James White: Mind Changer

He nodded curtly to indicate that the meeting was over, then said, “Don’t bother asking questions until you’ve had a chance to think about them. From now on I’ll be watching you closely and hitting you with a few surprises from time to time. Cha Thrat, Lioren, if you’re tired, go rest in the outer office. Braithwaite, I have a job for you?

As the others were leaving, he went on, “Lieutenant, Diagnostician Yursedth is due in half an hour. It is having troublesome dreams and waking episodes of psychosomatic peripheral neuropathy associated with one of its Educator tapes. Talk to it, identify and erase the culprit tape, then reiinpress a same-species tape with what you consider to be a more amenable personality with a similar medical background. I shall be picking the retiring administrator’s brains for the rest of the afternoon and, no doubt, trying to duck invitations to his farewell party?

He held Braithwaite’s eyes for a moment, but he did not allow the sympathy he was feeling to reach his voice as he went on, “The Yursedth case could be tricky, and this will be the first time that you’ve erased and reimpressed a tape without supervision. If you have a problem with it, Lieutenant, don’t call me. This one will be entirely your responsibility?

Braithwaite nodded and turned to follow the others. His carriage was erect, his uniform was impeccable, his features were without expression, but his face looked very pale. O’Mara sighed, closed his eyes, and tried to remember the mechanics of interviewing a candidate for a difficult and responsible job.

As they had applied to himself.

It had been the same office, but those days the walls had been covered only by sickly green anticorrosive paint rather than a selection of restful landscapes from a dozen worlds, and instead of the extraterrestrial furniture that made the present office look like a medieval torture chamber, there had been only two hard, upright chairs on opposite sides of a bench whose plastic worktop was buried under an untidy heap of printouts. Major Craythorne had occupied one chair and O’Mara the other.

That job interview, with the breaks necessary for eating, sleeping, and long periods of work experience, lasted for three years.

Suddenly he was back to the there and then, feeling the anxiety or perhaps it was the last hurried, undigested meal heavy in his stomach. Again he was smelling the supposedly odorless paint and hearing the high-pitched, intermittent sound of a nearby power drill that was forcing the major to swear mildly and pause from time to time.

“You have to remember, O’Mara,” said Craythorne, not for the first time, “that your face and manner do not invite trust, and your features show no depth or subtlety of mind even though we both know those qualities are there, and that on several occasions you have tinkered curatively with troubled other-species personalities. On the surface your consultation technique is crude but effective, so crude that your poor patient has no idea how deeply and sensitively he, she, or it has been probed and manipulated while you are appearing to bully them. Have you ever considered trying to be, well, insincerely polite?”

O’Mara sighed in angry impatience, but silently with his mouth open so that the other couldn’t detect it, then said, “You’re familiar with the Earth saying, sir, about trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear? You know I don’t work well in an atmosphere of insincere friendliness.”

Craythorne nodded calmly, but whether it was in answer to the question or the statement was unclear, so probably it was to both. He said, “Forget it for now, O’Mara. Your next assignment is to settle in a group of Kelgians. With them insincerity or politeness would be a waste of time because both concepts are completely alien to them. You’ll feel right at home. Have you any prior experience with that species?”

O’Mara shook his head.

The major smiled. “If I had time to tell you about them, which unfortunately I don’t right now, you wouldn’t believe me. They arrive in two hours. Before meeting them you should brief yourself on the library computer…

In the corridor outside their doorless office, someone dropped something heavy and metallic that made the whole room ring like a discordant bell. Craythorne winced and ended calmly, “… which, fortunately, is one of the few facilities in this place that is up and running.”

The major was a man O’Mara would have dearly liked to hate, but couldn’t because he was so damned likable. No matter how or why one of his subordinates messed up, he never lost his temper. Instead he just looked so disappointed that the culprits felt so sorry they never made the same mistake again. His manner was polished, invariably correct, and the greying hair and thin, sensitive features could have belonged to a career diplomat. Even in the issue coveralls he looked impeccable. It was as if the ever-present mixture of oily grime and metallic dust that stained everyone else’s clothing did not so much as dare approach his. He gave the impression of being, and truly was, a good man. He had opened up a job for O’Mara when all O’Mara’s options had closed.

“Major,” said O’Mara enviously, “how the hell did you get this way?”

The other smiled again and shook his head. “You keep trying to probe my hidden inner depths, and I yours. But trying to practice psychoanalysis on each other’s deeply buried psychoses is a waste of time, because as psychologists we don’t have any. We’re supposed to be sane, well-integrated personalities. It’s in our contracts.”

“Your contract, maybe…” O’Mara began.

Before he could go on, Craythorne said in a tone of gentle dismissal, “If you aren’t familiar with the new library computer consoles, there are plenty of mad genuises working down there who will be glad to help you out.”

Only a few of the freight elevators were working and they were usually so full of men and equipment that it wasn’t worth spending time waiting for a chance to squeeze into one. Besides, he was used to threading his way through many miles of corridors still under construction that were identified only by their hospital level and corridor numbers daubed with paint at the intersections. He slowed his pace to go around a couple of large, sweating and swearing men in Monitor Corps green coveralls, one of them a sergeant, who had been installing a heavy length of ceiling ducting, one end of which had fallen onto the floor. The NCO called out to him as he was passing.

“You” he said sharply, “help us lift this damn thing into position again and hold it. I’ll show you where it fits…

It was obvious where it fitted. Without speaking, O’Mara pulled a nearby bench into a more convenient position, lifted the loose end of the ducting onto the top surface, and jumped up himself. Then he lifted it without effort to the ceiling and held it accurately in position while the other two secured it.

“Thanks, friend’ said the sergeant. “Obviously you know what you’re doing and I need you here for a couple of hours. Whatever else you you were about to do, forget it.”

O’Mara shook his head and jumped to the floor.

“It’s okay” said the sergeant in a manner suggesting that he was unused to receiving negative responses. “I’ll fix it with your squad leader. On this job the Corps instructions take precedence over those given by civilian contractor supervisors.”

“SorryP said O’Mara, turning to go. “I really have to be somewhere else.”

“Hold it right there” said the other angrily. “Have you some kind of difficulty in comprehension…? What is it, Bates?”

The sergeant broke off as O’Mara turned back to look at him. It would not have been the first time that he had had to win an argument with his fists. But that had been in the bad old days and Craythorne would not like it if he started doing it again. Besides, the second Corpsman, Bates, was staring at his face and tugging urgently at the sergeant’s sleeve.