To Prilicla he added, “Keep listening just in case. .
CHAPTER 4
For about twenty minutes they worked in silence, although the procedure did not require a high degree of concentration. It was rather like weeding a garden, except that everything which grew was a weed and had to be removed one plant at a time. He would peel back an affected area of skin, the OTSB’s hair-thin appendages would investigate, probe and detach the rootlets, and he would peel back another tiny segment. Conway was looking forward to the most tedious operation of his career.
Prilicla said, “I detect increasing anxiety linked with a strengthening sense of purpose. The anxiety is becoming intense…
Conway grunted. He could think of no other comment to make.
Five minutes later the Tralthan said, “We will have to slow down, Doctor. We are at a section where the roots are much deeper…
Two minutes later Conway said, “But I can see them! How deep are they now?”
“Four inches,” replied the Tralthan. “And Doctor, they are visibly lengthening as we work.”
“But that’s impossible!” Conway burst out; then, “We’ll move to another area.
He felt the sweat begin to trickle down his forehead and just beside him Prilicla’s gangling, fragile body began to quiver-but not at anything the patient was thinking. Con way’s own emotional radiation just then was not a pleasant thing, because in the new area and in the two chosen at random after that the result was the same. Roots from the flaking pieces of skin were burrowing deeper as they watched.
“Withdraw,” said Conway harshly.
For a long time nobody spoke. Prilicla was shaking as if a high wind was blowing in the ward. The Tralthan was fussing with its equipment, all four of its eyes focused on one unimportant knob. O’Mara was looking intently at Conway , also calculatingly and with a large amount of sympathy in his steady gray eyes. The sympathy was because he could recognize when a man was genuinely in a spot and the calculation was due to his trying to work out whether the trouble was Con way’s fault or not.
“What happened, Doctor?” he said gently.
Conway shook his head angrily. “I don’t know. Yesterday the patient did not respond to medication, today it won’t respond to surgery. Its reactions to anything we try to do for it are crazy, impossible! And now our attempt to relieve its condition surgically has triggered off-something-which will send those roots deep enough to penetrate vital organs in a matter of minutes if their present rate of growth is maintained, and you know what that means
“The patient’s sense of anxiety is diminishing,” Prilicla reported. “It is still engaged in purposeful thinking.”
The Tralthan joined in then. It said, “I have noticed a peculiar fact about those root-like tendrils which join the diseased flakes of skin with the body. My symbiote has extremely sensitive vision, you will understand, and it reports that the tendrils seem to be rooted at each end, so that it is impossible to tell whether the growth is attacking the body or the body is deliberately holding onto the growth.”
Conway shook his head distractedly. The case was full of mad contradictions and outright impossibilities. To begin with no patient, no matter how fouled up mentally, should be able to negate the effects of a drug powerful enough to bring about a complete cure within half an hour, and all within a few minutes. And the natural order of things was for a being with a diseased area of skin to slough it off and replace it with new tissue, not hang onto it grimly no matter what. It was a baffling, hopeless case.
Yet when the patient had arrived it had seemed a simple, straightforward case- Conway had felt more concern regarding the patient’s background than its condition, whose cure he had considered a routine matter. But somewhere along the way he had missed something, Conway was sure, and because of this sin of omission the patient would probably die during the next few hours. Maybe he had made a snap diagnosis, been too sure of himself, been criminally careless.
It was pretty horrible to lose a patient at any time, and at Sector General losing a patient was an extremely rare occurrence. But to lose one whose condition no hospital anywhere in the civilized galaxy would have considered as being serious. . . Conway swore luridly, but stopped because he hadn’t the words to describe how he felt about himself.