James White - Mind Changer

“I will leave you now? it ended, “before I use language not befitting a ship’s officer.”

The sickbay door hissed shut behind it and the clicking sound of its feet diminished as it moved down the corridor. Joan looked at Kledenth’s agitated fur and then at its face.

“I’m sorry? she said. “All I can do is talk to you, but I won’t know what to say because I don’t know what I’m talking about. Lieutenant, as an other-species psychologist can you think of anything appropriate to say or do?”

O’Mara was walking quickly around the room, staring through transparent doors into the medicine and instrument cabinets. A few of them were locked, but the fastenings were less than robust and were easy to force open. He didn’t answer until he had rejoined them.

“I have a lot to say and more to do? he replied briskly, “but I’ll need the agreement and help of both of you. First I want you to pay close attention to what I’m saying, and while I’m talking I want you”-he looked intently at Joan—”to run that scanner over the affected area so I can explain what you will be seeing…

O’Mara described a condition that was encountered rarely among Kelgians, and then usually in the very young, and a procedure to relieve it that was simple, radical, and not without risk. The alternative to not having the operation was progressive and irreversible paralysis of the medial body fur. It was his own voice he was using, but the calm authority and certainty of his manner was based on the specialist knowledge and clinical experience of the donor of his mind tape. As he finished his step-by-step description of the indicated procedure, he knew from the way Kledenth’s fur was reacting and Joan was looking at him that there was a yawning credibility gap opening between them. Even before she spoke he knew that he would have to end by telling them the truth. All of it.

“Lieutenant? she said, “you certainly sound as if you know what you’re talking about, but how do you know? This, as I’ve told you before, isn’t the kind of stuff you picked up in a first-aid lecture.”

“You don’t know what this means, O’Mara? Kledenth said, its fur rising in stiff, agitated spikes, “because you are not a Kelgian.”

“Believe me, I do know? said O’Mara. He took a few seconds to remind himself of how stupid he was being, because if either of them told anyone else of what he was about to say and do, he would be out of Sector General and the Monitor Corps within days and probably find himself sentenced to an indefinite stay in one of the Federation’s psychiatric-adjustment facilities. But that was a risk that neither he nor his mind partner considered important compared with the fate that might lie ahead for Kledenth. He took a deep breath and began to speak.

He told them briefly about his work in Sector General and, without mentioning Thornnastor or the tape donor by name, the psychological investigation that had led to him impressing himself with the Marrasarah tape, which, although it was completely against regulations, he still carried. The memory-transfer technique was not widely known, he explained, because single-species, planetbased hospitals had no interest in it unless one of their senior staff became so eminent in the field that it was invited by the Galactic Medical Council to be a mind donor.

… It is the complete memories and experience of just such a person that I carry in my mind now? O’Mara went on. “In its time it was reputed to be the most able specialist in thoracic surgery on Kelgia. That is why you have to trust and accept everything I tell you?

Joan was staring at him intently, her expression reflecting a strange mixture of wonder, excitement, and concern, while Kledenth’s fur was a mass of silvery spikes. It was the Kelgian who spoke first.

“So your mind is partly Kelgian? it said. “I wondered why you talked straight like one of us. But if half my fur is going to lose mobility like you say, what are you going to do about it?”

Without replying, O’Mara turned away and walked quickly to the medicine cabinets, where he began filling a tray with the instruments, anesthetic, and medication that would be required. He himself had no idea of what he was doing, but his mind partner knew exactly what was needed. The instruments were designed for Sennelt’s use, but Earth-human digits were acknowledged to be the most adaptable and efficient manipulatory appendages in the Federation.

“Oh, God? said Joan in a frightened voice when he returned with the filled tray, “he’s, he’s going to operate on you.

O’Mara shook his head firmly. He held out his hands to her at waist level, and rotated them slowly to show the thick, blunt fingers and the palms which, in spite of his recent elevation to the status of officer and gentleman, still bore the calluses of his years in space construction.

“These are not the hands of a surgeon…” he said.

He bent forward quickly, took her hands gently but firmly in his, and lifted them up. They lay cupped in his roughened palms, slender, beautiful, and strong, as if fashioned in warm and living porcelain.

but these are.

She shook her head, looking suddenly frightened, but she didn’t pull her hands away. He gave them a reassuring squeeze.

“Please listen to me? he said, “because I’m being very serious. You are used to operating on small life-forms, which means that at times the procedure requires fine work in a severely restricted operative field. The fact that your patients are nonsapient is irrelevant. You now understand the clinical problem and the necessity for immediate surgery if Kledenth is not to be condemned to a future that, for any Kelgian, is too terrible to contemplate. The procedure, although considered radical, is fairly straightforward. You have the necessary surgical skills and I shall be guiding your hands at every stage. Please.”

“Yes, Earth-person Joan? said Kledenth, “please do it?”

He was beginning to realize that her hands, like the rest of her well-formed body, were really beautiful. Even when she was being subjected to the present severe emotional stress, they weren’t shaking a bit.

O‘Mara sat as comfortably as it was possible to be in Sennelt’s Melfan chair, watching the tiny dream-stirrings of Kledenth’s fur as it slept off the anesthetic while he tried to calculate the exact amount of trouble he could expect. But of one thing he was sure:

the trouble would involve himself and nobody else.

Before Joan, at his insistence, had returned to her cabin to get some sleep before breakfast, which was only three hours away, they had come to an agreement about the operation. She had performed it, her technique had been flawless, and the prognosis was favorable, but so far as outsiders were concerned she had not even been there. It was O’Mara who had done all the work, would bear the entire responsibility for and take all the blame or, if there was any, the credit for what could be regarded as an irresponsible and unlawful surgical assault on a defenseless patient. The patient, who was incapable of telling a lie, had promised to exercise the Kelgian option of saying nothing at all to anyone about the incident.

No matter what happened to himself, O’Mara was pleased that the not so innocent bystander would not be involved even though he, personally, was beginning to wish that he could be closely involved with her. He sighed, checked the audible warning on the monitors they had attached to Kledenth, then wriggled into a less uncomfortable position on the Melfan chair and tried to sleep.

But the inside of his closed eyelids were slowly becoming a three-dimensional viewscreen displaying pictures of Joan. He watched again the delicate precision of her technique as she worked on Kledenth, and saw her as she pointed out the scenery and talked animatedly about the beauties of the Dunelton Gorge, and in formal dress at dinner. But mostly the pictures, bright and sharp and tactile, were of her teaching him to swim in the pool. Some of the things she was saying and doing were not as he remembered them, and as a psychologist he could recognize the beginning of a wishfulfillment dream when he saw one. But before it could end as all such dreams end, he was awakened by the steady clicking of Melfan feet moving along the corridor.