“Nurse tells me that you ordered the voice recorders switched off,” it said before Lioren could speak, “and the earlier conversations with the patient to be erased. You exceeded your authority, Lioren, which is a bad habit of yours that I thought you had given up after the Cromsag business. But you have spoken with the patient at greater length than all of the medical staff combined since its arrival. What did it say to you?”
Lioren was silent for a moment, then he said, “I cannot tell you exactly. Much of the information is personal and I have not yet decided what can and cannot be divulged.”
Seldal gave a loud, incredulous cheep. “This patient must have given you information that will help me in its treatment. I cannot order a member of your department to reveal psychosen-sitive information about another entity, but I can request O’Mara to order you to do so.”
“Senior Physician,” Lioren said, “whether it was the Chief Psychologist or any other authority my response would have to be the same.”
The Hudlar nurse had moved away so as to absent itself and avoid embarrassing its department head by overhearing an argument that entity was losing.
“May I assume that I still have your permission to continue visiting the patient?” Lioren asked quietly. “It is possible that I might be able to obtain information arrived at by observation and deduction and the detection of facts, material of nonper-sonal nature about itself or its species which would assist you. But great care is needed if it is not to take offense, because it places great importance on the contents of its mind and the words used to reveal it.”
Seldal’s feathers were again lying like a bright and unruffled carpet around its body. “You have my permission to continue visiting. And now I presume you have no objection to me talking to my own patient?”
“If you tell it that the speech recorders will remain switched off,” Lioren said, “it might talk to you.”
As Seldal departed the Hudlar nurse returned to its position on the monitors. Quietly, it said, “With respect, Lioren, the Hudlar organ of hearing is extremely sensitive and cannot be turned off other than by swathing it in a bulky muffling device, the need for which was not foreseen in this ward and so it was not available to me.”
“Did you hear everything?” Lioren asked, feeling a sudden anger that the patient’s confidence had been breached and that Seldal, from whom he had been keeping the conversation a secret, would shortly be able to hear it all on the hospital grapevine. “Including the crime it is supposed to have committed prior to its arrival here?”
“I was instructed not to hear,” the Hudlar said, “so I did not hear, and cannot discuss what I did not hear with anyone other than the entity who forbade me to hear.”
“Thank you, Nurse,” Lioren said with great feeling. He stared for a moment at the other’s identification patch, which bore only the hospital staff and department symbols because Hudlars used their names only among the members of the family or those whom they proposed to mate, and memorized it so that he would know the nurse again. Then he asked, “Do you wish to discuss some aspect of that which you did not hear with me now?”
“With respect,” the Hudlar said, “I would prefer to make an observation. You appear to be gaining the patient’s confidence with remarkable speed, by speaking freely about yourself and inviting an exchange in kind.”
“Go on,” Lioren said.
“On my world and, I believe, among the majority of your own population on Tarla,” the nurse said, “it would not matter because we believe that our lives begin at birth and end with death, and we do not distinguish between the forms of wrongdoing which seem to be troubling the patient. But among the Groalterri, and in many other cultures throughout the Federation, you would be treading on dangerous philosophical ground.”
“I know,” Lioren said as he turned to leave. “This is no longer a purely medical problem, and I hope the library computer will give me some of the answers. At least I know what my first question will be.”