastic in spite of
the fact that its words were reaching her through two communicators, a
translator, and a considerable quantity of water. “O’Mara says that I can leave
and rejoin my family very soon, and can start contacting the space
administration on Chalder about my old job. I’m still young for a Chalder, you
know, and I do really feel well.”
“I’m very happy for you, One Sixteen,” Cha Thrat said, deliberately omitting its
name because others might be listening who were not entitled to use it. She was
surprised by the strength of her feelings toward the creature.
“I’ve heard the nurses talking,” the Chalder went on, “and it seems like you are
in serious trouble. I hope all goes well for you, but if not, and you have to
leave thehospital… Well, you are so far from Sommaradva out here that if you
felt like seeing another world on your way home, my people would be pleased to
have you for as long as you liked to stay. We’re pretty well advanced on
Chalderescol and your food synthesis and life-support would be no problem.
“It’s a beautiful world,” it added, “much, much nicer than the Chalder ward…”
When the Chalder eventually broke contact, she settled back into the pillows,
feeling tired but not depressed or unhappy, thinking about the ocean world of
Chalderescol. Before joining the AUGL ward she had studied the library tape on
that world with the idea of being able to talk about home to the patients, so
she was not completely unfamiliar with the planet. The thought of living there
was exciting, and she knew that, as an off-planet person entitled to call
Muromeshomon by name, its family and friends would make her welcome however long
or short her stay. But thoughts like that were uncomfortable because they
presupposed that she would be leaving the hospital.
Instead she wondered how the normally shy and gentle Chalder had been able to
prevail upon the acid-tongued Hredlichli to use the Nurses’ Station communicator
as it had done. Could it have forced cooperation by threatening to wreck the
place again? Or, more likely, had the Chalder’s call to her been supported,
perhaps even suggested, by O’Mara?That, too, was an uncomfortable thought, but
it did not keep her awake. The continuing spell of the Earth-human wizard or the
medication it had prescribed, or both, were still having their insidious effect.
During the days that followed she was visited singly and, where physiological
considerations permitted, in small groups by her classmates. Cresk-Sar came
twicebut, like all the other visitors, the tutor would not talk about medical
matters at all. Then one day O’Mara and Diagnostician Conway arrived together
and would discuss nothing else.
“Good morning, Cha Thrat, how are you feeling?” the Diagnostician began, as she
knew it would.
“Very well, thank you,” she replied, as it knew she would. After that she was
subjected to the most meticulously thorough physical examination she had ever
experienced.
“You’ve probably realized by now that all of this wasn’t strictly necessary,”
Conway said as it replaced the sheet that had been covering her body. “However,