Theoretically the entities possessing the greater medical seniority had the right of way, but not for the first time he saw a Senior belonging to one of the smaller physiological classifications take hasty evasive action when a six-limbed Hudlarian FROB Charge Nurse with eight times the body mass and an urgent task to perform bore down on it. In such cases it was reassuring to see that the instinct for survival took precedence over rank, although the ensuing contact was verbally rather than physically violent.
With Lioren, however, there was no problem. His trainee’s armband indicated that he had no rank at all and should get out of everyone’s way.
Two crablike Melfan ELNTs and a chlorine-breathing Illen san PVSJ chittered and hissed their displeasure at him as he dodged between them at an intersection; then he jumped aside as a multiply absentminded Tralthan Diagnostician lumbered heavily toward him, and in so doing accidentally jostled a tiny, red-furred Nidian intern, who barked in reproof.
Even though their physiological classifications varied enormously, the majority of the staff were warm-blooded oxygen-breathers like himself. A much greater hazard to navigation were the entities traversing what was to them a foreign level in protective armor. The local protection needed by a TLTU doctor, who breathed superheated steam and whose pressure and gravity requirements were many times greater than the environment of the oxygen levels, was a great, clanking juggernaut which had to be avoided at all costs.
In the PVSJ transfer lock he donned a lightweight envelope and let himself into the yellow, foggy world of the chlorine-breathers. There the corridors were less crowded, and it was the spiny, membranous, and unadorned denizens of Illensa who were in the majority while the Tralthans, Kelgians, and a single Tarlan, himself, wore or in some cases drove protective armor.
The greatly reduced volume of pedestrian traffic gave Lioren a chance to think again about his strangely imprecise assignment, his department, and the work that he had been sentenced to perform.
Even if he was able to prove that O’Mara’s suspicions were unfounded, investigating Seldal would be a unique experience for him. He would take the case very seriously indeed, regardless of its probable minor nature, and if his observations showed that Seldal really had a problem . . .
Lioren raised his four eyes briefly to offer up a prayer to his light-years-distant God of Tarla, in whose existence he no longer believed, pleading for guidance as to what was or was not abnormal behavior in one of the highly intelligent, three-legged, nonflying birdlike natives of Nallaji. He lowered his eyes in time to flatten himself against the wall as the mobile refrigerated pressure envelope belonging to an ultra-low-temperature SNLU rolled silently toward him from a side corridor. Irritated at his momentary lapse of attention, Lioren resumed his journey.
Until now the only abnormal and dangerous behavior he had identified, and it was a type all too prevalent in the hospital, was careless driving.
Chapter 8
LIOREN moved along the Melfan surgical ward at a pace which suggested that he knew where he was going and what he intended doing when he got there. The Illensan Charge Nurse on duty looked up from its desk, stirred restively within its protective envelope, but otherwise ignored him, and the other nurses were too busy attending to the post-op ELNTs even to notice his passing. But as he walked between the double line of padded support frames which were the Melfan equivalent of surgical beds it became clear that Senior Physician Seldal, in spite of its name appearing on the ward’s staff-on-duty board, was not present. Neither was Student Nurse Tarsedth.
Among the Illensan, Kelgian, and Tralthan nurses working all around him a Nallajim would have been hard to miss, which meant that it must still be in the operating theater adjoining the ward. Lioren climbed the ascending ramp to the observation gallery—a large number of the medical staff were physiologically incapable of mounting stairs—and saw that he had guessed right. He also discovered that there were two other observers in the gallery. As he had hoped and half expected, one of them was Tarsedth, the Kelgian DBLF who had spoken to him during his first visit to the dining hall several days earlier.
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