But the itching started inside his ear again, worse than ever before. He barely noticed the geysers of mud and water flung up by the dinosaur as it threshed its way out of the shallows and onto the bank. The gnawing, unlocalized itch built up remorselessly until with a sudden yell of fright he slapped at the side of his head and began poking frantically at his ear. The action brought immediate and blessed relief, but…
“I cannot work if you fidget,” said Arretapec, the rapidity of the words the only indication of their emotional content. “You will therefore leave me at once.
“I wasn’t fidgeting,” Conway protested angrily. “My ear itched and
I-”
“An itch, especially one capable of making you move as this one has done, is a symptom of a physical disorder which should be treated,” the VUXG interrupted. “Or it is caused by a parasitic or symbiotic life-form dwelling, perhaps unknown to you, on your body.
“Now, I expressly stated that my assistant should be in perfect physical health and not a member of a species who either consciously or unconsciously harbored parasites-a type, you must understand, which are particularly prone to fidget-so that you can understand my displeasure. Had it not been for your sudden movement I might have accomplished something, therefore go.
“Why you supercilious-”
The dinosaur chose that moment to stagger into the shallow water again, lose its footing and come the great grand-daddy of all bellyflops. Falling mud and spray drenched Conway and a small tidal wave surged over his feet. The distraction was enough to make him pause, and the pause gave him time to realize that he had not been personally insulted. There were many intelligent species who harbored parasites-some of them actually necessary to the health of the host body, so that in their case the slang expression being lousy also meant being in tiptop condition. Maybe Arretapec had meant to be insulting, but he could not be sure. And the VUXG was, after all, a very important person…
“What exactly might you have accomplished?” Conway asked sarcastically. He was still angry, but had decided to fight on the professional rather than the personal level. Besides, he knew that the Translator would take the insulting edge off his words. “What are you trying to accomplish, and how do you expect to do it merely by-from what I can see, anyway-just looking at the patient?”
“I cannot tell you,” Arretapec replied after a few seconds. “My purpose is.. . is vast. It is for the future. You would not understand.”
“How do you know? If you told me what you were doing maybe I could help.”
“You cannot help.”
“Look,” said Conway exasperated, “you haven’t even tried to use the full facilities of the hospital yet. No matter what you are trying to do for your patient, the first step should have been a thorough examination- immobilization, followed by X rays, biopsies, the lot. This would have given you valuable physiological data upon which to work-”
“To state the matter simply,” Arretapec broke in, “you are saying that in order to understand a complicated organism or mechanism, one must first be broken down into its component parts that they might be understood individually. My race does not believe that an object must be destroyed-even in part-before it can be understood. Your crude methods of investigation are therefore worthless to me. I suggest that you leave.”
Seething, Conway left.
His first impulse was to storm into O’Mara’s office and tell the Chief Psychologist to find somebody else to run errands for the VUXG. But O’Mara had told him that his present assignment was important, and O’Mara would have unkind things to say if he thought that Conway was throwing his hand in simply out of pique because his curiosity had not been satisfied or his pride hurt. There were lots of doctors-the assistants to Diagnosticians, particularly-who were not allowed to touch their superior’s patients, or was it just that Conway resented a being like Arretapec being his superior…?
If Conway went to O’Mara in his present frame of mind there was real danger of the psychologist deciding that he was temperamentally unsuited for his position. Quite apart from the prestige attached to a post at Sector General, the work performed in it was both stimulating and very much worthwhile. Should O’Mara decide that he was unfit to remain here and pack him off to some planetary hospital, it would be the greatest tragedy of Conway’s life.