O’Mara nodded and waited for a moment to give Craythorne the chance to respond; then he said, “I note the qualifier, sir. Does it mean that you have found one?”
“It means that there are two possible solutions, Lieutenant,” said Davantry, “Neither of which I particularly like. One is straightforward and probably unworkable, the other is simpler but, well, psychologically tricky. But first let us consider the reason for this hospital’s existence, which is to receive and treat the sick and injured of the sixty-odd intelligent species that compose the Galactic Federation. In the light of the experiment you have just seen, and discounting the few species who don’t travel in space, this would mean staffing the hospital with complete teams of physicians, surgeons, and medical and technical support staff of virtually every known life-form, on the off chance that a member of any one of those species would arrive needing treatment. It would be the same as providing sixty different one-species hospitals inside one structure. Sector General is big but not that big. It could be done but, to do it that way, the proportion of patients to staff would be ridiculously low and criminally wasteful of medical personnel, the majority of whom would have nothing to do but hang around waiting for a same-species patient to arrive. Inter-species conflicts could arise through sheer boredom.”
“More likely,” said Craythorne with feeling, “another interstellar war. But you have another solution, sir?”
“Or perhaps, Major,” said Davantry, pointing at the opened crate, “I have more horror stories for you. They involve, or will involve, cross-species memory transfer.”
Craythorne leaned forward in his chair, looking excited. “There’s been a lot about it in the literature recently,” he said. “Very interesting stuff, sir. It would be the ideal solution, but I thought the procedure was still experimental. Has the technique been perfected?”
“Not quite,” Davantry replied with a small smile. “We were hoping that would be done at Sector General.”
“Oh,” said Craythorne. O’Mara said the same but under his breath. Davantry smiled again, and divided his attention between them as he spoke.
“This hospital,” he said in a very serious voice, “will be equipped to treat every known form of intelligent life. But we have just proved beyond doubt that no single individual can hold in his, her, or its brain even a fraction of the vast amount of physiological data necessary for this purpose. Surgical dexterity is a matter of ability and training but, we have discovered, the complete knowledge of an other-species patient’s physiology and metabolism can only be furnished by means of a complete memory transfer of the mind of a leading medical authority in the relevant field of the patient’s own species into the brain of the physician-in-charge, who can belong to any other species provided it has hands and eyes and has the required surgical training. With the help of what, because the original name is polysyllabic and cumbersome, we are calling an Educator tape, any medically trained being can treat any patient regardless of species.”
“The Educator-tape application system,” he went on with a nod toward the opened container, “can impress a mind recording on the recipient’s brain within a few minutes, and be erased just as easily when the indicated treatment for the patient has been completed. The equipment and procedure has been thoroughly tested and the user is completely safe in that there is no physical trauma. But there is another problem.”
“Why am I not surprised?” said O’Mara. He thought he had been speaking under his breath, but Craythorne looked at him warningly while Councilor Davantry pretended not to hear and continued speaking.
“It is this,” he went on. “The tapes do not impart only physiological knowledge; the entire memory, personal and professional experience, and personality of the entity who donated the tape are transferred as well, and we know that all too often the top specialists in the medical or any other field can be aggressive, self-opinionated, and generally obnoxious people, because that is how most of them rose to eminence. Geniuses are rarely charming people. So in effect the tape’s would-be recipient must subject himself voluntarily to a drastic but temporary form of schizophrenia because another personality, an authoritative, forceful, and completely alien personality, is apparently sharing his mind. If the recipient’s mind is not also strong-willed and well integrated, especially if the tape is in place for several days, it will feel as if the donor mind is fighting for and perhaps threatening to gain control over it.”