“So you’re awake, young man,” he said. “What have you been doing to yourself. But first, where does it hurt?”
“It doesn’t hurt now,” he replied, pushing a hand against his stomach and then feeling the side of his head. “It doesn’t hurt anywhere.”
“Good,” said the man. From a satchel hanging from his shoulder he produced a flat instrument with a tiny lighted screen on one side and began moving it slowly across the surface of Hewlitt’s head, limbs, and body.
“I ate some fruit from that tree up there,” he went on. “It gave me a bad tummy ache and I fell off.”
“That is a very tall tree,” said the other, in the same tone of voice Hewlitt’s father used when he thought he was being told a very tall story. “Put your hand down again and don’t move until I’ve finished scanning you. Did you fall asleep at any time since the fall?”
“Yes,” he replied, “but I don’t know how long. The sun was going down when I fell. You woke me up.
“Out for four, maybe five hours,” said the man in a quiet, worried voice. “When I help you to sit up, tell me if anything hurts, right? I want to do a head scan.”
This time the scanner was moved very slowly over the front, top, and sides of his head and down to the back of his neck; then the monitor put the instrument back in his satchel and stood up. Before he could speak, Hewlitt’s parents arrived. His mother knelt down and grabbed him so tightly in both arms that he could hardly breathe, and she cried while his dad asked questions.
“He is a very fortunate young man,” he heard the medic say in a quiet voice. “As you can see, his clothes are cut to ribbons, probably from playing among the war relics and from a long slide down into the ravine, but there isn’t a scratch on him. He told me that he had eaten some fruit from that Pessinith tree up there. He says it gave him stomach cramps and that he fell from it and has been unconscious since before sunset. Now it isn’t my job to argue with an overimaginative child, but look at the facts. The stomach disorder has disappeared; a fall from the top of that tree should have resulted in cuts, abrasions, fractures, and concussion, but his skin isn’t even broken. A four-hour period of unconsciousness should be accompanied by some form of traumatic wounding that I could not have missed.
“From the state of his clothing,” the monitor went on, “I would guess that he overtired himself playing among the wreckage, and when he climbed down here he simply fell asleep. The stomach ache and his alleged fall could be an appeal for sympathy and an attempt to divert parental wrath.”
His mother had stopped crying and was asking him if he was really all right, but between her words he could hear his father saying that the wrath would be minimal because they were so glad to find him safe and sound.
“Children wander off and get lost sometimes,” said the monitor, “and sometimes it doesn’t end so well. We’ll give him a ride home in our gravity sled, but only because he may still be overtired. I’ll call in and check on him again tomorrow, although it really isn’t necessary-he is in fine shape. You have a very healthy young man there, and there isn’t a thing wrong with him…
The warm feeling of his mother’s arms around him and the sight of the floodlit ravine and the overtalkative monitor medic faded, to be replaced by the familiar surroundings of Ward Seven and another monitor officer who was watching him and saying nothing.
CHAPTER 8
He thought I was lying,” said Hewlitt, trying to hide his anger. So did my parents, the few times I tried to tell them about it, and so do you.
Lieutenant Braithwaite studied him in silence for a moment before he said, “The way you have just told it, I can understand why. He had good medical and anatomical reasons for thinking you were lying and, because most people trust the members of the medical profession, your parents believed him rather than their, well, imaginative four-year-old son. I don’t know what or who to believe, because I wasn’t there and the truth can be a very subjective thing. I believe that you believe you are telling the truth, but that is not the same as me believing you are a liar.”
“You’re confusing me,” said Hewlitt. “Do you think I’m a liar but don’t want to come straight out and say it?”
Braithwaite ignored the question and said. “Did you tell your other doctors about the ravine incident?”
“Yes,” he replied, “but I stopped doing so. None of them were interested in hearing about my lucky escapes. The psychologists thought that it was all my imagination, just like you.”
“I suppose,” said Braithwaite, smiling, “they asked you whether or not you disliked your parents, and if so, how much? Sorry, but I have to ask, too.”
“You suppose right,” said Hewlitt, “and you’re wasting your time. Sure there were times when I disliked my parents, when they didn’t do or give me what I wanted or they were too busy to play with me and made me work on school stuff instead. This didn’t happen very often, only when something urgent came up and they were both busy. They were attached to the cultural-contact department in the nearby base, and both of them were in the Monitor Corps but didn’t wear the uniform often because they worked mostly from home. But I wasn’t neglected. My mother was nice and could be coaxed into doing things for me, and my father was harder to fool but was more fun. One or the other was usually at home, and they spent plenty of time with me once I’d done the schoolwork. But I always wanted more time with them. Maybe that was because I knew, somehow, that I was going to lose them and there wasn’t much time left. I really missed them. I still do.
“Anyway,” he went on, shaking his head in a vain attempt to lose those memories, “your psychological colleagues decided that I had been behaving like a selfish, scheming, and normal four-yearold.”
Braithwaite nodded and said, “The psychological trauma of losing both parents at the age of four can have long-lasting emotional effects. They were killed in a flyer crash and you survived it. How much can you remember about the accident, and your feelings about it then and now?”
“I can remember everything,” he replied, wishing that the other would change to a less painful subject. “At the time I didn’t know what was happening, but I found out later that we were flying over a forested area on the way to a weeklong conference in a city on the other side of Etla when there was a major malfunction. We were using the small aircraft flight level, five thousand feet, and there must have been a few minutes before we hit the trees. My mother climbed into the backseat where I was strapped and wrapped herself around me while my father tried to regain control. We hit hard and tree branches pushed through the floor and one side of the fuselage and I passed out. When they found us next day my parents were dead and I was completely unhurt.”
“You were very lucky,” said the psychologist quietly. “That is, if a kid who had just lost both parents could be considered lucky.”
Hewlitt did not reply, and after a moment Braithwaite went on, “Let’s go back to the tree you climbed, or believed that you climbed, and the fruit you are supposed to have eaten that gave you the severe stomach cramps. Was there ever a recurrence of those symptoms later, before or after the flyer accident?”
“Why should I tell you,” said Hewlitt, “when you are thinking that I imagined everything?”
“If it is any consolation to you,” said Braithwaite, “I haven’t decided what to think.”
“All right, then,” Hewlitt said, feeling that this was going to be another waste of time. “For the first few days after I fell into the ravine I felt nauseated every time I ate something, but not badly enough to upchuck, and after that with reducing frequency until it went away altogether. It came back for a short time after I moved to my grandparents’ place on Earth, but I suppose that could have been due to the change of food and cooking. On Etla and on Earth, no medical cause could be found for these mild attacks of nausea, and I first began to hear the phrase ‘the condition has a psychological component.’ It hadn’t happened for years until I tasted my first synthesized meal on Treevendar, and then it was mild and happened only once. Obviously it was my imagination.”