Lioren taised a medial arm to point along the corridor and said, “This one is Colonel Skempton, another Earth-human DBDG as you can see, who is in charge of supply, maintenance, and nonmedical administration. It is the ranking Monitor Corps officer on Sector General and, I think we can agree, it has never been a host of the virus creature.”
“Right,” said Hewlitt. “But what I don’t understand is why isn’t someone like Prilicla doing O’Mara’s job? It is sympathetic, reassuring, pleasant all the time, and it really feels for its patients. And on that subject of empathy, why doesn’t its empathic faculty work on diagnosticians? Or do I add another three questions to the list of those you will not answer?”
The Padre did not look at him when it spoke, because its eyes were directed up and down the corridor. It said, “Your last three questions have a single answer which, subject to interruptions by arriving diagnosticians, I am free to give you because it has no bearing on the present emergency.
“First,” it went on, “Prilicla is much too gentle and sensitive to hold the position of chief psychologist, while O’Mara is sensitive and caring but not gentle …”
“Sensitive and caring?” said Hewlitt. “Is my translator on the blink?”
“We haven’t much time,” said the Padre. “Do you want to hear or talk about Major O’Mara?”
“Sorry,” he said, “I’m listening.”
As the hospital’s chief psychologist, Lioren went on to explain, O’Mara’s overall responsibility was the smooth and efficient mental operations of the ten-thousand-odd members of its medical and maintenance staff. For administrative reasons he carried the rank of major and, theoretically, this placed him among the lower links in the Monitor Corps chain of command. But keeping so many different and potentially hostile life-forms working together in harmony was a large job whose limits, like O’Mara’s actual authority, were difficult to define.
Given even the highest qualities of tolerance and mutual respect among all levels of its personnel, and in spite of the careful psychological screening they were given before being accepted for training, there were still occasions when serious, interpersonal friction threatened to occur because of ignorance or misunderstandings over other-species cultural and interpersonal behavior. Or a being might develop a xenophobic neurosis which, if left untreated, would ultimately affect its mental stability and professional competence.
It was the major’s duty to detect and eradicate such problems before they could become life- or sanity-threatening or, if therapy failed, to remove the potentially troublesome individuals from the hospital. This constant watch for signs of wrong, unhealthy, or intolerant thinking, which his department performed with such zeal, had made him the most disliked entity in the hospital. But the chief psychologist was doubly fortunate in that he had never sought the admiration of others and gave every appearance of enjoying his work.
“O’Mara has a particular and personal responsibility,” Lioren continued, “for safeguarding the sanity of the diagnosticians, who are in simultaneous possession of … The one who is approaching us now is the Melfan diagnostician, Ergandhir. The last time we spoke it was carrying seven tapes. Have you any feelings of recognition for it?”
Hewlitt waited until the Melfan had clicked past on its four exoskeletal legs and gone in to join the others, then said, “No. And it was another one who completely ignored our presence. From what you just said I thought you two knew each other.”
“We know each other very well,” said Lioren, “so I must assume that the forefront of Ergandhir’s mind is currently occupied by one of its Educator taped entities who does not know me, and never will since the original donor is no longer alive.”
“I hate to ask another question,” said Hewlitt, “but will you explain that?”
“It is part of the same question,” the Padre said, “and I’m trying to answer it.
Educator tapes were very much a mixed blessing, Lioren explained, but their use was necessary because no single being could hope to hold in its brain all the physiological and clinical information needed for the treatment of patients in a multispecies hospital. That was why the incredible mass of data required to care for them was furnished by means of the Educator tapes, which were the complete brain recordings of great medical specialists of the past belonging to the species concerned. If an Earth-human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient, he took one of the DBLF physiology tapes until the treatment was complete, after which he had it erased. Senior physicians with teaching duties were often called on to retain two or three of the tapes for long periods, which was not very pleasant for them, and their only consolation from their points of view was that they were better off than the diagnosticians.