In Conway’s pleasurable but busy life with the high unusual establishment that was Sector General there was only one sour note, and he met it again when he entered the Educator room: there was a Monitor in charge. Conway disliked Monitors. The presence of one affected him rather like the close proximity of a carrier of a contagious disease. And while Conway was proud of the fact that as a sane, civilized and ethical being he could never bring himself actually to hate anybody or anything, he disliked Monitors intensely. He knew, of course, that there were people who went off the beam sometimes, and that there had to be somebody who could take the action necessary to preserve the peace. But with his abhorrence of violence in any form, Conway could not like the men who took that action.
And what were Monitors doing in a hospital anyway?
The figure in neat, dark green coveralls seated before the Educator control console turned quickly at his entrance and Conway got another shock. As well as a Major’s insignia on his shoulder, the Monitor wore the Staff and Serpents emblem of a Doctor!
“My name is O’Mara,” said the Major in a pleasant voice. “I’m the Chief Psychologist of this madhouse. You, I take it, are Dr. Conway.” He smiled.
Conway made himself smile in return, knowing that it looked forced, and that the other knew it also.
“You want the Telfi tape,” O’Mara said, a trifle less warmly. “Well, Doctor, you’ve picked a real weirdie this time. Be sure you get it erased as soon as possible after the job is done-believe me, this isn’t one you’ll want to keep. Thumb-print this and sit over there.”
While the Educator head-band and electrodes were being fitted, Conway tried to keep his face neutral, and keep from flinching away from the Major’s hard, capable hands. O’Mara’s hair was a dull, metallic gray in color, cut short, and his eyes also had the piercing qualities of metal. Those eyes had observed his reactions, Conway knew, and now an equally sharp mind was forming conclusions regarding them.
“Well, that’s it,” said O’Mara when finally it was all over. “But before you go, Doctor, I think you and I should have a little chat; a re-orientation talk, let’s call it. Not now, though, you’ve got a case-but very soon.
Conway felt the eyes boring into his back as he left.
He should have been trying to make his mind a blank as he had been told to do, so the knowledge newly impressed there could bed down comfortably, but all Conway could think about was the fact that a Monitor was a high member of the hospital’s permanent staff-and a doctor, to boot. How could the two professions mix? Conway thought of the armband he wore which bore the Tralthan Black and Red Circle, the Flaming Sun of the chlorine-breathing Illensa and intertwining Serpents and Staff of Earth-all the honored symbols of Medicine of the three chief races of the Galactic Union. And here was this Dr. O’Mara whose collar said he was a healer and whose shoulder tabs said he was something else entirely.
One thing was now sure: Conway would never feel really content here again until he discovered why the Chief Psychologist of the hospital was a Monitor.
II
This was Conway’s first experience of an alien physiology tape, and he noted with interest the mental double vision which had increasingly begun to affect his mind-a sure sign that the tape had “taken.” By the time he had reached the Radiation Theater, he felt himself to be two people-an Earth-human called Conway and the great, five-hundred unit Telfi gestalt which had been formed to prepare a mental record of all that was known regarding the physiology of that race. That was the only disadvantage-if it was a disadvantage-of the Educator Tape system. Not only was knowledge impressed on the mind undergoing “tuition,” the personalities of the entities who had possessed that knowledge was transferred as well. Small wonder then that the Diagnosticians, who held in their mind sometimes as many as ten different tapes, were a little bit queer.
A Diagnostician had the most important job in the hospital, Conway thought, as he donned radiation armor and readied his patients for the preliminary examination. He had sometimes thought in his more self-confident moments of becoming one himself. Their chief purpose was to perform original work in xenological medicine and surgery, using their tape-stuffed brains as a jumping-off ground, and to rally round, when a case arrived for which there was no physiology tape available, to diagnose and prescribe treatment.