James White: Mind Changer

He waited until a second bout of fidgeting had abated, then went on, “I know that you have all broken the rules by sneaking a look at one another’s confidential psych files, so what I say should not cause embarrassment. If it does, tough. Braithwaite first.”

Without changing his position in the deep armchair, the lieutenant somehow gave the impression that he had come to attention.

“You” he went on briskly, “deal well with the office staff and routine and you are good with people regardless of species. When sympathy is needed you are sympathetic, firm when the being concerned isn’t doing enough to help solve his, her, or its problem, and you never, ever lose your temper. To your present superior you are respectful without being subservient, and you gently but firmly resist any attempt at bullying. As my principal assistant you’re close to ideal. Intelligent, efficient, adaptable, dedicated, uncomplaining, and completely lacking in ambition. In spite of completing your medical training here, you refused to take the Corps exams for surgeon-lieutenant. You have found your niche in Other-Species Psychology and you don’t want to go anywhere or do anything else. When you were offered a major promotion off-hospital you turned it down.

“But enough of the compliments, Lieutenant,” he went on. “On and under the surface your personality is so well adjusted that it is almost frightening. Your only defect is that in one respect you are a total and abject coward. You want to be and you are a trusted and resourceful second-in-command who enjoys the power and advantages that the position confers, but you are intensely afraid of taking the ultimate responsibility that would go with the top job.”

Without the smallest change of expression, Braithwaite nodded. He was a man who was comfortable with the truth about himself. O’Mara turned to Cha Thrat.

“Unlike the lieutenant” he said, “you are not afraid of anything. On Sommaradva you were a leading warrior-surgeon who, in spite of your patient being the first other-species entity you had ever seen, was able to intervene surgically and save the life of a leading member of the contact team. Because of the team’s gratitude, plus the fact that they wanted to do the Sommaradvan authorities a favor because the contact was not going well, you were sent here as a trainee, in spite of hospital objections, for political rather than medical reasons.

“In the event your surgical ability and technique were acceptable” he continued sourly, “but your strict adherence to Sommaradvan medical ethics was not. You were free to attend lectures, but soon nobody would accept you for practical work on the wards. We found you a job as a trainee in Maintenance, where you did well and became popular with a large number of the junior-grade medical and maintenance staff trainees until you messed up there, too. I’m not quite sure how you ended up here. Some people think I took pity on you.

“Some people,” he added dryly as he turned toward Lioren, “don’t know me very well.”

He paused for a long moment, thinking about what he should say to this entity who had suffered and was still suffering. O’Mara’s words and manner toward a patient and a colleague were different. With an emotionally distressed person he could be as gentle and sympathetic as the situation required, but to a mentally healthy nonpatient he preferred to relax and be his normal, badtempered, sarcastic self. In spite of the Tarlan’s continued good progress over the past two years, Lioren fell somewhere into the grey area between therapist and patient. But whatever he said, the Padre would accept it without complaint because it would consider that it deserved every physical and mental cruelty it would ever receive.

When Lioren had joined Sector General he had been a Wearer of the Blue Cloak, Tarla’s equivalent of Earth’s Nobel Prize for Medicine, and it had shown itself to be an unusually able and dedicated other-species physician and surgeon before transferring to the Monitor Corps’ medical service, where its promotion to surgeoncaptain had been deservedly rapid.

Then had come the terrible Cromsaggar Incident.

While it was in charge of a disaster-relief operation on Groinsag involving urgent treatment for a planetwide epidemic, a mistake had occurred that had virtually decimated the surviving population. As a result it was court-martialed for professional negligence and exonerated. But it had disagreed with the findings of the court, felt that it deserved the ultimate penalty, that it would never be able to forgive itself, and it had made a solemn promise that it would never again practice its beloved medical arts for the rest of its life, which it did not expect to last for more than a few days. With the aid of O’Mara’s highly unorthodox therapy, it had been able to forgive itself in part and extend its life expectancy, but Tarlans did not take their solemn promises lightly so it had never nor would it ever practice medicine on any being again.

Instead it had learned to sublimate its need to alleviate the suffering of others by bringing to them not the healing knife but the gentle, understanding, and sympathetic words, words that really meant something because the recipients knew beyond any possible doubt that they came from a person whose suffering had been so much greater than their own.

In every hospital, O’Mara knew, there were always patients whose condition was more serious than one’s own, so that the less serious cases found hope and consolation, and even felt themselves fortunate, in the knowledge that they were not as bad as that poor bugger down the ward.

It was a psychological truism that had enabled Lioren to put his mental anguish to constructive use. Its preferences were the truly hopeless cases, patients or staff members who were mentally distressed and did not respond to normal psychotherapy, or who were in desperate need of spiritual consolation, or who were terminally ill and afraid. It had turned its brilliant mind to gaining a basic knowledge of all the religious beliefs and practices known within the Galactic Federation, which on average numbered twelve to every inhabited planet. Its results, considering the difficult emotional area it had made its own, were exceptionally good.

Moral cowardice in an embarrassing situation, O’Mara decided finally, was the first refuge of the intelligent. He went on, “Padre, everyone knows everything about you and you are beyond embarrassment, so talking about you would be a waste of my time and breath. The point I’m making is that to begin with, all of you were flawed in some respect, but that has not affected the quality of your work in the department. To the contrary, it has given you a greater sensitivity and insight where your patients are concerned. But as a result of my recent promotion, from now on I expect you to do better, and much more.

“In case the grapevine omitted the details,” he continued, looking at them in turn, “my current position is this: I have been appointed administrator while retaining my position and duties of chief psychologist for the interim period necessary for me to find, evaluate, train, and choose my successor, who will also be expected to perform both jobs. It has been decided that in future the entity who holds this position must be a civilian, so that he, she, or it will not be influenced by the Monitor Corps, as well as having formal medical training and experience in other-species psychology to enable it to understand and satisfy the peculiar medical and nonmedical needs of this establishment. Because of its importance and the unusual nature of the qualification required, the position has been advertised on all the professional nets. Much of my time will be taken up familiarizing myself with my new duties while you help me winnow out the wishful thinkers, preferably at long range, so that we can short-list and concentrate on the one or two who might possibly measure up for the job.”