James White - Final Diagnosis

As he was describing his transition from solitary studies on his home computer into the higher education system with its increasing emphasis on group studies and team and solo athletic events, at which he did very well, and the opportunities to form friendships with the female students that his growing reputation as an athlete provided, Morredeth interrupted him.

“Are you complaining about this situation?” it said. “Or being boastful about your good fortune?”

“I am complaining,” Hewlitt replied, his voice raised with remembered anger, “because the opportunities and advantages were lost. Nothing ever happened. Even when I was strongly attracted to a particular young female and, I believed, she to me… well, it was very unsatisfactory and frustrating and, and painful.”

“Were you more strongly attracted to someone or something else?” asked Morredeth. “To a female who was not attracted to you? Or had you developed even stronger feelings for one of your small furry creatures?”

“No!” said Hewlitt. He looked at the sleepers in the nearby beds and lowered his voice. “What kind of person do you think I am, dammit?”

“A very sick Earth-person,” Morredeth replied. “Isn’t that the reason you are here?”

“I wasn’t that sick,” said Hewlitt, laughing in spite of himself. “I wasn’t sick at all, according to the university medics. They said that I was a perfect physical specimen in every respect. After many embarrassing tests and experiments were carried out, they said that there was no anatomical or hormonal reason why, after I had achieved full mental and physical arousal, my seminal fluid should not have been expelled. They also said that by some involuntary or unconscious method which they did not understand I was checking the mechanism of ejaculation at the penultimate moment, and that the sudden interference with the flow caused immediate pain followed by diminishing discomfort in the genital area until the material was reabsorbed. They suggested that my problem was probably due to a deeply buried, childhood emotional trauma that was showing itself in episodes of shyness so intense that it manifested itself on the physical level.”

“What is shyness?” said Morredeth. “My translator assigns no Kelgian meaning to the word.”

If a being always said exactly what it thought, it could not be expected to understand shyness. Explaining shyness to such a being might be like trying to describe color to a blind person, but he would try.

“Shyness is a psychological barrier to social interaction,” he said. “It is a nonphysical wall that keeps a person from saying or doing what he or she is wanting very badly to say or do; for emotional reasons, usually involving inexperience or oversensitivity or even cowardice, the words or actions are suppressed. Among Earthhumans it is very common during puberty, when the initial social contacts between the sexes are being made.”

“That is ridiculous,” said Morredeth. “On Kelgia the feeling of a male or female for one of the opposite sex is impossible to hide. If the attraction felt by one for the other is very strong but is not reciprocated, the first has the option of persisting in its attempt to influence the second until the feeling is returned or of transferring the affections elsewhere. The successfully persistent ones usually make the best life-mates. Did the psychological treatment enable you to break through your shyness barrier eventually and allow normal coupling?”

“No,” said Hewlitt.

For the first time in his experience the Kelgian’s fur almost stopped moving, but only for a moment before it became even more agitated. Morredeth said, “I’m sorry. That situation must be very frustrating for you.”

“Yes,” he said.

“The senior physician might be able to help you,” said Morredeth, trying to mix reassurance with honesty. “If it cannot solve your problem, Medalont will take it as a personal insult. No matter how serious the disease or injury, Sector General has the reputation of curing everything and everybody. Well, nearly everybody.”

For a moment Hewlitt stared at the other’s fur, which was being stirred into waves and eddies as if it were an agitated pooi of mercury; then he said, “The senior physician has my medical history, but as yet it hasn’t asked me about my involuntary celibacy. Maybe, like the university’s psychologist, it thinks the trouble is all in my mind. But the problem wasn’t, isn’t, painful so long as I avoid close, one-to-one female contact.

“When it became clear that the psychologist was getting nowhere,” he went on, keeping his eyes on the increasing agitation of Morredeth’s fur, “he decided that I was stubbornly refusing to respond to all his attempts at psychotherapy. I was told that living out my life without female companionship, which was probably what I secretly wanted to do, was rare but not in itself unhealthy. Many highly respected people in the past had done so, and made significant contributions to philosophy and the sciences while devoting themselves to the religious celibate life as writers and teachers, or by sublimating their sexual urges in scientific research…

He broke off because Morredeth’s body as well as its fur was showing increasing agitation. The underlying bands of muscle were going in and out of spasm, causing it to twist and turn and bounce against the bed.

“Are you all right?” he asked anxiously. “Shall I call the nurse?”

“No,” said the Kelgian, the upper part of its body threatening to roll onto the floor. “I don’t want any more of your stupid interference.”

Hewlitt wondered if he should raise the screens so that the bed would be visible from the nurses’ station, then remembered that the other was probably on a monitor. He looked at the writhing body again and said, “I was only trying to help you.”

“Why are you doing this cruel thing?” said Morredeth. “Who told you to do this to me?”

“I, I don’t understand you,” he said, feeling baffled. “What did I say?”

“You are not a Kelgian,” said Morredeth, “so you do not fully understand the mental hurt I feel. First you talked about stroking your furry pet, and then apologized for your insensitivity. Now you are talking about yourself and the impossibility of you ever finding a mate, but it is plain that you are really talking about me and my problems. You must have been told to do this. When Li-oren tried to do these things to me earlier, I closed my ears. Who told you to talk to me like this? Lioren? Braithwaite? The senior physician? And why?”

His first impulse was to deny everything, but that would have been unfair because Kelgians did not know how to tell, nor would they expect to be told, a lie. Either he should say nothing or tell the truth.

“It was the Hudlar nurse,” he said, “who asked me to talk to you.

“But the Hudlar isn’t a psychologist,” Morredeth broke in. “Why did it do such a cruel thing? It is unqualified and it was tinkering with my feelings. I shall report its behavior to the senior physician.”

Hewlitt tried to reduce the other’s growing anger by saying, “Every person I ever met thought they were good, if untrained, psychologists…“Including me, he added silently. “…just as they believed themselves to be expert ground-car drivers and in possession of a brilliant sense of humor. The trouble is, psychologists rarely agree on their methods of treatment. Are you feeling pain?”

“No,” said Morredeth, “anger.”

Considering the species of the patient, he thought, the words had to be accepted as the literal truth. As he watched the increasing agitation and violence of the fur and body movements, he wondered if he was seeing the Kelgian equivalent of bad language that the other had no need to vocalize.