“Perhaps I will be able to help you … with the Seldal business and in return … you can tell me more about Cromsag … and do me another small favor.”
The Earth-human Mannen had been a Diagnostician for many years. Its help and understanding of the Seldal problem would be invaluable, especially as it would be given willingly and without the need of him having to waste time hiding the reason for his questions. But he also knew that the price he would have to pay for that assistance in inflaming wounds that could never heal would be higher than the patient realized.
Before he could reply, Mannen’s lips drew back slowly in the peculiar Earth-human grimace which at times could signify a response to humor or a nonverbal expression of friendship or sympathy.
“And I thought I had problems,” it said.
CHAPTER 11
LlOREN’s subsequent visits were lengthier, completely private, and not nearly as painful as he had feared.
He had asked Hredlichi, the Charge Nurse on Mannen’s ward, to inform him immediately whenever the patient was conscious and in a condition to receive visitors, regardless of the time of the hospital’s arbitrary day or night that should be. Before agreeing, Hredlichi had checked with the patient, who hitherto had refused visits from everyone except for the ward rounds of its surgeon, and been greatly surprised when Mannen agreed to receive nonmedical visits only from Lioren.
Cha Thrat had explained it was insufficiently motivated to be willing to interrupt its sleep or drop other, more urgent work at a moment’s notice to pursue the Seldal investigation — which was, after all, Lioren’s responsibility — although it would continue to assist Lioren in any other way which did not involve major personal inconvenience. As a result, the first visit to Mannen had been the only one at which the Sommaradvan had been present.
By the third visit, Lioren was feeling relieved that Mannen did not want to talk exclusively about the Cromsaggar, disappointed that his understanding of Seldal’s behavior was no clearer, and embarrassed that the patient was spending an increasing proportion of each visit talking about itself.
“With respect, Doctor,” Lioren said after one particularly argumentative self-diagnosis, “I am not in possession of an Earth-human Educator tape which would enable me to give an opinion in your case nor, as a member of the Psychology Department, am I allowed to practice medicine. Seldal is your physician-in-charge and it—”
“Talks to me as if … I was a drooling infant,” Mannen broke in. “Or a frightened, terminal patient. At least you don’t … try to administer … a lethal overdose … of sympathy.
You are here to … obtain information about Seldal and, in return, to satisfy my curiosity … about you. No, I am not so much afraid of dying … as having too much time to think about it.”
“Is there pain, Doctor?” Lioren asked.
“You know there is no pain, dammit,” Mannen replied in a voice made stronger by its anger. “In the bad old days there might have been pain, and inefficient painkilling medication that so depressed the functioning of the involuntary muscle systems that … the major organs went into failure and the medication killed the patient as well as its pain … so that its medic escaped with the minimum of ethical self-criticism and … its patient was spared a lingering death. But now we have learned how to negate pain without harmful side effects … and there is nothing I can do but wait to see which of my vital organs … will be the first to expire from old age.
“I should not,” Mannen ended, its voice dropping to a whisper again, “have allowed Seldal loose in my intestines. But that blockage was … really uncomfortable.”
“I sympathize,” Lioren said, “because I, too, wish for death. But you can look back with pride and without pain to your past and to an ending that will not be long delayed. In my past and future lies only guilt and desolation that I must suffer until—”
“Do you really feel sympathy, Lioren?” Mannen broke in. “You impress me as being nothing but a proud and unfeeling … but very efficient organic healing machine. The Cromsag Incident … showed that the machine had a flaw. You want to destroy the machine … while O’Mara wants to repair it. I don’t know which of you will succeed.”
“I would never,” Lioren said harshly, “destroy myself to avoid just punishment.”
“To an ordinary member of the staff,” Mannen went on, “I would not say such … personally hurtful things. I know you feel you deserve them … and worse … and you expect no apology from me. But I do apologize … because I am hurting in a way that I did not believe possible … and am striking out at you … and I ignore my friends when they visit me in case they discover … that I am nothing but a vindictive old man.”
Before Lioren could think of a reply, Mannen said weakly, “I have been hurtful to a being who has not hurt me. The only recompense I can make is by helping you … with information on Seldal. When it visits me tomorrow morning … I shall ask it specific and very personal questions. I shall not mention … nor will it suspect your connection.”
“Thank you,” Lioren said. “But I do not understand how you can ask—”
“It is very simple,” Mannen said, its voice strengthening again. “Seldal is a Senior Physician and I was, until my summary demotion to the status of patient, a Diagnostician. It will be pleased to answer all my questions for three reasons. Out of respect for my former rank, because it will want to humor a terminal patient who wants to talk shop for what might well be the last time, and especially because I have not spoken a word to it since three days before the operation. If I cannot discover any helpful information for you after that exercise, the information does not exist.”
This terminally ill entity, in what might well be the last constructive act of its life, was going to help him with the Seldal assignment as no other person was capable of doing, simply because it had used a few impolite words to him. Lioren had always considered it wrong to become emotionally involved in a case, however slightly, because the patient’s interests were best served by the impersonal, clinical approach — and Mannen was not even his patient. But somehow it seemed that the investigation into the Nallajim Senior’s behavior was no longer his only concern.
“Thank you again,” Lioren said. “But I had been about to say that I cannot understand why you are hurting in ways that you did not believe possible when your medication should render you pain-free. Is it a nonmedical problem?”
Mannen stared up at him unblinkingly for what seemed a very long time in silence, and Lioren wished that he was able to read the expression on its wasted and deeply wrinkled features. He tried again.
“If it is nonmedical, would you prefer I send for O’Mara?”
“No!” Mannen said, weakly but very firmly. “I do not want to talk to the Chief Psychologist. He has been here many times, until he stopped trying to talk to a person who pretended to be asleep all the time and, like my other friends, stayed away.”
It was becoming clear that Mannen wanted to talk to someone, but had not yet made the decision to do so. Silence, Lioren thought, might be the safest form of questioning.
“In your mind,” Mannen said finally, in a voice which had found strength from somewhere, “there is too much that you want to forget. In mine there is even more that I cannot remember.”
“Still I do not understand you,” Lioren said.
“Must I explain it as if you were a first-day trainee?” the patient said. “For the greater part of my professional life I have been a Diagnostician. As such I have had to accommodate in my mind, often for periods of several years, the knowledge, personalities, and medical experience of anything up to ten entities at a time. The experience is of many alien personalities occupying and — because these tape donors were rarely timid or self-effacing people — fighting for control of the host mind. This is a subjective mental phenomenon which must be overcome if one is to continue as a Diagnostician, but initially it seems that the host mind is a battleground with too many combatants warring with each other until—”