sufficiently worried by the current state of its patients to seek a quick,
other-species opinion.
With the Cinrusskin tape and his intense concern for Prilicla confusing his
clinical view, Conway could do little more than make encouraging noises while
Gilvesh discussed a painful intestinal tract, a visually dramatic and
undoubtedly uncomfortable fungoid infection involving all eight of the
spatulate limbs, and sundry other conditions to which Illensans were heir.
While the patients were seriously ill, their conditions were not critical, and
the increased dosages of painkilling medication which Gilvesh was administering
against its better judgment .seemed to be having the desired effect, albeit
slowly. Conway excused himself from the frantically busy wards as soon as he
could and headed towards the much quieter MSVK and LSVO levels.
He had to pass through Level 163 again on the way, and stopped to cneck on the
condition of the EGCL. Murchison yawned in his face and said that the operation
was going well and that Prilicla was satisfied with the patient’s emotional
radiation. He did not call on Prilicla.
But he found that the low-gravity levels were having one of those days, too, and
he was immediately trapped into further consulations. He could not very well
avoid them because he was Conway, the Earth-human Senior Physician, known
throughout the hospital for his sometimes unorthodox but effective methods and
ideas on diagnosis and treatment. Here, at least, he was able to give “some
useful if orthodox advice because his Cinrusskin mind-partner was closer
temperamentally and physically to the Nallajim LSVOs and the MSVKs of Euril who
were fragile, birdlike, and extremely timid where the larger life-forms were
concerned. But he could find no solution, orthodox or otherwise, to the problem
he most des-perately wanted to solve.
Prilicla’s.
He thought about going to his quarters where he would have peace and quiet in
which to think, but they were more than an hour’s journey away at the other end
of the hospital and he wanted to be close by in case there was a sudden
deterioration in Prilicla’s already close to critical condition. So instead he
continued listening to Nallajim patients describing their symptoms and feeling
a strange sadness because the Cinrusskin part of his mind knew that they were
suffering, feeling, and emoting on many levels but his Earth-human mental
equipment was incapable of receiving their emotional radiation. It was as if a
sheet of glass lay between them, through which only sight and sound could pass.
But something more was getting through, surely? He h’ad felt some of the aches
and pains of the Illensan patients as he was feeling, to a certain extent, those
of the Eurils and Nal-lajims around him. Or was that simply the GLNO tape
fooling him into believing that he was an empath?
A sheet of glass, he thought suddenly, and a idea began to stir at the back of
his mind. He tried to bring it out into the light, to give it form. Glass.
Something about glass, or the properties of glass?
“Excuse me, Kytili,” he said to the Nallijim medic who was worrying aloud about
an atypical case of what should have been an easily treated and nonpainful
condition. “I have to see O’Mara urgently.”
It was Carrington who erased the GLNO tape because the Chief Psychologist had
been called to some trouble in the chlorine-breathing level lately vacated by
Gonway. As O’Mara’s senior assistant, Carrington was a highly qualified
psychologist. He studied Conway’s expression for a moment and asked if he could
be of assistance.
Conway shook his head and forced a smile. “I wanted to ask the Major something.
He would probably have said no, anyway. May I use the communicator?”
A few seconds later the face of Captain Fletcher flicked onto the screen and he
said briskly, “Rhabwar, Control Deck.”
“Captain,” Conway said, “I want to ask a favor. If you agree to do it then it
must be clearly understood that you will not be held responsible for any
repercussions since it will be
a medical matter entirely and you will be acting under my orders.
“There is a way that I may be able to help Prilicla,” he went on, and described