Many times the hospital’s diagnosticians as well as his fellow senior physicians had described the process as an experience of multiple schizophrenia viewed from the inside, as the donor entities apparently struggled with the tape recipient for possession of its mind. The effect was purely subjective, naturally, but where mental or physical discomfort was concerned there was no real difference so far as he was concerned. His own method of dealing with the problem, a solution which had sorely perplexed the hospital’s department of other-species psychology because most intelligent beings were incapable of acting in such cowardly fashion, had been to offer no resistance at all to the donor mind and to use its information no matter which of them thought they were boss of their mental world.
But in the physical world, while an other-species entity was occupying most of his mind, he had to remember to behave like a weak and incredibly fragile Cinrusskin and, if his donor entity should be a heavy-gravity Hudlar or Tralthan with a body-weight measured in tons, not to throw his non-existent weight around.
Like himself the spiders possessed six legs, but they were much more heavily muscled and he doubted if “cowardice” was in common usage in their vocabularies.
Even with Naydrad pressing down on the remainder of the spar where it projected through the carapace while Danalta and himself drew it out from underneath, the second half of the procedure took longer because the repair work to the lacerated blood vessels in the area, while operationally similar, was both more delicate and more awkwardly situated. But finally it was done, the operative field was cleared of foreign debris and the abdominal wound sutured and a small, sterile plate placed over the exit wound in the carapace. The repair work that remained was urgent and necessary but not life-threatening.
The glider impact had broken three of the patient’s limbs, with one of them sustaining a double fracture that had come close to being a traumatic amputation.
“We have already ascertained,” he said with a glance towards Murchison, “that the limbs on this species are exoskeletal and are composed of hardened, organic cylinders with no external sensors or muscle system apart from those serving the digits at the extremities. They use a proprioceptor system which enables the brain to know the exact, three-dimensional position of a limb with respect to the body at any given time, and movement is controlled hydraulically by the increase or reduction of internal fluid. Much of this fluid has been lost because of its injuries, but the supply should be replaced artificially with sterile fluid until it is replaced naturally in the manner of other species who automatically restore blood or other body fluids to the required volume.
“With this patient,” he went on, “we will use the accepted procedure for joining exoskeletal fractures and encase them in a rigid collar of the required length. We will begin with the left forward member and… I’m tired, Murchison, but still operational. Control your feelings, you are emoting like a nagging life-mate!”
The other was radiating concern rather than irritation but it did not reply.
“I’m sorry, friend Murchison,” he apologized a moment later, “for my lack of concentration and mental confusion. Certain aspects of the procedure brought my Earth-human and Kelgian tape-donor personalities to the forefront of my mind, and that is not a polite combination.”
Murchison laughed quietly and said, “I guessed as much. But look out of the window, it’s morning already. This has been a long op and you must be close to the limits of your endurance. With the experience we’ve already gained on this one, treating its limb fractures and the superficial injuries of the other spider casualties will be simple by comparison. The rest of the cases are non-urgent so that if we do encounter problems, they can wait until you waken. But I’m sure the rest of us can handle them.”
“I’m sure you can,” said Prilicla, looking at it through a thickening fog of fatigue that was becoming opaque to coherent thought. “But there is something about this one that concerns me, subtle differences in the external and internal body structure from that of your benchmark patient in recovery. This is a new species to us. The pilot may have sustained impact injuries that at first were not as obvious as physical trauma, deformation, and internal-organ displacement, perhaps, which…”
He broke off as Murchison laughed, louder this time, and there was an explosion of amusement from it and the other members of the team that momentarily hid their feelings of concern for himself.
“Perhaps you were concentrating so much on the surgical details,” Murchison said, “that you were too busy to notice or identify the differences you mentioned. They are due to the fact that our benchmark patient is a female and this one isn’t.”
“You are right, I must be tired,” he said, joining and adding to their waves of amusement as he flew unsteadily to the large, flat top of an instrument cabinet in a corner of the room and settled onto it. “But I shall observe and try to stay awake until all of our spiders are treated.”
He surprised himself by doing just that before his increasing physical and mental fatigue rendered sentience and sapience next to impossible. With all of the spider patients treated and transferred to the recovery room, his last conscious impression was of Murchison standing before the communicator and speaking to the captain.
“I’ve already tried to talk to one of them,” it was saying, “and I’d like to try again using simplified first contact procedure. These people aren’t space-travelers so I won’t need the complicated Federation historical material used during the Trolanni contact. There’s nothing else to do here at the moment except brood about the nasty things that could happen to us. So I want to try talking to them again. What do you think?”
“I think yes, ma’am,” Fletcher replied. “Give me half an hour to modify the program, then I’ll stand by to advise on its usage. There are eight more spider ships hull-up on the horizon and another twenty on the radar screens but still no activity on the beach. That situation will certainly change before long and the result will be a lot of people, possibly including ourselves, being killed.
“Talking our way out of this trouble,” it ended, “is the preferred option.”
CHAPTER 34
Prilicla wakened suddenly with the feeling that he had been caught up in a riot. Many strident, other-species word sounds and waves of angry emotional radiation were beating into his mind. Suddenly terrified and still befuddled with sleep, he wondered if the meteorite shield had failed and the spiders were overrunning the station. But then his slowly clearing mind and empathic faculty made him aware that the loudest sounds and strongest feelings were emanating from two principle sources, one of which was long-familiar to him, and both of them were in the adjoining recovery ward.
Not trusting his trembling wings to fly, he walked unsteadily into the other room to find out what was happening.
With the exception of the recently treated and still-unconscious spider pilot and Captain Fletcher, who was staring at the proceedings from the ward communicator screen, everyone in the ward was trying to talk at the same time, so much so that parts of the conversations were lost in the derisive beeping of the ward translator going into overload. Farther down the ward the Terragar casualties and Keet were arguing, heatedly but in tones low enough for them to hear the quiet voice of Jasam, who was postoperatively debilitated but recovering well, making a contribution. But most of the vocal and emotional noise was coming from the argument between Murchison and the glider pilot’s uninjured passenger.