James White - Final Diagnosis

Hewlitt was still running through his bright, newly acquired memories like an excited small child exploring a new playground when the virus creature retraced its path along his shoulder, arm, and palm to return to Cherxic. Without a word the Telfi left the lock chamber and the inner seal closed behind it.

There was nothing more to be said to it, they knew, and nothing left to ask.

They maintained their silence while Hewlitt followed the Padre as it guided the gravity litter containing the two Telfi cadavers through the boarding tube and into the hospital lock chamber. The seal had closed behind them and emitted a loud, double chime accompanied by a visual warning indicating that the Telfi vessel had broken the docking seals before Lioren spoke, and then it was into its communicator.

“Braithwaite? Lioren. I must speak to Major O’Mara. It’s urgent.”

“O’Mara,” said the voice of the chief psychologist. “Go on, Padre.”

“We are calling off the search,” said Lioren. “The last and only remaining host of the virus creature has been found. It is currently inhabiting a member of the Telfi gestalt whose ship is leaving as we speak. The vessel is to be given departure clearance without delay. And you can cancel the evacuation drills and disperse the waiting ships. The problem with the power-generation control systems is over and…

“I don’t see the connection,” O’Mara broke in sharply. “Are you trying to tell me there is one?”

“Yes,” said Lioren. “When two unusual events occur at the same time, the chances are that they have a common cause. I had forgotten that particular unwritten natural law and it was Hewlitt, not me, who made the connection. There is no longer any danger to anyone inside the hospital, either from a nuclear detonation or a cross-species contagion, and we will give you a full report as soon as we reach the department.”

“Wait,” said O’Mara, “where you are.

For what seemed a long time Hewlitt stared at Lioren, who was looking with all of its eyes at the two dead Telfi, before the chief psychologist’s voice returned.

“You’re right, Padre,” said O’Mara, “Engineering confirms that the instability in the nuclear power and distribution systems has rectified itself, why or how they don’t know, and the emergency is over. It happened within the past fifteen minutes. But that was the lesser of the two problems. There is still the matter of the multispecies virus loose in the hospital and, with respect, you two are so deeply and personally involved that your assurance that there is no danger could be, well, more an unconscious product of wishful thinking than clinical fact. Is Hewlitt fully aware of the situation?”

When it was clear that Lioren was not going to reply, he said, “Yes, I think so.”

“Then let there be no doubt in your mind, Hewlitt,” said O’Mara, “that you two are in serious trouble. I am personally very sorry about this, we all are, but your trouble started when you were infected by the virus creature as a child on Etla, and here it was passed to ex-Patient Morredeth, Padre Lioren, and, an idea which I find completely incredible, a Telfi whose physiology and environment is less suited to a microbiological form of life than one of our hottest autoclaves. There are probably other hosts that we don’t know about. That is why, when our power generation showed indications of increasing instability that would not respond to the failsafe systems, we kept calling emergency evacuation drills instead of moving everyone into the ships that had been assembled for that purpose. We could not afford to take the risk of turning a multispecies disease of unknown potentiality loose in the Federation.

“Padre, I have no wish to offend you,” the chief psychologist went on, “by doubting the words of a Wearer of the Blue Cloak of Tarla. But the will to survive in you two as individuals, and for the citizens of the Galactic Federation as a whole, is an evolutionary imperative that may be superseded by any ethical considerations. That is why Kelgia has been instructed to place ex-Patient Morredeth in orbital quarantine on arrival. Similar instructions will be sent to Telf regarding the ship that has just left, and to Etla regarding that cat. You two will be placed in isolation for intensive study by Pathology, and the decision is about to be taken to dismiss the evacuation vessels and replace them with a Monitor Corps sector subfleet with orders to interdict Sector General to all external contact. This could result in serious destabilization throughout the Federation, but it seems that we have no choice. Do you understand our position?”

“It sounds,” said Hewlitt, with a small, uncontrollable shiver that was partly of dread as well as a reaction to well-meaning stupidity, “that you would have preferred the hospital to blow up and save everybody a lot of trouble. But please believe us, you have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

“I’m sorry, Hewlitt,” said O’Mara. “If the Padre has broken communicator contact with us, please ask it to speak. Diagnosticians Conway and Thornnastor as well as Murchison, Prilicla, and Colonel Skempton are with me. You may already know that Lioren was once a highly respected senior physician in Sector General. No offense, Hewlitt, but right now we need to hear the report from a medical professional.”

One of Lioren’s eyes moved up to regard Hewlitt for a moment; then the Padre returned all of its attention to the Telfi dead. He could almost feel the other’s present sorrow and its old, remembered pain. It did not speak.

“Lioren is unable or unwilling to speak to you right now,” he said, “nor will it speak to me. But we have become very close to the Telfi and each other during the past few minutes. I understand the situation as well as the Padre does, and I am willing to speak.”

“It isn’t like the Padre to behave this way,” said the chief psychologist, in a voice that mixed impatience with concern. “But I suppose we must settle for a bloody amateur. Talk, dammit.”

Hewlitt took a firmer grip on his temper and said, “The Padre may indeed have taken offense at your suggestion that we are lying; I certainly did. But it is also gravely troubled by the thought of two dead Telfi who, if it had only known what we now know, might not have died. But in the event it decided to comfort Patient Cherxic, whose case was also terminal although the condition was not as far advanced as that of the other two. The mistake, which was not deliberate and not a reason to punish itself, was on a much smaller scale than the results of the wrong decision it made a few years ago, but its distress over the Cromsag Incident is never far from the Padre s…

“Lioren spoke to you about Cromsag?” O’Mara broke in. “It never speaks of that to anyone, not even me.

“It did not speak to me,” said Hewlitt. “As of a few minutes ago, after the virus creature transferred temporarily from Cherxic to Lioren and then to me, I knew everything that was in the Padre’s mind

He had to break off, because it sounded as if six voices were trying to ask six different questions at once. He looked at the Padre for help, but Lioren’s eyes were still on the dead Telfi and he knew that its mind was on the terrible occurrence in its past when a planet had been all but depopulated because of a single wrong dec~sion. Sympathy for the Tarlan made his voice sound harsher than he had intended.

“If you don’t stop asking questions,” he said, “I won’t be able to answer any of them. Please be quiet and listen to me.

He was surprised at how quickly the voices died away until he realized that O’Mara had been giving them the same message, in much less polite language.

“Yes,” he said, “the virus creature briefly reentered my body, specifically my brain. And no, the process did not render me telepathic. The effect is closer to that of the Educator-tape experience remembered by the then Senior Physician Lioren, except that the process is gentler and without the psychological disorientation associated with the sudden transfer into one’s mind of the memories and personality of a completely alien donor. This was not a mindrecording, it was the transfer of memories by a thinking, sensitive entity who, because of the debt it felt it owed us, was anxious not to cause mental distress.”