“I-I think I’m afraid to sleep,” he said, wondering why the admission of a weakness to an extraterrestrial seemed less embarrassing than it would to a human. “If I slept in this place I would have nightmares, and wake up again feeling worse. I suppose you know what nightmares are?”
“Yes,” said the nurse. It raised a forward tentacle and waved the tip in the direction of the ward beyond the screens. “You would have nightmares, about us?”
Hewlitt did not reply because he had already answered the question, and he was beginning to feel ashamed.
“If you go to sleep and have nightmares about us,” the nurse went on, “and then wake up to find that your nightmares have substance and are all around you, either suffering with you as fellow patients or trying to cure you, isn’t trying to stay wakeful a waste of time? Knowing that we will be here when you awaken might give your nightmare less force so that your mind might decide to dream about something more pleasant. Isn’t that a logical suggestion, Patient Hewlitt, and worth trying?”
Again, Hewlitt did not reply. This time it was because he was trying to come to grips with Hudlar logic.
“Besides,” said the nurse, “that Melfan quiz-forfeit show is injurious to mental health, regardless of the viewer’s species. Would you like to talk to me instead?”
“Yes-I mean, no,” said Hewlitt. “There are patients here who are sick and more in need of your attention. I have nothing wrong with me, at least not right now.”
“Right now,” the nurse replied, “all of the other patients are quiet, comfortable, and stable and are being monitored in their sleep. You are awake, and, for a young and mentally active trainee nurse, night duty can be boring. Is there anything you would like to say or ask?”
Hewlitt stared at the great, six-tentacled monster with its speaking membrane rippling like a fleshy flag and the skin that covered its limbs and body like seamless armor. Then he said, “Your paint is beginning to flake again.”
“Thank you for the warning,” said the Hudlar, “but there is no risk. It will last until the day staff comes on duty.”
“I do not understand you,” said Hewlitt. “At least, not well enough to ask questions.”
“From your earlier words about my use of cosmetics,” said the nurse, “I thought that might be the case. Do you know why Hudlars use nutrient paint?”
He was not terribly interested in anything extraterrestrials did. But this one wanted to talk, if only to relieve its boredom, and listening to it might take his mind off the extraterrestrial menagerie around him. A case of listening to one known monster in order to forget his dread of the unknown others. And after all, it might be trying in its own way to reassure him.
“No,” he said. “Why, Nurse?”
The first thing he learned was that Hudlars did not have mouths. Instead they had what they called organs of absorption, and from there one question led to another.
The species had evolved to intelligence on a heavy-gravity world with a proportionately high atmospheric pressure. The lower reaches of its atmosphere resembled a thick, semiliquid soup filled with tiny, airborne forms of animal and vegetable life which were ingested by the absorption mechanism covering the Hudlars’ back and flanks; and, because they were an intensely energy-hungry species, the process was continuous. The home planet’s atmosphere was very difficult to reproduce, so that in off-world environments such as the hospital it had been found more convenient to spray them at regular intervals with a concentrated nutrient paint.
“Sometimes,” the nurse went on, “we concentrate too deeply on what we are doing and forget our next meal spray. When that happens we grow weak from the effects of accelerated malnutrition wherever we happen to be, and the first member of the medical or maintenance staff to come along, or even an ambulatory patient like yourself, revives us with a quick respray. There are racks of Hudlar food tanks in most of the main corridors and wards, including the one on the wall beside the nurses’ station. The sprayer mechanism is very easy to use, although I hope you will never have to use one on me.