James White - Final Diagnosis

Braithwaite ignored the sarcasm and said, “Would you really like to know that it was your imagination, or would you rather not be sure? Think very carefully before you answer.

“If I’m imagining things,” said Hewlitt sharply, “I don’t want to be the only one who doesn’t know it.”

“Fair enough,” Braithwaite replied. “How well do you remember that tree you say you climbed on Etla, and the appearance of the fruit you may have eaten?”

“Well enough to draw a picture of it,” said Hewlitt, “if I could draw. Do you want me to try?”

“No,” the psychologist replied. He leaned sideways until he could reach the communicator keyboard with one hand and tapped briefly. When the screen lit up with the Sector General emblem, he said, “Library, nonmedical, vocal input, visual and translated vocal output, subject former Etlan Empire, planet Etla the Sick.”

“Please wait,” said the cool, impersonal voice of the library computer.

Surprised, Hewlitt said, “I didn’t know I could get the library on that thing, just the nurses’ station and the so-called entertainment channels.”

“Without the correct access codes, you can’t,” said Braithwaite. “But if you ever feel so bored that you want to browse, I could probably get you authorization. You won’t be given the codes for the medical library, though. When a case is thought to include a degree of hypochondria, the patient concerned should not be allowed access to a virtually unlimited number of symptoms.”

Hewlitt laughed suddenly in spite of himself and said, “I can understand why.”

Before Braithwaite could respond, the library voice said, “Caution. The Etla data is accurate but not yet complete. Following the large-scale police action taken against the then-Etlan Empire by the Monitor Corps, and the subsequent acceptance of its planets as members of the Galactic Federation twenty-seven standard years ago, the required transfer of Etlan botanical information to Central Records has been given a low order of priority owing to an intervening period of social unrest. The current situation is stable, the native intelligent life-form is physiological classification DBDG and nonhostile, and visits by other Federation citizens are encouraged. Please state your area of interest.”

A large-scale police action, Hewlitt thought. There had been a savage and mercifully short interstellar war fought between the Etlan Empire and the Federation, brought about by the need of the ruling group to maintain itself in power while diverting the attention of its citizens from its own shortcomings. But the function of the Monitor Corps was to maintain the Federation’s peace and not fight wars, so the response to the Etlan invasion of a whole galactic sector was a police action rather than a war. The fact that peace and stability had returned to the Etlan worlds meant that the Federation had won it.

“Etlan native flora,” said Braithwaite, interrupting Hewlitt’s cynical train of thought. “Specifically, a listing of all large fruitbearing trees, ten meters tall or higher, found in the south temperate zone. Display for twenty seconds’ duration unless requested otherwise.”

For some reason Hewlitt was beginning to feel uneasy. He looked at Braithwaite and opened his mouth to speak, but the lieutenant shook his head, pointed at the viewscreen, and said, “You described your tree as being very tall, but it may have looked tall because at the time you were a very small child. I thought it better to start with ten meters.”

It was like one of his childhood botany lessons, Hewlitt thought, a steady succession of tree pictures which in the present situation he found anything but boring. Most of them were strange to him, both in shape and foliage and in the fruit they bore, while others resembled the large bushes he had seen growing outside the garden fence. But one of them…

“That’s it!” he said.

“Hold: replay and expand data on the Pessinith tree,” said Braithwaite into the communicator. Then he said to Hewlitt, “It certainly looks like the tree you described: thick, twisted branches, with four thinner ones without bark at the top bearing the fruit clusters. And the color of the foliage is right for late summer when you climbed it. Library, run and repeat close-ups of the fruit showing seasonal growth and color changes.”

For several minutes he watched while the screen showed the fruit going through its cycle of green bud to small, dark brown sphere to the fully ripe, green-and-yellow-striped pear shape. It was so familiar that he had a twinge of remembered stomach cramps, and the feeling was so strong that he missed hearing the library computer’s boring recitation of the relevant nonvisual information.

“That is it,” he said again. “Definitely. Now do you believe me?”

“Well,” said Braithwaite, shaking his head in a way that suggested confusion as much as negation, “I now have another reason why that monitor medic didn’t believe you. And you haven’t been listening. That tree doesn’t reach the fruit-bearing stage until it is fifteen to twenty meters tall, and the fruit hangs from the topmost branches. If the tree was overhanging a ravine, and you fell from the top, you should have broken your stupid little four-year-old neck. Instead you escaped without a scratch.

“I suppose it is possible that intervening branches slowed your fall,” he went on, “or you fell into a thick bush before hitting the side of the ravine and rolling down. Stranger accidents have happened before now, and it would explain why you, an intelligent and seemingly well balanced person, are sticking to this incredible story. But that isn’t all you say you did. Don’t talk, Patient Hewlitt, just listen.”

In the silence the calm, impersonal voice of the library computer sounded clear and almost loud.“… While the fruit is ripening,” it was saying, “the spongy internal mass absorbs all of the juice and grows to fill the striped envelope which, before parturition, becomes tough and flexible. When the semiliquid, sponged-filled fruit strikes the ground, it bounces or rolls a short distance until chemical sensors in the skin indicate an underlying soil type suitable for germination, whereupon the area of skin in contact with the ground decomposes, enabling the sponge to release its liquid content and seeds into the soil and begin its own slower process of decomposition. This has a twofold purpose, in that the rotting spongy material promotes initial growth in the seeds, while the juice permeates the surrounding soil and inhibits or kills off competing growths.

“Warning,” it went on. “The fruit of the Pessinith tree is highly toxic to all known warm-blooded oxygen-breathing physiological classifications as well as the native Etlan life-forms of all species. It has been investigated for possible medicinal use in trace quantities without success. Two cubic centimeters of the juice ingested by an entity of average body mass, such as an adult Orligian, Kelgian, or Earth-human, causes a rapid loss of consciousness and termination within one standard hour, and three cubic centimeters would have the same effect on a Hudlar or Tralthan. The effect is irreversible and there is no known antidote…

“Thank you, Library,” said Braithwaite. His voice was calm, his face expressionless, but he hit the communicator’s cutoff key so hard that it might have been a mortal enemy. For a long moment the lieutenant stared at him without blinking. Hewlitt told himself that it was going to happen again, that another medical person was about to tell him that he had imagined everything. But when the psychologist spoke there was curiosity rather than disbelief in his voice.

“A few drops of Pessinith fruit juice will kill a fully-grown man,” he said calmly, “and you were a four-year-old child who sucked dry the contents of a whole fruit. Can you explain that, Patient Hewlitt?”