He had started quietly, but when he ended he was close to shouting. I won’t make any such distinction between casualties and neither
will my staff! This is a hospital, damn you! Well isn’t it?”
“Take it easy, son. It’s still a hospital,” said O’Mara gently.
“It is also,” Dermod snapped, “a military base!”
“What I don’t understand,” O’Mara put in quickly, trying desperately to pour on the oil, “is why the hell they don’t finish us with atomic warheads. . .
Another hit, more distant this time, sent its tinny echoes through the room.
“The reason they don’t finish us off with an atomic bomb, Major,” he replied, with his eyes still locked with Con way’s, “is because they must make a conquest. The political forces involved demand it. The Empire must take and occupy this outpost of the hated enemy, the Emperor’s general must have a triumph and not a pyrrhic victory, and subjugating the enemy and capturing his territory, no matter how few or how little, can be made to look like a triumph to the citizens of the Empire.
“Our own casualties are heavy,” Dermod went on coldly. “A space battle being what it is only ten percent of the casualties survive to be hospitalized and we are fortunate both in having medical facilities immediately available and in occupying a strong defensive position. The number of enemy casualties is much higher than ours, my estimate would be twenty to one, so that if they were to knock us out with an atomic missile now, when they could have done the same thing at the very beginning without losing a man, some very awkward questions will be asked within the Empire. If the Emperor can’t answer them he might find that the war, and all the fine, martial fervor he has built up, will backfire on him…”
“Why don’t you communicate with them?” Conway interrupted harshly. “Tell them the truth about us, and tell them about the wounded here. You surely don’t expect to win this battle now. Why don’t we surrender.
“We cannot communicate with them, Doctor,” the commander said bitingly, “because they won’t listen to us. Or if they do listen they don’t believe what we say. They know, or think they know, what we did on Etla and what we are supposed to be doing here. Telling them that we were really helping the Etlan natives and that we have been forced to defend our hospital is no good. A series of plagues swept Etla soon after we left and this establishment no longer behaves, outwardly, that is, like a hospital. What we say to them has no importance, it is what we do that counts. And we are doing exactly what their Emperor has lead them to expect of us.
“If they were really thinking,” he continued savagely, “they would wonder at the large number of our e-ts who are helping us. According to them our e-ts are downtrodden, subject races who are little more than slaves. The volunteers who have come out to help us do not fight like slaves, but at the present stage that is too subtle a thing to make any impression. They are thinking emotionally instead of logically…
“And I’m thinking emotionally, too!” Conway broke in sharply. “I’m thinking of my patients. The wards are full. They are lying in odd corners and along corridors all over the place, with inadequate protection against pressure loss . .
“You’ve lost the ability to think about anything but your patients, Doctor!” Dermod snapped back. “It might surprise you to know that I think about them, too, but I try not to be so maudlin about it. If I did think that way I would begin to feel angry, begin to hate the enemy. Before I knew it I would want revenge..
Another hit rang like a loud, discordant gong through the hospital. The commander raised his voice, and kept on raising it.
You must know that the Monitor Corps is the police force for most of the inhabited Galaxy, and keeping the peace within the Federation calls for the constant application of the psychological and social sciences. In short, guiding and molding opinion both on the individual and planetary population levels. So the situation we have here, a gallant band of Corpsmen and doctors holding out against the savage, unceasing attacks of an overwhelmingly superior enemy, is one I could use. Even so it would take the Federation a long time to become angry enough to mobilize for war, far too long to do us personally any good, but think how we would be avenged, Doctor…