“And.” said O’Mara.
“Currently it carries four Educator tapes.” said the lieutenant, “Tralthan, Melfan, Dwerlan, and Earth-human. I checked the donors’ psych profiles and none of them seemed as if they would be particularly hard to live with, especially for a strong-willed Kelgian like Yursedth who has years of experience with mind transfers. Its own psych file shows nothing suspect in its past. As for the troublesome dreams, which are causing mental distress of nightmare proportions during sleep and continual worry for hours subsequent to waking, I can find no cause for them. The same applies to the bouts of peripheral neuropathy, which are almost certainly associated with the main problem because they so closely resemble the nightmares. If there is a culprit tape, as you called it, I couldn’t identify it. This is a strange one, sir, because there is no obvious reason why the subject’s problem should exist.”
O’Mara nodded. “You didn’t expect me to hand you an easy one, Lieutenant” he said. “What are you doing about this nonexistent problem?”
“The subject is becoming increasingly distressed” said Braithwaite, “and I don’t want to waste time duplicating someone else’s work, especially yours. Yursedth wouldn’t tell me, at the time it was still annoyed because it wasn’t being treated by you, whether you had already initiated any kind of therapy. Have you?”
O’Mara shook his head. “I barely glanced through Yursedth’s file to check on its current workload’ he said, “which was about normal for a diagnostician of its seniority. The original question stands, Lieutenant: what are you going to do?”
Braithwaite was silent for a moment, and then he said, “I already checked for stress due to overwork and found nothing unusual. I’m going to get it to talk about its dreams and psychosomatic episodes again, and listen even more carefully this time. If nothing else occurs to me, I’ll suggest erasing the Melfan tape. If any of the Educator tapes are causing the trouble it is likely, well, slightly more likely, to be that one. As you know, sir, while the Melfans have very precise and accurate muscle control and positional sense, but the exoskeletal structures covering their limbs and digits have no sense of touch. It is probably a forlorn hope, but that might equate with Yursedth’s waking loss of sensation in its limbs and other areas of its body and its persistent nightmares. One of them, the one that seems to trouble it most, is about it being in a hospital OR on Melf and unable to operate because of an unexplained, creeping paralysis. I would then erase the Melfan tape and, before impressing another, observe and question the subject closely for a few days or weeks, to see whether or not the troublesome symptoms were still present or receding. I would do the same with the other tapes in turn and, if that didn’t work, I’d erase all of them and observe the effects. If any.”
O’Mara sat back in his chair and kept his face expressionless. Everyone on the staff knew that Yursedth had teaching duties as well as ongoing surgical commitments using its own medical experience as well as that of its four other-species mind partners. Time, as well as considerable personal mental disruption, was required to acclimatize mentally after the erasure of long-term tapes, which was why junior medics were not allowed to retain them for more than a few hours after use. Much more time and considerable emotional hassle would be needed for Yursedth’s mind, which subjectively would feel suddenly empty, to accommodate the alien knowledge and feelings of four new mind partners. But Braithwaite knew all this.
Deliberately, O’Mara decided to give a noncommittal, unhelpful answer. He said, “I can only imagine what Yursedth will say about that”
“I didn’t have to imagine.” said Braithwaite feelingly. “It told me what it thought in detail when I told it what I intended to do, purely as a last resort. I hoped that would concentrate, well, scare its mind to the extent of producing a reaction that would furnish a clue to the basic problem. It didn’t. Apart from the verbal abuse it said that it would ask for a second opinion. Yours.”
“And you said?” O’Mara prompted.
“That you had given me sole responsibility for its case and that if you did speak to it, that was the first thing you would say,” the lieutenant replied, then hesitated. “I don’t know what the second thing would be.”
“The same as the first” said O’Mara carefully. “I expect you to talk to me about the case and report progress, if any. If you consider it necessary you may discuss it with your colleagues in the outer office, but not to the extent that you would be dividing the responsibility for treatment. I am not going to advise or second-guess you with Yursedth. So don’t worry, Lieutenant, this psychological hot, medium-roasted, or cold mashed potato is all yours.”
“But I am worrying, sir” said Braithwaite, “mostly about my proposed line of treatment. I was ashamed of even suggesting it. Just wiping all four mind partners is, is crude, like amputating a leg on the off chance of curing a sprained ankle. I want to try something a little more sophisticated, and I’m not asking for advice…
“Good,” said O’Mara, “because you wouldn’t get it.”
“… but I would appreciate your technical supervision.” Braithwaite went on, “during a tape impression of Yursedth’s suspect Melfan mind partner into another subject. Instead of working from subjective verbal data secondhand, I’d like to have a close look around that Melfan donor’s mind myself from the inside—”
“No!”
Braithwaite looked surprised. “I know we don’t usually do it, sir,” he said, “and that technically it’s against the rules, but I believe this to be a special problem which I might not be able to solve in any other way without wasting several days or weeks of Yursedth’s teaching and operating time as well as subjecting it to a lot of emotional hassle. With respect, sir, it was you who made the rules and, from what I’ve heard, broke them all before they could be made official.”
That was then, O’Mara remembered, during the early years before Craythorne and the newly promoted and eager Lieutenant O’Mara knew what they were doing. He had insisted on doing more while knowing much less than the major and he still carried the mental scars, many of them willingly, to prove it. We lived, as the old Chinese curse phrased it, in interesting times. He shook his head.
“No,” he repeated in a conversational tone, “because the staff in this department are expected to be more or less sane. Failing that, they are expected at very least to know exactly who and what they are at all times and in all circumstances. To function effectively a therapist in this place must retain his, her, or its mental objectivity. That cannot be done if you assimilate and go probing into a donor mind that may be psychologically suspect because the experience, no matter how hard you tried to be objective, is intensely and dangerously subjective. A form of insidious psychological merging takes place, and traces of the emotional involvement with the donor entity remain even after the tape has been erased. You know the rule and, if you’ve temporarily forgotten it, I’m reminding you now. If you go exploring in alien mental territory, Lieutenant, you might bring back mental mud on your boots. So your mind, such as it is, must remain exclusively your own.
O’Mara paused for a moment to stare hard into the other’s eyes. Without raising his voice he ~added, “If one of my staff was to break that rule, they would need to urgently consider other work options. Is that clearly understood?”
“Yes, sir,” said Braithwaite. “But what about the diagnosticians and seniors who carry anything up to six long-term tapes each? Were they told the psychological reason for that rule, and about the risks?”