“Talks to me as if … I was a drooling infant,” Mannen broke in. “Or a frightened, terminal patient. At least you don’t … try to administer … a lethal overdose … of sympathy.
You are here to … obtain information about Seldal and, in return, to satisfy my curiosity . . . about you. No, I am not so much afraid of dying … as having too much time to think about it.”
“Is there pain, Doctor?” Lioren asked.
“You know there is no pain, dammit,” Mannen replied in a voice made stronger by its anger. “In the bad old days there might have been pain, and inefficient painkilling medication that so depressed the functioning of the involuntary muscle systems that … the major organs went into failure and the medication killed the patient as well as its pain … so that its medic escaped with the minimum of ethical self-criticism and … its patient was spared a lingering death. But now we have learned how to negate pain without harmful side effects . . . and there is nothing I can do but wait to see which of my vital organs . . . will be the first to expire from old age.
“I should not,” Mannen ended, its voice dropping to a whisper again, “have allowed Seldal loose in my intestines. But that blockage was . . . really uncomfortable.”
“I sympathize,” Lioren said, “because I, too, wish for death. But you can look back with pride and without pain to your past and to an ending that will not be long delayed. In my past and future lies only guilt and desolation that I must suffer until—”
“Do you really feel sympathy, Lioren?” Mannen broke in. “You impress me as being nothing but a proud and unfeeling … but very efficient organic healing machine. The Cromsag Incident . . . showed that the machine had a flaw. You want to destroy the machine . . . while O’Mara wants to repair it. I don’t know which of you will succeed.”
“I would never,” Lioren said harshly, “destroy myself to avoid just punishment.”
“To an ordinary member of the staff,” Mannen went on, “I would not say such . . . personally hurtful things. I know you feel you deserve them . . . and worse . . . and you expect no apology from me. But I do apologize . . . because I am hurting in a way that I did not believe possible . . . and am striking out at you . . . and I ignore my friends when they visit me in case they discover . . . that I am nothing but a vindictive old man.”
Before Lioren could think of a reply, Mannen said weakly, “I have been hurtful to a being who has not hurt me. The only recompense I can make is by helping you . . . with information on Seldal. When it visits me tomorrow morning … I shall ask it specific and very personal questions. I shall not mention . . . nor will it suspect your connection.”
“Thank you,” Lioren said. “But I do not understand how you can ask—”
“It is very simple,” Mannen said, its voice strengthening again. “Seldal is a Senior Physician and I was, until my summary demotion to the status of patient, a Diagnostician. It will be pleased to answer all my questions for three reasons. Out of respect for my former rank, because it will want to humor a terminal patient who wants to talk shop for what might well be the last time, and especially because I have not spoken a word to it since three days before the operation. If I cannot discover any helpful information for you after that exercise, the information does not exist.”
This terminally ill entity, in what might well be the last constructive act of its life, was going to help him with the Seldal assignment as no other person was capable of doing, simply because it had used a few impolite words to him. Lioren had always considered it wrong to become emotionally involved in a case, however slightly, because the patient’s interests were best served by the impersonal, clinical approach—and Mannen was not even his patient. But somehow it seemed that the investigation into the Nallajim Senior’s behavior was no longer his only concern.