So he politely observed the various tiny clinics, most of them without signs of recent use, from magno and hydrotherapy to nutrionics. He professed to admire the pediatrics ward, with its adjoining children’s playground, though he wondered how the native children managed to cope with such radically civilized toys.
What impressed him most was not the clinic but the fact that it seemed to have so little use. The only patients he saw were a few adults seated in the magnificent park that overlooked the sea, and every one of them was a bone-fracture case. Watching them as they came and went in self-powered invalid chairs from the native-type buildings at the rear, he decided to ask his own medical staff to examine this puzzle. Either the Langrian natives were an unusually healthy people, or they were using the medical center only for a few medical problems they couldn’t handle themselves.
Otherwise, if Miss Warr expected to overwhelm him with her uncle’s generosity to the natives, it was just as well that she would not be seeing the report he intended to file. Vorish had seen medical centers on many worlds. Any time a man in his command became seriously ill far from regular navy facilities, Vorish had to obtain for him the best medical care conveniently available, and he always made it a point to inspect the facilities himself. He would not willingly place one of his men in the care of Langri’s medical center. The building and its setting were attractive, but its medical facilities were at best mediocre, and there was no trained staff at all. Miss Warr, for all of her enthusiasm, was a novice, and the doctor could not possibly have the broad spectrum of experience so essential to a medical director. Wembling and Company had in fact made no more than a gesture at providing medical care for the natives.
But Vorish did not denigrate the gesture. He well understood that even a badly run center could produce spectacular results on a primitive world that had been completely without medical care.
“That’s the story,” Miss Warr said finally. “I insisted that the center be built first, and here it is. We’ve already inoculated the entire population against the worst diseases, and there’s a regular inoculation program for children. Diseases that formerly caused certain death now no longer require hospitalization, and we haven’t had a death from sickness since the center opened. We’re making spectacular improvements in infant mortality, and broken bones, which in the past frequently caused death or life-time disability, now are routinely handled. I still have nightmares about that child I saw die, and it’s the greatest satisfaction I’ve ever experienced to know that it won’t happen again.”
“To be sure,” Vorish murmured. “I see that you’re training native nurses.”
“We call them medical assistants. We have youngsters of both sexes studying here, and we let them perform all kinds of routine chores under supervision. As much as possible we convert our cases into medical lessons for them. Of course the natives won’t be able to achieve the competence to run the center themselves until they’re able to send their bright young people to medical schools on other worlds and make fully qualified doctors of them. That’s many years away, but the problem isn’t urgent. The resort will have its own medical center, so there’ll be doctors available until the natives can provide their own.”
“Thank you very much, Miss Warr,” Vorish said. “I’ll send my own medical officer to visit you. I’m sure he’ll be interested.”
Vorish and Hort emerged at the rear of the center, near the native buildings, and they took the paved walk back to the beach. As soon as it had curved out of sight of the center, Vorish said to Hort, “Now will you answer my questions?”
“You saw it yourself,” Hort said. “She thinks the medical center justifies everything.”
“I want to know what you think. I’ve heard Fornri’s story, and I believe him. He couldn’t possibly have forged that treaty, and anyway my records officer has come up with an old index tape that he fortunately neglected to discard, and on it Langri is classified Five-X. How did Wembling get the classification switched to Three-C?”
“How does a big-time operator manage anything?” Hort asked bitterly. “Political pressure, bribery, trading favors—if there’s a way, he knows how to find it. Probably we’ll never know how he did it. The question should be—what can be done about it while there’s still time to save the natives?”
“Save the natives? Surely Wembling isn’t plotting anything more sinister than stopping their harassment. He started his project with the idea of helping them.”
“He did not,” Hort said hotly. “Wembling never has any idea except to help himself. He was trying to make a record so he’d get a diplomatic appointment to a world with more potential loot. The moment he got the notion he could make more money from Langri resorts than he could from mining concessions somewhere else, he sent Ayns off to Colomus to get Langri reclassified.”
“I see. Even so, if the resort is as successful as Wembling predicts, ten per cent of the profits will produce a whopping income for the natives. Why are they fighting him?”
“Haven’t they the right to reject the ten per cent and the resort if they don’t want either?”
“Of course. That is, they should have had that right under the violated treaty. But it does seem to me that they could have compromised—received the benefits from the resort and at the same time controlled it. Wembling did try to get their permission first, Fornri said. And when he couldn’t, then he worked the reclassification.”
They had reached the beach. The natives pushed the boat into the water and stood waiting for them, but Hort and Vorish turned aside and sought the forest’s edge and a fallen tree to sit on. The boys grinned and pulled the boat back onto the beach.
“It’s a matter of life and death,” Hort said.
Vorish regarded him skeptically. “You’ll have to explain that.”
“These natives have a precarious existence. Perhaps a small resort, properly controlled, wouldn’t affect the world’s ecology, but Wembling doesn’t do anything in a small way. He’s building a huge resort, and he’s planning others, and already his construction and the water recreation of his workers is seriously affecting the natives’ food supply. If Wembling isn’t stopped, there won’t be any native population left to enjoy that ten per cent when and if Wembling and Company gets around to paying it.”
“Are you serious?”
“Deadly serious. It’s a scientific fact that a people can become accustomed to certain kinds of foods and unable to eat others. There are dozens of worlds where local populations are fond of native herbs that make visitors ill.”
“The Space Navy can tell you a few things about that,” Vorish said. “Our men come from all the member worlds of the Federation. Space Navy ships have to have dietary classifications, so that men accustomed to the same kinds of food can serve together.”
“Langri’s problem is much more serious than that. For an unknown number of generations, these natives have been existing on a diet composed almost entirely of koluf, a Langrian sea creature. It’s an extremely rich and nutritious food, but its components of vitamins and minerals and the rest are peculiar to the world of Langri and unlike any food ever eaten by humans anywhere else. By evolution or adaptation the natives’ bodies are accustomed to this, and I’m afraid they won’t be able to assimilate normal human foods. And the construction activity is ruining their hunting grounds.”
“In other words,” Vorish mused, “the natives can’t eat anything but this koluf, and Wembling and Company are destroying it.”
“Not ‘destroying.’ Driving it away. As far back as the natives can remember, koluf always have followed regular feeding routes along the coast. Now they’re changing them.”