White, James – Sector General 07 – Code Blue Emergency

Driven by Naydrad and with Danalta and Wainright flanking it, the litter was

already moving off. But Pathologist Murchison was hanging back, its face deep

pink and wearing an expression that Cha Thrat could now read and understand.

“Don’t be too hard on it, Prilicla,” Murchison said. “1 think it did a very good

job, even if it is inclined to forget who’s in charge at times. I mean, well,

let’s just say that with Cha Thrat, Maintenance Department’s gain was the

medical staff’s loss.”

As Murchison turned abruptly to hurry after the litter, Cha Thrat watched it

from three different and confusing viewpoints and with three sets of very mixed

feelings. To her Sommaradvan mind it was a small, flabby, and unlovely DBDG

female. To the Gogleskan mind it was just another off-planet monster, friendly

but frightening. But from her Earth-human viewpoint it was an altogether

different entity, one that for many years she had knownto be highly intelligent,

second only to Thornnastor in its professional standing, friendly, sympathetic,

fair-minded, beautiful, and sexually desirable. Some of these aspects of its

personality had just been demonstrated, but the sudden physical attraction Cha

Thrat felt toward it, and the associated mind-pictures of horrible alien

grapplings and intimacies, frightened her so badly that the Gogleskan part of

her mind wanted to call for a joining.

Murchison was a female Earth-human and Cha Thrat was a female Sommaradvan. She

had to stop feeling this stupid attraction toward a member of another species

who was not even male, because in that direction lay certain madness. She

remembered the discussion about Educator tapes with the wizard, O’Mara, and her

own experience of sharing her mind with those of Kelgians, Tralthans, Melfans

among others.

But that was not her experience, she reminded herself firmly. She was and would

remain Cha Thrat. The Gogleskan and Earth-human who seemed to be occupying her

mind were guests, one of them a particularly troublesome guest where thoughts of

the entity Murchison were concerned, but they should not be allowed to influence

her personal feelings. It was ridiculous to think, or feel, otherwise.

When the disturbing figure of Murchison had disappeared into the middle distance

and Cha Thrat was feeling more like herself than two other people, she said,

“And now, I suppose, comes the pinning back of the ears of a big-headed and

grossly insubordinate technician with delusions of medical grandeur?”

Prilicla had alighted on the roof above Khone’s doorway so that its eyes would

be on a level with Cha Thrat’s. It said gently, “Your emotional control is

excel-lent, friend Cha. I compliment you on you But your supposition is wrong.

However, your obvious understanding of the Earth-human terms you have just used,

and your earlier behavior during a very tricky clinical situation, leads me to

speculate about what might possibly have happened toyou.

“I am merely thinking aloud, you understand,” it went on. “You are not required,

in fact you are expressly forbidden to say whether my speculations are accurate

or not. In this matter I would prefer to remain officiallyignorant.”

It was evident from the first few words that the empath knew exactly what had

happened to Cha Thrat, even though its certainties were mentioned as suspicions.

It suspected that Cha Thrat had shared minds with Rhone, that the Gogleskan’s

mind had previously been shared with that of Conway, and it was the

Diagnostician’s medical expertise and initiative that had surfaced before and

during the birth of Khone’s child. For this reason the Cinrusskin was not

offended by the incident —a Senior Physician was far outranked by a

Diagnostician, even one who was temporarily in residence within the mind of a

subordinate’. And neither would the other team members feel offended if they

were to suspect thetruth.

But they must not suspect, at least until Cha Thrat was safely lost in the

maintenance tunnels of Sector General.

“From your recent emotional radiation,” Prilicla went on, “I suspect that you

had strong if confused feelings of a sexual nature toward friend Murchison that

were not pleasant for your Sommaradvan self. But consider the intensity of

Murchison’s embarrassment if it suspected that you, an entity of a completely

different physiologi-cal classification forced by circumstances to work in close