Conway did not have to be an empath to know that the empath was uncomfortable and did not want to answer any more questions.
A few minutes after PriLicla departed, he handed over the trainees to the instructors who had been waiting patiently for them to finish lunch, and he had a few more minutes in which to think before a trio of KeLgian nurses joined the next table and began moaning and twitching their fur at each other. He switched off his translator so that their conversation, a highly scandalous tale about another member of their species, would not distract him.
Prilicla would not display continuous emotional disturbance simply because it had received news of a promotion. It had borne heavy medical and surgical responsibilities on many previous occasions. Neither would it mind giving orders. True, it had no weight to throw about, but then it always gave its instructions in such a polite and inoffensive way that its subordinates would have died rather than make it feel unhappy by refusing to obey. And the newcomers had not been emoting unpleasantly and neither had Conway.
But suppose Conway would have felt badly if Prilicla had told him the details of its new job? That would explain the empath’s uncharacteristic behavior, because the thought of hurting another being’s feelings would be highly unpleasant for it—especially if the person concerned was a close friend like Conway. And for some reason Prilicla would not, or could not, speak about its new position in front of the newcomers, or perhaps before one of the newcomers.
Maybe it was not its new job which was worrying Prilicla but something it had learned during its meeting with O’Mara, something which concerned Conway himself and which the Cinrusskin was not at liberty to divulge. He checked the time and stood up quickly, excusing himself to the nurses.
The answers—and, he knew from long experience, very likely a whole new set of problems—would be found in the office of the Chief Psychologist.
CHAPTER 3
The inner office of the Chief Psychologist resembled in many respects a medieval torture chamber, and the resemblance was heightened not only by the wide variety of extraterrestrial couches and relaxers fitted with physical restraints, but by the graying, granite-featured Torquemada in Monitor Corps green who presided over it. Major O’Mara indicated a physiologically suitable chair.
“Sit down, Doctor,” he said with a completely uncharacteristic smile. “Relax. You’ve been dashing about in that ambulance ship of yours so much recently that I’ve scarcely seen you. It is high time that we had a good, long talk.”
Conway felt his mouth go dry. This is going to be rough. But what had he done or left undone to merit this sort of treatment?
The other’s features were as unreadable as a lump of rock, but the eyes which were studying him, Conway knew from long experience, opened into a mind so keenly analytical that it gave the Major what amounted to a telepathic faculty. Conway did not speak and neither, for a long moment, did O’Mara.
As Chief Psychologist of the Federation’s largest multienvironment hospital, he was responsible for the mental well-being of a huge medical staff belonging to more than sixty different species. Even though his Monitor Corps rank of major—which had been conferred on him for purely administrative reasons—did not place him high in the hospital’s chain of command, there were no clear limits to his authority. To O’Mara the medical staff were potential patients, and a large part of the Psychology Department’s work was the assignment of the right kind of doctor to a given patient.
Even with the highest degrees of tolerance and mutual respect, dangerous situations could arise among the staff because of ignorance or misunderstanding, or a being could develop xenophobia— in spite of the strict psychological screening every Sector General candidate had to undergo before being accepted for training—to a degree which threatened to affect its professional competence, mental stability, or both. An Earth-human doctor, for example, who had a strong subconscious fear of spiders would not be able to bring to bear on a Cinrusskin patient the proper degree of clinical detachment necessary for its treatment. And if someone like Prilicla were to treat such an Earth-human patient.