He was also responsible for the hospital’s medical elite, the Diagnosticians. According to O’Mara himself, however, the real reason for the high level of mental stability among the diverse and often touchy medical staff was that they were all too frightened of him to risk his displeasure by going mad.
O’Mara watched him closely until Conway had finished, then he said, “A clear, concise, and apparently accurate report, Doctor, but you are a close friend of the patient. There is the possibility of clouded judgment, exaggeration. You are not a psychologist but an e-t physician and surgeon who has apparently already decided that the case is one which should be treated by my department. You appreciate my difficulty? Please describe for me your feelings during this mission from the rescue until now. But first, are you feeling all right?”
All that Conway could feel just then was his blood pressure rising.
“Be as objective as possible,” O’Mara added.
Conway took a deep breath and let it out agaJn slowly through his nose. “After our very fast response to the distress signal there was a general feeling of disappointment at the rescue of just one survivor, a survivor who was barely alive. But you’re on the wrong track, Major. The feeling was shared by everyone on the ship, I believe, but it was not strong enough to explain the Cinrusskin’s hypersensitivity. Prilicla was picking up emotional radiation of distressing intensity from crew members stationed at the other end of the ship, a distance at which emoting would normally be barely detectable. And I am given neither to maudlin sentimentality nor exaggeration of symptoms. Right at this moment 1 feel the way I usually do in this blasted office and that is—”
“Objectively, remember,” O’Mara said dryly.
“I was not trying to do your diagnostic work for you,” Conway went on, bringing his voice back to a conversational level, “but the indications are that there is a psychological Problem. The result, perhaps, of an as yet unidentified disease, or organic malfunction or an imbalance in the endocrine system. But a purely psychological reason for the condition is also a Possibility which—”
“Anything is possible. Doctor,” O’Mara broke in impatiently. “Be specific. What are you going to do about your friend, and what exactly do you want me to do about it?”
“Two things,” Conway said. “I want you to check on Pril-icla’s condition yourself—”
“Which you know I will do anyway,” O’Mara said.
“—and give me the GLNO physiology tape,” he went on, “so that I can confirm or eliminate the nonpsychological reasons for the trouble.”
For a moment O’Mara was silent. His face remained as expressionless as a lump of basalt, but the eyes showed concern. “You’ve carried Educator tapes before now and know what to expect. But the GLNO tape is … different. You will feel Jike a very unhappy Cinrusskin indeed. You are no Diagnostician, Conway — at least, not yet. Better think about it.”
The physiology tapes, Conway knew from personal experience, fell somewhere between the categories of mixed blessing and necessary evil. While skill in e-t surgery came with aptitude, training, and experience, no single being could hope to hold in its brain the vast quantity of physiological data needed for the treatment of the variety of patients encountered in a hospital like Sector General. The incredible mass of clinical and anatomical information needed to take care of them had therefore to be furnished, usually on a temporary basis, by means of the Educator tapes, which were the brain recordings of the great medical specialists belonging to the species concerned. If an Earth-human doctor had to treat a Kelgian patient, he took one of the Kelgian physiologytapes until treatment was completed, after which he had it erased. But for the medic concerned, whether the tape was being carried for as long as it took to perform an other-species operation or for a teaching project lasting several months, the experience was not a pleasant one.
The only good thing about it from the medic’s point of view was that he was much better off than one of the Diagnosticians.
They were the hospital’s elite. A Diagnostician was one of those rare entities whose mind had proved itself stable enough to retain up to ten physiology tapes simultaneously. To their data-crammed minds was given the work of original research in xenological medicine and the diagnosis and treatment of
disease and injury in hitherto unknown life-forms. There was a saying current in the hospital, reputed to have originated with O’Mara himself, that anyone sane enough to be a Diagnostician was mad.
For it was not only physiological data which the tapes imparted; the complete memory and personality of the entity who had possessed that knowledge was impressed on the receiving mind as well. In effect, a Diagnostician subjected himself or itself voluntarily to a form of multiple schizophrenia, with the alien personalities sharing its mind so utterly different that in many cases they did not have even a system of logic in common. And all too frequently the foremost medical authorities of a planet, despite their eminence in the field of healing, were very bad-tempered, aggressive, and unpleasant people indeed.
Such would not be the case with the GLNO tape, Conway knew, because Cinrusskins were the most timid, friendly, and likable beings imaginable.
“I’ve thought about it,” Conway said.
O’Mara nodded and spoke into his desk set. “Carrington? Senior Physician Conway is approved for the GLNO tape, with compulsory postimpression sedation of one hour. I’ll be in Emergency Admissions on Level One Six Three—” he grinned suddenly at Conway “—trying not to tell the medics their business.”
Conway woke to see a large, pink balloon of a face hanging °yer him. Instinctively he tried to scramble up the wall beside “is couch in case the enormous, heavily muscled body sup-Porting the face fell and crushed the life out of him. Then suddenly there was a mental shift in perspective as the features registered concern and withdrew and the slim, Earth-human body in Monitor Corps green straightened up.
Lieutenant Carrington, one of O’Mara’s assistants, said, Easy, Doctor. Sit up slowly, then stand. Concentrate on put-big your two feet onto the floor and don’t worry because they aren’t a Cinrusskin’s six.”
He made good time back to 163 in spite of having to walk a large number of beings who were much smaller than just because the Cinrusskin component of his mind that they were big and dangerous. From Murchison he learned that O’Mara was in Prilicla’s ward, having first called in to the OR to discuss the EGCL’s basic physiology and probable environmental and evolutionary influence with Thorn-nastor and Edanelt, both of whom had been too busy to speak to him.
They would not speak to Con way, either, and he could see why. The operation on the EGCL had become an emergency with an unknown but probably extremely short time limit.
When the splinters of depressed carapace had been removed from the brain over an hour earlier, Murchison explained quietly between rumbled instructions from Thomnastor, there had been a sudden and surprising deterioration in the EGCL’s condition. The change had been detected by Prilicla who, because of its condition, had been excluded from any part of the operation. But the Cinrusskin had continued to act like a doctor by making use of its abnormally heightened emotion-detection faculty. Prilicla had pulled rank to send Ward Seven’s duty nurse to the operating theater with its empathic findings and a diffident suggestion that if they were to relay the operational proceedings to Seven’s viewscreen, it would be able to assist them.