Awkwardly at first, she used the tongs to lift the scanner from the limp grasp
of Khone’s digits and moved it over the abdominal area. While the patient was
concentrating on the screen, she edged further into the room and closer to the
patient. The unnatural position of herbent forelegs and spine, and the fact that
virtually her entire body weight was being supported on medial limbs normally
used only for manipulation, was threatening to send the associated muscles into
spasm. To ease them she rocked very slowly from side to side, moving a little
closer each time.
“The Sommaradvan healer is larger than was expected,” Khone said suddenly,
looking up from the scanner. It did not take Prilicla to tell her that the
Gogleskan was very frightened.
Cha Thrat held herself motionless for a moment, then said, “The Sommaradvan
healer, despite its size, will no more harm the patient than the sculptured
likeness lying on the floor. The patient must surely know this.”
“The patient knows this,” Khone agreed, with a distinct trace of anger in its
voice. “But has the Sommaradvan healer ever suffered nightmares, in which it is
haunted, and hunted, by dark and fearful creatures of the undermind intent on
its destruction? And instead of fleeing in unreasoning fear, has it ever tried
to stop in the midst of such a nightmare, and think through or around its
terror, and turned to face these dreadful phantasms, and tried to look upon them
as friends?”
Ashamed, Cha Thrat said, “Apologies are tendered, and admiration for the
patient-healer who is trying to do, who is doing, that which the stupid and
insensitive Sommaradvan healer would find impossible.”
Prilicla’s voice sounded in her earpiece. “You have irritated friend Khone, Cha
Thrat, but its fear has receded a little.”
She took the opportunity of moving closer and said, “It is realized that the
patient-healer’s intentions toward the Sommaradvan are friendly, and any harm
that might befall it would be the result of a purely instinctive reac-tion or
accident. Both the eventualities canbe avoided by rendering the stings harmless”
Khone’s emotional reaction to that suggestion had both Prilicla and Cha Thrat
badly worried, but time was running out for this patient and, if anything was
going to be done for it, there was no real alternative to capping those stings.
The little Gogleskan knew that as well as they did. It was being asked to
surrender its only re-maining weapon.
Cha Thrat dared not move a muscle other than her larynx, and that onewas being
seriously overworked as she tried to convince Khone’s unconscious as well as its
already half-convinced conscious mind that, in a truly civilized society,
weapons were unnecessary. She told it that she, too, was a female, although she
had yet to produce an offspring. She then spoke of her most personal feelings,
many of them petty rather than praiseworthy, about her past life and career on
Sommaradva and in Sector General, and of the things she had done wrong in
bothplaces.
The team member waiting impatiently by the litter must be wondering if she had
contracted a ruler’s disease and had lost contact with the reality of the
situation, butthere was no time to stop and explain- Somehow she had to get
through to the Gogleskan’s dark undermind and convince it that psychologically
she was leaving herself as open and defenseless by what she was telling it as
Khone was by relinquishing its only natural weapons.
She could hear Naydrad’s voice, which was being picked up by the Cinrusskin’s
headset, demanding to know whether Khone was a psychiatrist as well as a healer,
and if so, the stupid Sommaradvan had picked the wrong time to lie,on its couch!
Prilicla did not speak and she went on talking unhurriedly to the patient whose
voice, like the rest of it, seemed to be paralyzed by fear.
Suddenly there was a response.
“The Sommaradvan has problems,” Khone said. “But if intelligent beings did not
occasionally do stupid things, there would be no progress at all.”
Cha Thrat was unsure whether the Gogleskan’s words represented some deep,
philosophical truth or were merely the product of a mind clouded by pain and
confusion. She said, “The problems of the healer-patient are much more urgent.”