Even though Marrasarah was a living and suffering person in the minds of Thornnastor and O’Mara, it was simply a recording and nothing at all could be done for it. But here and now, if he understood the Tralthan’s feelings and motivation correctly, Thornnastor needed to cure Murrenth to stop that awful tragedy from happening again. It was a matter of professional pride but it was also deeply personal. The patient and the mind partner had become one. In its own mind Thornnastor was trying to cure both of them, and if the Murrenth procedure was as unsuccessful as all the medical probabilities insisted it would be, O’Mara hated to think of what it would do to the Tralthan surgeon.
“Field viewer set to fifty magnifications,” said Thornnastor calmly. “Stepped-down scalpel and retractor to reduction factor ten. Ready? We will begin…”
The magnifier slid forward on its telescoping arm and was interposed between the operative field and two of Thornnastor’s dirigible eyes as it picked up a knife whose large handle contained the mechanism which could deliver a cut ranging between a deep, six-inch, surgical slash to an incision so tiny and precise that it could only be seen by a microscope. With this procedure very precise work was possible, O’Mara knew as he turned his attention to the big diagnostic screen on the wall, provided the surgeon had rock steady hands or, in this case, tentacles.
On the screen the individual strands of fur looked like the slim, curving trunks of palm trees that were being bent slowly apart to reveal the heavily wrinkled organic ground surface from which they grew. A blade appeared, looking incredibly massive under the high magnification, and made an incision which cut cleanly between the parted trunks without touching much less damaging a single one of them. It went deeper, revealing the thin rootlets with their individual systems of tiny muscles that gave every hair its mobility, and these it avoided, too.
Like a thick, curving length of cable, one of the blocked capillaries appeared on center screen. A tiny longitudinal incision was made and a fine probe with a thickened tip inserted carefully into the opening. There was very little bleeding, just a few droplets which looked under the high magnification to be the size of footballs.
O’Mara dosed his eyes briefly so as to shut out his view of the screen and to remind himself that Thornnastor was working inside a capillary not much thicker than a hair while it tried to find and dissolve a clot without blasting a hole in the affected blood vessel and undoing all its previous, meticulous work.
There were many such blood vessels and many clots. But there was something about the surgeon’s work that was not quite right.
“This is microsurgery of a very high order,” he said quietly to Mannen, “but I don’t recognize the procedure.”
“I didn’t know you had medical training,” said Mannen, then nodded. “Of course, I forgot that you have the Marrasarah mind tape, too. What’s wrong with it?”
Thornnastor cleared its breathing passages and made a loud, disapproving sound.
“As the being O’Mara has just observed,” it said, “my procedure departs from normal Kelgian practice because I have made a synthesis of the surgical knowledge and experience of the three other mind partners that are available to me. The work is delicate and requires concentration. Apart from the necessary verbal contact between the operating team, I would appreciate absolute silence.”
Mannen, the Nidian tutor, and O’Mara maintained a complete and, in his own case, an admiring silence until Thornnastor withdrew, closed, and stood back.
“As you can see,” it said, curling one eye toward the wall screen, “the interrupted blood supply to the root muscles has been corrected and the connective nerve network that controls fur movement is intact. But the patient must be massively sedated and its fur rendered motionless until the area has a chance to recover completely from the recently inflicted surgical trauma, and heal.”
Suddenly it stamped its two medial feet, a habit of Tralthans who were in the grip of strong emotion, making all the loose equipment in the room rattle.
“Thank you, everyone,” it ended. “I believe we have an optimum result.”