Lioren kept one eye directed toward the biosensors, watching for signs of respiratory distress following that long speech. He did not find any.
“The personal stuff, yes,” Mannen went on. “My earlier attempt to get you to shorten my waiting time here was not to become general knowledge, for it affected only myself and had no bearing on the treatment of a patient of a new species or that culture’s future relations with the Federation. The clinical or otherwise nonpersonal information you have been able to gather or deduce is pure knowledge that you have no right to keep to yourself. It should be available to everyone just as the operating principles of our scanners or the hyperdrive generators are available to those able to understand and use them without risk, although for a while in the bad old days the hyperdrive was considered to be a top secret, whatever that meant. But knowledge is, well, knowledge. You might just as well try to keep secret a natural law. Have you tried explaining all this to your patient?”
“Yes,” Lioren said. “But when I suggested making the non-personal sections of our conversation public, and argued that it would not be breaking a confidence because it was clearly impractical to ask every single Groalterri in their population for their permission to reveal this information, it said that it would have to think carefully about its reply. I ‘m sure it would like to help us, but there may be a religious constraint, and I would not want to cause an adverse reaction through impatience. If it became angry, it is capable of tearing a hole through the structure and opening the ward to space.”
“Yes,” Mannen said, showing its teeth. “Children, no matter how large they happen to be, can sometimes throw tantrums. Regarding the religious aspect, there are many Earth-humans who believe that—”
It stopped speaking because suddenly the small room was being invaded, first by Chief Psychologist O’Mara, followed by Senior Physicians Seldal and Prilicla, who flew in and attached itself with spidery, sucker-tipped legs to the ceiling, where its fragile body would be in less danger from unguarded movements by its more physically massive colleagues. O’Mara nodded in acknowledgment of Lioren’s presence and bent over the patient. When it spoke its voice had a softness that Lioren had never heard before.
“I hear that you are talking to people again,” O’Mara said, “and that you especially want to talk to me, to ask a favor. How do you feel, old friend?”
Mannen showed its teeth and inclined its head in Seldal’s direction. “I feel fine, but why not ask the doctor?”
“There has been a minor remission of symptoms,” Seldal responded before the question could be asked, “but the clinical picture has not changed substantially. The patient says that it is feeling better, but this must be a self-delusion and, whether it remains here or goes elsewhere in the hospital, it could still terminate at any time.”
O’Mara’s mention of the patient wanting a favor worried Lioren. He thought that it was the same favor Mannen had asked of him, except that now it would be a more public request for early termination, and he felt both sorrow and shame that it should be so. But the empath, Prilicla, was not reacting as Lioren would have expected to such an emotionally charged situation.
“Friend Mannen’s emotional radiation,” Prilicla said, the clicks and trillings of its voice like a musical background to the words, “is such that it should not cause concern to a psychologist or anyone else. Friend O’Mara does not have to be reminded that a thinking entity is composed of a body and a mind, and that a strongly motivated mind can greatly influence the body concerned. In spite of the gloomy clinical picture, friend Mannen is indeed feeling well.”
“What did I tell you?” Mannen said. It showed its teeth again to O’Mara. “I know that this is a fitness examination, with Seldal insisting that I am dying, Prilicla equally insistent that I am feeling well, and you trying to adjudicate between them. But for the past few days I have been suffering from nonclinical, terminal boredom in here, and I want out. Naturally, I would not be able to perform surgery or undertake any but the mildest physical exertion. But I am still capable of teaching, of taking some of the load off Cresk-Sar, and the technical people could devise a mobile cocoon for me with protective screens and gravity nullifiers. I would much prefer to terminate while doing something than doing nothing, and I—”