“Interest is felt,” Conway said when the three of them were on the ground and standing at the points of an invisible equilateral triangle more than three meters on the side, “in the subject of healing on Goglesk. Comparisons of other-world knowledge and treatments might be made, of illnesses, injuries, and nonphysical disorders, and particularly of surgical procedures and anatomical studies.”
Khone’s center of attention was in the space between Wainright and Conway as it replied, “There is no curative surgery on Goglesk. Anatomical work is possible only on cadavers stripped of stings and residual poisons. Personal physical contact, except for the purposes of procreation or the care of nonadults, is dangerous for both the healer and patient. A certain minimum distance is essential for the performance of my work.”
“But why?” Conway said, moving instinctively toward the healer.
Then he saw that Khone’s fur was agitated and that the spikes all over its body were twitching. He turned toward the Lieutenant, ostensibly addressing Wainright when he spoke.
“An instrument in my possession enables a trained healer to observe the position and workings of internal organs and to chart the locations of bones and principal blood vessels,” Conway said, and withdrew the scanner from its pouch at his side.
He began passing it slowly along his other arm, then moved it to his head, chest, and abdomen, describing in his most impersonal, lecturing voice the function of the organs, bone structure, and associated musculature revealed on the scanner’s screen. Then he pulled the instrument’s telescoping handle to full extension and moved it closer to Khone.
“The instrument provides this information without touching the patient’s body,” he added, “if that should be a requirement.”
Khone had moved a little closer while he had been demonstrating the scanner, and the being had rotated its body so that the eye with the spectacle could be brought to bear on the instrument. Conway had angled the screen so that the Gogleskan could see its own internal structure while he could not. But he had also set the scanner to record so that he would be able to study the material later.
He watched the healer’s spikes twitching and the long, multicolor hair rising up stiffly to lie flat again, several times in a minute. Some of the colored strands lay at right angles to the others, giving a plaid effect. The breathing orifices were making an urgent, hissing sound, but Khone was not moving away from the scanner, and gradually the being was growing calmer.
“Enough,” it said. Surprisingly, it looked straight at Conway with its ridiculous, bespectacled eye. There was a long silence, during which it was obvious that the Gogleskan was coming to a decision.
“On this world,” it said finally, “the art of the healer is a unique one, and the probability exists that this is true in other places. A healer may, while treating a patient, explore delicate areas and states of mind, and pry into material which is distressful or even shameful, but invariably personal. This normally forbidden and dangerous behavior is allowed because the speaker may not speak of anything learned, except to another healer who is being consulted in the interests of the patient …
Hippocrates, Conway thought, could not have said it better.
And it might be possible,” Khone went on, “to discuss such matters with an off-world healer. But it must be understood that these matters are for the ears only of another healer.”
“As a layman,” the Lieutenant said, smiling, “I know when I’m not wanted. I’ll wait in the groundcar.”
Conway got down on one knee so that his eyes were on a level with those of the Gogleskan. If they were to speak together as equals, he thought, the process might be aided considerably if Conway did not tower over the other healer, whose hair and spikes were again twitching in agitation. They were less than two meters apart now. He decided to take the initiative.
He had to be careful not to overawe Khone with gratuitous accounts of medical superscience, so he began by describing the work of Sector General in very simple terms, but continually emphasizing the multispecies aspects and stressing the high degree of professional cooperation required for its performance. From there he worked gradually around to the subject of cooperation in general and its importance in fields other than medicine.
“… Observations have been made,” Conway went on, “which suggest that progress here has been retarded for reasons which, considering the high intelligence of individual Gogleskans, are not clear. Is an explanation possible?”
“Progress is impossible because cooperation is impossible,” Khone replied, and suddenly it became less impersonal. “Healer Conway, we are constantly fighting ourselves and the behavior patterns imposed on us by survival instincts evolved, I suspect, at the time when we were the nonintelligent food source of every seadwelling predator on Goglesk. To successfully fight these instincts requires self-discipline in our thinking and actions if we are not to lose the very modest, nay, backward, level of culture that we now possess.
“If the exact nature of the problem could be explained in detail,” Conway began, and then he, too, slipped into a more personal mode, “I would like to help you, Healer Khone. It might be that a completely strange healer, one who has a completely new and perhaps even an alien viewpoint, could suggest a solution which would not otherwise have occurred to the entities concerned …
He broke off because an irregular, urgent drumming sound had started up from somewhere further inland. Khone drew away from him again. “Apologies are tendered for the immediate departure,” it said loudly. “There is urgent work for a healer.”
Wainright leaned out of the groundcar. “If Khone is in a hurry he began, then corrected himself. “If rapid transport is required, it is available.”
The rear storage compartment was already open and the loading ramps extending groundward.
They reached the scene of the accident after ten minutes of the most hair-raising driving that Conway had ever experienced-the Gogleskan, probably because of its naturally slow method of ambulation, did not give directions for turning corners until they were abreast of the intersection concerned. By the time Wainright had grounded the vehicle beside the partly demolished three-story building indicated by Khone, Conway was wondering if for the first time in his adult life he would succumb to motion sickness.
But all subjective considerations were driven from his mind when he saw the casualties hobbling or tumbling down the cracked or slowly collapsing external ramps, or struggling out of the large, ground-level doorway which was partly blocked by fallen rubble. Their many-colored body hair was hidden beneath a layer of dust and wood splinters, and on a few of the bodies he could see the wet, red gleam of fresh wounds. But all of them were ambulatory, he saw as he jumped down from the vehicle, and they were all moving as fast as they could away from the damaged building to join the wide and surprisingly distant circle of onlookers.
Suddenly he caught sight of a Gogleskan shape protruding from the debris around the doorway, and heard the untranslatable sounds it was making.
“Why are they standing there?” he yelled at Khone, waving toward the onlookers. “Why don’t they help it?”
“Only a healer may closely approach another Gogleskan when it is in distress,” Khone said as its tiny manipulators drew thin wooden rods from a pouch strapped to its middle and began slotting them together. It added, “Or a person with sufficient mental selfcontrol not to be affected by that distress.”
Conway was following the healer as it moved toward the casualty. He said, “Perhaps a being of a completely different species could bring to bear on the case the required degree of clinical detachment.”