White, James – Sector General 11 – Mind Changer

He said, “It is a sound they make when the think another person is beautiful.”

“Oh, that’s all right then,” said Crenneth. “Are we expected to whistle back?”

It was ten minutes later when they were entering the brightly painted and completed section containing the Kelgian living quarters that Crenneth spoke again. It said, “For your information we are not, at our ages, subject to involuntary incontinence, if that is what you were suggesting back there. I did not allow any of my people to correct you because your situation at the time seemed uncertain and an interruption might not have been helpful. But there is a question I wanted to ask earlier.”

“Ask it now,” said O’Mara.

“Why are you, a Healer of the Mind, showing us the way to our accommodation,” it said, “rather than a person of lesser professional rank? Are you curious about a species you are meeting for the first time? Or do you have professional reasons for observing our behavior?”

For a moment he wondered how the ultra-polite Craythorne would have responded to questions like that. But he wasn’t the major and he would feel more comfortable if he started out the way he intended to proceed or, if he messed up, how he would very shortly finish. Besides, the library material had stated several times that politeness, like tact or telling lies, was a concept that Kelgians did not understand and they found its use both confusing and irritating.

“Yes to both questions,” said O’Mara. “You are among the first of the other-species medical staff to arrive here. I wanted to make your acquaintance as soon as possible since in the future I may, or may not, be called on to treat you in my professional capacity, or possibly to have some of you expelled from the hospital as psychologically unsuitable for service here. You will appreciate that my first impressions of your behavior could be important.”

Crenneth remained silent while its agitated fur told everyone but O’Mara what exactly it was feeling. It could not tell a lie, but there was nothing to stop its exercising the option of silence.

From somewhere among the group following them a voice said, “It thinks we’re all mad.” Another said, “After the higher nursing examinations and psychological fitness tests we had to take before we were even allowed to volunteer for this place, I think it’s right.”

They did not understand politeness, diplomacy, or the many other ways Earth-humans had of hiding the fact that they were lying, O’Mara thought, but surely it must be possible to ease the exact and perhaps frightening truth with an honest compliment.

He looked at Crenneth and raised his voice so that everyone else would hear him as he said, “From an objective viewpoint, you are all mad. However, an unusually high degree of dedication, unselfishness, and the placing of the health and future welfare of others before your own individual happiness are allowable neuroses. In fact, the fabric of galactic civilization is based on them.”

“But.”

They had reached the entrances to their quarters but it seemed that none of them wanted to go inside. Instead they stood around him, watching and listening while their fur did things that were incomprehensible to him, at least for the present.

Very seriously, he said, “You are all filled with enthusiasm and dedication and the noblest qualities of your profession, but that may not be enough. When this hospital goes into full operation there will be upward of sixty different life-forms, with sixty different sets of species’ behavioral characteristics, body odors, and ways of looking at life, on the medical and maintenance staff. Living space will be at a premium, so you will be working, eating, and, on our communal recreation level, playing together. A very high degree of species adaptability on the social level will be required.

Undoubtedly some of you will encounter serious psychological problems,” he went on, “whether you think so right now or not. Given even the highest qualities of mutual respect and tolerance you hold for your colleagues on the staff, there will still be occasions when inter-species friction occurs. Potentially dangerous situations will arise, through ignorance or misunderstanding, or, more seriously, a being could develop an unsuspected xenophobia which could affect its professional capabilities, its mental stability, or both. A Melfan medic, for example, who had a subconscious fear of the furry vermin with lethal stings that are native to its planet, might not be able to bring to bear on a Kelgian patient the proper degree of clinical detachment required for its treatment. Since Melfans are a six-limbed, exoskeletal species, some of you might feel the same way about them.”