mission from the rescue until now. But first, are you feeling all right?”
AH that Conway could feel just then was his blood pressure rising.
“Be as objective as possible,” O’Mara added.
Conway took a deep breath and let it out agaJn slowly through his nose. “After
our very fast response to the distress signal there was a general feeling of
disappointment at the rescue of just one survivor, a survivor who was barely
alive. But you’re on the wrong track, Major. The feeling was shared by everyone
on the ship, I believe, but it was not strong enough to explain the Cinrusskin’s
hypersensitivity. Prilicla was picking up emotional radiation of distressing
intensity from crew members stationed at the other end of the ship, a distance
at which emoting would normally be barely detectable. And I am given neither to
maudlin sentimentality nor exaggeration of symptoms. Right at this moment 1 feel
the way I usually do in this blasted office and that is—”
“Objectively, remember,” O’Mara said dryly.
“I was not trying to do your diagnostic work for you,” Conway went on, bringing
his voice back to a conversational level, “but the indications are that there is
a psychological Problem. The result, perhaps, of an as yet unidentified disease,
or organic malfunction or an imbalance in the endocrine system. But a purely
psychological reason for the condition is also a Possibility which—”
“Anything is possible. Doctor,” O’Mara broke in impatiently. “Be specific. What
are you going to do about your friend, and what exactly do you want me to do
about it?”
“Two things,” Conway said. “I want you to check on Pril-icla’s condition
yourself—”
“Which you know I will do anyway,” O’Mara said.
“—and give me the GLNO physiology tape,” he went on, “so that I can confirm or
eliminate the nonpsychological reasons for the trouble.”
For a moment O’Mara was silent. His face remained as expressionless as a lump of
basalt, but the eyes showed concern. “You’ve carried Educator tapes before now
and know what to expect. But the GLNO tape is… different. You will feel Jike a
very unhappy Cinrusskin indeed. You are no Diagnostician, Conway—at least, not
yet. Better think about it.”
The physiology tapes, Conway knew from personal experience, fell somewhere
between the categories of mixed blessing and necessary evil. While skill in e-t
surgery came with aptitude, training, and experience, no single being could hope
to hold in its brain the vast quantity of physiological data needed for the
treatment of the variety of patients encountered in a hospital like Sector
General. The incredible mass of clinical and anatomical information needed to
take care of them had therefore to be furnished, usually on a temporary basis,
by means of the Educator tapes, which were the brain recordings of the great
medical specialists belonging to the species concerned. If an Earth-human
doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient, he took one of the Kelgian physiology
tapes until treatment was completed, after which he had it erased. But for the
medic concerned, whether the tape was being carried for as long as it took to
perform an other-species operation or for a teaching project lasting several
months, the experience was not a pleasant one.
The only good thing about it from the medic’s point of view was that he was much
better off than one of the Diagnosticians.
They were the hospital’s elite. A Diagnostician was one of those rare entities
whose mind had proved itself stable enough to retain up to ten physiology tapes
simultaneously. To their data-crammed minds was given the work of original
research in xenological medicine and the diagnosis and treatment of
disease and injury in hitherto unknown life-forms. There was a saying current in
the hospital, reputed to have originated with O’Mara himself, that anyone sane
enough to be a Diagnostician was mad.
For it was not only physiological data which the tapes imparted; the complete
memory and personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was
impressed on the receiving mind as well. In effect, a Diagnostician subjected
himself or itself voluntarily to a form of multiple schizophrenia, with the
alien personalities sharing its mind so utterly different that in many cases