James White: Mind Changer

“The point” said Conway, beginning to sound excited, “is that nothing like the Tunneckis accident had ever happened before because their technology isn’t advanced and ground vehicles are a recent development. The brief, ultra-high temperature and exposure to the electrical discharge of the lightning strike vaporized sections of the internal padding so that toxic material was inhaled and eventually circulated to the brain. Mistakenly I thought that the minor scorching of Tunneckis’s body surface was the only symptom. But now I know differently, and Thornnastor has come up with a specific that will detoxify the brain area involved. I’m confident-well, let’s say I’m guardedly optimistic-of effecting a cure.

O’Mara looked at him steadily for a moment, then said, “You are about to say ‘but.’”

“But it will be very delicate work” said Conway, “work I would rather not do at a distance with remotely controlled instruments. It will have to be a hands-on job. I fully realize the risks of a lengthy exposure to Tunneckis’s mental contagion, but I don’t foresee it being a long operation. Sir, I’ll have to be there.”

“And I” said Thornnastor and Prilicla, practically making it a duet.

O’Mara was silent for a moment. He was wondering how it would feel at first hand, rather than listening to Cerdal or the others trying to describe it, when the higher levels of one’s mind began to dissolve away and one became more and more suspicious and afraid of all the other-species staff in the hospital, people he had known and respected and liked for a great many years. He took a firm grip on the mind he still had and spoke.

“And I,” he said gruffly. “Somebody will be needed there with enough sense to pull the plug if we look like we’re running out of time.” He turned to Prilicla. “But not you, little friend. You will stay well clear and only fly in for a few seconds at fifteen-minute intervals to monitor and report on our emotional radiation. You will be aware of trouble developing long before we are. And if you detect the slightest sign of a coarsening of the intellect, or insensitive or illmannered or antisocial behavior, no matter what we say to you or how we excuse it, you tell the security team to pull us out at once. Is that understood?”

“Yes, friend O’Mara” said the empath.

Thornnastor stamped three of its feet in rapid succession and turned one of its eyes toward Conway. Aged Tralthans were notoriously hard of hearing and assumed other species to be the same, with the result that its whisper was loud and penetrating.

“Insensitive and rn-mannered behavior,” it said. “With O’Mara, how will we know the difference?”

OR One-Twelve was in all respects ready and waiting for them as Conway, Thornnastor, and O’Mara entered and moved quickly to their positions. The microsurgery instruments, high-magnification scanner, the recorder, and Pathology’s modified crystalline suspension had been checked and double-checked at a distance so that all they had to do was go to work.

Without wasting time.

“Try to relax, Tunneckis,” said O’Mara reassuringly. “This time we know where we’re going because we’ve been there before. The entry-wound area will be anesthetized and there will be no physical sensation from inside your brain. Talk to me whenever you feel like it, and don’t worry. Ready?”

“Yes,” said Tunneckis, “I think.”

Once again the big operating screen showed the tremendously magnified view from the internal vision pickup as Conway’s instruments negotiated the cavernous inner ear, pierced the membrane, and opened a path into the area of the telepathic faculty. Sweating with the effort of making his hands move even more slowly inside the reduction gauntlets, Conway went into the series of liquid-filled, interconnected tunnels with the slender-stemmed clusters of crystalline flowers growing from their mottled pinkand-yellow walls and stirring in the microscopic turbulence caused by the invading instruments.

Even to O’Mara’s untutored eye they didn’t look healthy.

“This is a mess,” said Conway in unknowing confirmation. “The mistake we made during the first op was in analyzing, reproducing, and replacing the ambient fluid and crystal structures without realizing that they were contaminated by a higher than normal concentration of toxic material, the complex of vaporized metal and plastic inhaled by the patient following the lightning strike to its vehicle, that was carried by the blood supply from the lungs to the brain. Thornnastor has injected a specific which has neutralized the toxicity and no more will be arriving. But we can’t simply suck out the contaminated fluid and replace it with the new material in case emptying the area collapses or otherwise damages the brain structure. So we’ll have to do both at the same time and gradually dilute and replace the old, contaminated fluid with the proper mix of minerals and trace elements which will enable the crystals to regrow in their correct but inevitably still slightly toxic medium.

“AS you can see, there are two distinct types of crystals present…

One type was a small, stunted, almost colorless crystalline flower that barely filled the cuplike receptor on the top of its stalk, O’Mara saw. The other was large and dark red and overhung its cup-shaped attachment point like a misshapen black cabbage. He was pretty sure of which one was responsible for the mental contagion spreading throughout the hospital, and again Conway was agreeing with him.

… My guess is that the smaller, less developed type are the telepathic receptors” Conway went on, “and the larger, which have been growing out of control in the contaminated fluid since we were last in here, are the transmitters that are radiating the continuous telepathic shouting that is causing our other problems. We’ll have to remove them from their stalks, very carefully, and withdraw them with the contaminated fluid. Dammit, there are a lot of them. How are we for time? And how is the patient?”

“You have been working for half an hour,” said Prilicla, who had flown silently into the room. “During my last visit you were all too busy to notice me so I left without speaking when I found that the emotional-radiation levels were optimum.”

“Half an hour?” said Conway, incredulously. “It shows how fast time passes when you’re enjoying yourself.”

“Conway!” said O’Mara sharply. “That was a particularly insensitive remark to make in the presence of a conscious patient, especially one who might not understand Earth-human sarcasm.

“Insensitive?” said Conway, looking suddenly worried. “Am I being… affected?”

“I don’t think so, friend Conway” Priicla broke in. “Your emotional radiation, like that of everyone else here, is being distorted by fear, but it is diffuse and may be based on your general fear for the patient’s well-being. Friend Tunneckis is also feeling intense fear, but that is normal for the circumstance and it is trying hard to keep it under control.”

“And I do understand sarcasm,” Tunneckis added, “wherever it originates, so an apology is unnecessary.”

Conway gave a short, relieved laugh and was back at work before it ended.

The procedure was slow, painstaking, and seemingly endless. As Conway used his microinstruments carefully to crush and detach the large crystals from their stalks, large only because of the ultra-high magnification, and withdraw them through a tiny suction tube, O’Mara thought that it was like watching a particularly inefficient underwater vacuum cleaner at work. But with the crystalline debris was going a measured quantity of the toxin-filled liquid that Thornnastor was replacing with the uncontaminated fluid in which, they were hoping, the new, healthy crystals would grow. Slowly and steadily the proportion of toxic material was diminishing, and it seemed that a few of the crystalline flowers of both kinds were attaching themselves to empty stalks. Conway was sweating in concentration and all four of Thornnastor’s eyes were directed at its instruments. Prilicla paid four more visits but came and went without comment. It was not until the seventh visit that it spoke.