Cha Thrat and the padre made their species’ equivalent gestures of approval, Prilicla trilled, Conway applauded, and Thornnastor stamped all its feet in turn, softly for a Tralthan. Conway stood up suddenly and leaned toward Braithwaite with his hand outstretched.
“Nice going, Administrator, he said. “After the way you uncovered the Tunneckis problem, you really deserve this.” He laughed. “But a well-mannered chief psychologist that nobody dislikes will take a bit of getting used to.”
Speaking for the first time, Padre Lioren turned all its eyes on O’Mara and said, “Sir, you said that you wanted to leave without delay. The hospital has been your life for longer than most of us can remember. I, we that is, wonder what you intend to do with the rest of that life?”
“I have plans,” he replied seriously. “They include continuing my professional work and living happily ever after.”
“But, sir,” Conway said, “surely you’re not obliged to leave right away? Braithwaite will need a settling-in period of a few weeks or more likely months, and you should allow your mind to get used to the idea of doing nothing. Or maybe you won’t be allowed to sever all connections with Sector General. We run into nonmedical problems from time to time and may need you to come back for a while on a consultancy basis. And stop shaking your head, sir. At the very least we need time to juggle with the staffing schedules so we can throw a proper farewell party.”
“No,” said O’Mara firmly. “No settling-in period, because the best way of doing the job is to be dropped in at the deep end. No temporary detachments, no consultancies, and most of all, no long and embarrassing farewells for someone nobody likes. Prilicla knows my feelings about this. I insist. Thank you, but no.”
Braithwaite cleared his throat. It was a polite but authoritative sound. He said, “I’m not an empath like Dr. Prilicla, sir, but I know the feelings of every person in the hospital toward you. This time it is I who must insist. Your departure will be delayed by a few days because none of the outgoing ships can take you without first clearing it with me, so there will be time to organize a farewell party that all of us will remember.
“As the newly appointed hospital administrator,” Braithwaite added, “I am making that my first executive order.”
CHAPTER 34
Eventually he was allowed to board the Monitor Corps supply ship Cranthor, a regular and frequest visitor to the hospital. It had an all-Tralthan crew and one passenger cabin that was environmentally suited to Earth-human DBDGs. Those members of the crew who had not met him knew who he was and what he had been, and they were so eager to please him that they offered to start another farewell party on board. He told them that he just wanted to rest without company or conversation or entertainment tapes while he tried to recover from the first one. But the truth was that he wanted to watch the vast, dazzling spectacle of the hospital complex as it shrank to become a tiny, multicolored jewel in the aft viewscreen, while reminding himself that he was seeing it for the last time and remembering back to the time when he had been in a construction gang working on the empty structure, and the strange, weird, and exciting events and people he had met on his way up to his recent and brief appointment and sendoff as its retiring administrator.
The party had taken three days and two nights, because all the people who wanted to say good-bye to him had not been offduty at the same time. He could not understand the reason for all the fuss, because he knew that he was an intensely unlikable person even if he had been good at his job, but some of the things the senior and very junior staff of many species had said to him had almost wrecked his emotional self-control. He had been respected much more than he had ever imagined and, while nobody would admit to liking much less loving him, the intensity of that dislike had manifested itself in some strange and often touching ways.
Love, he thought, was supposed to be akin to hate. In their own particular fashion they must have hated him very much.
He stayed with Cranthor while it refilled its holds on Traltha, Orligia, and Nidia, but left it there because its next destination would be a return trip to Sector General. Over the years he had become an expert at hopping from ship to ship and, although he was still able to travel as a retired space officer and Sector General administrator, he had accrued enough back salary over the years to be able to pay his way if he wanted to keep a low profile. This time it wasn’t necessary, because Korallan, a tour ship larger and better appointed and, presumably, less likely to have operational mishaps than the old Kreskhallar, was berthed at Nidia’s Retlin spaceport while its passengers saw the sights, and was due to depart for O’Mara’s final destination in three days’ time. He was already familiar with Retlin from earlier stopovers, but used the time to reaccustom himself since his last leave to shopping and staying in low-ceilinged buildings where he had to bend almost double, and to public-transport vehicles in which he had to either kneel or squat.
On the first night out he discovered that the multi-species dining room contained seven other Earth-human passengers, three females and four males, all of them young. He was given a seat at the end of their table but deliberately avoided joining in their conversation. Unlike the situation in Kreskhallar’s dining room, this time he wasn’t the only male show in town and he had no intention of engaging in a shipboard romance. His life was complicated enough as it was.
He left the ship when it was disembarking at Kelgia’s main spaceport and took a private groundcar into its capital city. The driver was used to Earth-human and many other strange shapes squeezing themselves into its vehicle and politely, for a Kelgian, described items of scenic or architectural interest, not realizing that O’Mara had traveled this way many times and was already familiar with them. Even so, he could not help watching as the sprawling expanse of Kelgia’s largest multi-species hospital complex, looking like an open, beautifully landscaped, and aseptically clean white township, moved slowly past.
Even though he had never actually visited the place, every stretch of parkland, garden, and tree-shaded walkway, as well as the layout of the wards, operating theaters, and staff accommodation in every building, was known to him through the memories of his mind partner, who had trained and served there.
Kledenth, its fur rippling in a combination of impatience and pleasure, was already waiting for him at the entrance to its house when he paid off his driver and began stretching to ease his stiffened leg and back muscles. The Kelgian indicated its own larger and more comfortable vehicle parked a few meters away.
It said, “I had to pull, as you Earth-humans say, a few strings, but I got it. All the equipment you wanted is loaded on board. Now, I suppose you’re in a hurry to use it?”
“Eager to use it, Kledenth,” O’Mara replied, “but not in a tearing hurry. This time I’m not on leave and don’t have to return to Sector General, so hopefully I’m on this world to stay. There is time now, and there will be more later, to talk to you and your family and to thank you yet again for everything you’ve done for us over the years. The debt for saving your fur after that accident on Kreskhallar is more than repaid.”
“Look at the way my fur moves, said Kledenth. “In spite of my age is it not beautiful? It could so easily have been otherwise. My life and successful career subsequent to that accident, my loving lifemate and children, I owe to your specialist knowledge and gross insubordination toward that ship’s captain, and to the skill of the Earth-human female. That debt will never be repaid. But I think you are making one of your stupid and unnecessary Earth-human pretenses, so get into my groundcar and stop wasting time being polite to someone who doesn’t understand the concept.”