Conway was to remember that conversation several weeks later at the hospital when the living and dead specimens and film had been examined, dissected, and viewed so often that the leech-like Drambons undulated through his every dream.
O’Mara was not pleased. He was, in fact, extremely displeased-with himself, which made things much worse for the people around him.
“We have examined the Drambon medics singly and together, friend Conway,” said Prilicla in a vain attempt to render the emotional atmosphere in the room a little more pleasant. “There is no evidence that they communicate verbally, visually, tactually, telepathically, by smell or any other system known to us. The quality of their emotional radiation leads me to suspect that they do not communicate at all in the accepted sense. They are simply aware of other beings and objects around them and, by using their eyes and a mechanism similar to the empathic faculty which my race possesses, are able to identify friend and foe-they attacked the Drambon predators without hesitation, remember, but ignored the much more visually frightening Chalder doctor who was feeling friendship for them.
“So far as we have been able to discover,” Prilicla went on, “its emphatic faculty is highly developed and not allied to intelligence. The same applies to the second Drambon native you brought back, except that it is .
“Much smarter,” O’Mara finished sourly. “Almost as smart as a badly retarded dog. I don’t mind admitting that for a while I thought our failure to communicate may have been due to a lack of professional competence in myself. But now it is clear that you were simply wasting our time giving sophisticated tests to Drambon animals.”
“But that SRJH saved me.”
“A very highly specialized but nonintelligent animal,” said O’Mara firmly. “It protects and heals friends and kills enemies, but it does not think about it. As for the new specimen you brought in, when we exposed it to the thought-controlled tool it emoted awareness and caution-a feeling similar to our emotional radiation if we were standing close to a bare power line-but according to Prilicla it did not think at or even about the gadget.
“So I’m sorry, Conway,” he ended, “we are still looking for the species responsible for making those tools, and for intelligent local medical assistance with your own problem.”
Conway was silent for a long time, staring at the two SRJHs on O’Mara’s floor. It seemed all wrong that a creature responsible for saving his life should have done so without thought or feeling. The SRJH was simply a specialist like the other specialized animals and plants inhabiting the interior of the great strata beasts, doing the work it had evolved to do. Chemical reactions were so slow inside the strata creatures-the material was too diluted for them to be otherwise since its blood might be little more than slightly impure water-that specialized plant and animal symbiotes could produce the secretions necessary for muscle activity, endocrine balance, supplying nourishment to and removing waste material from large areas of tissue. Other specialized symbiotes handled the respiration cycle and gave vision of a kind on the surface.
“Friend Conway has an idea,” said Prilicla.
“Yes,” said Conway, “but I would like to check it by getting the dead SRJH up here. Thornnastor hasn’t done anything drastic to it yet, and if something should happen to it we can easily get another. I would like to face the two living SRJHs with a dead colleague.
“Prilicla says that they do not emote strongly about anything,” Conway added. “They reproduce by fission so there can be no sexual feeling between them. But the sight of one of their own dead should cause some kind of reaction.”
O’Mara stared hard at Conway as he said, “I can tell by the way Prilicla is trembling and by the smug look on your face that you think you have the answer. But what is likely to happen? Are these two going to heal and resuscitate it? Oh, never mind, I’ll wait and let you have your moment of medical drama. .
When the dead SRJH arrived Conway quickly slid it from the litter onto the office floor and waved O’Mara and Prilicla back. The two living SRJHs were already moving purposefully toward the cadaver. They touched it, flowed around and over it and for about ten minutes were very busy. When they had finished there was nothing left.