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.